Today’s blog is all about full disclosure, full disclosure on how this blog comes together and the challenges I face sometimes.
In order to provide you with this disclosure I need to let you know a little bit about how my mind works.
Recently, I was asked by a friend to preach for him in two country churches where he serves. He was going to be out of town and needed someone to fill in for him.
It was an honor to be asked and I looked forward to the opportunity.
It was about six weeks from the time he asked until the Sunday that I would preach for him. That’s plenty of time to create an outline and begin to put my sermon together a little bit at a time.
That seems to be the logical path for many people. Unfortunately, or fortunately, my mind doesn’t work that way.
For some reason, I’m one of the folks that need to have the pressure applied and the screws tightened before things start to come together.
It was that way for me as a student as well. From my perspective, most people studiously worked on their classwork and papers over time once they were given the assignment and deadline. They would break that assignment into small pieces and work on it a little bit at a time.
Trust me when I tell you that I tried to do that. Often. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.
As I attempted to prepare my sermon well in advance it simply didn’t work. Nothing crossed my mind or came to me in a revelation as I read or watched something over the course of the first five weeks. There is nothing unusual about this but I have always struggled to accept it and wanted to be “better” in preparing for these kinds of things.
On Wednesday or Thursday prior to the Sunday I was to preach an idea came into my head from somewhere.
Over the next few days I began to process that idea. I’d write down a few notes, look at a few scripture passages and play it out in my head.
I finished things up on Saturday night around 10:30. I felt okay about what I had but, as usual, it just didn’t feel complete.
Off to bed I went.
About four in the morning I woke up. A new illustration popped into my head.
I got up and went to my computer and started re-crafting what was once done.
Over the next couple of hours it all really came together in a way that I felt really good about.
Thankfully, my message that Sunday morning was well received.
So, what does this have to do with full disclosure?
Most weeks something will pop into my mind for a potential blog post. I’ll process through it over the course of the week leading up to the posting day of Monday.
Occasionally, nothing will come to mind until Monday. I don’t like that but that is the reality.
Here’s the full disclosure part.
Today, nothing came.
As I sat at my computer, all I could hear in my head was, “I got nothin’.”
I have been blogging consistently for well over two years. During that time there have been other Mondays when my mind said, “I got nothing’.”
As a result you got nothin’. I simply didn’t post. It’s probably been a handful of times and I felt awful every time I didn’t post.
I don’t like it when I do that so today you get a post about my struggles to post sometimes.
Here’s where courage and perseverance come in.
Sometimes courage is about doing the things you don’t want to do. Courage is about doing things that don’t seem to make any sense or don’t seem like they are worth your time.
It takes courage and perseverance to get up and go to a job that you don’t like.
It takes courage and perseverance to get up and go look for a job when you’ve been out of work for a long time.
It takes courage and perseverance to love your kids or your spouse when you maybe don’t seem to be getting anything in return.
It takes courage and perseverance to make the sales call to the prospect that doesn’t ever give you the time of day.
It takes courage and perseverance to go work out when you’re not seeing the results you think you should be getting.
What do you need courage and perseverance for today?
James 1:12
Have a STRONG and COURAGEOUS day!
Dave, “it’s okay to have nuttin to blog” you must know we all share in this struggle and what you have shared today is golden! We all struggle to get motivated some days, to make the effort to show up and do a good job, everyone I believe has this issue. Our anxiety is that we have created an expectation and we struggle some days just to meet “our” expectation plus that which we have created for others. What a burden we make out of all this….
Craig, I believe you have hit the nail on the head with your comments on expectations. You are so right in describing the burden we have made out of all of this!
Thanks, Craig!