How full is your plate? Do you know the size of YOUR plate? How do you manage your plate? Proverbs has so much wisdom regarding our use of time. One aspect of our time that didn't quite make it into yesterday's sermon is the subject of our time as a 'plate.' Here's material I gathered from a couple of sources and made my own for the sermon, but it didn't make the cut. I hope its helpful to you:
Some of you are big-plate people, like a platter (you can handle a lot of things at once). People look at you and say ‘I don’t know how you do it, you’re insane, you’re freakish, are you on time management steroids?’ Some of you, you're not a platter, you're more like dinner-roll plate people (can only handle a few things at a time). Your plate’s not real big – you focus. You say ‘I was gonna do two things, then I realized that was one too many.’
The key is to know yourself before the Lord - know how big YOUR plate is, accept the size of your plate, like that about yourself, keep it relatively full, and if you put something new on your plate, take something off, unless it wasn’t full.
A full plate is wonderful – life is meant to be lived, not defended against! But if its full, and you’re serving in one organization or ministry, and you start serving in another, you probably need to choose between the two. Decide you’re going to have another child? Great – but something probably has to come off the plate.
Our problem is most of us fill up our plate, and then start piling more things on the plate, and it all can’t stay on and some of it falls off. That’s when you’re late, you’re broke, burned out. With no margin. Letting other people down frequently. That's the sign you need to take some time to work ON your life, assess your plate, take a thing or two off, and move forward into more abundant life in Christ.
"Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." Proverbs 15:22
