"The next time you walk through a graveyard, take a moment to look at the tombstones. They all have something in common. It’s a dash. They have the date of birth and the date of death. Then, in between those two dates there is a little dash.
That little dash represents the brief period of time we are given to live in this world. In that tiny little dash, between the day we are born and the day we die, we must do all that we are going to do for God for all eternity. The Bible teaches us that life is like a vapor that appears for a moment and then vanishes away. It also teaches us that we will an account to God for what we do with our time.
There is eternity past and there is eternity future. Between those two infinite realms of time lies your dash. To make the most of your dash, you must redeem the time.
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"SUPERCOMPUTERS
A large internet firm began a program of downloading small chunks of gigantic mathematical equations onto their customer’s personal computers. When these computers are not being used for other purposes, their processors perform calculations to help solve complex problems which benefit science and medicine.
Someone no doubt initiated this program after considering all the idle computers sitting on desktops all over the world at any given moment. They saw a tremendously underused resource and they found a way to put it to work.
How often do you perform tasks that don’t require your full attention? You’re walking, waiting, cooking, or doing something that doesn’t require your total concentration? You are like one of those computers, turned on and capable of processing information, but achieving nowhere near full potential. Train yourself to think or to pray during those times. All those computers may some day produce a medical breakthrough. But what spiritual breakthroughs could be accomplished if God’s people could learn this method of redeeming the time.
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"Who is wiser, one who merely spends money or one who invests it? The one who invests it naturally. The person who mindlessly spends without considering the long term value of his purchase will end up a poor man.
There is another commodity more valuable than our money. It’s our time. Each day we are given many opportunities to merely spend time or to invest it. Smart investing means putting resources where they will produce the greatest results. That may mean stocks, bonds or real estate for money investors, but when it comes to investing time it means people.
When we spend time getting more things or seeking pleasure and amusement for ourselves, we’ve chosen to invest time in something with very low returns. But when we spend time with people, especially our families, we’ve chosen to make an investment that will result in rewards throughout eternity.
So remember don’t just spend time, invest it wisely for the greatest return. Then you will genuinely redeem the time.
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"Improving your reading speed is one of the most time saving investments you can make.
There are many techniques to improve reading speed. Many of them are tied to eye movement or eye fixations. When you read, your eyes jump from one spot to the next and fixate on the text. When a child first learns to read, they “fixate” on every letter. As we progress we learn to fixate on the word as a unit, not focusing on the letters.
Unfortunately, many of us stop there, instead of making our eyes span even wider taking two or three words per fixation. With practice a good speed reader can learn to fixate on phrases instead of words. That means 100 fixations per minute allows us to read 100 phrases instead of 100 words, and that’s a big difference.
With all the good Christian books available today, learning to read faster so we can read more, is a good way to redeem the time.
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