Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Busyness”
Our Bible verse for today: “There is profit in all hard work, but endless talk leads only to poverty.” Proverbs 14:23 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Being busy is actually good, if you’re busy with the right things.”
As we conclude our theme of “busyness” I want to be sure to stress that busyness is not necessarily bad. On the contrary, the Bible repeatedly teaches that God expects us to be industrious, hardworking, diligent, and conscientious about life in general. We are not to be lazy and we are not to make excuses for not doing the things we should do. This is important because too many people claim to be “too busy” for this or that, when in fact they’re just using busyness as an excuse to get out of doing something they should do.
And so, we have to be smart about this. We have to be wise in the choices we make regarding the things we will say “yes” to, and those we will decline to do. This is a problem for a lot of people. I’ve received a good bit of feedback from some of you regarding how much you wrestle with this issue in your own lives.
Since finding good solutions for dealing with the busyness of our lives is such a problem for so many people, I’ve decided to spend the month of August revisiting a theme we explored once before, back in September 2014. It’s the theme of “Boundaries”. Even though we have explored this subject once before, it was three years ago. Many of you were not part of our email and Facebook reader groups back then and therefore this will be entirely new for you. Others of you were part of the group back then but will still find it helpful to review these important lessons.
There is only so much we can allow into our lives at any one time. That means we have to say “yes” to some things and to some people, and we have to say “no” to others. In other words, we have to establish boundaries that will determine who and what we will allow into our lives, and who and what can not come in.
We have to do this. If we don’t then our lives will quickly become a lot like that Hungarian circus I made reference to the other day, the one with lots of wild monkeys out of control and causing chaos.
Much of what we consider in the coming month will be borrowed or excerpted from the great book “Boundaries” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. If busyness and proper boundaries is a challenge for you then I recommend you read that book.
I look forward to exploring this important subject with you. We can all use better boundaries to help us gain control over the busyness of our lives.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 