Leadership Capacity By Brian HoustonSample

Lighten your Load

“There just aren’t enough hours in the day!” is the common, exasperated plea of the over-committed. Exodus 18 recounts a similar situation in Moses life. He was trying to govern and counsel millions of Hebrews, wearing himself out and everyone else in the process. Does this sound a little like your life at times? Jethro exclaimed, “This is not good!” advising Moses to hand-over certain responsibilities to other capable people, he focused Moses on matters that required his leadership alone.

As your life moves forward and your capacity increases, you can’t continue to do more unless there are other areas where you are doing less. What do you want to accomplish? What should you continue and what should you discontinue? There will be times when you’ll need to offload the things that keep pulling you into the small, robbing you of time and energy. That won’t necessarily be the same as the tedious things you don’t enjoy, but it will be the things that prevent you living at a higher level and moving forward.

So, how do you identify what to offload and what to retain? The following is a checklist to help you to decide what to lighten from your load, releasing you to increase your capacity and productivity:

How to identify the unnecessary:

• What is your objective?
• Is this task helping to accomplish your objective?
• Could someone else be doing it? 
• Is it essential to what you want to achieve? 
• Does it serve any real purpose? 
• How is it helping the bigger picture or is it something you do because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
• Is it a distraction?
• Is it draining resources?

John 10:10 tells us that Jesus came so that we can “have and enjoy our life to the full until it overflows”. (AMP) If your life is overflowing with distractions, burdens and unnecessary tasks, then it’s a safe guess that you won’t be enjoying life or growing your capacity. The overflowing life Jesus came to give you is one that is continually releasing you into your God-given calling and allows you to release others into theirs.

PRAYER:

Lord, help me to recognise the things that are holding me back and keeping me from Your plans and purposes. I want to enjoy the life Jesus came to give me and to help others do the same.