I found it somewhat de-energising recently to look at my plans for the year and not see much that was ‘new and exciting’.
I tend to like ‘new’ and get bored rather easily if I have been doing the same thing for too long. Even really ‘good things’ lose their appeal to me after a while.
I don’t think this is a healthy thing – nor do I think it is necessarily an unhealthy thing. It just ‘is’ . But having said that it is important for me to be aware of when I need to work on something new because the time is right and when I want to work on something new because the old no longer excites me.
As I was praying this week I felt like God was saying that this period is one of those ‘steady’ periods where I don’t need to start anything new or come up with a different idea. I just need to stick at what I am already doing.
I’m fine with that. As much as it is less exciting, it is nice to (occasionally) have seasons in life where predictability and familiarity are the norm.
Over the last 10 years or so one of my learnings has been that sticking with something for as long as it takes is as important as dreaming it up in the first place. I was in my second year of youth ministry at Lesmurdie Baptist when I was offered two jobs that would have been a huge ‘step up’ in terms of a ministry career (I know there is no such thing) and after a very tough 18 months when there was little in the form of obvious results they were very tempting offers. Big churches, with quality staff and lots of kudos…
I felt called to keep pushing on where I was. Funnily enough it was soon after that the tide turned and we saw an enormous development in the youth scene. What happened? I think it was God at work, but I think it also mattered to stay the distance and simply stay true in the less exciting steady periods.