Doing too much

When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws. And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. – Exodus 18.16-18

We rarely hear about doing too much being a problem. In our success driven world all we hear is ‘do, do, do, work, work, work.’  It seems that the more work we do and the more we take on ourselves the more spiritual we are.

Jethro found his son-in-law, Moses, caught up in this trap. Moses was doing it all himself. He was unable to delegate authority or task. He micromanaged every situation. Every little dispute between the people was brought to Him. He didn’t trust anyone to handle any matter. He had to do it all.

How many leaders get caught in this trap today? We can start to think that we have to do it all. Deep down is the problem that we think only we can do it. This kind of leadership is based on pride.

When Jethro saw the problem he told Moses, ‘the thing you are doing may seem good to you, but it is not good. You are going to wear yourself out and both you and the nation are going to suffer. It is too much, you can’t do it by yourself.’ He then went on to give Moses a plan to delegate authority.

Jethro was right. While there is no excuse for laziness or lethargy or laxness in our work we need to be careful not go to the other extreme. No matter what our task if we don’t learn how to share the load it is going to hurt both us and those we minister to and serve. We will be no good to them or others.

The last thing we need is burnout. Let’s be sure that we are wise in the amount of work that we take on so that we can continue to serve God and each other.