Tired of All the Maintenance?
Pause from what you are doing and just be present.
Read. Enjoy. Reflect. Be with Jesus.
According to AI, maintenance is the process of keeping something in good condition by regularly checking, repairing, and preserving it so it continues to function properly over time.
Anyone tired of all the maintenance?
Maintenance on the car.
Maintenance on your hair needing to be cut.
Maintenance on your golf swing.
Maintenance on your marriage.
Maintenance on the struggling AC, the chair that broke, the old phone, the slow laptop, the overgrown yard, the out-of-balance budgets, and so much more.
Anyone tired of all the maintenance?
If maintenance is a process to help keep something in good condition, you need maintenance in your life. It is key to living longer into your 70s, 80s, or even 90s. It’s crucial to surviving and thriving in ministry. It’s needed more than ever in an increasingly VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous).
Admit it… You need maintenance on your body, mind, spirit, and soul.
You do. I do. We all do.
Good news — the Father loves us. Jesus is with us. The Holy Spirit wants to comfort us. As His apprentice disciples, Jesus desires to be the One to do any needed maintenance on our lives — and best yet, to pay the bill, free of charge.
Pause for a moment wherever you are to recognize God’s presence around and in you.
Sit with these verses and say them a few times over and over again, asking God to reveal to you any maintenance He wants to do in your soul.
Jesus says to us (John 15, NIV):
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
Good news again — you are connected to the True Vine.
There is life in you through Jesus. Yeah! He is at work pruning, watering, shining, and maintaining your life. Praise God.
Tough news — pruning can hurt. But that kind of maintenance in our lives allows new growth to begin.
I am curious…
If your body, mind, spirit, and soul were a garden “under maintenance,” what area would need the most tending right now?
How does it change your perspective to remember that Jesus—not you—is the Vine, and that your primary job is to abide, not strive?
Friends, may fruit be grown out of your ministry, leadership, and lives. And when that happens, may all glory go to Jesus.
In this life, we might be tired of all the maintenance, yet may we never grow tired of letting God work His miraculous maintenance on each of us.
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