A Work in Progress

 We all have a public persona. This is who we are, or at least who we pretend to be, when people are watching us. There is also our private person. Who we really are when no one is looking. Sometimes the two do not match up. To keep that from happening we ask ourselves how is it with our souls. 

Our soul is our whole being. It encompasses the heart, emotions, the mind, will and our passions. The soul of a person is the essence of our being. It is tempting to let the soul be corrupted by neglect as we focus on the external behaviors that everyone can see. When the soul is neglected, we begin to rot from within. This can lead to apathy, spiritual lethargy, and sometimes even hypocrisy. 

People see the outside. They see how we perform, what we accomplish, and the way we portray ourselves. God sees all of that, but He also sees the interior soul. He knows if we are just faking it. He sees right through pretense and playacting. Sadly, there seems to be a lot of that going on in the church these days. The focus is on getting people in the seats instead of getting Jesus cultivated souls in right relationship with Him through salvation and intentional discipleship. 

I was presented the question how it was with my soul in a book I began last week. When I did an honest inventory of my soul I did not like what I discovered. My soul was withered to some extent because of a devastating experience I had a couple of years ago. An experience I have not talked about publicly and tried to hide. It is nothing sinful. It not something immoral I engaged in. It was something that wrecked my faith. The real truth is that for two years, prayer has been hard. Where I used to pray for hours in the past, there have been times when I struggled to pray for a few minutes. Prayers for God to speak to me, to reveal His counsel and will have been met with deafening silence. The motivation to pray ebbed to a multi-decade low. Many times I languished to pray through, to get a breakthrough with God, even after I read His word, sat before in silence for hours listening, and most times I came away with no healing for my wounded soul. 

I do not blame God. The fault is with me. The wound in my soul has been so deep, I limped along in prayer. Confused, broken, devastated, and with an impotent faith on many days. That little question in that book forced me to deal with this. To bring the wounds of my soul to the open. To have some really raw conversations with God. To have to look at myself and to see how far I have fallen. 

Prayer was my passion. I love to preach about it, write about it, teach about it, and testify about prayers answered. I have not done that for two years. Nobody seemed to notice. Nor have I had fresh testimonies to share of God glorifying God sized answers to prayer either. The truth is it has not been well with my soul for some time. 

On top of that, I overcommitted myself. At one point, I was preaching or teaching nine times every week. I always had somewhere to be and something else to do. Quiet times got squeezed in between the next appointment. All the while, my soul shriveled more and more. Wise counselors told me I was doing too much and that it was going to impact my health. Slowly I started evaluating the things I was doing. I made the hard decisions to step away from some things. Now I am prayerfully seeking restoration of my soul in God's presence. This is not just a one time jump start. I did not get here overnight and the full restoration process may not happen over night. 

I want the public and private side of me to match up. That means long sustained times alone with Him. That means letting God's Spirit massage my waning faith back to strength. 

Recently, Turner told me an exercise one of his professors from college had them do in class. He required all the students to describe themselves in three words. Some described themselves as funny, athletic, talented, intelligent, friendly and so forth. Turner's answer was reflective and mature. He described himself as, "Work in progress." That describes me as well. I am thankful that God who began that work in me 41 years ago is still at it. I am still a work in progress. [Phil 1:6] It is better with my soul today than last week. God is helping me to trend in the right direction. I am just a His work in progress.