Journey to Love: What We Long For, How to Find It, and How to Pass It On

by Matt Mikalatos

Overview

The Journey to Love is our first step toward learning to accept love from others and to love those around us.

Finding love in our everyday lives and relationships can be difficult. In this collection of 40 short, story-driven readings, Matt Mikalatos helps us open ourselves to love in the world around us and to set aside control and embrace the wild, untamed vulnerability of loving and being loved.

This is an easy book to read over 40 days—or finish in a couple of hours. Each entry includes questions and exercises to help with reflection, transformation, or discussion with friends or a book club. The goal is to find ourselves more loving and able to receive more love.

Are you ready to join the Journey to Love?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641582964
Publisher:	Tyndale House Publishers
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 6.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Matt Mikalatos has, like you, experienced the joy of love and the pain of lacking it. He's excited to join you on this journey. Matt lives in the Portland, Oregon, area with his wife, three daughters, and a gigantic rabbit named Bruce.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part 1 Preparing for The Journey

1 Love Exists 1

2 It's Not You 6

3 What Lies Ahead 10

4 All You Have to Do Is Show Up 14

5 Permanent Relationship 18

Part 2 Finding Love

6 Recognizing Love 25

7 Gentleness 28

8 Kindness 32

9 Patience 36

10 Forgiveness 39

Part 3 That's Not Love

11 Love Is Not Peace 45

12 Love Is Not jealous 48

13 Love Is Not Easily Angered 51

14 Love Is Not Selfish 55

15 Love Doesn't Shame or Dishonor 59

Part 4 The Power of Love

16 The Power of Truth 65

17 The Power of Hope 69

18 The Power of Courage 73

19 The Power of Endurance 76

20 Love and Death 79

Part 5 Barriers to Love

21 Rudeness 85

22 A Lack of Vulnerability 89

23 Pride 93

24 Grief 97

25 Permission 101

Part 6 Divine Love

26 Mystical Love 107

27 Service 111

28 Freedom to Love 115

29 Imagination 119

30 Sacrificial Love 123

Part 7 Love Changes The World

31 Love as Activism 129

32 Compassion 133

33 Love and Justice 136

34 Love and the Transformed Heart 140

35 Love for Strangers 143

Part 8 Strength to Love

36 Rest in Love 149

37 Thankfulness 152

38 Faithfulness 155

39 Self-Control 159

40 The Remedy for Love 163

A Note on Abuse 167

Acknowledgments 170

Notes 173

What People are Saying About This

Drew Dyck

Gosh, this is a beautiful book. Matt’s vivid stories and powerful insights will linger in your heart and mind long after you finish reading. When I was at one of the lowest times of my life, Matt reached out to show me love, so I know he practices what he preaches. Whether you come from a background where love was abundant or scarce, my prayer is that God will use Matt’s words to open your heart to give—and receive—love.

Paul J. Pastor

I’m not sure how it’s possible, but many of us manage somehow to take love for granted. With insight, honesty, and his trademark quick wit, Matt gently makes that impossible, by helping us see new depths in the oldest virtue. Any reader who goes on this Journey to Love will return changed, in the best and simplest of everyday ways.

Vivian Mabuni

Matt Mikalatos is a fair, wise, and trusted voice online and in person. His new book, Journey to Love, is exactly what our splintered, weary world needs. I especially appreciate the example of the beautiful, healthy, loving friendship Matt, a married man, shared with Shasta, a single woman. A gifted writer and communicator, Matt fills these pages with inspiring stories, hard-won lessons, and challenges to move us toward greater love. Thank you for pointing us back to what really matters.

Kathy Khang

Journey to Love is a much-needed reminder that love is not only an emotion but a spiritual discipline and practice. Matt Mikalatos gives readers poignant stories to connect with our hearts and practical exercises inviting us to love with our whole selves. You’ll want to read this book with a journal and practice it with a community.

Joyce Koo Dalrymple

This beautiful book of meditations inspired me to reflect on the ways I have been loved and how I can love others better. The author shares stories of how he learned what love is that are both personal and universal. In our heart of hearts, we all long to live a life of both receiving and giving love in deeper ways. This book identifies barriers to loving well and clearly defines what love is, so that we can live the life of love we are created to live.

Gina Brenna Butz

Wherever you are on your own journey to love, you will find your next step in this book. Through thoughtful reflections and simple, practical exercises, Mikalatos encourages and challenges readers to act toward believing in and freely expressing radical love. In our divisive culture, this book is a refreshing call to a transformational way of living that is possible for any of us.

Michelle Ami Reyes

Journey to Love is a book I didn’t know I needed. It opened my eyes to a more robust understanding of love and what it truly means for love to be patient and kind. In our broken, racially fraught world, we all need to learn how to love better, deeper, richer. Matt’s book shows us the way.

Aubrey Sampson

In a world of power struggles and division, author Matt Mikalatos invites readers to do something extraordinary: inhale goodness and love and exhale it to those around them. Journey to Love is a rare opportunity, a respite for the weary soul, a breath of much-needed fresh air.

JR. Forasteros

Despite the Beatles’ assurances that learning the game of love is easy, I’ve found we all struggle deeply with this basic need: to receive love, and to love well. In Journey to Love, Matt invites us to follow him into a life bursting with love. Our steps are small and halting at first. But as the journey progresses, we find ourselves running, then sprinting, and finally diving headlong into a mystery that’s bigger and deeper than we imagined. Journey to Love is for anyone you know. Literally. Read it for yourself. Then read it with a friend. Or maybe someone who isn’t a friend quite yet. This book is medicine for our hurting world.

Amy Boucher Pye

We all want to love and be loved. But what does that mean? Through winsome stories and heartfelt reflections, Matt Mikalatos gently probes what love looks like as he welcomes us on a life-changing journey. Don’t miss not only reading this book but putting it into practice. You’ll never be the same!

Angie Ward

Journey to Love is simply beautiful. Personal and practical, Matt made me feel loved, made me want to love, and showed me how to love. The world will be a better, more loving place because of this book.

Catherine McNiel

We spend years investing in education, professions, hobbies . . . but what about love? Do we give any thought toward growing in our ability to give and receive this most precious resource? A quick look at the world—or ourselves—shows how much we could use a journey to love, and in these forty easy-to-read reflections, author Matt Mikalatos gives us the nudge we need.