Soul Work

It is our duty to be loyal to God’s desires.


Beware of allowing externals to take control of your life. “Eat, drink and be merry,” became the life purpose of the farmer who had lost his soul. He failed to live rich toward God and only focused on amassing wealth for this life.

Our souls are not designed to be floundering on their own but are to be deeply rooted in God.


Open your inner world to the Lord and sit in his presence for a few minutes, without words, just inviting him in, that you might experience his love for you. Gently ask him to show you a glimpse of your inner world. As you sit in the Lord’s presence, do you sense he is opening you to something? Make every effort not to resist God’s work. If you find negative emotions, don’t pretend they are not there. Welcome them and release them to the Spirit. As you open yourself to the Lord, he will transform you.

As Christians, we can fail to live “rich toward God.” When we allow a busy life to keep us from a profoundly rich, soul-expanding, all-encompassing love for Jesus, we have become the farmer, living a profoundly impoverished life, living as if this life is all there is.

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Keeping the Lord before us

“The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God .”


One of the most essential practices of the spiritual life is to keep the Lord before us all of the time. David knew this: "I keep the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure" (Psalm 16:8-9).

So how do we do this? When we take some time to retreat, we have the time to quiet our “inner noisy workshop.” Sometimes it takes 24 hours of solitude before we can begin to be present to the Lord. I've found some ways that help me to quiet the inner noise - things as simple as keeping a list so that my mind doesn't have to be continually reminding of things I don't want to forget.

Along with quieting the inner noise, we need to fill our minds with Jesus. We open ourselves to him and direct our thinking toward him. This is another goal. We can develop the habit of keeping the words of the Gospels in our minds by reading them carefully day by day, and re-reading them. We can memorize them. I find that when I am actively working on memorizing a passage, I naturally recall it throughout the day.

Keeping the Lord before us is a choice, a habit, a skill that we can practice and become better at. If we stick with it, keeping our mind focused on the Lord and at peace in Him will become the default. Our minds will return to him naturally, as a matter of habit.

Memorizing Scripture is such a gift as it helps our mind muse upon God.

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Principles of Devotion

Know deeply that I am whole in God’s eyes – beloved. He values and loves me. Because I am so loved and completely forgiven, I can love and forgive others.


Know yourself – your strengths and their accompanying weaknesses. Know how you promote and defend yourself.

Surrender to the love of God and entrust yourself to his loving intentions. Consent to his supremacy in all things. Be willing for God to be your Father.

Release control of your time, tendencies, inclinations, motivations, desires, goals, finances to the Lord. Be aware of what you might be holding back.

Find contentment in trusting in the goodness of the will of God, assured he has done and always will do well by us.

Fully participate, using your intelligence and energy to accomplish God’s will in the world.

Present your body to God—release each part to Him, ask him to take charge of your body, fill it, use it for his purposes. Use fasting as a strategy to help you know that the Lord is the Provider of nourishment for both your body and your soul. You are in charge of your body.

Stop idolizing your body. Care for it as it serves God and don’t worry or fear what will happen to it or what it will do to you. Entrust it to God.

Don’t misuse your body – not as a source of sensual gratification outside God’s will or to manipulate others by how you dress, or the things you say, or by using your words to exclude others.

Properly honor and care for your body—it is holy, set apart to God. Eat well and exercise. Enter into contrary practices like Sabbath resting and fasting to break the force of a habit that you don’t seem to be able to resist. When you feel tempted, turn your attention to deeply receiving the truth of God’s love for you. Rest. Sleep well.

Be in a community of trusted friends that are willing to open their inner lives. Be as honest as you can be about who you are.

Reflect on God’s Word each day.

Have a daily time to reflect on what the Spirit is doing in your heart and life. To do this, you might journal reflectively about: What insight did you receive today? What are you most grateful for? What do you want to hold on to? What do you want to release?

Take the opportunity to go on a spiritual retreat where you have the luxury of several days focused on being with God.



 

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Soul Rest

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. Psalm 23


It’s stressing over outcomes that makes me nuts. This is not the spiritual life. The spiritual life involves surrendering all outcomes to Jesus, drawing close, listening to his Spirit to follow his leading, and doing my best but not with a compulsive, obsessed, “driven to prove myself” mentality.

This is quite a challenge when you are being held accountable for results and you really can fail, lose funding, lose your job.

“The Lord is my shepherd.” He is the one who provides. He is the one who makes me lie down and rest secure. He is the one who nourishes and refreshes and leads the way. He is the one who restores my soul. He is the one who guards me from evil and takes away all my fear because I know he is right there beside me, able to protect me. He is the one who vindicates me in the presence of my enemies and honors me and blesses me. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all of the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Soul rest is possible because I learn from Scripture that the criteria for success in Jesus’ kingdom is not the outcome I’m striving for. That’s the world’s measure. Success in God’s kingdom is defined by God and is based on our love for him and others, our dependence and humility before him, our fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When we live in the kingdom of God we can lighten up, have fun doing our best, because we have been set free from having to prove our worth by producing results. God wants our hearts and he’ll produce success according to his measure. He may even have us fail in order to form our character in the crucible of suffering and difficulties. So rest.

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Spiritual Gluttony

Rest rekindles the fire.


There is such a thing as “spiritual gluttony” – when we compulsively want more and more spiritually. The compulsion to do more ministry, glean more insight, meet with more people, pray longer, give more, sleep less. Passion that morphs into an obsession can ruin us.

On a regular basis, we need to stop and take a true Sabbath’s rest. If we don’t, we can become spiritual gluttons. Passion everyday can squelch our passion. Lay down everything you are doing and stop all of your mental activity and truly rest.

Rest rekindles the fire.

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Restore My Soul

“There is no grander sight in the world than that of a person fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim.” Orison Swett Marden


Let God use all that he’s created to nurture my soul and speak to my heart. He is good, he cares for me, and loves me, and welcomes me into his kingdom through the passion of his Son. Everything leads me to him. He is restoring my soul.

Two weeks outdoors to be immersed in the beauty of nature has the same soul-restoring effect as a silent retreat. It draws me out of the world of hurry, and struggle, and decisions and draws me into God’s world of peace, and joy, and rest.

Lord, may you use these days to restore my soul. Light me on fire by the work of your Spirit that I’ll return home dominated by one unwavering aim to love you with my heart, mind, soul, and strength every day. I desire to be fired with a great purpose, that your will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

 

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Spiritually Dry

Sometimes we get to the point where we are really dry. We have worked so hard in ministry, yet we feel strangely disconnected from the Lord. How do we re-connect? How do we remind ourselves that we are living in His presence? What can we do to deepen our understanding of God's love for us?


Journaling, reflection, lectio divina, prayers of confession and relinquishment, silence, and solitude, the prayer of examen, will all lead us into his arms.

We can get spiritually dry even though we are involved in Christian activities.

It's amazing how refreshed we feel when we stop all of our "religious" activity, spend time giving God our hearts, falling in love with him all over again, letting the truth of His love soak into our inner sanctuary, seeing his hand in our lives and hearing his call, and simply attending to him. So one anecdote for spiritual dryness is to take a Sabbath’s rest and stop all of our work.

"The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." Isaiah 58:11

Spiritual vitality will return.

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Rest - A Day to Disengage

“Foolish out of measure is he who attendeth upon other things rather than those which serve the soul’s health.”


I had been intense all month, mentally considering ideas, reading, writing, meeting with people. On Thursday, I was exhausted and I felt on Friday that in order to continue wanting to be in pursuit of God, I needed a break, a day to totally disengage. I didn’t read anything. I didn’t turn on my computer. Instead, Kevin and I enjoyed a day outside. We took the light rail downtown and walked to the Rose Garden. A great day, enjoying being outside, with Kevin, mentally disengaged from ministry so that I could re-engage with enthusiasm tomorrow.

I’m learning that for me to stay hot, I must disengage at times. Passionate living can leave me mentally exhausted and a day off can be so refreshing that I wake up the next day desiring to re-engage.

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Sleep

It’s hard to be passionate about anything when I’m on the verge of falling asleep. When I’m tired. I just want to go to sleep. I can’t push through being exhausted. For me, I need to be rested to live passionately. So part of nurturing spiritual passion is being disciplined about getting enough sleep. For me, I need 7-1/2 to 8 hours of sleep.


I can want to be passionate, but if I’m too tired, I get grumpy. I can’t stay awake, I can’t concentrate, I can’t reflect or think deeply or learn. When I try to read when I’m tired, my eyes may scan the words but I have no knowledge of what I read. When I try to pray I fall asleep. So in order to nurture my heart’s desire for the Lord, I need rest.

We may want to stay up late doing something, but that actually works against us. If what is best for us is that we live fully alive, then we need to pay attention to getting enough sleep. That doesn’t sound as spiritual as staying up all night working on something—but it is.

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Our Bodies

“Most of what is called character consists in what our bodies are and are not “at the ready” to do in the specific situations we find ourselves in.” (Dallas Willard)


The proper retraining and nurturing of the body is absolutely essential to Christlikeness.

Willard instructs us that inclination to do what is wrong (temptation) resides primarily in my body. We can act or speak before we think. Our body parts can carry us away (James 3:5-6). Our bodies run our lives: we are almost entirely devoted to how our bodies look, smell, feel, and how I can use my body to be admired.

God created our bodies so that we could live a life devoted to God as we await our glorification and new bodies in the next life.

Body worship, body hatred, fear of what our bodies will do to us before we die are all coming from a perspective that there is no God. God says that our bodies are beautiful, holy, sacred and belong to him. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who indwells us. God created our bodies and gave them to us. Spiritual formation involves not just our hearts but our bodies as well.

Heart * Soul * Mind * Strength

 

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All of Me

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s comands and remain in his love.” (John 15:9-10)


Spiritual formation is foundational to living a Christian life that is pleasing to the Lord and worthy of his sacrifice and calling.

Spiritual transformation requires obedience. It requires intentionality on my part to do what the Lord commands, but it cannot be accomplished by depending on my will alone.

Spiritual transformation requires that I (heart, soul, thoughts, feelings, will) work together with the Holy Spirit in interaction with the grace of God to let God’s love change me in the core of my inner person.

Hungering for righteousness, longing and wishing for my attitudes, motivations, reactions, desires, and focused action to be beautiful and good, even Christ-like, won’t happen automatically while my attention is consumed in other things.

Spiritual transformation requires that I make love the central focus of my life. Jesus says, “Now remain in my love.” (John 15:9) Remain. Stay there. Don’t leave.

Love is the very least and the very most I can do.

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Is This Really Possible?

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:11-12)


"Living a life of love," "experiencing complete joy"—not exactly the first characteristics that spring to mind as people outside of the church seek to describe us. Not exactly the first characteristics that spring to my mind either. Why? Why aren’t we full of love and joy?

Willard writes, "It's God's intention that our lives should be a seamless manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23).

Is Willard right? Can we really get to a place in our lives where we experience God's joy from deep within that won’t be shaken by our circumstances? Not a pretense of joy, but a true sense of well-being and hope in the Lord always. Yes, I guess it is possible: Jesus taught us to abide in God's love, like a branch remains with the vine, "so that his joy may be in us and that our joy may be complete." It must be possible to live in joy.

Why don’t we experience love, joy, peace, patience...every day?

Maybe we're not paying enough attention to our interior lives. For the fruit of the Spirit to naturally overflow in our lives, we must attend to matters of the heart: experiencing His love and receiving his grace. When we go on a spiritual retreat we can take long periods of time to experience his love and grace in these kinds of specific ways. A spiritual retreat is different from a vacation. It's not just time for us to get away from it all. The retreat is for the specific purpose of being with the Lord.

During a retreat we have time for spiritual exercises like practicing the presence of God, and letting the Word of Christ richly dwell in us, and spending time in solitude with the Lord and experiencing his divine love. Practical exercises can help us abide in his love.

Back home, if we take the time to be with him, and make these practices part of our daily life, we are able to stay connected with the Lord like a branch is connected with the vine. Through living as Christ taught us we open ourselves to receiving his grace so that we will exude in increasing measure the character of the Spirit of God and experience his life changing us from the inside out. At least that's the goal that the Lord Jesus has set before us.

“Be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live a life of love.” (Eph. 5:1)

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Feelings and Desire

What role do our feelings play in our devotional life?

As I've been paying attention to my passion for the Lord every day, I am aware how much my "feelings" play a role in my spiritual life. We are so prone to do what we feel like. Our desires do lead us to the choices we make. There are mornings when I come to my desk for my quiet time and I feel like responding email, working on some work, cleaning my desk. Other days, I easily turn everything off and begin my devotional time.

I had no desire to do work this morning. I wanted to read and pray. That's what I felt like so that's what I did. A couple of weeks ago I was up against a deadline and I had a strong desire to finish my talk, and that made it nearly impossible for me to focus on my devotion. I tend to follow my desire, do what I feel like, and if I choose to go against my feelings, then it takes a whole lot of discipline and self-control.

So the easiest way to live would be to get my feelings, my desires, to be in line with what my good intentions are. If I intend to read my Bible and pray, and I have the desire to do that, for sure it will happen if it is at all possible. However, if I'm dieing to finish a project, I'm really enjoying working with a new software program, I'm up against a deadline, then I may be more driven to do my work than my devotion. So how do I get my feelings to line up with my good intentions?

Desire really is key to having passion and to determining how easily I'll give myself to do what I actually sit down and do. How do I direct my desires to help me grow in my love for Christ? Can I develop practices or exercises that will help me get my feelings and desires to pull me toward Jesus rather than compel me toward distractions and avoiding Him.

"There is only one big thing--desire. And before it, when it is big, all else is
little." Willa Cather

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Entering a Life of Worship

What is the chief end of man? What is the purpose of life? According to the Westminster Confession the answer is clear: To glorify God and enjoy him forever. As a young adult, I puzzled over what it meant to "glorify God," but as I've gotten older and continued to ponder it, I think that glorifying God has a lot to do with how I think about God, His Person, His character, His glory (Exodus 34) and how those thoughts draw me in to worship Him, and worship isn't to just be something that I do at church on Sunday morning, but to become a lifestyle, a 24/7 practice of my life.

What is the purpose of our lives? I think I would say, to live a life of worship. (Rom. 12:1-3)

Let the words of Christ dwell richly in you. Let the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs create an undertone of worship throughout our lives. Join in with the angels who are worshipping in heaven right now. "To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever." (Rev. 5:13) And let our love of God, our worship of Him, overflow into a life of compassion and mercy--loving others.

Willard writes: "Worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration of our whole beings to God. Nothing can inform, guide, and sustain pervasive and radiant goodness in a person other than the true vision of God and the worship that spontaneously arises from it. Then the power of the indwelling Christ flows from us to others."

Matt Redman in his book on worship encourages us to set apart something in our lives that will serve as a call to worship. That seemed like a wonderful idea. I've set apart the sunrise and for months now, every time a see the sunrise, it calls me to stop, turn my focus to the Lord, and worship him.

Worship isn't something that I have on my to-do list -- another chore. That's not the spirit of worship.

Worship overflows from my heart. Fill my heart, soul, mind with the words and thoughts and visions of God...pay attention to His fingerprints in my life, the wonderful points of grace, that I might be deeply grateful to Him for all He is doing and has done. Caring for my soul in these ways is my responsibility -- it's my responsibility to walk with God -- and when I do, love and worship overflow and transform me from the inside and overflow in love and mercy as I live out my worship in service and ministry.

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The Secret to the Spiritual Life

"The good tree," Jesus said, "bears good fruit." (Matthew 7:17)

Take care of the tree and it'll naturally produce good fruit. It makes no sense to start working on the fruit -- trying to make the apples sweeter, bigger, juicier. Take care of the tree, and you'll have good fruit.

Tend to my tree, and I'll produce good fruit.

Tend to my heart and I'll live a life of love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Is Jesus saying that if I tend to my heart, I'll be generous? If I tend to my heart, I'll experience self-control? Is that right?

I know that no amount of trying to be loving will make me loving. I can act as if I love you for a while, but that's not real love. Love has to come from within and flow out into my life. I can't be mad at you, and pretend "I'm fine, I'm happy, no problem" and call that love or joy or peace. It's not. It's pretending.

Good tree -- good fruit. Jesus is looking for us to be real. Authentic. Good fruit. No pretending.

How can we accomplish this? Jesus confirmed that all of the instruction in the Scriptures can be captured in the command, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Why is that? Because, if we tend to our hearts' devotion, we'll produce good fruit. The Springs retreat is all about learning how to tend to our hearts.

How do we live the spiritual life? How do we increasingly have our thoughts, attitudes, desires transformed so that we are authentically good? Love the Lord your God...

Don't work on fixing the fruit. Tend to the tree. Good tree--good fruit. Tend to your heart.

And the second commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
First, tend to your heart -- Love the Lord your God. Then, in real, authentic ways, let the love of God overflow and in tangible ways...love others.

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Love

St. Anthony's Retreat Center in November

"I urge you...by the mercy of God to present yourself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual act of worship."

How can we ever present our lives as holy to the Lord? It's only through spiritual transformation of our inner being that we can begin to live this verse of Scripture.

What is "spiritual transformation"? For the Christian, it is the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human heart in such a way that it becomes more and more like the inner being of Christ. The degree to which spiritual formation in Christ is successful, is the degree to which our outer life becomes a natural expression of Jesus' teachings. The quality of our character, how we choose to conduct ourselves in public and in private, how we react to adversity, these are all external expressions of our internal spiritual transformation.

But this is where it gets tricky.

Because, if the goal of spiritual formation is obedience to Christ, and obedience to Christ is defined in terms of external expressions: what we should do (pray) and what we shouldn't do (hate)--we have a serious problem. When external behavior is the focus, the whole process is corrupted by legalism. Legalism merely increases the kind of "righteousness" that the Pharisees had; it doesn't spiritually transform us. The Pharisees' righteousness was corrupt and unacceptable to God.

True righteousness is seen in obedience that arises from an inner transformation accomplished through purposive interaction with the grace of God in Christ. It's more than an obedience that is merely focused on our external life. In fact, the external manifestations of obedience are not the point at all.

What was so offensive to Jesus about the supposed righteousness of the Pharisees was that it did not arise from a true love for HIM. Their motives were not to love the Lord and live to please Him because they were so grateful for His mercy and grace. They were motivated to look good, to have their colleagues totally impressed with their acts of righteousness, to earn God's acceptance by their stellar behavior.

The motivation underlying our obedience matters to God.

God desires genuine transformation of who I am through and through -- a transformation that begins, I believe, with hours and months of coming to know in ever deepening ways the unfathomable love of God for me, personally. I believe that at the heart of Christian spiritual formation is knowledge of how much God loves me. True spiritual formation arises from knowing his love, and then allowing our lives to be a response to his love. We love him and want to obey him--humbly aware of our need for his love and mercy, but desiring to please him as an expression of our adoration and worship.

At the Springs, we experience spiritual transformation as we open ourselves to receive the love of God, listen to Him and respond.

Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength.

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