Source: Public Domain
This daily post is designed to help you live into our New Room Society covenant of practicing daily prayer together. Below is this week’s theme and daily practice.
Week 15: Capacity
Does your role as a faith community leader give you influence in more people’s lives than the average individual has? Why is it important to understand your capacity for ministry?
“You enlarge my steps under me, and my feet have not slipped.” Psalm 18:36, New American Standard Bible (NASB)
You are only one person.
But the simple fact that one of your primary jobs is to train other leaders means your influence will go further than it might otherwise.
So not only must you carefully cultivate your inner ground for spiritual growth and maturity, you must also be aware of how you are growing other leaders for ministry. And as you do the work to which God has called you, you will have to be mindful of how much you can actually take on.
You need to know what your capacity is. Not so much your capacity for being formed in the image of God, but your human capacity for powerful spiritual friendships.
Because you are human. Divinely called and powered by the Holy Spirit, but humanly limited.
Pastors burn out all the time. Sadly, there’s almost something culturally expected about it. There’s a worldly undercurrent of whispering which calls pastors who burn out “committed.”
But here’s a stark observation about that: the drive to exceed your capacity does not come from the forces that serve God. So it’s important to know who, specifically, you are committing yourself to. Because it’s not God who intends for you to burn out.
So if you intend to serve God, you must know your human limits or else be used by other gods.
Sunday: Gratitude for the “Large Place”
“From my distress I called upon the Lord;
The Lord answered me and set me in a large place.”
Psalm 118:5, New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Think about the last time you found profound relief in a trying time. Can you describe the spiritual, emotional, or (perhaps) physical “large place” that God answered you with?
This goes well with Psalm 18:36. Spend time today in gratitude for the wide steps and large places God has given you.