We begin 2009 talking about the simple life. So this is the question we’re going to ask:
- In a world that makes us feel overwhelmed, how do we live simply?
- How do we model freedom and joy in a crazy world?
- Because Jesus lived the simple life.
Ironically, when it comes to time management, sometimes his life was not at all what we
would classically define as “balanced”. He sometimes lived at a frenetic pace. But
because he always did his Father’s will, He modeled for us an amazing life of freedom
and joy even when he was tired and hungry and under pressure.
Can you say the same? I read a Calvin cartoon this week. Calvin says:
“God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I’m so
far behind I will never die.”
Ever felt like that? One poll found 61% of us feel they just don’t have enough time.
Parents with children under 18 felt most pressed for time. Those with the most amount
of time were teenagers. Does this surprise anyone?
So what does God’s Word have to say about finding the simple life in terms of how we
use our time? Turn to Ephesians 5:15-17, our passage today.
“Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the
most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be
foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.”
Let’s reflect on this. Paul says “live, not like fools, but like wise people.” How do wise
people live? Carefully. GREEK: lit. “Walk Circumspectly”. How do you walk in a
minefield? How do two porcupines kiss? Very carefully.
Paul is telling us that it’s not appropriate for Christians to be flippant about the
resource of time.
We read this phrase, “make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil.”
The KJV translates this REDEEM the TIME:
o “Redeem” means to buy up, and figuratively to rescue and
o The word “Time” here does not so much mean seconds on a clock as a
season or an opportunity a chance.
o The word Evil here means not so much the moral character but the effect
of a thing.
So literally we’re to rescue opportunities because we live in times that are harmful,
“diseased days”. So Paul puts a responsibility on us to salvage opportunities out of a
schedule that is gripped by the pull of entropy, bound in a southward pull toward waste.
He saying, time is a gift, but in this fallen world, it’s bound over to a negative flow.
Without some intentionality, some careful wisdom, day to day demands will cause us to
fret and worry and be slaves to the tyranny of the urgent, as time slips through our
fingers like heat out an open door in winter.
UNLESS! We redeem the time. Learning to live the simple life, means learning how to
rescue each day from it’s natural, entropic flow toward waste. How?
“UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE LORD’S WILL IS”. IE, my purpose! My God given
mission. We must be mission driven people. So check this out.
- My Mission must translate into Goals. And
- My Goals must translate into Activities. And
- My Activities must translate into my Schedule.
1. FIRST, MY MISSION MUST TRANSLATE INTO GOALS
The Apostle Paul was driven by purpose.
1 Corinthians 9:26 he says, “So, I run straight to the goal with purpose in every
step, not aimlessly.”
Now, setting goals grates on some people. But I suggest that goals can be powerful
statements of faith. The Bible says in Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to
please God.” So when you make a goal, you are saying,
“I believe X is God’s will for my life. So what I’m going to do, is to DARE to
believe that God will give me strength and courage and miraculous help to put
feet to it. Therefore, I will set a goal – in faith, trusting God – that by such and
such a time, I will be there.”
You say, that’s risky, it puts myself on the line. Without goals, you have no risk in your
life and without risk in your life, you don’t need faith, because you don’t need God.
Now, what sort of goals should we set? Just anything? Presumptuous goals? I want to
sing like Celine Dion this year! No. You cannot achieve everything you want in life.
BUT, you CAN achieve everything God put you on this earth to achieve. He gave
you guiding principles for life and he gave you a special shape. And it’s at the
intersection those two things - God’s moral will and his unique design for you – that you
have a MISSION to fulfill.
When you find people living in that sweet spot listen to them talk. Chariots of Fire*.
“Now I know why I'm here on this earth. This is how I’m supposed to
redeem the time.”
So, I devise my goals around my mission starting with God’s moral will. What’s that?
Jesus was pretty clear about that:
1. God wants me to LOVE Him. I was made to put God at the center of my life.
So I need to set some specific goals about developing this love relationship,
getting to know God, learning to trust Him. I need to set some goals about how
much time I'm going to spend with God to see God change me, to make me
more like his Son.
a. Goals for daily time of prayer.
b. Goals for reading or studying the Word.
c. Goals about character work God has in mind.
d. Goals about managing my own spiritual zeal.
i. Those are all goals based in your mission to love God.
2. Second, God has given me a Mandate to Love Others. Your mission in life is to
live in community extending yourself for the sake of others. So maybe one of
your goals in the next twelve months will be
a. to improve my relationship with my wife, or my kids, or my boss.
b. Or maybe you’ll develop a goal that says, in 6 months I want to do all I can
to reconcile with my neighbor after that lingering conflict.
c. Or maybe you’ll say, I need to love my church family better, in six months
I’m going to be in a small group.
i. Those are goals based in my mission to love others.
3. Third, God has made you to make a contribution to the world and the Kingdom
of God. He's given you certain gifts and talents. So you need to set some goals
saying, How can I best make a contribution? Where am I going to get involved
in giving my life away? So you make goals like…
a. How will my career be maximized to make a contribution to the world
b. How will I advance the Kingdom of God through my work?
c. How will I touch a need God put on my heart?
i. Set some specific goals about that.
That's how you redeem the time so it doesn’t slip through your fingers. That’s Mission
Driven time management. Now, once you do that, then you start planning your activities
around these goals...
2. MY GOALS MUST TRANSLATE INTO ACTIVITIES
Now, we all have a “Things To Do” list, right? Whether it’s in your head, or on your
computer, or a coffee stained napkin. There's one problem with a Things To Do list.
The things on that list are not of equal value.
Imagine Abraham Lincoln’s “Things To Do” list.
1) Pick up milk for Mary Tod
2) Go see Show at Ford’s Theater
3) Build Log Cabin
4) Free Slaves, Alter American History
Most of people tend not to organize their lives around goals which have been firmly
embedded in the Lord’s Will for their life. Instead, we tend to organize our lives around
the urgent or the unfinished – some of which are the Lord’s Will, some are not. Have
you noticed yourself ever forgoing the important, in favor of the urgent or unfinished?
When I was a kid, I was staying at my aunt and uncle’s house, when the big city hall
burnt down. I was fascinated by the huge flames, the trucks, ladders, firemen yelling.
Then something caught my eye. I noticed the firemen turning their hoses on the
building next door. My young mind thought that was strange. That building seemed
fine. It was not on fire, why did it need to get all wet? What a waste of time & water!
Couldn’t they see a building was burning down!
Allen Creek, you can put out fires your whole life, or at some point you can say, you
know, I’m going to let this fire rage on, because that house, can burn. I don’t want it to,
but in the big picture, long run, it’s more important that I work on this other house. In the
big picture, it’s less urgent, this house is not on fire, but it is more important.
Do we ever stop ourselves in the middle of running down our ever expanding to do list
and ask the question:
“Should I even be doing this in the first place? Is it in line with my goals, which
are founded in my mission – the really important stuff!?!”
Eccl 3:1 says: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity
under heaven:
It’s saying, there’s enough time to do everything. Ask yourself, would God give me
more to do than He gives me time to do it in? Next time you're doing something and
you say, “I don't have enough time,” that clearly means one of two things:
a. you've got some things on your to do list that aren't God's will for you, or
b. you're doing it in the wrong way. “There's a right way and wrong way to do
everything.”
So let’s look at activities that advance our mission driven goals in different areas.
- You’re responsible to love yourself. Jesus, as a young man, grew in four ways
to model this. The bible says, He grew in wisdom - intellectually. He grew in
stature - physically. He grew in favor with God - spiritual development. He
grew in favor with man - social development.
o How many of those 4 made your weekly “to do” list last year? (You say, I
grew physically, does that count? Horizontally or vertically?)
o You should have goals for personal development and self care which is
part of your mission, so when was the last time that showed up on the to
do list?
One time Jesus and his disciples were so overwhelmed with caring
for others needs that they didn’t have time to eat (Mk 6). So Jesus
pulled them aside and said, “come away with me to a quiet place
and get some rest.” They said NO to the urgent and yes to the
important – because sometimes self care is the most important
thing to DO given the big picture of your God honoring Mission. It’s
not putting out fires, it’s preventing fires.
So you put self care on the to do list and you don’t apologize for it.
- You’re responsible to love your family. If you're married, if you have children,
that’s part of your life mission. 1 Timothy 5:8 “If anyone does not provide for his
relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith.” Now
process that in your head. If you haven’t organized your activities such that your
family makes it on the to do list, you’re driven by the urgent and not the
important.
- You’re responsible to love your church family. Romans 12:5 tells Christians, that
we all belong to one another. The 25 people who attended AC3 Mission last
month heard me we talk about the benefits of being a part of a church family. If
that’s your mission, church needs to be part of what you do.
- You’re responsible to love your work and your co-workers. Titus 3:14 “Learn to
earn what you need by honest work and so be self-supporting.” Underline
the phrase ‘self- supporting’. Did you know that God wants you to be
self-supporting? That’s part of your mission. It needs to be on the “to do” list.
- You’re responsible to love the world. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son.” When you love something you give. And God
says, if you’ve found true peace thru my Son, it’s part of my mission for you to
give yourself to others. Some Christians will get so busy with church work that
they don’t have any space on their “to do list” for their neighbor in need of a hug
or a friend, or a listening ear or a helping hand!
So do your activities reflect these larger purposes of your life, or not? The more
connection there is between the two, the better, more fulfillment, more peace. Now,
once you’ve got goals that reflect your mission and activities that reflect your goals, the
final step in Godly Time Management is to ensure...
3. MY ACTIVITIES TRANSLATE INTO MY SCHEDULE.
This means if something is really important to me, I need to put it on the schedule.
Schedule is nothing more or less than an advanced time usage plan. Have you noticed,
we tend to give priority to scheduled items? If you have a doctor's appointment on
Thursday afternoon, your whole day is going to revolve around, “Did I make it to the
scheduled meeting?”
But the problem is, I hear people say this all the time: “This is important to me,” but they
don't ever schedule any time for it. Then you look at how people actually spend time
and there’s like 4 hours of TV every night. What’s going on? The days are evil and
time is drifting downhill, and they’re not living carefully – no plan.
That’s not to say that there isn’t a time and place for some TV. It can be part of your
legitimate time plan driven by your mission priorities. But here’s what happens. You
don’t preplan it and TV takes over. Like when you get a raise. If you don’t preset your
lifestyle, the extra money just gets eaten up.
Redeem the time friend! Rescue it because mission driven opportunities are all around,
but they will slip by and be replaced by wasted days.
- Your wife will wait for another date night,
- God will be there tomorrow,
- your body can handle one more day of mistreatment.
Because these things aren’t screaming deadlines in your face, we can ignore them.
Redeeming the time means we create our own deadlines and make them firm – and
maybe, let some other deadlines go by.
David once wrote:
Ps 90:12: “Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help
us to spend them as we should.”
CONCLUSION
Friend, listen to me: I have NO desire to teach you how to get more done. I want to
teach you how to do less. Most of you are already doing too much. Your life is filled
with activities. You're so stressed the last thing you need to do is learn how to squeeze
five more minutes in your day so you can do 100 more tasks.
We add and we add without ever stopping to ask,
“Is this the Lord’s Will for me? Should I be doing this in the first place? Is this in
line with my MISSION?”
I’d like to see all of us do less of what we don't need to do. And more of what God put
you on this earth to do. That’s what God Honoring Time Management is based on.
- Do less of what I'm not designed to do and more of what I am designed to do.
- Do less of what the world thinks I ought to do and do more of what God says I
ought to do.
You have just enough time to do God's will. So Paul says, TRY TO UNDERSTAND
WHAT THE LORD WANTS YOU TO DO.
Years ago, my wife and I went to a production of RENT in Seattle. And the final moving
song still rings in my ear when I think my responsibility before God to steward this most
precious resource of TIME. It goes:
525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes - how do you
measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of
coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you
measure a year in the life? How about love? Measure in love. Seasons of love.
At the Beginning of this new year – will you put LOVE at the center of your life and
purpose? If so, you will have just enough time to do God’s will.
