If you know me, you know I absolutely despise mowing my yard. I’m one of these people that will literally put it off until I can’t anymore. Why you ask? Honestly I don’t know, its just one of those things that I hate doing. Tonight for example was one of those nights, if I let my yard grow anymore Jack Black and Kevin Hart were going to come out of Jumanji in it, that’s how high it was. So I buckled down, and I mowed it. This time was a little different though, as I’m finishing up the front yard I feel the Holy Spirit give me a little nudge. You know those nudges I’m talking about, the ones where you know He’s about to tell you something, or teach you some type of lesson. Well that’s what He did!
A little backstory, my lawnmower is literally old as dirt. I’m 26 years old and its probably at least that old, so it needs a little extra love sometimes. When you start her she shoots out all this smoke, there’s rust everywhere, my dad has welded patches onto it to keep it running because of the rust; She really needs to retire. So when my grass gets high like this, she struggles a little bit. Sometimes it takes going over a patch of grass a few times to get everything, and she’ll get bogged down by trying to cut too much at one time. And that’s what Holy Spirit began teaching me.
As believers, especially those that are in leadership roles, we tend to try to take on too much at one time. For me, I have to always be doing something, that why I’m never home. I always have a million and one things to do, and I attempt to do them all on my own. Take the lawnmower for example, it gets bogged down because it’s already cut an entire yard of grass so when it hits this thick high spot, it can’t get it all by itself. So as the operator of the mower, I have to make the decision to help out and either go over the patch a couple different times, or mow in the opposite direction to blow the excess grass away from the unmowed sections. If i continue to mow in the same direction eventually the mower gets so bogged down that it just dies. When that happens you have to let it sit for hours before it will even start again.
This is us as leaders, especially myself, we take on so much stuff at one time, that not only do we get bogged down, but we get burnt out and eventually it leads to death. Now I’m not talking literal death, although if the stress is high enough, that could happen. But it leads to mental exhaustion, physical exhaustion, our emotions run rampant, and you literally just want to give up. But the key to the lesson was “Its okay to ask for help.” Let me say that again “ITS OKAY TO ASK FOR HELP!!!” We look at asking for help as a sign of weakness, at least in my mind I do. But if you’re truly a good leader you learn to ask for help, and delegate things to others. God created us to be in community, so why would we think we can do it all on our own? The mower gives us warning sounds and signs before it gets bogged down and dies, are we as leaders and followers watching and listening to those signs from ourselves and those around us?
Long story short, I got convicted mowing the grass. Isn’t it just like Holy Spirit to do that? Show up at random and teach you a lesson. My friends and I have a joke that you can literally make anything preach, well tonight, my lawnmower preached. I hope this encourages you but also challenges you as leaders and followers;especially if you find yourself like me trying to take on too much alone and being too Prideful to ask for help (that’s a preach on its own). So break down the stigmatism and start asking for help, you never know what you might learn from it, but also how it might help grow and activate someone else by allowing them to help you!
