Passionately in Love with Jesus

So many believers have gone before us who were passionately in love with Jesus. Not only the martyrs of the early church, but throughout the Middle Ages, Reformation and beyond, a great cloud of witnesses has gone before us.

Let me name a few of the highest peaks along a mammoth mountain range of faith. These are men and women who served God in their generation and passionately loved the Lord with all their hearts:
- Irenaeus
- Origen
- Augustine of Hippo
- Pseudo-Dionysius
- Gregory the Great
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Bernard of Clairvaux
- Hildegard of Bingen
- Francis of Assisi
- Thomas Aquinas
- Bonaventure
- Albert the Great
- Meister Eckhart
- Dante Alighieri
- Hadewijch
- Mechthild of Magdeburg
- Gertrude the Great
- Johannes Tauler
- Jan van Ruysbroeck
- Richard Rolle
- Catherine of Sienna
- Julian of Norwich
- Teresa of Avila
- Thomas à Kempis
- Francis de Sales
- Blaise Pascal
- Desiderius Erasmus
- Martin Luther
- Johann Arndt
-Francois Fenelon
-Madame Guyon
- Jonathan Edwards
- John Wesley
- Søren Kierkegaard
-A. B. Simpson
-A. W. Tozer

Many of these in the Middle Ages were referred to as “mystics.” They had an intimate, inner faith and experienced the Lord in a personal way. We would simply call them passionate believers!

This blog is dedicated to introduce these believers to today’s Christians. It will take some years, but I hope to run a series of articles on each of these men and women.

Several recent books helping to bring these bygone saints alive to contemporary readers that I would highly recommend are:
- Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998. ISBN: 0-06-062822-7.
- Foster, Richard and Gayle Beebe. Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-8308-3514-0.
- Jones, Cheslyn, Geoffrey Wainwright and Edward Yarnold, eds. The Study of Spirituality. New York, NY: Oxford, 1986. ISBN: 019-504170-4.
- Leng, Felicity. Invincible Spirits: A Thousand Years of Women's Spiritual Writings. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007.
- Myers, Glenn E. Seeking Spiritual Intimacy: Journeying Deeper with Medieval Women of Faith. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-8308-3551-5.
- Sittser, Gerald. The Adventure: Putting Energy into your Walk with God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985. ISBN: 0-87784-335-X.

© 2011 Glenn E. Myers