Epic Journey Podcast #26 – Routines That Restore - Episode Description
In this episode of the Epic Journey Podcast, Sonny and Cindy continue the series on the power of your words and discuss how your routines and the rhythms that God offers can restore your soul and breathe life into your heart, mind, soul and your relationships. They’ll discuss the importance of attending to your soul and breaking free from the automatic negative thoughts that can deplete you and cause division in your relationships.
Join us!
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Neglecting our souls can disrupt our oneness and God will restore our souls – God doesn’t want us to seek relief. He wants us to be restored.
Eldridge, John,2020.Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices For a World Gone Mad, Nashville,Tenn., Nelson Book Publishers.
John Eldridge says this:
“We may have neglected our soul’s need for beauty, we may have neglected our souls need for play. But I have reason to believe that unattended loss is a good place to start if you would recover and heal the vessel God wants to fill, if you would open up room in your life for him to meet you there…”
Our lives can get so busy and distracted that we are experiencing that unattended loss.
The pain that we are experiencing in our marriages sometimes is really our soul crying out longing to be filled.
We make the mistake of assuming this is our spouses responsibility and it’s not!!!. Our souls can slowly, and subtlety become depleted, and our hearts hardened, and then we blame our spouse, our marriage, our work, our finances because we are seeking relief because something has to be responsible for this!!
But blame only gives us temporary relief… like when we run away from an argument…there is a short-term reprieve but there’s no resolution of the problem and we remain distanced from each other. There is an enormous difference between relief and restoration.
God doesn’t want us to seek relief, He wants us to be restored and reconnected…
He wants our conflict resolved, our hearts softened, forgiveness both given and received, oneness with each other and with Him…fully restored.
Neglecting our souls, can disrupt our oneness.
We’re blocking that major artery through which God wants to connect us. We can make choices that not only affect our physical health but our spiritual health too.
John Eldridge also talks about healing the soul and what he found in his own life to be helpful and what has been unhelpful.
I want to share John Eldridges’ list with you because it may hit home with you and it helps us to realize that we do need to stop and consider the health of our own souls.
I’ll start with his unhelpful list:
Grocery stores. Television. Traffic. Draining people that live out of touch with their own soul, airports. The news, especially politics. Social media, your typical dose of movie violence
Now his helpful list:
Generous amounts of sunshine, everything living and green, long walks, lonesome country roads, swimming, beauty, music, water, friendly dogs, compassion, not expecting myself to produce the same level of work I normally accomplish in a day, yardwork, building a fence…
John goes on to ask these questions:
Now which cluster of the things I just named makes up most of your weekly routine?
Do you begin to see more clearly how essential it is that we intentionally care for our neglected heart and soul?
He’s talking about restoring our souls and our connection with God.
There will be times our oneness is disrupted, and we need healing and restoration.
God has a plan for that. God will restore our souls
In Psalm 23:2-3 ESV God is leading us into nature and the wilderness to do just that…
He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul.
We need...
