Reserves

Posted Wednesday, 4 November 2009 by johnortberg

When i first got married, I did not understand about the need for reserves.  (Actually there were lots of other things I didn’t understand, but there’s no time for that now.)  Then our car got injured, and our washing machine went on strike, and I learned.

When I first worked at a church, I did not understand about reserves.  We lived financially from week to week.  Then one week we did not have enough money to pay the staff, and I learned in a hurry.

But as important as financial reserves are, they pale next to our need for spiritual reserves.  Often in ministry I feel like Jesus (that’s a dangerous comparison!) when he was touched by a woman in a crowd ‘and felt the power go out of him.’   Ministry can be the most draining activity known to human beings, because it draws on the soul.  So i have to know what the signs are when my reserves are running low:  I got easily discouraged, I get preoccupied in my relationships, my motivation and energy drop, sin looks more tempting.

I need friends who speak to me about their observations of how my reserves are running.  A friend recently encouraged me to watch my own life for a while, and mark those activities that restore me.   For me its solitude, reading, conversations with very good friends, traveling with my wife, watching the ocean, and physical exertion.

How are your reserves?   What’s your plan to grow them?

5 Responses to “Reserves”

Good point about reserves, which seems obvious to me. However, my take-away was your point about watching your life for a while. Monvee has me starting a journal, which seems like a good vehicle for watching my life for a while. The way I have chosen to do it is in a MS Word doc, that I add to each day. I am going to use the idea you have posted to help me get started each day by having some questions that I want to watch. Each day, I will answer each question. I will label them with “Q1”, and “A1”, that way, I can do a search in my document later for “A1”, and quickly find my answers to that particular question in quick succession which hopefully will give me a feel for the answer to the question over time. So that’s the plan, I’ll see how it works out. Thanks for the inspiration though.

Posted by: Mark // November 5th, 2009 at 9:33 am



This morning on the way in to work, I was thinking about how the last few days have been overloaded to the point where I haven’t been able to spend extra time filling my reserves. Then I stumbled upon this post and God is confirming again that I need to mark this as high priority today.

I’m much like you in how I get filled up so I’ve already set aside some time later tonight and early tomorrow morning to be alone for solitude and reading before I take a long road trip. I also plan to spend time with a good friend today who will probably confirm my need to restore the reserves.

Keeping an eye on this is tough but definitely pays off. Thanks for the reminder!

Posted by: Erin Shank // November 5th, 2009 at 1:06 pm



Great post John.

Posted by: Pete Wilson // November 11th, 2009 at 11:53 pm



I guess this is more like a call to conscious living as Christians.
I have found out that when drained of “virtue” I and many become irritable, on short fuse, un-necessarily hard on thers at such times, highly critical (symptoms of some “resident evil”), repeated mistakes, forgetfulness and a host of other manifestations.
If we know these things then we can draw a startegy to deal with these issues but if we do not it is at such low times that thew enemy takes us on!

Posted by: Victor Turner // January 6th, 2010 at 7:41 am



Thanks, I needed this, Have allowed the cares of life to overwhelm me. Will refresh reserve and daily stop before going on. Starting a journal is tops.

Posted by: Blanca // January 11th, 2010 at 4:56 pm



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