Time Management

“Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Perhaps like you, I’ve read the preceding verse numerous times and didn’t give it much thought.  However, in recent months, I have been challenged to take another look.  The psalmist, I believe, has much to say to our fast-paced, busy generation.  Let’s dissect this powerful verse.

First he says, “Teach us.”  Good time management is a learned skill.  If we don’t learn how to spend our time, we may very well squander precious moments that we’ll never get back.  You understand the difference between rest and relaxation and wasting time, right?  Watching your favorite TV show may relax you, but spending hours in front of the TV may rob you of productivity.

The next phrase is “to number our days.”  We must learn to plan.  To plan is to optimize our time and energies.  When I taught high school English back in the 80’s, I discovered that if I didn’t plan something for my students, they would!  Life is too short to squander our days.  Let’s make them count!  I’ve adopted the “good, better, best” formula and try to apply it to my everyday life.  I ask myself, “Is what I’m doing the good thing, or the better thing, or is it the best thing to do given my current situation?”

We all have the same 24 hours. May we spend them wisely, which leads me to the next phrase:  “That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”  We need wisdom when it comes to effective time management.  Understand something.  The psalmist indicates that what we do with our time is driven by what’s in our heart. 

If we’re lazy or unmotivated, our hearts draw us to waste precious life moments.  I often meet up with people who do absolutely nothing with their lives.  Television, video games, cell phones and social media steal their life potential and at the end of each day these “couch potatoes” have nothing to show for their time.  And most of them are depressed and bound by some type of habit that steals their productivity, and gradually kills their hearts.  I can think of few things sadder than a wasted life.

Again, our hearts dictate what we do with our time.  I want my life to speak well of the Christ I represent.  I want time to be my friend, not my nemesis.  At 62 years old, I look back and ask, “Where did the past six decades go?  Time went by so quickly.  My kids are raised and now have families of their own.  I have six grandkids (and another on the way!), I’m going to be Medicare eligible in three years, and I want to know where time went! 

Do you see my point?  Let’s make each day count.  Let’s not squander our time on needless things and activities that add up to nothing in the long run. 

I know!  Let’s invest in what gladdens the heart of God – people!  In our very self-centered, narcissistic world, let’s use our time to make an eternal difference in the lives we touch every day.  In that way, time is on our side!

The Process

Occasionally, people approach me for help and want me to fix in five minutes what it’s taken perhaps many years to “break.”  They’re looking for the big event and the quick fix.

Even God needed time to redeem the earth!  Two-thousand years passed between Creation and Abraham; another two-thousand years passed from Abraham to Christ, and another two-thousand-plus years from Christ to our day.  And redemption’s scheme still hasn’t played out completely.  The devil is still on the prowl.  “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8b). 

Don’t get me wrong.  I thank God for the “big events” in the Christian life.  I was born again on August 4, 1970, baptized in the Holy Spirit on July 22, 1971 and baptized in water on August 18, 1974.  Because of my fear of water, it took me four years to work up the nerve to get “dunked.”  And even then I positioned a pastor on each side of me to secure my re-entry from the waters of the Grand River in Rock Creek!

I’m thankful when God answers a prayer or grants me a hallmark experience.  Those times ignite my faith and move me toward higher levels in God. 

Long ago, the night skies outside of Bethlehem suddenly lit up when an angel made earth’s greatest birth announcements to a group of unsuspecting shepherds. “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified” (Luke 2:8-9).

In A.D. 29, 120 believers in Jesus Christ were gathered together in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem when sounds from heaven suddenly filled the atmosphere.  “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:1-2).

The first “suddenly” of God announced the birth of a Savior.  The second “suddenly” signaled the birth of the Church. While we marvel at the big events in the Christian life, we must never forget that the intricacies of the Faith are hammered out on the anvil of time.  Salvation is both an event and a process.  I was saved, I’m being saved, and I will ultimately be saved.  Like you, I’m in process of “becoming.”  Remember, we’re human “beings.”

John 1:40-42 is a particularly meaningful passage to me.  “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.  The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah (that is, the Christ)’ And he brought him to Jesus.  Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon, son of John.  You will be called Cephas, which translated, is Peter.’” 

Jesus saw not only who Simon WAS, but who he WOULD BECOME.  That’s why He gave him a new name – Cephas in Aramaic, Peter in Greek.  Either way, both names mean “a rock.”  Peter, of course, is not presented in the Gospels as rock-solid, but he became a solid rock in the days of the Early Church.  By giving Simon a new name Jesus introduced a progressive change in character. 

Jesus looked past the Simon of “today” and saw the Peter of “tomorrow.”  He saw untapped potential.  That’s the way he sees us, too!  Don’t allow the process of you becoming more like Jesus to make you impatient.  Know that the good work He began in you will come to fruition.