Feeling Overwhelmed, Falling Behind

Your value is not measured by how you look or by what you do. You are lovingly created in the image of God, and that alone makes you valuable beyond measure.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139:14 I hate being sick. This past week I’ve been in that limbo stage where I’m not quite sick enough to get medicine but too sick to do anything but lay there and moan. Sinus infection. I had all kinds of things I was going to get done. I had projects I was going to wrap up. New projects to start and iron out the details. I had people to go see. Things to go do. I had a schedule that was jam-packed. And the very last thing I needed more than anything else was to get sick.

Oh I tried doing as much as I could. I answered some email in between coughs. I wrote down some thoughts in between sneezes. I even worked out a sermon in between the throbbing headaches. But it wasn’t near enough of what I needed to get done.

I missed part of Thursdays, all day Friday and Saturday and most all of Monday. Now today I’m sitting here staring at the piles of paper that seem to magically appear. I have 89 email to answer. I am behind on studying for three Bible study classes and I haven’t even begun to think about sermons. Yes. I feel overwhelmed. Just a couple years ago, I would have launched myself right into the work and worked so hard that I ended up getting sick again. But for some reason, today God spoke to me and said to put the important things first.

So I started to think about what was important. Was it the emails? The big project? Wrapping up the last big project?

As I started to grasp for what needed to be done on top of my in box, I spied my Bible sitting all alone on the corner of the desk. And suddenly I knew what needed to be first.

When we talk about Spiritual Disciplines of reading our Bible, prayer, worship, fasting, etc., we often think that we can do them only when we have time. But what God was telling me today is that we need to make time for everything else.

Troy Conrad