I pray, O God, pour out upon me your Holy Spirit–the Spit of prayer–that I may ever love and desire to pray; being daily free to approach you, with all confidence in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ; to bow before you in every time of need, as a child well beloved, O most beloved Father, you who are really a Father unto all your children in heaven and on earth. Grant that I may always lift up unto you holy hands, without fear or doubt, and in full assurance that all my prayers and sighs which come from the heart, are truly heard. Grant also that when my help delays I shall be patient, not dictating to you either time or measure, but to wait and abide your own good time; for you have pleasure in them that fear and put their trust in your mercy. Finally, O God, rule and frequently meditate upon the hour of my death and be momentarily prepared, while I pray sincerely for a blessed departure hence. Amen.
William Locke
Category: Spiritual Formation
Don’t Let Offense Make You Deaf
Over twenty years ago I lost a friendship because someone spoke the truth to me and it made me angry.
I was angry because my desire to go into vocational ministry was not manifesting in my life and I was basically griping about it.
My friend, who was, and still is, a full-time vocational minister said, “You know, maybe no one will ever call you pastor…”
That was all I heard. I am sure he went on to say some encouraging and loving things because that’s the kind of guy he has always been but I didn’t hear anything he said.
I was too offended.
My friend wasn’t unkind, rude, or cruel. He was honest. In fact, what he said was the most loving thing he could have said at that time and it turns out, he was absolutely right.
The problem was that my offense made me deaf to his encouragement.
I cut him out of my life for a while. I’m not proud of that.
When I realized that I was carrying bitterness in my heart against him I asked to meet him for lunch and asked him to forgive me.
As a brother in Christ, he did and there was reconciliation between us of a sort. But it was never really the same.
When something someone does or says touches a place of deep pain in us, we recoil and maybe even lash out.
“That hurts!!”
The mature and wise thing to do is to question those overreactions. To dig a little deeper. When our reaction is out of proportion, it is a signal. Something deeper is being touched, and it deserves our attention
I was not mature enough at the time to do that. I am trying to be now.
Don’t let offense make you deaf. Don’t let it harden you against the men who care enough to speak with honesty. A true brother tells you the truth in love. When it touches a place of pain, press in. Do not retreat.
From The Commonplace Book: Useless Prayer
From Spiritual Formation by Henri Nouwen.
The world says, ‘If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.’ Jesus says: ‘Come and spend some useless time with me.” If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us–what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel–God cannot easily speak to us. But if we can detach ourselves from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to ‘waste’ as precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find our ‘useless’ time will transform us, and everything around us will be different.
Prayer is being unbusy with God instead of being busy with other things. Prayer is primarily to do nothing useful or productive in the presence of God. To not be useful is to remind myself that if anything important or fruitful happens through prayer, it is God who achieves the result. So when I go into the day, I go with the conviction that God is the one who brings forth fruit i my work, and I do not have to act as though I am in control of things. I have to work hard; I have to do my task; I have to offer my best. But I can let go of the illusion of control and be detached from the result. At the end of each day I can prayerfully say that if something good has happened, God be praised.
Don’t Live in the Destination
In our hustle culture we are rarely where we are, we are almost always where we are supposed to be next.
We are having lunch with a colleague but we are thinking about our next meeting.
We are talking with our spouse but we are thinking about the project we need to finish.
Our kids are telling us about their day but we are thinking about the game we are missing on TV.
In her book, IF YOU WANT TO WRITE, author Brenda Ueland calls this living in our destination.
We are not present where we are, we are living where we are supposed to be next. And in doing that, we never experience anything. We never arrive anywhere.
What are we missing? More importantly, WHO are we missing?
A concept I have been thinking a lot about as I write my next book is that love lingers. When we truly love someone, they have our full attention in the time we are with them. We are not in a rush to get to the next thing, we are there, in that time with that person.
I have a friend who is dear to me and we’ve had trouble recently coordinating our schedules to get some time together. One afternoon he had window of time between meetings.
I said no. Not because I didn’t want time with my friend, but because I didn’t want to be rushed. And I told him that. He agreed with me.
If we had met, he would be living in his destination, and I would have been living in his destination too because I would be thinking about how he had to leave soon to get to his next appointment.
It takes discipline to be in the present moment with others, but it’s worth it. If you want to build real fellowship and community. You must linger.
The Institute on Aging conducted a study on the Top 5 Regrets of the Dying and here is how the doctor who conducted the study summarized their findings:
It all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks — love and relationships.
The next time you are with someone, anyone, try to be in that moment with them. THAT is your destination, not what’s next, but right there, with them. It will be uncomfortable, and it will take practice, but it will also be worth it.
It’s Not the Catastrophe You Think It Is
Confession time.
I am a chronic catastrophizer.
I RUN quickly to the absolute worse scenarios in my mind, dwell on them, and become convinced that those catastrophic scenarios are the most likely ones, even when they are remote.
Make a mistake at work? Everyone thinks I am incompetent now.
Have a fight with my wife? We’re on our way to a divorce.
Have to start taking blood pressure meds? I am going to die any day now.
Don’t get the feedback I want on a project? I am a failure and everyone hates it.
NONE of these are true. But they FEEL true and my mind and body respond as if they are true.
Then I tear myself to shreds internally until the issue is resolved.
After that comes the feelings of shame as I realize that yet again I have blown something out of proportion.
Not Just What Happened, But What Will Happen
It even impacts events that have not taken place yet.
I have social anxiety because I convince myself that I will do or say something stupid and embarrass myself or my family.
I dread doctor visits, work meetings, social events, ceremonies, dinners out, and travel plans, all because I believe they will be difficult or embarrassing or won’t go well.
I am not paralyzed by this. I go anyway. I do them anyway. But, it’s difficult to enjoy them because I am waiting for disaster to strike.
It’s not fun. And it had become my default mode of thinking for so long that I wasn’t even aware that I was doing it. And I wasn’t aware of what it was doing to me and to the people I care about.
Enter a New Practice
I’ve been working on it. Part of that is writing about it in my journal and here. So you’ll see more of this.
I’ve been trying something recently that has been helpful and that is replacing my negativity bias with a positivity bias.
Negativity bias is the human tendency to register negative events more readily than positive ones and to dwell on those negative events.
It rewires your brain to associate negative emotions with certain people, events, and experiences, and causes you to avoid them or approach them with fear or even anger.
In fact, it can cause you to see ONLY the negative and filter out anything positive.
I’ve been working on creating a positivity bias by bookending my days with positive expectations on one end and grateful, positive reflection on the other.
When I get up in the mornings my first thought is, “Today is going to be a great day. I am grateful to you, Lord.”
That’s like a command for your brain. It starts seeking out the great things in your day that you can be thankful for.
At the end of the day, when I am in bed I rehearse in my mind all the great things that happened that day and give thanks to God for them. This is especially important because this is where the real changes take place in the way you think and approach your days.
I felt like it’s been making a difference, but the real test came yesterday.
Putting it to the Test
Yesterday was my annual physical. Those are important, especially when you’re middle-aged, and as my doctor reviewed my EKG she said I needed to see a cardiologist. “Non-emergent arterial blockage” she called it.
Cue the panic attack.
Only there wasn’t one. And that surprised me.
She said that as long as I got a full work up in the next 3 to 6 months and started taking a baby aspirin I’d be fine and they probably wouldn’t do anything about it but establish a baseline so they can watch it.
And there were other issues too, that I won’t go into here, but it was stuff that would have sent me into an abyss of fear and despair only this time it didn’t. Not at all.
In fact, I walked out of the office feeling thankful to God that these issues had been revealed and that the changes I had been making in my diet and physical activity already had me on the right track and that I could just continue on that path.
That was nice.
I have some minor health challenges to face, positivity bias is NOT living in denial of reality, but the issues I am facing are not the catastrophe I would usually think they are. Instead, I am facing them feeling thankful and determined to make the changes I need to make.
You are NOT God, and That Sets You Free
We are not designed to be sovereign but to be dependent on the one who is.
I love this quote from Alan Noble:
“One of my concerns about contemporary society is that it suffers from a lack of agency…Alain Ehrenberg notes in his book THE WEARINESS OF THE SLEF, that inhibition is one of the symptoms of contemporary depression. He ties it to the burden of being a sovereign self, an overwhelming experience for most people that often leaves them frozen and feeling unable to move in the world.”
The belief that you are completely sovereign over your own life can be a paralytic.
- What if I take the wrong path in life?
- What if I never fulfill my potential?
- What if I just live an ordinary life and never do anything great?
- What if I fail?
- What if I look foolish trying to do something?
- What if my life doesn’t go EXACTLY like I want it to?
The belief that a good, loving, and kind God is sovereign over all things liberates us from the paralysis of self-sovereignty. It sets us free to risk and to advance and to try. And yes, to fail too. Because failure is a part of living. A BIG part of it.
If God is sovereign, then I am free to live without fear.
If God is sovereign, then I am free to take risks.
If God is sovereign, then I do not have to be afraid of whatever trials may come or what their eventual outcome may be.
When we don’t keep God’s sovereignty in mind, we put far too much pressure on ourselves to achieve certain outcomes and it can paralyze us into doing nothing.
A lack of faith in God’s sovereignty can also cause us to procrastinate on things we know we should be doing.
It is arrogant to believe I will always have the time to do what I know I should be doing right now. I don’t control the length of my life. My days are quite literally numbered (Psalm 139:16) and only God knows when they are up.
That fact should create a sense of urgency but without fear.
I am absolutely immortal until my days are done because they are in God’s book and I cannot add even one hour to their length (Luke 12:25-26).
So why worry?
Urgency without fear. We must do what we can. And leave the results with God.
Christians should be some of the boldest risk takers and doers and leaders and creators on the planet. We can risk and do and lead and create without fear, because we know we are not sovereign and that God is.
Joseph McBee 