Too Much of a Good Thing?

It struck me as I was reading my Disciple I Bible readings for today that there's more - way too much more - in each of these Bible reading assignments than I can possibly absorb at one time. It was so much easier to absorb my reading when I was only reading one chapter of the Bible at a time; when I knew that only one verse a day was what God had in mind for me. But today, reading John Chapter 21 and all of 1 John, I wasn't able to separate out that message that God had for me.

Then at the same time it struck me, that's why it's so hard for me to write here. It's not that I have nothing to write, but that I have too much to write and cannot decide what should come first or what's important. This flooding of my mind and heart with ideas and thoughts actually becomes crippling rather than freeing. I need something or someone to help me decide what the priority is; what's important now!

Is this what hinders me - and others - in our attempts at evangelism? Not that we have nothing to say about God, but that we have too much to know where to begin? And is this what hinders those who are seeking God from finding God? Too many questions to know which one to ask first, and even worse, so many questions to ask that it's hard to stop and listen to any of the answers?

Somehow, I need to get back to the place I once was; one chapter, one verse, one question, one answer... after all, there's only one God!

I was at a church leader training event the other day with Hank and Rich, and as the Praise Band played, we were watching the sound man move the sliders up and down on the mixer board to adjust the sound of the music. Later, as the speaker was in the middle of her presentation, there was a lot of extra noise caused by miss-adjusted sliders on the board. Rich noted that the individual sliders were much like things in our own lives that we don't want to give over to God; that we want our own control over. That made me think that the entire mixer board was much like our walk with God. When we first give our lives to God, that moment of justification to use a very Wesleyan term, we give God control of the main volume sliders on the board. then as we grow closer to God, we start turning more and more of the individual sliders - different parts of our lives - over to God. And God starts adjusting and balancing the different parts of our lives to make the best music possible with what we put into the board.

Now there might still be one or two (or more) cases where we haven't given stuff up to God - where we still control the sliders - and this upsets the balance of the music coming out of the speakers, out of our lives. But the beauty of it is, God can use the other sliders to adjust the overall balance and still produce music despite our clumsy attempts to control some part of the mix. So while there is still room for improvement in the sound, God is making music while we struggle with control.

Finally, I noted that there are two outputs from this soundboard, the main outputs that the world hears - the fruits of our lives, and the output that God feeds back to the monitors so that we can hear what we're producing. And God can adjust the monitor output differently than the mains so that God can show us where our attempts to keep control are throwing off the harmony and balance, hopefully encouraging us to make a change.

So what music is coming from your mixer board? Is God in control of all your sliders, or are you? Can you hear the feedback from the monitors that God is sending?