Alan Fadling's Blog, page 47

Steeped in God-Reality

“Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don ’t worry about missing out. You ’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

      “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6:33-34 MSG)

 

One of the ways I (Alan) sometimes engage a passage like this one is to work through three questions:

 

How does this passage speak to me?
How does this passage stir my heart?
To what is this passage inviting me today?

 

After I read this passage from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, here was my journal response to it, framed by those questions:

 

How does this passage speak to me? I can steep my life in God’s presence, God’s plans, and God’s provision. I want to be richly aware of who God is and what God does. I don’t want my life to be watery tea but strong coffee. I want my life to be heated by God Himself. I don’t want to be lukewarm or cold.

 

Whatever there is that worries me right now will take care of itself if I’ll be attentive first to God’s presence and God’s activity. If I let myself “get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow,” I’m no longer focusing my attention on God now.

 

How does this passage stir my heart? I feel invited into God-reality, but I also feel tentative with my ability to carry out this intention. I’ve felt so distractable lately. I feel a deep need for simple, focused attention. I feel hungry for a simpler heart and mind. I feel grateful that God wants this for me more than I want it for myself.

 

To what is this passage inviting me today? What verbs help me hear God’s invitation? Steep your life. Don’t worry. Give your attention. Don’t get worked up.

 

Once I’ve reflected and responded to a passage, I’ll often take 15 minutes to simply sit alone and quiet with God. These days, I usually sit in my backyard in the cool of the morning and watch for and listen to the birds. My sense of their non-anxious presence is often a great gift of grace to me. They help me pay attention to the God who made them…and me.

 

Reflection Questions:

How does this way of reflecting on scripture strike you?
Does it look familiar? Inviting?
Try reading a small passage from a gospel or letter and let these three questions guide a time of reflection and prayer.

 

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Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash

ICDT #8: A Personal Season of Loss

 

Hope is a deep and strong dynamic. I believe that deep down, we all have access to this gift. However, for many of us, it gets buried underneath the hard knocks of life. And yet hope gets uncovered, over time, as we make our way through our circumstances. Hope is that beautiful combination of two more life-giving dynamics: with and through. And, more importantly, it’s with and through with God.

 

Today, on the I Can Do That Podcast, I’ll be sharing some of my personal stories of loss and how I made my way to hope THROUGH the circumstances. Listen now on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

UL Podcast 197: Productivity and Our Hurried Souls

 

Today, I’m sharing a great conversation I had recently with my friends, Jeb Shore and John Freeman about how our obsession with productivity impacts the level of hurry in our souls. In An Unhurried Life, I wrote a chapter titled “Productivity: Unhurried Isn’t Lazy,” in part, to speak to this tendency to make assumptions about what makes our lives productive. The irony is that my over-busyness is more often a sign of a lazy soul that it is of a productive day.

 

The title, “Productivity and Our Hurried Souls” refer to something from An Unhurried Life, where Alan asked a question along these lines: “How productive is overwork anyway?” The point was that sometimes busy does not equate with productivity. We share some examples about how busy doesn’t always end up being as fruitful as we hope it will be?

No Time Like the Present

Hurry has been a temptation in each season of my (Gem) life. It is an unbidden tendency that can run in the background of just about any situation. It has showed up in my negative self-talk and in my too-high expectations of myself and those around me.

 

It can be easy to find ourselves under the pressure of all we do for others. Sometimes, it’s not even that heroic. We are simply under the demands that we place on ourselves—demands that may or may not have anything to do with what others want or need.

 

My life has been one long lesson in patience, trust, and grace. So…

 

What if I had a broader view of time?
What if I thought seasonally as well as daily?
What if the time I am given is actually enough?
What if I could live at the pace of grace?

 

All throughout nature we see examples of process: cycles of life, death, and renewal. We can have such a view of our own lives. Each of us moving beautifully through our own processes, giving grace to ourselves along the way. What if we allowed the seasons of our lives to ebb and flow? How might we move more graciously through our days?

 

A while back, a wise friend of mine shared, “Life does not come at me. It comes to me.”

 

Life does not come at me. It comes to me.

 

Quite a few years ago I stumbled upon an invention called The Present, a wall clock with no numbers, only one hand, and a color wheel for its face. The hand of the clock takes one year to make its way in a complete circle. Just looking at the way the colors fade from one to the next helps me to take a deep breath. Since then, the company has added two other clocks called Day and Moon.

 

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1 NLT)

 

With the images of The Present in mind (see link above), let’s ponder a few questions.

 

How do the blending of color and season affect your perception of time?
How does this compare with your view of a traditional clock that has numbers denoting hours?
How can this contrast help you regulate or slow your inner pace?

 

As you give some thought to your own inner pace…

 

What do you notice?
What is the speed of your thoughts? Your heart?
Do you need to pick up the pace or slow it down?

 

Giving attention to our inner pace can open us up to a whole new level of grace—both grace embraced and grace extended.

 

Spend just a few moments with Jesus in silence. Linger in these questions with Him. Allow Him to show you what grace He may have for you.

 

Remember, life does not come at you, it comes to you. What will you do with your time today?

Podcast 196: Being With God (A.J. Sherrill)

 

In today’s episode, Alan talks with fellow author, A. J. Sherrill about contemplative prayer. It’s such a timely practice for our frantic, hurried world today. We really do need wise mentor and coaches like A. J. to help us actually live the invitation to “Be still and know that God is…God is with us…God is at home in us through Christ by the Spirit.” We so need to learn how to be comfortable in solitude, silence and stillness. 

 

AJ Sherrill has more than twenty years of experience as a pastor, including as lead pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is now lead pastor at St. Peter's Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. He is an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he teaches popular courses on transformational preaching and the Enneagram. A. J. receives many speaking requests to lead Enneagram workshops across the country and is the author of The Enneagram for Spiritual Formation and a forthcoming book titled Being with God: The Absurdity, Necessity, and Neurology of Contemplative Prayer.

ICDT #7: Crazy Little Thing Called Love

 

Today, on the I Can Do That Podcast, we are talking about love. I realize it’s pretty audacious to think I can discuss this subject in a 10-minute podcast. Let me assure you, I am in no way covering the depths of God’s love or what it means to give and receive love. I am simply layering another part of our foundation.

 

But I’m not going to talk about a prancing through the daffodils kind of love. I told you that we’re combining grounded optimism with practical spirituality and I meant it. This means, in part, that we try to explore as best we can (even large topics like love) and then take appropriate action based on our current understanding. Is this a perfect science? No. Is this a work in progress? Definitely yes.

 

Listen now. Link in bio.

The Mystery of Indwelling

There is a simple scriptural truth that many Christians seem to struggle with when it comes to actual practice. We don’t seem to have a hard time with it as an idea or a statement of faith. Here are some texts where you’ll find it:

 

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

 

“God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

 

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)

 

I’m sure you can see what I’m pointing to. More than forty years ago, when I (Alan) was a high school student at a Christian concert, I was told that if I wanted to become a Christian, I should invite Jesus into my heart. So that’s what I prayed. What Christian would have a hard time with this idea? Likely none. Many are fine with “Christ in me” when it comes to entering into the Christian life.

 

But what about actually living the Christian life? Listen to this comment from Shirley Carter Hughson, an early twentieth-century Anglican abbot:

 

“It is evident, therefore, that in practicing the presence of God we are to look within, not without. We are not to allow the imagination to project our attention to some external place or condition where God may exist, for however He may exist there, it is not there that we can communicate with Him, but only in our souls. This was the mistake which St. Augustine tells us he made when he was searching after God, and found Him only after having lost much precious time because he did not seek Him aright. ‘Too late have I loved You, O Beauty, so ancient and yet so new,’ he cries, ‘too late have I loved You! For, behold, You were within, and I without, and it was without that I sought You!’ (Confessions, Bk. X, ch. xxvii).”**

 

It is the idea of the indwelling Christ that some Christian friends have struggled with. In 1990, a mentor of mine, Wayne Anderson, suggested that the biblical idea of “Christ in me” is key to understanding prayer and living in communion with God.

 

Some of my ministry colleagues at the time interpreted Wayne’s invitation to listen to Christ within them as out-of-bounds, non-Christian, New Age, even Eastern mysticism. They could not embrace a practice that, to my way of thinking, was a rather obvious extension of our theological belief in the indwelling Christ. We urge new Christians to recognize the reality of Christ at home in their hearts. But what does that mean when it comes to the practicalities of living in communion with Christ?

 

In his Confessions, Augustine grieves the time he wasted looking for God “out there somewhere” when God actually was nearer than his own heart. Augustine then describes himself as being “out there,” while all along God was “in here.” When we pray “Our Father in heaven,” we’re not talking to a distant God living somewhere above the clouds. We’re talking to the God who is at home in an eternal reality that is closer to us than the air we breathe.

 

We tend to prefer the familiar over the true. That which is unfamiliar raises red flags, and we assume it is error. When it comes to spiritual practices, a common method we use to decide whether something is fitting for us is to ask, “Have we done that before?” If the answer is no, we assume it must not be for us. It must be a “them” practice. This is how some Christians feel about solitude, silence, and listening prayer.

 

I’m so glad that today many are discovering the gift that such practices are and how rooted in kingdom reality they are.

 

Reflection Questions

When it comes to your experience of prayer, what difference does it make for you that Christ is in you? How does this affect your sense of Jesus with you always?

 

**Shirley C. Hughson, Contemplative Prayer (West Park, NY: Holy Cross Press, 1935), p. 13.

 

(Purchases made via the links may provide an Amazon Affiliate commission fee to Unhurried Living. This adds nothing to the cost of your purchase.)

ICDT #6: How to Become More Curious

 

I’d like to propose an idea right up front here. Can we acknowledge that 100% of the time we do not know 100% of the story? I know this may be jarring to some of us. I, personally, like to think that I always know what’s going on. I’m an excellent mind-reader and an astounding predictor of outcomes. I hope you can tell that my tongue is firmly planted in cheek.

 

We don’t actually know 100% of any situation, do we? After we settle into that level of humility, a beautiful dynamic can emerge: curiosity. Curiosity then leads to asking good questions, broadening our view and deepening our understanding.

 

UL Podcast #195: Insecurity and Our Hurried Soul

 

Alan  and friends, Darrell Warner and Matt Fogle, share a great conversation about the issue of identity. In his book, "An Unhurried Leader", Alan wrote about how doing our work to prove our worth is a very common temptation for leaders. It can be surprising just how often insecurity is driving us to frenetic activity.  

 

We too often imagine that our value or worth is hanging in the balance of how well we perform. But what if our value is already decided in our favor. What if our identity is a gift we’ve already received rather than a paycheck we still have to earn?

Shiizakana: Make Your Own Creative Choice

One of my favorite series on Netflix is Chef’s Table. I (Gem) have never before experienced a docuseries quite like this. Each episode tells the story of a single chef. The cinematography is exceptionally beautiful, the storytelling is compelling, and the food is unique and gorgeous. Using slow motion and lighting effects, the creators transport me to another world, where I love getting lost in the mood and the story.

 

After stopping off in dreamland and wishing I was a world-renowned chef (although I don’t really want to do all the hard work it takes to get there), I realize what’s really happening: I am being inspired to be who I am and to share what I have with creativity and passion.

 

Each chef is as unique as the food they serve, and they have found ways to express themselves that are true to their gifts and vision. As with most great stories, the hero does not receive rave reviews at the beginning. They learn and grow and fail their way through their careers. They experience setbacks and heartbreaks. But they don’t give up. They make their way to the top of their game and now enjoy the fruits of that labor.

 

Again, I am always inspired by each chef’s uniqueness. Some are quirky, some are intense, some are eccentric, some are peaceful, and all are gifted in expressing their culinary vision in their own way.

 

One episode of Chef’s Table highlighted Chef Niki Nakayama from Los Angeles. She creates a modern twist on the Japanese tradition of kaiseki. Within this very precise mode of presenting a multi-course meal, she often serves one dish that is completely non-traditional. There is a term for this: shiizakana, which translates to “not bound by tradition, chef’s choice.”

 

In our own lives some traditions are helpful and some are merely ruts. If you are stuck in a rut, it is good to remember that, at times, you can color outside the lines, try out a new path, and find ways to express your truest, most creative self.

 

How are you struck by this idea of being who you are and sharing from that? In our Unhurried Living paradigm, it really does begin on the inside and at God’s initiative.

 

Here is some food for thought: 

How are you being inspired to be all of who you are? By that I mean, how are you continuing to respond to God’s initiative to form you over time (Philippians 1:6)?
Are you stuck in any ruts? Are you engaged in unhelpful practices into which you could interject some shiizakana?
If you are in a learn-grow-fail process, how are you being inspired to keep going?
Like Chef Nakayama, how might you take some habit or convention and inject your own innovation into it?

Photo by Peter Dawn on Unsplash