To Hell With The Hustle, A 5-Day Devotional from Jefferson Bethke Sample

Day 4:

We can only truly give from margin. Financially. Emotionally. Vocationally.

Purposely living below our means and not buying everything the world says we need—and maybe saying no to an extra car, or a bigger house—leaves margin in our finances. It leaves space. We are spending less than what we have, so we have margin. And when we have margin, we have freedom. Freedom to give, freedom to invest, and freedom from stress.

Same goes with our time.

Don’t spend all the time you have. So you can be free and use it to serve.

When I start talking about our family’s intense views on time and schedule, it’s easy for people to think it’s selfish. Or privileged. I’ve even been asked if I ever let myself be inconvenienced for others. Yes, I do. . . .

I want to be ruthless about focusing on our priorities in our schedule—so I can be inconvenienced and actually have time for it.

To me there is no better way to show someone you love them than to bear an inconvenience of someone else’s burden with joy.

But most of us have zero possibility for margin in our schedules, no flexibility for interruptions.

When we read through the Gospels, some of the craziest stories about Jesus happened because He let Himself be interrupted. He wasn’t in a hurry. What He was on His way to do could wait. He was open to the Spirit’s leading.

Most of us schedule the Holy Spirit right out of our calendar so we don’t have space to be ready to serve in the ordinary, mundane, unnoticed ways. . . .

I wonder if our busyness with “big things” or “big dreams” or the Great Commission (Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:19–20 to go into all the nations and “make disciples”) is actually our excuse to not have to know the people who live next door? . . .

Have we somehow forgotten that the person across the hall, and the mailman, and the neighbor, and the barista qualify as people and live in a nation. So why do we have to go do some crazy big thing for God, when the command He gave us can be fulfilled by just being faithful and loving well over and over again?