Your Personal Vehicle - Pressures (part 1)

If you've been to any of our SHE events, you've know we love the JOURNEY concept.  We are all on a journey - this life is our journey.  It's not as much about the exact destination we are trying to reach as it is about becoming who God uniquely created each one of us to be.  

So, if we are on a journey, then we must have a vehicle.  I'm not referring to the vehicle you have to get you from your house to Hobby Lobby or Lowes or your church.  :)  I'm talking about your very own personal vehicle that God designed for you in which to travel thru life - YOU!   Sometimes our “personal vehicles” need some maintenance - an adjustment, a tweak, a tune up.  While there is definitely a need to maintain our physical vehicle - our body itself, we want to discuss some maintenance for our Spiritual and Emotional vehicles.  For the next few weeks, we're going to be blogging about this type of "Maintenance" and we hope it blesses you!  

Our first area for maintenance is TIRES.  

How many of you have ever experienced a flat tire?  We all know we need to have some air in our tires, but did you realize that just as under-inflated tires can slow you down, over-inflated tires can keep your car from traveling at its best and can even be dangerous?

Many things can affect tire pressure.  Some things include normal air loss thru the tire itself, payload, temperature and damage to the tire.  Tires lose a % of air every month just due to regular wear and tear.  

What happens when the pressure is too low?  Pressure that’s too low leaves too much of the tire in contact with the road.  These tires wear early and have the potential to overheat. That under-inflation can lead to tire failure or reduce the tread life by as much as 25%!  

Tire pressure that’s too high results in less tire touching the ground.  This can create a harsher ride as well as compromised traction.  The tires can be damaged more easily when they run over potholes or debris.  And, over time, over-inflated tires lead to excessive inner tire tread wear which can decrease the overall life of the tire.

Balancing pressures in our lives works much the same way.  We need pressures in our lives, but we need to make sure they are balanced - we can be neither under-inflated nor over-inflated.  We automatically have a level of pressure on us daily.  But we can allow these pressures to help us grow personally and help sustain us or we can allow unncecessary pressures to overwhelm us and keep us from becoming all we were created to be.

BALANCE is the key!

We can choose to highly reduce pressures in our lives by reducing the things we do.  We can delete everything from our schedule, sit at home, and do nothing.  BUT, this kind of lifestyle could leave us UNDER-INFLATED, and we weren’t created that way!  God, Himself is relational.  God, Himself created, Jesus walked the earth and did miracles and spoke and led others.   But we see God and Jesus both set examples of balance for us.  God rested on the 7th day and we see Jesus pull away from the crowds plenty of times.

Yes, we are human “beings” and there’s a time for just BE-ING, but we need some level of pressure to help us grow and become all God created us to be.  Under-inflation (too low of pressure) can significantly reduce our productivity for God.  

On the other hand, OVER-inflation (too many pressures) can create a much bumpier ride and can reduce our effectiveness for God.  Putting too many things on our calendar and not knowing how to prioritize can leave us feeling overwhelmed and frazzled.  

Again, BALANCE is the key!  We each need to find the balance that will work best for us!  We were created unique and we each have a unique amount of pressure that we are capable of handling.  It takes time and intentional effort, but if we can take the time to figure it out, we will be further along our Journey to becoming ALL God created us to be!

We'll talk more about ways to stay balanced next week. :)

Thanks for being on this journey with me!
Thanks for being YOU!

- jenny

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