Caring for the most important part of you, by John Ortberg (a summary by Pat Evert)
Our task was to get her to see, embrace and develop her internal life – her real life. The stream is your soul, and you are the keeper. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. It is my inner life.
I. WHAT THE SOUL IS
My inner life is where my secret thoughts and hopes and wishes live. Because my inner life is invisible, it is easy to neglect. No one has direct access to it, so it wins no applause. Gaining the outside world doesn’t help you if your inside world collapses. You are only able to live in a way that really helps and loves others when your soul feels its worth. A deep soul has the capacity to understand and empathize deeply with other people — not just himself. A deep soul notices and questions and doesn’t just go through the motions. A deep soul lives in conscious awareness of eternity, not simply today. It notices and observes and reflects in surprising ways. When my will is consistently, freely, joyfully aligned with what I most deeply value, my soul finds rest. That is wholeness. When I live with half-hearted devotion, my soul is always strained. It’s total contentment in your everyday experience of God.
II. WHAT THE SOUL NEEDS
We are limited in every way but one: we have unlimited desire. The truth is, the soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. My neediness only invites more of God’s generosity. The formation of the soul is the most important process in the universe. Other creatures can live happily for today and not think about tomorrow. But not us. Our blessing and our curse is our ability to extend ourselves into tomorrow. Human beings have an instinct that life does not end with the grave. And we have a hunger this world cannot satisfy. The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened . . . and you will find rest for your souls.” How good are you at doing nothing? How long can you sit in a chair in your backyard and do nothing? Solitude provides a shelter from noise and distraction, and that can be scary. We have become almost addicted to both.
Freedom, how do you get the freedom that your soul craves? This is the great irony about freedom. To become truly free, you must surrender. Gratitude, the soul thrives on gratitude. We feel better when we are grateful because the fundamental mind-set of the life of the soul is gratitude. Just tell that person why you are grateful for them.
III. THE SOUL RESTORED
In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness. He is slow: we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been for eternity. . . . It is suffering in what feels like the silence of God.
Hidden in Plain Sight 