When I first started farming as a teenager and into my twenties, I learned to work hard. And I learned to love it.
My boys are learning that now. For the last few months, they have been getting up between four and five in the morning to milk, move cows, feed chickens, and do the other chores, all before the stars begin to fade. They do it because they love the head start, the quiet of the hour, and the peace of the animals.
I offered to start paying them something, to connect the work they do with the money we save on milk and eggs. But my oldest son said, “I don’t want to, because I don’t want to fall into doing it just for the money.”
I can relate. Farmers and homesteaders need to make a profit, but we don’t do it for the money. We care about what we do because of the joy and purpose it brings before the Lord.
The challenge comes when loving the work means we can’t stop. At least, I couldn’t. In the early years I would get up early and work late. There was always more to do, always another project.
But then the other responsibilities of life began to speak up louder for my time. I needed to spend time with my kids and my wife. I needed to work on our house, build shelves for our bedroom, or take time to read or exercise. But I couldn’t stop. I was rarely on time and often never got to things, because finishing farm work always took longer than I thought.
“I just don’t have enough time.”
That’s what I thought. But was it true? I began to realize it couldn’t be.
Because what I was really saying was that God wasn’t giving me what I needed to do what He had given me to do.
2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
The truth was that I had everything I needed each day to be faithful. The problem was that I wasn’t submitting to the limits God had placed on me, and I wasn’t managing or prioritizing the tasks and time He had entrusted to me. I had what I needed; I just needed to submit to stewarding it well.
So I committed to stopping at 5:00 every day, even if I hadn’t finished my list, unless something unplanned or unusual came up. As a result, I had to listen to God much more carefully each day about which things on my to-do list were assignments from Him and which were just my own additions.
This meant I had to learn the humility of stopping. Stopping the garden work when it’s time for supper. Stopping coffee time with my wife when it’s time to work. Stopping before I start a big task when I only have an hour left in the day. Stopping all my leftover tasks when the kids are in bed, and actually GOING to bed. And then stopping sleeping when I need to wake up.
To say yes to what God calls me to requires learning to say no to everything else. And each task and responsibility He calls me to has a time and a season that requires a point where I must submit to stopping for the sake of the next thing. It hurts at times. It is dying to self. But it is healing and fruitful and produces life when done in submission to God.
As I’ve learned to cultivate, and re-cultivate, the habit of stopping one thing to move to the next responsibility God has given me, it has produced far more fruit. I don’t go from fighting one fire to the next as much as I used to. And there is more focus on my “knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
There is humility in recognizing our limits. But there is also freedom.
In what ways do you need to practice the humility of stopping this week, so you can step up to the areas of obedience God is calling you to?
