rest, part four

4. rest: distinguishing between need, ability, season, and calling

After the last post I received an email asking an excellent question about how to distinguish between need, ability, season, and calling. Here are some of the principles I call upon to navigate through those challenging waters:

• A wise missiologist, Steve Hawthorne, once said to me, "Alicia, you have a lot of dreams and ideas. That's okay, because you have a whole lifetime to live them." His words challenged me to realize that all of the things I feel called to do don't need to be done TODAY. The longings and interests and giftings in my heart are going to be realized throughout my entire lifetime.
  
• There's a great deal of difference between saying, "I volunteer because there's a need" and "I volunteer because there's a God."
  
• The greatest gift I can give people I need to say "no" to is to be faithful to those God calls me to say "yes" to.
• Personally, God leads me through peace, not stress. If I feel stressed about saying "no" I give myself more time. It is much easier to ask for more time to pray than to reverse a hastily uttered "yes" later on.
• God's primary prerequisite for calling people to a task is not gifting. Because I am able to do something well, that does not mean that God is calling me to do it.
  

rest, part three

3. rest: the discipline of selective disappointment

In the beginning...of ministry, I said "yes" to other's requests for a variety of reasons:

• I felt I was supposed to say "yes"
• I wanted to honor the people who asked me to say "yes"
• I thought something would go undone [gasp] if I didn't say "yes"
• I wanted people to consider me a team player or to simply value me for helping out
• I reasoned that if I'm able to meet a need, I must therefore be called to meet that need
  

But when all these reasons layered over one another, I soon found myself running on empty.

Once God graciously began helping me to distinguish between need, ability, season, and calling...the next big challenge for me personally was paying the price of others' disappointment when I started to respectfully say "no, thank you" to opportunities and requests.

The discipline of selective disappointment goes something like this:

• people are always going to have an opinion about how you should be using your time and talents
• if you are here, some will think you should be there; if you're doing this, some will think you should be doing that...
• so since people are going to be disappointed ANYWAY, I vote we take authority in how that disappointment is distributed

When I'm faced with someone's disappointment, I remind myself of the following:

• need is a voice that never says "enough"
• the greatest gift I can give anyone will come from the overflow of a healthy, well-nurtured relationship with Jesus and my family
• every time I say "no" I give someone else the opportunity to say "yes" and that's a good thing
  

rest, part two

2. rest: a framework

I would like to strongly suggest that you consider purchasing a great book that will provide a spiritual, physical, and interpersonal framework for our redefining of rest: Margin, by Dr. Swenson.

Barry and I read this book years ago. Picture a straight line that represents our daily reserve of personal energy. Swenson is a medical doctor whose premise is that God designed us (physically, emotionally, relationally) to live between points A and B and that the space between B to C is on reserve for the unexpected, for crisis. BUT on a daily basis we live from A to C. So when a crisis does arise, it pushes us over into overload.

In other words, God didn't design us to live to the end of our abilities every day. We're supposed to have a buffer. If we live each day to the end of our rope, there's nothing left to hold onto when an unanticipated problem calls for something "more."