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Time Management in Christ
by Whether we worry about time, or timing, it doesn't matter. They both belong to God. To worry excessively about how our future might work out is as futile as it is disobedient. Let's not dwell on what kind of people we might be someday, but rather, let's live for Christ, in Christ today. It's easy to imagine ourselves as something impressive sometime later, but it is better to obey the Lord right now. So it goes that God's grace always requires reality-based action, which will continue to seem excessively difficult to us as long as we are impressed with imaginary greatness. Obedience has to apply to today. Genuine trust can't help but be trustful right now. Anyone can make claims about what they have done or will do for Christ, but who dares to follow Him today? We have been strikingly puny since birth, unavoidably limited by our mortality. Advancing in years helps us to understand the stunning truth that we, by ourselves, are extremely small and limited, the center of no universe except the imaginary one in our minds. Reality for us is that we are locked into this small space, unable to avoid physical harm, decay and eventual death. Yet our Advocate before God and before the world is Christ, who is unlimited by the things that limit us. Such is the greatness of Christ that He redeems everything we made into a loss, even our lost time. Therefore, even if we feel physically burnt out from our former ways of living, we needn't remain crippled with regret. We needn't waste time making up for lost time because Christ makes up for our every shortfall Himself. In case you feel justified in worrying about time or anything else, you might as well stop fooling yourself. If we worry about anything, then we are only disobeying Him who commands us not to worry. The worth or waste of any aspect of our lives is not ours to estimate, because we are now God's property. Because we belong to the Lord we are joyfully enslaved to an otherworldly outlook on ourselves. We are liberated from every self-defeating estimation. From now 'til our deathbeds we are free to trust God, who accomplishes more with one second than we can accomplish in a thousand years apart from Him. And we would discover that God has already proven Himself trustworthy if we honestly surveyed our past. Whether hardship or ease, comfort or pain, He has been faithfully Himself at all times, past or present. If we are Christ's now, then His Spirit has been at work since before we were aware, even during the years we spent wandering aimlessly. If we are His, then His Spirit has been orchestrating our rejoining His flock all along. Therefore, we will be trustworthy time-managers if we surrender all our time to Christ. But this truth is helpful only to those who are willing to trust Him wholeheartedly, even to the utter negligence of this world. We will be free from worrying about time when we surrender to Him as our Time Manager. If we need encouragement in this, we need only look to Christ's quality of life while He was on earth physically. He was faithful throughout the few years of His life to the eternal benefit of the human race. We might also look to any person who obeys Christ, whose efforts are therefore endorsed by Christ. Christ-followers trust the Lord with their time and therefore can't help but lead spiritually successful lives. by Patrick Roberts. Find his book and additional resources at www.BooksByPatrick.com Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people to Jesus Christ. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |