Doing More with Less
If I hear one more leader say, “we have to do more with less”, I’m going to quit. More than one person I know has talked to me about the company they work for cutting back on staff, in order to save profits for their share holders, improve the look of performance for reporting so leadership can keep their jobs, or so they can sell the company based on better looking numbers, or just as an extreme survival mode.
Whatever the reason, the result is greater pressure on employees who don’t usually get profit-sharing bonuses, or raises as a result of doing more with less. Their lives take on new stresses, not only because employment now seems tenuous at best, and with the staff is half what it used to be, they are required to do more and to produce just as much as they did with full staff.
Ephesians 3:20 [NLT] “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
It reminds me off the Israelites in slavery in Egypt. For a reason having nothing to do with profits or bottom line, Pharoah famously told the Israelite slaves [in Exodus 5] that he would no longer provide straw for the bricks they made. They were to gather the straw themselves now, and yet not reduce the number of bricks per day they made.
Pharoah was trying to suppress and oppress. Most company leaders are just trying to survive. But it amounts to the same stress on employees who are trying to do more (or the same) with less help.
A wonderful blessing for believers is the way that “do more with less” plays out in our relationship with God. The best part about this from a believer’s standpoint is that He also asks us to “do less with more”. And, yes, these two, seemingly conflicting things, can and must occur at the same time.
God never intended us to save ourselves. When Philippians 2:12 instructs us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”, it is not saying we can do it on our own. Otherwise, it would not be followed by this in verse 13, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for [His] good pleasure.” God is doing the actual work, we just need to work with Him. And, if the Spirit lives in us, it provides the “want to” as well as the “doing” in us.
Our own sacrifices, good works, repentance, and obedience do not save us, though they are an important part of how we “work out” our salvation. These are just the ways that we align ourselves with the will and works of God through us.
God bids us to do less, because nothing we can do can compare to what can be by Him in and through us, when we are less and He is our “more”.
And yet, through that process He gives us the power to do more, by Him doing the “more” in and through us. So much more.
We cannot save ourselves. All our works will not earn us salvation. We must live differently. We must work the works of God. But we do that because we are saved, not in an effort to be saved.
We can do more with less because God is able to do more with less:
Ephesians 3:20 [NLT] “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
With just mere mortals lead by Him, God is saving the world. With passionate believers who step aside from what we can do to allow that bigger work to be done Him through us, God is changing the world.
Sweet sisters, are we willing to do less so that His “more” can work through us? Feel like you are not doing enough? Getting burned out by all your struggles, by the pressures of life or by the way the world is going? Concerned that your congregation is not big enough to have an impact in your community?
Act like a business leader who needs more profits = ask God to do more with your “less”. He will.
I welcome your comments and questions. You can write me now in the chat or any time at Nancy@DynamicChristianMinistries.org