11-22 On Saturday we had 8 “Wildmen” at Canaan for retreat and I think of them as passionate for God. It reminded me of an article I read by Chila Soychik who describes a passionate woman but I think it applies to both sexes. Persons that are passionate for God have a thirst for Him that is the driving force of their lives. They care little for fame or fortune, recognition or reward but have experienced a personal relationship with Him. They hunger for truth in this mixed up world where wrong often seems right. They go to the Word every day as their necessary daily food. They love others with a godly passion and model unconditional love. They don’t portray themselves as having arrived but as someone who knows where they are going. They encourage others to join them too. A passionate person lives today with tomorrow in mind, knowing their life is a drop in the bucket of time and eternity. They live each day to the fullest and are vibrant and committed. They avoid sin so they can gain intimacy with God. None of us have boundless energy, super-human strength, or superior spirituality. In fact, we are ordinary ones who fail, fall, and are tired at the end of the day. But have we seen God work, heard Him through His Word, experienced peace and answered prayers, and enjoyed the comfort of the Holy Spirit? If so, we can call ourselves “Wildmen” or “Wildwomen” who are passionate for Him.
Category: Sister Judy (Page 234 of 271)
Devotions based on Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Custody
We are told in Phil 2:12 to cultivate and complete our salvation with reverence and awe. ( AB) Action steps are ways to work out our salvation if we are serious about our soul care. Our culture says to work more do more etc but let us not be hijacked by people and messages of the world at the expense of our souls. Caring for our souls is a need in every season, every culture, and every soul. We should be careful to recognize warning signals that our soul gives us such as stress, depression, lack of joy strife, dryness, anxiety, preoccupation with daydreams, more time spent using technology etc. We may need to admit to God all the areas of our life that are out of control and ask Him to help. . We should also note the positive aspects of our soul which includes peace, contentment with life, spiritual aliveness, and exuberance about life. We can be inspired by preachers or our spouse can help us but no one can care for our soul like we can.
We must choose to be true to ourselves. Being true to our soul will look different than what that would be for another. What works for us may not work for someone else. But let us be intentional and explore the ways that are life-giving for us and stay with that. Then every so often we should evaluate our experiences, go on retreats, ask ourselves if we are making choices that bring us closer to Him. “We flourish and thrive when we give the soul what the soul requires to live.”
Devotions based on Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Custody
Love is the acid test of Christian spirituality. It is the proof that we love God. Either we are growing to be more loving or we are not growing at all in our souls. Soul friendships are the place where love is fostered, nurtured, and given. It is also the primary place where love is received. It is the place where our soul connects in love, to love, and to be loved. In everyone’s life there is a great need for a soul friend. In this love, we are understood as we are without mask or pretension. May we learn about this love from I Cor 13 “ Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t’ have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first”, doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.” (MSG) Let us think of ways we can be a soul friend to another!
Devotions based on Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Custody
“A soul friendship is an open place for another soul to emerge, a safe place for the action of friendship making, which is no easy task.” Sometimes we mistakenly assume that one broken person plus another broken person equals a whole. But our math is wrong. One broken person plus another broken person just equals more broken people. What we really offer another is our wounds, our fears of being rejected, our history etc. But when we experience God in our midst soul friendships happen. We offer ourselves to one another and feast in the fellowship that can transform us. Friendship is really a movement from me to we. To be present to you means that I must be prepared to be temporarily absent from me. My selfish desires to be heard and understood must be put aside for the sake of the other. It’s not about just me. It’s about us! We move from the journey alone to the journey together. “When we love one another deeply from the heart we move out of our own hearts into the sacred space of our friends- where peace and fear coexist, where trust and doubt find an equal dwelling place, where secrets are so embedded and darkness so great that we long for someone to bring us light.” In soul friendships we move out of the darkness and into the light of not only each other’s presence but His presence-the true light.
Devotions from Stephen Smith’s book , Soul Custody
When we live only for ourselves we become alienated from others and also alienated from ourselves. Our deepest and truest self is not an isolated self but finds its meaning and fulfillment in community. In a soul friendship we die to our false self and learn the joy and grace of being accepted as we truly are. The author mentions levels of friendship that correspond to the chamber of the heart. Chamber One is the surface level of connecting to another person. Here we just share basic information about each other. Chamber Two conversations go a bit deeper. Here we share common interests and affinity. Chamber Three is where we share some of our story-good along with the bad. We try to be reciprocal in what we give each other and also receive. Chamber Four is the place that holds secrets that no one knows; our hurts, our wounds etc. Soul friendship is the journey of sharing all the chambers of our heart with all the chambers of another’s heart and discovering God in the midst of it all. Chamber 4 is the place that good friends, tested and proven friends explore together. It is the chamber that yields great rewards of personal transformation. It is challenging and requires trust, safety, and an invitation to go there. Even Jesus selected only a few good friends to share his most intimate secrets and for most of us we are able to share with only a very few too.
Devotions based on Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Custody
“A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.” Prov 27:18 TLB
There is nothing quite like sharing the journey of life with a person whom we love and from whom we receive love! Our loneliness melts away as another person offers us love and companionship, giving us the sense of being cared for deep in our souls. But in our culture today many try to connect with others on Face Book etc without ever really looking into the eyes of another soul to see and be seen, to know and be known, to discover and be discovered. We are more isolated today socially and many people say they have no one to confide in. Our souls were not made for pseudo-friendships. When we settle for them we are choosing to settle for far less than we were made for. True friendship and building of authentic community was exemplified in the New Testament. Jesus said we are to love one another, accept one another, serve one another, and confess to one another. God’s presence with us is what transforms an ordinary friendship into soul friends. We are present to each other as we are in the presence of God.
Devotions from Stephen’s Smith’s book, Soul Custody
We all need to discover how we can make the body-soul connection in our lives. Some people take prayer walks and can be a good therapy for our soul and body. Some may do it by running or going to the gym. They founder of the YMCA, Dwight Moody, saw that caring for the body was a way to care for the souls of men and women. It still continues to help people live well through the development of spirit, mind, and body. How we treat our body is how we treat our souls. To honor our souls means to honor the body in which our soul dwells. To abuse or neglect our body is to do violence against our souls. Sometimes we may become disappointed with our bodies and can become over whelmed with self-rejection. We may listen to the voice of self-condemnation that can speak more loudly than God’s voice that we are His beloved. We need to recognize, face and refute the lies about our bodies and believe the truth. He already accepts us and we can stop striving. If we try to be perfect by the world’s standards we will fail. But when we receive the truth that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, we will want to care for God’s remarkable creation. One day we will have new bodies but as we treat our bodies with honor and respect on this earth it is an act of worship and an act of faith.
Devotions from Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Cusody
God never intended for us to separate our bodies from our souls. In fact, learning to care for our bodies is a way of being hospitable to our souls that live within us. The soul is the place where everything comes together- physical needs, spiritual needs and intellectual needs. So neglecting our body can actually hurt our spiritual lives. Our body is our “soul address”. Our soul lives at this address and we need to honor our bodies. How many times do we stop to appreciate how our bodies have served us and gotten us to where we are now? In Scripture our body is referred to as the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It is the place where God chooses to dwell. Our body-whatever shape, size or appearance is the place where God chooses to dwell. “Our bodies matter because our sacred soul dwells in our physical body”. Spiritual disciplines help us make the body-soul connection. Nearly all spiritual disciplines involve some physical response. We kneel, we bow our heads, we dance etc. “A disciplined life in God is a life in which we make space for God-even in our bodies.” Let us abstain from things that harm our bodies and do what will help them and therefore nourish our souls.
Devotions from Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Custody
To find our true vocation we must pay attention to what moves us. We need to ask ourselves when do I feel passion rise within me? “ Work is more than mere work when we realize, this is what I was made for-this is what I must do.” Some of us may have to try several lines of work before we discover what fits us. Each job becomes its own school of the soul to teach us, to inform us, to point us forward to the next step. Our lives’ work is really a composite of all the jobs-good and bad, success or failure- that teach us, make us and shape us for our calling. We need to pay attention to what we learn in each one about ourselves and our roles. There is not cookie –cutter approach for our souls for each of us is different. It may help to explore our inner soul with a spiritual guide or a trusted friend. Let us live our questions and pick up unturned stones and look under them for the truth. As we discern the truth about ourselves and our callings, along with our passions, interests and giftedness, God will open doors for opportunities and orchestrate how it all comes together. Often this convergence doesn’t happen until we are in our 50’s and beyond. Let us all watch for the light on our path and move forward. May our work be worship for as we live for a greater purpose than ourselves and a greater calling than our egos, we give glory to Him.
Devotions from Stephen Smith’s book, Soul Custody
Frederick Buechner said, “The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done….The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” About 70 % of people are unhappy in their current job due to work related stress. And since the majority of our time is spent at work it is important to find work that brings fulfillment, challenge, contribution, and continued motivation. Making wise choices about what we do with our lives and our abilities becomes a sacred responsibility. As we care for our vocations, we in turn care for our souls. What we do for a living affects our souls! In each of us there is the underlying question of what we should do with our lives. If we become obsessed with merely succeeding and getting ahead, we can lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles, without ever knowing who we really are. We are more than our job that we do for a living! It is our birthright to become who we are, to do what we are called to do. There is joy when we engage in our work and it is not just a means to an end. If we are to know our true vocation, we must take a long hard look into our souls, that place that is most us, and let our inner voice speak and nudge us in the right direction. Then our work can bring glory to God. More tomorrow
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