Declaring war against a constantly packed calendar

I’m a pretty organized person. I’m a planner. I’m a list maker (just see yesterday’s post). I’m a calendar-filler. And that’s not always bad. It’s good in many ways. Except for when it goes too far…which has a tendency to happen in my life. (Yeah, I know I should have already realized this by now, but sometimes it takes me a while to learn something.)

Calendars and to-do lists are sometimes the worst things for me. When I see a full calendar and a to-do list a mile long, I somehow subconsciously believe that if I’ve got a lot to do, then I must have some purpose and meaning. I somehow assume that I must matter and have more value if all the slots on my day planner are filled up.

Messed up, I know, but I’m starting to un-learn this line of thinking as God digs around in my life.

If I really stop and think about it, I’ve been tying my identity, my meaning to the things I do. Instead of trusting that I’m loved by God, regardless of what I do or don’t do, I choose to let the stuff I do determine my value.

Justin Davis talked some about this last week at CrossPoint. One statement stopped me in my tracks…

We equate busyness with significance. The busier we are, the more important we are. Your calendar doesn’t dictate your worth.

Yikes. That’s described my life for far too long.

So I’m declaring war against a constantly packed calendar. Not because “doing good” is bad. Doing too much without allowing for any margin…that’s when it turns out bad.

Because I’m learning that my identity is not tied to my to-do list.

It’s in who He says I am. Because compared to knowing that, everything on my calendar just doesn’t seem to matter anymore…

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

–Philippians 3:7-9, The Message