Latest / Prayer Before Work / When "I Can Handle It" Becomes the Problem - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- Sean Graver: So your to-do list from yesterday is still open on your screen. Except now it has today's list stacked on top of it. And somewhere in there is a task from last week. You still haven't touched. Hey, this is Sean. Welcome back to Prayer Before Work. Now, maybe nobody sat down and decided you'd be doing the work of two or three people. It just happened. One open position that never got filled, one project that got added temporarily. maybe an on call rotation that somehow became every day instead of every third day. Now you're the person everyone routes things to because you're the only one who actually gets them done. And that's not really a compliment as much as it's a a warning sign. Now there's a story in Exodus that gets skipped over a lot, but mostly because it's not about Moses doing something impressive. It's about him almost running himself into the ground. So his father in law, Jethro, watches him single handedly settling every dispute for an entire nation from morning until evening. And he says something pretty straightforward. In Exodus eighteen, verses seventeen and eighteen, he tells him, What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. Now I w one thing I notice about that moment is that Moses wasn't lazy or disorganized. He was actually leading well by every measure available to him. He just hadn't noticed that I can handle it and I should handle it are two different things completely. Now Jeff Throw had to point that out from the outside because Moses was too far inside to see it himself. And if you're the one everyone routes things to right now, you might need someone playing Jethro for you, or you might need just to be honest enough to play that role for yourself. And that could mean like maybe specifically naming what's actually on your plate, and doing that to someone with the authority to change it. it might mean asking directly, is this sustainable long term or or is this temporary? And pushing for a real answer in instead of just an assumed one. You're not being weak when you say the load is too heavy. It's just true. And true things are worth saying. So let's pray. Lord, we're we're tired in a way that a good night's sleep doesn't fix. help us to tell the difference between doing our job well and just drowning well. everyone assumes that we're fine. G give us the courage to n to really call out what's actually happening instead of just pushing through it and and where the load genuinely needs to change. Open a door for that to happen. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Go make today count.