Where Does Time Go

Thanks Joseph certainly there are times in all of our lives when we sense that the path God is leading us there's a mountain in the way or there's a lock on the door and we're not under we're not sure we understand what God is doing or why he's allowing what he does certainly it is in those times we need to be praying Lord move in a way I've never seen you move before or move me through this situation in a way that will glorify you thanks Joseph reminding us of that. Two years ago USA Today newspaper had an article that talked about some experts and their advice about how much time it takes to do the necessities of life what they did is they called together this panel of experts and the purpose of this was for them to tell us how much time is needed to fulfill all the basic necessities of life they had experts in many different fields like exercise or hygiene some of them talked about how much time it requires to do our work and commuting time domestic chores and maintenance at home eating entertaining even spiritual development sleep family time and on and on the list goes you know all the things that it takes to live a well balanced life and when they pulled all these experts to find out how much time is needed in this area for a well balanced life and they added up all of those areas you know what they found for you to live a well balanced life it would require 42 hours in a day no wonder you are so stressed out no wonder you feel like you never get anything done or all the things that you're supposed to get done in a day's time no wonder you feel behind and exhausted you're trying to cram 42 hours of stuff into a 24 hour time block that's the reason why you're under so much stress we're going to talk about that today because of that phenomenon we end up finding ourselves hearing ourselves say a lot of things like well I just don't have time for and you can fill in the blank or maybe you find yourself saying that just aren't enough hours in the day it's been proven there aren't enough not really but it seems that way sometimes or you may find yourself saying just where does the time go anyway it just seems to fly away it's going by me faster than I can keep up with it well we're going to talk today about the sixth principle of coping with stress and that is management of time time management you see when we get in a situation like that and we feel that time is just flying away we don't have time to keep up with everything that we're doing it is times like that when you feel like you wish you could just speed yourself up and do things faster or slow everything else down to where you could catch up in the recent movie clock stoppers that's exactly what happened Zach is a young high school student who's interested in getting a car but he can't get his dad away from work long enough to get to the car lot and find a car the reason is his dad is engaged in developing a highly secret project for an international company when the government finds out about this project it is so dangerous if it falls in the wrong hands that they decide they want it stopped well it's a watch that slows down the molecules or actually speeds up the molecules of a person to the to the speed that they feel like they're moving in regular motion but everything around them seems to be stopped it actually speeds up their ability to mobilize through life obviously in their own hands that could be terrible well Zach finds this watch one day and puts it on and suddenly discovers the incredible powers that are inherent in that new discovery it looks as though he's moving in normal time but everything around him is completely stopped let's look at what he and his girlfriend get into when they find the incredible power of being able to stop time but speed yourself up to get stuff done let's just take a glimpse with such awesome power comes awesome responsibility at least that's what my dad would say but it's not here is he oh do we start oh first time a woman is always giving me parking tickets look at her she raised them before the meter even expired she has offended my sense of justice let's go eat something more no it looks like we got our own little Picasso here well he's about to enter his blue period oh nice nose ring I think that's meekers bikey stealing oh I don't believe this this guy promised me that he'd hold this call for 24 hours hmm but it's just not right to break a promise shall we make it so number one hey let's start check on Venezuela do it do it way up it's your man's don't leave me like this no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no oh well I don't know about you but there are times when I wish I could slow down everything around me and and maybe not do the things that they did with that use of time but but still to be able to catch up a little bit while everything else stops don't you wish you had that power sometimes well there is a sense in which although we can't do quite the same thing we can gain better control of our time it's called time management and it's our sixth principle for coping with stress if you do not learn if we do not learn how to manage our time or have some way of organizing our time we are going to feel the continual frustration and pressure and stress of too much to do and too little time to get it done in so we've got to ask ourselves where does the time go and how can we manage it better how can we gain better control of our time what I'd like to do this morning is give you four biblical principles of time management and then we're going to give some practical tips on how we can put those into practice okay principle number one of time management is this it's the principle of budgeting time and the principle could be stated this way very simply plan ahead would you look in your bible's please at Psalm 90 Psalm 90 the 90th chapter of Psalm we're going to look at one verse in that passage it talks about budgeting time now to get the context of Psalm 90 you have to understand this is the only Psalm written by Moses did you know that Moses actually wrote one of the Psalms this is it now remember what Moses did for 40 years he led the children of Israel through the wilderness and watched a whole generation die off in the wilderness he watched close to two million people die every day there were all kinds of people who were dying and he talks about that in Psalm 90 talks about how God is an everlasting dwelling place for them throughout all generations although men turn back to dust and he saw plenty of that happening in verse three he says a thousand years in your sight is like a day that's gone by men are swept away in death verse five but the Lord is always there the length of our days is 70 or maybe 80 in verse 10 but notice what he says in verse 12 after thinking about all of this procession of death that he sees in the wilderness this is his conclusion verse 12 teach us to number our days a right that we may gain a heart of wisdom okay now he had a perspective on life that very few of us will ever have because he is allowed to live through this whole period while he watches everybody he's ever known in Israel die so he's got a perspective on life that's a little different what he's saying basically is be aware Lord teach us to be aware of all of our days to take life a day at a time to value life a day at a time to number life in terms of days and then apply to those days each day day at a time a heart of wisdom to be able to learn how to use that time wisely it's called budgeting our time now I don't know if you have ever done this little exercise or not but it's an extremely valuable one to do to actually literally number your days you ever done that I decided to do it this week and I figured out what day today would be on this day today September 4th 2005 this is my 19,413th day alive if I live to age 70 I will live 6,209 more days that's including leap years if I live to 80 as this text says that many will and maybe many of us will then I have 9,861 days left unless of course the Lord comes back first and we don't know when that day may be but as I was thinking about that and I could have done this with the years I guess we just don't think about it that much but when I was thinking about that it occurred to me I've already lived two thirds of my life all other things being equal if I live a normal lifespan I've already lived two thirds of my life it's behind me I can't do anything about that all I can do is from this point on number my days in other words count each day as a special gift from God and use it wisely apply a heart of wisdom to that day it's called budgeting time it's called planning ahead you see time is a lot like money time is a limited resource just like money is that we must decide how we're going to use now we understand that when it comes to money at least some of some of you understand that when it comes to money you understand that money is a limited resource that you have to decide how you're going to use and so how do you do that you do that with a budget and in your budget you have decided that you will allocate those limited resources to certain areas you'll allocate some to giving to the Lord's work as the Bible teaches you'll allocate some to fixed expenditures things that you know you have to pay your monthly bills and that kind of thing you may allocate some to the future and saving an investment and that kind of thing and then the rest is is negotiable it's it's up to you as to how you will use it and you can use that basically for whatever you feel you want to or however you feel the Lord wants you to the same thing is true with time time like money is a limited resource that we must decide how we're going to use and so we must learn to budget it it takes a system of understanding what's most important like fixed expenses or what the Lord requires of us just like giving or what we need to do to prepare for the future in using our time just like we would with our money and we allocate certain blocks of time to those priorities and we'll talk a little bit more about priorities in a moment but budgeting time is the same thing as budgeting money you understand you realize what must you must do and you budget that you allocate that you schedule that and then the rest of the time is free time if you will under the Lord's direction you use that as you believe he would have you to that's called budgeting time so that's the first principle that's what Moses is talking about in Psalm 90 when he says teaches to number our days when we apply a heart of wisdom and to each day live it wisely the principle of budgeting time the second principle biblical principle of time management is the principle of redeeming time and the principle can be stated this way take control of your schedule take control of your schedule now you say where's that in the Bible let's look at Ephesians chapter 5 Ephesians chapter 5 just turn over to your New Testament and keep going till you find Ephesians Ephesians chapter 5 verses 15 and 16 where Paul talks about this concept of redeeming time of taking control of your schedule verse 15 he says be very careful then how you live not as unwise but as wise making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil and when I see those words making the most of every opportunity I think of a story I once heard about a young man who was having difficulty cultivating relationships with young women he wanted to find someone to date maybe develop a relationship with and hopefully someday find someone to get married but he was just having difficulty with that kind of relationship building so he took a couple of classes went to a couple of seminars on you know developing your personality and developing relationships and so forth and soon after he finished that those classes he found himself going on vacation and as he got on the airplane he found that his seat was beside the seat of a very attractive young lady and so he decided to put into practice some of the skills interpersonal skills he had learned he struck up a conversation they began to talk about things and it was going really well to the point that he was thinking you know we could really maybe develop a relationship here and something might happen from this who knows and so he decided to ask her he said what kind of men do you really prefer and she said well you know I prefer Native Americans I prefer Jewish men and just you know good old boys she looked at him and said you know you haven't given me your name yet to be talking about these kinds of things what is your name he sensed his opportunity and so he said my name is Jeronimo Bernstein but all my friends called me Bubba yeah he's the kind of guy that takes advantage of every opportunity he's every opportunity you can well that's not exactly what Paul's talking about although it's close when Paul says make the most of every opportunity he's talking about literally redeeming time in fact that's the way the King James translates it and I think it's still the best translation of this particular phrase redeeming the time now in order to understand what that means we have to understand the concept of redeeming or redemption you see in Bible times to redeem something meant that you bought something back maybe it used to be in your possession and it's no no longer in your possession and you buy it back you bring it back into your possession sometimes it was used of things that maybe you had to sell off to pay some debts or something you find yourselves in better financial shape so you buy it back or when it had to do with people it had to do with buying someone off of the slave market buying them out of slavery making them your possession and then you could do with them what you would you could have them serve you you could set them free if you wanted to but the whole concept of redemption is to buy back take control again of something that used to be yours but no longer is yours or something that is in slavery that you want to make your possession so when Paul says redeeming the time buying up the opportunities if you will the concept is this we must seize our time and regain control of our schedules if you don't if you don't don't take control of your schedule you will find that your time is enslaved to dominant people and to emergency urgent things that just pop up in the course of a day the urgent seems to require our immediate attention and so things that happen on the spur of the moment we devote ourselves to and if that's the way you live you will be constantly frustrated and stressed out because you've not learned the biblical principle of redeeming your time of buying back your time and taking back control of that which has become enslaved to someone else the principle is very simple and that is that other people will always have stuff for you to do they will with their agenda and their priorities push those on you if you are not in control of your own time you say well wait a second what about my job I go to my work and I'm basically told what to do or I have a job description that's fine that's great and but even there things will come up that you have some discretion over and certainly your own time you have discretion over how to use if you do not redeem your time you will find it being planned out for you by other people by dominant people or urgent events I think the best example of this is Jesus Christ now Jesus was the perfect balance between servanthood being available to help people at any time and controlling his schedule perfect balance in Jesus Christ now for us it's difficult to find that balance sometimes and we get a little skewed one way or the other but Jesus had perfect balance in that Mark chapter 1 tells the story of Jesus having a very busy day in fact it's one of the own I think there are only six full days of Jesus life described from beginning to end in the gospels and this is one of them in Mark chapter 1 and in Mark chapter 1 Jesus has been in the synagogue and as he's there in the synagogue a man cries out with an unclean spirit and Jesus casts the spirit out of him then after the synagogue service they go to Peter's house that was customary in that day go home eat like we do on Sundays spend time relaxing and fellowshiping with one another but Peter's mother-in-law is sick and so he heals her you see he is available to people word has gotten out about he's in town he's at Peter's house and so by that evening the whole town shows up with all the sick people and Jesus goes out and heals sick people all evening okay this has been a very busy day where Jesus has just made himself available to whatever the needs were at the time the Bible says here in verse 35 look at it this is the next day very early in the morning while it was still dark Jesus got up left the house went off to a solitary place where he prayed Simon and his companions went to look for him and when they found him they exclaimed everyone is looking for you now stop right there for a moment you see what's happening he has been very available to people the day before he has done whatever needed to be done on a spur of the moment that's servitude that's a servant heart and so Peter comes to him early the next morning when he's praying and says everybody's looking for you I mean this could be a repeat of yesterday there may be people from other towns around Capernaum that have come bringing all their sick people everybody wants a piece of you Jesus and notice Jesus response Jesus replied let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there also that is why I have come and we're going to see in a moment that Jesus priorities always dictated his schedule Jesus knew that at this point in his ministry it was not his primary purpose to heal people that was a wonderful thing it was something that served to show the credentials of him as the Messiah but the primary purpose for him coming was to preach and teach at this early phase in his ministry later on it would become to train the 12 so Jesus says no to a demand there are all kinds of people waiting for you Jesus they're looking for you they want something from you and Jesus says no we're going somewhere else you see if you do not redeem your time you will never be able to say no to something that comes your way but redeeming your time means you take control of your schedule and we'll see in a moment there are times that that's outside your control you can't help that but whenever you have the opportunity take control of your schedule if dominating persons or other outside uses of your time that are not wise are crowding in there comes a time when it's okay to say no Jesus did Jesus said no not today we're going somewhere else doing something else so take control of your schedule redeem the time buy it back out of the slavery that your schedule may have become to other people's demands and wishes buy it back control of yourself take control of your schedule the third principle of time management in the Bible is the principle of prioritizing time principle can be stated this way let priorities decide your use of time let your priorities decide your use of time we just saw that in Mark 1 with Jesus Jesus knew his mission and he gauged his use of time against that mission you remember what he said there he said this is why I've come I must preach to other villages that's my mission that's my purpose for this phase of my ministry so no today is not going to be a healing day for anybody who comes I've got to press on to preach to other places you see Jesus sense of priorities his purpose his mission why he was here allowed him to say no to some things and yes to others and you will never find yourself to be able to do that unless you have a sense of priorities what is most important what is it that God wants me to do let me give you another example of this in Jesus life we're not going to turn there but the story may be familiar to you it's in Luke chapters 18 and 19 where Jesus is on his trip to Jerusalem this is the last trip to Jerusalem before he will die this is going to be the week before he will suffer on the cross and he's about 17 miles away from Jerusalem going through a small town on the Dead Sea by the name of Jericho as he comes into Jericho there's a huge throng of people that are with him most of whom believe that Jesus is going to Jerusalem to proclaim himself King and so they're all excited you know there's a lot of tension in the crowd and Jesus hears a voice from the side of the road calling out son of David have mercy on me son of David have mercy on me and Jesus stops and he goes over and heals blind Bartimaeus now there were people who were trying to shut Bartimaeus up don't bother the master now can't you see he's got more important things to do Jesus took time out for that one crying voice that need on the side of the road he walks on into the city of Jericho and he looks up in a tree and he sees a real short guy up there by the name of Zacchaeus now Zacchaeus is the last person anybody in this town would expect Jesus to want to spend time with he is the hated representative of the Roman government who rips us off when he collects our taxes everybody hated Zacchaeus Jesus looks up in that tree and says Zacchaeus come down I want to spend time at your house today and with a lot of other people fuming Jesus takes a detour to Zacchaeus's house now Jesus tells us why he did that why he did those two things in Luke chapter 19 verse 10 the verse that summarizes the Zacchaeus story he says this for the son of man came to seek and to save what was lost that was his priority you see he was come to seek and to save what was lost and here was someone who needed help who needed Bartimaeus Zacchaeus and so that was his purpose and his purpose his priority drove what he did with his time how he used his time but sometimes that meant saying no also to those same kind of requests like we saw in Mark 1 and to give another example in John 11 when he gets word from good friends of his Mary and Martha that your friend the one you love Lazarus is sick and the obvious implication is please come quickly we know you can heal him come quickly and Jesus doesn't Jesus basically says no he waits until four days after Lazarus died why because as he explained to his disciples in that passage this sickness is not unto death but that the glory of God might be revealed Jesus knew that what he would do in his time table and the father's time table would bring more glory to the father than if he said yes to the request of Mary and Martha so you see Jesus knowing his sense of mission and purpose and priorities was able to say yes sometimes even when other people thought it was an unwise use of time and to say no at other times you will never discern that or learn that ability until you have a sense of priorities in your life that really came home to me shortly after I came here to Johnson Chapel in the church I passed in Indiana it was a smaller church church about 150 I was the only staff member solo pastor Jeannie was my assistant pastor secretary maintenance no she didn't do the maintenance but Jeannie was we were basically a team in the ministry but I was the only pastor I could go in that office at whatever time I wanted to in the morning and I could study all morning that was basically my schedule study all morning I may get two phone calls and nobody dropped by the church I mean it was just you know very small town it just didn't happen and when I came here I all of a sudden realized this is different this is different phone rings all the time people drop in all the time sometimes just say howdy and so I finally decided listen you know I want to be available to people I really do love to have an open door policy but you know what my main priority for this church is and my ministry here is to be ready to preach the word on Sundays and other times that's my main priority according to the word of God that's my number one priority and so I've got to do whatever it takes to get time to study and so I found that when I come into the office in the morning 7 or 7 15 usually now when I come in I have asked the secretaries when people call and ask for me would you please tell them if it's an emergency you'll take your call right now or if it's my family I'll take the call right now but if it's not an emergency he's not available till 10 o'clock and he could call you back after that now I certainly don't mean that to put anybody off but I found that having a sense of what God really wants me to use my time for there has to be a certain time where I can at least get started and I usually study till 12 so two hours I'm I'll take interruptions and just do whatever study I can squeeze in but for the first three hours I have got to be digging in the book and studying so that I get the momentum going if the first thing I get as a phone call my mind is scattered and I can't be ready to to minister to you and feed the flock on Sunday or Wednesday night and so a sense of priority what must be done what has to be done sometimes sets the schedule that did for Jesus it should for us and sometimes it means we have to say notice some things not because we're unkind or unfeeling but because we understand the principle of prioritizing time now the fourth principle of time management is the principle of limitations in other words understand your own limitations understand your own limits again Jesus is the best example of this you say wait a second Jesus didn't have any limits he was God yes he was fully God but don't forget he was also fully man and in his humanity Jesus voluntarily limited the exercise of his divine attributes so that he could live life as a human being too that means that Jesus spent 30 years preparing for his life's work he didn't just jump into it at age 12 he could have but he didn't he spent 30 years preparing for his life's work he spent 40 days in the wilderness seeking God's face before he went into his ministry there are times when Jesus got time away from people and alone to pray and there were times when Jesus got away from the crowds just to be with his disciples and just to and I don't mean this irreverently at all just to shoot the breeze you know I think one thing that we often forget is that the lifestyles in Bible times were quite different from lifestyles today Jesus makes a trip with his disciples from Jerusalem to Jericho it's about 17 miles they're not teaching crowds in that time period it may take a couple days to make that trip they're walking okay what are they doing during that time they walk for a few hours they're fellowshiping together talking about things then they stop for lunch gotta get a stick and a line and stick it in the creek over here and try to catch a fish then gotta make a fire gather some firewood make a fire cook the fish maybe the fish aren't biting so you got to move a little further down the stream what's happening during all that time fellowship with the disciples kind of replenishing things time away from the stress and pressure there was a lot of that and a lot of if you will dead air space that's not covered in the gospels were those kind of things were taking place today our lifestyles are so drastically different we jump in our car we're there in five minutes of course we may be thinking about bicycles now for a while but we can jump in our car and be there quickly and we can get our food we don't have to catch the fish we don't have to build the fire we can grab something out of the freezer throw up the microwave put it on 30 seconds and complain about how long it takes to cook this thing you know that's the way our lives are and so if we don't build into our lives some recognition of our own limits that you can't just keep your nose to the grind 24 seven all the time or you are cruising for a burnout you just can't you've got to have some limits somewhere and you don't understand those then you are asking for incredible stress so the principle of limitations understand your own limits now if I could for a moment for a few moments I want to take these four biblical principles all of which are found in the word of God and I want to just give you some practical tips some of them I've learned from others some of them I've learned by hard knocks just want to give you some practical tips on how to actually put them into practice on how to manage your your time and my time five of them first of all let me strongly suggest that you list your priorities and goals I mean if we're going to budget time and redeem time buy it back if we're going to prioritize our time we have to know what our priorities are right that's the first place to start we have to understand what are the things God really expects of me and wants me to do those are my priorities in life now we all have many opportunities and many demands in life and it requires that we must make choices so that means we have to say yes to some things no to others you will not be able to know where to say yes and where to say no and if it's difficult for you to say no you'll just all the time say yes and push yourself to extreme limits you will not know where to make that call unless you have developed a sense of your priorities now how do you do that several years ago at a workshop at Moody Pastors conference Dr. Paul Benwear who was at that time a professor at Moody I heard him give a workshop on this very thing and it really clicked with me he said what what you need to do regardless of who you are he was talking to pastors but it applies for anybody is he said determine what he called your life mission statement and he said this is how you need to do it he said take your roles in life our O L E S roles in life every role or function that God has for you and write it down and for me it came out looking something like this there are nine of them I am first of all a child of God then I am a husband I am a father I'm a grandfather I'm a son I'm a brother I'm a pastor I'm a friend and I'm a citizen of my community those are the nine roles of life and most of us have something similar to that those are the nine functions we play or seven or eight or whatever ten years maybe and he said determine between you and God what does God expect of you in each of those areas so I just started listing him what from what I know of the Bible what does the Bible expect of me as a child of God well I've got to be developing my relationship with him and I wrote down fairly quickly seven or eight things that I think were from the word of God about my relationship with him as a child and did same thing about a husband and a father and grandfather and so on what what does God expect of me in these areas those become your priorities in life now when you get a sense of priorities it really helps you to begin to put your life together and take back control of your time and to learn how to budget time because you cannot prioritize a schedule until you know what your priorities are and when you understand what your priorities are then that's where you start putting your time in it may mean you don't watch quite as much television to some of your friends or it's been but and it may mean you have more leisure time once you understand that you can say notice and things so so the first important tip practically is to list your priorities and goals remember the illustration I've used several times here and that is the science teacher with the jar and he puts the big rocks in first then he pours in the gravel which kind of fills in between those and then he pours in sand which filters even more and then he pours in water which soaks in and the point of that illustration is that if you don't get the big rocks in first they'll never get in if you start with the sand and fill it up and then the water you'll never get the big rocks in if you don't understand what your priorities are your time will be frittered away with the urgent just the things that pop up every day and you will not have control of your time you will not be seizing it you'll not be managing it well second practical tip I would give you is this develop a master schedule develop a master schedule what I'm talking about is a schedule of how you will use your time each day and develop that schedule around your priorities okay this is what God wants me to be in this area okay I'm going to put that into a schedule now I found this extremely helpful for anybody who has self-employed who does not have someone telling them what to do it's important for your whole day to be able to do something like this if you have certain work expectations and your work block is taken up by you know you know what you're going to do you've still got other discretionary time time before you go to work time when you come home from work time on the weekends how are you going to use that time I would encourage you to develop a master schedule take each day of the week Sunday Monday through Saturday and say this is how I'm going to spend my time how I plan to do it morning Monday morning Thursday morning Friday afternoon Saturday evening these are the things that I'm going to plug into these time slots develop kind of a master schedule of your life what does that help you do it helps you budget your time and order your time seize your time redeem your time according to your priorities you see the real priorities of life rarely scream out for attention and you can let them go for a while but if you let them go too long you will damage the effectiveness of your life by not focusing on the priorities and so a master schedule helps you decide this is how I'm going to use my time each week each day so that I make sure like a budget with your money I make sure I'm getting the fixed expenditures of time that God wants for me I'm getting those done those are the important things in life third practical tip I would give you is use a personal organizer to help you do this use a personal organizer it may be a pocket calendar it may be a little you know legal pad it may be a daytime or if you're really into technology it may be a palm pilot or a pda or a blackberry or something like that a raspberry or whatever but whatever it takes for you find some tool to be able to pull all that together I'm not real heavy into technology I'm still a kindergarten and when it comes to that so I'm still kind of a pen and paper guy in mine is a daytime but this is such a handy little tool I take it with me wherever I go it has become known in our family as my brain and without it I would be clueless really I've got in this little thing everything that I have to do already this week every appointment I have everything I have planned to do but way of work and time time with family and so forth I can take this thing out here's a yearly calendar I'm going to look at a week a month a year at a time into exactly what's already scheduled and I schedule a year ahead in this so that that gives me the opportunity when urgent things come up or someone else says I need to meet with you I can say okay is it an emergency yeah well let's do it right now if it's not an emergency if you've known about this since last Tuesday then I've got time for you Wednesday at three o'clock I mean I can look at Wednesday and see already I've got three appointments and then see a line I've got other work to do and study and emails and calls and administrative work I know exactly what Wednesday's holding if something comes up on Wednesday I can fit it in or I may have to fit it in another day but see using a personal organizer will help you to be able to glimpse what you've got to do it's just a tool to help you budget time redeem time prioritize time and work in your limitations as well now the fourth practical tip I would give is this plan out each week using the tools that we've already talked about plan out each week again I don't know how you do it don't know what your system is and yours is probably a lot better than mine but let me just give you real quick rundown on how I do it it takes a half hour a week and I usually do it on Thursday or Friday for the next week what I do is I take my master schedule which has my daily schedule or weekly schedule kind of laid out I take my yearly calendar that's got everything I have appointments for and so forth for next week and then I take another little slip of paper that I keep which is called my work list you say boy I wish that's all the work I had to do I write small I type it small and then reduce it by 50 percent and this has got every bit of study I have to do for the week visits calls and letters administrative work that I need to do to keep things going here at the church and so I take that and my master schedule and my calendar and sit down in a half hour I can map out my whole week into exactly where I'm supposed to be when who I'm supposed to meet with and it helps me to use my time better now please understand I'm not perfect at this sometimes my days go haywire just like everybody else's but at least it gives me something to go on and something to help budget and schedule and redeem time with it's tremendous help when you get the calls the emergencies the urgent needs then you can either just take off and do them if they're that urgent or you can fit them into what you know are the priorities that God has for you so that you're not your time is not enslaved to other people you're in control of your schedule now let me give you one final practical tip and it's this submit to God's rearranging of your time and some of you thought that I didn't know anything about this this all seems so packaged what about when God steps in what about when a real emergency comes in what about when a real need comes in well I go back to what Jesus did when there were urgent needs that needed to be taken care of that overrode his schedule and it needs to for us as well by the way there's some wonderful verses in Proverbs just listen for a moment while I read a few of these verses in Proverbs 16 when unplanned events and needs and emergencies come up see them as God's rearranging of your schedule what you've already got planned the Bible talks about that beautiful balance in Proverbs 16 it says says this to man verse 1 to man belong to plans of the heart which is saying hey God gave us the ability to plan our lives to plan our schedule to make our plans that's a good thing it's not an unbiblical thing not an unspiritual thing it's a wise use of the brain and mind and time God gave us to man belong to the plans of the heart but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue you can plan out your day and something's going to happen you're going to get a phone call or an emergency come up that you did not plan on and you're going to find yourself crying out to God God what do I say what do I say in this situation boy I never planned on this and God gives you the reply of your tongue you see as you depend on him verse 2 says all the man's ways seem innocent to him but motives are weighed by the Lord verse 3 says commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed that's that's assuming you've already made plans but then commit them to the and he will enable them to succeed verse 4 the Lord works out everything for his own ends even the wicked for a day of disaster even tragedies that come into our lives have a part in God's plan and purpose even though even we might not choose them and then verse 9 is a great verse in his heart a man plans his course but the Lord determines his steps so you know what the book of Proverbs is saying is do your best to plan yes use the tools that God's given you to plan your time wisely in other words to budget it to redeem it to prioritize it all those biblical principles do that but then be open to God rearranging your schedule and when he does go with the flow and let God take you wherever he's taking you that particular day and whatever demand of your time he sees fit to be sensitive to that and you will find yourselves not getting all stressed out you may have to say well Lord I had some pretty important things planned for today looks like that's not going to get done you evidently didn't want me to get them done today I'm going to flow with what you want me to do and there may be times when it's not an emergency and someone's demanding and you say I'm sorry this has been coming on three weeks right yeah well let's put it off two more days I've got time for you Thursday at two o'clock maybe times when you have to say no but you can do that if you understand the principles biblical principles of time management now let me say this in closing some of us have developed very destructive patterns that need to change we have no sense of organization about our time we are as loose with our time as we may be with our money no sense of organization or planning and so we just kind of whatever happens whatever knew we just there you know and and we find ourselves a guarantee you a life like that fritters away a lot of time and does not use it wisely now always need to be open to whatever God wants for us but the Bible talks about budgeting time making sure you plan ahead so some of us if we really want to take Psalm 90 and verse 12 seriously if we really want to take Ephesians 5 verses 15 and 16 seriously if we really want to take Christ's example in the gospels seriously then we're going to have to start planning ahead budgeting our time we're going to have to start taking control of our schedule redeeming the time we're going to have to start letting our priorities and our understanding of what God says about those to dictate the use of our time we're going to have to understand there are some limits we can't do everything so there are some limits we have to back off some and then when God says I got a different plan for you today we need to be willingly submissive to that and you know what the byproduct of all that is an incredible reduction of stress in your life if you learn how to manage your time and then submit it to God's time table it's all in his hands you've done what you can do now it's in his hands and the stress is gone would you pray with me please father