Limited Capacity (Your Daily Allowance)

You have an allowance of time, effort, hunger, and attention every day. (Ground-breaking, I know!) Imagine a pie symbolizing your total capacity for each day, which you can slice into pieces representing different activities.

Now hold on — there is a big problem here.

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The problem is when you spend your daily allowance poorly.

You may be thinking, “I spend my day as efficiently as possible, making use of every moment!” Well, you are right.

At least, kind of.

Your time, effort, hunger, and attention are finite. You cannot go into debt or overdraft your account. Thus, when you spend them on one thing, you ignore another entirely. Another term for this is opportunity cost. Examples:

  • When you spend your allowance watching television, you forfeit reading the book you “want” to read.
  • When you choose to work from home in the evening, you forfeit quality time with your family.
  • When you stress about things, you forfeit peace.

You get the gist. You have a very limited capacity each day, and you spend it on what is most important to you.

When you spend your daily allowance on the distractions of this world, you diminish your hunger for God.

This is where I introduce you to the concept of fasting.

Here is James MacDonald’s definition of fasting:

Abstaining from food (and sometimes other things) for measured periods of time, in order to heighten my hunger for the things of God.

Your hunger for the things of God will not increase on its own. You have to intentionally fight to push other things off of your plate to make room (the concept of displacement) and then act on the available capacity.

Your capacity has to go somewhere, but it is important to know the decision is yours alone.

One way to increase your capacity and hunger for God?

Fast.


How will you spend your capacity today? Will those things satisfy you? Do they reflect what is most important?