the antidote for exhaustion part 2: wholehearted men

The glory of God is a man fully alive.
St Irenaeus

I have come that you may have life, life to the full.

Jesus

In my last email, I spoke of David Whyte’s conversation with a Benedictine Monk in a season of utter exhaustion. The monk surprised him with this answer. 

"The antidote for exhaustion is not necessarily rest. It's wholeheartedness."

In Whyte's conversation with the Monk, he went on, 

"The reason that you are exhausted is that much of what you are doing you have no affection for. You’re doing it because you have an abstract idea that this is what you should be doing in order to be liked. You are exhausted because your energies lay elsewhere. You have been ripening yourself, and you are ready to harvest yourself, and if you don’t, you will rot on the vine."

This is one of the most profound paragraphs I have read in a long time.

• Obligation without affection.

• Being miserable to be liked.

• Unable to access energy because it has been relocated to another area of life.

• Rotting on the vine and neglecting the harvest.

The key to being the man you want isn’t an idealistic sabbatical, working harder to get ahead, or doing more of what is making you miserable simply because you should. 

The key is aligning yourself with the activity of God in your life. 

So many men today set a course for their life in their twenties and then it becomes a rut. Things calcify in such a way that change becomes impossible. But to walk in the Spirit as followers of Jesus means that we listen to His leading wherever it takes us. Jesus models this so well. Jesus lived a wholehearted life.

Jesus refused to fit into the social conventions of his day for the sake of being liked.
Jesus would leave a village in the middle of a revival when the Father told him to move on.
Jesus would stop in the middle of a crowd to tend to an individual others had missed.
Jesus challenged the disciples and made space for children.
Jesus went to the cross and rebuked Peter for trying to hold him back.

Jesus followed where the Father's energies led him.
You must too.

One of the hardest challenges I have faced navigating the course of my life is fitting into categories that make others happy.

I love being a Pastor and serving an amazing local church, but I have a heart for the kingdom that extends beyond the boundaries of New York.

I love the life of the mind, theology, philosophy, and sociology, but I also love the arts, music, and poetry.

I love holy ambition and drive, but I chase wonder and whimsy hard.

And for most of my life, this pursuit of wholeheartedness has made me at odds with the conventional world. The price of wholeheartedness is being misunderstood. But it is a price worth paying. 

Being wholehearted will require you to have courage. 

It requires the willingness to say yes to things you have said no to for a very long time.
It requires you to say no to things you have been saying yes to for a very long time.
It requires ruthless honesty about your need to please people and be liked.
It requires being honest about changes that need to happen. Friends you need to let go of, endings that are overdue, acknowledging your opinions and convictions have changed.

Why not take a moment this week to ask God to show you how to pursue wholeheartedness? Maybe the following questions are a few things to reflect on.

What have you lost affection for? 

What is robbing you of joy?

What dream has been burning in your heart that has been smothered by obligation but needs to breathe?

What has God ripened in you through your abiding in him?

Where has God been working in private that needs more public expression?

What do you need to harvest from this season before it rots on the vine? 

Behind the answer to these questions is the rest of your heart, the rest you have been looking for that has gotten lost along the way. 

Learning about wholeheartedness, David Whyte wrote,

"Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences." 

Here’s to the terrifying, heart-stirring, soul-wakening consequences of living from the whole of our hearts.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.