On a summer fishing trip, the bait shop owner showed me a fish they had picked up thrashing on the top of the water in a quiet cove. This good sized bass had an enormous perch lodged in his mouth. He had seen a great big perch for dinner, got it in his mouth, but couldn’t do anything with it. He couldn’t swallow it or spit it out. Talk about having eyes bigger than your stomach! As they watched the struggling bass, the fishermen realized he wasn’t going to be able to rid himself of his predicament on his own. The perch was not going to come out or go down. They went over to try and help him get rid of the perch, but it was too late. Mr. Bass and his lunch ended up unlikely partners mounted on the bait shop wall.

    I don’t know about you, but I think I know how Mr. Bass might have felt half way through his ordeal. I can get myself so inundated with commitments, obligations, opportunities, and challenges. Most of them seem important at the time. The majority are worthy of my attention. But it’s not long until I find these things choking the life out of me!

It doesn’t matter if we are rewarded with the biggest and best project ever if we can’t do it without killing ourselves, destroying our families, or giving up our walk with Christ.

    In a culture that mistakes “busy-ness” with productivity and commitments with importance, we must find a way to keep from biting off more than we can chew! It doesn’t matter if we are rewarded with the biggest and best project ever if we can’t do it without killing ourselves, destroying our families, or giving up our walk with Christ.

    Every so often I have to sit myself down and have a talk with myself about how to deal with this problem. These are a few things I tell myself, I hope you find them helpful to you:

• I’ve got spend time with God each day and bring before him the key opportunities, commitments, and challenges I face. I must ask him for wisdom before I commit to them. If I do not sense his pleasure, his leading or his approval for my decision, then I’d better be very careful not to force it to happen!

• In addition, I must make a set of life priorities and set my yearly goals based on them. If new opportunities do not advance me toward my yearly goals and life priorities, then they probably are not worthy of my investment of time, effort and energy.

• Finally, I’ve got to ask myself this key question: “Does doing this help me better serve God and lead my family closer to me and him?” If I cannot come up with three very specific ways an opportunity will help me clearly serve God better without compromising my spiritual responsibilities to my family, then this is not a commitment I should make!

    Schedules fill up on their own. Productive people have many offers to be more productive. But the secret to productivity is not volume of opportunities, but volume of production in the best opportunities! Ask God to help you find his schedule, his work, and his timing for your life, Jesus did!