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All Your Heart: How to Live for Christ Without Holding Back
- GenresFaith
232 pages
Published July 12, 2026
About the author
Tanner Kalina
3 books4 followersTanner Kalina is a Catholic evangelist, author and well-known speaker who has dedicated his life to sharing the Gospel. A former actor and screenwriter, he now presents to tens of thousands of people each year, including youth, laity, parish leaders, and clergy.
He has written two books, and he is the Co-Founder of the Saints Alive Podcast on Hallow. He is the presenter of several Ascension Press faith formation video series, and he has contributed other video projects to EWTN, FOCUS, the National Eucharistic Revival, and more.
He and his wife, Alli, reside in Loveland, Colorado.
He has written two books, and he is the Co-Founder of the Saints Alive Podcast on Hallow. He is the presenter of several Ascension Press faith formation video series, and he has contributed other video projects to EWTN, FOCUS, the National Eucharistic Revival, and more.
He and his wife, Alli, reside in Loveland, Colorado.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 15, 2026
I underlined so much of this book that at some point I had to accept I was no longer highlighting. I was basically colouring it in.
All Your Heart is one of those Catholic books that takes a very familiar idea and somehow makes it feel newly urgent.
Love God with all your heart.
Simple enough.
Except Tanner Kalina spends the next two hundred pages asking the uncomfortable question hidden inside that command: do we actually?
Not in theory. Not in the sense that we identify as Catholic, go to Mass, pray sometimes and generally agree with the right things. Do we love God with the whole heart, or have we simply become very comfortable giving Him most of it while quietly reserving certain rooms for ourselves?
That question runs through the entire book.
Kalina builds his argument around the biblical understanding of the heart, not simply as the seat of emotion, but as the centre of the person, where intellect, will, desire and love meet. I found this especially interesting because he refuses the modern tendency to separate what we think, what we choose and what we feel. His point is that they constantly shape one another.
What we believe matters.
What we repeatedly choose matters.
What we give our attention to matters.
Eventually, all of it forms the heart.
One line stopped me completely:
“If half of your heart is 100% bought in for the Lord, and the other half isn’t, then your heart isn’t.”
There is really nowhere to hide after that.
The chapters on attachment were probably the most challenging for me. Kalina draws heavily on St. John of the Cross and that image of the bird tied by a thread rather than a rope. The material holding it may be thinner, but the bird still cannot fly.
That is such an uncomfortable description of spiritual attachment.
We tend to imagine idolatry as something dramatic. Kalina brings it much closer. What do we look to for identity? Comfort? Worth? Security? What gets hours of our attention while prayer gets the scraps? What person or ambition are we quietly expecting to give us what only God can?
His observation that “an idol or attachment is something or someone we want more than God” is brutally simple.
And then the book becomes even more countercultural.
Kalina is unapologetic about orthodoxy.
In a culture obsessed with “your truth”, he insists that peace cannot be built on endlessly shifting beliefs. If Christ is Truth, then discipleship necessarily involves submitting the intellect as well as the emotions. As he writes, “a peaceful heart flows from stable beliefs.”
I loved this section.
There is a tendency in modern Christianity to present love and doctrine as though they are somehow competing ideas. Kalina refuses that false choice. Right belief, right action and rightly ordered love belong together. Orthodoxy is not a cage around the Christian life. It is what allows the heart to stop endlessly negotiating with itself.
And I loved how practical the final sections become.
This is not a book advocating one dramatic conversion moment followed by effortless holiness. Quite the opposite. Kalina talks constantly about habits, repetition, training, perseverance and beginning again.
“Virtues are like muscles.”
That image runs beautifully through the book. Holiness is trained. Prayer trains the heart. Obedience trains the will. Truth trains the intellect. Love becomes habitual because we repeatedly choose it.
Which means failure is not the end of the process.
It is part of it.
Perhaps my favourite paradox in the whole book is this:
“The more we conform to Christ, the more uniquely ourselves we become.”
That, to me, is Christianity in one sentence.
The world constantly tells us that freedom means removing limits, following every desire and constructing ourselves from scratch. Christianity says almost the opposite. Surrender yourself completely to Christ and you finally become the person you were created to be.
Freedom is found through order.
Fulfilment through emptying.
Life through the Cross.
And ultimately, the heart finds itself by giving itself away.
Five stars.
Thoughtful, orthodox, challenging and full of passages I will return to. This is not a book about becoming a slightly better Christian. It is about refusing the half-hearted version of Christianity we have somehow convinced ourselves is enough.
As Kalina writes at the end, God wants more for us than we can imagine.
The only reasonable response is to dare to love Him back with all our heart.
All Your Heart is one of those Catholic books that takes a very familiar idea and somehow makes it feel newly urgent.
Love God with all your heart.
Simple enough.
Except Tanner Kalina spends the next two hundred pages asking the uncomfortable question hidden inside that command: do we actually?
Not in theory. Not in the sense that we identify as Catholic, go to Mass, pray sometimes and generally agree with the right things. Do we love God with the whole heart, or have we simply become very comfortable giving Him most of it while quietly reserving certain rooms for ourselves?
That question runs through the entire book.
Kalina builds his argument around the biblical understanding of the heart, not simply as the seat of emotion, but as the centre of the person, where intellect, will, desire and love meet. I found this especially interesting because he refuses the modern tendency to separate what we think, what we choose and what we feel. His point is that they constantly shape one another.
What we believe matters.
What we repeatedly choose matters.
What we give our attention to matters.
Eventually, all of it forms the heart.
One line stopped me completely:
“If half of your heart is 100% bought in for the Lord, and the other half isn’t, then your heart isn’t.”
There is really nowhere to hide after that.
The chapters on attachment were probably the most challenging for me. Kalina draws heavily on St. John of the Cross and that image of the bird tied by a thread rather than a rope. The material holding it may be thinner, but the bird still cannot fly.
That is such an uncomfortable description of spiritual attachment.
We tend to imagine idolatry as something dramatic. Kalina brings it much closer. What do we look to for identity? Comfort? Worth? Security? What gets hours of our attention while prayer gets the scraps? What person or ambition are we quietly expecting to give us what only God can?
His observation that “an idol or attachment is something or someone we want more than God” is brutally simple.
And then the book becomes even more countercultural.
Kalina is unapologetic about orthodoxy.
In a culture obsessed with “your truth”, he insists that peace cannot be built on endlessly shifting beliefs. If Christ is Truth, then discipleship necessarily involves submitting the intellect as well as the emotions. As he writes, “a peaceful heart flows from stable beliefs.”
I loved this section.
There is a tendency in modern Christianity to present love and doctrine as though they are somehow competing ideas. Kalina refuses that false choice. Right belief, right action and rightly ordered love belong together. Orthodoxy is not a cage around the Christian life. It is what allows the heart to stop endlessly negotiating with itself.
And I loved how practical the final sections become.
This is not a book advocating one dramatic conversion moment followed by effortless holiness. Quite the opposite. Kalina talks constantly about habits, repetition, training, perseverance and beginning again.
“Virtues are like muscles.”
That image runs beautifully through the book. Holiness is trained. Prayer trains the heart. Obedience trains the will. Truth trains the intellect. Love becomes habitual because we repeatedly choose it.
Which means failure is not the end of the process.
It is part of it.
Perhaps my favourite paradox in the whole book is this:
“The more we conform to Christ, the more uniquely ourselves we become.”
That, to me, is Christianity in one sentence.
The world constantly tells us that freedom means removing limits, following every desire and constructing ourselves from scratch. Christianity says almost the opposite. Surrender yourself completely to Christ and you finally become the person you were created to be.
Freedom is found through order.
Fulfilment through emptying.
Life through the Cross.
And ultimately, the heart finds itself by giving itself away.
Five stars.
Thoughtful, orthodox, challenging and full of passages I will return to. This is not a book about becoming a slightly better Christian. It is about refusing the half-hearted version of Christianity we have somehow convinced ourselves is enough.
As Kalina writes at the end, God wants more for us than we can imagine.
The only reasonable response is to dare to love Him back with all our heart.
September 10, 2026
“There is a God shaped hole in our hearts.” A great writing on how we can align our hearts with God, softening our hearts and being open to Him. When we love God fully and truly, then we can learn to love others and to reveal more about ourselves. Great lessons and examples on how to love Christ, others, ourselves, and where to make sure God is the priority.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews