Violence To Your Soul

If you are not doing the hard work of sitting at Jesus’ feet daily, you are in trouble!

Sometimes we have to get outside our stream to hear other pastors talk about soul rest. I’m not sure why our rest gauges get broken so easily. Maybe they have never been properly calibrated in the first place.

For years I taught, coached, and then moved on to pastoring with no one talking about soul rest. The result was me continually doing violence to my soul. I suffered and others suffered as well. It literally took my getting a Chronic Illness and having my body crash repeatedly for me to begin to put healthy soul rhythms into place.

Thomas Merton writes:

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence… activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence… It kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Peter Scazzero continues Merton’s thought by adding, “And in doing violence to ourselves, we are unable to love others in and through the love of Christ.”

So work hard. Shepherd God’s people. Be poured out like a drink offering for the sake of the gospel. However, don’t live under any misconception that “hard work” is only external!

Truly, if you are not doing the hard work of saying “no” to certain requests, you are in trouble.

If you are not doing the hard work of sitting at Jesus’ feet daily, you are in trouble.

If you are not doing the hard work of controlling your schedule instead of letting it control you, you’re next destination may be out of the ministry and living in burnout central. Greater men than you and me have taken up residence there. By God’s grace, let us not move there.