Confession is good for the (wired) soul

At the airport after teaching a workshop on The Wired Soul.

Okay, so I’ve been a bit of a whiner lately, and ungrateful to boot.  I think I’m over it now, but since confession is good for the soul, here I am, telling you.  It started last week when I was in Canada to share on topics from my book, The Wired Soul with the Navigator staff.  Before my workshop, I got to hear two amazing messages about Jesus—one by missiologist Michael Frost and the other by author and teacher Deb Hirsch.  I was deeply moved by what they shared, but then I found myself thinking about my workshop where I’d be talking about rewiring our brains and digital life and smartphones and that’s when I started feeling sorry for myself, lamenting, “Lord, why can’t I just talk about Jesus?”

The Lord used those messages to gently but firmly set me straight.  Let me explain. Michael Frost told us that the primary mission of the church is to alert everyone, everywhere to the universal reign of King Jesus, and then he asked: “What do others know of God’s reign from watching your life?” 

Deb Hirsch talked about Jesus sending us into our world exactly as the Father sent him and that being incarnational is first and foremost identification with others in their humanness. This, she said, requires a lot of listening and learning and time.  Simply put, it means we must be present to the people God places in our paths.

As I sat there thinking about presence, the Lord reminded me that I wrote this book because everywhere I looked, I saw Christ-followers who had lost their way, who were so caught up in digital life that they were no longer able to be present—to themselves, to God or to the world around them.   Being tethered to smartphones as intensely as we tend to be, makes it difficult to even experience the reign of our King Jesus, much less alert the world to it.  These things were on my mind with every page I wrote in that book, and while it is full of information—research, statistics, etc., The Wired Soul is, most importantly, a word of hope and a path forward in this crazy technological revolution of which we are all a part.  Here is how I summarized it on the final page:

           …undergirding each word there has been a purpose, a passion that fuels not just this book, but everything I                have ever written or taught. Simply put, I yearn to see Christ- followers fulfill their joyful destiny by                          walking in intimacy with him. Never have I felt this to be more at risk than today, as the digital revolution                  alters our very way of being in the world.

I hope you will read The Wired Soul for one reason—I want you to fall in love with Jesus all over again, and for most of us, unless we find some balance in our digital lives, there is simply no space for that to happen.  Okay, I’m done whining now, and feeling grateful I got to write this book.  You can get it now here!