Welcome to Faith Notes

Find the RESET button.
from Ron Rose
November 17, 2008

Preparation

Years ago I traveled the country holding workshops on stress and burnout. Looking back on those stressful times I am reminded of a central message… “The only people without stress are dead!” To put it another way, the goal is not to rid life of stress, but to take control of life in spite of stress.

As expectations unravel and life seems to spin out of control, it’s a natural tendency to feel powerless and empty. Alarms go off all around you, the future grows frightening and uncertain, and you feel alone and depleted.

At this point a lot of people will desperately harness all their reserves on a flash of effort and energy. When that fails, what’s left? Despair.

My friend Len Sweet helps me here. His words urge me to take one more step. I keep them close, “Get it, get over it, or get out of the way.” You have a choice… no one can ever take that choice from you.

Choose to take control; it’s the ultimate faith step. Some well-intentioned, but misguided believers would label this a lack of faith and counsel you to pray more, study harder, and repent. Stressed out moments are not a sign of weak faith; they are the proving ground of strong faith.

God isn’t hidden away in some dark room, buried in the pages of a book; he is beside you and inside you. He knows what’s happening, he created you. He designed you with the ability to be drained and emptied so you could then be recharged, replenished and restored. He’s waiting for you to be what he made you to be. It’s up to you. Faith trusts God’s design. Faith takes control.

First step in the “take control” process is to toss the term “burnout,” replace it with drained, like drained batteries. Burnout leaves you with nothing left, feeling drained indicates you can be replenished and recharged.

Second step is to plug the drain, put life on hold, press pause. It’s your life, stop and take a moment to claim it. You can’t handle the future till you’ve taken hold of the present.

Step three changes everything. Find your reset button and hit it! Restore perspective. Claim God’s energy with fresh purpose and power. I have found an annual sailing trip to be my reset button. Each year I return empowered to be what God designed me to be, regardless.

After the first day, there were battery chargers everywhere. For a 42ft catamaran, the “Knot on Call” has a spacious and efficient galley, but we had managed to fill the open spaces with ipods, cameras, GPS’s, cell phones, and notebook computers. Sailors need their electronic stuff.

There were eight of us onboard. It was our annual sailing outing; this time we were to explore the islands just off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico.

“Knot on Call” is a hybrid model with electric motors to accompany the sails. That means the boat has a large bank of batteries that need a generator to charge them. When everything is running as designed, it’s terrific.

However, 45 miles away from home base something went wrong. The alarms sounded, electronics ceased, and props stopped. We were at sea without power. Sails were fine, but even with the generator, no power, no anchor, no control. 

We frantically checked breakers and switches, tried and retried the emergency procedures, but nothing worked. Finally, Charlie remembered the reset button.

He opened the top of the boats electronics cabinet. Inside it resembled the guts of a computer with circuit boards and wires and a few unidentifiable objects. But, there on the motherboard was a metal shield with lightening symbol printed on it and in the middle was a hole marked RESET.

Charlie stuck a pencil in the hole and pressed. Lights began to flash, electric motors began to whir, and control was restored. 

We had drifted a little. Our course had to be changed. We made adjustments, but power was back. Later we discovered a bad regulator and a dead battery cell.

I now have a renewed appreciation for reset buttons.

Motivation

When you are gathered around your Thanksgiving table this year, thank God for the human design. Thank him for our ability to be recharged… by the way, to be recharged means you have to have been drained. The ultimate charge only comes when you have been drained to the limit. God made you that way. Have faith.

Have you found your reset button? It may take a while, but it’s usually hidden in plain site inside your “get-away” place. In more ways than one—it’s your Sabbath place.