Get Out of My Chair
In the woods, alone, God said four words that reoriented everything.
The Day God Told Me to Get Out of His Chair
I was somewhere in the woods at Quest — a men's retreat — alone with nothing but a journal, a Bible, and the uncomfortable silence that descends when you have no meetings to run to and no phone to check.
I had been building. Always building. Companies, teams, strategies, plans. Whether I was good at it or not, I knew I wanted to be in control. And somewhere in the relentless forward motion, I had quietly assumed a posture that I hadn't consciously chosen: I was running my own life from a seat that didn't belong to me.
In that silence, God said something I've never forgotten.
Get out of my chair.
Not audibly. But unmistakably. The kind of word that lands in your chest before it reaches your mind. I had been sitting in the chair of control — over my career, my finances, my family's future, my own formation — and calling it leadership. What it actually was, was fear wearing the costume of competence.
That moment in the woods didn't fix everything. But it reoriented everything. And it's why, four times a year, I stop — completely — and go back to the posture I found that day.
Why Most Leaders Never Stop
The men I know who are most capable are also, paradoxically, the most resistant to stillness. High capacity and high control tend to travel together. We are wired to move, to solve, to build. Stopping feels like falling behind.
But here's what I've learned: the leader who never stops never actually leads. He reacts. He manages. He maintains momentum. But the deep work — the recalibration, the discernment, the pruning of what needs to go and the clarity about what needs to stay — that work only happens in the quiet.
The ancient Christian tradition called this hesychia — holy stillness. Not emptiness, but the kind of attentive quiet that makes you available to hear what the noise drowns out. The Desert Fathers practiced it in the Egyptian wilderness. The great leaders of the Reformation practiced it in their studies. And every leader I've ever admired who built something that actually lasted had some version of it in their rhythm.
The quarterly retreat is my version of it. And it's the single most important thing I do four times a year.
The Framework: Three Postures, Six Movements
I don't go into the retreat with an agenda. I go with a posture — or rather, three of them, held in sequence.
Posture 1: Surrender
Before I can hear anything, I have to get out of the chair.
Surrender isn't passivity. It's the active, intentional release of control over outcomes I was never designed to control. I bring every weight I've been carrying — the business pressures, the financial uncertainties, the relational tensions, the dreams that haven't materialized on my timeline — and I open my hands. One by one. Out loud, if I need to.
This is the hardest posture for high-capacity leaders. We are trained to hold on. Surrender feels like losing. But what I've found, every single time, is that surrender is the thing that makes the next two postures possible. You cannot listen well when your hands are full. You cannot steward wisely when you're gripping the outcome.
Posture 2: Listen
Once my hands are open, I ask one question: What are You saying?
Not what do I want to hear. Not what confirms the direction I've already chosen. What is God actually saying — about my life, my character, my calling, the people I love, the work I've been given?
I bring six movements of my life into this listening:
- Career — What is God building through my work, and what am I building instead?
- Family — Am I present, or just nearby? What does my wife need? What do my kids need from me right now?
- Health & Fitness — Am I stewarding the body I've been given, or running it into the ground?
- Spiritual Formation — Is my inner life keeping pace with my outer life? Where am I drifting?
- Finances — Am I a faithful steward, or am I using money to manage anxiety?
- Relationships & Community — Who is speaking into my life? Who am I investing in? Am I isolated or connected?
I don't rush through these. Each one gets time. Each one gets silence. I write down what surfaces — not what I think I should write, but what actually comes when I stop performing and start listening.
Posture 3: Steward
Listening without response is just introspection. The third posture takes what I've heard and turns it into faithful action.
For each of the six movements, I ask: What is the one thing I need to do differently in the next 90 days? Not a list of improvements. One thing. The specific, concrete, Spirit-led next step that will matter most.
These become my 90-day commitments. Not resolutions. Commitments — held accountable, reviewed at the next retreat, carried into the daily rhythm of my life.
What the Retreat Is Not
It's not a planning session. I'm not building a strategy or setting OKRs. That work has its place, but it belongs in the office, not in the woods.
It's not a performance review. I'm not grading myself or generating guilt about what I haven't done. Condemnation is not the Holy Spirit's voice. Conviction is — and conviction always points forward, not backward.
It's not a vacation. Rest is part of it, but the retreat has a purpose: to come back different. To return to my people with more to give than I came with.
The Question Underneath All the Questions
Every time I go on retreat, I eventually come back to the same question. The one God asked me in the woods at Quest. The one that won't stop being relevant no matter how many times I think I've answered it:
Whose chair are you sitting in right now?
Not as accusation. As invitation. An invitation to get up, step back, and return to the posture that actually produces the life I want to live — as a leader, a husband, a father, a friend.
Surrender. Listen. Steward.
Four times a year, I go back to the woods. And every time, I come out lighter.
Want the Full Retreat Framework?
I've put together the complete quarterly retreat guide — the three postures, the six movements, the questions I use for each one, and the 90-day commitment structure — in a format you can take into your own retreat.
If you want it, subscribe to the 85 Leadership newsletter. I'll send it directly to your inbox — along with weekly reflections on leadership, formation, and the disciplines that compound over a lifetime.
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Chris DeLeenheer is the author of Quiet Drift and the creator of 85 Leadership. He writes about the inner life of leadership — the formation, the disciplines, and the slow becoming that most leadership content ignores.
Written by
Chris DeLeenheerChris DeLeenheer is a husband to Libby, a father to four daughters, and a faith-first leader whose life moves between building operating companies, training hard miles, and trying to follow Jesus honestly. He writes and runs out of Waco, Texas, and has spent the last decade quietly learning what it costs a successful man to stay awake — and what it takes, day by day, to find his way back. Quiet Drift is the book from that journey.