Prayer

I Resisted Winter and Missed the Renewal of Spring

Posted on March 31, 2016March 30, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

The kale we planted in the garden last spring grew into thick stalks all summer and kept our table supplied with greens. By fall the kale stalks were curling and falling all over themselves. Their leaves, which had been full, crisp, and green throughout summer started wilting, turned shades of brown and yellow, and finally succumbed to the constant attacks of tiny pests. By the time the cold winds of November swept the final leaves off the trees, our kale plants were little more than battered stalks with tiny bits of green poking out here and there. Yes, they were just barely alive, but they were far from healthy.

I don’t know why I waited so long to pull out the old kale. Maybe I was hoping that it would survive the winter and sprout new life in the Spring. I left it hanging limp and lifeless all winter. By the time the snow melted, the kale had all but rotted away.

As soon as the weather grew warm, I finally gave in and yanked the old kale stalks out of the garden. I poured new compost into the beds and raked it smooth. A few weeks later I scattered a new crop of kale and lettuce seeds into the orderly garden beds.

The new kale is going to take some time before it’s ready to eat, but I couldn’t hold onto last year’s planting. It had to go in order to make room for what’s next.

How long have I tried clinging to last year’s planting and held up the new things that must take their place?

I have been longing for the new thing, but have continued to cling to what is old.

I have become withered and overgrown, bitter and stagnant, but then I wonder why the new life hasn’t taken root and grown yet.

This week I had a chance to finally pull some old roots up as I make space for a new venture. The “Revert to Author” notice arrived for my first book that I wrote about theology. At the time I was one of many writers trying to sort out Christian theology and whether my faith could survive without the promise of certainty. Some are still wrestling with that question, some have moved on with their faith, and some needed to leave their faith behind. I have moved on with my faith, realizing that I didn’t need an airtight theology in order to have a relationship with a God whose top concern is love.

As I set aside my identity as a writer about theology and culture, I felt both a relief and a fear of what’s next. The fear of “what’s next” is why we often cling to what’s old and dying. We can’t imagine that something better is possible.

I made the mistake of thinking: Better to stick with the broken thing we understand than the new blessing we can’t fathom.

The same day that I signed my agreement to revert the rights of my theology book back to myself, I also continued to work on plans to launch a new website: www.thecontemplativewriter.com. This is a project that has been in the works for a long time, but I just didn’t see how to move forward with it. I kept plodding along with what I knew about theology, uncertain about what would grow if I pulled everything up and started all over.

I finally started planting new things a few years ago when I took a break from blogging about theology and then released Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together. Since then, each step toward prayer and writing, or writing about prayer, has been affirming and life-giving.

It was a long winter, but I now see that I needed the winter. I needed a winter to kill what was no longer productive or life-giving. I needed winter to force me to uproot the past and to make room for what’s next.

Shifting to writing about prayer feels like the beginning of Spring. There is new life to this direction, and I’m finally realizing how I’ve held myself back by failing to uproot what I planted last season.

How many of us go into winter kicking and screaming, lamenting the loss of summer’s warmth and the brilliant colors of the fall because we lack hope for the future?

Perhaps fighting winter is a good sign at times. Perhaps we rightly see the good that we’ve had. I’m grateful for all that I’ve accomplished and learned from that last season. In fact, the things I’m planting today are benefitting from what I planted before.

For this new season, I need to keep writing on this website with longer form posts about prayer, writing, and Christianity, but I’m also making a new space for brief, daily posts about contemplative prayer. The site officially launches April 2^nd and begins with regular daily posts (not Sundays) on Monday, April 4^th.

My new site, The Contemplative Writer, will offer daily posts that provide guidance for daily prayer, Christian spiritual practices, and sources for meditation and contemplation. You can sign up to receive posts via email, the weekly email with highlights and a custom Examen, or follow through the RSS feed. In the coming month I hope to add more spiritual direction topics and a podcast version of the newsletter.

This website is what I’ve needed in my own life. It’s my hope that my own imperfect journey toward prayer and the wisdom of others will prove beneficial for you as well.

Visit The Contemplative Writer today.

Does Christian Spirituality Boil Down to These Two Questions?

Posted on March 22, 2016June 14, 2017 by Ed Cyzewski

planner-time-for-prayer

Christian spirituality often boils down to two questions: Do I have time? Will this work?

You could say these are chicken and egg questions. If prayer works, you’ll find the time for it. If you don’t find the time for prayer, it won’t work. If prayer doesn’t seem to work, you won’t find the time for it.

Find the time for prayer, and it will work… eventually.

This is why it has helped to compare the ways that the reflection of prayer resembles the reflection that goes into writing. The two use many of the same practices and mindsets. If I struggle at one, there’s a good chance I’m struggling at the other. My failures and breakthroughs in writing have helped me understand my failures and breakthroughs in prayer.

Writing is a lot like prayer since everyone thinks they can write, just as everyone thinks they should be able to pray. However, both require learning some basic disciplines, mindsets, and practices in order to make them more likely and more fruitful. True, anyone can and should pray. Anyone can and should write. However, just sitting down to write can be extremely frustrating. The same goes for just sitting down to pray.

Disciplines, structure, and the wisdom of those who have gone before us provide a framework that helps us stand. We learn within the security of these structures and disciplines. What we learn from others we imitate clumsily at first. Over time we find our own way forward.

In the case of writing, I’ve faced these questions about whether I have the time and whether writing will “work.” I’ve found that I had to spend years making time for writing, prioritizing it, learning from experts, imitating the masters, and failing a lot. The progress was slow and incremental.

We can find time for just about anything if we make it a priority. I have learned that prioritizing things like prayer, exercise, and writing means I have to really plan ahead during the day for things like:

When will I do the dishes?
When will I fold the laundry and put it away?
When will I sleep and when will I wake up?
How will I keep myself from wasting time on social media?
How will I focus on my work?
Some days go better than others with all of these tasks!

If I want to make the most of my writing time, I need to invest in things like:

Reading constructive books.
Free writing when I have a moment.
Jotting down ideas in a notebook or phone.
Practicing and stretching myself with new projects.

My growth as a writer is a lot like prayer in that I need to learn the disciplines of prayer, learn from people who have greater experience in prayer, and practice using them. Just trying prayer out a few times won’t give you a clear sense of whether it will work. It’s a long term discipline that you develop over time.

Will prayer work? Only if I make the time for it.

Can I find time for prayer? I can, but I’ll be more likely to do so once I see that it works.

If you’re uncertain, discouraged, or leaning heavily toward doubt right now, I trust that prayer is hard to attempt. Where do you begin if prayer has been a source of frustration?

I’ve learned that I need to begin with making time to practice and learning what I can.

We’re left with faith, believing that God is present already and that the greatest barrier in prayer isn’t coming from God’s end of things but rather training ourselves to become aware of God. We can step forward into prayer believing that those who seek will find. Mind you, we don’t know what exactly we’ll find when we seek. We can’t control the timeline of our seeking.

We can only control our schedules and what we believe about God: that God is present, that God is seeking us, and that the simple desire to pray is enough to begin making time for prayer.

Read more about the basics of contemplative prayer and Christian spirituality in my latest book:

Flee, Be Silent, Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace with God through Contemplative Prayer

On sale for $2.99

Amazon Kindle | Amazon print | Kobo | B&N

When the Truth Doesn’t Help and God Is Hard to Find

Posted on March 18, 2016February 11, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

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My pastor once asked during a sermon: “Who would you turn to when your life hits rock bottom, the theological know-it-all or the person who embodies the love and compassion of Jesus?”

Some may say that one need not choose between the two, suggesting that an unrelenting, uncompromising dedication to the truth is the most loving thing you can do. My pastor was aiming at something entirely different.

If you get the truth that Jesus and his contemporaries were communicating, you’ll start to embody his love and compassion. In fact, transformation becomes far more important than indoctrination.

I won’t say I’ve hit rock bottom, but our family is in a challenging, isolating season. It has felt like ALL HANDS ON DECK for months now, and we have no guarantee that it’s going to end soon. In the midst of it, someone said to me, “Remember, we have a great God.”

I’m not sure that “remembering” theological statements in this season has been that helpful. I have been far more in need of God’s presence and empathy rather than intellectual guarantees. It’s a similar principle to the story of Job: when difficulty strikes, theologizing should never come before empathy and presence.

I’m not shutting down the “thinking” part of my faith, tossing out my theology books, or leaving my Bible unread. The big picture of my life doesn’t boil matters down to an either/or proposition between theology and love/empathy. Perhaps I’m reacting against a proposition-based, theologically-driven form of the Christian faith that mightily feared not having an answer for a particular situation.

When life becomes difficult, this fragile form of the faith grasps for answers and throws around truth as if the people in a difficult situation could pose a threat to the stability of Christianity. What if someone’s trouble demands an answer that a proposition-based faith can’t deliver?

More than propositions, Jesus came to give us God’s presence. The assumption is that seeking first his Kingdom and his righteousness will ensure that things work out in the end. If anything, Jesus disrupted the answers of theological systems without necessarily tossing out theology all-together.

Jesus pointed us to the place where we can find God’s presence and experience union with God. I have grown suspicious of anyone who wants to debate that point or inserts caveats.

As life feels uncertain, and challenges pile up, I have longed for God’s presence more than ever. The people I’ve turned to for prayer aren’t the ones with all of the answers. I’m taking my weakness and fear to the people who will pray with compassion and love. These are the people who know the Father’s heart and can intercede on my behalf as fellow beloved children of God. These are the people who happen to have a sound theology, so far as I can tell, but that is only because they have drawn near to the loving presence of God.

Read more about the basics of contemplative prayer and Christian spirituality in my latest book:

Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians

On sale for $8.49 (Kindle)

Amazon | Herald Press | CBD

Jesus Wasn’t a Monk but He Kind of Was

Posted on March 12, 2016January 18, 2019 by Ed Cyzewski

cave-prayer-contemplative-monk

Allow me to reveal just how Protestant I am. I’ve studied the Gospels closely and intensely for the majority of my life, but I rarely made any connections between Jesus and monks, starting with the fourth century desert fathers, right on through the present day. Jesus was out in the public eye preaching sermons and discipling people, right?

When I became more charismatic, I started tacking on “healing people” to Jesus’ list of activities.

What could Jesus possibly have in common with monks who hid in the desert, took vows of silence, and wove baskets or brewed beer (depending on the century) in their free time?

Sure, Jesus went off to pray in the desert for 40 days…

Sure, Jesus spent entire evenings praying…

Sure, Jesus had a vision of God while praying on a quiet mountain side…

Sure, Jesus got baptized in the wilderness and heard God call him his “beloved son”…

Sure, Jesus prayed fervently and personally with God during his most difficult moments…

Sure, Jesus told his followers to pray in the quiet and privacy of their own rooms…

Wait, that’s starting to sound a bit like a monk.

Mind you, there are all sorts of monks. Some are more chatty, some are more handy, some are more interested in preaching, and some are more interested in preserving the quiet, contemplative prayer practices that have been passed down by the historic church. I can’t imagine any Protestants saying that Jesus was particularly “monastic” in his practices or his ministry. I can, nevertheless, see the common threads between Jesus and the monks. They make a lot more sense when I start looking at the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus was kind of like a monk.

The monks also make a lot more sense when I remember that they were a reform movement in the line of a long history of reform movements that took to the desert and wilderness. When the prophets called Israel back to God, they often hung out in the wilderness. When John the Baptist began preaching about repentance… wilderness. When Paul needed to figure out the Messiah in light of Jesus… wilderness.

As Christianity rose in prominence, the monks recognized that the empire’s power and the influence of the clergy could become extremely toxic. They also fled the pleasures of the city, and even if Protestants would like to critique some of their negative associations with the body (Hello there, early church cultural captivity to Platonic philosophy!), we can sort of get it today. They wanted to remove as many distractions from the pursuit of God, and as Christianity grew in power and influence, they also wanted to avoid the temptations of church-based power.

Jesus didn’t go to the extreme of hanging out in a cave 24/7, but the more we look at the way he rejected the power centers of Judaism and any kind of official position within the religious hierarchy of his day, the more he looks like a monk.

The monks became a kind of expression of the Christian faith in a particular time and place, so the continuity and differences shouldn’t surprise us. Just as Jesus heard the voice of God loud and clear alongside a lonely river or atop a deserted mountain, the monks actively sought to hear the voice of God by pursuing solitude rigorously. Just as Jesus battled Satan during his 40 days in the wilderness, we have many reports of visitors to the cells of monks hearing them arguing with demons.

As a Protestant, I have long considered the monks a different class of Christian. Not necessarily a “higher” class (Hey, I AM Protestant after all), just a different class. They did spiritual stuff and experienced God in ways that I’ll simply never touch, right?

As a follower of Jesus, I continue to face the possibility that he was more like the monks than he resembles a lay person like me. He routinely sought quiet moments alone with God and even made great sacrifices in order to make it happen. Jesus modeled the daily pursuit of God within ministry, and he knew deep down to this core that he was God’s beloved Son, a Son that pleased God the Father.

The monks set off to their cloisters in order to uncover this mystery for themselves. How could the God of the universe love them so deeply and fully? They dropped everything in order to find out. They were so committed to this pursuit of God’s love that they didn’t want to risk confusing the praise of church leaders with the acceptance of God.

I’m still a Protestant, but I’m one of the growing number of Protestants who recognize that the spiritual practices of monks are deep, true, effective, and needed. The monks know a great deal about the presence and absence of God, the intimacy of Christ, and the ways that daily attentiveness to the pursuit of God can reorient our lives in ways that we can hardly touch through hours of diligent Bible study and historical-critical exegesis.

I’m not a monk, but I kind of want to pray like one because the monks were kind of like Jesus.

Confess Your Dreams to Each Other

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

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There’s a Christian tradition of confessing your sins to someone else as a step toward freedom. We may quote James saying, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” James 5:16, NIV.

By keeping our struggles, flaws, and imperfections secret, we leave ourselves vulnerable to their attacks, the shame they generate, and the feeling that we’re inevitable failures in spirituality. I know all of this from repeated experience.

It’s hard to confess to someone else. The times I’ve stepped forward to receive prayer from someone have been agonizing. Perhaps we fear judgment or being exposed as frauds. Perhaps we fear that the prayers of the person we approach won’t help. If there’s a chance that the prayers offered won’t help, then why risk exposing ourselves?

Vulnerability feels like we’re going to trap ourselves, but more often than not, it’s quite liberating. I find that hard to believe most weeks.

I’m a begrudging believer in confessing sins to a trusted friend or mentor, but I also believe in confessing our dreams.

Aside from our flaws, I believe our hopes, callings, and dreams may be the most fragile parts of ourselves. We don’t want to appear foolish, stupid, or ridiculous. We don’t want to set out for a valiant goal only to fall on our faces. Who wants to set out in pursuit of something that carries significant personal meaning and then fail publicly and dramatically?

Mind you, a dream or goal or hope isn’t necessarily virtuous in and of itself. However, before we can even discern this, many of us will suppress these notions before they get out of hand and people find out about them.

I have gone back and forth on this stuff plenty of times. I remember sharing an idea for a book one time in a group of friends and a stone cold silence followed. Someone may have said, “Hmmmm.”

Needless to say, I never touched that idea again.

I’m learning how to manage “confessing” these ideas and dreams and callings a bit. For instance, I’ve learned that the place to start with confessing my dreams is a few trusted people. I’ll tell my wife and then follow up with an email to a few trusted friends and experts to sound things out.

Last year I bought domain name and built an entire website. I felt like I just needed to do it in order to have the experience of building a more static website from the ground up regardless of whether or not I used it. I ran the idea past some trusted people. Many gave it a thumbs up, but a few shared some reservations. Perhaps there were already websites that covered this topic. Perhaps it wouldn’t catch on as I hoped. I asked for prayer. I prayed a lot.

I followed up the feedback and discernment process with some tests on social media. I shared posts and updated related to my new website’s topic.

Silence. Zip. Nada.

I decided to scrap the idea. I’m not sure if it wasn’t my thing to do or if my approach wasn’t the most effective way forward, but I’m pretty sure it was a combination of both.

I’ve been sitting and waiting on what’s next. I wrapped up my book Write without Crushing Your Soul this past fall and have been mentally divided between three book ideas that I can’t quite choose between.

Just as the domain name for last year’s website experiment expired, a new idea popped into my mind. Once again I tested it with my wife and then, before I could talk myself out of it, I zipped off some texts and emails to friends.

I confessed that I needed them to be in the loop right from the start. I told them that I needed them to know about this idea before I bailed. Sure enough, they were encouraging, while I spent the following day picking apart all of the reasons why this website is a terrible idea.

However, once I got over the fear of launching a new website and received some helpful feedback, I started to take tentative steps forward.

This project feels big and intimidating enough that I have to trust in God’s help to make it happen. It’s true to my experiences and, dare I say, “journey” in spirituality. It’s about something that I keep asking God, “Are you sure I should do this?” And I keep getting affirmations in return.

Today I’m plugging along with this new project, and I can’t believe that I ever doubted it or needed to tell someone before I preemptively gave up on it. But the truth is that I needed my friends’ accountability. I needed them to know that at one point in time I had thought this was a good idea, and I needed their honest feedback right then and there before I blew the whole thing up.

Accountability is good for uncovering our faults and struggles, but it’s also good for keeping us pointed to our true north. Accountability helps us put both hands on a crazy idea that just may come from God and to hold onto it through the storms of doubt, exhaustion, and fear.

Confess your hopes and dreams to one another so that you may discern God’s direction. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective

Why We Need the Wilderness

Posted on February 10, 2016April 19, 2022 by Ed Cyzewski

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Why did Jesus spend so much time hiding in the wilderness?

That strikes me as a terrible strategy for influencing the largest number of people. He was completely cut off from the existing networks and leaders who could help amplify his message.

His talent pool of potential apostles was also frightfully low in the wilderness backwaters around Galilee. How in the world would he find speakers, managers, and teachers educated and sophisticated enough to carry his message to enough people? Wouldn’t they just wreck what he started?

All of that time in the wilderness also made Jesus really inefficient with his time. He was always withdrawing to pray for long stretches of time. Didn’t his life feel a bit out of balance, always praying alone or teaching a few disciples instead of communicating to larger crowds on a regular basis?

Every time Jesus returned to the centers of power and influence, the religious leaders met him with strong opposition and applied one test after another to determine whether he was an insider or an outsider. If he refused to play their games, he most assuredly had to be an outsider.

Why did Jesus choose the wilderness?

He prioritized prayer.

He preemptively identified himself as an outsider so that his message did not depend on the religious establishment to prop up his ministry. He let the message grow on its own.

Notice that Paul did something very similar. He withdrew to the wilderness for a period of time and then let his message rise and fall more on its own merit and inspiration from God rather than depending on the leaders of the early church.

The wilderness is where we begin and build the right kind of foundation so that we actually have something worthwhile to say.

I confess that I didn’t start out loving the wilderness. I still have my gripes about it today.

I’m finally appreciating the value of moving forward at my own pace (God’s pace?) as the Spirit leads. I don’t kick and scream quite as loudly when I need to go into the wilderness. I can see how a seeming step backwards into the wilderness is the only way I can move forward.

Most of us don’t need one more thing to do. We need more wilderness, more space, and more withdrawal.

I remember reading piles of Christian books throughout college and seminary, and I started to hate a particular phrase: “We must…”

We must engage this, we must consider another concept, we must remember, we must do another thing, and we must keep adding one… more… thing… to do. The more a book said “We must,” the more I resisted the impracticality of its message. It seemed like every Christian book I read was an unintentional recipe for spiritual burn out.

Americans are a people deeply invested in doing. We’re optimistic work-a-holics who have a reputation for taking a fraction of the vacation time that the rest of the world deems essential. As a culture, Americans aren’t very good at withdrawing from much of anything. When we burn out, we immediately blame ourselves for not being strong enough, not being resilient, not being organized, or not hiring someone to help us do more.

If we try to fix a problem, we tend to fix it by adding “something” else to the mix rather than subtracting. If you want to fix your diet, you focus on eating MORE of something else, such as meat (hello, Dr. Atkins). If you want to fix your crowded schedule, you get a cool new app or five cool new apps that all sync together. If you want to fix clutter, you buy better storage containers.

As a culture, we don’t have much of a grid for disconnecting. We don’t naturally value the wisdom of those who speak from a place of simplicity and less unless that simplicity comes with a product attached to it.

Venturing into the wilderness doesn’t look like STRONG LEADERSHIP^(TM). We fear that the vision, strategy, and key results are all going right down the toilet when we step away. Perhaps they will. Then again, if we keep pushing, keep adding, keep trying to bear it all, we will break down, wear out, and burn out. We need the strength to admit our weakness.

It’s an act of faith to withdraw. I’m trusting God to provide for us and to guide us when I step back and make the nearly impossible admission that I can’t do it all, that I don’t know where all of this heading, and perhaps exerting more control is the worst thing for me.

Most importantly, when I look around and wish I had more influence or could expand my work to new, greater heights, that’s most likely the exact moment I need the wilderness. Growth that’s lasting and meaningful comes from the wilderness.

The lure of “I want it now!” success doesn’t mix well with the wilderness.

The wilderness will kill our drive for quick success. That’s why we need the wilderness.

Believing God Exists Isn’t Enough for Prayer

Posted on February 8, 2016June 14, 2017 by Ed Cyzewski

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I’ve spent so much time worrying about whether or not God exists that I overlooked a more important question. If I believe that God exists, do I believe in a God that I would approach in prayer?

Another way to ask that would be: If I believe in God, do I believe in a loving, merciful God who wants nothing more than for me to pray? Or do I let my imagination create images of an angry, violent, and petty God who is waiting for me to finally mess up enough to justify banishing me from his presence forever?

That latter image haunted my prayers for years. Whenever I struggled to pray, I told myself, “Well, this is it. You’ve finally done it. God has finally turned away from you, and there’s no hope. Prayer may work for other people, but it won’t work for you.”

By imagining a God who could take me or leave me, waiting to strike me down, or to cast me away at the slightest infraction, I made it extremely hard to pray. If I can’t imagine God liking me, let alone loving me and seeing me with compassion and mercy, it’s awfully hard to begin to pray.

Perhaps we struggle to reconcile the God of Hebrew Bible who throws down thunder, hail stones, and fire from the heavens. Perhaps we can’t reconcile those stories with the proclamations of the Psalms:

The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.
Psalm 103:8

I don’t know how to create a theological system that seamlessly accounts for these stories and comfortably fits them in with the many verses in the Psalms and prophets where God is described as merciful, compassionate, full of love, and loving for his people like a jilted lover.

Here’s what I do know: the people who seek God in prayer have found more love, mercy, and compassion than they ever would have guessed. When the mystics write about the presence of God, there is awe and even a bit of fear at times, but God is love, compassion and mercy.

The people who have dedicated their lives to prayer overwhelming reveal that the God we seek is the kind of God we would want to seek.

That isn’t to say that our faults or sins aren’t a big deal. Anyone who believes in the cross and resurrection would recognize that these are important problems that God himself has set out to resolve. The point for me is not minimizing my faults, it’s seeing the largeness of God’s love, mercy, and compassion.

My mistake wasn’t underestimating the seriousness of sin; it was underestimating how deeply God loves us.

Over and over again in the Gospels, I see Jesus telling people that God is more loving and merciful than they expect, that more people are welcome than they suspect, and that the supposed barriers between people and God are actually not holding anyone back.

Perhaps the greatest struggle for Christians today isn’t believing God exists, it’s believing that God is merciful.

We do ourselves no good if we believe in a God that we fear, a God we dare not approach, or a God who is so terrible that we fail to open our deepest fears and pains to him.

In the vast reserves of God’s love and mercy, there is room for us to come as we are and to seek healing and restoration. The greatest obstacle to God’s mercy is believing that it exists and applies even to you and to me.

Read more about the basics of contemplative prayer and Christian spirituality in my latest book:

Flee, Be Silent, Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace with God through Contemplative Prayer

On sale for $2.99

Amazon Kindle | Amazon print | Kobo | B&N

What If We Defined Success as Freedom?

Posted on February 3, 2016February 19, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

on-track-freedom

How many times have I made myself miserable by focusing on my unfulfilled hopes and desires?

How often have I stayed put for fear of appearing like a failure?

When haven’t I said that I’m not enough or not doing enough in order to meet a certain measure for success?

Sometimes life feels like an endless race where I just keep moving the finish line for myself. All it takes is a bit of unchecked envy or comparison to make me realize I’m doing everything wrong, am in danger of appearing as a failure, and at risk of being a lonely isolated failure forever. So I squint my eyes hard to look at that finish line and commit to work harder than anyone else in order to reach it before people learn THE TRUTH about me.

A New Standard for Success

Let’s forget that finish line for a second. Let’s forget what everyone else is doing.

What if that finish line for success and the fear of being found out as a fraud is actually holding you in bondage? What if the allure of freedom through success, money, influence, etc. is just a fleeting mirage of our consumer society? What if the people who appear to be on top are actually MORE TRAPPED than we are because they have all of the same fears as us and they need to maintain the appearance of having it all together?

I’m done with defining success as a particular accomplishment that we can measure with material possessions or online analytics.

Let’s define success as freedom.

Do you know that God loves you deeply and has sent you to love others?

Are you creating space in each day to rest in that love and in the presence of God?

Are you sharing that love and freedom in some way? Are you free to love your family and friends?

I’ve lived under the weight of anxiety, fear, and performing for others for far too long. Sure, there are many things that I can legitimately fear, but fear and scarcity become lifestyles that rob us of the gifts we should enjoy.

If you’re looking to define yourself or your day as a success, let’s ask this question: Am I living in freedom?

God Offers What We Need

The Gospel message that I have given my life to is about freedom, freedom in Christ and freedom through the Spirit. Our lives are hidden away in Christ and Christ lives in us. We have been set free for the purpose of freedom. This is the anthem of the Gospels and Epistles where Jesus and Paul repeatedly argued with people who wanted to add behavior requirements and mandatory rituals for followers of Jesus. Paul clearly stated that we don’t live in the freedom of Christ by subjecting ourselves to yet another written code.

The love of God frees us to love and serve others. There is a cost of following Christ, but there is also tremendous freedom as we drop the crushing weight of pursuing success and trying to identify ourselves by what we can earn or the influence we can gain.

It is extremely problematic to define ourselves by the flimsy judgments of others and the forces of the market.

I can’t do anything to make God love me more.

I can’t do anything to improve upon the freedom that God gives.

I can only choose to accept God’s freedom by faith and lean into it each day. That is where the real struggle of spirituality comes in for me.

Are You Thirsty for God? Then You Are In!

Each day I can either seek the presence of God and move toward freedom or I can seek outward measures of my worth and success. I can start to look at everything I haven’t achieved or I can rest in all that God has given me.

The good news is that even if we face this struggle daily, we can turn things around. We can stop the fear, anxiety, and longing for something, anything other than what we have.

Instead of working harder, getting more efficient, or adopting new ways to schedule productive days, we can opt out of the crazy, soul-crushing system. We can take the ultimate leap of faith into a moment of silence where we believe that God calls out to us: All who are thirsty, come!

What’s Your Next Step?

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Dig deeper with some helpful books: Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond and Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly are among the most helpful books I’ve read.

Why Jesus Needed to Pray

Posted on January 25, 2016April 19, 2022 by Ed Cyzewski

wilderness-prayer

I’m not 100% certain about all of the reasons why Jesus needed to pray. The thing is, once I start asking why a member of the Trinity would find it necessary to pray for long stretches of time, it makes me wonder if I’m still missing something about prayer.

Why do I pray?

I pray out of fear or a sense of need.

I pray because I feel distant from God.

I pray because I hope to intercede on someone else’s behalf.

I pray to let go of circumstances.

I pray to say thank you—that is, if I’ve managed to loosen my grip on a situation long enough to wait on God.

You could say that my prayer life is very result-focused. I have an outcome or goal in mind. Even my moments of quiet prayer have a goal of sorts in mind. That’s not necessarily wrong. We are told to make our requests known to God and to even be as persistent as a woman who wakes up an unjust judge in the middle of the night in order to plead her case.

There’s an untiring tenacity that the writers of the Bible use to describe prayer over and over again. It’s not wrong to say that prayer can be result-focused. The difference is this: I wonder if sometimes I’ve made the mistake of ONLY being result-focused with prayer.

From the 40 days in the wilderness to the all-night prayer-a-thons that pop up throughout Jesus’ ministry, we can’t possibly think he spent the entire night making requests or saying thank you for things. There’s every reason to believe that he spent significant amounts of time before God in silence, especially since the Psalms, which many Jews had memorized, instructed him to do just that when praying.

I recognize that we’re well into the territory of speculation, but it’s reasonable speculation with a Biblical precedent. It’s not outlandish to presume that Jesus spent long stretches of time simply sitting, kneeling, or standing in stillness before God.

Such prayer leaves the agenda up to God, and nothing at all may happen. Then again, everything could happen. It’s not about what we say, think, or do. There’s no special incantation or procedure that you have to get “just right.” There’s just you and God and a quiet stretch of time that is open to the Spirit.

I suspect that Jesus craved this time with God the Father so much that he was willing to lose an entire night of sleep in order to make it happen. That strikes me on one level as a mind-blowing level of commitment since I’m a sleep deprived parent of young kids. And yet, many people who work out or pursue a serious hobby often sacrifice sleep in order to make it happen in the early or late hours of the day.

The same benefit of writing or running in the still, silence of the morning can be found in a late night prayer time that commits to both speak and listen to God the Father. I suspect that Jesus craved the simple, singular focus of his attention to God the Father. He knew that his days were filled with people making requests, asking hard questions, and traveling throughout territories that were sometimes hostile. Each day presented new challenges and conversations that were no doubt exhausting physically and could leave little time to focus solely on the Father.

There was nothing in the middle of the night that could pull his attention away from the Father. While I don’t know exactly how the Trinity works or how things lined up while Jesus was incarnated on earth, the simple answer is that Jesus craved uninterrupted attentiveness to the Father.

While surrounded with so many people who either misunderstood him and his mission or outright opposed him and even plotted his death, Jesus found his rest in solitude with the Father.

As an American, I’m obsessed with growth, progress, and results. I want things I can measure. I want to work on stuff and excel.

I desperately need to imagine Jesus venturing away from the city in order to find the quiet he needed in order to meet with the Father. I need to imagine him sitting down and letting go of the questions, controversies, and needs that surrounded him nearly every waking minute. In that solitude he is attentive to the Father without distraction, and like a warm breeze drifting from the nearby sea, his Father’s love settles over him.

The Worst Has Already Happened and It’s Going to Be OK

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Failure, rejection, isolation: these are just a few of the things I fear on a day to day basis. Perhaps I don’t even take the time to reflect on what I fear the most. Fear can simmer in the back of my mind.

In our work, in our relationships, and in our spirituality, we often fear the worst happening.

I fear that no one will care about my next book.

I fear that the people I respect will reject me or, worse, ignore me.

I fear not having close friendships while everyone else has tight-knit communities who rally around them and cheer them on.

Writing has pushed me to face these limits in so many ways on a regular basis. On many occasions the worst has happened. I’ve faced all of these fears, and without a doubt they have left me devastated, sad, and despairing about the future.

Then something unexpected happened: the sun rose on another day, and another after that.

I didn’t really have any choice in the matter. I had to figure out what to do next.

I may have endured some of these struggles quietly, but don’t mistake that for handling them gracefully.

Facing failure, seeing my worst fears come to life again and again, and staring into the vast expanse of loneliness for long seasons pushed me to also see all of the unhealthy ways I’d relied on flimsy crutches to keep myself standing. Things such as the validation of the crowd or of specific authors and editors were given far too much weight in determining the value of my work and my progress in my calling.

Rejection today does not mean it’s inevitable for next year or five years from now if I keep working and try something different.

Most striking, the perspective I’ve gained after facing my worst fears revealed to me that so many of my worst fears were already realized long before I thought I was facing them. In many cases I lived in either delusion or ignorance, and it took falling on my face dramatically to finally remove my own blinders.

I saw the hard truth: while I feared that readers would be apathetic about my work, I could finally see in hindsight that very few people cared about my writing when I started out, and rightfully so. I needed a lot of time to work on it and to build deeper connections.

I don’t know how to avoid starting off so fragile. I know that the number one fear of bloggers is that no one will read their posts. So many don’t start because of this fear. I worked at my blog for several years without seeing much traction. It was the worst.

Then the sun came up again and again and again. I tried something different, and things finally started moving forward. I could point to several different factors, but perhaps I most needed to fail before I could figure out the right way forward.

With so many things in life we have to ditch the narrative of steady progress. Writing has showed me that it’s more like a series of wrong turns, crashes, and stretches of progress. I’ve been all over the map, and I don’t think I could truly move forward until I finally felt stuck, lost, or banged up beyond usefulness.

I had to be jarred from my daydream. It took failure to make me realize just how tough things were at the outset. And yet, once I saw how bad things were, I finally saw that things could may be OK if I kept moving forward.

I have no doubt now that the bad days will come again and again. I also know that there will be good days and even days of slow, incremental progress. I know that I have a calling to write, but that doesn’t guarantee a smooth trip forward.

Writing has served as a kind of lab for living. It has given me a much higher tolerance for pain and failure in other areas of my life. I am learning that I may fail others at times in relationships, but I can make progress in being more considerate or less controlling. I may really hate the first three months of running, but at a certain point I’ll start to crave my weekday runs. I may really struggle to focus for five minutes during prayer, but if I keep failing and trying month after month, I can build myself up to 20 minutes of quiet meditation that feel far more natural—and needed.

I still fear plenty of things. Worry is a lifestyle or habit that I’m learning to break. Some days I fail dramatically at trusting God with my worries and cares. I’m grateful that I’ve failed enough to know that tomorrow promises another day to take a step forward.