Alan Fadling's Blog, page 72

Podcast: What Does Your Soul Love (Pt. 1)

How do you feel about change? Some of us naturally love change. We like spontaneity, variety, new experiences. And some of us naturally resist change. We like stability, tradition, we like to “do it again.”

But personal preferences are not exactly what we’re talking about today. When it comes to our life in Christ, change is part of the invitation. Transformation is essential to the journey. This week and next we are going to share some key insights from our new book, "What Does Your Soul Love"? Today we’ll discuss desire, resistance, vulnerability and truth.

Discerning the Transitions that Lead to Transformation

Many years ago, we found ourselves in an extended season in which we felt like we were moving from transition to transition in our lives. Sometimes it involved outward transitions like new roles or new neighborhoods, but more often, it was a matter of transitions inside of us.

Transitions of what was meaningful currently compared to what had been meaningful to us before.
Transitions in our experience of God with us or, sometimes, wondering why God didn’t feel as close to us as before.
Transitions in our emotional lives. Transitions between confidence and insecurity, between peace and worry, between joy and sadness.
Transitions in the way we were relating to one another. We found that as each of us grew and changed, the nature of our marriage relationship changed. More transition.

We remember at one point, after talking about transition so much, we found ourselves feeling a little tired, even disillusioned, from so much change. Part of the tiredness was not feeling like we were landing somewhere solid in our lives with all that transition. It was disorienting.

Eventually, we looked at each other and found ourselves quoting a line from one of our long-time favorite movies.

Maybe you’ve seen it: “The Princess Bride.” If you have, you may remember a scene at night when Vizzini, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya have kidnapped the princess. Inigo begins making comments about being followed, which Vizzini says is “inconceivable.”

Inigo continues to persist about the possibility that they are being followed and Vizzini continues to insist that it is, in fact, “inconceivable.” Unlikely event after unlikely event unfolds, and that same word, “inconceivable” arises.

Finally, at the top of the cliffs of insanity, being followed up the rope they are climbing by the man in black, Vizzini, yet again, declares the whole thing “inconceivable”, when Inigo turns to him, and says, “You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

We cannot tell you how many times we have quoted that line to one another when we found ourselves in a place of fresh understanding. It has been a great source of wisdom to us.

In our case, the word was “transition.” “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

We had been using the word “transition” to describe a season in which we were experiencing change after change. We were using it in the assumption that we were on our way to landing somewhere final and maybe even predictable. “Transition” was going to be a limited little season that would end.

We decided that maybe the word “transition” wasn’t actually the best word to describe what we were experiencing.

Maybe, instead, rather than being in transition and looking for a final landing place, we were actually on a journey. Maybe instead of “transition,” “journey” was the word we were looking for. And a journey is different than a transition.

People on a journey are pilgrims. They are nomads. They are on the move. It helped us to think that perhaps we weren’t looking to land somewhere soon where we would feel secure once again.

We came, little by little, to learn that being on a journey meant that our sense of home was not mostly going to be in some predictable somewhere, but in a completely faithful Someone. That Someone is with us wherever we find ourselves. God was inviting us to find ourselves at home in Him in the midst of our journey from change to change.

In our new book, What Does Your Soul Love?The subtitle is “Eight Questions That Reveal God’s Work in You.”The message at the heart of the book is the reality of change—more particularly, of personal transformation in Christ. Here are the first few lines of the introduction:

This is a book about change. We set out to write a book about transformation, but in everyday life, the two of us have very different responses to change. Alan resists change, tending to avoid it. He prefers to keep things the way they are; he likes predictability as a way of feeling secure. Gem embraces change, even seeks it out. She loves the variety and creativity of new experiences. But we both are hungry for the kind of change God invites us to.

We seek the sort of transformation that would make us a little more beautiful in kingdom ways. We both want the kind of change that is an answer to “Your kingdom come, your will be done in me as it is in heaven.”

So some of us tend to love change. We like spontaneity, variety, new things.

And some of us tend to resist change. We like stability, tradition, we might just be like the little child who says to her parent, “Do it again.”

But whatever our initial response to change might be, change is very much a part of our journey with Jesus.

In Philippians 1:6 (ESV) we read, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Our confidence for the future is not rooted in any human capacity, strategy or plan—ours or anyone else’s. The confidence Paul speaks of here is found in the strong intention and the full commitment of God to finish the good work begun in us, among us and through us.

God has started something in each of us.
God has started something among us as the body of Christ.
And God is fully committed to finishing that very good work.

One of the things we’ve learned about staying on and leaning into this journey of transformation is something pretty simple.

“It will be very difficult to embark (and remain) on a journey of transformation if we do not have confidence that we are already loved as we currently are. We don’t change so that we’ll be loved more by God. We are measurelessly loved by God, so we are free and enabled to change in all the ways we long for. (What Does Your Soul Love?, p. 7).  

The secure place where we can take the personal steps into the new places God’s work is inviting us into is the place of our deep confidence in God’s reliable and ever-present care for us.

The home in which we can make our way in our current places of transition is in the secure care of a very Good Shepherd in whom we really shall not find ourselves in a condition of want.

And one of our very favorite prayers in the New Testament has been the prayer that closes Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

This is what is sounds like in Eugene Peterson’s The Message version. Let the words paint a picture of this very good work that God has envisioned, has planned and is now executing in us and among us:

“So, this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.”

What a beautiful vision of each of our lives.

It’s a vision of love that flourishes and overflows among us: being loved by God and loving God back, loving one another, and loving the neighbors God gives us.
It’s a vision of love that is a response to a growing knowledge of reality and a clearer discernment of what really matters.
It’s a vision of love that is “pure and blameless,” love that is rooted in more and more harmony between our ideas, our words, our relationships, and our works.
Finally, it’s a vision of a life of love that is increasingly full of goodness and of a very real experience and expression of the presence of God among us.

God has been engaged in a very good and beautiful work in you. And as we all move into the uncertain weeks, months and even years ahead, there is something we can be utterly confident about.

The One Who has begun this good work among us is fully resolved, fully capable and fully engaged towards the fulfillment of that work until is well-done in each of us and among us together.

How might God wish to show God’s presence with you in his faithfulness, in his care, in his great ability to do good in and through change?

 

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

Staying on Our Transforming Journey

Our new book, What Does Your Soul Love?, finally releases next week, September 17. It’s been a long journey and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. At the center of the book is God’s invitation to us to “be transformed.” This kind of change is good news, even if it sometimes feels challenging, scary, even painful.

How do we stay on this transforming journey? What does it look like when we get stuck along the way? How might we continue to cooperate with God’s gracious invitation to “be transformed”? One of the things we’ve learned about staying on and leaning into this journey of transformation is something pretty simple. Here’s how we put it in the book:

“It will be very difficult to embark (and remain) on a journey of transformation if we do not have confidence that we are already loved as we currently are. We don’t change so that we’ll be loved more by God. We are measurelessly loved by God, so we are free and enabled to change in all the ways we long for. (What Does Your Soul Love?, p. 7).

We don’t change so we’ll be loved. We are loved and so we can change. The secure place where we can take the personal steps into the new places God’s work is inviting us into is the place of our deep confidence in God’s reliable and ever-present care for us.

The home in which we can make our way along the pathway of transformation is in the secure care of a very Good Shepherd in whom we really shall not find ourselves in a condition of want.

God wants to restore your life by transforming it into the beautiful image of his beloved Son. God is determined to finish this very good work that is already started. Wouldn’t your soul really love to cooperate more fully with this good work?

Questions for Reflection

Where have you felt stuck at times in your own journey of transformation?
What changes have you felt hungry for but haven’t seen much movement in your life?
Take a moment for prayer, asking God to shine a light on what a next step in the presence of his unfailing love you might be invited to take with God.

 (You can still preorder the book and get a number of bonus materials on our website at https://www.unhurriedliving.com/preorder )

 

Photo by Artsy Vibes on Unsplash

Podcast: Navigating Change with Confidence

The message at the center of our new book "*What Does Your Soul Love*" is the invitation and opportunity to change, to be transformed. That’s the idea we’ll focus on today. The big idea of how God is with us in the many changes we experience in our lives and in our communities of faith.

Timely Silence...Wise Thought

In our upcoming book, What Does Your Soul Love?, I shared a few nuggets of wisdom from one of my mentors, Abbot David Geraets (1935-2012). But there’s one I did not put in the book and I’d like to offer it to you today.

I had the pleasure of having Abbot David as my spiritual director when I attended his school for spiritual directors. I had learned that he was an expert in working with dreams, so I brought in a binder full of dreams that I had been recording since 1993. At the time it was 2005. Over the course of our meetings he was patient as we blasted through most of twelve years of my unconscious process.

So much was happening deep within me during that season of being under his training. So much so that Abbot David gave me some gracious counsel. He said that if something important or special happens inwardly, at the hand of the Holy Spirit, don’t be too quick to share it with others. If you do so, it can lose its potency. A kind of dissipation occurs with too many words and when something hasn’t matured within us.

I tucked that counsel away and have brought it to mind many times. It is true, when something stays in my journal, undiscussed, it has a way of sinking deeper inside me. The changes are personal and meaningful.

I have to confess, however, that I don’t always do this. I am a verbal processor, so I quite often speak out what I am seeking to solidify in my own mind. I have noticed that speaking does, in fact, dissipate some of the personal importance of a work of the Spirit.

Abbot David was in good company. Let’s see what Henri Nouwen has to say about the discipline of silence and how it tends the fire of the Spirit’s work within us.

Silence guards the inner heat of religious emotions. This inner heat is the life of the Holy Spirit within us. Thus, silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive .  Diadochus of Photiki offers us a very concrete image: "When the door of the steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good . Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity , being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts ." (Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart , emphasis mine)

You might want to read that again. It is dense with meaning. I bolded the phrases that I think draw out what Abbot David meant.

Have you ever shared an inside joke with a best friend or your spouse? A single look at just the right moment and you both know exactly what the other is thinking. I wonder if this discipline of silence can be like that with God. Only you and he know what is going on and it makes it even more special and personal to share it

And the added bonus is that the kind of silence that holds closely the inner work of God actually leads to wisdom. And wisdom is something to be shared...at the right time...in the right way. This is something to which I aspire. How about you?

REFLECT

How does the idea of not speaking too soon strike you? Do you resonate it? 
What would it look like to hold onto the movement of the Spirit within as God does his work? 
How might this kind of silence lead to more wisdom?

A PRAYER FOR THE DISCIPLINE OF SILENCE

Help me, Lord, to keep your work hidden in my heart like Mary, treasuring and pondering it. When and if it becomes time to share with others, may the potency remain. And help me to know when something is just for you and me. Thank you. Amen.

 

Photo by Sam Wheeler on Unsplash

Podcast: Following Jesus: Two Options (Inhaling Grace Audiobook, Part 8)

Welcome to an Inhaling Grace audiobook episode of the Unhurried Living podcast. Here are the next three devotionals from Inhaling Grace. May you sense the real presence of God shepherding you as you listen.

Navigating Our Experiences of Change

When it comes to change, sometime back, Gem and I found ourselves in an extended season of years in which we felt like we were moving from transition to transition in our lives. Sometimes it involved outward transitions like new roles or new neighborhoods, but more often, it was a matter of transitions inside of us. 

Transitions of what was meaningful now compared to what had been meaningful to us before. 
Transitions in our experience of God with us or, sometimes, our wondering why God didn’t feel as close to us as before. 
Transitions in our emotional lives. Transitions between confidence and insecurity, between peace and worry, between joy and sadness. 
Transitions in the way we were relating to one another. We found that as each of us grew and changed, the nature of our marriage relationship changed. More transition. 

I remember at one point, after talking about transition so much, we found ourselves feeling a little tired, even disillusioned, from so much change. Part of the tiredness was not feeling like we were landing somewhere solid in our lives with all that transition. It was disorienting. 

Eventually, we looked at each other and found ourselves quoting a line from one of our long-time favorite movies. 

Maybe you’ve seen it: “The Princess Bride.” If you have, you may remember a scene at night when Vizzini, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya have kidnapped the princess. Inigo begins making comments about being followed, which Vizzini says is “inconceivable.” 

Inigo continues to persist about the possibility that they are being followed and Vizzini continues to insist that it is, in fact, “inconceivable.” Unlikely event after unlikely event unfolds, and that same word, “inconceivable” arises. 

Finally, at the top of the cliffs of insanity, being followed up the rope they are climbing by the man in black, Vizzini, yet again, declares the whole thing “inconceivable”, when Inigo turns to him, and says, “You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.” 

I cannot tell you how many times Gem and I have quoted that line to one another when we found ourselves in a place of fresh understanding. It has been a great source of wisdom to us. 

In our case, the word was “transition.” “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

We had been using the word “transition” to describe a season in which we were experiencing change after change. We were using it in the assumption that we were on our way to landing somewhere final and maybe even predictable. “Transition” was going to be a limited little season that would end. 

We decided that maybe the word “transition” wasn’t actually the best word to describe what we were experiencing. 

Maybe, instead, rather than being in transition and looking for a final landing place, we were actually on a journey. Maybe instead of “transition,” “journey” was the word we were looking for. 

And a journey is different than a transition. 

People on a journey are pilgrims. They are nomads. They are on the move. It helped us to think that perhaps we weren’t looking to land somewhere soon where we would feel secure once again. 

We came, little by little, to learn that being on a journey meant that our sense of home was not mostly going to be in some predictable somewhere, but in a completely faithful Someone. That Someone is with us wherever we find ourselves. God was inviting us to find ourselves at home in Him in the midst of our journey from change to change. 

Questions for Reflection

Where have you most recently been experiencing change or transition? 
Have you found yourself expecting to land in a place where change no longer comes your way? 
What if God is inviting you to a journey in which change just might be normal? 
How might that be an invitation to companionship with God in a process of transformation?

 

Photo by Bryan Minear on Unsplash

Podcast: Sustainable Spiritual Leadership: An Opportunity

One of our deep passions as an organization is the spiritual wellness and vitality of leaders. This strategic focus lies at the heart of what we do in our writing, our speaking and our training. There is a way of following Jesus that grows in us a restful soul and a fruitful vocation.

This podcast is a closing message as part of the Unhurried Collective. In working with this group, as well as the core of our ministry is on contemplation. We feel feel this is critical, and why I unpack it in the message today, is that contemplation, rather than being any kind of escape from reality, is actually a profound engagement with Reality.

Comfort Abounds

When I was young, there was a season of years when my parents cared for foster children. Over the course of about five years, thirteen children flowed through our home. These babies, toddlers and kids (always younger than me) came from extremely broken homes. Their parental abuse ranged from addiction to drugs and alcohol to physical abuse. 

It’s a brutal reality to see a child with their hair pulled out and bruises on their abdomen, and even harder to hear that this was done by their parents. Even as I type this right now, I get a pit in my stomach. Who would do that?

As you can imagine, the process of saying goodbye to these children took its toll, especially when they were sent back into the mess from which they came. The pain of letting go (as well as my parent’s age) brought the fostering years to an end. 

More recently I’ve been watching a beautiful story unfold at my church. There is a lovely woman who recently became a foster mom. Just like my mother, she desired to open her heart to children, take them into her home and care for them. So she went through the lengthy process and now it has been a delight to see her show up at church with little ones in tow.

A few weeks ago, it was her turn to read the scripture in service. And, for just a few days, she was fostering a newborn. As she walked up to the podium, she cradled the precious little one, wrapped in a white blanket. The sight in and of itself was a beautiful image.

But when she began to read, and I heard these words emerge from her lips, I began to tear up. I don’t think I had ever heard this scripture read with such tangible evidence of it's being true...right before my very eyes. She was living the words. Here is what she read...

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

I wish you could have been there. I wish someone would have taken video of that moment. But it came and went just like the scripture reading does each week. It was short and so very sweet. I didn’t want that moment to end. I know it will be etched in my mind for the rest of my life. She expressed the living word. She was, quite literally, the comfort that child needed and it emanated from the comfort she had received from God.

When was the last time you saw scripture being so graciously lived in front of you? The bible is so much more than the rulebook that some assume it to be. It is full of wisdom for our very real lives. And it is best expressed to the world through our lived experience. Then the full wisdom can be revealed in quiet power...like a foster mom holding a newborn...and comfort flows.

Podcast: Why Does God Bless You? (Inhaling Grace Audiobook, Part 7)

Welcome to an *Inhaling Grace* audiobook episode of the Unhurried Living podcast. Here are the next three devotionals from [Inhaling Grace](https://www.unhurriedliving.com/offer...). May you sense the real presence of God shepherding you as you listen.