Handling Logistics...

Logistics may be the single biggest hindrance to personal growth in the Lord. For logistics, is the machine that busies our hands and idles our hearts. Logistics is a mask that safely says, “I’m doing” tricking both our own selves and the outside world that we are properly handling all that God has for us. Busyness itself is not sinful nor is it in direct opposition to Christ. The Lord himself was busy. However, the Lord was never rushed.

At a certain point in our walk with the Lord, we recognize the obvious deception of social commitment. Being at a community is not the same thing as being in a community and so as the long list of social obligations continues to cover our calendar we find ourselves tired, run down, and empty. The logistics of a life filled with social appointments does not tend to brush us up against the savior.

Then there is the less obvious and seemingly more innocuous pull of the things that are good. Investing in the lives of others, ministry work, obligations to job, school, and family, etc. Yet even these, can without notice, consume our lives and can become what we call our walk with Christ when really, they are merely things that fill our days and consume our thoughts. The things we have to take care of, the things that are necessities get priority... They become our end. When we can finish them, fix them, participate in them, we feel satisfied and lay down in our bed of false comfort only to awake and participate again the very next day.

These logisitics – They consume us and strangle our growth.

BUT, the truth is, that logistics are life’s reality. We should make time for friends, for family, for school and work commitments, for ministry assignments, for small group, etc. But, how do we answer the call of logistics while still being an active participant in conversations with Christ?

Consider these questions:

Do we have time in our schedule to wrestle with Christ over something?

Do we go to our knees willingly or does the Lord have to bring us there through trials and circumstance?

Do we have the time to relate God in such a way as to explore His full worth?

I read a poem recently, that helps us ask the hard questions of our heart. It’s called $3 Worth Of God by Wilbur Reese...

"I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don't want enough of Him to make me love a hated man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I'd like to buy $3 worth of God, please."

So, as this old year closes and the new one begins, we should consider asking ourselves if we fear that too much of God will explode our soul or disturb our sleep? Are we pleasingly filled with the logistics of life and a just small portion of God? Are we prizing comfort and the satisfaction finishing a to-do list over transformation?

When I think about this, I am reminded of a piece of scripture from Isaiah 50 that says:
“The Lord [a]GOD has given Me the tongue of disciples,
That I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word.
He awakens Me morning by morning,
He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.
5 The Lord GOD has opened My ear;
And I was not disobedient
Nor did I turn back.”

I pray that as we are awakened morning by morning that we are neither inclined towards disobedience nor turning back. That the busyness of our days would not become the definition of our days and that we would know that God can take care of any and all logistics, but we are responsible for participating in our relationship with him. Let us not be satisfied to merely brush against him, but to sit as his table and feast in His full worth.