Soulfit "Train yourself…"

In a group I’m coaching, we decided to write a personal psalm to help us pause,
notice and respond to God’s movement in our lives. I offered 2 Samuel 22:4-20
as a template or example to spring from.  This came from that:

A Psalm of Lauren

“From before I was born Lord, you marked me as your own; you had plans for me, plans to call me your precious daughter, plans to walk with me. I didn’t know your Presence during some hard times in my life, but you were near all along.

When I was at my lowest, you were there with a gentle word and comforting presence. You didn’t walk away, even during the times when I turned and drifted away from you.

The voices of others grew louder, telling me I do not belong, that I don’t measure up, I’m not wanted and I should try harder to be better. I struggled to meet the expectations of those around me and my own expectations that created walls of shame and guilt.

I couldn’t see the value in me apart from the things I could accomplish, should accomplish. But the victories were shallow and short-lived. I felt alone and outcast.

I didn’t know who to trust and how to trust you, and I’m still working through all of the voices to hear yours more often and clearly. Would you continue to quiet the voices in my mind and those that seek to tear me down?

But Your voice was there all along. I am untouchable in your hands of protection; in the midst of the storms of life; I am safe, I am seen, I am heard and I am loved.

Trying harder doesn’t bring me the peace and joy that come from me surrendering to you. I want to hear your voice saying, “Well done, my child.”  Though I am not enough on my own, you declare me enough for your purpose. So, Lord, I seek not my own on my own, but I seek what you have planned through your strength and kindness.

You have a purpose for me. You desire me to draw near to you and to be content and filled with joy. You desire good for me. Turn my heart from the things I’ve known to the things you want me to know. Turn my heart from the worries of this world to see your eternal perspective.

People stumble and fail, I stumble and fail. But Lord, that’s not the end. You don’t cast me aside and withdraw from me. Because of your great love and patience, I can rise again and push forward; not to attain perfection on my own, but to catch a glimpse of Your perfection. Transform me from within, in the uttermost deepest parts. Shine light into my soul that I may repent and be strengthened.

You have declared me worthy, you have declared me as beloved, and you lead me every moment. My confidence is in you. Teach me to trust in you alone.”

An exercise for your soul: Give God some space and time and write a psalm to
capture some of what He’s doing in and for you! 

(disruptive, subverting an established system)

Our subversive Savior used a brilliant weapon against the status quo: 

Love.

On Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday, maundy – Latin for mandate = commandment) the night before his death, Jesus gave a new commandment. (John 13:34,35) Following that command to love one another would become what distinguished His people from others.  The next day Love cut piercingly through the spit-filled mockery and wrenching injustice.  It threw His enemies off.  They never saw that coming.  Love is subversive at times.

Up is down.  Giving is receiving. Life is death. Being is becoming.

So many paradoxes in this life of faith!  So, we too have to be subversive.  The established system we seek to subvert is our propensity to self-centeredness; the idea that, life is about us, all about how I think it should be. When full life really comes from the One who designed us.  So, subverting that mindset means looking honestly at me and my status quo.

I think we’d all agree that sin is a problem for us.  And more so when we think it’s not.  We’ve seen way too many leaders living as if they were above the ways of God and losing their way.  How easily we can lose our way.  In the book of Hebrews it’s referred to as hardness of heart, or dullness of ears, immature, untrained and unaccustomed to God’s Word.

“The moment we formulate our doctrines, draw up our moral codes and throw ourselves into a life of ministry apart from a continuous re-immersion in the [gospel] story itself, we walk right out of the presence and activity of God and set up our own shop.” E Peterson Subversive Spirituality

We’re talking about inner work here, matters of the invisible. Often, we’re too content with just the outward things in our lives:

“…we must draw boundaries where they will help us. But it’s dangerous to imagine they will reform us, protect us from moral decay, or eradicate the true source of sin. We can’t let down our guard. Sin begins in our own hearts and minds, and the most effective protections are the ministry of the Holy Spirit and equal, open relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ.”  Amy Simpson 

What in your soul needs that subversive love? 

RH Barton speaking of R Mulholland’s Invitation to a Journey says the soul’s “journey toward Christlikeness and abandonment to God begins by exposing conscious sins and omissions and culminates in a greater awareness of the deep-seated attitudes and inner orientations of our being out of which our behavior patterns flow. Here God deals primarily with our “trust structures” especially those deep inner postures…that do not rely on God but on self for our well-being.”

There’s something about a swing that makes you take time to ponder….

8 ½ ideas for inner growth

1. Stop
2. Look
3. Listen
4. Hear
5. Feel
6. Grieve
7. Release
8. Receive

½ .  Find your next step – what is it?     ___________________________

Psalm 4:4 “…reflect in your heart and be still. Selah”

After my father-in-law’s memorial service, I’m contemplating the inevitable misses in life, the cries for help, the absences at crucial junctures, the lack of voice – what I wish I would’ve noticed, where I wish I would have been, when I wish I could have heard another or held my tongue.  How drowning that can be!  …yet how redeeming to know God is orchestrating me.

Now that I know, I go

To places in the past I should have been, noticing faces that needed a touch, traces of sorrow unheeded, feelings ungreeted, unspoken questions seeded

To grow into ogres of thought that overshadow the truth that I sought, the love I fought for you.

Heaves of hind-sighted regrets, finding way for an undiscovered voice;

“It’s not as it should have been,” yet spliced

With reaches both ways, clarity and haze

Stillness of time bidding me stay; I cannot dwell in the powerful array

that holds in its mire.  So, I fight for you & me, as I see in new light what is becoming.

“We do not grieve as those without hope…” 1 Thess. 4:13

What “miss” in your past tries to hold you in its mire?

“You’re…a mirage, an oasis in the distance and then nothing…”

Jeremiah to God (Jer. 15:18)

  About 600 years BC the Israelites had gone through all the motions of “religion” and were living just like the other nations, with all their pagan practices including sacrificing their children to another god. Reform had come but was only skin deep.  God had pleadingly given His people so many chances to turn.

In a most wrenching treatise of offense, God lets Jeremiah know He must stop the carnage, the entitlement, the flippancy.  (Jere. 2)  Jeremiah holds the warning before them and they scoff, they bully, they claim, “God is with us.”  And Jerusalem had no idea what was coming.

Jeremiah is done.  Angry, hurt and lonely.  No one listens.  He’s had so much come against him; bombarded with one thing after another.  You almost expect him to storm out and quit. But what does he do?

He comes bare and raw to the Lord.  He speaks his mind and to me it feels irreverent and accusatory.  He’s SO honest.  He brings all the reality, the mess, the sheer emotion without hiding or minimizing any of it.  And God is glad that he does. But he doesn’t leave him there.

“Prayer is a constant re-establishment of our priorities.”

Run with Horses, E Peterson, p.103

Our lives and circumstances throw all kinds of wrenches in our thinking, planning and dreaming.  God hears Jeremiah out; doesn’t squelch his outcry.  Perhaps He’s been waiting for the truth to come out, to be faced and owned. That’s when you get to the real core beliefs, the real wrestling, where names are changed.  We have to get there, but sometimes it takes years.

God’s patient response is not pandering because he knows what staying with those kinds of volatile emotions does to a person.  He’s out for our good.  He basically says, “I’m glad you came to Me.  I feel the same rejection and pain. This is heart wrenching.  I hear you and know how difficult it is.  But I also strengthen you for it. My plan is coming about. So, let’s return to your priorities… Your goal is not that they follow you, but you follow Me.  Return to Me.  (Jere. 15:19)

Our rock bottom goal is following our God.  Sometimes emotions, mild or fierce, are windows into what’s going on in us that’s unseen or maybe even unconscious.

  Have you let God in on your raw emotion to re-establish your priorities?  

“…the things on earth stand next to Him like a candle to the sun! 

What compares to His great love?  Behold his holy Son…

The Word became a man that my soul should know its Savior. 

…Salvation is in his blood, Jesus Messiah!” 

Hillsong – “Behold” (Then sings my soul)

This piercing song deeply affected my spirit, skillfully ushering into my inner being living truth that transforms thoughts and intentions: God’s Spirit to my spirit and from there to my soul (mind, will, emotions) massaging, informing and releasing into the brain where the neuro stuff happens.  That’s where the actual result of what comes into my spirit flows out, from soul to brain to life.

Ephesians 4:23 “be renewed in the spirit of your mind…”  The spirit of your mind!? 

If THE Spirit is the chief informant for our spirit, we are on a good path.  If our spirits don’t have time or ears to be informed or sourced, we risk the outcome of a driven, overstressed lifestyle that denies the danger of overdoing our fight/flight/freeze hormones. We could eventually lose the ability to readily produce our well-being hormones.  So much so, that over time, a brain glutted with adrenaline overdose will seek anything that will give it a shot of a comfort hormone, which at that point will only come with greater risks and extremes.  Thus, the addictions, thrill seeking and phobias that are so rampant among us.  Our souls are being informed by our driven-ness rather than by our Designer.

My spirit was inadvertently informed by a song full of His Word and my mind is renewed, my heart is courageous to honor Him as I chose to believe Him today. My brain follows suit and the synapses trigger the neurons to carve a deeper path to positive action.  I face my circumstances with more freedom, expanded ideas, compassion and hope.

I am being renewed in the spirit of my mind!

How is your spirit being informed, so that your soul is sourced with truth and grace for real living?

Ideas from The Anxiety Cure, Dr. A. Hart