Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

In short order, here are the top ten symptoms of emotionally unhealthy spirituality: Using God to run from God Ignoring anger, sadness, and fear Dying to the wrong things Denying the impact of the past on the present Dividing life into “secular” and “sacred” compartments Doing for God instead of being with God Spiritualizing away conflict Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure Living without limits Judging other people’s spiritual journey

great deal of “God-activity” in order to avoid difficult areas in my life God wants to change. I know I’m in trouble when I … Do God’s work to satisfy me, not him Do things in God’s name he never asked me to do Pray about God doing my will, not about me surrendering to his will Demonstrate “Christian behaviors” so significant people think well of me

True, Jesus did say, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). But when we apply this verse rigidly, without qualification from the rest of Scripture, it leads to the very opposite of what God intends. It results in a narrow, faulty theology that says, “The more miserable you are, the more you suffer, the more God loves you. Disregard your unique personhood; it has no place in God’s kingdom.”

Being productive and getting things done are high priorities in Western culture. Praying and enjoying God’s presence for no other reason than to delight in him was a luxury, I was told, that we could take pleasure in once we got to heaven. For now, there was too much to be done. People were lost.

For most of my Christian life, I wondered if monks were truly Christian. Their lifestyle seemed escapist. Surely they were not in the will of God. What were they doing to spread the gospel in a world dying without Christ? What about all the sheep who were lost and without direction? Didn’t they know the laborers are few (Matthew 9:37)?

of a desire to bring true peace, Jesus disrupted the false peace all around him. He refused to spiritualize conflict avoidance.

Few Christians make the connection between love of self and love of others. Sadly, many believe that taking care of themselves is a sin, a “psychologizing” of the gospel taken from our self-centered culture. I believed that myself for years. It is true we are called to consider others more important than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). We are called to lay down our lives for others (1 John 3:16). But remember, you first need a “self” to lay down.

My body screamed. I could feel my stomach knotting. My fingers formed into a fist. My neck and shoulders tightened. This was not a discussion. It felt like a divorce. I followed her into the kitchen. All the biblical arguments I had used the past ten years to keep Geri in New York raced through my mind: God wants us together. One flesh … doing everything together. That’s a great marriage. It would be a bad witness to others. I’m senior pastor of the church. You’re the pastor’s wife. We are in this together … a team. God called us both here. Women don’t make these kinds of decisions without their husbands—or at least their agreement. This is unbiblical.

The reality, however, was that my discipleship and spirituality had addressed neither my insecurities nor my understanding of myself. Breaking free would require learning to feel, learning to distinguish feeling and thinking, and finally, summoning the courage to follow my God-given “true self” rather than the voices and demands around me.

God speaks to us through a knot in the stomach, muscle tension, trembling and shaking, the release of adrenaline into our bloodstream, headaches, and a suddenly elevated heart rate. God may be screaming at us through our physical body while we look for (and prefer) a more “spiritual” signal. The reality is that often our bodies know our feelings before our minds.

At times when I am about to interact with authority figures or somebody I don’t know, I get physical sensations but I don’t know why it is happening. Sometimes I am flooded by emotions that disorganize and confuse me.

We then lie to ourselves, sometimes convincing ourselves that we aren’t feeling anything because we don’t think we should be feeling it. We shut down our humanity.

Sometimes they are our fleshly desires or the enemy. Other times God is prodding us to a better choice. God intends that we mature in learning to recognize how he speaks and guides us through our feelings.

Allow yourself to experience the full weight of your feelings. Allow them without censoring them. Then you can reflect and thoughtfully decide what to do with them. Trust God to come to you through them. This is the first step in the hard work of discipleship.

If it happened that I had once written a best-seller this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naiveté, and I would take very good care never to do the same thing again. If I had a message to my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: be anything you like, be madmen, drunks … of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success. I heard no more reply from him, and I am not aware that my reply was published.6

My culture, family of origin, and flesh tell me that only possessions and talents and applause from other people are sufficient for security. Jesus models surrender of my will to the love of the Father as the true anchor for who I am.

watched him only so that I might see what effect my remarks were having upon him. And for the two or three minutes after we separated my sole thought content was those things I could have said that might have impressed him even more. I had not cared a whit for my classmate.

Before I entered the hospital, some of the 700 Club staff said to me, “Don’t do this. You will never regain any kind of platform. If people know you were in a mental institution and on medication, it’s over.” I said, “You know what? It’s over anyway. So I can’t think about that.” I really thought I had lost everything. My house. My salary. My job. Everything. But I found my life.

Jesus was not selfless. He did not live as if only other people counted. He knew his value and worth. He had friends. He asked people to help him. At the same time Jesus was not selfish. He did not live as if nobody else counted. He gave his life out of love for others.

Become anxious (i.e., highly reactive and “freaking out”) when a relationship system falls apart or becomes unbalanced

Able to cope with crises without falling apart Stay in relational connection with others without insisting they see the world the same

Can respect others without having to change them Aware of dependence on others and responsibility for others

My journey into emotionally healthy spirituality began very simply. Each day, as part of my devotions with God, I would allow myself to feel emotion before God. Then I would journal. Over time I began to discern patterns and God’s movements in a new way in my life.

written to review truths God told to me during that time. This takes time. I slowed down the pace of my life considerably. From working six days a week (and about seventy hours), I slowed down to a five-day, forty-five-hour workweek. Over the years this led me quite naturally to the classic Christian disciplines of silence (escaping from noise and sounds) and solitude (being alone, without human contact).

As I followed her question of why I could not admit my age freely, I was forced to acknowledge that sense of being backward and behind had long, intertwined roots reaching back from my family of origin that continued to impact me. God was peeling off another layer of my false self (what a lifelong process!). He was peeling off another layer of the onion that the true Pete in Christ might freely live.

None of the training I received concerned itself with knowing myself. The problem was that running a large organization, overseeing budgets, and managing staff and deadlines and endless to-do lists crushed me. I was busy, very busy, and dying on the inside.

But keep making changes. Be willing to tolerate the discomfort necessary for growth. Pray for the Holy Spirit’s power to continue. You are doing something that has never been done before in your history! In some cases you will be challenging deep multigenerational patterns. Expect that you may stir up some profound emotionality!

Others were sawed in two for their faith. Only God knows your future. Yet you can be sure of one thing: your life, like Yeager’s airplane, will shake in the process of you maturing into the person God intends. Why? The raw material of your life is unaccustomed to flying in order to break through the sound barrier. It will initially feel uncomfortable, as if the plane of your life is shaking from the pressure. If you move forward, however, you will find that God is with you and behind you. His grace is sufficient. His power is accessible. And the unknown before you is really like poking through Jell-O.

Frank, as the oldest child, filled in the gap his father vacated—at least financially. He worked hard but had a lot of difficulty with friendships. The frequent moves scarred him. He had difficulty getting close to people or sustaining long-term friendships. He rarely spoke with his dad.

The great news of Christianity is that your family of origin does not determine your future. God does! What has gone before you is not your destiny! The most significant language in the New Testament for becoming a Christian is “adoption into the family of God.” It is a radical new beginning. When we place our faith in Christ, we are spiritually reborn by the Holy Spirit into the family of Jesus.

This is the Christian life. God’s intention is that we grow up into mature men and women transformed by the indwelling presence of Christ. We honor our parents, culture, and histories but obey God.

In God’s family, success is defined as being faithful to God’s purpose and plan for your life. We are called to seek first his kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33). Everything else, he promises, will be added to us. Moreover, God declares we are lovable. We are good enough in Christ (Luke 15:21–24). Discipleship, then, is working these truths into our practical, everyday lives.

I Over-Functioned Along with my brothers, our role was to “make Mama happy” since my dad was absent for her. Even though we were the children, it was expected we would take care of her. There was little room to play, to have fun, or to be listened to.

Is it any wonder that I had great difficulty maintaining healthy, appropriate boundaries as an adult?

How many high-achieving, “successful” people are driven by a deeply seated shame and feeling of abandonment, silently crying out, “Notice me!”?

My beliefs regarding marriage and gender roles were shaped much more strongly by my family than Scripture. Of course Geri complained. But all the women in our extended family complained about their husbands. Wasn’t that normal? Our marriage sure seemed better than most. I was “helping” with the kids, wasn’t

I Resolved Conflict Poorly Even though I taught workshops on conflict resolution and communication, the basic way I handled conflict and anger resembled my family of origin, not Christ’s family. My mother raged and attacked. To avoid conflict, my dad the appeaser gave in to whatever my mom wanted. I took on my father’s basic style, taking the blame whenever something was wrong in order to end any tension. I justified it as being like Christ, a sheep going to the slaughter. In doing so, however, I did not love well.

A child doesn’t say, “What’s wrong with this environment where I am growing up?” They think, What’s wrong with me? So I grew up feeling inadequate, flawed … defective. If people only knew, I would think to myself. I loved the message of Christ. No other religion in the world reveals a personal God who loves us for who we are, not what we do. His approval is without conditions. Yet for the first seventeen years of my discipleship the profound impact my family history had upon me blocked that truth from penetrating deeply into my experience. Like many people I meet, I lied to myself out of fear, twisting the truth to myself: Oh, Pete, it wasn’t that bad. How many people have it so much worse?

My answer is always the same: “No. All families are broken and fallen. There aren’t any ‘clean’ genograms. None of us comes from perfect families with perfect parents. Most parents did the best they could with what they brought with them into adulthood. And it is likely that some of the things that did hurt us, such as

He languished in prison for ten to thirteen years. What a waste! What betrayal! His life, to the age of thirty, appears to be a tragedy. If anyone should have been filled with bitterness and rage for so much family pain, it was Joseph! Yet he remained faithful as a seeker and lover of God. Even when horrific events outside his control swirled around him, Scripture describes Joseph as “walking with God.” Then the incredible happened. Overnight, through the interpretation of a dream, Joseph was pulled from the pit of prison

God is the Lord God Almighty who has all history in his grip, working in ways that are mostly hidden to us on Earth. Joseph understood that in all things God is at work, in spite of, through, and against all human effort, to orchestrate his purposes.

Most of us are resistant to going back and feeling the hurt and pain of our past. It can feel like a black hole or an abyss that might swallow us up. We wonder if we are only getting worse. Yet Joseph wept repeatedly when he reunited with his family.

Joseph had plenty of reason to say to himself, I don’t have a right to exist. My life is a mistake. I am worthless. I should never trust anyone. I shouldn’t take risks. I shouldn’t feel.…

Joseph was very aware of his past. Think of a play and a script being handed to an actor for a certain part. Most of us never examine the scripts handed to us by our past. Joseph did. He thought about it. And then he opened the door to God’s future by rewriting it with God. It has been said that the real measure of our sense of self is when we are with our parents for more than three days. At that point we need to ask ourselves how old we feel. Have we gone back to our…

One Final Word: Our Need to Be “Alone Together” The gravitational pull back to the sinful, destructive patterns of our family of origin and culture is enormous. A few of us live as if we were simply paying for the mistakes of our past. For this reason God has called us to make this journey with companions in the faith. Going back in order to go forward is something we must do in the context of community—with mature friends, a mentor, spiritual director, counselor, or therapist. We need trusted people in our lives of whom we can ask, “How do you experience me? Tell me the feelings and thoughts you have when you are with me. Please be honest with me.” Prayerfully listening…

most of us to a Wall in our journey with Christ. We find ourselves disoriented, confused, and shaken by the unknown…

Lord, I believe you are a God with great purposes. You placed me into my particular family in a particular place in a particular time in history. I don’t see what you see, but I ask you to show me, Lord, the revelation and purposes you have for me in your decision. I do not want to betray or be ungrateful for what was given to me. Yet at the same time, help me discern what I need to let go…

Ten to thirteen years later God led him again to another Wall—the sacrificing of that long-awaited son he loved, Isaac, on an altar. Consider Moses, Elijah, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, and Paul. Each appears to have gone through the Wall numerous times in their journey with God. “Unintentionally and unknowingly we fall back into imperfections. Bad habits are like living roots that return. These roots must be dug away and cleared from the garden of our soul. … This requires the direct intervention of God.”3 Note I said “gone through,” not “gotten to.” Because these men did make the journey to the other side of the Wall, so can we. When we make it through the Wall, we no longer have a need to be well known or successful, but to do God’s will.

Without an understanding of the Wall in the journey, however, countless sincere followers of Christ stagnate there and no longer move forward with God’s purpose for their lives.

He longs for an intimate, passionate love relationship with us. For this reason, John of the Cross wrote that God sends us “the dark night of loving fire” to free us. John listed the seven deadly spiritual imperfections of beginners that must be purified:

Pride: They have a tendency to condemn others and become impatient with their faults. They are very selective in who can teach them.

They are discontent with the spirituality God gives them. They never have enough learning, are always reading many books rather than growing in poverty of spirit and their interior life.

They take more pleasure in the spiritual blessings of God than God himself.

St. John of the Cross knew the human tendency to become attached to feelings of and about God, mistaking them for God himself. These sensations, rich or empty, are not God but only messengers from God that speak to us of him.

They have seen, as Karl Barth notes, that “the root and origin of sin is the arrogance in which man wants to be his own and his neighbor’s judge.”11 Before we go through the Wall, we prefer to exercise the right to determine good and evil rather than leave this knowledge to God. Afterward, we know better.

Another helpful way to measure your level of brokenness is to consider how “offendable” you are.

Contrast that image with a broken person who is so secure in the love of God that she is unable to be insulted. When criticized, judged, or insulted, she thinks to herself, It is far worse than you think!

I also like to remind God of his need to behave in ways that fit in with my clear ideas of him. For example, God is just, merciful, good, wise, loving. The problem, then, is that God is beyond the grasp of every concept I have of him. He is utterly incomprehensible. Yes, God is everything revealed in Scripture, but also infinitely more. God is not an object that I can determine, master, possess, or command.14 And still I try to somehow use my “clear ideas” about God to give me power over him, to somehow possess him. Unconsciously, I make a deal with God that goes something like this: “I obey and keep my part of the bargain. Now you bless me. Do not allow any serious suffering.”

God is knowable, yet he is unknowable. God is inside us and beside us, yet he is wholly different from us. For this reason Augustine wrote, “If you understand, it is not God you understand.”15

One of the great fruits of the Wall is a childlike, deepened love for mystery. We can rest more easily and live more freely on the other side of the Wall, knowing that God is in control and worthy of our trust. Joyfully we can then sing with David: “He made darkness his covering,

as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

Richard Rohr has written extensively about the five essential truths to which men must awaken if they are to grow up into their God-given masculinity and spirituality.20 His conclusions, I believe, describe the powerful biblical truths all of us can now truly know as a result of going through the Wall and experiencing a greater detachment: Life is hard. You are not that important. Your life is not about you. You are not in control. You are going to die.

It has rightly been said that those who are the most detached on the journey are best able to taste the purest joy in the beauty of created things.

The journey with Jesus calls us to a life of undivided devotion to him. This requires that we simplify our lives, removing distractions. Part of that will mean learning to grieve our losses and embrace the gift of our limits.

Grant me grace to follow you into the unknown, into the next place in my journey with you.

We grieve the many things we can’t do, our limits. We experience greater or lesser losses from our families growing up. Some people, like me, “lost a leg in that war” during our childhood years and now walk with a limp.

Finally, we lose our wrong ideas of God and the church. (Thank God!) What makes this so difficult is how much we invested of our lives into a certain way of following Jesus, into certain applications of biblical truths, only to realize much of it was foolishness or perhaps even wrong. We feel betrayed by a church tradition, a leader, or even God himself. We realize God truly is much larger and more incomprehensible than we thought.

Much of contemporary Christian culture has added to this inhuman and unbiblical avoidance of pain and loss. We feel guilty for not obeying Scripture’s commands to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4) and to “come before him with joyful songs” (Psalm 100:2).

“Feeling sad or depressed or anxious about the future has got to be due to my unbelief. This is not God. It has to be related to my sins. I just figured it was better I stay away from church and Christians for a while until I get over it.”

For the first time in her life, she was turning toward her losses, not avoiding them. One week, after our group, I asked her how she was doing. She responded, with her head down, in a whisper, “Pete, I keep thinking that if I continue going down this road of truly grieving my losses, I might die.” Turning toward our pain is counterintuitive. But in fact, the heart of Christianity is that the way to life is through death, the pathway to resurrection is through crucifixion.

an inaccurate explanation of what is going on: “Did you know that John has a genetic disposition toward rage that runs in his family? That’s why the meetings aren’t helping him.” Intellectualizing. We give analysis, theories, and generalities to avoid personal awareness and difficult feelings: “My situation is not that bad compared to how others are suffering in the world. What do I have to cry about?”

He shouted at God. He prayed wild prayers. He told God exactly what he was feeling. For thirty-five chapters we read how he struggled with God. He doubted. He wept. He wondered where God was and why all this had happened to him. He did not avoid the horror of his predicament but confronted it directly.

When we do not process before God the very feelings that make us human, such as fear or sadness or anger, we leak.6 Our churches are filled with “leaking” Christians who have not treated their emotions as a discipleship issue. Grieving is not possible without paying attention to our anger and sadness. Most people who fill churches are “nice” and “respectable.” Few explode in anger—at least in public. The majority, like me, stuff these “difficult feelings,” trusting that God will honor our noble efforts. The result is that we leak through in soft ways such as passive-aggressive behavior (e.g., showing up late), sarcastic remarks, a nasty tone of voice, and the giving of the “silent treatment.”

“It would be all right if there hadn’t been any mess. But you can’t handle mess. You need everything neat and easy. I don’t know. … Maybe you can’t love anybody. So much Buck. When Buck died—it was as if you buried all your love with him and I don’t understand that. … Maybe it wasn’t even Buck. … Maybe it was just you. But whatever it was I don’t know who you are, what we’ve been playing at. … So I was crying … because I don’t know if I love you anymore, and I don’t know what I am going to do without that.”

hate waiting for subways, buses, airplanes, and people. Like most New Yorkers, I struggle not to finish other people’s sentences. I talk too fast. My greatest challenge in following Jesus Christ for over forty years has been waiting on God when things are confusing.

Birthing Ishmaels is common in both our churches and personal lives. “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7) remains one of the most radical commands of our day. It requires enormous humility.

“That is the way God works,” they argued time and time again. “You reap what you sow, Job, and you must have done some bad things. You need to repent so God can bless you once again. You are suffering due to your sin. Trouble comes to sinners.” Job’s three friends represent “classic religion” or “legalism.” It goes something like this: “The reason you are not healed is you don’t pray enough, fast enough, read the Bible enough. You are suffering more than most because you have sinned more.”

They tried to fix Job and defend God, and in their attempt to explain what God was doing (which they did not understand), they tortured Job, who was already in great pain. Do you know what it is like to feel worse after talking with some people who were trying to make you feel better?

The confusing in-between resists all earthly categories and quick solutions. It runs contrary to our Western culture that pervades our spirituality. It is for this reason we have such an aversion to the limits God places around us.

Your work and relationship realities. Our work remains “thorns and thistles” (Genesis 3:18). It is hard. We never totally finish. There is always a grief in never having complete fulfillment. Relationships will not be perfect until heaven. Who wouldn’t like a perfect, loving church where everyone has the time, energy, and maturity to love everyone else perfectly! We must grieve that limit also or we will demand from them something they cannot give. Your

John understood limits and replied, “A person can receive only what is given them from heaven” (John 3:27). He was able to say, “I accept my limits, my humanity, my declining popularity. He must increase. I must decrease” (see John 3:30). In contrast, many of us are like a baby. A baby screams for his mother to feed and take care of him. He is the center of the universe, with others existing to care for his needs. He suffers from grandiosity, arrogance, childishness. Growing up will require learning he is not the center of the universe. The universe does not exist to meet his every need.

That is a painful lesson for all of us to learn. Our egos tend to be so inflated that we act as if we were God. Often we have larger fantasies and wishes for ourselves than our real lives can support. As a result, we work frantically trying to do more than God intended. We burn out thinking we can do more than we can. We get stressed and blame others.

We run around frantically, convinced that the world—whether it be our churches, friends, businesses, or children—will stop if we stop. Others of us get depressed because our desires are so high and unachievable that it seems useless to do anything at all.

Getting off our thrones and joining the rest of humanity is a must for growing up. A part of us hates limits. We won’t accept them. This is part of the reason why grieving loss biblically is such an indispensable part of spiritual maturity. It humbles us like little else. In fact, one of the great tasks of parenting and leadership is to help others accept their limits. This applies to the home, workplace, community, or church.

STEP 3: Willing to Subject Ourselves to the Direction of Others. We are free to give up our arrogance and all-powerfulness and are open to accepting God’s will as it comes through others. This may be a manager at work, or directions from a friend. And we do it without grumbling or an attitude.        STEP 4: Patient to Accept the Difficulties of Others. Life with others, especially when living in community, is full of aggravations. This requires we give others a chance to figure out their weakness in their own way in their own time.

STEP 5: Radical Honesty to Others about Our Weaknesses/Faults. We quit pretending to be something we are not. We admit our weaknesses and limitations to a friend, spouse, parent, or someone else who cares about our development.        STEP 6: Deeply Aware of Being “Chief of All Sinners.” We see ourselves as potentially weaker and more sinful than anyone around us. We are the chief of all sinners. This is not self-hate or an invitation to abuse, but is meant to make us kind and gentle.

Pay Attention Wait in the Confusing In-Between Embrace the Gift of Limits Climb the Ladder of Humility Let the Old Birth the New … in his time … we will be blessed.

But remember, resurrection only comes out of death—real death. Our losses are real. And so is our God, the living God.

The Daily Office and Sabbath are ropes that lead us back to God in the blizzards of life. They are anchors for living in the hurricane of demands. When done as a “want to” rather than a “have to,” they offer us a rhythm for our lives that binds us to the living God. They are nothing short of revolutionary disciplines for Christians today.

They were not to try to see and know that which belongs to the Almighty God. God was teaching them that, “after the full flowering of their achievements and activities, they [were] invited, not to be active, not to accomplish, but to surrender in trust. … Action, then passivity; striving, then letting go, doing all one can do and then being carried … only in this rhythm is the spirit realized.”4

As theologian Robert Barron argued, at the heart of original sin is the refusal to accept God’s rhythm for us.5 The essence of being in God’s image is our ability, like God, to stop.

The word Office comes from the Latin word opus, or “work.” For the early church, the Daily Office was always the “work of God.” Nothing was to interfere with that priority. It was “an act of offering … by the creature to the Creator … prayers of praise offered as a sacrifice of thanksgiving and faith to God and as sweet-smelling incense … before the throne of God.”

I did not join the monks in their six hours of manual work, but spent that time taking naps! I was too physically exhausted. (My body was not accustomed to getting up at 3:15 a.m.)

And I read church history—a lot of it—trying to understand how this might apply to schoolteachers, police officers, lawyers, social workers, contractors, students, financial advisors, and stay-at-home moms seeking to follow Jesus in a place like New York City.

It is the rhythm of stopping that makes the “practice of the presence of God,” to use Brother Lawrence’s phrase, a real possibility. I know it does for me. The great power in setting apart small units of time for morning, midday, and evening prayer infuses into the rest of my day’s activities a deep sense of the sacred, of God. All the time is his. The Daily Office, practiced consistently, actually eliminates any division of the sacred and the secular in our lives.

You also choose the content of your Offices. A number of possible resources are available that you may want to utilize—The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle, Celtic Daily Prayer by the Northumbria Community, and A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God by Norman Shawchuck and Rueben P. Job are three excellent examples.9 Many of us also utilize the daily examen of St. Ignatius for compline (see appendix C). Compline refers to the final office/prayer time at the completion of the day before going to sleep.

second tool I use when my mind wanders is to pray the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” If nothing else happens during a Daily Office, it is a call to mindfulness, an invitation to pay attention to what our short, earthly lives are all about.

These are probably the most challenging and least practiced disciplines among Christians today. We live in a world of noise and distractions. Most of us fear silence.

We have been experimenting with how to integrate the Daily Office into our lives within our active local church in New York City. In appendix A is a simple tool we have used to help individuals and small groups get started in pausing for the Daily Office throughout the day.13

also pick one or two others over the next couple of months as you develop your practice of Sabbath keeping. Consider resting from: work physical exhaustion hurriedness multitasking competitiveness worry decision making catching up on errands talking technology

I ask God for the grace to leave the frenzied busyness around me and be a contemplative presence for others.

And in doing violence to ourselves, we are unable to love others in and through the love of Christ. This leads us to the topic of our next chapter: growing into an emotional adult who loves others well. Lord, help me to grab hold of you as my rope in the blizzard today. I need you.

She confesses that she couldn’t bear such ingratitude—and so her dreams about serving others vanish, and once again she finds herself wondering if there is a God.

Over time Jessica distanced herself from the vice president and other managers, avoiding them whenever possible. During the next two years she worked hard, but she felt like she had hit a ceiling in how far she could go with this company.

What assumptions is she making about her vice president? His administrative assistant? About God’s will for her life? What might she have done to prevent her pain? To preserve her relationships at work?

The Bible is clear what we are to do. Part of growing into an emotionally mature Christian is learning how to apply practically and effectively the truths we believe. For example: How can I be quick to hear and slow to speak? How can I be angry and not sin? How can I watch my heart above all else (since that is the place from which life flows)? How can I speak the truth in love? How can I be a true peacemaker? How can I mourn? How can I not bear false witness against my neighbor? How can I get rid of all bitterness, rage, and envy? The end result of an inability to walk out our beliefs is that our churches and relationships within the church are not qualitatively any different from the world around us.

Are easily hurt Complain, withdraw, manipulate, take revenge, become sarcastic when they don’t get their way

Accurately assess their own limits, strengths, and weaknesses and are able to freely discuss them with others Are deeply in tune with their own emotional world and able to enter into the feelings, needs, and concerns of others without losing themselves Have the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the perspectives of others

Jesus’ profound, contemplative prayer life with his Father resulted in a contemplative presence with people. Love is “to reveal the beauty of another person to themselves,” wrote Jean Vanier.6 Jesus did that with each person he met. This ability to really listen and pay attention to people was at the very heart of his mission. It could not help but move him to compassion. In the same way, out of our contemplative time with God, we, too, are invited to be prayerfully present to people, revealing their beauty to themselves.

They were diligent, zealous, and absolutely committed to having God as Lord of their lives. They memorized the entire books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They prayed five times a day. They tithed all their income and gave money to the poor. They evangelized. But they never delighted in people. They did not link loving God with the need to be diligent, zealous, and absolutely committed to growing in their ability to love people.

Buber described the most healthy or mature relationship possible between two human beings as an “I-Thou” relationship. In such a relationship I recognize that I am made in the image of God and so is every other person on the face of the earth. This makes them a “Thou” to me. Because of that reality, every person deserves respect—that is, I treat them with dignity and worth.

The result of I-It relationships is that I get frustrated when people don’t fit into my plans. The way I see things is “right.” And if you don’t see it as I do, you are not seeing things the “right” way. You are wrong. Recognizing the uniqueness and separateness of every other person on earth is so pivotal to emotional maturity.

Jessica’s relationship with her vice president was not what Buber would characterize as I-Thou. Jessica did not have the skills and emotional maturity to resolve this conflict maturely.

Ellen loves her parents. They are both quite critical about how she raises her children. Each holiday is filled with tension. Ellen doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t want to hurt their feelings. She is a false peacemaker.

the way of true peace will never come through pretending what is wrong is right! True peacemakers love God, others, and themselves enough to disrupt false peace.

He taught that true peacemaking disrupts false peace even in families: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’” (Matthew 10:34–36). Why? You can’t have the true peace of Christ’s kingdom with lies and pretense. They must be exposed to the light and replaced with the truth. This is the mature, loving thing to do.

Talk about your own thoughts, your own feelings (speak in the “I”). Be brief. Use short sentences or phrases. Correct the other person if you believe he or she has missed something. Continue speaking until you feel you’ve been understood. When you don’t have anything else to say, say, “That’s all for now.”

When it appears the speaker is done, ask, “Is there more?” When they are done ask them: “Of everything you have shared, what is the most important thing you want me to remember?”

Respect means I give myself and others the right to:

16). To check out assumptions, or stop mind reading, as we like to call it, is a very simple but powerful tool that eliminates untold conflicts in relationships. It enables me to check out whether what I’m thinking or feeling about you is true. It enables me to clarify potential misunderstandings.

The Bible has much to say about not taking on the role of judge to others (Matthew 7:1–5).

Reflect on something you suspect the other person thinks or feels but hasn’t told you. Ask: “Do I have your permission to check out an assumption I am making?” or “May I have permission to read your mind?” (If he or she grants it, then you can proceed.) Say: “I think you think …” or “I assume you are thinking …” (fill in the blank). When you finish, ask them: “Is this correct?”

Of course you’re coming to the family event. We’re important to you, aren’t we? I never knew the job involved all that. You never told me. My adult son should know I need him to come over and fix things. I shouldn’t have to ask.

As you can see, what happens most often in an allergic reaction is that we end up treating the person with whom we are in a relationship now as if they were someone from our past. We treat them like an It.

The PAIRS organization has developed a helpful exercise (“Healing the Ledger”) we encourage people to take part in, either with another person or by themselves:16 An emotional allergy you trigger in me is … When this allergy happens, what I think or tell myself is … When this allergy happens, I feel … When this allergy happens, what I think and feel about myself for even having these feelings is … When this happens inside me, the behavior you then see from me is … What this allergy relates to in my history is … When this allergy happens, you remind me of … The price we are paying for this in our relationship is … The words from the past that I needed, the words that I wish had been said to me, are …

Most of them, however, did have one great quality: they were willing. That is all God asks of us.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. I am aware of how often I treat people as Its, as objects, instead of looking at them with the eyes and heart of Christ. I have unhealthy ways of relating that are deeply imbedded in me. Please change me. Make me a vessel to spread mature, steady, reliable love so that people with whom I come in contact sense your tenderness and kindness. Deliver me from false peacemaking that is driven by fear. Lord Jesus, help me love well like you. Grow me, I pray, into an emotionally mature adult through the Holy Spirit’s power. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Eventually we find ourselves unfocused, distracted, and adrift spiritually. Is it any wonder that most people live off other people’s spirituality rather than taking the time to develop their own direct experience of God? Most Christians talk about prayer but don’t pray.

While we know little of the specifics, it is clear that he oriented his entire life around loving God. He renounced certain activities, such as eating the king’s contaminated food (Daniel 1), and engaged in others, such as the Daily Office (Daniel 6). Daniel somehow fed himself spiritually and blossomed into an extraordinary man of God in this hostile environment. He

The great, buried gift in a Rule of Life is its goal of regulating our entire lives in such a way that we truly prefer the love of Christ above all things.

My personal Rule of Life is a prayer document that constantly changes. It is a “live” work in progress—always. For example, due to my highly intuitive, conscientious temperament, I rarely write down my goals and commitments. For me, it can easily become a “have to” rather than a “want to” out of love for Christ.

to work on over a long period of time. An example under Prayer might look something like this: Pray the Jesus prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”) each day at work, several times a day.

“For three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.” I think I could use a few good rocks myself! This is one of the most challenging and least practiced disciplines among Christians today. When we are silent, we come face to face with our addiction to being in control and always trying to fix things. As Dallas Willard says, “Silence is frightening because it strips us as nothing else does, throwing us upon the stark realities of our life. It reminds us of death, which will cut us off from this world and leave only us and God.”

Benedict understood an important principle: growing, maturing Christians are always exploring, reading, and learning.

Listening to teachings from people ahead of you spiritually may also be included here. Consider studying not simply for information but for the purpose of formation in Christ. Pray back to God what you are learning. I love to read so I could easily have moved Study under the category of Rest. Yet I can think of a few friends who would move Study immediately to Work.

Take some time to reflect on the four characteristics of biblical Sabbaths—stop, rest, delight, contemplate. What will it mean for you to stop and rest rather than use this as one more day to “get things done”? One key to my Sabbath is to purposely not think about New Life Fellowship Church, my place of work, nor look at emails or my answering machine. Waste time and don’t look at the clock.

Finally, when you plan your vacation this coming year, apply the principle of Sabbath. See it as an extended Sabbath to the Lord. Plan, in advance, how you will balance the four elements of biblical Sabbaths—stopping, resting, delighting, and contemplating—during that time.

Instead of cooking elaborate meals and having a house that is always perfectly clean, we have made choices to let that go. We are no longer involved in fifteen projects at the same time in our service for Christ.

The principle of tithing—that is, the giving away of 10 percent of our income—is also an important component to simplicity. It teaches us to let go of what is not necessary and to remain dependent on God as our security and source. Jesus himself taught that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). It

Under this category I would include commitment to the poor and marginalized; to bridging racial, cultural, and economic barriers; to working for justice and the environment; to world missions. For some of us, our challenge is to do something for others outside of our comfort zone. For others, like me, the issue is limits. How can I embrace my God-given limits and not go beyond what he is asking me to do?

What might you want to include in your Rule of Life about exercise? How many times a week will you exercise? What will you do? What about your work habits? Are you eating a balanced, healthy, nutritious diet? What is the effect of certain foods on your energy level? Do you get adequate rest and sleep? Scripture says sleep is a gift of God (Psalm 127:2). When is the last time you went to the doctor for an annual checkup?

For example, a headache, knot in your stomach, inability to sleep, and the resulting exhaustion may be God calling you to slow down or to change directions. Listening to our bodies can be an important way to listen to God. When we care for our bodies, we acknowledge the holiness of all of life and honor the fact that God is within us.

And may love invade you. It will never fail to teach you what you must do.

Be Free for God I have a need of such clearance as the Savior effected in the temple of Jerusalem a riddance of clutter of what is secondary that blocks the way to the all-important central emptiness which is filled with the presence of God alone.