How to Grow the Garden of your Soul you Want
The inward life has been compared to a garden. So how do you grow the garden of the soul you really want? Intentional living is the first of four keys to creating an flourishing inward life.
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How do you grow in your faith? How do you deepen the inward parts of your spiritual self?
That was Ryan Huguley's question in his newsletter a few weeks ago. I took note of his thoughts, and then I considered how I would answer this question for myself. What would I say to someone who asked that exact question? Ryan is a pastor and spiritual director who helps people practical work through their faith. I’m a pastor who is often asked how to have a relationship with God.
In other words, the true burning question people have, which they often cannot express succinctly, is:
“How do I grow the inward part of my life?”
So, I took a few minutes to jot down some ideas, and to my surprise I looked back at something I wrote almost 15 years ago, and it said almost the exact same thing. There are some differences, and I think I’ve improved my list since, but the core issues are the same. Here is my list of how to grow your spiritual self:
Intentional
Community
Scripture
Prayer
Over the next four weeks, I will expand on one of these core pieces of spiritual growth, which begins with living intentionally.
Living Intentionally
I wrote a series of articles on the Word of the Year project at the start of this year. I started this personal growth mechanism in 2011 and have continued for 13 years. That first year, I chose the word FREEDOM. It was a bountiful year for me, and the number one lesson I learned about finding freedom was living intentionally.
I learned to find freedom in any area of my life, I need to be intentional.
The fruit of intentional living goes far beyond freedom.
What do you want?
Often, when I meet with someone for prayer or spiritual counsel, I’ll begin with this question: “What do you want?” It’s an open-ended question, so he or she can talk about the most pressing thing on their mind. As we talk it through, I've found that the person will eventually find themselves at the core of what is bothering them. This core issue is what they want to change, improve, or grow in.
At this point, we figure out the steps to get there, which means being very intentional. When you want something in your life, you must intentionally see it happen. Intentionality is true with learning from a Word of the Year, finding a new job, creating a successful workout routine, or growing your inner life. God intentionally planned a path from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane. If you want to grow in your inward life, you must be intentional about that, too.
Intentionality in Scripture
Late in the Old Testament, hundreds of years after David, Solomon, and the height of the Israeli empire, Israel was punished for her constant sin. These consequences came in two phases: the Assyrian empire invaded and conquered half of the kingdom (Israel), and then Babylon defeated the other half of the nation (Judah). Though God disciplined Israel, he also showed them mercy. Seventy years after King Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army sacked Jerusalem, God allowed a small remnant of refugees to return to their homeland.
The people returned in several waves and slowly began to rebuild the former capital, Jerusalem. The people arrived in Jerusalem with huge dreams—rebuilding the city, the walls, and the Temple. This was what the Jewish people wanted. In other words, they dreamed of rebuilding Jerusalem, but their dreams kept falling flat. They stalled out on rebuilding the Temple and did the same with the walls.
Nehemiah’s Intentional Plan and Steps
When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, the Temple had been restored, but the walls were still in piles.1 The people had quit working on them for valid reasons—the surrounding people threatened them with violence and political harm. Nehemiah was dismayed by what he saw but didn’t allow it to overwhelm him. He attacked the problem with three intentional strategies: Assess, Prepare, and Work. Let’s look at each of these a little more in-depth.
Assess
When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, his first action was to assess the state of the walls. He went out late at night with only a few hand-selected people. He saw the exact state of the city's defenses. He got a picture of what he was dealing with instead of relying on what others had told him.
When building (or rebuilding) your inner, spiritual life, you need to know exactly where you are and be honest about your state of life.
Part of this work means determining what you want your life to look like. The garden of your soul will look different than your neighbor’s. What do you want your inner life to be? Does it include prayer, mediation, daily devotions, weekly worship attendance, etc? What does the fruit look like? We know that Paul tells us in Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.2 What other fruit will you experience in your life?
This intentional step of assessing where you are and where you want to go is vital to building the inner life you want.
Prepare
After Nehemiah assessed the state of the walls (and knowing the final result would be these walls rebuilt around the entire city), Nehemiah devised a plan for the city officials. This plan was two-fold, and both aspects are important for building your desired inner world.
First, Nehemiah assigned everyone a section of the wall they would be responsible for. Every Jewish person in the city was required to take their part, so Nehemiah sectioned out the wall tribe by tribe and family by family. There was no ambiguity about what they needed to do. Each person knew the specific steps they should take to see the walls rebuilt.
What is the step you need to take to see your spiritual life rebuilt? You don’t need to do it all in a day. It took the people weeks to finish the walls using this plan. Creating, tending to, and growing your spirit will take a lifetime. However, it begins with ONE step today. What is the step you need to take today?
Second, Nehemiah prepared to fight. He had enemies against his plan — other groups who didn’t want to see Jerusalem rebuilt and fortified. So they hurled threats at Nehemiah, the same threats they had told the previous leaders. They threatened to harm the people physically and to send word to the king the people of Israel were planning a rebellion against him.
Nehemiah fought these threats by arming the people. He led them to rely on God and fight these enemies if attacks came. Nehemiah also fought these opposing leaders by refusing to engage in their political shenanigans. He knew he had the king's backing, so their threats were toothless.
You have an enemy of the soul working against your desire to build a strong spiritual self. You need to fight him. Arm yourself by putting on the armor of God.3 Remind yourself that you are a child of God4, and no weapon formed against you can stand.5 And you don’t have to engage in his mental warfare. Scripture tells you to capture your thoughts so they don’t destroy you.6
This is exactly how Nehemiah battles his enemies. He ignores them:
“so I replied by sending this message to them: ‘I am engaged in a great work, so I can’t come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?’”
-Nehemiah 6:3
Work
After Nehemiah assessed the work that needed to be done and prepared the people to do it, the hard part began. They worked. Scripture says they worked from sunrise to sunset, day after day.
This is the gritty and unsexy side of growth.
It goes back to that step you know you need to take. Growth is moving from knowing what you need to do to doing it and doing it day after day. In Nehemiah, we find the work on the walls wasn’t easy for anyone. It was hard on the poor, and it was hard on the rich. The work it takes to grow your spirit will be hard no matter who you are, but the results are worth it.
The Garden of the Soul
So, let’s end by going back to the start.
What do you want? What does growth look like for you?
Our neighbor, Donna, recently moved from her home to a retirement living facility. We were sad to see her leave because she is a character (oh, the stories we could tell!). But the other reason we’ll miss her is each summer, she turned her front yard into a huge flower bed. This garden consumed her life from the first signs of Spring to the dying embers of Fall. Most of every day, she was in this garden of flowers, from sun up to sun down.
Now that she has left, we fear this garden will follow her. It will either be gutted and replaced with a regular lawn or die from lack of care.
It’s a well-worn trope…your soul is a garden. If you ignore it, it will wither and die. However, if you take the intentional steps (or hard work) of assessing, preparing, and working in the garden of your inner world, it will bloom and flourish.
My prayer is you take the next step of caring for your soul.
In encourage you to read the book of Nehemiah this week. It’s short (only 13 chapters long), but it is a great case study in leading both yourself and a team through growth and change.
Galatians 5:22-23
Ephesians 6:13-17
1 John 3:1-3
Isaiah 54:17
2 Corinthians 10:5