By Joe LaGuardia
By the time I graduated college and entered seminary, I burned out on biblical academia. The start of the my three-year Masters of Divinity program was the next step towards ministry, but I was not interested in the work or for working in ministry in general. Its not that I abandoned my call; I just needed a break.
When placement officers at seminary asked what church I wanted to serve, I declined. Instead, I went to work for Chik-Fil-A for that first year. When classes assigned books, I read them through for routine rather than for sport. When a professor assigned an essay, I wrote blindly. My heart was not in it, not entirely.
I enjoyed my seminary years, don’t get me wrong–its just that I hit a season of melancholy in which the religious studies exhausted me. I felt that I lived in a bubble, and I couldn’t find my way out.
Over the summer, when my wife and I traveled back to Florida to visit family, I expressed these feelings to Kristina’s grandmother. Her grandmother (whom we called Granny) was a Bible-believing Baptist prayer warrior whose love for the Lord was matched only by her love for the church. She played piano for many years at the First Baptist Church of Tequesta, Florida, and served as volunteer secretary for many years more. She was a Renaissance woman of sorts who read everything from church history and church architecture to theology and mysticism.
Granny was a mentor to Kristina and, later, to me, when it came to intercessory prayer–she was, unlike many Baptists I had met, “Spirit-filled,” meaning that she regularly attended charismatic services around town. It made her special and her wisdom contagious.
When I told her of my malaise, she knew what I needed. She took my hand and asked me to take her to the bookstore. We went, and she dragged me over to the religion section. I was not very pleased–the only religious books you find at those places are the pop culture books that focus more on self-help than biblical insight.
She scanned the shelves and found what she was looking for: Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart. I was not familiar with Nouwen’s books aside from one on discipleship I read in college (Creative Teaching). She handed me a copy and told me to read it. She wasn’t recommending it, she was telling me to do it. She purchased it and sent me on my way.
When I read The Way of the Heart, I found myself in a place that I hadn’t been before–Nouwen’s writings on the early church fathers and the importance of silence and solitude in the spiritual life, as well as his acute insights as to the role that suffering and servanthood plays in ministry, were among the most profound insights I had read.
Nouwen spoke of crises of faith as places of wilderness where we face our demons and rely fully on the Holy Spirit for survival. He spoke of the Christian life as a series of conversions rather than one single conversion experience, allowing me to see that I was being converted (yet again) in the reading of this little, 70-some-odd page book.
I found a book that spoke directly to my soul: It did not provide cliché answers to hardship, and it informed readers that we must find Christ with unyielding faith–not with the head, but with the heart. My prayer life caught fire.
From Nouwen: Jesus’ invitation to lay down my life for others has always meant more to me than physical martyrdom. I have always heard those words as an invitation to make my own struggles, my doubts, my hopes, my fears, my joys and my pains and my moments of ecstasy available to others as a source of consolation and healing.”
After that book, I picked up The Gennessee Diary and Wounded Healer, both Nouwen classics. I read both of those books three times each over the years, and I taught a small-group book study on The Way of the Heart twice in eight years while working at Trinity Baptist Church. My copy was so worn down, I had to purchase a new one.
Granny’s investment in me — and her ability to give me the book I needed most — guided my ministry, brought me back to Christ, and re-aligned my heart. It gave me purpose and clarity of calling, and focused my attention on the field in which I eventually gained a doctorate. It gave birth to this blog nearly fifteen years ago!
Of all the books that have shaped my life, The Way of the Heart came the closest to the Bible in saving my life– Nouwen helped me meet Jesus in a new way and convicted me to commit my entire life to prayer and Spirit-filled living in all I do, just as Granny had lived.
Baptist Spirituality 