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November 20, 2018
Fight The Good Fight!
November 28, 2018
Are You Spending Your Minutes Wisely?
GUEST BLOG
by Andrews Adams
Guest Bio: Andrew is the director of The Reflection Center House of Prayer and writer at www.heinspiredme.com. He is married, has one son, and loves following the Lord’s leading in his life to establish night and day prayer, unite the Church, and disciple younger believers!
Let me tell you a short story:
There once was a man, on a fine summer day,
Given 73 minutes, to spend anyway.
He looked at his watch, half past two,
73 minutes, what should I do?
His Bible lay closed beside his tablet,
I’ll get to that, he thought, in a minute.
He spent the first 3 checking the stocks,
And the next 20 lost in his email inbox.
With 50 minutes left and unsure of what to do,
He opened his Facebook and Twitter feed too.
Suddenly, while scrolling, he heard a buzz,
He checked his watch to see what the time was.
Startled, he realized his time had passed,
How, he thought, did that go by so fast?
I had so much I should have done,
But now all my time is gone.
“Lord, make me know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is nothing before You; certainly, every man at his best state is but vapor.” Psalm 39:4-5
Now, of course, this is a made up story…but it isn’t far from the truth for most of us. Have you found yourself in a similar situation? Did your heart sink when you realized how much time had passed and been wasted?
Spending Our Time Wisely
In Psalm 39, David shows his mindfulness of how brief his time on earth is. What does he do? He asks God to help him make the most of his time. Have you prayed this prayer? Stop and do it now! Pray that you would redeem the time you have.
Your time is extremely valuable. A leader should assess a task and see if it is worth the time investment. A good leader knows that time is like gold, invaluable and precious. How you spend it needs to be purposeful and good “spending habits” are essential.
If you don’t know where your time goes – there should be warning lights going off! When you don’t plan your time, it disappears. Instead, we need to pray, asking God for wisdom on the best way to spend our time. It will look different for everyone. There’s no formula that will fit everyone. You must rely on your relationship with the Father and trust that His direction is better than your own.
The Best Use Looks Like A Waste
We live in a world where getting stuff done (the quicker the better) is ingrained in our very existence. But this isn’t the way God sees things. Reading the Gospels, we often see Jesus doing things that seem at odds with our lifestyle. He would get up early and pray, even after a long night of ministry where He healed the sick and sent demons out of people (Mark 1). We read that and think, “What a waste! He’s the Son of God and working miracles. Why ‘waste’ the time and energy praying?”
In this, we see the need for this very article. We need a recalibration of what it means to spend our time wisely. Long, loving hours with the Father in prayer and worship are far from wasteful! They are the most life-giving and changing hours of our lives. They reorient our hearts back to focusing on the eternal God that saved us and who we love and adore! The world may scoff (1 Peter 3) at our time management, but we know that we can get more done when we spend more time with Him!
Thanks
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and read this article. I hope that it helps you focus on Jesus and spend your time with Him so that you can be the man or woman He has called you to be!
This work by Andrew Adams remains his full intellectual property and is published here in this form with his expressed permission and will. For more of his work visit the links below in his bio.
