Marginless Results:
Thursday, September 23rd @ 11 am EDT, I’m leading a FREE conference call for any and all pastors. (Details at the bottom) In preparation for that, we’ve been talking about an extremely overlooked topic in ministry circles: Margin.
Today we’re going to look at the results of a Marginless existence.
1. Fragmented Thoughts. Ever noticed that when you’re stressed out and busy as heck, that your thoughts feel scattered and discombobulated? (yeah I totally just worked that word into this blog post!) I know it’s true for me. In fact, there are times when I’m running like crazy in my day that I actually say out loud, “What am I doing right now?”
Other times, we’ll lose our train of thought, right in the middle of a sentence or conversation with someone. Definitely a sure sign that we’re living marginless.
2. Inability to Focus. When the margin is gone, so is the focus. We have some huge thing that’s gotta get done, and yet we can’t focus for anything! That’s from a lack of margin. Kill the margin, kill the focus. (Wait… what are we talking about right now?)
3. Guilt. The problem with burning the candle at both ends is that eventually our subconscious catches up to us and starts making us feel guilty. “You should be sleeping more…” “You should be home more…” “You should be whatever…” Take it from me, guilt will suck the life out of you.
4. An Inability to Rest. There is a dangerous place in all of our workaholism/marginless lifestyles and that is the inability to turn it off. We become addicted to progress, or completion or the to-do list, or the in-box, or the twitter feed. If you can’t shut it off, you’re living dangerously.
Margin restores balance to the force, Luke. It’s not an optional luxury for the lucky few. God created us to not function properly without it.
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To be apart of the FREE Conference Call:
- Call 888-350-0075 at 11 am EDT on Thursday, Sept. 23rd then enter the code 7479514.
- NOTE: This is a new phone number & code.
Hi Pastor Matt.
First off, thanks for all you do to help me grow in my relationship with God. Secondly, you asked for a little feedback on the idea of margin so I thought I would just throw something out there that I first thought of when you mentioned the concept of margin a few weeks back at Church.
For me, margin ( which is a great word to summarize an important concept ) provides comfort because it helps me to reduce this unhealthy drive I developed a few years back to try and legislate/litigate every action I make in a day.
As background – because I had stopped living within the lines for a while, when I reconnected with God I found myself wanting to draw lines everywhere because I was scared of getting off track again. Hope that makes sense.
Therefore, margin, for me, means a better balance in my day to day in terms of knowing I am doing the right things for the right reason, what God wants me to do. Using your analogy of the paper, say I am living/writing on that paper with margins, I would say margin helps me to know if I wander past a line a bit, the margin on the paper will both help alert me to the fact that I've crossed a line and allow me the peace of mind to know that a small mistake here or there isn't going to result in me falling off the paper….so to speak.
Does that make sense?
Well, anyway, kind of got a little wordy with my thoughts but thanks for letting me share and hope that helps in some small way. It sure helps me. Take care and have a nice weekend!!
Neil