Cultivated: Slow Work & Habits of Holy Resistance

What if slow seasons are where God is doing His deepest work?

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Women Under Construction. I'm your host, Katie Wood. This podcast exists to build up generations of daughters who lead with clarity, rooted in who they are, called to what God has for them, and commissioned to live it out in their everyday lives and the local church. Okay, before we jump in, I need to start with a disclaimer and also a bonus, because today you, my friend, are getting a two-for-one episode. So here's the completely honest backstory with you. Last week, I got home from a week full of retreats, which was so incredible, mind-blowing in the best way. And then when I got home, I immediately got hit with what I am assuming is the neurovirus. And then after that, I got a cold, and you can still kind of hear it in my voice. And then I had some medical testing done where I got a result that I just wasn't expecting. And so, all of that to say, like it has just been a week and I kind of checked out. Um, but then last night at Bible study, one of my friends called me out in like the most loving way, and she said, Katie's been teaching us about pruning, and she pruned the podcast right out of her rhythms. And honestly, like it was funny. You can laugh because I did. And it was also a little too accurate. Um, because somewhere in the middle of like all of that week, I just stopped. And it was a clear reminder to me when my friend said this that it's time to pick it back up. So hello, hi, I've missed you, friends. Today, you are getting a two for one where we are combining the slow work of God with habits of holy resistance. If I'm honest, I don't think these are two separate conversations we need to have. I think they're the same invitation, just from like different um angles and viewpoints. So let's get started. Amen. Okay. I want to start here. What do I mean by the slow work of God? Because I think if we think of this honestly, nine times out of 10, most of us don't like slow. We like progress and clarity and visible results. We want to feel like something is happening. But scripture shows us something very different about how God works. Join me in Philippians 1, 6, where Paul says that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. Not quickly, not like instantly, but faithfully. And I'm not one to like cherry pick verses out of things here or there. Uh, your girl loves some context, but I love this verse. And then if we think about it and we go back to Genesis, we see that even creation itself had a process. God, he could have spoken everything into existence in a moment, and yet he chose rhythm, he chose sequence, he chose days. And then to bring us back to this like garden analogy that we're using over the course of this series, in Mark 4, we see this picture of a seed growing while the farmer sleeps. It says the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. And I think when we think of that and we look at it theologically, I know that this means God is working in ways you can't see or measure or explain. And I believe that for most of us, this is where we struggle. Because we equate visible growth with spiritual growth. Yet God, our merciful, loving, kind Father, is not concerned with what you produce. He is deeply invested in who you are becoming. And this process of becoming, it takes time. And so if we're thinking about it in light of what my last week looked like, I did not choose slow last week. I didn't choose to get sick, I didn't choose to like stop my life, I didn't choose the unexpected, but I was invited into slow. And I think that maybe that's where some of us are today. Not in a season we choose, but in a season that is forming us. And when we think of this, like slow seasons, I think so often we resist and we struggle with slow seasons because we as a people in a broken and fallen world, we mislabel slow seasons. We call them um stagnation or failure or lack of progress. But for today, I want us to like take that and hold those thoughts captive. Like, am I thinking of this season as less than, as failure, as a lack of progress, as a lack of visible growth, or is this season actually a formation season? I think of the nation of Israel when they were in the wilderness, it would have been very easy for them to think this is a season of failure. God told us that he would bring us out of Israel, and we would walk through the desert and we would get to the promised land, and we would be able to go into the promised land, and it was gonna happen smoothly and easily and kind of quickly. And then life kind of happened. Um, humanity happened, our brokenness happened. And in that, you can choose to look at the wilderness uh one or two ways. That the wilderness was a season where God was not with the people of Israel, which is in that moment. I'm not trying to take away from what they were feeling in that moment. I don't know that I wouldn't feel that way. That's a completely human way to feel. Or we can choose to look at it as God not abandoning them, but preparing them. We know that some of them probably didn't see it that way. They thought that something had gone wrong. And I think if we're honest, we can identify with the people of Israel in that moment. We do the same thing. We live in a culture that values speed and visibility and productivity, but God values faithfulness and depth and obedience, and those things are usually built slowly. In John 15, Jesus talks about pruning. I'm gonna read John 15 verses 1 through 17. She's chunky, but I think it's really important for what we're talking about today. I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made complete. My command is this love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that lasts, so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. This is my command. Love each other. What a word, what a word. Thank you, Jesus. So in this, we hear Jesus talk about the act of pruning. And pruning can feel like a loss because we hear the language he's using, cutting back. We're thinking, like, when you go out and you do your trimming and you garden or you cut some trees back, like you are literally cutting limbs off. And what do we do with those limbs? Here in Central Virginia, we have bonfires. Um, so we burn them, but it you could throw them in the trash, you could toss them in the woods, like whatever it might be. We get rid of the things that we prune. And it looks like when we think of it that way, that there's something that is being taken away. But I want to present you with this idea. It's actually intentional. Sometimes what feels like God is doing nothing in that moment is actually God doing the deepest work. See, your girl, me, I had to sit with this this week because it's so easy for me to sit there and feel like, oh my gosh, I dropped the ball, I got off track, I'm behind. Do I even keep podcasting for the rest of the series? Because I missed an episode. But the Lord, in his kindness and his generosity, and his mercy met me and reshaped my idea of this. Like, what if I'm not behind? What if I'm being formed in a way that doesn't show up on a schedule or on a content calendar? And friend, not just me, but you too. So if the slow work of God is his pace, then our question becomes how do we live in alignment with that? And this is where the habits of holy resistance come in. Because whether you realize it or not, you are being formed every single day by what you consume, by what you prioritize, by what you repeat. Oh, I'm so excited to have this conversation. If you read this week's Substack, um, you know that this has been a huge focus for me for the last um four months minimum, that I have just been focusing on the theology of habits and rhythms and how that impacts us. Um, we talked about it in Bible study last night. I am just like on a roll. So that's great, Katie. How do we connect this to scripture? In Romans 12, 2, it says, do not, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I'm gonna hit you here with a hard truth. My friend Carrie um calls it a holy spirit slap, but transformation doesn't just happen, it requires intentionality, it requires resistance. I'm gonna say it one more time. Transformation doesn't just happen, it requires intentionality and it requires resistance. And I wanna kind of like shape and mold our thinking around this when we talk about holy resistance. I mean by choosing practices that shape you into who God says you are, not into who the world says that Katie is, into who God says that Katie is. Because when everything around us is pulling us in a different direction, we need that grounding truth to keep us rooted. See, it's not this idea of holy resistance, this is not like a spiritualized idea of self-improvement. It's not about becoming the most productive, effective version of yourself. That may happen, but this is about spiritual formation. In Galatians 5, we are told to walk by the spirit, and that is a daily intentional movement. Luke 9, 23, Jesus tells us to take up our cross daily. So habits, they matter, not because they make you impressive, but because they shape who you become. And I believe that you don't accidentally become who God calls you to be, that you are formed into it intentionally, slowly over time. And see, this is where it starts to like really get real. And when I said that this is not two separate conversations, it's the same conversation from two angles. These are the two angles. And here, I wish you could see me because I am talking with my hands and and I am bringing my left hand and my right hand together to converge when I'm I'm trying to talk and get this point across to you. That is how I feel about it, like how powerfully I feel about it. Um, when these two ideas they come together, slow seasons reveal your habit. Because when our lives get disrupted, when our rhythms fall apart, when we're tired or sick or overwhelmed or uncertain, that is where our formation shows up. I think about um Matthew 7. I I cannot remember who I heard recently talking about this. It might have been my own pastor. Um, building your life on rock versus sand. We don't always know what we've built on until the storm comes. And so this past week, as I'm living out this intersection of the slow work and the habits of holy resistance, I had to ask myself, like, when everything stopped, what was still there? What felt easy, what felt hard, what disappeared? Because these slow seasons, they're not creating formation in us, they're revealing what's been formed in us. And like that is not meant to shame you. I will say, this week I didn't scroll social media because I've kind of given that up for 40 days. Um, but I did find myself filling that time with other like quick dopamine hits. Um, I got quite a few more Amazon packages this week than I normally do. Um, like those sorts of things, right? So, like, I'm not trying to shame you in that. I'm I'm trying to invite you as your friend to notice, to realign, to rebuild where you need to. And and here's the thing, like, not all at once. Don't don't demolish everything and start the rebuild here. Like, start with something small because you're not gonna get it perfect the first time, but we're gonna do it in a beautiful and intentional way. I shared it this week on the Substack, but I wanted to take a few minutes um while we're here together and share with you my top three non-negotiable habits of resistance. Um, there are people who have written entire books on this um in a kingdom-minded way. I'm thinking of like Justin Whitmill Early, Elizabeth Woodson, even Jess Connolly. They go deep into these habits of resistance. Um, so I am going to give you my down and dirty habits of holy resistance. Like, if we were sitting in my kitchen table and you were like, hey, Katie, this sounds really great in theory. What do you, how do you do this? This, these are what I would tell you. Um, but then I really want to encourage you to explore their work because they give a really rich and full picture. And it has shaped, quite honestly, a lot of my um the ways that I think about habits of resistance. So I'm thinking of like Justin Whitmall early. The man is the king of a rhythm. He loves a rhythm, he loves a routine, he lives a very rhythmic life. Um, I'm thinking of Elizabeth Woodson. She just released a book recently called Habits of Resistance, How to Resist, How Culture is Forming You. I read it in a weekend, and if I'm being honest, I need to reread it. Like I loved it, I devoured it, it made such an impact, and I want to go back and see like what did I miss? And then Jess Connolly, um, a dear friend and mentor, I think of her book, Tired of Being Tired, where she talks about how to add in resistance to take care of your physical, spiritual, and somatic needs. So I would encourage you if you're like really into this and you want to learn more, um, those are the three authors that I would I would call out. But I'm gonna give you, as your friend, my three non-negotiable habits of resistance. The first is the habit of stillness, which to me resists the noise. And you might think, like, oh my gosh, Katie, I really kind of thought you were gonna ease into this. Uh no, that's not who I am, and you know that. Um, this is a habit that has genuinely changed my life. I have practiced stillness, what I am calling stillness, every evening from like 8:30 to 8 a.m. since we moved into our new house. I didn't do this well at our old house, but in this house I do it really well. My phone lives in my office. Honestly, my laptop pretty much lives in my office. Um, my computer lives in my office, my iPad travels with me, but all I use it for is journaling and reading. Um, but my phone lives in my office at night. And so I shut things down and I put them away. And I don't come back for it after like 8, 8:30 until the next morning. Um, and that matters to me because it gives me the space to break up with culture in a way. Um, I noticed that it was really easy for me to lay in bed and scroll on Instagram until 11, 12 o'clock and then go to bed and wake up and be exhausted for my quiet time in the morning. I noticed that it was really easy for me to have a text message come in and it not be emergent, but because it's a friend, a colleague, um, a family member to feel the need to be on call 24-7 to answer that message. And so my phone lives in my office in the evening. Um, and the last thing that I do at night is not sit and watch TV or sit and scroll on my phone. It is journaling. I was talking about it last night in Bible study. Like, I cannot go to sleep if I don't journal. It's um, what's the metaphor I used? It's like when you close out all the tabs in your internet browser to shut down. And it's like you close out all those tabs and then like whoosh, it's all out. And you're like, all right, cool, I can start tomorrow fresh. Um, and so for me, journaling is that this stillness rhythm is that. I have a book in my nightstand. I journal on my iPad, and then I immediately go to a book that I'm either reading or a devotional, and I read that. Um, and then just like easily transition into sleep. And when I wake, I get up, I put on some praise music, normally like a little lo-fi praise music. Um, and I spend time in the world before I even come into my office to get my phone. It's so simple when you think about it. This practice in this rhythm. I'm literally putting my phone behind a door, but it's incredibly powerful. The second habit of resistance is community, resisting isolation. Um, this is easily one of the most significant habits of resistance in my life. I constantly am surrounded by kingdom minded men and women who are walking alongside of me. Um, This, I think, is rooted for me in Hebrews 10, 24 through 25, where it says, and let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not by giving up meeting together, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. See, gathering for community, like it's not just this occasional thing that I do. It is woven into the very fabric of my week. I think of the Monday Night Supper Clubs, my Tuesday Bible study, the various coffee and power hours that I do with friends, my Saturday study group, the daily group texts that go out. My life is lived very intentionally open with women, not in a performative way, but in an accountability, encouragement, and growth way. Because we do not resist well in isolation. I have found that I need my sisters in Christ to be there to support me in moments where I find myself having a hard time resisting. The third habit uh is um the habit of scripture, resisting lies. This one, I know it feels so foundational. Um scripture is a habit of resistance for me because it helps me fight back against the lies that the world shouts at me 24-7. And as a Bible teacher, I know we are called to be in the word daily, not just like reading it to say we've read it and checking it off, but letting it shape us. Um, I like to think of scripture as essential as like the air that we breathe. Like it, it, it permeates the marrow of our bones. And that is because the world that we live in, the broken, falling world that we live in, is constantly forming us. And scripture, my belief, scripture is how we are reformed. And for me, you're like, oh, okay, so you read your scripture in the morning, Katie. Yeah, and I listen to worship music, lo-fi music, um, most of the day. I don't have the news on. I don't even really watch the news. I used to get the newspaper delivered, and then I was just like, I'm kind of not even reading this. Um, so so I don't have the noise of the world competing competing with me and telling me lies. I a lot of times will listen to a sermon or an audiobook when I go for a walk. Um, and then choosing something that feeds my spirit instead of defaulting to scrolling or mindless TV. So I am a big fan of having um a variety of books to grab from. I have in my office a bookshelf that is just my to-be read books. And then on the other side of the room are all of the books that I've read. Um, and so for me, it's it's reading, it's walking, it's baking, it's playing golf with my husband, um, lots of different things. So, like, what's that other thing that feeds my spirit instead of defaulting to something that's like a quick worldly dopamine hit? So those are my like top three. Do I have more than three? Yes. But those are the three that are my like my big heavy hitters. And so, talking about that, I want to make this really simple as we go into this week. Um, because I don't want you to leave this episode overwhelmed. I want you to leave with clarity. And I know that we talked about two really big topics that are interwoven. Um, and at the same point, like, I don't want you to be overwhelmed. So if you're in a slow season, and if you're not, I want us to think about like, what is one small habit we can choose that aligns us with who God says we are? Not 10 things, not a full life overhaul, just like one thing. I was in therapy um last week, and my therapist and I were talking about a new morning rhythm that I was trying to institute. And I had like five things that I was gonna do. And at the end of explaining to her why those five things were really important and how they were gonna be incredible and transformative. Um, my therapist, who is the kindest woman and also a Christian, looked at me and was like, I hear you. Um, can we just pick one for this week? And that's the type one in me was like, What do you mean? Just pick one. Uh, I can do them all. And she's like, I know you can probably do them all, but like, let's just pick one that way if life gets crazy or if something unexpected happens or if you oversleep, like you have that one that you're like, this is the one that I'm focusing on that week. And so I'm encouraging you to do the same. I did do that. I did not do all five. Um, I did one. So maybe it's five minutes in scripture before you check your phone. I love the dwell app on my phone. Um, maybe it's praying in your car instead of listening to um music or a podcast. Maybe it's choosing a Sabbath rhythm each week, but it's something small, something faithful. Because we know, as women and daughters, that small and faithful obedience over time will shape a life that looks like Jesus. As we close today, maybe the slow work of God in your life isn't something to rush past. Maybe it's something to lean into. Perhaps the habits you're building right now are the very things that God will use to carry you through the next season. Thank you for being a part of Women Under Construction. If this episode encouraged you, share it with someone who's building alongside of you. And remember, you are rooted in who you are, called to what God has for you, and commissioned to live it out in your everyday life and the local church. I can't wait to come back with you next week.