A thought by John Ortberg from his
book, The Me I Want to Be (p. 71).
Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy
the book.)
But I thought to try harder is always
what we need to do.
John says, “The harder you try to hit
a fast serve in tennis, the more your muscles tense up. The harder you try to
impress someone on a date or while making a sale, the more you force the
conversation and come across as pushy. The harder you cling to people, the more
apt they are to push you away.
“Sometimes trying harder helps. It can
help me clean my room, push through phone calls I need to make, or run another
lap. But for deeper change, I need a greater power than simply ‘trying harder’
can provide. Imagine someone advising you, ‘Try harder to relax. Try harder to
go to sleep. Try harder to be graceful. Try harder to not worry. Try harder to
be joyful.’”
He goes on, “Often the people in the
Gospels who got into the most trouble with Jesus were the ones who thought they
were working hardest on their spiritual life. They were trying so hard to be
good that they could not stop thinking about how hard they were trying. That
got in the way of their loving other people.”
John later says, “If trying harder is
producing growth in your spiritual life, keep it up. But if it is not, here is
an alternative: Try softer...
He goes on, “Trying softer means
focusing more on God’s goodness than our efforts. It means being more relaxed
and less self-conscious. Less pressured. When I try softer, I am less
defensive, more open to feedback. I learn better. I stay patient if things
don’t turn out the way I expected. It means less self-congratulation when I do
well and less self-flagellation when I fall down. It means asking God for help.
“When I am trying too hard, I cannot
stop thinking how nobly I’m behaving. When I take even one step toward growth,
my very next thought will often be pride at my goodness — which of course moves
me two steps back. True growth always goes in the opposite direction of
self-righteousness.”
Earlier he said, “A river of living
water is now available, but the river is the Spirit. It is not you.
“The contemplative Franciscan priest Richard Rohr puts it like this: ‘Faith does not need to push the river because
faith is able to trust that there
is a river. The river is
flowing. We are in it.’
“Don’t push the river.”
Let’s quit trying so hard and let’s reach
out to the Holy Spirit?
Yes, yes!
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