I've Reached My Limit

There's a good chance that you've reached your limit. I don't know where these limits come from. I never hear anyone talk about them, and some of them are unknown to us. This limit that I write of is different then the annoyance level. You know when you get really peeved at someone and right before you explode like a puss filled zit you say, "I've reached my limit!" That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about a limit that you set for maintenance. I'm sure someone smarter than me has done some research on this, but there are lots of areas where we maintain instead of pressing ahead. It's this feeling that you are good enough.

Maybe it's hit you at your job. When you first got to your job you went above and beyond, but now that you've been there for a while you've gone to maintenance mode. Your not as bad as some co-workers, but you are not pursuing excellence. Maybe it's with your spouse. When you first met you went above and beyond to woo them. Now you have retired the romance jersey and are happy to maintain your relationship.

I see maintenance mode most often in people and their relationship with God. People tend to get to a level and then coast. It might have started with going to church. That was a HUGE step and now you are just maintaining. Maybe you go to church and you even volunteer, but there is something that is keeping you from pursing a passionate relationship with Jesus. There is something inside us that hits our limit and says that's it. The problem with this is that it makes a relationship with God more like a checklist and less like a relationship. Relationships can't maintain. They either get better or eventually they get worse. There is no holding pattern.

I'm challenged to my core by the following... "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins." - 2 Peter 1:5-9. 

Did you catch that? When we continue to add to our faith it helps us from being ineffective and unproductive. We are blind when we think that we have arrived and can now maintain a relationship with God.  With a relationship with God there is no maintenance mode.