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And when we do all of that and we start to fill our lives so full that there's no margin, no room for anyone to interrupt us, we often can unintentionally grow resentful and bitter because we don't have enough margin in our lives.
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I don't know if this sounds like you, but it's definitely been me before, where I have filled my life so full and said yes to so many things that whenever somebody else asks me for something or when something disrupts my schedule, I almost get angry or frustrated because I'm like, I just don't have time for this.
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Welcome to Vessels, a podcast designed to equip multi-passionate women who are on mission with God.
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This is a space to be filled back up as you pour out to the people around you.
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Each week, you'll hear honest conversations and encouragement to strengthen your faith and help you move forward in your calling.
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Now let's get into this week's episode.
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Hey friends, welcome back to another episode.
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This week we are talking all about stewarding our time well and making more margin in our lives.
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And before we get into this week's episode, I would love if you are listening and you haven't subscribed to the show yet, I would love if you could subscribe or follow wherever you're listening to this from.
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And if you haven't left a rating and a review on whatever platform you're listening to, would you do me a favor and quickly go leave a rating and a review?
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It would just mean so much to me to help more people find the show and know about the show so that I can continue to make a bigger impact.
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All right.
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So this week we are chatting about our time.
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We're chatting about margin, we're chatting about how to make sure that we aren't packing our lives too full to allow God to move.
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And this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because it's something that I have been struggling with myself.
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I realized quickly this year and really over the past probably two years that I was just feeling things too full.
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And some of this has to do with my business, some of it is just excuses, but a lot of it has to do with feeling like everything depends on me.
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And with that, I realized that I am unintentionally a control freak oftentimes when it comes to trying to be obedient to the things that I know God's called me to do and trying to make sure I'm doing them well and going all in on whatever it is that God has called me to.
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And so over the past two years, that has looked like building a business and going full-time in my business, a little creative company.
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If you aren't aware, I run a web design studio where I help Christian creatives and service providers to get found and chosen online through their website, marketing strategy, branding, and SEO strategy.
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And so over the past two years, I've been working really hard to grow my business and get it to a steady place where I kept saying, whenever my business gets to XYZ, then I will have more time to focus on the writing, speaking, and podcasting side of the things that I know God's called me to do as well.
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And I realized this year I said yes to way too many projects at one time.
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And that led me to just feeling really burnt out.
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And I just kept coming back to this message about time, stewardship of our time and making sure that we are creating margin for God and making sure that we are not taking control unintentionally.
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And I also realized that something else the Lord spoke to me is that your calling is not a hobby.
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And what that means is basically for all the things that I do in my life, it's often felt easier for things that are more of a career to take a front seat, whether it was when I was in the corporate world or whether it's my business that I'm running now.
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All of those things make more sense, quote unquote.
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And first, I want to quickly say that sometimes your calling is a career, and sometimes your calling is not necessarily a vocational career.
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Sometimes your calling can look like a lot of different things.
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Um, and really it's just being on mission for God.
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But in this context, I'm talking about the things that God has called us to do that feel like a hobby, but we need to treat like an actual job instead of using our real jobs as an excuse to not do the things that God's called us to do.
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And so when I felt like the Lord spoke that to me, I realized that I had been putting my writing and speaking and the podcast more on the back burner because it's not the thing that makes money and brings income to my house.
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And so it felt right to make sure that I'm prioritizing the areas that are bringing income to our family and are growing the income we need to um sustain our life and all of those types of things.
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But I also know very much so that I am called to speak and write and do this podcast and pour into others and encourage others.
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And so I realized in a sense that part of the reason I was treating those things like a hobby is because it takes so much time and effort to create content, to put yourself out there for writing and speaking in this podcast, and trying to do it all by myself has been a lot.
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And so oftentimes I just treated it like a hobby because it wasn't paying the bills.
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And so it felt like it wasn't the right thing to do to put too much time and effort into something that makes no money.
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But then I realized that God isn't looking at my wallet necessarily, He is looking at my obedience.
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And part of the reason that I also have struggled sometimes with my calling is because I have faced a lot of rejection in it and have faced a lot of setbacks in it.
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And part of that has looked like pitching myself to literary agents and publishers years ago and getting told that my platform wasn't big enough and that the topic that I wanted to write about was too oversaturated.
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And so I let that rejection really define things for such a long time.
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I have not pitched agents or publishers since then.
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And I've just been working on growing my platform ever since to hopefully be able to pitch them again someday and throwing my time into other areas that seem to be more fruitful and making money and providing for my family.
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And I say all that to encourage you in whatever calling you may have from the Lord, whether it is a vocational calling, a career calling, whether it's to stay at home with your kids, whether it's in ministry, whatever that looks like, make sure that you are also not treating your calling like a hobby.
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And one of the other things that really resonated with me the other week as I was preparing to lead a devotional for a group of women in a small group that I'm part of, I was praying about what to speak about to them and praying about just each of our seasons of life and coming off of the season where I have been busier than I ever have been in my business.
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And I quickly realized I did not start working for myself to work as much as I am working.
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And I did not start working for myself to have to work nights and weekends and all of these other things.
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And I realized that I was not making margin for God like I needed to.
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And it kind of dawned on me that we are all living such very full lives.
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And we are all living these lives that we fill to the brim, whether it's intentional or unintentional.
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And when we do that, we are unintentionally taking control from God and saying, like, I've got this, I've got everything under control.
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I know when everything's gonna happen.
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And I, and we use the excuse of, well, I'm doing it for the Lord.
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And so often, whether we're in ministry or whether we're just pursuing the calling that God has us that may be outside of traditional ministry, we often use the excuse, well, I'm just doing this for God.
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And so, yada yada yada, you know, we go hard towards the things that we feel that we are supposed to do.
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And we end up neglecting other areas of our lives or just filling our lives so full that we burn out.
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And that's just not how God intended for us to live our life.
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If you're enjoying this, did you know that I have a weekly email called The Second Cup?
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Think of it like a little extra encouragement to start your week.
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You can sign up in the show notes.
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And when we do all of that and we start to fill our lives so full that there's no margin, no room for anyone to interrupt us, we often can unintentionally grow resentful and bitter because we don't have enough margin in our lives.
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I don't know if this sounds like you, but it's definitely been me before, where I have filled my life so full and said yes to so many things that whenever somebody else asks me for something or when something disrupts my schedule, I almost get angry or frustrated because I'm like, I just don't have time for this.
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I don't have time to be interrupted.
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I don't have time to be caught at this red light.
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I don't have time for the checkout lane to be going really slow at Target.
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I don't have time for this person to be calling me.
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And I almost get frustrated because somebody is interrupting me or disrupting my perfectly planned schedule because I filled my life so full that I had no room for any error of margin.
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And I had no room for anything to get out of order.
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And if one thing gets out of order, it just sets off this chain reaction.
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And then I quickly find myself feeling resentful and bitter.
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And I think so many of us can relate to this.
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And the other thing that happens when we allow our schedules to be so full is we don't give God much room to move in our lives, or worse, we miss what he's doing because we're filling our time so full, even if it's good things.
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And I know of all the places in our lives, this can happen the easiest in ministry because, like I mentioned earlier, we use the excuse that we're doing it for God.
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And so therefore, we just need to do it all.
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But I just want to remind you that Jesus did not live his life that way.
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He always had margin.
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He always retreated and had quiet time with the Lord.
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He always allowed himself to be interruptible.
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And when we talk about stewardship, I want to remind us that stewardship is not just about money.
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Stewardship is also about our time and our talents.
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And how are we stewarding the life that God has given us?
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How are we stewarding the time that God has given us?
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And how are we stewarding the talents that He's given us?
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And there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
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So I want to quickly talk about the story about Jesus and the bleeding woman.
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This comes out of Mark V, and I love this story, and I know you've probably heard the story before, and people always typically focus on the woman and her faith.
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I know sometimes people do focus about Jesus in the story, but I want to quickly chat about it.
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I'm not gonna read all the scripture because it would take too long, but just a quick summary for you.
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Jesus is essentially on his way to heal Jairus' daughter in this story.
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And this is really urgent and important because Gyrus' daughter could potentially die.
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And so he's in this huge crowd of people that are pressing in all around him as he's making his way to go meet Jairus' daughter.
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And in the middle of that, there's a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years, and she knows that she desperately needs a touch from the Lord.
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And so she reaches out and touches his cloak and she's healed instantly.
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As we know, Jesus stops and he turns around and he notices her and he speaks to her.
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He allowed himself to be interruptible.
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And he wasn't saying, you know, it wasn't this moment where he's like, oh no, like I've got to get to Jairus' daughter.
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He wasn't panicked.
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He wasn't rushed, even on his way to perform a separate miracle.
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He had margin in his life.
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What I love about this story is that he made time for this woman.
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And he also noticed this woman.
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There were so many people vying for his attention in that crowd, I'm sure, because they were all pressing around him.
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They were all touching him.
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And this woman touched him and he noticed.
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And he noticed because of her face.
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But what I want us to pay attention to in this story is more so the part where Jesus is making room to talk to this woman, to allow himself to be interrupted and to not rush through the moment.
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I know so often we can find ourselves in different moments where we are rushing into the grocery store, we're rushing here, we're rushing there.
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And if someone interrupts us, we get frustrated.
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But what I want us to learn from this story is to allow ourselves to be able to be interrupted and to not overlook the things that are right around us, to take time to ask the Holy Spirit, what do you want me to notice around me right now?
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What do you want me to make margin for in my schedule right now?
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Because so often these interruptions are divine appointments.
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And if we are not paying attention, we can miss them.
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We can miss the opportunity for God to use us where he needs us most because we just can't be bothered.
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If Jesus had been rushed and then he had no margin, that woman would have been overlooked.
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And I just don't want that to be the same for us.
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I don't want us to overlook people because we're in such a hurry, because we have filled our lives just way too full.
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And another story that I often think about when I think about this topic is Mary and Martha.
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We've also heard this one a ton.
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We always hear about being more like Mary and less like Martha because Martha is busy, she's serving, she's hosting, she's doing all the things that need to get done.
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And Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet.
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And Martha gets frustrated because she's like, come on, like I need help.
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Somebody help me.
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Like, we can't just be sitting here.
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And how often is that us?
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I love how Jesus just gently corrects Martha's priorities because Martha was doing something good.
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She was trying to be a good host.
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She was trying to make sure everyone is fed and having a great time and prepare her home for Jesus.
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Instead, she missed the moment to actually sit and be with Jesus.
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And so I want us to think about that as we think about how we are filling our lives to full.
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And something that really resonated with me as I was kind of studying this topic, I was studying scripture and I was just looking up different verses that have to do with margin and stewarding our time and all of these things.
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And there was a verse in Leviticus that really stood out to me.
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And the verse in Leviticus is Leviticus 19, 9.
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And it says, When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
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Part of this scripture goes on to talk about leaving some of the harvest, like to not pick up everything that you left in the field and to leave some for the poor and the needy and the less fortunate.
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But what I want us to pay attention to in this is the part that says, do not reap to the very edges of your field.
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What this is talking about is basically making sure that you leave some room for margin, that you aren't reaping so far to the edges that you have no room left to give.
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And whenever these farmers were harvesting in their field and harvesting their land, they would have to make sure that they're leaving edges of their field.
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And I think this is just so wise for us to make sure that we are not reaping to the edges of our schedules of our lives, that we are leaving margin for God to move in our life and for him to speak to us.
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I know so often when we are in these busy seasons and we find ourselves in our prayer time and we're like, Lord, I just want you to speak to me.
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I just want you to like, how come you're not moving?
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How come you're not this?
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And I found my, I have found myself in that scenario so many times where I'm like, Lord, I just want to hear from you.
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I just want to do what you're calling me to do.
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How come I'm not seeing the movement I need, this or that?
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And looking back, I realized in those moments it's because I'm not giving him room to show me anything because I filled my schedule so full that even if he were to tell me something, if he were to guide and lead me in something, when would I have time to do it?
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When would I have time to do the things he's asking me to do when I have zero margin to even do it?
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And he's so gracious that he's not going to give us more in that when we can't even do the things that we're already doing right now.
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He's not gonna just keep piling it on.
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He's gonna let us wait and ask for margin and create that margin before he's like, Yeah, I want you to go do this now.
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And then there was another verse that also came up in my study for this in Haggai, that's in Haggai one, five through nine.
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And I'm gonna read this for you guys really quick.
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It says, Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways, but you have sown much and harvested little.
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You eat, but you never have enough.
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You drink, but you never have your fill.
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You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and he who earns wages does so to put them in a bag with holes.
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Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways, go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it, and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.
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You looked for much, and behold, it came to little.
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And when you brought it home, I blew it away.
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Why, declares the Lord of hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.
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And that scripture hit me like a ton of bricks, you guys.
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When I was reading that, I was like, whoa, I I am I was just blown away because how often do we busy ourselves with building our own house?
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Whether we are filling every ounce with things that we want to do or things that we think we are doing for the Lord, but really we just get so busy that we never give God room to do the things that He's actually wanting to do and move in those situations.
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And I also realized in my own life that as I try to take control, that's me building my own house unintentionally.
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Even if I think that I'm building it for the Lord, even if I think, okay, I'm doing this for the Lord, I'm gonna do this, this, this, this, and this, and I'm gonna be obedient and I'm gonna do everything God's asked me to do, and it's all gonna be great.
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And then I quickly realize that as I try to take control and I, you know, pray, I'm like, okay, God, I'm gonna do it.
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Great, I go do it, but I like kind of take off without God sometimes where I'm like running down the road and he's still back there, like, wait a second, I didn't say go, or I didn't say, you know, all these things.
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And so often we can be so guilty of building our own house.
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And so that scripture just really stood out to me.
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And I hope that you can glean something from it too, because it hit me like a ton of bricks.
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And it talks about basically it's just how people are working hard, but they're not seeing results.
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And God is telling them to consider their ways.
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And I think he's saying the same thing to us for us to consider our ways.
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And just because we're doing more does not mean what we're doing is fulfilling, and it doesn't mean what we're doing is meaningful sometimes.
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And it doesn't mean that we are building the things that God has called us to build, or maybe we are building the things God's called us to, but at some point we got so busy in it that we forgot to stop and listen to see if that's still what he's calling us to do.
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So as we start to wrap up this episode, I want this to be practical for you guys.
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I want you to slow down in this moment and just for a second think about these questions and think about where in your life do you need to create more margin?
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And ask yourself, how have you been stewarding your own time?
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What might God be asking you to lay down in this season of life?
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Are there good things in your life or other things in your life that could be crowding him out?
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Where have you maybe been reaping your field all the way to the edges?
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And maybe you need to have that margin worked back into your schedule.
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And for me, this wasn't about overhauling everything overnight, but it's about having that awareness first.
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And this is something I'm still working through and working on with God right now because I have a lot of time commitments right now that I'm trying to fulfill and be a good steward of my yes, but I'm trying to be more intentional about future yeses.
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And I love the book from Lisa Turkhurst called The Best Yes.
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And in that book, essentially, she talks about how we are constantly giving our yes to something.
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Whether we intend to or not, we are always saying yes to something, which inherently says no to something else.
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And sometimes when we say yes to things that aren't our best yes, we have that resentment, we have those hard thoughts.
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Feelings or just like those uneasy feelings deep down because we said yes to something that we probably shouldn't have said yes to.
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And now we feel bad because we had to say no to this other thing that we actually really wanted to be doing.
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And so, how do we steward our yes well?
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I highly recommend reading that book.
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It's just such a good one.
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She wrote it so many years ago, but it's still such a good topic to remember today.
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And I just want you to pay attention to where do you feel stretched, where do you feel rushed, where do you feel out of alignment and invite God into that because He's not asking us to do more.
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He's really just inviting us to make space and to have margin.
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And basically what margin is, it's making sure that you are working in time of availability, essentially, not filling your calendar so full with projects at work that you have no time to pivot if a coworker needs something.
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Or in my case, when I'm running my own business and it's just me, I need to create more margin between different projects that I'm saying yes to.
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So if a project runs over or if something else comes up, I have a little bit more margin where I don't feel stressed when someone comes to me and says, Hey, can you help me with this last minute or this or that?
00:23:16.559 --> 00:23:23.279
It also looks like having margin where you aren't having to work as much at night and you don't have to work on weekends.
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It's having margin when you are at the grocery store and you're not in a rush.
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You can take your time and when you're in the checkout lane, you're not rushed and feeling frustrated at how long things are taking, but you can actually slow down and look around and look someone in the eye and smile at them.
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Or when you're going through a drive-thru or at a restaurant, being intentional to make eye contact with someone and smile at them.
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Margin can look like making sure that you carve out 15 or 20 minutes to spend with the Lord in the morning and that you don't feel rushed in your time with the Lord.
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It could look like making sure that there's more time in your kids' schedules so that you aren't running from basketball practice to soccer practice to all these different things and just having more margin where things aren't just back to back to back in your schedule, but that there's space between each of those things.
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That's even something that I do now with trips that I take.
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I try to make sure that I'm getting to wherever I'm going early enough that if the airplane schedule is off or something goes wrong, that I'm not stressed out because I like packed everything so tightly in the itinerary that now I'm frustrated at things that are out of my control.
00:24:40.720 --> 00:25:16.559
And so basically it's just creating more pockets of space in your life and making sure that you aren't doing too much, making sure you're not taking on too many roles that you have said yes to and seeing what are things that you can say no to and allow somebody else to step into that role and realizing that not everything has to depend on you, and that if God is calling you to something and calling you away from something, he will provide for that other thing, for that position or that role to be filled with someone else who can do it too.
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So this week, I just want to encourage you to take a look at your schedule, take a look at your rhythms, your commitments, and ask God where is he inviting you to make room?
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Not out of pressure, but out of trust.
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And when we make space for God, we don't lose anything and we gain what really matters.
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I hope that this resonated with you and encouraged you.
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And if this episode really resonated with you, could you share it on social media or share it with a friend?
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I would love for you to share this with anyone you think would be encouraged by this episode who needs this message.
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And once again, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, be sure that you subscribe so that you can be first to know when an episode comes out each week.
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Thank you guys so much for listening and watching.
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And it just means so much to have you part of this podcast community.
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I'm so excited for the things that are ahead and a few fun things that I am launching in the very near future that will allow you to be even more involved in the podcast and have actual community.
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So stay tuned for that.
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And I will see you back here next week.
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And when we do all of that and we start to fill our lives so full that there's no margin, no room for anyone to interrupt us, we often can unintentionally grow resentful and bitter because we don't have enough margin in our lives.
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I don't know if this sounds like you, but it's definitely been me before, where I have filled my life so full and said yes to so many things that whenever somebody else asks me for something or when something disrupts my schedule, I almost get angry or frustrated because I'm like, I just don't have time for this.
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Welcome to Vessels, a podcast designed to equip multi-passionate women who are on mission with God.
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This is a space to be filled back up as you pour out to the people around you.
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Each week, you'll hear honest conversations and encouragement to strengthen your faith and help you move forward in your calling.
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Now let's get into this week's episode.
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Hey friends, welcome back to another episode.
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This week we are talking all about stewarding our time well and making more margin in our lives.
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And before we get into this week's episode, I would love if you are listening and you haven't subscribed to the show yet, I would love if you could subscribe or follow wherever you're listening to this from.
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And if you haven't left a rating and a review on whatever platform you're listening to, would you do me a favor and quickly go leave a rating and a review?
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It would just mean so much to me to help more people find the show and know about the show so that I can continue to make a bigger impact.
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All right.
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So this week we are chatting about our time.
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We're chatting about margin, we're chatting about how to make sure that we aren't packing our lives too full to allow God to move.
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And this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because it's something that I have been struggling with myself.
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I realized quickly this year and really over the past probably two years that I was just feeling things too full.
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And some of this has to do with my business, some of it is just excuses, but a lot of it has to do with feeling like everything depends on me.
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And with that, I realized that I am unintentionally a control freak oftentimes when it comes to trying to be obedient to the things that I know God's called me to do and trying to make sure I'm doing them well and going all in on whatever it is that God has called me to.
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And so over the past two years, that has looked like building a business and going full-time in my business, a little creative company.
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If you aren't aware, I run a web design studio where I help Christian creatives and service providers to get found and chosen online through their website, marketing strategy, branding, and SEO strategy.
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And so over the past two years, I've been working really hard to grow my business and get it to a steady place where I kept saying, whenever my business gets to XYZ, then I will have more time to focus on the writing, speaking, and podcasting side of the things that I know God's called me to do as well.
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And I realized this year I said yes to way too many projects at one time.
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And that led me to just feeling really burnt out.
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And I just kept coming back to this message about time, stewardship of our time and making sure that we are creating margin for God and making sure that we are not taking control unintentionally.
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And I also realized that something else the Lord spoke to me is that your calling is not a hobby.
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And what that means is basically for all the things that I do in my life, it's often felt easier for things that are more of a career to take a front seat, whether it was when I was in the corporate world or whether it's my business that I'm running now.
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All of those things make more sense, quote unquote.
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And first, I want to quickly say that sometimes your calling is a career, and sometimes your calling is not necessarily a vocational career.
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Sometimes your calling can look like a lot of different things.
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Um, and really it's just being on mission for God.
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But in this context, I'm talking about the things that God has called us to do that feel like a hobby, but we need to treat like an actual job instead of using our real jobs as an excuse to not do the things that God's called us to do.
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And so when I felt like the Lord spoke that to me, I realized that I had been putting my writing and speaking and the podcast more on the back burner because it's not the thing that makes money and brings income to my house.
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And so it felt right to make sure that I'm prioritizing the areas that are bringing income to our family and are growing the income we need to um sustain our life and all of those types of things.
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But I also know very much so that I am called to speak and write and do this podcast and pour into others and encourage others.
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And so I realized in a sense that part of the reason I was treating those things like a hobby is because it takes so much time and effort to create content, to put yourself out there for writing and speaking in this podcast, and trying to do it all by myself has been a lot.
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And so oftentimes I just treated it like a hobby because it wasn't paying the bills.
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And so it felt like it wasn't the right thing to do to put too much time and effort into something that makes no money.
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But then I realized that God isn't looking at my wallet necessarily, He is looking at my obedience.
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And part of the reason that I also have struggled sometimes with my calling is because I have faced a lot of rejection in it and have faced a lot of setbacks in it.
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And part of that has looked like pitching myself to literary agents and publishers years ago and getting told that my platform wasn't big enough and that the topic that I wanted to write about was too oversaturated.
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And so I let that rejection really define things for such a long time.
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I have not pitched agents or publishers since then.
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And I've just been working on growing my platform ever since to hopefully be able to pitch them again someday and throwing my time into other areas that seem to be more fruitful and making money and providing for my family.
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And I say all that to encourage you in whatever calling you may have from the Lord, whether it is a vocational calling, a career calling, whether it's to stay at home with your kids, whether it's in ministry, whatever that looks like, make sure that you are also not treating your calling like a hobby.
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And one of the other things that really resonated with me the other week as I was preparing to lead a devotional for a group of women in a small group that I'm part of, I was praying about what to speak about to them and praying about just each of our seasons of life and coming off of the season where I have been busier than I ever have been in my business.
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And I quickly realized I did not start working for myself to work as much as I am working.
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And I did not start working for myself to have to work nights and weekends and all of these other things.
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And I realized that I was not making margin for God like I needed to.
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And it kind of dawned on me that we are all living such very full lives.
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And we are all living these lives that we fill to the brim, whether it's intentional or unintentional.
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And when we do that, we are unintentionally taking control from God and saying, like, I've got this, I've got everything under control.
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I know when everything's gonna happen.
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And I, and we use the excuse of, well, I'm doing it for the Lord.
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And so often, whether we're in ministry or whether we're just pursuing the calling that God has us that may be outside of traditional ministry, we often use the excuse, well, I'm just doing this for God.
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And so, yada yada yada, you know, we go hard towards the things that we feel that we are supposed to do.
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And we end up neglecting other areas of our lives or just filling our lives so full that we burn out.
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And that's just not how God intended for us to live our life.
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If you're enjoying this, did you know that I have a weekly email called The Second Cup?
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Think of it like a little extra encouragement to start your week.
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You can sign up in the show notes.
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And when we do all of that and we start to fill our lives so full that there's no margin, no room for anyone to interrupt us, we often can unintentionally grow resentful and bitter because we don't have enough margin in our lives.
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I don't know if this sounds like you, but it's definitely been me before, where I have filled my life so full and said yes to so many things that whenever somebody else asks me for something or when something disrupts my schedule, I almost get angry or frustrated because I'm like, I just don't have time for this.
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I don't have time to be interrupted.
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I don't have time to be caught at this red light.
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I don't have time for the checkout lane to be going really slow at Target.
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I don't have time for this person to be calling me.
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And I almost get frustrated because somebody is interrupting me or disrupting my perfectly planned schedule because I filled my life so full that I had no room for any error of margin.
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And I had no room for anything to get out of order.
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And if one thing gets out of order, it just sets off this chain reaction.
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And then I quickly find myself feeling resentful and bitter.
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And I think so many of us can relate to this.
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And the other thing that happens when we allow our schedules to be so full is we don't give God much room to move in our lives, or worse, we miss what he's doing because we're filling our time so full, even if it's good things.
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And I know of all the places in our lives, this can happen the easiest in ministry because, like I mentioned earlier, we use the excuse that we're doing it for God.
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And so therefore, we just need to do it all.
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But I just want to remind you that Jesus did not live his life that way.
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He always had margin.
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He always retreated and had quiet time with the Lord.
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He always allowed himself to be interruptible.
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And when we talk about stewardship, I want to remind us that stewardship is not just about money.
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Stewardship is also about our time and our talents.
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And how are we stewarding the life that God has given us?
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How are we stewarding the time that God has given us?
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And how are we stewarding the talents that He's given us?
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And there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
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So I want to quickly talk about the story about Jesus and the bleeding woman.
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This comes out of Mark V, and I love this story, and I know you've probably heard the story before, and people always typically focus on the woman and her faith.
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I know sometimes people do focus about Jesus in the story, but I want to quickly chat about it.
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I'm not gonna read all the scripture because it would take too long, but just a quick summary for you.
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Jesus is essentially on his way to heal Jairus' daughter in this story.
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And this is really urgent and important because Gyrus' daughter could potentially die.
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And so he's in this huge crowd of people that are pressing in all around him as he's making his way to go meet Jairus' daughter.
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And in the middle of that, there's a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years, and she knows that she desperately needs a touch from the Lord.
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And so she reaches out and touches his cloak and she's healed instantly.
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As we know, Jesus stops and he turns around and he notices her and he speaks to her.
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He allowed himself to be interruptible.
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And he wasn't saying, you know, it wasn't this moment where he's like, oh no, like I've got to get to Jairus' daughter.
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He wasn't panicked.
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He wasn't rushed, even on his way to perform a separate miracle.
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He had margin in his life.
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What I love about this story is that he made time for this woman.
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And he also noticed this woman.
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There were so many people vying for his attention in that crowd, I'm sure, because they were all pressing around him.
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They were all touching him.
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And this woman touched him and he noticed.
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And he noticed because of her face.
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But what I want us to pay attention to in this story is more so the part where Jesus is making room to talk to this woman, to allow himself to be interrupted and to not rush through the moment.
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I know so often we can find ourselves in different moments where we are rushing into the grocery store, we're rushing here, we're rushing there.
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And if someone interrupts us, we get frustrated.
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But what I want us to learn from this story is to allow ourselves to be able to be interrupted and to not overlook the things that are right around us, to take time to ask the Holy Spirit, what do you want me to notice around me right now?
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What do you want me to make margin for in my schedule right now?
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Because so often these interruptions are divine appointments.
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And if we are not paying attention, we can miss them.
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We can miss the opportunity for God to use us where he needs us most because we just can't be bothered.
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If Jesus had been rushed and then he had no margin, that woman would have been overlooked.
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And I just don't want that to be the same for us.
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I don't want us to overlook people because we're in such a hurry, because we have filled our lives just way too full.
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And another story that I often think about when I think about this topic is Mary and Martha.
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We've also heard this one a ton.
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We always hear about being more like Mary and less like Martha because Martha is busy, she's serving, she's hosting, she's doing all the things that need to get done.
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And Mary is sitting at Jesus' feet.
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And Martha gets frustrated because she's like, come on, like I need help.
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Somebody help me.
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Like, we can't just be sitting here.
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And how often is that us?
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I love how Jesus just gently corrects Martha's priorities because Martha was doing something good.
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She was trying to be a good host.
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She was trying to make sure everyone is fed and having a great time and prepare her home for Jesus.
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Instead, she missed the moment to actually sit and be with Jesus.
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And so I want us to think about that as we think about how we are filling our lives to full.
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And something that really resonated with me as I was kind of studying this topic, I was studying scripture and I was just looking up different verses that have to do with margin and stewarding our time and all of these things.
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And there was a verse in Leviticus that really stood out to me.
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And the verse in Leviticus is Leviticus 19, 9.
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And it says, When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
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Part of this scripture goes on to talk about leaving some of the harvest, like to not pick up everything that you left in the field and to leave some for the poor and the needy and the less fortunate.
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But what I want us to pay attention to in this is the part that says, do not reap to the very edges of your field.
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What this is talking about is basically making sure that you leave some room for margin, that you aren't reaping so far to the edges that you have no room left to give.
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And whenever these farmers were harvesting in their field and harvesting their land, they would have to make sure that they're leaving edges of their field.
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And I think this is just so wise for us to make sure that we are not reaping to the edges of our schedules of our lives, that we are leaving margin for God to move in our life and for him to speak to us.
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I know so often when we are in these busy seasons and we find ourselves in our prayer time and we're like, Lord, I just want you to speak to me.
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I just want you to like, how come you're not moving?
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How come you're not this?
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And I found my, I have found myself in that scenario so many times where I'm like, Lord, I just want to hear from you.
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I just want to do what you're calling me to do.
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How come I'm not seeing the movement I need, this or that?
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And looking back, I realized in those moments it's because I'm not giving him room to show me anything because I filled my schedule so full that even if he were to tell me something, if he were to guide and lead me in something, when would I have time to do it?
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When would I have time to do the things he's asking me to do when I have zero margin to even do it?
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And he's so gracious that he's not going to give us more in that when we can't even do the things that we're already doing right now.
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He's not gonna just keep piling it on.
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He's gonna let us wait and ask for margin and create that margin before he's like, Yeah, I want you to go do this now.
00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:45.359
And then there was another verse that also came up in my study for this in Haggai, that's in Haggai one, five through nine.
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And I'm gonna read this for you guys really quick.
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It says, Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways, but you have sown much and harvested little.
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You eat, but you never have enough.
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You drink, but you never have your fill.
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You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and he who earns wages does so to put them in a bag with holes.
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Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways, go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it, and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.
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You looked for much, and behold, it came to little.
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And when you brought it home, I blew it away.
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Why, declares the Lord of hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.
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And that scripture hit me like a ton of bricks, you guys.
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When I was reading that, I was like, whoa, I I am I was just blown away because how often do we busy ourselves with building our own house?
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Whether we are filling every ounce with things that we want to do or things that we think we are doing for the Lord, but really we just get so busy that we never give God room to do the things that He's actually wanting to do and move in those situations.
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And I also realized in my own life that as I try to take control, that's me building my own house unintentionally.
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Even if I think that I'm building it for the Lord, even if I think, okay, I'm doing this for the Lord, I'm gonna do this, this, this, this, and this, and I'm gonna be obedient and I'm gonna do everything God's asked me to do, and it's all gonna be great.
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And then I quickly realize that as I try to take control and I, you know, pray, I'm like, okay, God, I'm gonna do it.
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Great, I go do it, but I like kind of take off without God sometimes where I'm like running down the road and he's still back there, like, wait a second, I didn't say go, or I didn't say, you know, all these things.
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And so often we can be so guilty of building our own house.
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And so that scripture just really stood out to me.
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And I hope that you can glean something from it too, because it hit me like a ton of bricks.
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And it talks about basically it's just how people are working hard, but they're not seeing results.
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And God is telling them to consider their ways.
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And I think he's saying the same thing to us for us to consider our ways.
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And just because we're doing more does not mean what we're doing is fulfilling, and it doesn't mean what we're doing is meaningful sometimes.
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And it doesn't mean that we are building the things that God has called us to build, or maybe we are building the things God's called us to, but at some point we got so busy in it that we forgot to stop and listen to see if that's still what he's calling us to do.
00:20:31.200 --> 00:20:36.480
So as we start to wrap up this episode, I want this to be practical for you guys.
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I want you to slow down in this moment and just for a second think about these questions and think about where in your life do you need to create more margin?
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And ask yourself, how have you been stewarding your own time?
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What might God be asking you to lay down in this season of life?
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Are there good things in your life or other things in your life that could be crowding him out?
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Where have you maybe been reaping your field all the way to the edges?
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And maybe you need to have that margin worked back into your schedule.
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And for me, this wasn't about overhauling everything overnight, but it's about having that awareness first.
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And this is something I'm still working through and working on with God right now because I have a lot of time commitments right now that I'm trying to fulfill and be a good steward of my yes, but I'm trying to be more intentional about future yeses.
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And I love the book from Lisa Turkhurst called The Best Yes.
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And in that book, essentially, she talks about how we are constantly giving our yes to something.
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Whether we intend to or not, we are always saying yes to something, which inherently says no to something else.
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And sometimes when we say yes to things that aren't our best yes, we have that resentment, we have those hard thoughts.
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Feelings or just like those uneasy feelings deep down because we said yes to something that we probably shouldn't have said yes to.
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And now we feel bad because we had to say no to this other thing that we actually really wanted to be doing.
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And so, how do we steward our yes well?
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I highly recommend reading that book.
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It's just such a good one.
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She wrote it so many years ago, but it's still such a good topic to remember today.
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And I just want you to pay attention to where do you feel stretched, where do you feel rushed, where do you feel out of alignment and invite God into that because He's not asking us to do more.
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He's really just inviting us to make space and to have margin.
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And basically what margin is, it's making sure that you are working in time of availability, essentially, not filling your calendar so full with projects at work that you have no time to pivot if a coworker needs something.
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Or in my case, when I'm running my own business and it's just me, I need to create more margin between different projects that I'm saying yes to.
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So if a project runs over or if something else comes up, I have a little bit more margin where I don't feel stressed when someone comes to me and says, Hey, can you help me with this last minute or this or that?
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It also looks like having margin where you aren't having to work as much at night and you don't have to work on weekends.
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It's having margin when you are at the grocery store and you're not in a rush.
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You can take your time and when you're in the checkout lane, you're not rushed and feeling frustrated at how long things are taking, but you can actually slow down and look around and look someone in the eye and smile at them.
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Or when you're going through a drive-thru or at a restaurant, being intentional to make eye contact with someone and smile at them.
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Margin can look like making sure that you carve out 15 or 20 minutes to spend with the Lord in the morning and that you don't feel rushed in your time with the Lord.
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It could look like making sure that there's more time in your kids' schedules so that you aren't running from basketball practice to soccer practice to all these different things and just having more margin where things aren't just back to back to back in your schedule, but that there's space between each of those things.
00:24:18.559 --> 00:24:22.640
That's even something that I do now with trips that I take.
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I try to make sure that I'm getting to wherever I'm going early enough that if the airplane schedule is off or something goes wrong, that I'm not stressed out because I like packed everything so tightly in the itinerary that now I'm frustrated at things that are out of my control.
00:24:40.720 --> 00:25:16.559
And so basically it's just creating more pockets of space in your life and making sure that you aren't doing too much, making sure you're not taking on too many roles that you have said yes to and seeing what are things that you can say no to and allow somebody else to step into that role and realizing that not everything has to depend on you, and that if God is calling you to something and calling you away from something, he will provide for that other thing, for that position or that role to be filled with someone else who can do it too.
00:25:16.799 --> 00:25:27.119
So this week, I just want to encourage you to take a look at your schedule, take a look at your rhythms, your commitments, and ask God where is he inviting you to make room?
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Not out of pressure, but out of trust.
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And when we make space for God, we don't lose anything and we gain what really matters.
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I hope that this resonated with you and encouraged you.
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And if this episode really resonated with you, could you share it on social media or share it with a friend?
00:25:44.400 --> 00:25:50.799
I would love for you to share this with anyone you think would be encouraged by this episode who needs this message.
00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:59.200
And once again, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, be sure that you subscribe so that you can be first to know when an episode comes out each week.
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Thank you guys so much for listening and watching.
00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:06.960
And it just means so much to have you part of this podcast community.
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I'm so excited for the things that are ahead and a few fun things that I am launching in the very near future that will allow you to be even more involved in the podcast and have actual community.
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So stay tuned for that.
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And I will see you back here next week.
