About the author : Antwuan Malone
Antwuan Malone is a Ministry Director at ELEVATE Young Adult Ministry (elevateministry.net) where empowers young adults toward Christian leadership. He is passionate about seeing young adults take their place in church history by drawing near enough to God to hear his call on their life, and courageously living in obedience to that call.
Do Less, Better
I’m late. I know.
Last year around this time I was all excited about all kinds of things. I won’t bore you with the list, but it was pretty long. So, in light of all that I wanted to accomplish last year, my “resolution” was about organization and discipline. The thinking was, “Well, if I hope to accomplish all of these things, I’m going to need to organize myself better, and execute what I organized.”
I didn’t tell many people about that goal, and frankly, I didn’t put anything down that would help me accomplish it either.
As I result, I ended up doing many things well… but nothing really great.
I started taking inventory on this in the fall when I realized I was doing way too much, with way too little help. I began, then, thinking about how God might be viewing my life. Was I doing what he wanted? When he wanted? In the way he wanted?
A project I’m working on required me to look back at the posts I made in 2011, and one of the main ideas that kept recurring had to do with purpose, and doing what God put us here to do. I clearly struggled last year with not only what God wants me to do, but how he wants me to do it.
I’m not much nearer to the answer to those questions (I don’ think) today, but I have realized something. Doing too much is doing too much. “Jack of all trades…” and all that, is for the birds.
I realize now that everything doesn’t have to be done at the same time. And while I am still baffled by God’s refusal to let us go into the places he’s told us to go into when we think we’re ready (and for me, “ready” means the moment when I actually have the energy to do it), I do accept that God totally knows what he’s doing.
I know that should go without saying.
I know God knows what he’s doing but i had/have to learn that knowing how, when, and with whom God wants to serve is just as important as knowing what he wants. Gideon is a great example for that.
So for 2012, my motto will be to offer God my best with less… to do less, better, and to accept that all things have their timing.
That’s not to say I won’t still be busy, but I like the idea of focusing on really offering God an Able sacrifice with a few things, and waiting for him to move me into what he has set before me. The good news for you guys is that writing is among those few areas where I’ll be committing most of my time, along with taking steps to creating the Candid Christian Community that inspired the creation of this blog in the first place. But you’re gonna hear more about that later this week!
