Life is “ticking” away, one second at a time. Are we using our time wisely and making the seconds count for eternity? Or are we wasting time doing things God never intended for us to do?
It seems that life gets busier each year, and we live at breakneck speed. At times, it feels like we’ve lost control. We have pressures of deadlines, family responsibilities, job duties, home responsibilities, church and ministries in which we want to be involved. We have meetings to go to, programs to attend, blogs to read or write, phone calls and emails to return, and people all around us urging us to go, go, go, and do, do, do.
I sometimes just want to yell, “STOP!”
God has given every one of us exactly 24 hours a day – no more, no less. The problem is not the amount of time God has given us, but the way we view time and how we use the time we have. God has given us enough time to accomplish what He wants us to do.
We get into trouble when we try to do more than God ever intended for us to do. When that happens, our relationships become strained, we lose sleep, our health declines, our homes are a mess, and our relationship with the Lord gets pushed aside.
We tend to handle “not having enough time” in one of two ways:
1. We stop doing things – but that often results in feeling guilty, especially when they are things we should be doing.
2. We continue to overdo it and overextend ourselves, leading to burnout.
The most common source of time problems is a lack of priorities. But how do we set priorities? When we have so many good things we are asked to do, how do we choose when to say yes and when to say no?
Begin by developing your personal mission statement. What has God put you on this earth to do? How has He uniquely gifted you?
By knowing your purpose, you can discern what to say “no” to and what to say “yes” to. You can download a handout from my Resources page to help walk you through developing your personal mission statement.
In the next few posts, I will address some other ways to help you manage your time wisely.
I’d love to hear from you: What do you find to be the biggest “time-wasters” in your life and how have you dealt with them?
