Our refrigerator broke a few years ago.  Nearly every attempt I’ve ever made to fix something mechanical has resulted in further damage to already broken items, so when the cooling machine was whining, I did the smart thing: I stepped away from the appliance and called for help.  Soon a large man with tools was at our house.  He opened the freezer, which was stuffed beyond capacity with huge quantity “good deal” items from Costco. 

He turned to my wife and me.  “Do you see what you’ve done?”  he asked, glaring at us accusingly, his stares alternating between the freezer and us.  We told him that, no, we didn’t see ‘what we’ve done’, told him that we’d simply put things that needed to be frozen in the freezer, told him that we didn’t see the crime in that.  

“The freezer needs room for air to circulate.  You’ve jammed it so full, it can’t breathe.  You’ve taxed it’s circulation system” he said harshly, as if we were bad parents who’d been feeding our children lard at every meal. “I’m glad I got here when I did; otherwise she might not still be with us.”  He was laughably serious.   He turned to the freezer, where he removed about a third of the items and did some magic work to restore it to health. 

As he gave us the bill he looked at us like he was a doctor who’d just revived a dead spouse, and said, “I love appliances.  You two were lucky this time.  I hope you’ll learn from this and be more careful in the future.”  We thanked him and as he left, we felt as if the refrigerator had become our fourth child, and that we’d found the best pediatrician in the city. 

Ecclesiastes reminds us that, “whatever your hand finds todo, do it with all your might.” How many times have you encountered a mindless employee, utterly absent even though their body was at work? Maybe we’ve not only seen such, but have, in our worst moments, been such.  How do we gain the capacity to give ourselves fully to each of our tasks, eating, drinking, playing, praying, working?  There are several answers: 

Say YES.  We’ll be most energized if we’re doing the things that God us wired us to do.  But here’s the tricky part:  We don’t always know, intuitively, what those things are.  I was asked to teach a High School Sunday class when I was in college and refused, twice, before caving in and saying yes.  I prepared, and taught, and the end of it all was this:  I’ve been teaching the Bible all over the world for the past 25 years.  Who knew I was wired to teach?  Certainly not me, which makes me glad I said yes, and gladder still that the youth pastor was persistant enough to ask me three times! If you’re not sure how you’re wired, you need to say yes to more opportunities. 

Say NO.  Once Idiscovered that I’m made to teach, I needed to do what Paul told Timothy to do:  I needed to ‘stir up the gift ’by ‘devoting myself’ to it.  This means saying no to some things I like so that I can use my gifts and fulfill my calling more effectively.  There are some trivialities that all of us could release and not even feel the pain,if we’d use that time instead to fan the gifts God has given us into full flame.  I also need to say no to late night parties on Saturdays because I preach three times each Sunday.

“No” is as important and liberating as “Yes.”  Both are required if you’re going to discover how God has wired you, and step into his story with presence, and joy.