Sacred Rhythms E-Book

Ruth Haley Barton

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Transforming Resources
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 311

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

Logos Book Award Winner Align the Rhythms of Your Life with God's Presence and Purpose Do you long for a deep, fundamental change in your life with God? Do you desire a greater intimacy with God? Do you wonder how you might truly live your life as God created you to live it? Sacred Rhythms invites you into a spiritual journey that nurtures your soul while aligning your daily life with the presence of God. Drawing from the monastic tradition of creating a rule of life, this book equips readers to integrate spiritual disciplines into their everyday routines, paving the way for authentic spiritual transformation that can only be brought about by God. In Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for incorporating them into everyday life. Each chapter features practical exercises designed to help you integrate the practices, whether on your own or in a group setting. The final chapter weaves everything together, helping you structure your life for meaningful spiritual transformation. In Sacred Rhythms, you will - Understand seven key spiritual disciplines: solitude, Scripture, prayer, honoring the body, self-examination, discernment, and Sabbath. - Learn to integrate these disciplines into your daily life, with practical exercises for both individuals and groups. - Create a rule of life that makes space for God's presence in your daily life. - Reflect on principles and practices for living a life of spiritual growth and transformation.Sacred Rhythms invites you to deepen your relationship with God through establishing your own sacred rhythm of life with God. Begin transforming the rhythms of your life today!

Leseprobe

RUTH HALEY BARTON

Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation

www.IVPress.com/books

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2009 by Ruth Haley Barton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Design: Cindy Kiple Images: druvo/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-7829-1 (digital) ISBN 978-0-8308-3333-7 (print)

To the communities of the Transforming Center

with love and gratitude

for your companionship on the journey.

Our shared seeking has called this book forth.

Contents

Introduction

1 Longing for More: An Invitation to Spiritual Transformation

2 Solitude: Creating Space for God

3 Scripture: Encountering God Through Lectio Divina

4 Prayer: Deepening Our Intimacy with God

5 Honoring the Body: Flesh-and-Blood Spirituality

6 Self-Examination: Bringing My Whole Self Before God

7 Discernment: Recognizing and Responding to the Presence of God

8 Sabbath: Establishing Rhythms of Work and Rest

9 A Rule of Life: Cultivating Rhythms for Spiritual Transformation

A Note of Gratitude

Appendix A: Journeying Together

Appendix B: Leading a Group Experience

Appendix C: Choosing Spiritual Disciplines that Correspond to Our Needs

Notes

Praise for Sacred Rhythms

About Formatio

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Introduction

One can begin one’s [spiritual] quest by attending to the desires of the heart, both personal and communal. The Spirit is revealed in our genuine hopes for ourselves and for the world. How brightly burns the flame of desire for a love affair with God, other people, the world? Do we know that to desire and seek God is a choice that is always available to us?

Elizabeth Dreyer

Years ago, I sat in a staff meeting at a church I was serving; the purpose of the meeting was to talk about how we could attract more people to join the church. At one point someone counted the requirements for church membership that were already in place and made the startling discovery that somewhere between five and nine time commitments per week were required of those who wanted to become church members!

Outwardly I tried to be supportive of the purpose for the meeting, but on the inside I was screaming, Who would want to sign up for this? I was already becoming aware of CFS (Christian fatigue syndrome) in my own life and couldn’t imagine willingly inflicting it on someone else.

The clarity that dawned in this moment caused me to start being a little more honest about what my own Christian life had been reduced to. While I was trying harder and doing more, there was a yawning emptiness underneath it all that no amount of activity, Christian or otherwise, could fill. It made no difference at all that I had been a Christian all of my conscious life, that I had been in vocational Christian ministry since early adulthood or that I was busy responding to what appeared to be God-given opportunities to become involved in many worthy causes. The more I refused to acknowledge the longing for more, the deeper and wider the emptiness became—until it threatened to swallow me up. In the midst of such barrenness, it was hard to even imagine what Jesus might have meant when he said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). My responses to sermons and devotional reflections on this verse were cynical at best. The Christian life just didn’t feel that way to me.

It was hard to know where to go to talk about such uncomfortable realities. Life in and around the Christian community does little to help us attend to our longings, to believe that deep within there is something essential that needs to be listened to, or to offer much hope that our deepest longings could take us somewhere good. At times the deeper longings of our heart are dismissed as mere idealism—beyond the realm of possibility this side of heaven. At other times, subtle fear or outright discomfort arises in the face of such expressions of our humanity. The emphasis on human depravity in many religious circles makes it hard to know if there is anything in us that can be trusted.

Sometimes the language of longing is used to stir the emotions of a crowd, but most often what is offered in response is found wanting in the end. Our longing for love is met with relationships that are fairly utilitarian and prone to fall apart under pressure. Our longing for healing and transformation is met with self-help messages that leave us briefly inspired and yet burdened by the pressure of trying to fix ourselves with some new technique or skill. Our longing for a way of life that works is most often met with an invitation to more activity, which unfortunately plays right into our compulsions and the drivenness of Western culture.

My first response to this awareness of longing was to try tweaking my schedule, learning how to say no more decisively, adopting new time management tools. But there comes a time when desire is so deep that mere tweaking is not enough. Finally I just gave in to it all, making the choice to radically reorder my life to listen to the longings of my heart and arrange my life for spiritual seeking. This was a time of utter openness, of questioning almost everything, of letting many of the outward trappings of my life—particularly my spiritual life—fall away until the deepest longings, those that are embedded in the very essence of our humanity, began to be revealed in all of their raw beauty and power. The longing for significance, the longing for love, the longing for deep and fundamental change, the longing for a way of life that works, the longing to connect experientially and even viscerally with Someone beyond ourselves—these longings led me to search out spiritual practices and establish life rhythms that promised something more.

Opening to the Mystery of Spiritual Transformation

Perhaps one of the most basic things we need to understand about spiritual transformation is that it is full of mystery. We can be open to it, but we can’t accomplish it for ourselves. Paul alludes to this in his writings by using two metaphors. The first is the process by which an embryo is formed in its mother’s womb: “I am in labor until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The miracle of conception, the formation of the embryo and the birth process itself are natural but also full of mystery. Even though I have conceived and given birth to three children, even though I have marveled at photos of an embryo forming in its mother’s womb, even though I think I understand the facts of life, something in the whole process remains a mystery to me, something I cannot control or make happen. The miracle of birth is always a miracle. It is a God thing. Every single time.

It is the same with the process of metamorphosis. Paul refers to this process in Romans 12:2 when he says, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed [metamorphoō] by the renewing of your mind.” The Greek word metamorphoō is “metamorphosis” in English: the process by which a caterpillar enters into the darkness of the cocoon in order to emerge, eventually, changed almost beyond recognition. This change is so profound that the caterpillar transcends its previous existence to take on a completely different form with a completely different set of capacities. I doubt that the caterpillar has much cognitive understanding of the process itself or the end product. Something much more primal is at work. Something in the very essence of this little being says, It is time. And so the caterpillar obeys this inexplicable inner urging and enters in.

Both of these metaphors place the process of spiritual transformation squarely in the category that we call mystery: something outside the range of normal human activity and understanding that can be grasped only through divine revelation and brought about by divine activity.

What does this mean for those of us who are seeking to give ourselves more fully and concretely to the process of spiritual transformation? One thing it means is that whatever we think we might know about it, the decision to give ourselves to the experience of spiritual transformation brings us to the very edge of what we know and leaves us peering into the unknown. Even though it is normal for each and every redeemed person to experience spiritual transformation, something about it will always remain a mystery to us. It is one thing to be able to tweak and control external behaviors; it is another thing to experience those internal seismic shifts that change the way I exist in this world—from a worm crawling on my belly to a butterfly winging its way to the sky. That kind of change is something only God can do.

In the end, this is the most hopeful thing any of us can say about spiritual transformation: I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God.

A Journey of Discovery

When we are in touch with our deepest longings (instead of being completely distracted by their surface manifestations), a whole different set of choices opens up. Rather than being motivated by guilt and obligation—as in “I really ought to have a quiet time” or “I really should pray more”—we are compelled to seek out ways of living that are congruent with our deepest desires. Sometimes this feels risky, and it often opens up a whole new set of questions, but this is fundamentally what spiritual transformation is all about: choosing a way of life that opens us to the presence of God in the places of our being where our truest desires and deepest longings stir. These discoveries are available to all of us as we become more honest in naming what isn’t working so that we can craft a way of life that is more congruent with our deepest desires.

The journey begins as we learn to pay attention to our desire in God’s presence, allowing our desire to become the impetus for deepening our spiritual journey. This is the substance of the first chapter, and it is not to be taken lightly or skimmed over as a precursor to the disciplines themselves. If we skip this part of the process, our work with the disciplines will be nothing more than another program entered into on the basis of external prodding or superficial motivators. Stay with this chapter for as long as it takes for you to land on something solid within yourself, to discover what it is that you really want. It is not until after we have settled into our desires and named them in God’s presence that we are ready to be guided into the spiritual practices that will open us to receive what our heart is longing for.

The movement from desire to discipline is important:

What shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds and bodies—and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others and the world. The habits and disciplines we use to shape our desire form the basis for a spirituality.

Each chapter that follows provides practical guidance for entering into the central disciplines of the Christian faith in such a way that they are linked to the most consistent and compelling desires of the human soul. At the end of every chapter is a practice section that offers you concrete guidance for experiencing each discipline so that you can begin to incorporate them into your everyday life. If you are one who can’t help reading a book all the way through, go ahead and do that; however, the greatest benefit will come when you read back through it slowly and actually practice each discipline for as long as it takes for you to feel comfortable with it and experience it a natural expression of your intimacy with God.

This book is not, nor could one book ever be, an exhaustive treatment of all the spiritual disciplines spiritual seekers have used throughout human history. The disciplines explored here are simply the ones that are most basic and needful as a way to begin—like learning the basic steps of a dance or the basic melody of a song. After we explore these basic movements in our relationship with God, chapter nine offers the opportunity to begin putting them together in a patterned way so that we move beyond random, haphazard approaches to the spiritual life. In Christian tradition, this structured arrangement of spiritual practices is referred to as “a rule of life.” A rule of life is a way of ordering our life around the values, practices and relationships that keep us open and available to God for the work of spiritual transformation that only God can bring about. Simply put, a rule of life provides structure and space for our growing.

The phrase “spiritual rhythms” is another helpful way of talking about this important concept, because it provides relief from some of the heavy-handed and rigid approaches to the spiritual life that many have experienced. This language draws on the imagery of the natural rhythms of the created order: The ebb and flow of the ocean waves and tides, which come and go steadily but are full of infinite variety and creativity. The predictability of the changing seasons but also the beauty and variance that captures us anew each and every time. The rhythm of a good beat, which makes music and dancing one of the most delightful and spontaneous experiences that we enjoy, yet mastery of the basic notes and moves is required if we are to enter into it fully.

The disciplines themselves are basic components of the rhythm of intimacy with God that feed and nourish the soul, keeping us open and available for God’s surprising initiatives in our lives. After we learn the disciplines, there is infinite creativity for putting them together in a rhythm that works for us and great freedom for adding other disciplines and creative elements.

The caterpillar must yield up the life it knows and submit to the mystery of interior transformation. It emerges from the process transfigured, with wings that give it freedom to fly. . . .

A rule of life gives us a way to enter into the life-long process of personal transformation. Its disciplines help us to shed the familiar but constricting “old self” and allow our “new self” in Christ to be formed—the true self that is naturally attracted to the light of God.

MARJORIE THOMPSON, SOULFEAST

An Invitation to Community

Although this book’s emphasis is on personal spiritual disciplines, the spiritual journey was never meant to be taken alone. The whole of Scripture bears this out, but Jesus’ life in particular offers us a compelling example. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, after praying and listening to God all night, he chose a small community of twelve disciples—“those whom he wanted,” the Scriptures tell us. He chose them first “to be with him” (Mark 3:13-14) and then to do the work of ministry. Jesus’ first invitation was for them to be together with him in community, shaped by his teaching and leadership, and he remained faithful to these relationships until the end of his life.

Our commitment to community and to spiritual friendship within that community is in itself a spiritual discipline that is of great significance to the spiritual life. Spiritual friendship is not primarily a social relationship that exists for the purpose of catching up over lunch or an occasional lunch or a golf outing. It is not primarily a collegial relationship focused on work matters or service projects. It is not a self-help relationship focused primarily on problem solving or accountability. It is not even primarily a Bible study group. Rather it is a relationship that is focused intentionally on our relationship with God as viewed through the lens of desire. With such a friend we share the deepest desires of our heart, so that we can support one another in arranging our lives in ways that are congruent with what our hearts want most. Together we reverence the ways God is meeting us in the context of the spiritual practices that help us to seek him.

Community is such a crucial element of the formation process that it will be addressed as a theme woven throughout the book. Furthermore, you are also invited to experience community by choosing a friend or two or even a small group with whom to take the journey, using the guidance provided in the “Journeying Together” appendix. This appendix will guide you in experiencing each discipline together and will also provide questions to help you debrief your experience. Thus the spiritual disciplines form the basis for your interactions with others in community, and your life in community becomes a safe place to practice the patterns and behaviors that bring about substantive change. If you have friends who seem to share a capacity and a desire to enter more deeply into the spiritual journey, invite them to join you so that none of you have to take the journey alone.

There are moments in our lives when we cry out inwardly, I don’t care what anyone else says; there has to be more to the Christian life than this! This book is for those moments in your life and mine. It is about hearing Jesus speak right into such moments with whispers of understanding and hope: “There are desires in you that are so deep and so true and so connected to the essence of who you are; those are the desires I want to meet—and not just partially, but abundantly.”

May Jesus Christ himself meet us in the place of our spiritual seeking.

1 Longing for More

An Invitation to Spiritual Transformation

The reason we are not able to see God is the faintness of our desire.

Meister Eckhart

One of the things that still surprises me this far along in life is how and when and with what power my longing stirs. Certain times are fairly predictable—times when I am tired from travel and missing home and family, seasons when I have been overly busy and long to be with God for God’s own sake, certain moments in the holiday season when I hunger for a deeper experience of the meaning of things. To some extent I have grown accustomed to these longings and know what to do with them. But there are other times when longing ambushes me with a ferocity that seems all out of proportion to what is going on at the moment; it catches me up short with the awareness that something here warrants my attention. Although the experience of longing and desire is often bittersweet, it reminds me that I am alive in ways that I want to be alive.

A few years ago our daughter Bethany was celebrating her fifteenth birthday. It was September of her first year in high school, and all she wanted was to have a party with fifty of her closest friends. (That was after she had gone over the guest list with a fine-toothed comb and whittled it down from seventy-five!) While it was a little daunting to think about hosting the first party of the year for fifty new high-schoolers, it was what she wanted, so our whole family rallied to the occasion. Bethany’s older sister, Charity (who was a senior at the time) corralled some of her friends to organize and do the judging for a karaoke competition. Very cool. I fixed and served the food. My husband, Chris, patrolled the premises to make sure visitors carrying unwanted substances didn’t find their way to the party. Younger sister Haley just tried to stay out of the way.

At one point in the evening, I became alert to the fact that something important was going on, something that was connected with the deepest longings of my heart. As kids were going through the food line and fixing their hamburgers and hot dogs, they were all very polite, but there was one young man whose expression of appreciation was so genuine that I stopped what I was doing and paid attention. He said, “Thanks for letting us do this, Mrs. Barton. This is so much fun!”

I looked up from serving, met his eyes and said, “You’re welcome. We really enjoy having you!”

He paused mid-ketchup, returned my gaze and said with incredulity, “Really?” as though he was completely unaccustomed to being enjoyed.

The young man’s unguarded response combined disbelief and wonderment so sweetly that I was flooded with awareness and suddenly saw my life in a way I had never seen it before. Something inside me stood at attention and said, This is my life. This is what it’s like to be all the way here now rather than always longing for something else. This is my life as it is meant to be lived in God.

That moment passed as quickly as it came, one of many that made it a delightful evening. Our whole family had banded together to do something special for one of us, and it felt good. When it was all over, we collapsed in our family room, utterly exhausted, and reflected on the evening. We laughed about the karaoke contest and commented on who could sing and who couldn’t. We took a leisurely look at the gifts Bethany had received. We talked about what a good time everyone seemed to have and how polite and appreciative they had been. And the thought came anew: This is my best self. This is who I want to be more and more, by God’s grace. These are the moments I will remember on my deathbed and say, “That was what I was meant for.”

Then it ambushed me—my longing, that is. A prayer welled up from the depths of my being, a prayer so full of desire that it was barely articulate: “O God, give me more moments like this—moments when I am fully present to you and to others in love. Moments when I am connected with what is purest and most authentic within me and able to respond to your presence in that place. I want to live my life in such a way that there is more of this!”

There are other moments, as well, when longing stirs. There was the perilous summer when I turned forty. As the actual birthday approached and the party was being planned, I realized that I did not want a party where people stood around holding a drink and making small talk. This time it was the longing for love that took me by surprise. When I really listened, I realized that what I most wanted was to give and receive love—really—on that day. I wanted to be with friends and family. I wanted to have time. I wanted to share from the heart and know that we had seen each other and heard each other and put into words how much we mattered to each other. How surprising to notice that underneath the noise and activity of my “adult” life, such simple and tender longings stirred.

And so that’s what we did. We canceled the party, and instead I had opportunities to spend time individually with those most precious to me throughout the day: breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between! What a wonderful day it was—a day full of love given and received.

Then there are the times when I am aware of my brokenness, and a longing for real, fundamental change groans within me. In one season of my life I experienced a betrayal so deep that for quite some time I was almost paralyzed in relating to anyone outside of my most intimate circle of family and friends. While I had the normal feelings of anger and outrage, sadness and grief, there was an even deeper longing—the longing to be healed. I was aware that I had turned inward, had closed my heart. Distrust and suspicion had made me hard-edged and withdrawn, and I found myself crying out to God to do something within me that I could not do for myself. Something that would enable me, once again, to be given over to God and to others with the kind of trust and abandon I had known before the betrayal.

Regardless of the pain I had experienced, I did not want to live forever in a hardened and broken state. For the first time, the Jesus Prayer—uttered by the blind and the broken in Christ’s day—began to pray itself in me unbidden: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. I knew that whatever needed to be done in me, God would have to do, for I was incapable of fixing myself.

Naming Our Desire in Christ’s Presence

When was the last time you felt it—your own longing, that is? Your longing for love, your longing for God, your longing to live your life as it is meant to be lived in God? When was the last time you felt a longing for healing and fundamental change groaning within you?

Do not rush past this question; it may be the most important question you ever ask. But this is hard, I know. In religious circles we are much more accustomed to silencing our desire, distancing ourselves from it, because we are suspicious and afraid of its power. Isn’t there something better I should be doing with my time? we ask ourselves. Something a little less dangerous and unpredictable? Something more selfless and spiritual? And besides, desire is such a volatile thing. Are not my desires shot through with human deception and sinful urges? What if they overtake me and propel me down a path I ought not travel? Worse yet, what if I touch that place of longing and desire within me and let myself really feel how deep it goes, only to discover that those desires cannot be met? What will I do with myself then? How will I live with desire that is awake and alive rather than asleep and repressed?

These are some of the deepest questions of the human soul, and they defy any attempt at simplistic answers. In the midst of my own discomfort with such penetrating questions, I have found it surprising but also reassuring to enter into the biblical story and discover that Jesus himself routinely asked people questions that helped them to get in touch with their desire and name it in his presence. He often brought focus and clarity to his interactions with those who were spiritually hungry by asking them, “What do you want? What do you want me to do for you?” Such questions had the power to elicit deeply honest reflection in the person to whom they were addressed, and opened the way for Christ to lead them into deeper levels of spiritual truth and healing.

In the story of Jesus’ encounter with blind Bartimaeus on the Jericho road, for instance, the question about desire is the pivot point. We don’t know how long Bartimaeus had been spending his days begging by the side of the road, but on this particular day Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was passing by, and he had a sense of new spiritual possibility. Perhaps Jesus could do something for him that no one else had been able to do. Perhaps Jesus could do what he had been hoping for and dreaming of for so long.

But it was noisy and crowded in the city that day, and it would be hard to get anyone’s attention, let alone someone as busy and important as this popular young teacher, who was always, it seemed, surrounded by disciples and questioners. In order to get Jesus’ attention above the din of the crowd, Bartimaeus had to reach deep within, touch that place of fundamental human need and desire, and cry out from that place. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And Jesus heard him that day, above all the other voices that were clamoring for his attention. The honesty, the desperation, the humanness of the cry was completely arresting. The people around him were embarrassed by such an honest expression of need and tried to silence him, but Bartimaeus’s soul cry so captured Jesus’ attention that it stopped him in his tracks. He stood still in the middle of the road and summoned Bartimaeus to himself. As they stood face to face, Jesus asked the question that required Bartimaeus to name his desire: “What do you want me to do for you?”

Now if I had been in Bartimaeus’s shoes, I might have gotten a little impatient with a question whose answer was so obvious. “What do you mean, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Isn’t it obvious? And besides, this is getting a little personal, don’t you think? We don’t know each other that well!”

But on another level, the level where the spiritual journey is unfolding, it is a question that penetrates to the very core of our being. And it is very, very personal. It brings us face to face with our humanness, our vulnerability, our need. If we let it, such a question strips away the layers of pretense and superficiality to expose what is truest within us. And that is a very tender place indeed.

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. There is a place within each one of us that is spiritual in nature, the place where God’s Spirit witnesses with our spirit about our truest identity. Here God’s Spirit dwells with our spirit, and here our truest desires make themselves known. From this place we cry out to God for deeper union with him and with others.

Desire as the Beginning of the Spiritual Journey

When we pay attention to our longing and allow questions about our longing to strip away the outer layers of self-definition, we are tapping into the deepest dynamic of the spiritual life. The stirring of spiritual desire indicates that God’s Spirit is already at work within us, drawing us to himself. We love God because he first loved us. We long for God because he first longed for us. We reach for God because he first reached for us. Nothing in the spiritual life originates with us. It all originates with God.

So it is that the spiritual life begins in this most unlikely place. It begins with the longing that stirs way down deep, underneath the noise, the activity, the drivenness of our life. But it is not always comfortable to acknowledge such longing, and the direction that such an admission takes us is different for all of us.

When James and John (and later on their mother) answered Jesus’ question about desire by asking that they be granted positions of prominence in Jesus’ kingdom—one on his right and one on his left—it exposed false ambition that was detrimental to them and to the community of disciples. Similarly, there are desires within us that work against the life of the Spirit within us—desires rooted in selfish ambition, pride, lust, fear, self-protection and many other unexamined motives. These desires lurk within all of us, and that is why giving any attention at all to desire feels like opening up Pandora’s box. But it is even riskier to refuse to acknowledge what’s real within us, because whether we acknowledge them or not, these dynamics are at work wielding a subterranean power over us. Their power only gets stronger the longer we repress them. How much safer it is for ourselves and everyone around us if we open up our desires in Jesus’ presence and allow him to help us sift through them.

As disturbing as it is to be exposed in this way, sometimes it is exactly what we need. For then Jesus can gently strip away that which is false and destructive in our desire and fan into flames those desires that are good and true.

Listening to Jesus’ response to James and John, you can almost feel his compassion and love for them. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” (Matthew 20:23). The disciples’ ability to be this honest with Jesus about the deeper dynamics stirring within them was a new kind of intimacy that opened the way for him to begin the process of making right that which was not right within them. One can only hope that such a penetrating comment and question served to begin releasing these disciples from desires that were not their truest ones. If they had not been honest with Jesus about what was going on inside, their darker desires would have functioned underground and probably have eventually destroyed their relationships with the other disciples and their ministry.

Opening up our desire in God’s presence—even when we’re not sure which parts are true and which are false—is humbling, but it gives God a chance to help us sort it all out. There is another possibility as well. Sometimes when we open up our desire in Christ’s presence, we find ourselves needing to discern what is our part and what is God’s part in this process of living into our heart’s deepest desire. When Jesus met the paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda, his question about desire was even more pointed. “Do you want to be made well?” he asked (John 5:6). In other words, How bad do you want it? Do you want it bad enough to do something about it?

How Bad Do You Want It?

I have spent a lot of time on the sidelines of youth soccer games and have witnessed all sorts of obnoxiousness on the part of soccer parents. But every so often a bit of truth presents itself in this unlikeliest of places. One day a particularly overbearing father was yelling at two fourth-grade girls who were converging on the ball and trying to win it for their team. In an attempt to be motivating, he screamed (among other things), “How bad do you want it? You’ve got to really want it!”

Though I was annoyed by such a display of unbridled emotion by an adult at a children’s game, I was struck by the truth contained in his statement. The depth of desire has a great deal to do with the outcome of our life. Often, those who accomplish what they set out to do in life are not those who are the most talented or gifted or who have had the best opportunities. Often they are the ones who are most deeply in touch with how badly they want whatever they want; they are the ones who consistently refuse to be deterred by the things that many of us allow to become excuses.

The more authentic our desires, the more they touch upon our identities and also upon the reality of God at the heart of our being. Our most authentic desires spring ultimately from the deep inner wells where the longing for God runs freely.

PHILLIP SHELDRAKE, BEFRIENDING OUR DESIRES

The paralytic was full of excuses: “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus’ response, in effect, was “Never mind all that. Stand up, take up your mat and walk” (John 5:6-9). Then the paralyzed man reached within himself to that place of deep desire and deep faith and did what he was told. And somehow his willingness to follow his desire opened the way for him to experience Jesus’ healing power.