Ever so gently, God got my attention and whispered the invitation to make some changes.
As you can imagine, I hit a wall aſter sixteen years in
full-time ministry. Disillusioned, I felt like I was on a treadmill that never ended, and while I was somewhat aware that I was depending primarily on my own strength to power that treadmill, I didn’t know how to do it any differently. I took a sabbatical, went back to seminary and
started a retreat ministry called Breathing Space to help people like me carve out time to listen and respond to God. Despite my driven, type-A, Ennea- gram three personality (or maybe because of it!), I started building rhythms in my life to make more space for silence and solitude, to experience Scripture and prayer in new, contemplative ways and to practice many other spiritual disciplines. I discovered, through the giſt of God’s grace, that this was how He restored my soul. If I would carve out the time, He would meet me in that space and slowly transform me over time. Ten, I became the executive director of a Christian
camp. Te frenetic pace, constant needs of others, external crises out of my control and being on call 24/7 sucked me back into the nonstop rhythms of worka- holism. I didn’t completely abandon the practices that drew me close to God and nourished my soul, but I slipped back into seeing them as a luxury that camp leadership rarely afforded me. Sometime during my third year, I was exhausted and realized this insane pace was unsustainable. Ever so gently, God got my attention and whispered the invitation to make some changes. It was then that I was reminded of this most power-
ful truth from John Ortberg’s book, Soul Keeping: “Te most important thing in your life is not what you do; it’s who you become. Tat’s what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” Mic drop.
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www.ccca.org May/June 2024 These are the questions for each of us: Who am
I becoming? If my mission is to make disciples of Jesus, am I becoming the kind of person who lives like Jesus would if He was in my place? In other words, am I actually living the life I am inviting others to live? Am I becoming a person powered by God’s strength? Is my soul being transformed to look more and more like Him over time? Te soul is oſten described as the engineer of our
being. In his book Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard wrote, “What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. Not external circumstances, or your thoughts, or your intentions or even your feelings, but your soul … [it] correlates, integrates and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self.” The soul simply cannot be avoided; it hungers for
meaning, and in the absence of meaning, it resorts to performance and fanaticism. If I’m not careful, I can find myself guilty of performing, running around doing a bunch of stuff I think pleases God while completely neglecting my soul and the work God wants to do in me. It was in a similar climate when Jesus spoke the
words found in Matthew 11:28–30, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Tere is, perhaps, no greater verse than that for
leaders to mediate on to evaluate the condition of our souls. Just as people misguidedly find their identity in sports, politics or possessions, we can get lost in the work of ministry.
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