A Sojourner’s Thoughts

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Tending to our Souls

You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. (Haggai 1:9 ESV)

Haggai is one of my favorite books in the Bible. The message is so simple – put your own things aside and take care of God’s house. If we place this in context, Haggai is address the Israelites who have given in to the world around them. Nehemiah had been commissioned to go and rebuild temple in Jerusalem. The project started out well but soon the world around them was distracting them, suppressing them, and generally causing them to loose focus on their mission, their purpose. As the Israelites gave into the world, they began to focus on their own needs, wants, and desires. This then leads to the conditions described in the earlier verses of Haggai where the prophet describes the futility of the life they are living.

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (2 Corinthians 6:16 ESV)

The question I need to be asking myself today is how am I being distracted by the world around me? You see as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians “We (I) are the temple of the living God.” How am I doing at building and maintaining God’s temple within me? I’m teaching a class this summer call Soul Care: tending to the heart, body, and mind where the students are focusing on this very question. I find it interesting how many are glad that they can take the time to focus on their soul rather than the business of life around them. It only strengthened my belief that we, just like the Israelites that Haggai addressed are busy with the world and our own lives that we are neglecting to focus on building God’s temple by tending to our soul.

As the story continues to unfold in Haggai, we see the Lord producing a drought on the land until the people come together, refocus their attention on God and begin once again the build the God’s temple. The world around them notice this and try once again to stop the work, but God’s people have a renewed focus on getting the work done. I know in my life when I neglect the work I need to put into tending to my soul that I also feel like I am in a spiritual drought and life seem a bit futile. It is not until I refocus my attention on God that the drought turns into a refreshing rain that nourishes my soul and the work resume on soul, God’s temple within me.

The question I pose is a simple one – How is your soul care going? Is the work on God’s temple moving forward or has is come to a stop? Are you in a drought or are you experiencing a refreshing rain?

If you would like to talk about your soul let me know.

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2014 Year End Reflections

2014 – A Year End Reflection

The best way I can describe 2014 is – I began with an intimacy with God I had not experienced in a very long time and is ending with the birthing of a new ministry – The Sojourner’s Garden. Did the first give rise to the second? I don’t know because much happened in the “…” (the space) between the beginning and the end. The “…” is a lot like the “-” on a grave stone. You have a birth year and a death year and the “-” represents the time one spent on earth. Most often there are a lot of years represented by the “-.”

So what happened in the “…’s” this year. How has my soul been? How have my relationships grown? How has ministry been? Have I loved God with all I have? Have I loved my neighbor the same way? Maybe I need to do a beliefs & values check…

Trusted God with all my heart –
Being strong and courageous –
Guarding my heart –
Loving God and loving others –
Serving Him by serving you –
Giving voice to those who have no voice –
Developing relationships –
Choosing my words wisely –
Being transformed, shape, molded by God –

What are the grades I would give myself for these traits this last year? Without measurable outcomes I really don’t have a way of grading myself. I believe I would make the B honor roll. I would come up with a couple of A’s, a couple of C’s, and the rest B’s – some +’s, some -‘s. I need to work better at guarding my heart and choosing my words. I am pretty good at serving others and giving voice to the voiceless (at least ministering to them/with them).

What I need to do now is look again at my personal life mandate and put into place how I am going to live out each of my belief/values in the coming year. Are all my operational beliefs still valid? Do I need to incorporate something new? This is a task for another day for now I want to reflect back over the last year and see what I have learned.

The year began on what I have had a very hard time describing. Coming back from the CQ COC retreat in Dec 2013 I was in a spiritual state of nirvana, a sense of a deep, personal, intimate relationship with God. My time alone with God was a time of true contentment but with a sense of change coming. Yes, I know that those two statements seem to oppose each other – how can one be content, yet be sensing a change? Maybe this is why it is a time that is so hard to explain.

As winter rolled into spring and then burst forth into summer the changes I was anticipating did not happen and I had to re-evaluate the signs I had been reading. As things unfolded differently than I had plan my relationship with God had also returned to a more “normal” state. My time with God no longer had the same intimate feeling it did a few months earlier. The question I ask now is who was it that changed, me or God? It’s wasn’t that I was now discontent or didn’t sense change, but it was in some way different.

As summer moved into fall I once again turned to what I was seeking and instead started asking “God, what do you have in store for me?” This simple act of turning from what I thought God should do to asking what it is I should do seemed to draw me back into that closer, more intimate relationship – it is different than what I experienced at the beginning of the year. Not better or worse, just different. At work, my job description changed again as did my office for a couple of days a week – can you say window. My time with God began to change as well. Consistent time with God, centering myself on Him who created me, prayer (which has always been my weakest spiritual discipline) came alive, and my dream reemerged – a dream reflecting back through the years actually has its genesis in the the mid-1990’s as Shoal Lake Ministry.

I have come to realize that I was alive after the retreat a year ago because God had stirred in me this new adventure – spiritual director, mentor, teacher, dreamer, writer – and I had embraced it. As different opportunities arose I assumed this is where I was suppose to move – not bothering to really seek God’s will in it. You see we were so close that I didn’t need to ask, I just knew this was it. The thing is these different opportunities would have put me into a “box” where I might not be able to do all that God has planned. But, you see, these “boxes” would have been the safe way to move forward. God isn’t about this kind of safety, rather I need to push forward just like the barbarian sheep I wrote about 5-6 years ago. I need to push my head through the fence and get some people together not to push my head back but rather to push my butt forward to the other side. Will this happen tomorrow, no I don’t think so. But I am putting together a five year (give or take a couple of years) plan to set me up, for what is now being called, my encore career. That ministry that I can do as my life begins to wind down and I settle into the last few decades of my life.

2014 you have been a good year. I don’t have a lot written about you through the year but God has been good. I have entered into new ministry opportunities at church, while scaling back others. I have drawn closer to God and what He has in store for me in the future. I have seen my kids grow and mature and I have realized they did listen to a lot of the things I told them. They don’t always do things the way I would but then again they aren’t me (thank goodness). I have had a lot of wonderful adventures this past year with my wife of 32+ years and look forward to loving her and getting to know her even a little better in this coming year. Ok, I admit it, this empty nest thing is really kinda fun.

I close this reflection with a prayer of gratitude to the creator of all thing, the transformer of my life, the source of who I am and who I am still becoming. Father God, thanks for using me to be your ambassador, your hands and feet, your minister while I go about doing this thing called life. Amen.

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But God…

Trust GOD from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for GOD ’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all. (Proverbs 3:5-6 MSG)

So here I am walking down my life path and according to my map there is a fork in the road ahead where I will be making a decision to go right or left. It’s not that one path is better than the other, but they are quite different paths. I would be comfortable going either direction but I do have a preferred path. My map has been projecting this fork for months and there has been a growing sense of what I call “content anticipation.” The day arrives and when I get to the fork I find that one of the paths has been closed, in fact the path was never actually constructed. The sign read upon further review the construction of this path has been delayed indefinitely. So the fork has simply turned into a slight veering to the side around the closed path.

I want to argue with God about the closed path – “You see God MY MAP says that at this point in my journey there will be a choice to be made about which path to take!” To this complaint God simply steers me to the above verse. “Trust me” God says, “don’t worry about your map rather just listen to me and I will direct you on your journey. You see Scott you don’t have the full picture, but don’t worry I will keep you on the right path. What you need to do is keep listening.”

BUT! But? But. “Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go…” Trust – an easy word to say but a hard one to live out. So I guess I have two choices – I can sit down by the side of the road, complain to God, mope, twiddle my thumbs, and wait or I can shrug my shoulders, take a deep breath, and refocus on the path I am on – waiting, listening, and pondering what the future may hold. My choice is to quit relying so much on “my map” and instead lean in a little closer to hear that “still small voice” of God to see what lies ahead.

How do you handle life when it seems you’ve been thrown an unexpected twist? I know that most of these twists and turns are merely a small inconvenience but others are a major shock – the unexpected loss of a loved one, a broken relationship, or the loss of a job. These things can cause real pain, real grief, real emotional issues – we need to acknowledge these feelings and emotions, we need to work through them (with the help of others, if needed). You need to know that it’s also alright to let God know how you feel. He want to know about our hurts and pains, our disappointments and struggles. But when the time is right, after the shock and rawness of our emotions has subsided, we also need to ask God “What’s next? Where is this new path going to take me?” You see there is a promise that can be found in Provers 3:5-6 – “…he’s the one who will keep you on track…” It might not be the track you were expecting but we can trust that God will be with us as we travel down this new road.