This weekend I had a lot of down time to sit and relax (a lot of it consisted of me sitting on the couch all day watching Friends haha). In that downtime I began to reflect on the busyness of my life and how I often feel exhausted at many points throughout the week. Why is this? I am someone who enjoys being busy, I tend to go 150mph all the time and yet here I am completely wiped with everything I have to do in a week. Gosh If I’M tired, I can’t even imagine how other people feel who aren’t wired like me and don’t enjoy fast paced lives. In this bit of reflecting I began to pray about it; because honestly, if this was how the rest of my year was going to go, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it! And that’s when God revealed three major areas of my life that I often waste time and energy on resulting in exhaustion.
Our job in life is not to police the world, carry other people’s burdens, or impress people with how awesome we are; it is to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And yet, I often find myself busied with the three things I just mentioned.
1. Policing the world: I’m often critical of other people’s decisions and behavior. I spend a lot of time making sure people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing (ex: chores, serving, meetings, jobs, morality, spiritually) and forget to show grace or even hold myself to the same standards that I hold others too (how many times have I forgotten to clean the bathroom when it was my turn or skipped out of a meeting that I was supposed to attend). We judge ourselves by our motives and other by their behaviors.
2. Carrying others burdens: I’m constantly wanting to help others, to pour into them, to make sure they’re ok (often at the expense of myself) What I’ve learned recently is that I love people more effectively and efficiently when I’m taking care of myself first. I have enough to work on let alone the shortcomings of others. As I find wholeness in the Lord, that wholeness is then poured out onto others. We are responsible TO people, not FOR them. It is not my responsibility to heal, cure, redeem, and restore other people. Those are areas of ownership that are not intended for me.
3. Impressing others: I want people to see me in the right light; to see my gifts and abilities, to know my heart and see what a great value I am in a friend. The root of this is people pleasing. I want them to recognize my value and approve of my life. Maybe if they see this they’ll want to be my friend or do things for me. With this paradigm, I’ve created my own formula. Me +all the good things about myself = you wanting to be my friend. It literally is like an exchange: my value as a friend in return for your approval or recognition. The only problem with this equation is that there’s a downside to this formula. Me + my character faults and slip ups = abandonment from you as a friend. This is not real relationship. Instead of spending my time selling myself to others and maintaining the image of how I want people to recognize me—if I spent that time being vulnerable and humble I would develop real relationships that are strong, authentic and intimate. Everyone wants intimacy in life, and yet we try to take other routes besides vulnerability to get there. Eventually all routes go through vulnerability so why not try skipping all the shoots and ladders.
While these are ugly parts of my heart, the good news is—I serve a God who redeems. He’s able to take these twisted parts of me and restore them. What areas of your life need restoring? What areas of your life are you depending on your own strength? What are things that you are wasting time and energy on? (not sure, anything outside of pursuing God’s glory is a good place to start) I would encourage everyone this week to do a little soul searching themselves and create time in your life for the Lord to move because he wants to breathe life and freedom into your life, and yet often, we don’t put ourselves in a position to receive these things.
No comments:
Post a Comment