Habits Of Pruning, Part 3: Withness (Luke 7:36-50) Series

We are coming to the close of our series on cultivating spiritual disciplines. We’ve got two more disciplines to talk about, and next week I will wrap up with what this all means in terms of a life of holiness. So let me just remind you where we’ve been. We are looking at eight habits we can develop in our life that will help us abide in Christ and bear fruit for Him (John 15). Four of those habits are things we engage in, things we say yes to, that help us remain close to Jesus. We’ve been calling those Habits of Abiding, and they are Bible reading, prayer, community, and accountability. You may remember that two of those are related to Loving God (Scripture and Prayer), and two are related to Loving Neighbor (Community and Accountability).

There are also four habits that involve us actively resisting or saying no to some things so that we can bear even more fruit. We call those Habits of Pruning, because John 15 tells us that “every branch in [Jesus] that does bear fruit is pruned by our Heavenly Father so that it can bear even more fruit. So God will lead us to resist some things, say no to some things—limit certain things in our lives so that we can be even more fruitful.

We talked about Sabbath—saying no to a day of work so we can learn to rest in God and His provision for us. Last week we talked about Fasting—saying no to food for a certain period of time so we can learn to crave God and feast on his will for our lives.

Just like with the habits of abiding, the first two habits deal with loving God. But the next two habits deal with loving neighbor.

How many of you have read the Harry Potter books, or seen the movies? Well, this may be a spoiler alert if you haven’t read them, but you’ve had, like, fifteen years since the last one came out, so I feel ok with telling you the ending.

Here’s the story: Voldemort is the evil wizard, and he’s obsessed with achieving immortality. And he’s found this ancient spell that allows him to split his soul into pieces and hide the pieces in various inanimate objects, which he then scatters throughout the world. Then, if anything happened to him, then one of his followers could just pull his soul out of any of those objects and bring him back to life. These objects are called horcruxes, and the entire last book of the series is about Harry, Ron, and Hermione trying to destroy these horcruxes so they can kill Voldemort. Because they realize that when someone divides their soul, it makes them vulnerable. Every time Voldemort created a horcrux, and put a portion of his soul into a nonliving thing, he became less able to show love or compassion or empathy for the people around him. In the end, he was barely recognizable as a human being.

Human beings were never meant to split their souls.

Why am I bringing this up? Because whether we want to admit it, we are really, really good at making horcruxes. Remember: a horcrux is an inanimate object into which we put a portion of our soul. And every time we split our soul, we are less “there” for the people around us.

You’re going, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not some evil dark wizard. I would never put part of my soul into an inanimate object.”

Really? Let me show you a few potential horcruxes: [show phone. Show TV remote. Show game controller]

If you don’t believe your son or daughter or husband or wife has put part of their soul into one of these, ask yourself what would happen if you took them away. And if you wonder if I’m exaggerating when I say that every time you pour your soul into one of these it diminishes your ability to engage with the flesh and blood people around you, go to a restaurant or a mall and just people watch for a little while. You’ll see whole families that are physically together at a table, but all of them are glued to their phones.

If we’re going to get our souls back, we need to develop some new habits. So today, I want to talk about cultivating the Habit of Withness. I know. You’re going, “withness? Is that even a word?” Actually, it is. Here’s how Webster’s defines “withness:” Withness is “the state or fact of being close to or connected with someone or something: close association or proximity”

Put another way, withness is the discipline of focusing your attention so that the person who is in front of you in that moment believes that he or she is the most important person in the world to you.