Holy Longing

What’s stirring within you as you change gears and head into the fall season?

Are there new ways you sense God inviting you into something more?

Those are the questions that have been surfacing for me over the last few weeks.

Our family has just survived an across-town move that left my wife and me a bit overwhelmed—and definitely exhausted. At the same time, I’m back in school, beginning a three-year Doctor of Ministry program focused on spiritual formation.

Syllabus shock is real when you’re nearly sixty.

These big life changes have put me in a season of introspective evaluation. And as I’ve been reflecting, I’ve noticed something I didn’t really want to see.

My early years in ministry were deeply shaped by a business-saturated megachurch environment that was more interested in growing large than growing deep. I became obsessed with strategy and trying to crack the code of church growth. I believed that if I could just find the right approach, the right strategy, the right technique, we could make things happen. Thankfully, that feels like a long time ago.

But lately, I’ve noticed myself slipping back toward a similar kind of temptation: to believe I can learn my way to mature faith. I just need to figure it out and find the right technique.

Maybe you can relate. When life gets busy and the future feels uncertain, it’s easy to reach for control. We strategize. We plan. We fix. We try harder.

But I’m feeling a holy longing to do something different.

To turn toward God.
To listen for his voice.
To wait.

I’m reminded that after the resurrection, Jesus didn’t send his disciples out with a five-step strategy for changing the world. He told them to wait for the Holy Spirit. There is something deeply freeing about remembering that not everything is up to me.

When I embrace that truth, I begin to experience the freedom that comes through surrender. Developing my walk with God is more like receiving a gift than learning the latest spiritual hack.

I don’t need more knowledge. I don’t need another technique. I need to sit with Jesus.

I want to cultivate a quiet confidence that I can still reach out and touch the hem of his garment and help others do the same.

My desire this fall is simple: to quiet and still my soul each day, to become more attentive to the presence of God, and to trust that he will do the heavy lifting. Maybe that’s an invitation for you, too.