It requires no artistry, no imagination, no discipline - just dumb, methodical obedience.”Įven our obedience can bring death to our souls. In The Rest of God, author and pastor Mark Buchanan emphasizes, “The attraction of legalism (duty over desire) is that despite all its complexity, it is mindless.It draws nothing from your heart, your mind, your strength, your soul. Religiously diligent, many mornings I woke with an inward disdain for the very task that God had called me to do. I thought that if I replicated practices and strategies that have brought past success - pushed hard enough into enough activities that look good-I would be fine.īut the harder I worked, and the more I sought to control outcomes, the more fatigued and disheartened I grew. Yet emotionally, and in my actions, I defaulted to patterns I had ingrained in my life. Intellectually, I knew that “apart from God I can do nothing” (see John 15:5). A language barrier, coupled with an atheistic culture, proved more challenging than we had envisioned. In the spring of 2006, our family began a 2-year international mission assignment. My heart had grown callous and numb, and I needed spiritual resuscitation. I was attempting to curry favor with Him through performance. Depleted and exhausted from a life that lacked grace, I had become void of much passion or joy.įor too many months - years, even - religious activity had come to trump having a love relationship with God. ![]() Ryan was fine, and over time, traces of guilt and the image of my son’s “dead-boy’s” float gradually eased.īut in a somewhat strange turn of events, I began to see myself metaphorically - like one face-down atop the water in a pool - floating spiritually lifeless. ![]() Having seen my son so close to dying, I spent a lot of time thinking about life. I was instantly thrust into a parent’s worst nightmare as I saw him floating motionless atop the pool surface.įifteen minutes later, after what seemed like hours, Ryan screamed and cried in the back of the ambulance, piercing my fog of fear and answering my prayers.įor weeks afterward, I sat on my porch and gazed in the direction of the pool, continuing my habitual meetings with the Lord. I took a routine upward glance from the pages of my book toward our Florida apartment pool where my 6-year-old son, Ryan, had been playing.
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