But God knows the way
Psalm 142:3, 143:8-10 When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn. … Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you … Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.
Do you ever feel like life comes at you too fast and furiously?
That’s how I feel now, and I hate that feeling. The last few Karis years burned me out on high stress. In the past I could convert pressure into productivity. Now I find it paralyzing.
What about you? How’s your relationship with stress?
I dislike pressure in part because I believe God wants us to live peacefully and joyfully, not uptight and frustrated. To feel the impact of this from Scripture, do this (which I just did): Go to BibleGateway.com, search “peace” and skip to the New Testament. Then scroll through soak yourself for a while in these 89 verses (or however many there are in the version you choose).
The corollary, I think, is this: if I am NOT living peacefully, I’m not paying enough attention to the Lord’s guidance about when to say yes and when to say no, and how to follow through on the “yeses” in a different way. I must take time each morning to connect with my Lord and in the context of his love for me, hear his marching orders for the day rather than responding too quickly to all the other voices I listen to. And I need to be more selective about the voices I prioritize, under the Lord’s loving guidance.
The area of my life that most easily pressures and paralyzes me seems to be the area I end up giving the least effective attention to even though it hangs over me all the time: marketing. This year it happened that I published too many books and parts of books to keep up with. Two of them were “supposed” to come out last year, but for various reasons didn’t. Each one of them requires marketing to become the blessing I believe God wants them to be, and to justify the resources poured into them by me and by others.
I woke up this morning finally able to accept what Dave has been telling me for a while: I need to hire someone to help me. I have leads; I just haven’t taken the time to follow up on them. So that will be my next task: reach out to some people who love doing what I do not and find out whether one of them can use their gifts to aid me. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Shutterstock: Andy Dean Photography
I am finally feeling hopeful about getting out of the whirlpool and back on solid ground. And making progress on Cally and Charlie Book 3 … haha.
What’s your next step toward living peacefully and joyfully?
Debra Kornfield 