"High Capacity" Christian?

I just finished a post on my leadership development blog in which I discussed in detail the challenge for me in this winter season. You can read it by clicking “A Purpose Filled Winter”. The post was a way of expressing my own angst at being at my capacity for several weeks straight as well as a way of recuperating. This weekend is the first in three weeks where I have more than a two hour break during the day. (Hence why there are so few blog posts here...)

I talked about turning down a dear friend who asked me to help lead a massive outreach event for our church. This was not an easy decision. As you may know I love to lead, I love to live my faith and I have been learning to love outreach events and serving others. The reason I said no was obvious I was at my capacity and see no reasonable break in the pace for several weeks. I had a choice; dump all other responsibilities and do the event or say not to helping lead the event. Given the nature of my responsibilities at work, at my church, within my family at school there was no way I could walk away from these responsibilities. All this event could so was strain relationships to a breaking point.

Yet I know that if God had told me in prayer that I needed to find a way I would have done so. I have prayed more than once the dangerous prayer, “use me”. Yet on this decision God remained silent. Of course I could continue to seek him and gain his wisdom on the question. I think though in this case had he wanted me to lead the event he would have been clear on it.

It is funny though that in the past several weeks I have been seeing another “perfect storm” come to life in my consciousness. As an engineer the concept of a perfect storm is an apt metaphor. When multiple waves meet in water and they have the same phase (that is they are aligned crest to crest) the result is a wave of twice the amplitude (a fancy word for size). The alternative is that if they are opposite phase a trough is aligned with a crest they cancel each other out. So the perfect storm wave has multiple waves of the same phase meeting together all at once forming a very large wave. All right enough techno weenie engineer speak.

My point is this, for the last several weeks I have been exposed to teaching on, have been reading about and have been distracted from the central core of the Christian life; intimacy with God. The Christian life is not about works, it is about loving God and loving others as yourself. This has been the core theme of our pastor’s messages for the past six weeks. It is the theme of two books I have been reading on prayer and Christian living. It is exactly what the enemy is distracting me from as I engage the world at my capacity day after day.

If not for the time I set aside to be with my heavenly father I would be lost. My time in the word each morning, my prayer and worship bike rides, Tuesday bible study and Friday / Saturday small groups all help me stay connected and provide the opportunity to slow down for just awhile and seek his voice.

So I soldier on jealously guarding these times with the Lord and seeking more opportunities to love him and his people more.

Father I praise you

I thank you for the realization of Love

I thank you for revealing to me the need to love you

For teaching me how to love you

For teaching me how to love your people

I praise you for beginning to open the eyes of my heart

So that I might see your heaven on earth

See your wonders and glories

Father I will forever be a child amazed with the wonder of you

Thank you for my salvation and my freedom in Christ

Amen