Laying Aside Our Own Agendas

"One of our persistent difficulties is that while we want help, we do not want to change. We are quite willing to go to God to ask for strength, but not so willing to ask for redirection. We are happy to be encouraged, but not to be converted.

In doing this we are making the fatal assumption that we are okay in what we are doing and in our priorities; all we lack is adequate resources. And so we turn to God in prayer asking for more grace, more of His Spirit, and more of His power. Even in our search for solitude and inner peace, we are frequently motivated by the idea that we are simply looking to find greater inner energies in order to carry on with our own agendas.

Nouwen, however, reminds us that the place of solitude "is not a private therapeutic place ... it is the place of conversion." It is not the place where we recharge our spiritual batteries and then continue to live as we have lived before. It is not the place where we catch our breath in order to madly reenter the race. It is not the place where we simply find some quietness before we plunge into the world with its babble of voices.

The place of solitude is where we are changed. It is the place where we abandon some of our agendas, where we acknowledge our compulsions, where we discover new directions, and where, more importantly, we find a new self."

Reflection 14, "The Place of Conversion: Laying Aside Our Own Agendas", Dare to Journey with Henri Nouwen by Charles Ringma.


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The next morning Jesus awoke long before daybreak and went out alone into the wilderness to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. They said, "Everyone is asking for you."

But he replied, "We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too, because that is why I came."

Mark 1: 35-38 (New Living Translation)