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Sacred Yes

Sacred Yes

Last updated on: May 25, 2018 at 1:22 pm by Frank Viola

Sacred Yes 2018-05-25T13:22:19-04:00 Frank Viola

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Susie Larson has just come out with a new book. It’s entitled Your Sacred Yes: Trading Life-Draining Obligation for Freedom, Passion, and Joy.

Recently, I caught up with Susie to talk about her new book.

Enjoy!

Share one or two experiences that shaped the insights in the book.

Susie: About fifteen years ago, a distinguished woman invited me to breakfast though I barely knew her. And what she had to say to me about knocked me silly. I’d been running myself ragged doing all kinds of good things, church things even; but I was about to receive the wake-up call of my life. She leaned in, looked me square in the eye, and proceeded to tell me how once upon a time both she and her husband were respected leaders (like us), and busy at church (like us), and their lives bore lots of fruit (like us, it seemed). But in an unrealized moment of vulnerability, her husband fell morally in a very public way, and their lives came crashing down around them. At the time of our breakfast date, she was still sorting through the wreckage of his choices. She leaned in and said:

“Susie, I am quite sure that neither Kev nor you have any thoughts or secret desires to step off of God’s best path for you, but I see the weariness in your eyes and I know we have a fierce opponent as an enemy. He’ll wait for just the right time and he’ll trip you up, or he’ll trip up Kevin. He intends to take you out. God has put you on my heart time and time again and I’m telling you, warning you, please step back, get some rest, re-set, and put some firmer boundaries around your marriage, your life, and your time.”

That breakfast date put a healthy fear of God in me. I believe it’s entirely possible that she saved us from some kind of devastation and I thank God for her courage. Kevin and I raced toward burnout at that time, and that encounter was one of the catalysts God used to slow us down and put us back on track. Since then, we’ve never let up from certain marriage and time boundaries.

Thankfully, God loves us all enough to alert us to the enemy traps and dangers down the road.

May we be wise enough to listen to the messages He sends our way and make the necessary course adjustments.

The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty (Proverbs 27:12 niv)

When we—without thinking too much about it—give away our time to things un-appointed by God, we will not have the grace to sustain them. Consequently we put ourselves at risk of the enemy’s schemes. We may forge ahead with energy and enthusiasm, but, under our own strength, we’re not strong enough to keep our own footing. Especially when we live out from under God’s best will for us.

Over-commitment not only wears us out, it also destabilizes us and makes us vulnerable.

Whenever we say yes, we say no. And if we say yes to things God never asked of us, we’ll say no by default to the sacred and precious areas of our life that need nurturing, attention, and care.

What is a sacred yes?

Susie: Life is a gift. Time is a treasured commodity. When we open our hands and give what we have to Jesus—be it our moments, our gifts, our time, or simply room and space for Him to show up—we find life to be a sacred journey.

When we do life with a consistent awareness of God’s presence in our midst, we find joy. And that’s the place where healing, fulfillment, and abundance happen. Jesus invites us to live purposeful and passionate, focused and free. Our yes becomes sacred when we understand that whatever we give to Jesus, He multiplies, redeems, and uses in a way that honors Him and strengthens us.

What is a sloppy yes and a shackled yes?

Susie: Nothing drains us more than signing up for things God never asked us to do. Yet, all too often that’s exactly where we lose our way. When we live shackled to others’ opinions, expectations, and requirements, we give away our yes because of a lie. We commit to things in order to save face, and as a result, we miss out on God’s invitation to fully entrust ourselves to Him.

Sometimes we over commit for all the wrong reasons (pride, insecurity, fear, hastiness). Other times we have the best of intentions for giving away our time (a good cause, a great need, there’s nobody else). Either way, we need to ask ourselves some probing questions:

Do the vast majority of our yeses increase our faith and fill us with a greater expectancy of how God is moving in our midst? Or, do they drain us to the point that we find ourselves weary, simply rushing from one thing to the next?
Are we captive to our commitments, or free to respond to God’s invitation to do life with Him?
Is our current path a catalyst to increasing joy and faith or does all of our rushing make us more prone to worry and fear?
When we assess honestly the time we give away to our various commitments, do we find behind it all, a divinely inspired soul growing in grace and strength? Or are we a spent and weary soul, losing steam by the day?

Sloppy yeses fall out of our mouths and off of our hands when we get caught up in the rat race culture and live in constant reaction to our crazy schedule, the pressures of the crowd, and the never-ending needs in front of us.

Shackled yeses come from a heart held captive by the opinions of others. When we’re driven by approval, or to save face, or to rescue or prove our sense of self-worth, we spend our energy trying to earn what Jesus has already purchased for us.

Give us two or three insights from the book that would be helpful to Christians.

Susie: Here’s something I learned long ago, and its truth is still bearing fruit in my life: We’re not called to a busyness that drains us. We’re called to an abundance that trains us. As we walk intimately with Jesus, He will train, refine, correct, and redirect us until we’re suited to manage the ‘more’ He has for us. But always, that increase comes with an element of rest, abiding, and margin. Though God calls us to live full, abundant lives, He doesn’t run us ragged or ask us to grind our gears to the point of breakdown.

Here are a few more insights that might encourage you today:

Fear stirs up our insecurities and drives us to strive. Love opens our eyes and invites us to respond.

Nothing drains us more than signing up for things God never asked us to do.

In God’s yes, there’ll always be an element of rest.

Talk about living life on autopilot.

Susie: When I worked in the fitness industry for a number of years, we commonly saw two types of people in our group fitness classes: those who fully engaged in the exercises in form and strength, and those who simply went through the motions with barely any exertion or execution. Who do you think was more fit at the end of the day? The same applies to our faith journey. Though consistency and discipline add momentum to our journey, we can too easily go from repetition to autopilot in the way that we connect with God and walk out our Christian faith.

When we forget that we’re called to a living-breathing relationship with Jesus, which involves daily interaction and course adjustments, we start to go through the motions. When we go through the motions, we disengage our hearts, and when we disengage our hearts, we disengage our faith. When all we’ve got is empty motion and minimal execution, we get nowhere, accomplish little, and most importantly, we change nothing in the spiritual atmosphere.

God is moved by our faith, not by our motions. When we worship God and mean the words that we sing in the depths of our soul, something changes. When we pray passionately and shift our weight onto God’s Word, something changes. When we love the unlovely because it’s how Christ has loved us, something changes. Our God-given call is too important for us to slip into autopilot and mindlessly go through the motions.

What do you hope readers will walk away with after they finish your book?

Susie: I pray my readers walk away with a renewed passion to number their days and live with a fully awakened heart, a fully engaged faith, and a profound assurance of God’s love for them. When we stop living in reaction to the culture (and to our fears and insecurities), and begin instead to live in response to God’s love and provision, we’ll know the abundant, abiding life to which our souls are heir, and, to which Christ so graciously invites us.

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