Our primary calling is not to serve people or meet their demands but to be available to God: to know him and worship him. So we must say ‘no’ to some things so that our ‘yeses’ will have meaning.
A young man talked to his pastor about his conflicts between work and family. The wise pastor replied: ’serving your family is the Lord’s work’.
Our calling to serve others is always a limited call, for specific tasks. We are not called to be Messiahs, but baton-carriers in life’s relay, handing it on to the next person. Workaholics often masquerade as devoted servants, but really it is a sickness, an addiction, a desire to control, an insatiable appetite for ‘glory’. ‘Work enthusiasts’ on the other hand are healthier, are generally better delegators. Be enthusiastic about your job, but do not let it define you.
Stress is what life is about: it is necessary for our wholeness. But when stress produces distress, it’s destructive. Some of the effects of ‘distress’ are reversible, others irreversible. One person out of four in the U.S. – 65 million – suffers from hypertension/ high blood pressure: a state directly attributable to stress. One million of these will die this year from the effects of heart disease. Further: one in 8/9 suffers from a serious gastro-intestinal problem. 50-60 million have sleep problems. One mental health authority says panic-anxiety disorders are the number one mental health problem U.S. women suffer. For men it’s second, after drug and alcohol abuse.
Read more: http://elev8.com/elev8-original/orethawinston/there-is-more-to-life-than-work/#ixzz0hmcQth9h
