DON'T BECOME A YES-AHOLIC

Addictions run rampant.  Worse they boss us day in and day out.  One of these villains is the constant urge to say yes to each need, demand, and request knowing we can't possibly keep up this pace.

Now, understand that I know many who are lazy as well as unreliable.  These could use a good dose of stepping up to the let's get involved needs of others by saying yes. But these are not this post's target.  The committed and hard working sort are.

I had a good thing happen to me when I was 32 years old.  I became very ill.

I was hospitalized and knocked out of my occupational duties as a church minister. The anguish was intense.  The lack of strength to participate was discouraging.  I was a mover and a shaker and things needed moving and shaking.

But I learned to go to school at this seminar.  God showed me that the church didn't run due to me.  It flowed due to His Spirit.  Surprise me!

Living next door to the church, I would stand at the window on Sunday mornings and nights and watch the members/visitors move in and out.  Oh how this hurt my heart. They were getting along without me.  It didn't mean that they didn't love me.  Yet, it did mean that I evidently wasn't their source of energy and nor their dependent compass.  Surprise me!

We who are committed to kingdom matters tend to take on the thought that the church depends on us.  Not true.  The church depends on God and He showed me in stark moments that I don't run His show.  My yes is not the dynamic that makes people and things click.

He is.

Thus I learned to say no when I thought such was the honest spiritual answer; and even when I felt others would be displeased.  This latter element is a killer which seems to hold us at gunpoint to force a yes out of us.

Blessings flow, however, even from our no.  First, it allows others the opportunity to get to serve who wouldn't otherwise if we keep hoarding the labors.  Second, it allows us to rest for stronger service toward those areas He truly calls.  And third, God gets the picture that we believe He operates the kingdom when we can trust our no every bit as much as our yes.

I know.  I know that church leaders feel the greater need is to get the members to commit to a yes in service.  I get that.  But has it occurred that more yeses might come about if those whom we deem as very loyal would give room for these others to enter into the force by our saying no to those things which seem to pressure because of over-loaded schedule?

Yes-aholics eventually wear out and down.  At first it is called grouchy and eventually, for a few, it is labeled as burn out.  This isn't necessary.  Yes-aholics don't run God's show.  We never have.  We have fooled ourselves into thinking the church depends on me.

Yes-aholics, this isn't the case.

We are to depend on God by abiding by His call to let our yes be yes and our no be no.