Are you frustrated that there are not more than 24 hours in a day? Overwhelmed by the number of projects on your to-do list? Tired of being tired and not having enough time to spend in God’s Word and with your friends and family? These may be the most common struggles in the world. The good news is that the Bible offers clear principles for managing our time well. This plan will expound upon those Scriptures and give you super practical advice for how to make the most of what time you have left in this life!
Jordan Raynor
Day 1
Scriptures: James 4:13-14, Ephesians 5:15-17, Psalms 90:12, John 9:4, Proverbs 21:5
Our Time Management Problem
I get asked for a lot of time management advice. Not because I’ve got this topic “figured out,” but because I’ve had a tremendous amount of practice seeking to balance the many different productive activities in my life. In addition to serving as the CEO of a venture-backed technology startup, I am also an author, doing my best to help my fellow Christians connect the gospel to their work. At home, I am a husband and a father to two wonderful girls under the age of three. To say my life is insane right now is a bit of an understatement. But by the grace of God alone, I am “managing” it all and still somehow get 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
Managing my time well has long been an obsession of mine. Why? Because the Bible reminds us time and time again that our lives are “just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanish away” (James 4:14). God still has you and me on this earth for a reason: to love Him, to love others, and to make disciples of Jesus Christ. We are people of purpose. We weren’t created to just sit around and wait for eternity. We are called to engage in the world, to create culture, to be productive in serving the needs of those around us through our lives and through our work. In short, God has called us to join Him in His mission to redeem the world.
Given the magnitude of that mission and the ticking clock of time, we should be the most purposeful people on the planet, living with a healthy sense of urgency, always looking to make the most of the precious time we have been given. That’s why you’re reading this devotional! Over the next few days, we will dig into God’s Word together to uncover some time management principles straight from Scripture. But I will warn you now that this process isn’t easy. If it were, we wouldn’t all be perpetually struggling with this problem. At the end of the day, successful time management comes down to diligence and discipline (Proverbs 21:5). As we will see, being disciplined with our time will free us up to make the greatest contribution to the world on behalf of our Lord and Savior. Ready to make the most of the limited time the Lord has granted you? Let’s begin!
Day 2
Scriptures: Luke 5:16, Mark 1:35, Matthew 6:33
Set Your Boundaries
Throughout the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John repeatedly note the amount of time Jesus spent in solitude—away from the disciples, the crowds, and the busyness of his ministry. The frequent mention of this behavior suggests that Jesus was a master at setting boundaries with His time. Likewise, if we are to effectively manage our time and make our greatest contribution to the world, we too must establish clear boundaries with our schedules.
Like Jesus, this should start by allocating regular time for prayer (Mark 1:35) and study of God’s Word. Most of us are used to the idea of tithing our money. But what about tithing our time? If we fill-up our schedules with demands from work and home and then try to find time to spend in prayer and study of God’s Word, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Before you go any further in this study, take some time to determine what time you will tithe exclusively to prayer and study of Scripture on a daily basis.
Once you have set clear boundaries in your schedule for spiritual disciplines, it can be helpful to take a similar approach to budgeting your time at home and at work. For me, a regular routine helps me keep my “work-life balance” in check. Nearly every day, I head to the office at 4:45 a.m. and I arrive back home at 4:00 p.m. This predictable schedule gives me clear boundaries within which I force myself to concentrate my work. Is my work ever done? Of course not. But that would be true if I worked until 5:00, 6:00, or 10:00. There’s no such thing as done. Having a hard line in my schedule for the end of my day at the office ensures that I have plenty of time to spend with my wife, kids, and church family.
If you don’t take the time to set boundaries in your schedule, someone else will. If you haven’t already, follow Jesus’ lead and set clear boundaries within which you will spend your time. This is the first step in getting control of your calendar and managing your time well.
Day 3
Scripture: Matthew 5:37
Collect Your Commitments
Jesus commanded that our “Yes” be “Yes,” but more and more frequently, a Christian’s “Yes” really means “No.” Every time we fail to follow-through on a commitment, show up late, don’t complete a project on time, or fail to keep our voicemail’s promise that we will “return your call as soon as possible,” we are disobeying Jesus’ command that our “Yes” be “Yes.” In our fast-paced lives, we are saying “Yes” more than ever, while more and more frequently failing to keep our word. The fact that this sin seems so innocuous should set off alarms within the Church. We are images of God, representations of Jesus Christ to a lost world. To reflect our Savior well, we must be keepers of our word.
But how practically do we do this? It starts by having a system to effectively collect all of our commitments. This could be as simple as a piece of paper or as complex as a digital task-management system like OmniFocus. The tool is far less important than the process. If we are to follow Jesus’ command that our “Yes” be “Yes,” we must have a way to keep track of everything we are saying “Yes” to. Sounds like common sense, right? It is! But sadly, so few people do this well. The good news is, this is a super simple problem to solve.
Sometime today, take 30 minutes to do a “mind-dump” of every commitment you have made to yourself, your friends, your spouse, your kids, your co-workers, etc. Once your list is complete, look for commitments that you need to renegotiate or quickly close the loop on. For example, maybe you promised your grandmother that you would call her last week and you still haven’t made the call. Take 5 minutes to give granny a call and fulfill this commitment. Let your “Yes” be “Yes” even if you’re delayed. I promise, once you go through this exercise and you’re confident that everything is out of your head, you will feel immense relief and peace.
Day 4
Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
Determine What’s Essential
Martha gets a bad rap in our preaching of this passage in Luke 10. But the fact is, we are all Martha from time to time, struggling to identify which tasks are the most essential at any one given time. Clearly, someone needed to make dinner, and I’m willing to bet that Jesus greatly appreciated Martha’s hospitality. It wasn’t that cooking dinner wasn’t important. Jesus just made clear that it wasn’t the most essential thing Martha or her sister Mary could have been doing at that moment in time. What was most essential in that moment was being taught at the feet of Jesus.
As we saw yesterday, collecting our commitments, tasks, and projects is an essential step of effective time management. But once all of your commitments have been collected, it’s time to determine what on your list are the most essential projects and tasks. This process requires clarifying what you believe God is calling you to in this season of life and your work. With that big picture and those overarching goals in mind, ask yourself, “What is the one thing that, once accomplished, will make everything else within this project easier or more fruitful?” The answer to this question is the most essential thing you should be focused on. Put everything you can on hold until this one task is accomplished. Then repeat the process again and again.
When I was writing my last book, Called to Create, I was overwhelmed by the number of tasks that needed to be done to bring that project to market. I had to get an agent, sell a publisher, conduct interviews, write 50,000 words, build a platform to market the book, etc. But at the beginning of the project, I knew that if I couldn’t get an agent to take me on, nothing else within the project would matter. Securing an agent was my most essential task. So I put everything else with the project on hold until I found an agent to take me on.
The truth is, at any given point in time, very few tasks and projects are truly essential. Get in the habit of identifying the essential two or three things on your plate and focus on them until the task is completed.
Day 5
Scriptures: Luke 14:28-30, Proverbs 21:5
Plan Each Day
It’s no secret that to be successful with your finances, you must plan where you will spend your money before it winds up in your bank account. We should take the same disciplined approach to our time. After all, unlike money, we can’t earn more time, so we should be even more inclined to budget our hours than our dollars.
If you followed Jesus’ lead in day two of this reading plan, you should have clear boundaries outlining how much time you have dedicated to be productive in a given day. With these boundaries set, your commitments collected, and your essential few projects and tasks identified, it’s time to enter into a more granular planning mode, determining how you are going to spend each hour of each day. I love Jesus’ words in Luke 14:28: “For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?” The way we “calculate the cost” of our productive activities is by budgeting our time, ensuring we have “enough to complete” the things we have committed to.
So, what does this look like practically? For me, I spend the last 30 minutes of every work day identifying the most essential tasks and projects I want to accomplish the following day and planning out how I will allocate my time to accomplish those things and everything else on my calendar. This way, when I sit down at my desk the next morning, I don’t have to waste precious mental energy thinking about what I will do next. The decisions have been made. Now all I have to do is execute.
All throughout Proverbs, God reveals the wisdom of conservatively planning out how to spend our time and money. When planning out your days, be intentional about underestimating what you can accomplish in a 24 hour period. Human nature is to overestimate what we can accomplish in a given time period. Simply being aware of this will help you make wiser decisions in planning out your time. It’s far better to end the day with unexpected free time than to not accomplish what you set out to.
Remember Jesus’ warning in Luke 14:29-30: “For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’” Not doing what we say we will do is harmful to our testimony to a lost world. Plan your time well to ensure you can finish what you’ve committed to start.
Day 6
Scripture: Mark 1:29-38
Just Say No
As Mark opens up his account of Jesus’ ministry, he portrays the Savior on a healing spree, driving out demons from a man in the synagogue and healing Peter’s mother-in-law at her home in Capernaum. That same evening, “the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door and Jesus healed many.”
Not surprisingly, the next morning the disciples rushed to Jesus and said, “Everyone is looking for you!” Clearly the town had gotten wind of Jesus’ miraculous powers to heal and wanted an encore on day two. But Jesus said no. In what likely came as a shock to the disciples, Jesus said, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”
This is the first, but certainly not the last time we hear Jesus utter the word “no” in the gospels. Why did Jesus say “no”? Clearly he had the power to heal more people. Clearly he had the desire to alleviate the pain in these people’s lives. But while Jesus may have wanted to heal more people, He knew He had limited time on earth to fulfill his “purpose.” Jesus didn’t come to earth just to heal and reveal His identity. He came to preach about the gospel in preparation for the Passion He would perform on the cross. Jesus was crystal clear on His purpose and this led Him to say no to good things in order to focus on the essential thing He came to earth to do.
If Jesus couldn’t say yes to everything, neither can we. You and I have limited time and resources. To make the most of the time we have left, it is critical that we get super clear on what we believe God has called us to do and get in the habit of saying no to opportunities—even really good ones—that distract us from our essential mission.
Remember, you are alive for a purpose! I pray the Scriptures we have explored over the past six days will challenge us to be wise about how we spend what time we have left on this earth, using the final hours to love God, love others, and make disciples of Jesus Christ through our lives and our work.