Breathing Room (1) – Create Margin

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to CROLCC, we are so glad you are here worshiping with us.  I hope you had a nice Christmas break over the past two weeks.  Perhaps some of you only had one week and have already started working, believe me, I know how you feel.  Some of you are dreading that when tomorrow rolls around the work cycle starts again.  And a small percentage of you may even say, vacation, what vacation?  I have been working non-stop!

I remember hearing an interesting comment from a pastor a few years back saying that everyone seems to be busy.  He said that even retired people seems to be busy.  You may think they are retired from work, but their schedules still fill up with doctor appointments and activities.  And it seems the more driven you are, the busier you are.  Funny thing is, if you are not busy, people tend to equate that with laziness or lacking self-motivation, and nobody wants to feel that way.

Therefore for the majority of us, our lives are busy and fast-paced and we live our lives to the limit.  But, have you noticed the lack of margin increases our stress and shortens our tempers? It tends to distract us from the most important things in our lives . . . and our relationships suffer. So we are going to talk about this issue for the next four weeks and see if we can create some breathing rooms in our lives. Because we will find out that there’s actually a connection between our willingness to create margin and our faith.  And God has something to say about that.

Moving Forward

No matter what you do, you’re going to live within limits—the limits culture drives you to, the limits fear places on you . . . or the limits your heavenly Father will lead you to. What’s at stake isn’t your progress. It’s your peace.

Discussion Questions

1. Talk about one of your favorite memories from the year that just ended.
2. Do you prefer a clutter-free life or do you tend to gravitate toward messiness? How does that preference affect your daily life?
3. As you look back on last year, how much breathing room did you have in your schedule? In your relationships? In your finances?
4. Read Matthew 6:31–34. Why is it so challenging to live out what Jesus commands in this verse?
5. Where do you need some breathing room in your life? What is one thing you can do this week to begin to create it? What can this group do to support you?