When Donn and I went to Japan for a year in 2003*, one of my responsibilities was to teach the conversational English classes of a missionary who was in the United States on home assignment. Soon after we arrived, I discovered that all eight of the conversational English classes were squeezed into a day and a half each week–Wednesday morning and afternoon and Thursday morning.

I was stunned. I had fibromyalgia and one of the things I tried to avoid was cramming too many responsibilities into a short period of time. When I overdid, a flare up of symptoms often followed. I thought the solution would be to move some of the classes to other days. However, our acting field director explained that our Japanese students often had many things scheduled, and if we changed the day, we would lose a lot of students.

Before going to Japan, the Lord had gone to great lengths to teach me that if I wanted to be guided by the Holy Spirit, I couldn’t be ruled by the expectations of other people. How did that fit into this situation? And what about trusting God for the grace to do what I was being asked to do?

In retrospect, I know the prayer I prayed was Romans 8:26-27 in action–I didn’t know what to pray but the Holy Spirit interceded through me. “Father,” I said, “is this a speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) “I can’t do this” time, or a My grace is sufficient for you (II Corinthians 12:9) time?” Throughout that day and the next, I either heard or read II Corinthians 12:9 three or more times. I knew God was saying His strength would be made perfect in my weakness; He would enable me to do what would otherwise have been impossible.

So by faith, I accepted the conversational English class schedule. (I believe they did rearrange the ages of the children’s classes somewhat so that I only had three children’s classes back to back instead of four.) Every Wednesday I taught two hour-long English classes in the morning at a church, three half-hour, high-energy children’s classes in the afternoon at another church, and two hour-long English classes in our home on Thursday morning. And every week, as I looked to God for grace, His strength was made perfect in my weakness. I was amazed at the energy that flowed through me, especially on Wednesdays which was a marathon for me.

All of that said, I believe far too many of us simply add more and more activities to our schedule, especially ministry activities, assuming that God wants us to say “yes,” because we’re doing His work. But I don’t believe it’s God’s plan that we try to live outside the constraints of time, getting only a few hours of sleep and neglecting our families on a regular basis. One of my daily calendars by Cynthia Heald stated that most of our temptations and testings come not from the temptation to do evil but from the temptation to do things which are in themselves good, but interfere with our walk with God, family or other responsibilities.

I told a friend once, “That WooHoo feeling we get when someone asks us to do something we love isn’t necessarily the Holy Spirit! Sometimes it’s just our flesh getting all excited!” We’re told that the Proverbs 31 woman, “considers a [new] field before she buys or accepts it [expanding prudently and not courting neglect of her present duties by assuming other duties];” (Proverbs 31:16 AMPC).

How important it is to make sure any changes we’re considering are part of God’s plan for us. Only then can we assume that His grace will be sufficient for us.

Thank you, Father, for your amazing grace that is made perfect in our weakness. Help us  discern your plan so we don’t say “no” to difficult things you’ve asked us to do or “yes” to things that aren’t your will. Amen

*We didn’t have a car during our first year in Japan but someone else used our carport.