"An Olympic hurdle jumper must do two things. He must finish his race quickly and he must clear each of the hurdles. He can’t afford to waste excess energy by going too high over any one hurdle but he must completely clear each one.
That’s often how managing time works. There are a number of tasks you have to complete each day. You have to clear the hurdle for each one but there is no value in jumping far above and beyond the hurdle, especially if it takes resources away from future hurdles and causes you to miss one.
For example, do you know what you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his class in medical school? Doctor, because he finished his race and cleared all the hurdles, even if he didn’t jump way over any of them along the way.
Think right now about what God wants you to accomplish today. Then create a time strategy to clear all the hurdles and redeem the time.
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"You don’t have to be a Christian to understand the value of time. The person probably more responsible for the secularization of America than any other is the man known as the father of public education, Horace Mann. He was a 19th century educator who rejected the Christian faith, instead believing that man could achieve greatness without God through secular education. He once said, ""What the church has been for medieval man, the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God would be replaced by the concept of the public good.""
Perhaps Mann’s life had such an impact because he diligently applied his time to furthering his cause. Listen to this quote from Mann:
Lost yesterday,
Somewhere between sunrise and sunset,
Two golden hours,
Each set with sixty diamond minutes.
No reward is offered,
For they are gone forever.
As those who oppose God apply themselves full time to destroying any Christian influence in our culture, it places an ever greater burden on us as Christians to redeem the time.
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Last week I attended my 25th high school reunion. It was originally supposed to be a big shebang at a downtown hotel, but when only a handful of the 700 graduates signed up, the big event was cancelled and those who still wanted to get together were told to meet at the school before the Friday night football game.
I wasn’t a Christian in high school so I enjoy going to reunions and witnessing to my former party buddies. But last week it seemed everyone came, chatted for a few minutes, then awkwardly left. I thought about the contrast to the current high school crowd a few feet away at the ball game. No doubt, just as I did 25 years earlier, the majority were trying their best to please and impress their friends, not realizing that in a short while their relationship would change to one of a few minutes of idle reunion chat every 5 years.
That’s why pleasing God and family instead of peers is redeeming the time.
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"President Harry S. Truman once said, “I have found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.” That’s a good observation from a man who himself landed the world’s top job.
As Christians, our focus is not to make it to the top of the corporate ladder at any price. But our focus is to be all God wants us to be. Yet I’m afraid many of us miss that mark because of just what Harry Truman said, we do not apply our full energy and enthusiasm to the work at hand.
In the Bible, the Apostle Paul encourages us to “do our work heartily, as unto the Lord and not unto men.” He’s not referring to the big important work you’re going to do someday. He’s talking about the routine, boring, toilsome, task waiting on you right now.
Doing that job well will redeem the time.
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