Month: April 2017

Soul Comfort

Soul Spring

 

“…let us grow in every way into Him who is the head–Christ.”

Ephesians 4:15

 

After a full-on week, I sat outside to enjoy the fresh spring air and gaze on the new. The new raspberry bush growth; new, bright colors

taking the place of the grey and worn; new leaves on the chestnut tree that was so barren and begging a few weeks ago. These sturdy leaves will shade, supply and delight us all the way through the heat and storms to next fall.

 

When I took a little time for my soul to catch up with life, I noticed a niggling disdain for a brother trying to hide in my heart. As I let it come to the surface, I realized my contempt, then recognized God’s kindness leading me to repentance. I’m so thankful He does that to clean us out. Spring-cleaning of the soul, like weeding and preparing soil for new growth. How unknowingly the soil of our hearts gets hard!

 

How’s the condition of the soil of your heart? What growth is springing new in you? In your spirit and soul? As I journey with those interested in exploring their inner beings and replacing old with new, I find delight in fresh insights and discoveries as though new worlds are opening up. New growth from places of brokenness and shame, growth that will shade, supply and delight the soul through heat and storms, because of newfound freedom and strength.

 

One fellow journeyer said:

 

“…life is such a paradox: full of joy and pain, laughter and tears, freedom and strain. The mix reminds us that this is not our home… we are just passing through. At the same time we want to reach our full potential as we travel – all for His glory!”

 

New life, ideas, and dreams often come from connection and growth; growth into the unique you he has created; becoming the you that is free to love and give. We’re finding that as we share our journeys.

 

“When a person tells his story and is truly heard and understood, he undergoes actual changes in his brain circuitry that correspond to a greater sense of emotional and relational connection, decreased anxiety, and greater awareness of and compassion for others’ suffering.”

Curt Thompson, M.D., Anatomy of the Soul

 

What are some ways you are cultivating new growth in your life?

Soul Awe

Soul Abiding

Jesus – right before the horror.

 

Guest post by Rachel P. Scott

 

In “the Passion Week story right after the last supper, Jesus and his disciples are likely on their way to the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus knows he will be betrayed by one friend and abandoned by the rest. Into this heavy context, He speaks final commands, final wisdom to his disciples.

 

What will He say?

 

Our hearts and ears are open, Lord.

“Abide in me… Abide in my love.”

 

That’s the message? He’s about to die!

 

And yet His charge to His disciples, to us, is to abide in His love. To abide; to make one’s home in. He speaks of fruit too, but only to say that we are powerless to produce it without Him. He also speaks of obedience to commands that He knows will result in our fullness of joy.

Both of these things, producing fruit and obeying commands, tend to bring out the part in each of us that wants to earn love.

 

And yet these two are immersed in, surrounded by, the much stronger thrust of the whole passage – to remain in His love.  If we don’t want to be like branches that are  “thrown away and burned”, the answer is NOT working harder to produce more!

 

We hear Him speaking to our hearts, “Let your heart feel at home in my love. Let my love be your security; let my love be your resting place. This is the work you must do. Yes, there will be fruit, much fruit, abiding fruit! But the fruit is my responsibility. You cannot do it. You remain connected to my love; I will produce the fruit.”  As Jesus was the True Servant that Israel could not be, He is the True Vine, producing the fruit that we cannot. And yet He still wants us to be a part! We cannot do it, but He made a way. Connected to Him, branches to the vine, we get to be fruitful participants in His Garden.

 

Incredible love. Jesus is taking steps, passing buildings and trees, each of which brings him closer to the greatest pain a human has ever borne – the full weight of eternity’s suffering, sorrow, ugliness, evil – and all of this faced alone. He could have sought comfort, or rebuked the disciples for their upcoming abandonment, or frantically explained his Messiah-ship again, hoping the disciples would finally get it.

 

He didn’t.

 

Instead, He urged them to remain, abide, not WITH Him as they had been doing for the last 3 years, but IN Him. He urges us to do the same. We have no insecurity in His love – He chose us, we didn’t choose Him! As we walk through this Holy Week, may our hearts be broken and overjoyed by the love of Christ, that His greatest pain and His greatest sacrifice offer a home and a hope for us.”

 

How are you learning to abide in this Love?

 

Soul Searching

Soul Feelings

I tend to withdraw when I have a feeling I can’t seem to figure out. But I’m learning…

 

Those deep feelings we often sweep under the rug or minimize can be messengers trying to tell us something of what’s happening within. I came across this old song by the children’s TV personality Fred Rogers who said, “Feelings are mentionable and manageable.”

 

I thought it had some good reminders for us adults as well.   🙂

 

 

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…
And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

It’s great to be able to stop
When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,
And be able to do something else instead

And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish.
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

 

 

But when our feelings move to anxiety because “We’re a tangled web of hardwiring and history, wounds and praises, thoughts, emotions, gut instincts, perceptions and knowledge, blind spots and brilliance,” (Marilyn Vancil) we may need to unearth what’s underneath those feelings and anxieties. The “stop” then needs to take on a more serious measure.

 

I’m a proponent of meditation which can be a form this stopping mentioned in the song above. As Archibald Hart says of Christian meditation in The Anxiety Cure:

 

“…deep breathing alone would prevent half of the visits to emergency rooms for panic attacks. Slow, deep breathing floods the body with needed oxygen and reduces stress hormones such as cortisol. Imagine a gazelle being chased by a cheetah. Does the gazelle run with long, slow, intentional breaths or does it panic with rapid, shallow, high alert breaths? Meditation and deep breathing is the opposite reaction of stress. Keep in mind that this sort of meditation is a far cry from the type of Eastern meditation in Hinduism and Buddhism. Whereas they have the goal of emptying the mind, the goal of Christian meditation is to fill your mind with all of the riches and wonder of the Saviour and his work in your life.”

 

A place to dissect those feelings and decipher what is underneath them, whether it’s healthy concern that needs to move to prayer, self-protection, defending my old self or pride, we can get some clarity and help in our spirits with a “stop”.

 

A good exercise for this is meditation, slowing yourself down with deep breathing in God’s presence then taking the worry to Him for examining and understanding.

 

When panic or anxiety is on the horizon, what will your plan be?

 

” The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways,

but the folly of fools is deception.”

Proverbs 14:8