"Two Eskimos in a kayak were chilly, so they started a fire, which sank the craft, proving the old adage you can't have your kayak and heat it too.
Many people are trying to have their cake and eat it too. By that I mean they say they want to do more and be more for God, but they aren’t willing to let go of the old ways that keep them from launching out full force. For example, many small churches have empty pulpits and many mission fields go unmanned, because people are resistant to the change required to answer the call of God to full time service. Answering that call would mean letting go of the cake they’re holding on to.
What we don’t realize is that time is short. There is not a single day we can afford to waste doing anything outside of God’s will. That doesn’t mean full time Christian vocation for everyone, but it does mean being a full time Christian by consistently redeeming the time.
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"Working out of the home can be a great time saver. The advantages are numerous, including zero commuting time and a being much more available to your children. The ability to set your own hours is also a great benefit.
But the other side of working from home is the temptation to not set firm work hours. That results in a tendency on the part of those who work at home to feel they can never be free from work. We can’t leave work at work because home is the workplace. The way to counter that is to establish set hours for work. Obviously there will be some flexibility when necessary, but our general rule should be that we establish a time to work and a time to stop working.
The world’s way of thinking is that freedom is the absence of rules. But that’s really the route to bondage. God’s method for those who work at home or anywhere else is flexible structure as the way to redeem the time.
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"A mother of nine children wrote:
""If I live in a house of spotless beauty with everything in its place, I am a housekeeper, not a homemaker. If I only have time for waxing and polishing, my children will learn of cleanliness, not godliness. Love leaves the dust in search of a child's laugh. Love smiles at the tiny fingerprints on the newly cleaned window. Love wipes up the tears before it wipes up the spilled milk. Love is the key that opens salvation's message to a child's heart. Before I became a mother, I took glory in my house of perfection;
but now, I glory in God's perfection of my child""
Those are the words of a mother with the right perspective. It’s very easy to lose our focus in the daily grind of household chores, and miss what is really important. But taking time for people before things is good parenting and its redeeming the time.
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"How old are you? Do you remember when you used to think people your age were “old?”
Someone said, “You know you are getting older when policemen look like little boys or when your doctor, your boss, or even the President is younger than you are.”
“Where does time go?” you ask. The answer is time doesn’t go anywhere. We are the ones who move through time and we move very quickly. In the Bible, Job said “my days are swifter than a weaver’s beam.” Consider the brief amount of time it took to get where you are today. Then think of how quickly the remainder of your life will pass by. That should challenge you to want to use all the time you can to serve the Lord.
Because no matter what your age, you just don’t have much time left. That’s why you need to redeem the time.
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