…is standing in the way of what you should do.

As your life gets more complicated and the world gets smaller, there are so many things you could do with your time, resources and energy.

That wasn’t always true.  In a pre-wired world, our personal universe was smaller and many of us longed for opportunities.  You only got news when you bought a newspaper or turned on a tv (and even then, what you saw had been pre-narrowed for you).  You only really learned when you had a book or took a course or got out into another forum.  It was far more difficult to start something, whether that was a writing project (who would publish you?) or a not-for-profit or a business.  But now you can start almost anything anytime you want.  It’s just easy.

There is so much you could do.

But there are only a few things you should do.

What you could do will always compete with what you should do, until you figure out what you should be doing.  And that will help refocus and eliminate all the coulds until you focus 90% of your time on the handful of shoulds that will become your life. (You can leave the 10% for fun and experimentation with what could be.)

I’ve had to spend a lot of time over the last few years figuring out what the best use of my time is because the possibilities keep multiplying.  What I could do seems to keep growing for me as it does for you too.  It’s just the nature of world we live in.  But the more you realize that could doesn’t mean should,  the more you will discover what your true mission in life is.  In fact, you may finally find your sweet spot.

What you could do is always standing in the way of what you should do.

What should you being doing today?  Eliminate a few more things you could be doing and you might find out.

I’ve got more than a few friends right now who are going through a very difficult season.  Cancer, marriages in crisis and career issues are just a few of the problems in the lives of people I care about.

One question keeps surfacing:

Does God give you more than you can handle?

Strangely, I think the answer is simple:  Yes he does.

As I’ve reflected on my own challenges and those of my friends, I’m reminded of the searing pain of some seasons of life.  Whether it’s leadership challenges, illness, circumstances, or even personal implosions, sometimes it really does seem like more than you can handle.

Which sounds like a recipe to abandon faith.  But actually, it’s the opposite.  Those moments are the ones in which our faith needs to deepen even more.  Here’s why:

God gives us more than we can handle, but he never gives us more than He can handle.

The very moment in which we are most likely to lose faith is the moment in which we need to deepen it.  Because God can handle whatever you are facing, even if you can’t.

A couple of passages have sprung to life for me in this season with my friends.  Here’s one of them.  I love what Paul says:

We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)

In fact, we expected to die. But we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.  Tell me if you’ve seen a more powerful thought recently.  I haven’t. That’ll preach.

Even in leadership, sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the task and things not going the way I had hoped (despite best efforts) that I just have to re-surrender everything to God.

Is it too much for you and me to handle?  Sometimes, absolutely.

Which is why I’m so grateful for a God who can be trusted in every circumstance, no matter what it looks or feels like to us.

What are you learning in this area?  What’s helped you?