by John Ortberg
If your soul is devoted to something that becomes more important to you than God, that is your idol. The soul cannot give up its idol by sheer willpower. It is like an alcoholic trying to become sober by promising himself that he won’t drink anymore. It never works. In many ways, what the Bible calls idolatry we call addiction. You can be an addict and never touch a drop of alcohol or a gram of cocaine. Nice things like food, shopping, recreation, hobbies, and pleasure can move imperceptibly from casual enjoyment to addiction. I know men who buy expensive boats and then feel compelled to be on the water every weekend, not so much because they enjoy “serial boating,” but because if you’re spending this much on something, you had better enjoy it. Idols always turn us away from our freedom.
This is where grace comes in. I cannot replace an idol by turning away from it. I must turn toward something.
As Timothy Keller puts it, “We are all governed by an Overwhelming Positive Passion.” He gives an example: In the book of Genesis, a young man named Jacob meets a young woman named Rachel and tells her father he wants to marry her. He offers to work for Laban seven years if he can marry Rachel. Laban says yes. “So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.” Jacob discovered time is relative way before Albert Einstein said anything about it. Every single day for seven years, Jacob doesn’t just show up for work; he does so with a song in his heart. Why did seven years seem like a few days? Because he had an overwhelming positive passion, and that changes everything.
Zacchaeus had an overwhelming positive passion for money. As a tax collector for Rome, he gave up relationships, integrity, and honor for his idol.
Then one day he met Jesus.
“Today I’m repaying everyone I’ve cheated four times over, and I’m giving half the rest of my money to the poor,” Zacchaeus said. What led him to do that? He had a new overwhelming positive passion.
The soul must orbit around something other than itself — something it can worship. It is the nature of the soul to need.
OVERCOME BY THE SOUL’S NEED
What the soul truly desires is God. We may try to fill that need with other things, but the soul will never be satisfied without God. The psalmist describes that need in terms of losing consciousness: “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD.”
When I was a young associate pastor in my first church, the senior pastor (also named John) invited me to preach on Sunday morning. When it came time for the sermon, I stood at the pulpit, and five minutes into my sermon, I fainted dead away. The platform was made of marble, so I hit the ground hard, with a loud smack. After the service I apologized to John. I felt horrible because this was a Baptist church, not a charismatic church where you get credit for that sort of thing.
“I’ll understand if you never ask me to preach again,” I told him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he responded, and in a few weeks he asked me to preach again. And I fainted again.
I was certain that I was finished in that church, but he asked me to preach again the following week. He even mentioned he was having the marble floor covered with carpet to protect my fall, just in case.
“I’m going to have you keep preaching until you quit fainting or it kills you.”
These many years later, I just received a letter from that church asking if I would preach for their seventy-fifth anniversary. John had long since retired, but the current pastor wrote, “People here still remember you . . . I thought that was nice . . . as the fainting preacher.”
I don’t think that was what the psalmist had in mind when he said his soul faints from yearning for God. I laugh whenever I recall those first attempts to preach, but it also offers a graphic reminder of my soul’s deepest need. Fainting is a scary thing. My fainting said more about my nerves than my desire for God. I have often wondered what it must be like to want God so deeply that it leads you to faint.
There is another grace-filled memory about that church that still melts my soul. Through that church, I met a woman who attracted my attention. I had always thought if I ever did get married, it would be to a Midwestern girl. But then I met that California girl at this church. She was so beautiful, I never thought a woman who looked like that would ever even go out with me. And as a matter of fact, that particular woman never did go out with me.
But then I met Nancy through that church, and she was even more beautiful. She not only went out with me, but married me. We now have Californian children and a Californian dog and serve at a Californian church.
I am glad God has a sense of humor. It is good for the soul.
ACCEPT YOUR SOUL’S NEEDINESS
Sometimes when I talk to my soul, I call it “Bob” to remind myself to be patient with it. Bob’s need for God is enormous, but that’s okay. Bob’s neediness only invites more of God’s generosity. He’s not going anywhere. Besides, oddly enough, the family kind of likes him.
Our soul begins to grow in God when we acknowledge our basic neediness.
Francis Fenelon was a brilliant spiritual writer and successful cleric who stood up to King of France Louis XIV and allowed himself to be displaced as royal tutor. He lived disgraced in exile. But in obscurity and humiliation, his soul thrived. He understood the condition of his soul:
In order to make your prayer more profitable, it would be well from the beginning to picture yourself as a poor, naked, miserable wretch, perishing of hunger, who knows but one man of whom he can ask or hope for help; or as a sick person, covered with sores and ready to die unless some pitiful physician will take him in hand and heal him. These are true pictures of our condition before God. Your soul is more bare of heavenly treasure than the poor beggar is of earthly possessions. . . . your soul is infinitely more sin-sick than that sore stricken patient, and God alone can heal you.
Good people — especially people of faith — do not like to think of themselves as “poor beggars” who are “sin-sick.” We fill our soul’s desires with everything that counters that image, trying to convince ourselves that everything is well with our souls. It isn’t. Our souls faint and yearn and cry out for God.
How do we respond when we understand the neediness of our souls?
CHAPTER 7
THE SOUL NEEDS A KEEPER
I and no one else am responsible for the condition of my soul.
In my early fifties I was given a sabbatical: seven weeks with nothing to do. The elders at our church invited me to take it. Actually, they insisted that I take it. I needed it because I was becoming increasingly frustrated and impatient and preoccupied. I felt as if I had too much to do and not enough time or ability to do it. I was obsessed with the external things that needed to be done around me. I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect. That’s a great recipe for a healthy soul, as long as you live in a perfect world.
During my sabbatical, it was easy to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my life,” as my friend and mentor Dallas Willard had so wisely counseled. I found myself thinking that I’m a better person when I’m on sabbatical than I am when I’m working for God at a church, and I knew that was just plain wrong. I began to form a new goal: I want to be as relaxed as I am on vacation while being as productive as I am at work.
There was only one place to learn about that. So I drove back to Box Canyon. I had a whole day to spend with Dallas. I told him that I felt frustrated because the people at the church I served were not changing more. I asked him what I needed to do to help our church experience greater levels of spiritual growth.
Long pause . . . “You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.”
Huh?
“No,” I corrected him. “I wasn’t asking about me. I was asking about other people. I was wondering what I need to make the church do. I was thinking about a book everyone should read, or a prog
ram everyone should go through, or a prayer system everyone should commit to.”
“Yes, Brother John,” he said with great patience and care. “I know you were thinking of those things. But that’s not what they need most. The main thing you will give your congregation — just like the main thing you will give to God — is the person you become. If your soul is unhealthy, you can’t help anybody. You don’t send a doctor with pneumonia to care for patients with immune disorders. You, and nobody else, are responsible for the well-being of your own soul.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “I learned long ago about the importance of having a quiet time when I read the Bible and do daily devotions; I do my best to start each day that way.”
“I didn’t say anything about having a quiet time,” he gently corrected again. “People in churches — including pastors — have been crushed with guilt over their failure at having a regular quiet time or daily devotions. And then, even when they do, they find it does not actually lead to a healthy soul. Your problem is not the first fifteen minutes of the day. It’s the next twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes. You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing total contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.”
“But how can I have total contentment, joy, and confidence?” I responded. “My work isn’t going nearly well enough. Lots of people are not happy with me. I am inadequate as a pastor, husband, and father. Every week I carry the burden of delivering a sermon and knowing I’ll have to feel the pain if it doesn’t go well.”
“I didn’t say you should experience total contentment, joy, and confidence in the remarkable adequacy of your competence or the amazingly successful circumstances of your life. It’s total contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday experience of God. This alone is what makes a soul healthy. This is not your wife’s job. It’s not your elder’s job. It’s not your children’s job. It’s not your friend’s job. It’s your job.”
The stream is your soul. And you are the keeper.
THE LAW OF CONSEQUENCES
This is the message of one of the most important and challenging chapters in the Bible. The ancient practice of holding children guilty for parents’ misdeeds left confusion about the whole idea of responsibility for the soul. The Word of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel:
What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”? As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son — both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die.
Then God lays out a few long case studies to illustrate his meaning, and in case anyone missed it, he repeats it again: “The soul that sins is the soul that shall die.”
This is what we might call Reality 101 when it comes to the soul. It is the law of consequences. Paul put it like this: “You reap what you sow.” Even people who have never read the Bible or gone to church can recite that verse, even though they probably have no idea where it comes from. Mostly we like to say that as a warning to other people. Apparently we believe that by some magic, the law of consequences doesn’t apply to us.
• I can spend without getting into debt.
• I can lie without getting caught.
• I can let my temper fly without damaging my relational life.
• I can have a bad attitude at work and get away with it.
• I can avoid disciplining my children without their getting spoiled.
• I can neglect the Bible and still know God.
Our capacity to live in denial about the law of consequences is huge and is damaging to the soul. In the Bible it takes God a long time to teach the human race about this. One of the ways he tries to teach this concept is in an obscure and really bizarre little story that starts the book of Judges.
As the book begins, Israel is fighting: “It was [at Bezek] that they found Adoni-Bezek and fought against him, putting to rout the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Adoni-Bezek fled, but they chased him and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes.”
I’m not making this up.
When I grew up in Sunday school, our main educational technology was called the flannel graph. I don’t ever remember seeing this character named Adoni-Bezek with no thumbs, no big toes. Seems like a gory way to start off a book in the Bible. As I’ve learned from years of reading and studying and teaching the Bible, there’s always a good reason for whatever is in the Bible. In this case, if you learn about this story, it can actually save you a world of pain.
Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them.”
Things were violent back then, but even then this was big-time torture. Adoni-Bezek does thumb and toe removal not once, but seventy times. It was his signature move. Then, to intensify the humiliation of these rival kings, he feeds them by having them eat scraps under the table.
He was sowing terror and cruelty and getting away with it.
Until one day . . .
Now he’s the ex-king with no thumbs and no toes under the table. But notice — he doesn’t say, “Israel did this to me”; he says, “As I have done, so God has repaid me.” All those years, all that torture, all those victims — someone was watching the whole time. It’s not just that there is a Law of Consequences in the universe. There is a God of Justice in the universe. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” And the primary arena in which this is true is that little plot of ground that has been assigned to your care — your soul. A soul that is not kept properly will surely die.
KEEP YOUR SOUL BY SPEAKING TO IT
The formation of the soul is the most important process in the universe. John Keats wrote, “Call this world if you please ‘The vale of soul-making.’ ” In our day, we talk a lot about self-talk. Books get written about the importance of self-talk. Apparently, that’s a really important part of the human condition. Everybody here talks to themselves. In the Bible, people talk to their souls. The difference between talking to yourself and talking to your soul is that the soul exists in the presence of God. So you will see in the Psalms and elsewhere people speaking to their souls because when you speak to the soul, it naturally turns to prayer because in the soul God is always present.
Your soul is not the same thing as your emotions. We live in a world where we’re encouraged to think that our feelings dominate our lives and that we are powerless over them. But even contemporary research indicates the power God has placed in the soul to be master of our emotions. In one study, researchers presented subjects with pictures of angry faces. Half of the participants were told simply to observe the faces. The other half were instructed to label the emotion on each face. The simple act of labeling the emotion reduced its emotional impact on their own moods. It also reduced the activation of the brain region associated with strong primitive emotion.
Normally when we are angry about something, we mutter under our breath: “Well, that sure was stupid, you big dummy.” We beat up on ourselves or, worse, on others. We may find temporary relief from that, but the soul still cries for attention. The next time you blow something — when you’re frightened, when you’re dissatisfied — instead of mindless self-talk, speak to your soul: “Why are you afraid, O my soul?” At first it might seem a little silly, but remember, you are the keeper of your soul. Only you.
Not long ago I got really angry at somebody. Finally I literally stopped in my tracks because I was so immersed in anger and said, “Soul, why are you so angry?” Something interesting happened. I found that I just began to pray, and it was like God saying to me, “John, you are not your anger.” It’s like my soul had a place to stand with God, and we could talk sensibly about my anger, even as it ebbed from my soul.
“I am the master of my fate: I am the c
aptain of my soul.”
No, I am its keeper, not its captain. I did not make it, and I cannot save it from death.
That’s why soul-care is a different task than self-care. I do not care for my soul only for my own sake. It is only mine on loan, and it is coming due soon.
The psalmist wrote that blessed people are like trees planted by rivers of water, which yield their fruit in season, and whose leaves do not wither; they prosper in all they do. In the ancient Middle East, trees were rare. Rain was scarce. Deserts were plentiful. But if a tree were planted by a river, it was no longer dependent on uncertain weather or the surface conditions of the soil. It could flourish at all times because its roots allowed the water to stream into each part of the tree to bring it life. You couldn’t see the roots, but no one could miss the green leaves or fresh fruit.
Just as in the little parable that started this book, our soul is like an inner stream of water that gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other area of life.
WHAT’S BLOCKING THE STREAM?
Once there were two brothers who could not get along. They had grown up together, played together, fought together, laughed together; perhaps they had been close.
But when they grew up and their parents died, they had an argument about how to divvy up the estate. It grew severe enough that they couldn’t get along anymore; the money was more important than the love of one brother for another.
One of them — the younger, who didn’t have any leverage — decided to get some outside help. He approached a rabbi: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
That teacher was Jesus, but he didn’t play arbiter; instead, he gave a warning and told a story. The warning was that a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of their possessions. The story was about a wealthy farmer who harvested a bumper crop one year. He said to his soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.” His life became an upscale village filled with expensive homes. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you.” When Jesus says the man’s soul will be required, he uses language from the business world; it’s a term that would describe a loan that had fallen due. Our souls are on loan to us. One day, God will review with us what our souls have become. That is what will matter from our lives.