February 25, 2016
“… persons are often told, ‘You just need to pray more, go to church more, read your Bible more, be more obedient to God, deal with unconfessed sin in your life, and everything will be fine.’ This is like telling persons with broken legs that they just need to run more and strengthen the muscles. Our spirituality is not an “add-on,” it is the very essence of our being.”
Robert Mulholland ― from Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation
It is not that any of this is bad advice. I’m quite certain that every one of us would benefit tremendously from more prayer, more fellowship and corporate worship, more time in Scripture, more obedience and a stronger striving towards holiness.
It’s that we respond all to often to true seeking with a formula. A person says they aren’t being fed, we tell them to do more, or to lead something. A person admits a shallow relationship, so we give them tasks. A person opens up a deep vulnerability and we set forth expectations.
Each of these is a valid commitment in the walk of the faithful, but we are not what we do. And our doing will so often fall so short of any kind of fulfillment. Yet the heart of our response to any need, to any lapse, to any fall is always to do something else. The truth is that all to often it was the focus on doing that led to the precipice. Or that our constant doing left a newcomer, or an outsider with little more than an empty sense of busy-ness.
There is a healing that needs to take place and it is not a healing of doing. It is a healing of resting, it must be a retreat. Yet not a retreat from the faithful or of the fellow Christ-followers, the time of healing is when our prayers must be strongest, our fellowship must be deepest and our compassion most obvious.
Otherwise, we are a church of broken legs just trying to run more.