Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

by John Ortberg

Those who think about eternal life usually think the phrase refers to immortality — a life that never ends. Technically, they are right, but the way it is used in the New Testament is not only about duration. It’s not about quantity of years but quality of life with God.

Then there is what has come to be called the Acts 2 community — the first attempt at church. Jesus has returned to be with his Father, but he is still present through his Holy Spirit. Though he is not present physically, his followers find another way of doing life. They devote themselves every day to what Jesus taught: to prayer, to fellowship, to breaking of bread together. They shared what they owned; they served each other’s needs. Ethnic barriers came down as they became known by the way they loved each other. It’s a different community, devoted to a Jesus way of life with God.

Over the recent centuries, every once in a while a follower of Jesus gets a vision for this kind of intimate life with God. Centuries ago a man named Nicolas Herman, who was an uneducated household servant from a poor family, got converted to the Christian faith by looking at a tree. It was winter, and the tree was barren, but it occurred to Nicolas that the tree would grow leaves again in the spring. This produced in him a deep sense of God’s care and power. It struck him that if God does that for trees, he would surely do it for a person. So this young man entered into a monastic community, spent his life in the kitchen as a cook and dishwasher, and all the while privately devoted his life to being with God. Today we know him as Brother Lawrence.

When the soul is with God it doesn’t matter if you are a dishwasher or a president. The soul thrives not through our accomplishments but through simply being with God.

The Soul Experiment. It’s a simple way of focusing my soul on God throughout the day. I begin each day by challenging myself: How many moments of my life today can I fill with conscious awareness of and surrender to God’s presence? Then I try to deliberately imagine myself doing that at home, at work, in my car, when I’m online, when I’m watching the news, when I’m with others. Can I do the “with God” life all the time? I’ve been trying to make this the goal of my day as opposed to a list of things I have to get done. Can I just keep God in my mind today, regardless of what I’m doing? Here’s a little picture of how it works for me. One day I had a meeting with my staff that lasted about an hour and a half. When it was over, I realized I had failed for an hour and a half at this experiment. I had not thought about or listened for God a single time in that hour and a half — and I work at a church. Then I had to drive somewhere, and I was grousing in my spirit because I felt like I had too much to do and not enough time to get it done. Do you ever have that kind of thought? I was feeling hurried, impatient, and ill-tempered. Then this thought came to me: “John, let’s look at the next two hours. You will go through those two hours of your life with me or without me. You can continue doing life without me and feel stressed, pressured, angry, sorry for yourself, impatient, and be a pain in the neck to the people around you. You can do those two hours that way. Or you can do thos...

“For do you not see that God is trying experiments with human lives? That is why there are so many of them. . . . He has [seven billion] experiments going around the world at this moment. And his question is, ‘How far will this man and that woman allow me to carry this hour?’ ”

God wants to make every moment of my life glorious with his presence. This is the core of the “with God” life.

It means basically that he wants to fill our souls with beauty, splendor, wonder, and magnificence.

God desires this for all of us. That’s the whole point of tending to the soul — to fill us so completely with his presence that the brilliance of his love shines through us.

Many Christians expend so much energy and worry trying not to sin. The goal is not to try to sin less. In all your efforts to keep from sinning, what are you focusing on? Sin. God wants you to focus on him. To be with him. “Abide in me.” Just relax and learn to enjoy his presence.

Every day is a collection of moments, 86,400 seconds in a day. How many of them can you live with God? Start where you are and grow from there...

The psalmist says “I have set the LORD always before me.” Paul says, “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” They speak to the need for our souls to be completely and thoroughly with God. But as both of these verses suggest, it does not happen automatically. “Set” and “take captive” are...

The best place to start doing life with God is in small moments.

My commute can be an ordeal of traffic and delays, or it can be a time to reflect on God. My to-do list for that day can seem overwhelming or deadly boring, or it can remind me that God will be with me in every meeting, every phone call, every deadline. I would like to say I do this well and consistently, but the truth is, sometimes I get in such a rush that I miss noticing and enjoying God’s presence in the moment.

People will look different when I see them with God. People are a huge part of the “with God” life, because we have to live with people. We have to interact with them. How we get along with people says a lot about where our soul rests. When we are living with God, we will see people as God sees them. If I’m aware God is here with me, and God is looking at you at the same moment I’m looking at you, it will change how I respond to you. Instead of seeing you as the annoying server at McDonald’s who messed up my order, I will see you as someone God loved enough to send his Son to die on your behalf. I will see you as a real person who got up dreading going to work, dealing with impatient customers, being on her feet all day. In other words, I will no longer see you as everyone else sees you. This is exactly what Paul is after when he says, “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” From now on, now that my soul is centered with God in Jesus, I won’t look at people the same way.

Imagine how your church would change if you saw each other through God’s eyes. Imagine how the world would respond if Christians saw people the way God sees them.

In the Bible, God never gives anyone an easy job. God never comes to Abraham, or Moses, or Esther and says, “I’d like you to do me a favor, but it really shouldn’t take much time. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.” God does not recruit like someone from the PTA. He is always intrusive, demanding, exhausting. He says we should expect that the world will be hard, and that our assignments will be hard.

The Bible does use the word easy once, though. It came from Jesus. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened . . . and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Easy is a soul word, not a circumstance word; not an assignment word. Aim at having easy circumstances, and life will be hard all around. Aim at having an easy soul, and your capacity for tackling hard assignments will actually grow. The soul was not made for an easy life. The soul was made for an easy yoke.

The beginning movement in the Cycle of Grace is Acceptance.

For Jesus, identity and acceptance come before achievement and ministry. This is joy no one can take away. You cannot earn acceptance.

We forget that the work of our own lives is a gift from our heavenly Father. Jesus never forgot. He heard the voice of heaven.

Jesus depended on God’s acceptance because he faced massive human rejection. God’s acceptance is stronger than human rejection, but it was not just for him. Jesus realized that his acceptance was not just for his own sake. The alternative to soul-acceptance is soul-fatigue.

There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the body.

There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the mind.

There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the will.

Our wills grow weary with so many choices.

These categories of fatigue are difficult enough in and of themselves. But they combine to make us feel separated from God, separated from ourselves, and distanced from what we love most about life and creation. This is soul-fatigue.

The next movement is what might be called Sustenance, or sustaining grace. The idea here is that Jesus engaged in certain practices that allowed God’s grace to keep replenishing his spirit:

A common problem is that people think of spiritual practices as obligations that will actually drain them. Sometimes I may need to engage in a practice like giving generously, or serving humbly, which my sinful side resists. But generally I need to engage in practices that connect me to God’s grace and energy and joy. That might be going to the ocean, listening to glorious music, being with life-giving friends, taking a long hike — doing them with Jesus.

The test of a sustaining spiritual practice is: Does it fill you with grace for life? What are your sustaining practices? Do you want to explore some new ones?

The soul craves rest. Our wills sometimes rejoice in striving; our bodies were made to (at least sometimes) know the exhilaration of tremendous challenge; our minds get stretched when they must focus even when tired. But the soul craves rest. The soul knows only borrowed ...

The American devotional writer Lettie Cowman wrote about a traveler visiting Africa and engaging a group of carriers and guides. Hoping to make her journey a swift one, she was pleased with the progress of the many miles they covered that first day. On the second day, though, all the carriers she had hired remained seated and refused to move. She was greatly frustrated and asked the leader of her hired hands why they would not continue the journey. He told her that on the first day they had traveled too far too fast, and now they were waiting for their souls to catch up to their bodies. Cowman reflects, “This whirling rushing life which so many of ...

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has coined the term “ego depletion” to describe a level of fatigue that goes beyond mere physical tiredness. People living in this depleted condition report more tiredness and negative emotions, but those are not the only effects. Depleted people who watch a sad movie become extra sad. When facing temptations like eating chocolate chip cookies, they are more likely to give in. When faced with challenges like an especially difficult assignment at work, they are more likely to fail or turn in lower quality work. The brain area that’s crucial for self-control (the anterior cingulate cortex) actually experiences a slowdown.

The soul was not made to run on empty. But the soul doesn’t come with a gauge. The indicators of soul-fatigue are more subtle:

Things seem to bother you more than they should. Your spouse’s gum-chewing suddenly reveals to you a massive character flaw.

It’s hard to make up your mind about even a s...

Impulses to eat or drink or spend or crave are harder to resist than they otherwise would be.

You are more likely to favor short-term gains in ways that leave you with high long-term costs.

Your judgment is suffering.

You have less courage.

The soul is not well when we rush so much. If it does not get the rest it needs, it becomes fatigued.

He never rushed a song, or a walk, or a prayer. Part of the reason people found it healing to be with him was this quality, which was highly contagious. We think of it as being rested or unhurried, which it is. But it is the effect resting has on the soul: it gives it peace. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” When you give your soul rest, you open it to the peace Jesus intends for you.

The third movement in the Cycle of Grace is Significance. We were made to make a difference beyond ourselves. Significance as it relates to the word sign — our lives were meant to be signs that point beyond ourselves to God.

Jesus had great clarity about the significance of his life, often described in his great “I AM” statements: I am the bread of life; I am the Way; I am the Vine; I am the Good Shepherd. The reasons he was here in the world. Then he would state the significance of his followers, the “You are. . .” statements: You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. You are a city on a hill.

This third movement involves grace not just flowing into us, but also now through us and out into others for their sake. But this, too, is a gift of God’s grace. Do we know who ...

As Jesus began his ministry, his very first temptation took place after he had been told by the Father, “This is my beloved Son.” In the next verse Jesus goes into the wilderness. The Evil One says to him: “IF you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread. . . . IF you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the temple.” In other words: Don’t listen to the voice. Don’t trust grace. Don’t believe your Father. Prove it. Earn it. Make it happen. Make it about you. Jesus said, “No.” Temptation depended on getting Jesus to question his identity, to feel as if he had to prove his identity by doin...

What is the core part of you God made you to be that they will talk about at your funeral?

The grace of significance liberates me from the need to hurry.

Dallas pointed out to me once that there is a world of difference between being busy and being hurried. Being busy is an outward condition, a condition of the body. It occurs when we have many things to do.

Being hurried is an inner condition, a condition of the soul. It means to be so preoccupied with myself and my life that I am unable to be fully present with God, with myself, and with other people. I am unable to occupy this present moment. Busy-ness migrates to hurry when we let it squeeze God out of our lives.