Life Management

A lifetime is the period between date of birth and date of death. We all know our date of birth but don’t know the later. Compared to eternity however, life is too short. Time is a unit of life. It is life’s currency. “Time is a resource that is nonrenewable and nontransferable. You cannot store it, slow it up, hold it up, divide it up or give it up. You can’t hoard it up or save it for a rainy day–when it’s lost it’s unrecoverable. When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.”(A.W. Tozer).

Stephen Covey writes: “Time management is a misleading concept. You can’t really manage time. You can’t delay it, speed it up, save it or lose it. No matter what you do time keeps moving forward at the same rate. The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.” This is why the topic of this article is life management, rather than time management.

The Unwelcome Realities
In a lifetime the average North American will spend:
6 months sitting at stoplights
8 months opening junk mail
1 year looking for misplaced objects
2 years unsuccessfully returning phone calls
5 years waiting in line/waiting for latecomers
6 years eating
21 years watching television.

Number your Days
No one has all the time in the world to do everything he wants to do. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. It is therefore critical that you know what you’re doing with your time.
“Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” Psalms 90:10, 12.
Your available total time = the time between the date of birth and date of death/rapture. This time is our allotted time. Job 7:1, Job 14:14, Acts 17:26.

Assuming you have 81 years to live, you’ll spend;
8 hours per day sleeping = 21 years.
8 hours per day working or studying = 21 years.
8 hours per day grooming/miscellaneous = 21 years.
The first 2 sets of 8 hours are fixed, the third one is variable. This means that you don’t have a lot of control over two-thirds of every day of your life. However, there is a lot you can do within the more flexible time. How much time do you have left? Assuming a lifespan of 80 years, you can calculate the number of days you have left by using the following formula:
80 – Age X 365 = number of days left to live.
For a 40-year-old man, the answer is 14,600 days. This translates to:
4866 days sleeping
4866 days working
4866 days to cleanup, shop, eat, exercise, pay bills etc.
The average individual only has 5 hours a day of discretionary time. In the case of this 40-year-old man, he has 1014 days in total of discretionary time. The difference between a fulfilled life and an empty one is often dependent on how this discretionary time is used. Where are you investing those 5 hours a day of your life?

The true cost of things
Our lives are measured in terms of time. Whenever you want to make a major purchase, think of the true cost of the purchase in terms of time. Anything you want to spend money on that demands you spend more time working extra hours to pay for it requires critical thinking. Few things in life are worth the enormous sacrifice of longer hours at work. “You don’t really pay for things with money. You pay for them with time. “In 5 years, I’ll have put enough away to buy that new house. Then I’ll slow down or get out of this business altogether.” That means the house will cost you five years---five out of eighty, maybe. That’s one sixteen of your whole life; one twelfth of your adult life; one quarter of the time you’ll spend living with any one of your children.” Charles Spezzano.
Very few things are worth the extra hours of money-making. Vacation, second home, recreational gadgets, jewelry etc. are usually not worth it. An additional qualification which may eventually increase your hourly rate may be.

Make the most of opportunity
The Bible admonishes us to redeem the time. The word “redeeming” can be translated buying up or purchasing. The word “time” is not the Greek word “chronos" which means clock time that is measured in hours, minutes and seconds, but it is the Greek word "kairos" which refers to quality of time or season. We are not called to be good time managers; we are called to be good opportunity managers. It is not just counting the days, months and years, but making the days, months and years count. Tomorrow you will be given another 24 hours, but you may never have the same opportunity again.
Successful management of life depends on how you manage every 24 hours. The most crucial part of your 24 hours is time spent in dialogue with God. Therefore make sure that part of your 5 hours of discretionary time is spent in activities that have eternal value. Remember that regardless of how you mismanage a particular day another day is a new opportunity for improvement. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

Busyness
One excuse many of us have for not giving God our time is that we are very busy. “If you have so much business to attend to that you have no time to pray, you have more business on hand than God ever intended you should have” (DL Moody). “The management of time is the management of self; therefore, if you manage time with God, He will begin to manage you.” (Jill Briscoe). "The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes & hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in." (C.S. Lewis)

In making the most of every opportunity, take note that relationships are the best use of our time. The order is as follows:
Our relationship with God
Relationship with spouse (if any)
Relationship with children (if any)
Relationship with brethren
Relationship with others (neighbors, coworkers, extended family members).

Life is too short to bear grudges, gossip, backbite, harbor hate, plot revenge, and watch TV endlessly. Gain a new perspective. Focus on the eternal. Minimize the temporal. After all, 80 years is a very short time compared to endless life. Our current life is a preparation for the next. Avoid distractions. “You can either pay now and play later or play now and pay later. But either way, you’re going to pay”.
Forget yesterday Phil 3:13-14. Manage your life by managing your day. Stop worrying. “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday”. There is only one of you for all time. Fearlessly be yourself (Anthony Rapp). And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. (Abraham Lincoln).
Treasure every moment that you have! Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift...That’s why it’s called the “present!”

A colleague told me this story about a time management expert who was teaching a seminar for executives. He placed a large jar in front of the group. Next, he put seven or eight large rocks into the jar until it was full. “Is the jar full?” He asked. Everyone nodded. Then he took pebbles and filled up the jar with the small rocks until they reached the rim. “Is the jar full?” By now, they didn’t answer. So, he poured fine sand in. “Is the jar full?” Some nodded. He proceeded to take a pitcher of water and filled up the jar again. “What’s the lesson about time management?” he asked. Hands shot up, and everyone agreed “No matter how busy you are you can always fit more things into your schedule.” “Wrong.” he replied. “The lesson is: unless you put the big rocks in first, they never will fit in. You must figure out what the big rocks are for you.
The biggest rock in my life is the Rock of Ages. In Him I live and move and have my being. I must carve out time with Him on a daily basis or I am not making adequate preparation for my next life. If I am not going to spend eternity working, shopping or playing golf, it makes sense for me to train myself to spend time with God on earth. My next big rock is my marriage followed by my children. I must also live a love-filled life for the rest of my days.

Terry Muck tells of a letter he received from a man who used to have absolutely no interest in spiritual things. He lived next door to a Christian, and they had a casual relationship. Then the non-Christian’s wife died of cancer within a short time. “I was in total despair. I went through the funeral preparations and the service like I was in a trance. And after the service I went to the path along the river and walked all night. But I did not walk alone. My neighbor - afraid for me, I guess - stayed with me all night. He did not speak; he did not even walk beside me. He just followed me. When the sun finally came up over the river he came over to me and said, "Let’s go get some breakfast."
I go to church now. My neighbor’s church. A religion that can produce the kind of caring and love my neighbor showed me is something I want to find out more about. I want to be like that. I want to love and be loved like that for the rest of my life.”
The Christian saw an opportunity to reveal Christ to his friend. He had learned how to redeem the time.