Enough
"No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.”
- from one of Paul’s letters to the folks in Corinth
We are feeling a little stretched. It is not only the start of the new year with a recalibration of commitments to existing clients but establishing relationships with a bunch of new ones. Add to that a destination Life Plan retreat in Missouri and one for couples in Utah this year. Oh yeah, and there is a little expression of what we do breaking out in several cities in South Africa with the prospect of much more beyond that.
And I am not currently monitoring, but I think my heart rate pulsed up a bit just typing that.
But we have never been more clear about our mission or more invigorated by the possibilities. And we are also getting stretched in some other ways. All these exploratory missions abroad and the destination events we are doing in the states are costly. You can add to that the way God has asked us to help others regardless of cost.
The tab is really starting to mount. Costly in terms of time, finances, and emotional bandwidth.
But we are learning to trust what Paul said to those folks in Corinth. And it is taking on many different facets:
He will not allow us to be tested beyond what we are able.
He will give us the energy to do everything he has intended for us to do.
He will provide the resources to fund everything he intends for us to do.
He will ensure the emotional bandwidth to do everything he intends for us to do.
He will make the time to do everything he intends for us to do.
But there is a strong corollary to those ideas.
We will always become financially and emotionally exhausted trying to do the things we choose to do on our own. We will not have enough to do the things we do out of self-determination. We can even become exhausted doing things that are intrinsically good if they are the things that we have been given to do.
And ironically, the more we surrender our own plans and need for control, the stuff he has for us to do seems to get bigger, more unfathomable…
…but way more effortless.
‘Bigger’ or ‘more’ is actually easier. We can accomplish more out of an even more generous expression and there is not only enough to accomplish everything, but it is also way less overwhelming and exhausting. We are actually gaining energy and momentum as we do more. And that is bringing us to an even more resolute understanding of all that I expressed above.
We will never have enough to do what we want to do.
We will always have enough to do the work he has given us to do…even when it is more than we could have ever hoped or imagined.
Consider
Are you exhausted and overwhelmed?
Are you running out of every resource trying to do a lot of good things?
Are you sure you are doing the things that have been appointed to you?
Do you feel like there is enough to do everything you are doing?