Picture this...you are at the gym and you’re getting ready to lift some weights. It’s been a while, but you’ve decided to go for it. The barbell is in your hands and you are prepared to lift it up over your head.

But before you do so, a guy walks over to you and says, “I bet you can lift more than that. Here, let me help you.” You protest, but he insists and then he proceeds to add 20 more pounds to each side. And then he just walks away,...

 Welcome to an Inhaling Grace audiobook episode of the Unhurried Living Podcast. Here are the next three devotionals from Inhaling Grace. May you sense the real presence of God shepherding you as you listen.

In our new book, What Does Your Soul Love?, one of the eight questions we ask is, “What Are You Clinging To?” It’s the question of control. Many of us struggle with control issues. We want to feel safe, so we seek to take control of things and even people around us. This doesn’t generally turn out so well, for us or for others.

What we’ve discovered in our journey with God is that our souls actually love to be abandoned to the loving and good purposes of God for...

We are diving into part two of our discussion on our new book, What Does Your Soul Love? 

When it comes to our life in Christ, change is part of the invitation. Transformation is essential to the journey. But we get stuck when we let what we perceive to be negative emotions and issues stop us from moving forward. Today we are going to address pain, fear, control and, finally, joy.

When asked to choose between one or the other, would you prefer to ask questions…or to have answers? Most of us would readily admit that we like answers. And as soon as possible, thank you very much.

However, as spiritual directors, Alan and I are accustomed to asking questions and then not striving for answers right away. Sometimes a good work is actually accomplished inside of us as we hold the questions—to linger with them and let them be answered in layers. 

If...

How do you feel about change? Some of us naturally love change. We like spontaneity, variety, new experiences. And some of us naturally resist change. We like stability, tradition, we like to “do it again.”

But personal preferences are not exactly what we’re talking about today. When it comes to our life in Christ, change is part of the invitation. Transformation is essential to the journey. This week and next we are going to share some key insights from our new book, "What...

Many years ago, we found ourselves in an extended season in which we felt like we were moving from transition to transition in our lives. Sometimes it involved outward transitions like new roles or new neighborhoods, but more often, it was a matter of transitions inside of us.

• Transitions of what was meaningful currently compared to what had been meaningful to us before.
• Transitions in our experience of God with us or, sometimes, wondering why God didn’t feel as close to us as before.
...

Our new book, What Does Your Soul Love?, finally releases next week, September 17. It’s been a long journey and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. At the center of the book is God’s invitation to us to “be transformed.” This kind of change is good news, even if it sometimes feels challenging, scary, even painful.

How do we stay on this transforming journey? What does it look like when we get stuck along the way? How might we continue to cooperate with...

The message at the center of our new book "*What Does Your Soul Love*" is the invitation and opportunity to change, to be transformed. That’s the idea we’ll focus on today. The big idea of how God is with us in the many changes we experience in our lives and in our communities of faith.

In our upcoming book, What Does Your Soul Love?, I shared a few nuggets of wisdom from one of my mentors, Abbot David Geraets (1935-2012). But there’s one I did not put in the book and I’d like to offer it to you today.

I had the pleasure of having Abbot David as my spiritual director when I attended his school for spiritual directors. I had learned that he was an expert in working with dreams, so I brought in a binder full of dreams that I had been recording since 1993. At the...