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January 9, 2025
This past spring, I hit a wall. Right when I was gearing up to plan a whole new set of goals and sketch out new steps of what lay ahead, I came to a screeching halt. I just sensed God saying, “No. Stop. Rest.” It wasn’t just a quiet voice I heard through the whisper of His Word or in prayer. It was a halt I felt in my body. Suddenly, it was as if I couldn’t do anything anymore. I had been running at full speed for so long, it was like I hit a brick wall going 100 miles an hour. I simply had to stop.
My husband Jason encouraged me that my rest had to be longer than my usual four weeks off in the month of July. He also encouraged me to enter into a rest that didn’t have limits. I had to be willing to offer up anything and everything to God; nothing could be too sacred or too necessary or too part of my identity, significance, or routine to give.
It took me some time to get to the place where I was willing to offer God this kind of rest, a rest that was on His terms, not on mine. But once I got over the fear of what I might have to give up, the deep peace that came was extraordinary. I was able to take a deep breath for the first time in a very long time. I gave up working with people I had grown to love, halted rhythms in my work day, work week, and year I had grown accustomed to (and I might even add addicted to). I cleared everything off of the table and simply became open to receiving from God anything and everything He wanted to give. Through this rest, I was able to untangle my worth from the writings, retreats, and posts I produced and in the followers I lost or gained. My worth was found in Whose I was, not in who I was, and my significance was rerouted from an identity I made for myself to an identity I received for myself as God’s beloved child.
In short, I learned to respect my limits.
Somehow, in the full-on sprint of the last six years of hosting retreats, writing and self-publishing books and Bible studies, starting a podcast, re-doing a website, and raising four kids, I had built my life around my goals and not my limits. I had come to mourn my limits, thinking of them as something God was disappointed in and frustrated by, just like me. And as a result, I was often exhausted and stressed.
Over dinner this summer, some wise friends suggested I read the book You’re Only Human by Kelly Kapic. I took the book on our family vacation and slowly but surely read every line, soaking in every word. There was nothing revolutionary in the book, just simple, life-giving reminders that I had limits, and the limits I had were God-given and ordained. The book helped me untangle the lie I subconsciously believed that my limits were a faulty or bad part of my creaturely design. But the truth the book so beautifully articulated is that our limits were put into place before the fall of Adam and Eve and sin and mess, not after. Our need to sleep, rest, eat, sabbath, play, and work were all part of God’s good design for His creation.
The goodness of limits was something I had never before considered. I always assumed my limits were bad, something to be overcome and resisted. But in resisting my limits, I was resisting my God. I was resisting His good, purposeful plan for my life.
As a new year dawns, so do my hopes in new starts, new projects, and new goals. If I’m not careful, I can start to think that a new year doesn’t just mean a new start on hopes and dreams but on a whole new me without any time constraints or limits on my schedule.
But I have to go back and remember what I learned through my extended time of rest: my goals subtly shifted from planning my projects and then acknowledging my limits only when I hit a wall to planning my limits and then planning the projects I sensed God moving me towards. After all, as Kapic writes, we’re only human. None of us is infinite in energy, time, and resources, although we act like it. We have to “rediscover that being dependent creatures is a constructive gift, not a deficiency….We must learn the value and truthfulness of our finitude, eventually getting to the point where we might even praise God for our limits. I didn’t say praise him for evil: we need to see the difference between the gift of finitude (i.e. human limits) and the lamentable reality of sin and misery.”1
Did you catch that? There is an important difference between our human limits and the lamentable reality of sin and misery.
Satan would love nothing more for you and I to step into this new year confusing our good creaturely dependence with our evil rebellion and sin. Learning to sleep eight hours a night or sunset our phones so we can enter into rest and play with our families and friends is good and not to be confused with the evils of procrastination or fear.
So here is my challenge to you and me both. Before we sit down with pen and paper in hand to plan out our rhythms or goals for the new year, we must start with our limits. We start with how many hours we need to sleep at night to be sane, functioning members of society. Start with how many hours a day or week we can really commit to work without it infringing on our need to Sabbath or prioritize relationship with the Lord or the people in our lives He has given us to live with in community.
Remember: God is not disappointed with our finitude. He is not throwing up His hands in irritation at our limits. He made them and wove them into our good design as His creation. Without them, we cannot be the people He created us to be. If the goal you have in mind pushes you to step outside of your God-ordained limits of sleep, rest, or resources, stop. Pause. And get to the bottom of why that goal seems so pressing or urgent. What itch are you trying to scratch apart from God? What worth are you trying to prove? How might hitting your goals that push you beyond your good limits actually be harmful for your soul or inhibit you from becoming the person God created you to be?
Is it ok to be stressed once and a while when we are in seasons of a full-court press with work or relational demands or sickness or unforeseen obstacles that are a part of life? Of course. The apostle Paul writes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). Honoring our God-given limits doesn’t mean we will never be stressed or stretched or required to go without eight hours of sleep or miss a healthy meal. There are times in the gospels Jesus was so exhausted from the demands of the day He fell asleep in the middle of a raging storm (Mark 4:36-41). But in our stress, like Paul and like Jesus, we are always to remain dependent within our limits on the steady love, wisdom, and provision of our unlimited God. That’s the goal of our goals. As believers, our goals are to lead us to be dependent on a good God who loves us and will never forsake us, even when life pushes us to the breaking point.
If we constantly ignore or are frustrated by our limits, we miss the gift of dependence. We miss the provision of a God who gives us what we need and daily bears our burdens (Psalm 68:19).
Recently, I came across this prayer and find myself turning to it often:
Till we arrive at heaven, our home, may we gratefully avail ourselves of all the advantages afforded us in our journey. We bless you for wilderness privileges; for the manna; the streams of the smitten rock; the fiery cloudy pillar; the tabernacle and the ark. We bless you for the Sabbath, the sanctuary, and the ministry of the Word. We bless you for the opportunities we have, this day, enjoyed in waiting upon you. Amen.2
As the new year stretches out before us, we must all remember our wilderness privileges. As we live within our limits, daily depending on God, we will find the manna we need, the water that never runs dry, the cloud that leads the way, the fire that provides warmth in the darkness of the night, and the tabernacle that gives us the presence of a God who lives among us and gives us an identity we receive as His people and children.
As you plan out this new year, start with your limits, and then listen for the ways God wants to move within those limits, giving you all that you need to be fully dependent on Him.