Time is truly precious.
I turned 46 this year, and it feels strange to be so close to 50.
In my younger days, I was somewhat indifferent to death. I did not seek it, but I was not afraid of it either. In times of despair, I even thought of it as an escape from living. The desire to be with Jesus being “far better,” and such and such (Phil. 1:23).
But now I find myself praying often for a long and fulfilling life, eager for God to help me number my days aright that I may gain a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12). Now I want to live to see my children’s children (Ps. 128:6).
Thinking about time has changed how I plan my time.
Honouring Our Limitations
Recently, I made changes to my professional life, my wife and I made changes to our family life, and we are actively making changes to our ministry priorities.
All of it involves doing a little less so I can be a little more fruitful—as a husband, a father, a person, and a pastor.
Pete Scazerro, author of The Emotionally Healthy Leader, has a unique answer to a familiar question. Often when he’s asked if he’s busy, he answers, “I’m not busy. I’m limited.”
During a time when my wife and I felt overwhelmed by expectations and obligations, our counsellor said something simple: “God’s will is found within our limitations.”
How strange to think that limitations work to serve as a revelation of God’s will, not an obstacle to it.
She drew a triangle with three circles in it—work, play, and rest. Then she showed how each circle gets larger as we invest more time into it. But it is not as if each circle can get large without limitations.
No circle can overstep the boundaries of time and energy that the triangle represents. We have limited hours and days in a week, and our bodies and our minds can only carry so much weight.
If one circle gets the best of us and grows larger, the others will suffer and shrink.
So discerning God’s will and receiving a heart of wisdom comes with honouring our limitations, not violating them.
Violating Limitations Is Costly
In his podcast, Pete Scazerro also says, “Most of us are chronically overextended, doing more activity for God than our relationship with God can sustain. The notion of a slowed-down spirituality—or slowed-down leadership—in which our doing for Jesus flows out of our being with Jesus is more of a dream than a lived experience.”
Life is too short to marginalise Jesus.
It’s too costly to everything that is precious to me, to make anything more precious than him.
If I want to plan the rest of my life to turn into the best of my life, then the best of my life begins with Jesus getting the best of me.
But we already know this.
Why do things remain the same?
Treasuring God’s Reward Empowers Taking a Risk
Pete Scazerro describes something called the awareness gap. It is the gap between what we know and how we act. This is an uncomfortable gap to overcome. Most people do not overcome it until they prize the reward that comes with it. We need to see the reward of closing the gap before we have the courage to do it.
Until I see the reward of looking into my daughter’s eyes as she throws a ball at me and eagerly waits for me to throw it back to her, it is difficult to take the step of removing something important from my calendar to make room for something far more precious.
It is not until being with Jesus feels like being fully alive that I will have the courage to turn away from things that I thought made me feel fully alive.
What truly makes you feel fully alive?
Seeing the Lord Who Wore Our Limitations
Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.
He made himself nothing.
He took the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
In humility, he became obedient to death, even being limited by three nails to death on a cross (Phil. 2:6-8).
Therefore, God exalted him, to the highest place (Phil. 2:9-11).
As Jesus honoured the limitations God sent him to embrace, God accomplished his will for us through him.
We will only be free to honour limitations in Christ Jesus when we see the limitations he embraced for his people.
We are the joy for which he endured the cross.
There is life in honouring our limitations, not loss.
There is grace in them, not exhaustion.
Jesus meets us in our limitations, and to meet him—to abide in him, is to be fully alive.
