Knowing Your Tipping Point

Have you ever experienced a tipping point? Do you know what I’m talking about? You reach a pivot point, and then everything is simply in motion to keep going.

As a kid, I remember riding in the car on Galveston Island. There was a slanted wall to help control the incoming flow of high water. It was concrete, and if there were no cars around, dad would drive up the side of the concrete wall. I simply knew the car would tip over and roll down to the road.

We all know the point of tipping is the effort to get something to or over a pinnacle. From rolling a boulder, or felling a tree. Rocking your car to get it unstuck. Using a bumper jack to raise the tire off the ground for repairs. Or even adding just a little harder effort to open that jar that doesn’t want to open.

We deal with Tipping Points all the time. We have all experienced it. Only, we have not known what to call it. Remember, there is the last straw that causes tempers to flare to volcano status? Or that one extra demand at work that makes us so frustrated we quit. Maybe that one last blunder on social media that causes us to drop someone? Or be dropped! Or the cookie has crumbled so much you can no longer deal with a family members antics. What if we let our laundry pile up until it overwhelms our capacity to where something clean!

While unacceptable tipping points exist, there is a myriad of compelling points we need to reach. As in, getting a project off the ground! Or jumpstarting our diet, or creating a new habit.

Here’s My Thought Today.

Regardless of how you think about it, you need to recognize Tipping Points are crucial. You must know where your tipping point lives and breathes!

Knowing a tipping point is important. It may be different every time we need it to show up! But we strive to reach that point so that momentum is on our side. Our effort of pushing, pulling or lifting, causes a rush to success! The effort spent to get to that pinnacle has a tremendous payback. Gravity or momentum takes over and makes the remainder of the job much easier to accomplish.

Practical Thought

Think about it from the point of Archery! There are two basic bows in use today.

A Recurve Bow is the standard bow that’s been around for centuries. No matter how uniquely designed it may be, you pull the string with all your strength. And you anchor the arrow until release with the same amount of strength. The recurve bow does not give you any assistance!

The Compound Bow is an engineering marvel! The shape of the handle, limbs, pulley’s and cable are important. They work together to help you pull back the string with effort. But there is a tipping point! The design helps you pull further than you thought possible and not use the same amount of strength! Suddenly, the bow has energy assist from its design. You no longer pull with all your strength! The bow takes over to allow you to anchor the arrow with much less strength! It’s simply amazing!

Engineering marvels exist in everything we use. With less effort than possible, we utilize tools to assist our world. Freeze food, microwave to perfection, raise the garage door or clean the carpets that collect dirt!

Spiritual Application

We struggle with negatives that pulls us from our walk with God. Call them temptations or sin, or some predilection from our DNA or culture. Positives and negatives make us who we are. We fight the good and the bad at the same time. Perhaps it’s like the devil and angel cartoonishly sitting our opposite shoulders, Whispering. Directing. Cajoling. Tempting. Correcting. The voices of our past attempt to lead, while the life of the present draws. And tomorrow? Well, that’s simply the future that is a dark uncertainty. We struggle!

The Apostle Paul dealt with this and freely admitted this is the battle of many. It’s the battle between being spiritual while existing in a carnal body.

“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.
For what I am doing, I do not understand.
For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.
If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.
But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells;
for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
For the good that I will to do, I do not do;
but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
Now if I do what I will not to do,
it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.”
(Romans 7:14-21 NKJV)

It’s nested logic that you must think through, but in essence, we war flesh against the spirit all the time! Could this be why some marriages are successful, and others are not? One has career success, while another bounces through life with no focus? One is a saver, and one is a spender? While one laughs, another cries?

We struggle against who we are, especially when we want to be spiritual. It is a battle to be one way when something about our identity makes us another way.

Our Words Show Up

I believe our words are often the first herald of our spirituality and carnality! Listen to James writing about how we live with good and evil.

But no man can tame the tongue.
It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
With it we bless our God and Father,
and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.
Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.
My brethren, these things ought not to be so.
Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?
Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?
Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.
(James 3:8-12 NKJV)

We must learn that to be spiritual, we need assistance to get us over the tipping point! We are not successful in our own self, willpower, or abilities. What is this assistance? Where does it come from?

Again, we turn to Paul as he puts action to our understanding of the Spiritual. “The Spirit helps in our weakness.” (Romans 8:26) That Spiritual influence comes from within you, you from the outside! What are these weaknesses? Essentially, those things which are carnal. Let’s consider this. Either live according to the fleshly desires or spiritual desires, you cannot do both. (Romans 8:5-6).

Paul describes the life of the carnal mind.

Because the carnal [fleshly] mind is enmity [hostile] against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
(Romans 8:7-9 NKJV)

You are carnal and fleshly if you have no Spirit of Christ within you. And you do not belong to him. Think about this for a moment. Our Tipping Point either puts us over the “hurdle” of being Spiritual. Or it’s constantly pulling us back into the morass of never being Spiritual.

Knowing Your Tipping Point

What’s your Tipping Point? Consider your life and explain what draws you either to the Spiritual or Fleshly world? What carnality makes you less spiritual? Ditto on the opposite!

Do you know your Tipping Point? Can you set up the tools and barriers that keep you focused one way or the other? Sure you can. You simply need to make up your mind what you want to be! Spiritual? Or carnal?