Strategic Withdrawal
Withdraw. Retreat. Take a step back.
If you are anything like me, the advice above feels like an admission of defeat. You feel as though any break in your pace, any giving of ground, any time released will result in reduced productivity that can never be recovered.
So you press on. You advance. You take not one but two steps forward!
The striving described above is a nearly universal impulse for humans. It materializes differently across divergent personalities (the prototypical Type A is described above), but we are all inclined to look inward in our pursuit of outward productivity. If you aren’t advancing, you are retreating, and that can’t be what you are called to—or at least that is what you tell yourself. It is where we get the phrase, “the way forward.”
After all, nobody is looking for the way backward. Nobody is looking to retreat or withdraw.
But then you read, “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16).
Jesus had just launched His public ministry and the crowds were flocking to Him. This was the time to keep the momentum going. Truly, it was. Jesus knew His mandate would eventually lead to a sacrificial death, but this was a moment of building. He was spreading His Father’s news, and telling the eternity-altering story that He was the embodiment of God! This was no time to retreat. Time was short and there was a job to do!
And yet, Jesus withdrew. He not only withdrew, but He did so often.
As you and I grow in our fervency to live like Jesus, we are foolish to disregard this habit of Jesus simply because it conflicts with cultural norms. You need to withdraw regularly. This is not just taking vacations (though I took one recently and was reminded that rest from routine is an important form of withdraw, as well). Withdrawing is a regular practice of separating yourself from the absolute din of noise and chaos that is your earthly home in order to clearly hear the intimate whispered voice of your loving heavenly Father!
Jesus would withdraw, pray, listen to His Father, and return to His Father’s work with renewed clarity.
You should withdraw, pray, listen to your Father, and return to your Father’s work with renewed clarity.
What feels like surrendering progress is actually essential to staying over the target of your Father’s work. It is also the way you prepare in advance for the situations God will put you in to specifically advance His will. You will be composed and confident in those moments not because you orchestrated them, but because you withdrew often to convene with your God, and He used those times to prepare you in advance for the work He was preparing for you (Eph. 2:10).
So do you want to take on and conquer the world ahead of you for God?
If so, the key is not in the road ahead nearly so much as it is in the regular retreat.
Do as Jesus did. Withdraw often. Pray and be with the Father. That is the place in which the road ahead is charted and the territory won.