You can accomplish more than you think.  Most of the barriers are in your head.  At least if you’re like me. 

Let me explain. 

It’s only June, but I think I’ve gotten more accomplished this year than in many other years combined.  I could say I’m excited about it, but actually I’m a bit shocked.  Shocked because some of the things I’ve gotten done are the very things I’ve thought about for years and never completed.  Some I never attempted. 

For years, people told me to write a book.  I even put it on my goal list once or twice. Just never did it.  It helped a lot that a great friend drafted me to cowrite one with him. While we worked on the concepts for a couple years, the real writing crunch happened very quickly.  Within the better span of a solid week, I had most of the first draft done.  Two months later, it was being printed. Now it helped alot that I wasn’t writing solo, but after it was over, I realized I might have written earlier if I put my mind to it. The issue:  I wasn’t sure I could actually do it.  But now I’m started to think about a second book. 

About six weeks ago, a mentor challenged me to designate a significant goal for 2010 that was doable by December, but that would actually be a challenge.  He encouraged input, so I emailed our staff and elders and asked what they thought I should do. Among the suggestions were:

• Run a triathalon
• Delegate more decisions
• Take a full day off every week

As I thought about these suggestions over a few days, I realized that these are all things I’d been thinking about for a while; in some case for years.  Then I got honest with myself: if I put my mind to it, none of them would actually take me to the end of 2010 to accomplish.  So I put them all on my goals for May and got them started or done.  (Well, the triathalon became a duathalon – I sink rather than swim).

My big goal for for 2010 became something I truly struggle with: I want to learn how to relax and have fun.  That one I thought I couldn’t solve in a month. 

I’m sitting here moving into June realizing that I have a huge obstacle in my life: me.  My little brain convinces me again and again that I can’t do what I’m actually able to do. 

I’m determined to overcome that.  If I can do even those things I’ve been putting off for years within a few months of each other, what else can I get done?

None of this squeezes God out of this conversation. I think it’s easy to rationalize our non-action as ‘spiritual’ or waiting on God.  Maybe He’s waiting on us – to get moving. 

This energy and resolve can move in multiple directions: your marriage, your parenting, your spiritual life, work, starting a new ministry, fitness – you name it.  

For me, it was simply admitting I spent  time convincing myself that I couldn’t do these things.  Shame on me.

How about you?  Do you struggle with this?  What helps you overcome inertia or a lack of progress in certain areas of your life?

PS.  By the way, after a month of working on it, I’m even relaxing better and having some fun.  How about that!

Most of us want to be good at what we do. Most of us would love a little more than that – we’d love to be great at what we do.

Think about this math.  If you’re going to get top 10% results, you’re probably not going to get them using the same methods that 90% of other people use.  The methods the 90% used generated the results that 90% of people get. 

We often want results that are disproportionate to our effort or methods.  But the people who got top 10% results used different methods than most others.  They did something, or a (more likely) a combination of things that moved them ahead of others in whatever they were doing.  The people who get top 1% results are doing things differently than 99% of everyone else.  If you’re playing on the first line of the winning team in the Stanley Cup finals, it’s not because you simply skate with the boys from 6 – 7 a.m. before work every Tuesday.  

• If you want an excellent marriage, you have to have different patterns and habits than most others couples.
• If you want your business to be the best in its field, your methods will be different than most of your competitors and colleagues.
• If you want your ministry to reach more than people than you’re currently reaching, your methods are going to be different than 95% of other churches (less than 5% of Canadian churches have an attendance of 350 or more on a Sunday).  
• Most of us have a reasonable level of dissatisfaction with some aspects of our lives.  Jesus invites us into a radically different methodology (love your enemies).  Most of us really don’t want his methods; we just want his results. 

If you want different results, you have to work and live differently. And the change that represents to most of us is steep enough that we’ll keep living and working like the 90%, hoping to be like the 10%.  Not wise, but real. 

What different patterns have worked for you?  What’s helped you overcome obstacles or helped you make a break through in what you do?

Ministry might just be the perfect storm.

If you have a marketplace job, your life has some definable components: your work, your family and your personal life.   You might get up, spend some time with God, head off to work, come home and hang out with your family. 

In ministry, these worlds get fused.  You wake up, spend time with God. Go to work, which in some ways is spending more time with God and serving God.  Then you go home, and wait – you are a Christian family.  And you attend work with your family. Or hang on, is that work or is that personal or is that family?  

See what I mean.  It gets confusing. 

In my first year in ministry, I found I was tempted to combine my personal spiritual walk with sermon prep.  If I was preaching Exodus anyway, why not hang out in the text during my quiet time?  

I don’t know why, but early on that just struck me as unhealthy.  So I decided to adopt a discipline of personal bible reading that had zero to do with "work".  My plan the first year was just this:  read through the Bible in a year.  I did, and it revitalized my devotional life.  Fourteen years later, I’m still reading through the Bible every year. I’d never say everyone should do it.  But for me, it’s been awesome.  For whatever reason, it’s liberating to be reading through 2 Chronicles and realizing you may never preach on it all year long.  

Naturally, I find things in the Bible I end up preaching on.  But the point is that that wasn’t the point.  

I do pray for things that impact our ministry, but I try to spend a lot of time praying about things that I would pray about if I wasn’t in ministry.  For me, it’s boiled down to a simple, haunting question:

If I stopped ministry tomorrow, what would be left of my spiritual life? 

By cultivating a spiritual walk that has little do do with work, I hope I can answer that question with a resounding "quite a bit."  

This principle has helped my family sort out the thorny question of what to participate in as well.  The rule we adopted early on was that as a family, we would do those things we would normally do if we were just Christians and I wasn’t the pastor.  It would be normal for our family to serve in some ministries, but not every ministry. Normal to be out at church a night or two a week, but not every night of the week.  Normal to attend church, but not necessarily multiple services every Sunday just because we hold them.  So my wife and kids serve because they are Christians, not because I’m the pastor.  It’s been so healthy. 

We’ve been fortunate to be part of a community that understands that principle, respects it and even thinks it’s healthy.  So grateful for that! 

This is the fourth practice that’s helped me stay alive and engaged in ministry more often than not over fifteen years:  to cultivate a spiritual walk that has little to do with "work".

How about you?  What helps you?  If you stopped ministry tomorrow, what would be left of your spiritual life?  If you stopped ministry tomorrow, what would that do to your family’s rhythm of service? 

So I’m having a non-productive day today.  A great breakfast meeting, but my focus started fading shortly thereafter.  No shortage of stuff to do and I don’t even want to take a nap – just not enough focus to accomplish anything significant.

Question:  do our body and mind ever conspire to force us into time off?

I am haunted by a verse in 2 Chronicles.  It talks about Israel being overthrown and defeated as a nation.  Originally, the people of Israel were supposed to let the land lay fallow every seven years (no crops), celebrate a year of Jubilee every 50th year, and observe the Sabbath week to week.  Did they? Pretty much they didn’t. Never.  Ever. 

Instead of resting, they worked.  Gotta make money.  Gotta get ahead.  We’re driven.  If I don’t make it happen, it’s not going to happen.

But then they got defeated.  Completely.  Captured – taken into exile.  And this is the poignant observation of scripture on their defeat:

So the message of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled. The land finally enjoyed its Sabbath rest, lying desolate until the seventy years were fulfilled, just as the prophet had said.  2 Chronicles 36.21

Ouch.  I don’t want my body to enjoy its Sabbath rest involuntarily. 

I love to work, but God created each of us with limits.  I fear being lazy, so I work extra hard.  (Best definition of laziness I ever heard was from Stuart Hall – laziness is resting before you are tired).  I’m always trying to push past my limits, but maybe God just doesn’t want me to. 

When I analyze why I work too hard, I shudder:

- I feel I can run the universe better than God can. 

- I like too much control and not enough dependence.

- I want to be significant, and am not comfortable enough letting God be significant.

I get terrified by the idea of a real Sabbath – a day where I produce nothing…absolutely nothing and simply let God be enough for me.  I’ve had very few days in my life where I completely did nothing…produced nothing, got distracted by nothing (no sports, no movies, no biking, no reading) and just let me be in the presence of God.  Wonder what that would be like?

I’m planning on taking tomorrow off.   Maybe my body is telling me I should have taken today off too. 

What do you think?  Do you pay attention to God-ordained limits?  If not, why not?