Unhindered

“There’s nothing more exhausting to a leader than disunity. Everything just feels so volatile and no one seems to feel fully heard or appreciated.”

“There’s so much decision fatigue, especially with the weighty decisions are carried out in the context of discord and uncertainty. It’s so confusing to even know what it looks like to love everyone well right now.”

“We’re all living in ambiguity, and that gets harder as it goes on longer. I am always paranoid as to whether I’m doing the right thing now that I’m out of the lane I knew how to run in.”

“I struggle with feeling like I’m contributing now that I can’t do what I used to.”

“I’m trying to put a positive face to all that’s happening. But, there’s really so much to grieve.”

“As life keeps pressing in, I’m finding out that our staff and people aren’t as healthy as I thought.”

These are some of the things leaders around the country have confided in us over the last many months as they’ve been navigating impacts of COVID-19, rising racial tensions and national elections.

The list of challenges for today’s leader is long, and it’s clear that they aren’t worn out just from working too many hours.

They’ve been drained and disoriented by constant adaptation and the unattainability of a return to the past. They’ve needed to grieve what’s been lost, and many haven’t yet slowed down to embrace lament. They’ve questioned themselves at every turn, wondering if what they are doing is right. They’ve been left with the nagging sense that they’re not doing enough or contributing well when their old roles have been taken away and they feel directionless.

Leaders have been weighed down as well by the emotional burden of volatility and disunity simmering under the surface of relationships and everyday interactions in their churches and businesses. As differing views on COVID-19, racial tensions and elections have cumulatively increased an “us versus them” mentality, many churches and Christian workspaces have become places of tension.

Many leaders are living under the pressure that every decision they make is about to royally upset someone. No matter what they decide on reopening plans or which social issues to take on, they can expect emails from outraged people on both sides who can’t believe the decisions that have been made. Often it feels impossible to leaders to make everyone feel understood and loved. Leaders have been left with the great responsibility of trying to lead people back to unity; yet many feel unequipped to lead through this challenge.

With these new pressures upon them, many leaders are seeing parts of themselves show up that they don’t recognize. Some have seen loss of their gentleness and a return of old anger. Some have felt the nearing of burn out and a growing desire to be done. Others have seen themselves isolating and feel the walls going up toward others.

The impacts of constant stress and change have showed up in the church at large too. Anxiety, depression, marital conflict, substance abuse and self-medication as circumstances have all surfaced and as life has kept pressing in on people. Some people have started living defensively as tension has risen. Many have stopped listening and started trying to prove why they are right.

Crisis can bring out the worst and it can bring out the best. While we’ve certainly seen the best show up in many ways over the last few months—innovation, social issues forced to the surface for needed conversation, and a slower pace imposed on the speed-aholics—we’ve also seen the worst show up. The progressive buildup of stress, pressure, division and confusion has left its wake of exhaustion, insecurity, judgment and anger.

Many times we’re seeing more fruit of the flesh than fruit of the Spirit showing up.

Where do the church and its leaders go from here?

While most are trying to charge forward in the good that God is accomplishing through the unexpected events of 2020, many leaders still feel unequipped to know how to draw out the best in themselves and the people they are leading in these impossible circumstances. Inspiration just seems to fall short in creating needed transformation in people.

The majority of energy has been going into rethinking methods of caring, connecting and providing. That’s good. We need that. But in order to truly come out of this better, we can’t just do things differently. We have to become different.

We need to make room amidst all the planning of new ministry approaches and fix our attention on the true heart of the matter: the heart itself. The only way to express more fruit of the spirit in us and come away from this year with unity and wellness is to make our top priority allowing God to shape our hearts.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Heart matters.

Unhindered Hearts

One word captures what our hearts need to become: unhindered.

When our hearts are hindered, they are being held back, misdirected or confused by something within that God didn’t create. Maybe it’s fear, self-doubt, a need to feel important, resentment, judgment or rigidity that’s getting in the way.

When you see someone fight to be right, rather than to listen with compassion perhaps they are hindered by pride, control or fear. When you get paralyzed by decisions, maybe you are hindered by insecurity, people pleasing or fear of failure. When someone you love is overwhelmed by uncertainty, perhaps their heart is hindered by fear and yearning for control.

Our hearts get hindered because something other than God is shaping a part of them. Our hearts get shaped by things like family of origin, everyday life experiences, God-moments and sin.

• Maybe the things you experienced in your life taught you that you’re only as good as your last performance. Then fear of failure and unattainable expectations began to hold back your heart.
• Maybe your life story left you feeling continually misunderstood. If so, perhaps you’re hindered by a need to be seen, which makes you quick to speak and too slow to listen.
• Maybe you experienced a series of unexpected things like divorce and death in your life, leaving your heart misguided by fear of the unknown and a desire to control by avoiding risk.

Our hearts are hindered far more than we often know. On the good days, our hearts may not feel hindered. We’ve got enough energy to suppress the parts of us that don’t look like Jesus. But when life presses in, we lose our reserves and things show up in us that get in the way of the fruit of the Spirit showing up in us.

Sometimes we’re so used to the way our hearts feel when they’re hindered that we don’t even notice. It’s like having 20-pound weights strapped to your ankles every time you walk out the door, but being so used to them that you think it’s normal that you get exhausted after a few blocks. 

Hebrews 12:1 paints a picture for us of the importance of unhindering our hearts. It says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Running with perseverance isn’t just about making it to the end of the race. It’s about having the wholeness, wellness and togetherness that it takes to make it through the challenges along the way and finish well.

Unhindering our hearts creates a couple major outcomes we can’t afford to go without in today’s landscape:

1. Leaders with resilience

We need leaders who can deal with the ambiguity, change, and division that is still ahead. We need leaders who are leaning into confidence, assurance, trust, compassion, and patience to keep running with perseverance. We need leaders who are ready and equipped to lead others through the same process of heart change they’ve navigated.

2. Churches full of people who can really be the church

The call to “be the church” is the repeated anthem we’ve heard from leaders all over the country. The call is to stop looking to the church as a consumer would and start living and being what the church has taught us. It’s about being able to show up for our communities when everything on which we’ve depended has changed.

Being the church also means fighting for unity by loving those who see things differently than we do. Paul writes, “I urge you, my brothers and sisters, for the sake of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree to live in unity with one another and put to rest any division that attempts to tear you apart. Be restored as one united body living in perfect harmony. Form a consistent choreography among yourselves, having a common perspective with shared values” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

As Paul says, unity is all about harmony and choreography, bringing together different voices and perspectives to create something beautiful together. We need to see more fruit of the Spirit coming out in ourselves in order to restore the capacity for us to come together as one body of Christ that can stand together and love one another through our fears, our political differences or our wounds from even well-intended others.

The Process of Unhindering

In Scripture God has given us a process that we can follow to unhinder our hearts.

1. Identify your heart shapers

“While God is in the heart shaping business,” author and speaker Reggie McNeal notes, “so much more than God has shaped your heart.” Living in this imperfect world full of sin and brokenness means that there are so many moments, experiences and influences that have shaped our hearts in the wrong ways.

A parent who didn’t love well, a series of rejections, enduring ongoing abuse, getting disappointed by unanswered prayers, constant criticism, or living with a disability can all be heart shapers. Even believers and Christian leaders haven’t made it through life without experience being their teacher over God in some way.

Your job is to take a deep look at the things other than God that have shaped your heart. What has your life taught you that is misguiding your heart? Think about the top five experiences, moments or influences that taught you something that doesn’t sound like God. What did they teach you? Challenge yourself to open yourself up to hear God’s voice in their place.

2. Heal your Sore Spots

Our hearts have been bruised by the things that shaped us, other than God. We call these places of pain, our Sore Spots. Sore Spots are defined by words like pride, inadequacy, rejection, fear, unvalued and shame. Sore Spots become the interpretive guide for our hearts. As input comes into our hearts, if it hits the sore spot, we’ll be prone to see things through its lens of lens of fear or shame or inadequacy. That can really mess up our ability to see others’ intentions clearly or correctly understand what things mean about who we are.

Psalm 147: 3 promises, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

We must allow God meet us in the places our hearts have been wounded. Let him show you the alternative he has for you: a sense of safety for fear, God-given esteem for inadequacy, or feeling cherished instead of unvalued.

Romans 8:18 says, “ I am convinced that any suffering we endure is less than nothing compared to the magnitude of glory that is about to be unveiled within us.” When you let God heal your Sore Spot, the very site of your wounding can become the source of your genius. Your genius is the best of you that shows up to make your unique contribution to the world.

3. Re-examine your Heart Logic

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

Our hearts have a fundamental, yet primitive way of making sense of things. The heart’s logic isn’t always consistent with God’s logic. And that gets us in trouble. Our hearts are asking four basic questions that influence all of the other meaning-making we do throughout life. The questions are:

1. Is God good? Is He really good all the time?
2. Am I good even though I’m flawed? Am I truly valued and worthy of love?
3. Are other people good? Is there goodness among the brokenness in humanity?
4. Is life good? Is life good even in the most difficult times?

As you evaluate your answers to the questions, you have to resist the urge to let your head answer, rather than your heart. Many times we have more objections to saying “yes” than we realize at first pass. Once you’ve been honest with how your heart answers these questions, you must reexamine your answers with the gift of reason and faith. We have to be able to say “yes” to all four questions in order to set ourselves up with a foundation of hope and trust.

4. Rewrite your private conclusions and life lessons

Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”’

We develop ways of thinking and doing throughout life that are the product of the Sore Spots and Heart Logic within. With those untrustworthy influences in our hearts, no wonder we don’t always see things the way God does. We might see threat where God sees promise. We might see a roadblock where God sees a way around. No wonder our strategies and behaviors in life aren’t always the ones God would choose for us. We might get defensive when God asks us to stay humble. We might try to hide and put on a mask when God asks us to let others see. We’ve got to surrender all we’ve known and let God show us a new way.

Spend time with God to reexamine what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to in your life. What thoughts misguide you? Constant self-condemnation? Expecting the worst from others? Judgment? What behaviors and strategies mislead you? Denial? Self-indulgence? Control?

Let this understanding become a new guide for how you’ll walk out the commands from 2 Corinthians 10:5, to “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ,” and from Ephesians 4:22-24, to “put off your old self” and “put on the new self.”

Leading an Examined Life

In order to join God in this process of unhindering your heart, you must decide to lead an examined life. With your heart unexamined, your heart is working against you rather than for you. It keeps you stuck in the same rut, with the same outcomes that you don’t know how to change. It keeps you feeling like Paul: “I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway” (Romans 7:19).

Most of us start the process of self-examination with what’s on the outside. We look at the state of our lives and decide on the solutions are needed. We try to fix our situation or control another person to find a better outcome. But that’s backward. And it’s insufficient. What we must do is get to the heart of the matter and let our inside change our outside.

We need to get away from the hustle of adaptation and from the noise of external voices, get before God, and say, “Lord lead me through your process of heart change to shore up the insecurity, fear, people pleasing, control or compartmentalizing within me that’s keeping me from leading well and living well.” Or “Lord, lead our people beyond their single-mindedness, judgment, unhealthy coping, or fear that’s compromising well-being and unified community.”

As the church looks for direction to carry it into its new beginnings, let this be it: Let us come together as the body of Christ to submit our hearts to God’s unhindering process. May that spur us on toward more togetherness, deeper resilience and greater emotional and spiritual wellness.

The heart of the matter is that heart matters. Real change doesn’t happen until hearts change.