Investing for God - Time

If I were to hand you a check for half a million dollars today, what would you do with it? Well, you can probably think of a lot of things you would do with $500,000. You might buy a new car, or maybe even a new house. You might pay off that student loan that you’ve been carrying for so long. You might use some of the money to help out a family member who is in need. Who knows? You might even decide to quit your job and go back to school, or maybe start your own business doing something that you like to do.

But if you were really wise, you would take the bulk of that money and invest it in such a way as to yield a continuing return. By investing it, you would be able to reap dividends far into the future. You would actually be enhancing the quality of your life, not just now in the present, but for many years to come in the future. That’s the difference between spending and investing.

Well, obviously, nobody’s going to hand you a check for a half million dollars. But I want you to realize that each one of us has been given a gift that is far more valuable than money. We have been given the gift of time!

On January 1, 1993, God gave us a new year. A year comes out to 365 days, or 8,760 hours, or, to put it still another way, 525,600 minutes. In other words, on January 1, God handed you a blank check for half a million minutes, and now you’ve got to decide how to spend them. And as of 11:30 this morning, January 24, you’ve already spent 35,250 of them! How did you spend them? Did you waste a lot of them? Did you just fritter them away? Do you have anything to show for them? Are they going to yield dividends far into the future? Did you invest those precious minutes of time wisely?

The other day, I was going through my desk and came across some of my old datebooks. These are the books in which I keep track of all my appointments and meetings and other activities. As I leafed through them, it dawned on me that I was looking at a documentary record of my life.

As I looked at those appointments, and meetings, events and activities, I began to wonder about the question “What difference did all these things make?” “How am I different…how is the world different…and how is the cause of Jesus Christ different because I spent my time this way?” Now I’m living in the time that was once my future, and I’m looking back from that perspective and wondering about my spending decisions.

The great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote

We lack not rhymes and reasons

As on this whirligig of time

We circle with the seasons.

If you are like most Long Islanders, you probably feel like you are on a whirligig of time. You’re going in circles, faster and faster, but you wonder if you’re really going anywhere. Are you really accomplishing anything of lasting value as time races by?

Tennyson hit the nail on the head when he said that people don’t lack “rhymes and reasons” for the things they do. If I have learned anything about human behavior, it is that human behavior is always purposeful. No matter how strangely people act, they always do so for a reason.

But most people have never really stopped to consider the biblical “rhymes and reasons” for the way they spend their time. When it comes to a “time investment strategy” most people are simply flying by the seat of their pants. They are making up their own reasons, instead of flying by the map that God has given us. That’s why I’d like to suggest three biblical principles that will help you to get a handle on how to invest your time wisely.

The first principle is to understand your purpose.

The American historian Robert Middlekauf, in his book about the Revolutionary War asks the question “Why did the British lose?” They had the better army. They had better trained soldiers. They had a professional supply organization to keep that army in the field. They had overwhelming naval superiority. They actually won more battles than they lost. So why did they lose the war?

They lost the war because nobody on the British side knew exactly what it was they were fighting for. What were they were trying to accomplish? Were they trying to occupy and hold territory? Were they trying to destroy the ragtag revolutionary army under General Washington? Were they trying to change the political attitudes of the American people? Nobody really knew… so they lost the war for lack of a clearly understood purpose.

Before we laugh at the British, let’s remember that the same thing happened to the United States in Viet Nam.

If you are going to live effectively, you need to know the purpose of your existence. If you are going to invest your time wisely on this spinning planet, you need to know the reason you’ve been put here. Managing your time effectively really boils down to managing yourself, and you can’t manage yourself unless you know what your mission is.

The Bible teaches us that we have been placed on this earth to serve God. We are not here by accident - the end result of a random combination of molecules. And we are certainly not here just to have a good time and then die. We’re not here to just do whatever we please.

As human beings, each one of us has tremendous value - a value that is given to us by God. And we can only find fulfilment as human beings when we give ourselves to serving and loving our Creator. We can’t find happiness and satisfaction by going out in search of it. We can only find it when we turn away from our own agenda, and seek to honor God.

Jesus said:

Mark 8:35-36 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

The Westminster Confession puts it this way: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Our mission is to focus our own attention on God and to draw other people’s attention to God, so that together we can appreciate His excellence. That is our purpose.

And that is the first and most basic question we need to settle when we consider how best to invest our time. What is it that we are here to accomplish?

In Eph. 5:16, Paul said that we should “redeem the time”. He didn’t just mean that we shouldn’t waste our time, but that we should invest our time for redemptive purposes - to get to know God better, and to help others get to know Him, too. That’s why we’re here. That’s our mission as human beings.

So when it comes to deciding how we’re going to invest the time God has given us, we’ve got to keep our purpose in view. We need to evaluate everything we do in light of that purpose. We need to ask “Is this activity going to help me get to know God and serve God better?” “Is this activity going to help me to help other people get to know God and serve God?”

I fear that so much of what we do from day to day not only doesn’t help us move toward our goal, it is actually counter-productive. It pulls us away from knowing and serving God. That’s because we don’t have a clear sense of purpose.

So the first principle in investing your time wisely is to understand your purpose. But a man like General Schwarzkopf will tell you that it’s not enough just to know your mission. You’ve got to develop a strategy for carrying it out.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to be at the controls of a 17 foot speedboat on Lake Erie. As we headed out of the lake and into the Niagara River, it was important that I keep the nose of the boat pointed toward our destination. The Niagara River has a very strong current with a mind of its own. A few miles downstream, as you know, the Niagara River takes a rather interesting drop!

The river had a different agenda for our boat than the one we had. That is why I had to actively keep the boat pointing in the right direction. That was my strategy. I didn’t look at the scenery going by. I didn’t engage in small talk with the other people in the boat. Priority #1 was to keep the nose of the boat in the right place, so we could get to where we wanted to go.

The first biblical principle is to understand your purpose. The second biblical principle is to develop your priorities. Your priorites will be shaped by your purpose. If you believe that you are here to love God and serve Him, that’s going to determine the set of priorities by which you govern your life. But if you believe that you’re here to just basically have a good time, to live a comfortable and successful life and then die, then that’s going to be what shapes your priorities. People always prioritize around their purpose.

In other words, people will always find a way to do what they think is really important. It never ceases to amaze me (and amuse me) how people will travel three hours to sit on a concrete seat in an ice-cold stadium in the rain to watch a Jets game, but the same people will wake up on a Sunday morning, look out the window, and decide to skip church because the weather’s lousy.

The people who go to the football game, come rain or shine, do so because they believe somewhere deep down in their hearts that God really put them on this earth to be Jets fans. That’s their purpose in living, so that’s what shapes their priorities.

You prioritize around your purpose. If you think something is really important, then you will find a way to do it. So the corollary of that principle is that your personal schedule is going to reveal what you believe to be really important in life.

When Jesus was in his last year of ministry, he retreated for a little while with his disciples to the northernmost part of the country. They kind of got our of the mainstream for awhile. He had things he wanted to teach his disciples far from the crush of the crowd.

But when he finished doing that, he knew it was time to go to Jerusalem. He had a date with destiny there. So the Scripture says “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” People along the way tried to dissuade him from going, but Jesus knew the reason he had come to earth was to die on the cross. He knew his purpose, and so he shaped his priorites around that purpose.

Principle 1 - Know your purpose

Principle 2 - Build your priorities around your purpose

Principle 3 - Plan your day according to your priorities

When you look at the way you spend your time, it all comes down to saying No to some things and saying Yes to others. But that’s easier said than done! How do you decide what you’ll say No to and what you’ll say Yes to?

Most people manage their time according to the “urgency model”; they’ll say Yes to things that are most urgent. They poke their stick at the nearest alligator. They make a To Do list, and they place the most urgent things at the top of that list. But the problem with the urgency model is that not all things that appear to be urgent are really important.

Have you ever thought about all the junk mail that you get? A management consulting firm in Pittsburg estimated that the average person spends eight months in a lifetime opening junk mail.

Junk mail is covered with messages that scream URGENT - PRIORITY HANDLING - SPECIAL LIMITED TIME OFFER - EXPIRES SOON - OPEN IMMEDIATELY, all in an effort to capture your attention. That mail comes all dressed up in the costume of urgency, but it is really just garbage. And in my house, that is where it goes, unopened. And the more stickers and hype on the envelope, the harder I throw it in the trash can. Just because something is urgent doesn’t mean it is important!

A couple of days ago, I was standing in a store being served by a sales clerk. I was the only customer in the store. In the middle of my purchase, the telephone rang. Guess what the sales clerk did? She answered the phone.

She put me - a customer who was there in person standing in front of her, wanting to give her my money - she put me on hold in order to answer a ringing phone. She ended up being on the phone for about 5 minutes, while I stood there and waited. She let the urgent take priority over the truly important. And because she did, a customer walked out of her store saying “What lousy service!”

Every one of us experiences this. Urgent things crowd into our lives, clamoring for our attention, and we respond to them without ever stopping to ask the question “What is really important? What are my true priorities?”

Now, of course, some things that are urgent are truly important. If your child falls down and breaks his arm, as one of mine did a couple of years ago, it is both urgent and important that you take him to see Dr. Lesniewski. But you will find that most of the urgent things that blind-side you each day are really not very important in terms of your true purpose and priorities.

So you have to be able to develop the ability to say No to the things that do not fit in with your God-given priorities. And the best way to say No to those things is to have a bigger Yes burning inside of you.

But if you live your life responding to the urgent, you will run yourself into the ground. You will burn out, and you will be ineffective in the way you invest your time. I know people like this. They are always running. They never seem to have enough time. Their lives are filled with frantic activity, but are they really accomplishing anything of lasting value?

When you look at Jesus, one of the fascinating things that you notice about him was that he was never in a hurry. Yet he was the most purposeful individual who ever walked this earth. He accomplished more than anybody who ever lived. That’s because he knew his purpose; he developed his priorities around that purpose; and he planned according to his priorities.

There’s a flip side to this question. Just as you find that most of the urgent things in life are really not important, you will also find that the truly important things in life are not urgent.

Take a mundane example: your car. Your car needs periodic maintenance. It needs the oil changed every three to five thousand miles. Is your mechanic standing over you waiting to hit you on the head with a wrench if you don’t do it? No. What happens if you let your car go beyond three to five thousand miles without changing the oil? Nothing.

Not right away, anyway. Your car still runs. But the longer you let it go, the worse it runs, and the chances are greater that you are permanently damaging it. And if you let it go too long, you wake up one morning and your car doesn’t work anymore. Then you’ve got a crisis on your hands! You see, if you ignore the important things in life, they have a way of becoming critically urgent. Desperately urgent. Even tragically urgent.

Changing the oil in your car is pretty humdrum. What about your body? The same principle is true of physical exercise. You’re not going to die just because you don’t get enough exercise today. But if you put enough of those “todays” together, you will die.

Same is true of marriage. Your marriage isn’t going to fall apart if you don’t invest time working on it today. But put enough of those “todays” together, and it will fall apart.

Same is true of parenting. Your child isn’t going to turn against you just because you didn’t invest time with him, and hug him, and tell him you love him today. But put enough of those todays together, and your child will grow up wondering whether you do love him.

Same is true of your spiritual life. You’re not going to fall away from the Lord just because you didn’t read the Bible and pray today. But put enough of those todays together, and your love for God will grow cold.

The most important things in life don’t come with a sticker marked URGENT on them. The only way to identify what’s really important is:

1. to have a clear view of your purpose

2. to have a solid set of priorities built upon that purpose, and

3. to plan to invest your time according to your priorities

I once saw a picture of a very unusual farm out in Nebraska. The farmer had sown his field with a variety of crops in a bewildering arrangement. If you were to have walked through his field, you would have come upon a strip of alfalfa, followed by a patch of corn, then an area of soybeans, then another strip of alfalfa. The arrangement would have made little sense.

But if you had flown over that farm in an airplane, you would have immediately understood why the crops were sown that way. The farmer had carefully and painstakingly produced an example of “crop art”. Using the natural colors and textures of the various plants, he created in his field a beautiful picture which could only be appreciated from the air.

In order to do that, the farmer deliberately selected and sowed the seed at the proper time. He prioritized his daily schedule around his ultimate purpose. And when the seed began to grow, it might have looked confusing from ground level, but that isn’t where the farmer’s perspective was. He was always thinking of it from a higher vantage point.

When 1996 is over, and your Day-Timer is full, I wonder how many of those half million minutes will turn out to have been well-invested, or just spent.

In Ephesians 5:15-16, the Lord tells us to…

Ephesians 5:15-16 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

Let’s make the New Year count for Him.