Great Ideas!

I love a new idea. I often get really caught up in a new idea. I try to find all of the ways I can apply it! It's kind of like when we started making our own bread. I went nuts trying to find all of the other things I could make myself! I went overboard with the ideas! Then I had to balance it all out and determine what things were really worthwhile to make myself and what things were still better just to go and buy.

The truth is that we can take any idea a bit too far. We can turn just about anything into a fanaticism and begin applying it in the wrong way to the wrong things. Suddenly it doesn't seem like it works anymore and we burn ourselves and others out on what could have been a great idea and a very useful tool.

God has something to say about this very topic. In Isaiah 28:23-29 we find...

Give ear and hear my voice,
Listen and hear my words.
Does the farmer plow continually to plant seed?
Does he continually turn and harrow the ground?
Does he not level its surface
And sow dill and scatter cummin
And plant wheat in rows,
Barley in its place and rye within its area ?
For his God instructs and teaches him properly.
For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
Nor is the cartwheel driven over cummin;
But dill is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a club.
Grain for bread is crushed,
Indeed, he does not continue to thresh it forever.
Because the wheel of his cart and his horses eventually damage it,
He does not thresh it longer.
This also comes from the LORD of hosts,
Who has made His counsel wonderful and His wisdom great.

There is a good and appropriate time for the great ideas we gain as we grow in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. But, there are also times when those ideas are about as useless as continually plowing ground instead of moving through the appropriate steps of farming.

Have a great new idea to share? Let's hear it, and then let's join together and pray for wisdom and discernment to know how and when to implement that idea - and when to back away.