Things I’ve learned this season (hope it helps and contains at least an intimation of wisdom especially for extroverts or those who find value in constantly serving others externally!
Things I’ve learned in a study season. Confession of an extroverted minister!
It’s ok to pull back and listen to more gentle winds in times of great turbulence. It’s ok to just consider things for a season, and be innerly prepared for the next. It’s ok to reflect and consider what is already formed in your heart, and what still needs to be. What part of God am I learning to incarnate and embody next! Which part of His Face is He revealing this season?!
Even if you are an extrovert, it’s ok, to have internal seasons of quiet growth. But it requires patience. Stillness, and just being with, is work for us.
Taking in the very best revealed knowledge in your silent seasons helps-take in the best spiritual nutrients in silent seasons! Seek truly en-Lightened conversations, where the Spirit is hovering. Go there, enter there, learn from that space in daily exchanges! Seek those conversations!
Find the living conversations around you, where Love and His Spirit are hovering! The most wise thoughts from humble ones are best to ingest when in a rest season.
Action will return, but the root system is treated best in rest and receptivity-even if it looks like nothing fruitful is happening outside you. If you find self worth in helping others, you need to remember, His ongoing work in you, will also bless others, even if you don’t feel like you are helping them.
Sometimes just your presence, when in Presence is enough to bless others, even if you have no practical tools for them at this instant.
Listening in Love is the highest practice.
If you find your worth in serving others, sometimes, it’s good to stop being overtly helpful, and resonate again with Him in your inner being-to find the inner monastery of being again, where just the two of you are sitting and chatting, running or walking.
To just fill up from that communion/ relational space, before giving again. Learning this type of Sabbath-ing with, sustains longevity in service. Sabbath-ing puts us deeper into the Father’s I-amness. It’s a good place to then later, act from. Resting is work for extroverts. Or rather a new Grace to be imparted. When we don’t feel useful to others, we rest again in being worthy at the being level! This develops trust for us.
If you feel useless, when doing nothing but being, you probably need to do less for a while, until you can do action from a deeper place in your heart.
Use your “off” stage seasons to grow in new parts of God, which you are less familiar with. Listen well to what these are, and consider why you haven’t embodied those parts thus far.
Read wisdom literature and slow down to that space of considering things outside yourself.
Sit in water rather than fire for a season. Fire always returns. Water refreshes and sinks into skin, to ready us for seasons of fire!
Trust the season of life you are in, to teach you what you need next. Be patient to let each season fully settle into you. It’s cumulative, even when certain seasons seem boring or less interesting, things are being planted in you, which you will need to be whole and useful.
Be ok, when seasons of change come! Welcome them, with heart opened joy! Joy overcomes fears of transformation. Joy is the opposite spirit of our times! It’s a sign of God’s creativity, and that we are in a collaboration together. In this sense, change seasons are a sign of hope, we are never stuck in our previous seasons of growth, but have a long trajectory into out eternal names!
Find the Cloud and see what new shapes it is forming. Follow and try to contour yourself to that shape. It’s alive, relational and dynamic. Last season’s dry cloud, may form a rain cloud in this one.
God is dynamic, creative, even in forming you! He is making the poem of who you are, even more perfectly expressed, in seasons of rest. Trust that. Keep collaborating! If you need to recall previous seasons to keep hope kindled, do; but know there is another level of formation occurring within you each season, which requires a new level of trust.
Some seasons are more about you. Others more about others. Be ok with both.
Don’t think God is going to keep showing you the same part of His Face. He wants to reveal the Whole Face. So He turns to let you know new angles and aspects of His Being each season.
Find the part of His Face He is revealing to you now. Look deeply until that part starts reflecting on your inner screen of being.
Since, life is a progression into getting to know and appreciate and embody more and more of who God is, we are free to mess up and make mistakes along the way. The dynamic Cloud of His Presence, will find us, if we seek it. Don’t worry too much about your performance, just be receptive to what He is forming in you–say yes, confess, yield until He is all the way into that unformed or decorated room of the house you are! And are becoming. And then follow it’s creative shapes through the seasons of our lives.
True spirituality is relational, so listen as if in a friendship, which we are. It’s a friendship spirituality, so you will know where Your Friend is always in the conversation and communion of becoming. He is with you always, no doubt, but we must stay engaged in the relationship-keep finding the contact point! God is good like that.
Thanks for listening to some confessions of a constant extroverted servant minister, as he becomes!
When God shares you again, as He always does, you will know it was His work in silence which formed that expression, and once again, be in thanks and wonder at His Ways! God always shares us with one another in the end!
So, in short, learn to rest in and into, your particular season of formation, and others will be blessed, eventually, and even in the meantime, from that useful rest!
