Introduction
Setting the scene
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
Psalm 84:5
We are familiar with the term ‘hardening of the arteries’ as a medical problem that can increase the chance of a stroke or heart attack. But how many of us have considered that we may be suffering from hardening of the ‘ought-eries’? Hardening of the ‘ought-eries’ refers to a life dominated by a relentless sense of obligation – constantly feeling the need to meet expectations, whether our own, others’ or even, we may believe, God’s. To live with this condition is to be continually plagued by the relentless thought, ‘Whatever I do is never enough.’ It may not lead to a heart attack, but can so often affect our heart of hearts, which may lead to (among other symptoms) depression, burnout or simply turning away from faith, because ‘it is just too hard’.
This condition can happen because we have a poor understanding of who we are in Christ and a poor understanding of what God actually wants from us and, importantly, what He wants for us.
The words of Jesus speak directly into this situation of being driven:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
(Matthew 11:28-30)
Many know this passage well and are familiar with what it is like to be driven, and yet find it hard to equate the two! Now that I am aware of this, I find that many scriptures actually address it; however this is the obvious one, so I will start here.
The Message Bible paraphrases the passage in its own unique and often helpful style:
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
Exploring what Jesus meant by these words will shed new light on our understanding of this passage, taking it from our heads to our hearts, as at the core of this Jesus is speaking to our heart of hearts. Bringing rest for our souls, and healing for our ‘hardened ought-eries’.
Using this book
This is book is a journey, from Jesus heralding a new era to a magnificent revelation of grace at the end, in which I invite you to join me. Recently, my wife, some friends and I walked the Fife Pilgrim Way in Scotland. Along the route, waymarkers encouraged us to keep going, guided us and provided moments to pause and reflect. One such point was the church at Markinch, which over countless centuries has been used as a resting place for pilgrims. As we sat outside the church, breathing fresh air in the sunshine, it was good to rest, eating our packed lunch and reflecting on what we had seen and learned. In a similar way, at the end of each section of this book, you will find a ‘waymarker’, encouraging you to pause and to review what has been learned and where on the journey you are. As you walk with me, I hope that your hardened ‘ought-eries’ will ease and you will again breathe fresh air in the sunshine of God’s grace.
I do not see myself as an academic or a theologian but as a practitioner who has endeavoured to live out my Christian faith in many different areas, so please don’t expect a polished theological document. Rather, see it as a journey, which I trust is biblically grounded, helping us all grasp in a deeper way what this life of faith looks like.
Over the years, I have read widely. While I will reference sources where possible, much of what I share has been shaped by personal study and lived experience that has simply formed who I am and what I believe.
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A journey into rest
Religion is not the church we go to but the cosmos we live in.
Our world and our culture are in the greatest need of rest, and peace for our souls.
G K Chesterton[1]
My own journey of learning
A close friend recently asked me, ‘After all your years in industry, leadership and preaching, why do you want to write about this?’
On reflection, I came to the conclusion that in many ways this defines my own story. I think this addressed an unrelenting need in my own life, but also one that is pressing in many of our lives, in the Church and also in our increasingly fast-paced world. As I have begun to share my heart on this, I find that I am not alone, with many saying that it strikes a deeply resonant note. Out of all the things I have learned and preached, this still touches me more deeply than anything else.
Let me explain
Years ago, at a Bible week in a tent on yet another rainy Scottish summer’s evening, when worship was beautiful and deeply moving, I asked God to be close and embrace me. The answer that came back was clear and shocking: ‘No.’ That set me on a journey which later I realised I had been on for a long time.
Many years before that night in the tent, during a stressful time as a civil engineer, I was running several contracts and working long hours travelling crazy distances each day. Life had become intolerable and exhausting. It felt as though I was on a hamster wheel that I could not get off. Previously I felt that the Lord had promised that my work would be worship, but at this precise time that seemed a million miles away. In hindsight, I realise that God was working deeply in my life, calling me further into Him and towards church leadership.
As I drove those long and at times lonely miles across Scotland, I would sometimes be so overwhelmed by God’s love that I had to stop the car and simply let myself be embraced by Him. I recall one particular time on an early summer morning high above Loch Lomond when I was praying as I drove to yet another stress-filled day at work. I was overcome by such a presence of the Lord in the car that I had to pull over and stop. I don’t know how long I sat there, unable to pray and hardly even able to breathe as the Lord was so close. Time stood still and eventually I had to ask the Lord to let me go as I was struggling to breathe! I knew the Lord was with me and that He loved me! I don’t know whether it was a response to stress or a deep spiritual encounter, but it was undeniably real to me in that moment.
Later, after leaving my career as an engineer and embarking on a new direction of church leadership, I would again be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task God had called me to and, again, I would have to pull over and yield to what felt like a very physical embrace. As before, I had to ask the Lord to stop as I simply could not breathe!
Going back to that night in the tent when I felt the shock of the Lord saying, ‘No,’ I had to go outside and sort it out with God! My wife will often sense a leading to a certain chapter and verse without knowing exactly what the verse is about; it is often appropriate to the occasion. I don’t normally work that way, but that evening I had a strong sense that I should look at Matthew 23:37:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.
I was stunned! The Lord had called me by name from Scripture – ‘Chic’ (OK, I know the spelling is not precise)! But I felt the Lord saying, ‘Chic, I would embrace you, but you are too busy so I can’t.’ As you can imagine, that stopped me in my tracks, and so a long period of reflection and interior work started.
I began to explore a more contemplative way of being. As you will have gathered by now, I am out-and-out activity driven, so I found this hard, but essential. I started to read different kinds of books which I would describe as ‘how to be’, as well as the more technical ‘how to do’ books on church leadership. I began to learn how to simply sit in the presence of the Lord and listen. I was introduced to the work of the Northumbria Community,[2] which reacquainted me with the ‘art’ of sitting and contemplation. I learned to sit for fifteen or twenty minutes of a morning in the Lord’s presence. Just sitting, not praying, not studying, but simply sitting and giving room for Him to speak, to be with me and me with Him.
As part of this, I use a reflective practice which has helped me many times, personally and in leading individuals and groups. This is how it goes; maybe you would like to try it sometime.
Finding a quiet space, I pray, asking the Holy Spirit to guide me, then I imagine a scene from around AD30, when I am leaving Jerusalem, with the city gates behind me. I begin to walk. I see a campfire over to my right in a bit of scrubland, around which there is a group of a dozen or so people, and then I recognise Jesus among the group. Asking the Holy Spirit to guide, I then consider and imagine what to do next. I occasionally repeat this exercise as and when I feel the need to, and each time I have a different experience, which often helps me understand what God wants to say to me.
The first time I did this, I recall looking at my watch (I know it is AD30 and watches were not invented then, but stay with me!) and thinking, ‘I don’t have time for this but I know I need to go over, I can’t not.’ So I simply went over and joined the group. The most telling part was my nervous glance at my watch.
Sometime later, I did the same exercise, asking the Holy Spirit to guide me through the scenario again, and this time as I went over, Jesus was very clearly telling me to be quiet and sit down, pointing to a log on His left. I sat down, while Jesus remained standing, and I just sat.Very soon after, I contracted shingles, resulting in taking time off work and being forced to ‘sit down’! Lovely people wanted to pray for healing and a quick recovery back to activity. I welcomed the prayer but declined the offer of a quick return to activity as I knew I was where I was meant to be, with God having things to teach me. During this time, which lasted a few months, I journeyed through Henri Nouwen’s wonderful book, The Return of the Prodigal.[3] For months I ‘sat on that log’ as I listened to the Lord and read that book.
My health recovered and life was good as the church grew and I was seeing fruit in my ministry. However, sometime later, things again began to get difficult, so I made time to visit a trusted Christian counsellor, with whom I had to do some further hard work. She unravelled that I was suffering from that ‘hardening of the ought-eries’, which I referred to earlier. My life was driven by the thoughts of ‘I ought to do this and ought to do that’; in effect I was driven, to the point where I was damaging my health and no doubt the lives of those closest to me. I won’t go any deeper into the drivers causing this, as I think we all have different ones and it will not add anything to list mine.
Again, more time off work as the Lord worked deeply within me. I was returned to health as I relearned what it is to sit still and allow Him to embrace me. After going through the spiritual exercise described above again, I heard Jesus say, ‘Lean closer and let Me embrace you.’ This was very difficult indeed, as I have a skin condition from birth which makes embrace uncomfortable, and the thought of itchy, scratchy robes around me was physically off-putting. Not surprisingly, that resulted in a reflective interior journey until I was willing and even hungered for that embrace, robes and all!
I was getting desperate. When was I ever going to get off this ‘log’ and get on with ministry? When I finally felt the Lord say it was time to get up, He showed me that I was not to go alone but, in fact, it would be a dance, a dance with Jesus. Sure, getting up and moving, but in that dynamic embrace with Him. Ken Gire’s book The Divine Embrace[4] helped me to see this.
During one of these times of reflection, I remember an evening at a local restaurant with my wife. As I savoured a particularly delicious lamb shank, I recall hearing God whisper, ‘What do you want, really want, in your heart of hearts?’ That did take me by surprise, and I thought about it for a few moments and asked the Lord if He could give me time to think and reflect on it. It was much too big a question to answer spontaneously, and anyway, the lamb shank was so delicious!
I prayed, thought and reflected on this for some months and eventually, in reading through the Psalms, I found that Psalm 27 echoed my decision:
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple …
My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’
Your face, Lord, I will seek.
Do not hide your face from me.
(Psalm 27:4, 8-9)
Have I learned this lesson? Am I living in this perfect divine embrace? I would love to say yes, but that would not be truthful. I try to, and sometimes am better at it than at other times, but it is something I hunger for and I know what it feels like. It is something to press into and return to in greater depth to reset myself when things get hard. I am beginning to recognise those drivers that rob me of peace, telling me to work harder, and I have learned to say no. But this is not a one-time thing; it is a lifetime of work.
One day, when I’m fully embraced in His love, I will know rest as I never have before. Until then, I press on, knowing that His embrace is always within reach and that this is a lifelong journey.
I hope that, by being honest and sharing my journey, I can encourage you to find that promised rest for your own soul.
[1] Cited in Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, London: SPCK, 2019, p6.
[2] www.northumbriacommunity.org (accessed 6th March 2025).
[3] Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal: A Story of Homecoming, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2004.
[4] Ken Gire, The Divine Embrace, Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003.
