“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
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Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
“God is teaching me “steadfastness” in so many ways. I count it all as joy.”
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“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”
“The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.”
Something that I learned over my sabbatical is that I don’t think I ever REALLY knew how to to pray.
Yup.
For me, there was always an element of “dressing myself up” before I approached God in prayer. To reference a Lecrae lyric, “I thought that first I had to clean up my life…”
This showed up in a variety of ways.
1. I felt like I had to use the right words. I actually believed that my prayers had to be flowery and impressive and wordy (even in private). The “cop-out” I used was that God gave me an extensive vocabulary and thus He would be honored by my use of it. In truth, this simply fueled a performance based model of prayer that left me feeling validation as if I did God a favor. PRAYER IS NOT ABOUT US. IT’S ABOUT GOD.
2. I didn’t feel right asking God for things. In the dark crevices of my heart and mind, I believed that asking God for something that I wanted revealed a deficiency in my motivations and in my heart of hearts. I didn’t want to be exposed…to God. HEY TYSON! THAT’S THE POINT! Prayer should absolutely be a opportunity to empty ourselves before God and be exposed completely. Plus, He already knows what we want. To believe that we have an ability to deny God the opportunity to hear our requests is foolish and prideful.
3. I only prayed if I “felt” like it. What does this mean? I actually believed that prayer only counted if I could give ALL OF MYSELF to it. Mind, body, soul, and strength. Of course in this dream world, I was the dictator of when my mind, body, soul, and strength were all clicking on all cylinders, and then, and only then, would I REALLY pray. Truth be told, those four elements of a human are NEVER clicking on all cylinders. Shouldn’t the BEST time to approach God in prayer be when one, some, or all of those elements are completely broken down? Shouldn’t we come to the Lord with every single one of our deficiencies proclaiming that in our profound weakness, He is profoundly strong.
As the rest of the Lecrae rap goes, ”Now I’m hearin I just gotta cling to the light…will you take me as I am?”
Yes. Jesus will.
I have made adjustments to my praying life in the wake of my sabbatical as well as the season of life that He has me in, and I pray that these patterns stick with me.
I’ll be honest. My prayers are sloppy, bold, unorganized, and gut-wrenching at times. I know this because I began writing them out in a journal but my hand started hurting, forcing me to move to a Word Document.
Reading these documents back, I can only think of King David and the Psalms. One moment, he is up. The other he is down. One moment he is celebrating great victory. One moment he is mourning defeat. All the while, he is CRYING out to God in a real and honest way. This must be the territory one must tread upon if he truly is a man after God’s own heart.
Amen.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
I’ll be honest. The idea of “sabbatical” always seemed to me, as an outsider looking in, like a magic pill that brought about magical healing and restoration.
It took going on sabbatical myself to realize it isn’t a pill. It’s a plan.
I say this, because at the outset, for the first three days of my break, I spent much of it, “doing what I wanted.”
In fact, it became a thing: “Tyson does what he wants. He’s on sabbatical.”
Let me illustrate.
I was watching a new show on ABC called “Happy Endings.” On the show, one of the characters opens up a food trailer that specializes in steak sandwiches. As I watched this, I suddenly wanted a steak sandwich but I simply didn’t just want one. I wanted to make one.
“I’m on sabbatical - I do what I want.”
Within minutes, I was at HEB buying up every conceivable item needed to make a sandwich when I caught a glimpse of a magazine with the cast of Harry Potter on the cover. You know what’s coming.
“I’m on sabbatical - I do what I want.”
Hours later, my kitchen is in shambles, the menu of the third Harry Potter movie is playing on a loop in the DVD player, and I’m asleep on the couch.
Don’t get me wrong. All of these things are great, but I was awakened to a haunting reality. There was a spirit of rebellion in my new mantra along with an attitude that for some reason, work and ministry had all this time, been robbing me of this perceived FREEDOM to do what I wanted.
It was time for a change.
Rather than resting FROM Jesus. I needed to rest IN Jesus.
WIth that, I implemented a bedtime followed by a regimen. For me, what the regimen did was not stifle me but rather create a pattern of discipline that would align me with the things that stir my affection for Jesus.
Those things (in no particular order): 1) Reading 2) Conversations with people 3) Quiet
1. Reading was a tough one but after completing a second book, I could not stop reading. (I read 9 books which may not be much of a feat to some, but to me…huge deal).
With regard to reading Scripture, I focused on the simple truths rather than immediately jumping into “mine the depths” mode. What happened next was pages and pages in my journal all from simple lines like, “God is love.”
Additionally, I fought the urge to prepare sermons and instead wrote notes and prayers in hopes that God would bring these thoughts back when the time came to preach.
2. As for conversations with people, something beautiful happened. There was a risk in spending significant time with people from the church because there was a probability that discussions about church would come up. This isn’t to say I avoided these people, but a significant part of me naturally gravitated to non-church-going people.
What I realized very quickly was that as I frequented the same places throughout the day, the same people would show up. ”Why were they there?” ”Why weren’t they at work?” “Did they think the same thing about me?” As these faces became more familiar, it became perfectly natural to ask about their story.
One of these individuals happened to be my neighbor. I had known Mike for years but our conversations had always been surface level. Then one day, I decided to ask him why he had been at home during the day for the past couple of weeks. As I suspected, he had the same question about me, so I told him.
He then told me that he was at home because his department at work had cut back hours on most of the staff and it was looking like his situation was a bit tenuous.
What began as an innocent question soon blossomed into a fantastic ministry opportunity and friendship.
3. Quiet.
I am typically a very active and boisterous person and for a personality such as mine, there is POWER in being still and letting the Lord speak.
So I cut out the noise.
I got off Twitter and Facebook not because they were just distractions but because I had reached a point in my sabbatical where any tweet or post I posted would have been for the sole purpose of drawing attention to myself. I was contributing to the noise.
As for my phone, I set specific ringtones for specific people and only answered those calls and texts. I took email off of my phone and had all of my passwords changed.
The result: Silence and stillness.
All in all, it has been a wonderful experience and I am excited to be back. Most importantly, I’m realizing that I have such a love and passion for a pace of life that is not about rushing to the next thing. The way that I was living before had some significant dangers.
For instance, people in my life - CLOSE friends - had been in the midst of significant struggle - and before I left, I had no idea simply because I believed the lie that I did not have time for it. Sabbatical taught me that community is NOT always about convenience and being surrounded by people who won’t challenge you and sharpen you. Community should emphasize truth and honesty and both of those things take time and effort. I have all the time in the world now and God has renewed my every effort.
Another danger was that the completion of simple tasks and huge strategic initiatives had become my sense of worth and identity. It was all I knew because I had not been still long enough to hear God reminding me of my hopelessness without Him. It was going to take a major failure to get me to stop and realize, and thankfully, He was faithful to bring that trial about.
Writing all of this now, and having been back for about two weeks, I am thankful of God’s Grace that sabbatical taught me these lessons. At the same time, a sabbatical shouldn’t be only catalyst by which these positive changes happen and these lifelong lessons are learned. I know this now and am thankful for the rhythm He has so richly blessed me with.
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
