First…a parable of our souls. (watch below)
I’ve been reading John Ortberg’s Soul Keeping in the days leading up to a trip to the Dominican Republic with Mission Emanuel. Part of my assignments for these days is to lead 2 seminars on “Getting the most out of our time with God.” 1
Here in the beauty of Cielo (meaning “sky” or “heaven”) we work and play and dig deep wells of beautiful relationships. Americans and Dominicans (and sometimes Haitians) work together to create and dream for justice and healing. For these days (or rather, hours) of teaching, I gather with two groups: American teenagers and young adults serving here for 3 weeks and Dominican men and women who work in the ministry office.
There are two distinct cultural perspectives at work: young people who are just learning about their spiritual journeys…still forming to words and phrases to capture the relentless love of Christ and a personal relationship with their Creator. And then there are those who serve the ministry every day – keeping the books, organizing projects, managing staff, maintaining the campus and its resources. Amazing men and women who come from different walks of life and together care for an entire community. No matter the differences between these two groups, it is clear… every soul hungers for God. That’s why every hand goes up when I ask, “who here would like to have a better devotional life?”.
Our first day is spent on “Spiritual Personalities”. I discovered this phase almost 8 years ago when leading a group study on An Ordinary Day with Jesus, by Ortberg and Ruth Haley Barton. A major premise of the study is to admit that each of us is designed uniquely, and in our rebirth in Christ, we have particular tendencies defined by our soul’s hunger and learning styles.2
Just like the video above and the story of the “keeper of the stream”, we must be caretakers of our souls. With debris on the edges and branches that fall and disturb the flow, our souls require attention. The personalities each of us discover can point to the way we connect to God (Relational, Worship, Intellectual, Creation, Contemplative, Activism, Service) and categorically experience nourishment in his presence.
It’s amazing how throughout my life and most other Christians, we adopt a discipleship strategy that’s akin to “one size fits all”…or as one friend described a bad medicine experience, “when I was sick, (my friend/non-doctor) gave me an antibiotic that worked for him, so I took it. But I got sicker. Later, my doctor told me I was having a reaction and it would take weeks or months to recover from taking that antibiotic.”
Imagine the freedom of discovering that God has wired your soul to connect with Him while being relational with others – and the frustrations you experience in being in solitude or attempting contemplative disciplines are simply not your personal pathways to growth. It DOESN’T mean we can avoid those disciplines (in fact spiritual disciplines is our topic for the remaining session). But it DOES mean that we understand our souls better and stop taking the proverbial medicine that works for someone else and expect the same result in us. It means that we can stop pushing others to experience the same emotional joy that we experience at a breathtaking sunset, a piece of art, a song in the order of worship, an explosive teaching of Scripture, a cause of justice or a humbling act of service. We free ourselves from such expectations and bless others by doing the same.
So let’s return to the stream of our souls and care for it well. Let’s enjoy the beautifully unique ways God has made us and be grateful. Let’s pursue an experience with the Lover of our souls and connect with him in the life-giving ways we would incorporate with a loved one. And let us learn from others and appreciate the ways they are uniquely encountering God. If you have not taken such an assessment, I encourage you to do so. For you might discover what I and thousands of others have and grow stronger in your devotional life by living in the “personality” you already have and enjoy God more fully in the process.
Footnotes:
1 I came up with the title a few days ago and regret how consumeristic it sounds. Perhaps “How to enjoy our time with God”…
2 I have since also discovered Gary Thomas’s work on the same – Sacred Pathways. Yet I found the former assessment works a bit better when translating to young people or in Spanish.)
Not Just a Corner 