Two things in my life and joined together to challenge me of late. The first is our coming youth ministry series called Metamorphosis. We're spending time in the sermon on the mount and we'll be challenging our students to allow God to change them. The second is the DVD series my small group is working through called "The Life You've Always Wanted" by John Ortberg.
In the book's chapter which was covered in the last video we watched, Ortberg says: "The great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them." [The Life You've Always Wanted, page 77]
My ministry keeps getting more and more busy. There are many projects and ideas that I want to tackle that I simply have no time for. At times I get lost in the day to day, and the idea of seeking long term vision is pushed to the side. For me and how I'm wired, and for our church, this isn't healthy. I need to learn how to delegate more, do less, and dream more.
In my family, we have achieved a level of insanity since Christmas that has surpassed previous levels of insanity. Adding a fifth child, a dog, buying a new-to-us van, and now buying our first home have all elevated my [and the family's in general] stress level [and sense of not enough time to accomplish routine tasks like our dozen+ loads of laundry a week] to previously uncharted levels.
This is not to say that things are out of control. I still see and sense God's leadership in our ministry. I am excited about where God is leading us, and I see some clear paths for the future which, when God accomplishes them through us, will bring even greater glory to his name. I see clear, and sometimes painful ways, which God is teaching / stretching / frustrating / and ultimately growing me as a leader, pastor and father. I am also in awe of how God has provided for our family, that even on the day the I was most discouraged, God chose to add a simple and yet humorous element to our story - which proved to me his hand on the whole picture.
In summary, it seems that God has been teaching me to be less hurried, and more focused on what he has already given me; and to trust more, to dream more, and to worry less about what is to come.
