It is yielding to Jesus. It is learning to follow his lead. It is learning to rest in the reality that if I am to “improve” at all, it is going to be his work in me rather than my work for him. Spiritual transformation is much more about what God is forming in me than in what I am doing. I was helpless to help myself; Christ came to do for me what I could not do for myself.

That, in a nutshell, is one way of preaching the gospel. After the initial ego-sting wears off, it really is good news.

The gospel, according to certain tellings, can sound and look a lot like self-improvement. And to a self-help obsessed culture, (fueled by an industry that is worth about $13 billion dollars annually), it is no surprise when we are drawn to it. It is no surprise that so many of our “discipleship programs” are really just “self-help programs” couched in New Testament language, cherry-picking verses or stories that give a Christian seal-of-approval to self-help ideas.

My earliest understanding of prayer was that in prayer I was to ask something of God: “Heal my headache. Help my friend. Cause us to succeed. Provide for this need.” The evidence that this “worked” was “answered prayer”—whatever I had asked for actually happened in some way.

Then, I came to understand prayer as more of a conversation, in which I could ask questions and listen to God’s response: “What should I do in this situation? Which option should I choose? Who should I share your love with? How should I spend my free time today? What is your calling on my life?” The evidence that this “worked” was a sense of purpose and direction, greater confidence in what I was to do.

In more recent years I am understanding prayer as a space in which I can be with God. “__________________.” Silence. Not many words at all, if any. The evidence that this “works” is… well… hmm…

To be honest, it’s so deeply and intimately beautiful that I find it hard to describe in a single sentence.

I’ve heard it said that the most loving thing we can do for another person is to give them the gift of our presence. Our undivided attention. To simply be with them. Not working on a project, not solving a problem, not dreaming about the future, not engaging in anything tangible or productive—just being.

So it is that we are invited to love God: by bringing our whole self to be present to him.

After all, (as I have also heard it said), he created human beings in his own image, not human doings.

If you’ve been a leader for more than a minute, you know the pain of someone leaving. Someone uno longer able or willing to follow you. Someone in disagreement with your ideas, your practices, your decisions, your new haircut, your whatever. It stings every time—even those times when the sting of loss is mixed with a sigh of relief.

Sometimes people leave your leadership because you messed up. Own up to that. Learn from it. Process it internally; make changes externally. Move on.

But sometimes people leave precisely when you’re doing your best.

One of Jesus’ most poignant and classsic teachings in the gospel of John comes in chapter 6: After miraculously feeding thousands of people using only a little boy’s lunch, he sees a teachable moment and says, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And what was the result? Being Jesus, we might expect that there would be thousands of converts after such a display of power and a powerful sermon. But no. Whatever credibility his food services had gained him was quickly lost as the conversation turned to cannibalism.

Sometimes we have to get out from under the shadows of our mothers and fathers in order to do what our Heavenly Father is doing.

There comes a point where what was done in the past no longer serves the present. There comes a point where must reckon with the fact that our emulation has become parody, to the loss of our true selves that God has created us to be for the sake of the world.

Our mothers and fathers were themselves for their world; we must be ourselves for our world. We cannot be them for our world. That is an impossibility because it is based in non-reality. The only reality we have in which to walk in the light of God is now. Not in the past. Not in the future. Now.

That is, in the present and tangible world. In real times and real places. In the here and now.

God is not encountered in the past, although our memories can perhaps recall where he was close to us in times and places that we did notice his presence or activity.

God is not encountered in the future, although we can anticipate his presence with us.

God is not primarily found in the interior world. If we ignore his presence to us in the outer world of creation, people, seasons, circumstances, and even our own bodies, we are in danger of missing him and also of making our own thoughts and emotions into our gods.

Are a decent sign that your ego has been oversized. Or overactive. Or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe all of the above.

Ego, sense of self, is not evil. It’s an integral part of what it means to be human. It serves as a sort of dashboard for our life: when a warning light comes on, pay attention.

A gut punch is a sign that some humility and contentment are needed, like symptoms of a serious illness. A re-clarification of exactly who you are (and are not), of what your activity ought to be be (and ought not to be), of where your place is (and is not).

What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

The Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 14:15)

What if we said the same thing about leadership? “I will lead with my mind, but I will lead with my spirit also.”

In my experience of church leadership, observing both my own inner dynamics and in working alongside dozens of other leaders, I have seen this tension. There is a spectrum that we all move along. Some leaders tend to stick firmly towards one end or the other. Some are chronic over-thinkers, astute and business-minded, evaluating their ministry with SWOT analyses and strategizing their next steps. Some leaders tend to over-spiritualize everything, living in the heat of the moment, moving forward with little fore-planning and calling it being Spirit-led, conflagrating their whims and moods with discernment.

And yes: by “some leaders,” I mean “me.” The struggle is real. We are complicated and nuanced creatures.

The mind and the spirit are not opposed to one another. At their best, they complement each other as each potential question or decision exists along a continuum between the two.

The trick comes in having the wisdom to know to lean more on the mind or the spirit. It is quite tempting to run to one extreme or the other. (And, quite, frankly, easier and faster). Some decisions that are very practical and logical are over-spiritualized, and others that are more mystical in nature are over-systematized or over-debated. Some things are best approached as a “spiritual” decision while others as a “thoughtful/logical” decision.

Most decisions require a delicate blend of both. Good leaders welcome this tension.

Just say it.

Say it at the right time.

Say it in the right medium.

Say it to the right people.

Say it within the right time frame. Not everything needs to be a novel. It might need to be an essay, or a blog post, or a tweet, or a bumper sticker. Know the difference.

In saying that the kingdom comes like a mustard seed, or like yeast, Jesus is gently and somewhat indirectly inviting us to rest in the act that God works even through death. Not in spite of death, but with and through death.

As Jesus himself points out elsewhere, the only way a seed can fulfill it’s purpose is by dying. By being literally buried underground, then breaking apart and decomposing into the earth. A seed’s full seed-ness is reached in it’s death.

In the same way, yeast completely disappears when it is mixed—or, perhaps better, “buried”—into the flour. Not only that, but it gives its life during the baking process. It suffers under a heat which it cannot survive, yet which also solidifies the tiny pockets of air it has created in the risen dough. Yeast’s full yeast-ness is reached in its death.

In the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, one not-named but ever-present element is an invisible one: Breath. That is—speaking literally in terms of the parables—carbon dioxide.

The air that we breathe out is the air that plants “breathe in.” Once the seed has begun to take root, and the first tiny little shot of green peeks through the soil, the plant begins to take in carbon dioxide. That—mixed, of course, with water, sunlight, and other nutrients from the soil—is what keeps the plant alive. Makes it grow. Enables it to eventually bear fruit.

In the baking process, the way that yeast causes the dough to rise is by producing carbon dioxide. That’s what the tiny bubbles are filled with in the early stages of activating the yeast. What the yeast “breathes out,” simply because it is alive and active, gets trapped in the gluten that was formed during the kneading. And thus the loaf lifts.