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Barriers: A Weary Soul

Published on February 7, 2022

Last updated on January 21, 2023

Featured photo by Ellie Burgin on Pexels.com

If you’re just joining us here, welcome to our series on barriers to spiritual investment.  We’ve discussed time as a barrier in previous posts, and this is the second post exploring weariness as a barrier to investing in our spiritual lives. Last post, we spent some time looking into the weary heart.  Today, we sit with the weary soul.

What is the soul?

To begin, let us turn to the Bible to learn how it identifies the soul. The English word, “soul,” is used fifty-seven times in the CSB. 

Its usage in the text is a complex thing, often sharing attributes with the heart and the mind and the spirit of a person. For our conversation, we will discuss the soul as: the deepest, innermost, most intimate part of a person.

Where did the soul come from?

In the book of Genesis, the creation story is recounted, and in chapter 2 we learn how mankind was created by God.  Mankind was shaped out of the dirt of the ground but did not have life until God breathed that life into him. That breath of God is what animated mankind as a type of creature. It is also at that moment that the man (and, therefore, all humankind that would be the same type of creature after him) became a living soul (“being” in the CSB). A living person with an intimate, interior life.

What is the soul’s purpose?

If we look at these fifty-seven uses of “soul” in the CSB, we can learn a few helpful things about our souls. Don’t take my word for it, though.  Click on the verse links and read the verses and their context for yourself.

With our soul, we can:

Our soul can be:

I find it interesting that, based on these passages, the soul of a person is only ever satisfied when it focuses in the direction of God. When it does not, we find ourselves with weary souls. No wonder God wants us to love him with all our soul (Mark 12:30).

What makes a soul weary?

When we feel the weariness of our souls, we are feeling sin’s war against them (1 Peter 2:11). We are experiencing the evil that has broken the world and continues to radiate fissures beyond our imagining.

It can feel terrible, heavy, and impossible to heal from.

With all of that soul-burden, it’s no surprise investing in our spiritual growth seems like just too much to handle when we have weary souls.

But it is exactly then, when we can finally realize there is nowhere else to turn but to God.  Because we’ve tried other ways and found them wanting.

However, when we begin to turn our souls, even just a little, toward getting more intimate with God, we find that the weariness of the soul lifts and finds its needs met in him.

Needs of the Soul

Our souls are as unique as we are. What our individual soul needs at any given time is only ours to discover.  No one can tell us the deepest need of our own soul. Except God.

Yes, people can tell us our soul needs to be saved from the destructive influence of evil, and that is universally true.  But it goes beyond that.

To tend to the weariness of our souls begins with discovering what our specific soul needs right now and that requires some self-awareness.

Discovering the need of your soul 

I recently read (actually listened to, on Audible) a great book, Sacred Rhythms, by Ruth Haley Barton.  I highly recommend it if you’re in a soul-weary place.  And even if you’re not, really.

It has taken me longer than usual to put this article together because, upon looking into the idea of soul weariness, I have found my own to be more weary than I knew. I needed a lot more time than I realized to settle into that truth and tend to it.

What results is, I hope, some fresh perspective on the need of the soul and what happens when you discover it.

Upon prompting via Barton’s book, I spent multiple days asking my soul the question,

“What do I want/need from God right now?”

I searched for the deepest longing within me. That longing which is purest, most authentic within me, and in need of attention.

At first, I found myself wanting a better financial situation. I wanted healed relationships in my family. I wanted to know what God’s specific direction is for me in this writing that I do. I wanted a richer time in biblical community. I wanted life to look like the idyllic version I expected when I started a family.

But when I asked myself why I wanted those things, I found them to be surface wants.  The reason for them, the longing, was deeper.

So I dug deeper. 

For another day, I asked again and discovered I wanted control. I wanted to be able to make everything work out right for my kids. I wanted to be diligent to honor God with my writing and encourage others with it. I wanted to be a voice of healing into the broken darkness of others’ experiences. 

But those were still not getting at the essence of my deepest soul longing. Those wants weren’t needs. They didn’t need attention. They were certainly revealing and challenging, but they weren’t what I was trying to get at. They weren’t what my weary soul needed.

Another day sitting with the question, “What do I want/need from God right now?” Then I stopped trying to come up with answers.  I just sat with the question. I let it linger. I asked God the question, instead of myself, or perhaps along with myself.  And I waited.

Then, driving on the highway, alone in my car, my soul broke open to reveal its treasure.

I want to be–need to be–known. All the way known.  Not just my behaviors. Not just my reasoning. Not just my emotions. But known. All the way down to my deepest parts. To my soul.

As soon as I reached that discovery, it was clear I was incapable of meeting that need myself. And the people around me are incapable of meeting that need. They can only know me so deeply and that is not as deeply as I need to be known.

“What if it cannot be met?” I feared.

Still, my soul cried out to be known.  The desperation that welled up within me–the heart’s cry–brought me to sobs. 

Challenge yourself

Ask yourself the question. “What do I want/need from God right now?” and include God in the conversation. Allow him to reveal the need of your own soul to you.

Maybe you also desire to be known, or it may be something else entirely.  To get to that deepest and truest part of who you are, you may discover some uncomfortable factors as play: false ambition, pride, fear, lust, self-protection and other heart-loves common to all of us.  But when you find that deepest need, that heart cry, Barton says, “you’ve found your capacity to reach for God.”

It feels risky to lay out that desire you feel, like I do, might not be able to be met. But it is even more of a risk to not lay it before God. He will show us what is false and what is true. What is bad and what is good. He makes right what is not right within us. This transformation of what is not right into what is right and good and “as it should be” is what makes spiritual investment worth the effort. Worth the vulnerability. Worth the trying.

The hard work of spiritual investment is, indeed, taking what is not right to the one who can make it right. It’s not about bringing guilt and shame, but about being exposed before him, finding that place perfectly safe and perfectly good. And the comfort of knowing that he will not just smooth our egos or tell us it’s fine when it’s not fine. He sits with our soul and he guides, and he has hard conversations with us, and gives us his power to be healed.  

So while it feels volatile, it is still as genuine as we can be.  It is inviting God to be our personal Emmanuel. Our “God With Us”.

For those, like me, who would rather not feel the feelings but just keep trucking along like everything’s gonna be alright, I say, “Do not be afraid of emotion.  Give it all the time it needs.” 

It took me three days just to begin discovering my soul’s deepest need. It may take longer for you, and that’s okay.  There’s no race. You might have a lot to clear away before you can get to the deepest need of your soul.  That’s also okay.  This is about what your soul needs, not how you’re doing in comparison to others or to your own ideal picture of yourself.  That’s just another thorny entanglement keeping you from the growth waiting for you.

You may already have your soul-need so freshly near the surface that you know what it is right this moment as you read these words. Once you’ve discovered it, read on. 

Until you’ve discovered it, stop here and continuously seek. The rest of the post will still be here when you’re ready.

Revival of the Soul

Unmet need

Now we’ve named the need of our unique souls right now, we’ve discovered one area for us that is not right that we need God to make right.

Let’s do a bit more work within ourselves, with God’s help, to more fully understand what it is we are bringing to him and how we’ve been trying to meet our soul need.

Take an imaginary walk through the last twenty-four hours of your life. Notice the moments when you felt anger, disappointment, isolation, sadness, fear, repulsion, shame. Dig deeper and ask yourself why you felt those things. Some of them likely result in the soul need you have which you’ve been trying to meet by your own faulty means.

For me, once I identified that I was looking to be known, I started to see that I was striving to have that need met in a lot of way that weren’t satisfying.

In a subconscious effort to be known, I explain myself to others in great detail when I feel they might misunderstand me. I want the person I am speaking with to fully know where I am coming from. It doesn’t seem so bad when you first think of it. But ultimately, it’s truly impossible to make sure one is always understood every time they speak. It simply becomes a lot of work trying to get everyone to know all the things. Eventually, people get tired of hearing me talk about myself, including me! I was making their complete knowledge of me my goal because I was seeking to satisfy my own soul need to be known. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work and I was left soul-weary.

Another way I can seek to satisfy my need to be known is by making connections with new friends. Now, new friends are a great idea, especially after spending two years in relative isolation from my previous relationships (outside of my household).

Thanks pandemic.

I’ve made a bit of shift in my social connections over the past year, and found myself in a place where it was time to make some new friends. In that, I learned how incredibly socially awkward I can be. In my striving to meet my soul need of being known, I often have conversations with potential new friends and try to hurry up and give them all of the information about my life, who I am deep inside, what I care about, and what I struggle with. All to try to speed up the process of being known and moving into that place of relationship where you just “get” each other.

Guess where I ended up on that front. Feeling weird and awkward. Looking at polite faces with eyes big as saucers because who overshares like that?

Me. Trying to get my soul need met all the way and in a hurry. More than once I’ve been left unsatisfied and feeling pretty foolish.

Then, the less known I felt by the people around me, the more irritated I became. I wasn’t specifically irritated because people didn’t know me like I wanted to be known. I was irritated because I was dissatisfied. Impatient. Upset. Angry that I seemed to always be the one no one cared to know and I couldn’t make myself be known. It felt futile.

My soul was weary.

Name the futility

How about you? Is your story like mine? Now that you know what your soul is needing right now, can you see areas of striving to meet that need that have been resulting in your own soul’s weariness?

Take a minute or two and name those. Write them down, say them aloud, text them to someone you trust with your broken places. Get them out into the light and call them what they are.

The fact that all those efforts we are exerting are not actually meeting the needs of our souls points to the truth that there’s a better, more fulfilling way to the revival of a weary soul.

Breath of fresh life

Take that need of your soul and that collection of areas where you’ve been trying to meet the need yourself and share it all with the Giver of your soul. It’s okay to not have words. He still understands.

Sit with him. Be silent with him. Lay your soul’s need open and exposed to him. Begin to trust him with that deepest part of you. It matters to him, after all. He gave it to you. He sacrificed himself so you could find your way back to him.

Invite him into your soul place. To sit with you. To see your need as you express it to him. To know your need. To treasure the vulnerability of your need with him. Be with him in the intimate place of your soul

Wait there with him.

Moving immediately out of the discomfort is usually not the best for us. Let him lead you out when it is time.

This is what I have been practicing. Each time I notice myself striving to meet my own soul need, I call it out in front of him in prayer. Sometimes a quick prayer in the middle of life. Sometimes a long sitting with just me an him in the silence. I invite him to know me. I choose to change directions from the ways I’m trying to be known that are futile and wearying. And then I ask him to show me himself, so I can know him better. It’s a funny thing about the Holy God that the more I know him, the more I am fully known. He meets the need no one else can meet. Every time.

When you are willing (or willing to be willing, even if you’re not all the way willing yet), he will shepherd you on the journey that meets your need and he’ll do it while also meeting the needs of many others.

His light will shine in your soul, revive your soul, and bring it delight.

Then set a date to meet him there again. And again. And again. He meets your soul’s need like nothing and no one else can. The more you spend time with him in the place of your soul, the more satisfied you will become.

For the eye-rollers

I recognize here that this can sound like a bunch of Christian mumbo-jumbo.  It’s easy to let the eyes and the mind gloss over because all Christians say “go to God.” I’ve been the eye-roller.

There’s a reason to go to him.  And it’s not simply because a book tells us so.  It’s because we’ve lived it. We’ve watched others live it.  We’re telling truthful stories of our experience of God with us, and we’re listening to those of others.  

We believe Jesus is the only way, not because we want to throw all the others under the bus, but because many of us have tried other ways and found only Jesus and his Spirit with our souls is the way that fully satisfies. 

Get about your business

As we wrap up today, I want to leave us with some wisdom from scripture.

When your soul is weary, get to know your desires and needs and how you are trying to meet them.

Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul.

1 Peter 2:11 CSB

Get about your business exposing them to the light of Christ.

Everything exposed by the light is made visible, for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Ephesians 5:13-14 CSB

Invite him into the dwelling place of your soul

I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not allow my eyes to sleep or my eyelids to slumber until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.

Psalm 132:3-5 CSB

May all our souls find their needs met in Christ,

Published inArticlesBarriers to Spiritual Investment Series

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