Chasing time: Intro

Ok, I have no idea why this wasn’t pub­lished when it was sup­pose to but I was look­ing through my unpub­lished posts and saw this, I am aghast. Worse, I have noticed that at least one other post is miss­ing for the first week of November I believe. This post was sup­pose to come as the first post of the Chasing Time series. Alas, it comes last. Here it is as it was intended to be pub­lished mid October with some addi­tional com­ments at the end:

I guess I have jumped the gun with this ser­mon series as I have already deter­mined to reign in my time, to man­age it bet­ter as you may have read last week. Now I have a dif­fer­ent prob­lem from many in that I am not dom­i­nated by try­ing to get too many things done in too lit­tle time. I have a bit too much “free time” which I waste away instead of really focus­ing on the impor­tant — that is what God would have me do with that free time. But first the ser­mon notes.

Life almost seems like time is pass­ing faster an faster. We are not get­ting stuff done that we wish we had done. We are chas­ing time instead of man­ag­ing time.

We chase things that don’t mat­ter and things that we wish we could have done and we did not. There are no time machines. Our past is now his­tory. We can learn from our past, it does not have to con­trol us, but it can help us not make the same mis­takes. God can take our past and shape us to the betterment.

So the ques­tion is: are we mak­ing the same mis­takes? What would our future look like if we don’t learn from our past? Darth Vader, “You were right” a life full of regrets.

If we mange time:

• Life becomes easier
• We are doing what matters
• When we slow down to do what we know mat­ters, we get more done.
• Get God’s applause.
• We feel the most sat­is­fac­tion when we have worked the hardest.
• Finish well, because we have taken con­trol of our time.

The ser­mon series is going to focus on man­ag­ing our time bet­ter. As such, even our ser­vices are going to change to make time for the more impor­tant. Announcements are dropped and we are encour­aged to greet each other and grab cof­fee before the ser­vice starts.

Will we com­mit to man­ag­ing our time?
Commit our­selves to God. It is his prin­ci­ples and his Spirit to help us.

Psalms 37:4 [show]Psalm 37:4 [4]Delight your­self in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
. God is not a genie in a bot­tle. When we per­sue God He will trans­form our desires into His.

Well, I am excited about this series as it will con­tin­u­ally chal­lenge me to not waste my time by chas­ing after non-kingdom issues. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t spend time in leisure but rather, it shouldn’t be our pas­sion. Neither should work for work’s sake. Rather, all that we do should be done that God be given the glory.

I intend to fol­low through with my post last week with regards to my time man­age­ment, maybe with some minor changes. I am try­ing to lis­ten to God as to what He would have me do.  My pri­or­i­ties have to be God, Family, Friends, and finally any work I may get for web devel­op­ment and com­puter con­sult­ing. As such, my time allo­ca­tions as men­tioned last week should be tweeked. We shall see.

AFTERWORDS:

Ok, here I am over a month later and I have some­what failed hor­ri­bly in my time man­age­ment. In part this has been due to my health being rather poor, caus­ing me to sleep very lit­tle and walk­ing around in a daze the rest of the time. Pray that God will restore my health to allow me to do as He would have me do.