"Purposeful Time Management” Series

Psalm 90, we are told, is a prayer of Moses, the man of God. And among the requests that Moses made of the Lord, he asked God to teach him how to manage his time. (READ TEXT)

Time is a great leveler. It doesn’t matter if we are wealthy or poor, educated or uneducated, a manager or a laborer, male or female, popular or unpopular; we all have only one life to live. Since this is so, we should want to make the most of the time we have.

“Time is life, nothing more, nothing less. The way you spend your hours and your days is the way you spend your life.” - John Boykin, The Gospel Of Coincidence

How can we live in such a way that we -invest our time wisely rather than spend our time wastefully? In Moses’ request, we are told of two ingredients that will give us the focus we need to make the most of the time we have.

1. A sense of perspective concerning the brevity of life - v. 12a

Moses rightly observes that our days are numbered! We don’t have an indefinite number of days in which to live.

“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” - James 4:14b (NIV)

Now, perhaps the swiftness with which time passes has already occurred to you. No doubt, you may have come to, this realization as a result of noticing that there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do all you want to do or feel you ought to do.

I understand that the Chinese once sought to deal with the common problem of not having enough time by having, at one point in their history, a calendar with 15 day weeks!

The fact is that no matter what we do, we can’t change the reality that time passes. Life is commonly described in one of four ways: as a journey, as a battle, as a pilgrimage, and as a race.

Whatever the metaphor, there is one thing on which we must all agree:

If life is Journey, it must be completed.

If life is a battle, it must be finished.

If life is a pilgrimage, it must be concluded.

If life is a race, it must be won.

Each of our lives will, one day, come to an end. Since this is so, we need to make the kind of decisions in the time we have, which will result in our getting where we want to be when we reach the end!

Having a sense of perspective concerning the time we have in this life, leads us to make sure the second ingredient is found in our life as well.

2. A sense of priority concerning the decisions of life - v. 12b

“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve

wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. Success depends upon using it WISELY.” - Denis Waitley, The Joy Of Working

“Nine-tenths of wisdom consists of being wise in the scheduling of our time.” - Teddy Roosevelt

I understand that once in Great Britain there developed a problem with their public transportation where empty buses driving by bus stops full of people. After an investigation was conducted, it was discovered that the bus drivers felt that they needed to pass up the crowded bus stops so that they might stay on schedule.

Too many people are like that. Because they lack a sense of priority in life, they by pass the important things in life as they tend to those things which seem to be the most urgent. You see, the urgent must not be confused with the important! Many people are spending their lives wastefully because they are seeing only to the urgent things in life, while bypassing those things which are really important.

How can I determine what things are really important in life, and thus, develop a healthy sense of priority? I need to see to those things in the present which will enable me to . . .

A. Not regret the past.

“The time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

- 2 Timothy 4:6b-7 (NIV)

I need to do those things today, which will make sure I will have no regrets tomorrow.

“Life may be short, but it gives most people time to outlive their good intentions.” - Anonymous

What things do you know you ought to do that you have been putting off? If you persist in doing so, one day you’ll find yourself looking back on your life regretting the fact that you didn’t do what you knew you should when you had the opportunity to do it.