Frenzy And Friends

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9-11

One of the big problems I've had all my adult life is finding a good balance when it comes to work. As a legalistic pastor, I was a workaholic. Some people actually think that being a workaholic is a virtue. I've actually heard some confess it about themselves with pride, but it's not a virtue. It's a flesh pattern. There may be numerous reasons for people being a workaholic, but a big one is an inner need to prove our worth to ourselves by what we accomplish. For years I felt guilty when I couldn't point to something productive I had done at the end of the day.

I have grown beyond the place where I beat myself up for not having accomplished something measurable every day, but I still have a tendency to overextend myself at times when it comes to commitments to doing things. I usually realize that's what I'm doing when I begin to feel frustrated instead of fulfilled by my work. I remember one time, years ago, asking my friend Bill Gillham, "Do you ever look at your schedule and groan?" In his fatherly and folksy way, he answered, "Brother, you have too many things on your plate."

Yep, I tend to do that. Yesterday two things happened that the Lord used to speak to me about this again. The first was when my friend, Dave Lesniak, shared the passage at the top of this blog with me.

In that text, the Apostle Paul says that divine love will cause us to grow in insight so that we are able to discern what is best. The NAS uses the word "excellent" instead of "best." The key here is that our Father wants us to be able to distinguish between good things and God things. Just because something may be a good thing to do doesn't mean it is the best way to spend our time and energy. When we discern which is which, we will live a lifestyle "filled with the fruit of righteousness" instead of filled with the frenzy of religion. Legalistic religion demands, "More! More! More!" while Jesus sometimes says, "Come apart and rest awhile" (see Mark 6:31). To live a life of excellence means that we don't say yes to every "opportunity" that comes along, but instead that we determine what our Father would have us to do and then focus on those and only those things.

As our Father tends to do, later in the day He spoke to me again when Melanie and I were with our friends, Gary and Dianne Tjaden at P.F. Changs. For "some reason" Gary began to question me about the amount of free time I take. To get to the point, I confessed to him that sometimes I'm not good at free time. I thought I'd dodged the bullet when we moved on to other subjects, until right before we left when he asked, "So, can I hold you accountable about this?" God has a way of not letting you off the hook when He wants to get His point across - have you noticed that?

So here I am, deciding again to say no when I need to say no . . . planning to walk out of the office when it's time to do that . . . intending to pace myself ... purposing to focus on the excellent things and forget the extra things that don't matter, and hoping to have the sense to know the difference.

Boy oh boy, I'm a slow learner about some things. Can you relate?

Anyway, thank God for friends who cut through our lives with loving words of truth. I know Jesus isn't frenzied. Never has been, never will be. God is glorified when we learn that fact and live in light of it. But, as they say, "it sure ain't easy sometimes!"