An Unhurried Leader

The Lasting Fruit of Daily Influence

Alan Fadling

• Publisher: IVP Formatio
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780830890910
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

- 15th Annual Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year - Also Recommended in LeadershipWhat does grace-paced leadership look like? Spiritual mentor. Pastor. Executive director. Parent. Professor. Spouse. We have many roles and relationships. And in the midst of all we do, we're tempted to frantically take control of situations in hopes of making good things happen. Alan Fadling, author of An Unhurried Life, writes: "That kind of unholy hurry may make me look busy, but too often it keeps me from actually being fruitful in the ways Jesus wants me to be. Jesus modeled grace-paced leadership. To learn that we begin not with leading, but with following." In these pages Alan Fadling unfolds what it means for leaders to let Jesus set the pace. Through biblical illustrations, personal examples, and on-the-ground leadership wisdom, this book will guide you into a new view of kingdom leadership. Along the way you just might find that the whole of your life has been transformed into a more livable and more fruitful pace.

Unhurrying
Our Thoughts

RECENTLY, THE PRACTICE OF NOTICING my thoughts has become a transforming and empowering activity for me. I’ve come to realize how many thoughts have been in my thinking for so long that their slight whisper can trigger in me a far-from-slight reaction.

What does she really think of me?

How will I ever get this project done?

Why is he taking so long?

These thoughts have, in fact, become habits. As such, they have grabbed me and sometimes pressed me into unhelpful and unholy responses. I call them “autopilot thoughts” because too often they seem to be thinking me more than I am thinking them.

You’ve probably heard it said that “you are what you eat.” In physical terms, every cell in our bodies has been built out of and nourished by the things we have eaten over recent weeks as well as past months and even years. If we have cultivated good eating habits, our bodies have benefitted. When it comes to our inner life, an echo of this insight is the idea that “we are what we think.” The thoughts that we allow to make themselves at home in our minds and hearts shape our souls. Some of those thoughts are good, true, and life-giving; some of them are not. Some of the thoughts that run through my mind feel like my own, some feel like gifts from God, and some feel like the whispers of an enemy.

Martin Laird, who has written some helpful things on the Christian practice of contemplation, suggests this: “If we think we are our thoughts and feelings, we go through life simply reacting to what is going on around us, with little awareness that we are even doing this or that life could be otherwise. When we try to pray, distractions will strike us as being especially ensnaring, even overwhelming.” So as I engage in noticing my thoughts, it helps me to remember that the thoughts that run through my mind are not necessarily me. I have thoughts. For example, temptations come as thoughts. At times the voice of the enemy whispers leading suggestions from the back of my mind that seem to be my own thoughts. Messages from the world seep in via television and social media. If I mindlessly embrace these thoughts as my own, they may too often prompt my next action taken or word spoken.

When I pay attention to my thoughts, I also realize how many different thoughts run through my mind. I have thoughts about my life, my wife and my sons, my friends, my work, food, and play. Some of these thoughts are rooted in truth and end up bearing good fruit in my life and my work, but some don’t take me to good places. Some thoughts are God-given and Spirit-inspired, while others are downright diabolical. Some thoughts seem my own, though they may echo either the voice of a loving heavenly Father or the whispers of my soul’s enemy. And some thoughts are just plain mundane.

INVITE GOD’S LOVING GAZE

David’s prayer in Psalm 139 has proven especially helpful to me in this matter of dealing with my thoughts.

Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting. (vv. 23-24)

Here David welcomes God’s loving, all-knowing gaze into the depths of his heart. Following David’s example, we can pour out our hearts to our heavenly Father. In fact, the Spirit can shed light on thoughts that have become embedded as impulses and enable us to shut or at least slow them down. But letting God search my heart requires me to slow down enough to be searched. If I’m going through airport security, I have to submit myself to being searched. I can’t run through the line and avoid X-ray machines or TSA agents. Similarly, a kind of inward stopping is required if God is to search our hearts. Practically speaking, I can sit down in a comfortable chair and become physically still in a relatively short time. But it takes longer for my mind and heart to become still in God’s presence so that he might search my soul.

David prays, “Search me, God, and know my heart.” Too often, instead of inviting the searching eyes of God to know my heart, I hide what is in my heart from myself, from others, and—as if it’s even possible—from God. I’m not that different from our first father and mother, who tried hiding in the garden when God called for them. I’m like a little child who imagines that, since he has his hands over his eyes and can’t see anything, no one can see him either. We play along with such a child, and perhaps God lovingly condescends to our silly little game, but eventually the path of a life worth living is found in being deeply known by our God.

David’s prayer continues: “Test me and know my anxious thoughts.” Similarly, I invite God to “test” what he has searched out in me, especially my anxious thoughts—and I define anxious thoughts as every thought that is not rooted in my trust in God. I have realized that so many of my thoughts seem to take absolutely no notice of the real presence of God with me—caring for me, protecting me, guiding me, affirming me, encouraging me. I too often lack confidence in God’s measureless faithfulness. I sometimes allow troubles to loom larger than the ever-present and almighty God who has good plans for my life. I’m tempted to hide rather than submit my heart and mind to the gaze of the God who loves me, the One who wishes only to heal, free, guide, and empower me to walk more closely with him.

The next line of David’s prayer also needs to be mine: “See if there is any offensive way in me.” These offensive ways are more than my mere anxiety. God can see in me certain traits that actually are offensive to him. Think of an offensive smell. You step in something, and the smell travels with you. Just as we do what we can to avoid such smells, I’m tempted to do what I can to hide from God anything in me that he would find offensive. I want to put on my best appearance. But let’s remember that the God we invite to search us is for us, not against us. God is against what may damage or destroy us or others, but even then God is for us. When God searches us, we shouldn’t be surprised that anxious or offensive thoughts surface. He reveals them in order to quiet them, cleanse us, and renew our minds. Any anxious or toxic thought in me is perfectly safe to bring into the presence of the God who seeks my good.

The last line of David’s prayer brings hope and encouragement: “Lead me in the way everlasting.” Having invited God to see me as I am, I can then be led in the way of life he has for me. I find, however, that as I walk in God’s way, he brings to light those thoughts that shouldn’t be in my mind and heart. Yielding myself to this is easier when I, like David, remember what I know about this God who is searching my heart:

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you. (Ps 139:17-18)

David acknowledges here just how “precious” God’s vast and priceless thoughts are, quite a contrast to his own anxious and sometimes offensive thoughts. David longed to be led in the way of lasting life by the One who is always thinking the good, the beautiful, and the true toward him. Sharing in that longing, I bring my anxious thoughts into the presence of God’s peace. I bring my fearful thoughts into the presence of his encompassing love. I bring my discouragement into the presence of eternal encouragement. I bring my self-doubt into the presence of the faithful one.

HELP FROM THE DESERT

One source of help in this matter of noticing our thoughts is the tradition of the desert fathers and mothers of the early centuries of the church. These men and women left behind their cities and journeyed into the deserts of Egypt, Israel, and other wilderness regions of the Middle East. They went, in part, to escape what they saw as the easy faith of an official church and, in part, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (Lk 4:1-2). In seeking to escape the corruption they saw in their urban worlds, they soon discovered that the wilderness held as many temptations to sin as the cities. In other words, they realized the battle was as much within them as it was surrounding them.

Among the legacy of these early Christians is the identification of what came to be known as the seven deadly sins, although they’re more like eight deadly thoughts. The categories identified were thoughts about food, sex, things, anger, dejection, acedia, vainglory, and pride. (The later listing of seven deadly sins combined the similar vices of vainglory and pride.) The desert fathers and mothers learned that a life of godliness begins with the practice of noticing our thoughts, especially those that are anxious or even offensive.

When people went out to the desert to learn from these holy men and women, they were encouraged to honestly and openly share whatever thoughts went through their minds. Rather than waiting for negative thoughts to become negative perspectives, behaviors, or, worse, habits, these believers addressed where all such things begin: in our thoughts. They mentored new members of their communities in how to become more awake to their thoughts. Before they settled in as unquestioned assumptions, shaped expectations, or captured wills, these bad thoughts were noticed and addressed.

COUNTLESS THOUGHTS TO NOTICE

When I first began intentionally paying attention to my thoughts, I found myself thinking about a scene from an I Love Lucy episode. Lucy and Ethel are working on a candy factory assembly line, and they are supposed to wrap the individual chocolates that are coming by on a conveyer belt so they can be boxed up further down the line. At first, the chocolates come along at a moderate pace, and Lucy and Ethel keep up just fine. Eventually, though, the conveyer belt begins to accelerate until the two friends are no longer keeping up. What to do with all the chocolates? Thinking quickly and quite resourcefully, the women begin to stuff chocolate into their mouths and down their shirts. Too many chocolates coming at them way too fast! Just like my thoughts come at me. So many of them are coming so quickly, and too often I feel that I’m at their mercy. Even that is a thought. With all these thoughts, I feel like I can’t afford to pay attention to each one unless my full-time job is “thought noticer,” and no one’s paying me to do that job.

Are you, like me, always thinking? Then you may also imagine getting lost in your thoughts, and in thoughts about your thoughts, and so on. I usually find that noticing a few of my thoughts slows my thinking down. I experience a holy unhurry in the practice. If I miss a thought and it’s important, the Lord will bring it back around at some point. The practice of noticing our thoughts begins by . . . simply noticing our thoughts—strategic or mundane, inspiring or anxious, interesting or boring.

When I pay attention to the immediate thought before me, it no longer seems part of the swarm. One by one, my thoughts feel less overwhelming. Theologian and professor Martin Laird suggests that “the key is to move from being a victim of thoughts (the commenting, chattering mind) to being their witness (the heart’s stillness). Thoughts and feelings remain, but this move from victim to witness transforms our relationship with affliction.” The role of witness enables me to look at my thoughts as separate from me, which, after all, they are.

One practice that helps me notice my thoughts is journaling. It’s often a helpful way for me to sample the stream of thoughts running through my mind at any given moment. Just now, for example, I took five minutes to write down whatever thoughts went through my mind. I tried to capture in words both the content and the feeling of each thought. In five minutes I wrote down nearly twenty thoughts. Ten percent of them were positive an...