Redeeming Your Time
by Tambra Breyer
It’s a new year. For most people that means new plans, new goals, and new resolutions. For some, that means committing to less or stripping away excesses. Yet for others, maybe even most people, it may mean getting more things done: exercise more, eat healthier, travel more, get a promotion, spend more time with the kids, and so on. These “more” items may be good, but there is a catch. We are not the Creator or Author of time, which means that anything involving more will quickly leave us feeling squeezed and wrung out. It’s no wonder that 23% of people will drop their resolutions by the second Friday of January (also known as “quitters’ day”). By the end of January, 43% of those who set new goals will have given up. In fact, only 8% of those who make new plans, goals, or resolutions will follow through with them for the entire year.
This may all seem like a product of our unique time in history. We live in a digital era where those under the age of thirty never lived in a world without computers and cell phones. We are bombarded with information so quickly our brains can barely take it all in, let alone know what to do with it all. But we would be hard-pressed to say we are busier than any other generation simply because we spend our time differently. When we consider how Jesus spent his time, we can easily envision him spending six hours of his day just walking to his next appointment. He was practiced at noticing the people in front of him, while also keeping in mind where he was going and why he was going there. He spent time teaching, healing, and confronting, while also spending time praying, eating, and sleeping. Jesus was intentional, interruptible, and yet uniquely able to finish the work that God had for him each day. He was bound by the same 24-hour day that we are, but never seemed to sacrifice a person over a project or time with the Father over time “on the job”. If our ultimate goal is to be more like Jesus, then we can use him as a model of how to spend our time well.
Trade Noise for Nearness
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” Mark 1:35-38
There is much to be gleaned from this passage. We see here, and throughout the Gospels, that Jesus withdrew from people, daily life activities, and the demands of his ministry to be alone with the Father and pray. Jesus was consistent and intentional about seeking solitude and silence. His power, wisdom, compassion, and purpose were a direct result of his ongoing discipline of trading the noise of the world for nearness to his Father. In fact, it seems that the busier Jesus became, the more he sought out silence and solitude:
Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Luke 5:15-16
As Jordan Raynor puts it in his book Redeeming Your Time, “To redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must fight to block out noise and create room for silence, stillness, and reflection.” There are a variety of ways to do this and one primary way is to become the boss of our phones. In fact, our phones have ways of helping us with this exact issue with the advent of screen-time limits and “do not disturb” settings. Because we have become accustomed to filling any gap in our day with distraction, we must resist the urge to fill any sliver of silence that might possibly come our way with noise. Instead, recognize it as a grace and take the moment to pray, whether it is at your kitchen counter with the mixer running or in the boardroom waiting for the meeting to begin.
Embrace Sabbath
The word sabbat (sabbath) is a noun and refers to a day or period of time which is set apart as holy. It is first mentioned in Exodus 16:23a:
He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord.”
However, the word sabat is a verb and is first mentioned in Genesis 2:2:
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
While the meaning of the words is very similar, the difference between the noun and the verb should not be underestimated. While the noun, sabbat, represents a period of time, the verb, sabat, represents an intention on what is to be done during that time. That intention is the act of resting. Stop slaving away, stop the hustle, stop the grind. Stop looking down and pause to look up. Stop doing and just be. After the Jews had been literal slaves to their jobs for several generations, they could not imagine a life that did not revolve around work. Are our lives much different? When we take time to rest in the way God intended, we actually become more productive, better balanced emotionally, and physically healthier. In essence, our personal bottom line is improved as much as the financial bottom line of large corporations like Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A that practice sabbath.
Choose Important Over Urgent
In a 2014 Twitter post, pastor and author Timothy Keller said, “Self-control is the ability to do the important thing rather than the urgent thing.” Benjamin Franklin articulated the same concept by saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” which was in regards to fire prevention. Franklin and Keller knew what we all instinctively know: continually choosing urgent (putting out fires) over important (learning how to prevent fires) is a sure-fire way to burnout (pun intended).
Jesus was seamlessly able to tend to both the urgent and the important. We see it as he heals a paralytic that came crashing through a roof as he was teaching (Luke 5:17-26), as he heals a woman with a bleeding disorder while on his way to heal a 12-year-old girl (Luke 8:43-48), and as he heals ten men with leprosy on his way to Jerusalem (Luke 17:11-19).
Jesus’ mission was clear and important: to seek and save the lost. So why even take time to heal? Maybe it is to teach us that there is always time for compassion if we are not focused on other distractions. Maybe it is to show what is possible if we eliminate the noise of the world and live out our mission from a place of rest and reflection.
Ultimately, we are only given a certain number of minutes, and as the Apostle John said, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4). Matt Perman states it well in his book What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done, “The entire purpose of our lives — what God wants from us — is to do good for others, to the glory of God.”
This may all seem like a product of our unique time in history. We live in a digital era where those under the age of thirty never lived in a world without computers and cell phones. We are bombarded with information so quickly our brains can barely take it all in, let alone know what to do with it all. But we would be hard-pressed to say we are busier than any other generation simply because we spend our time differently. When we consider how Jesus spent his time, we can easily envision him spending six hours of his day just walking to his next appointment. He was practiced at noticing the people in front of him, while also keeping in mind where he was going and why he was going there. He spent time teaching, healing, and confronting, while also spending time praying, eating, and sleeping. Jesus was intentional, interruptible, and yet uniquely able to finish the work that God had for him each day. He was bound by the same 24-hour day that we are, but never seemed to sacrifice a person over a project or time with the Father over time “on the job”. If our ultimate goal is to be more like Jesus, then we can use him as a model of how to spend our time well.
Trade Noise for Nearness
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” Mark 1:35-38
There is much to be gleaned from this passage. We see here, and throughout the Gospels, that Jesus withdrew from people, daily life activities, and the demands of his ministry to be alone with the Father and pray. Jesus was consistent and intentional about seeking solitude and silence. His power, wisdom, compassion, and purpose were a direct result of his ongoing discipline of trading the noise of the world for nearness to his Father. In fact, it seems that the busier Jesus became, the more he sought out silence and solitude:
Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Luke 5:15-16
As Jordan Raynor puts it in his book Redeeming Your Time, “To redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must fight to block out noise and create room for silence, stillness, and reflection.” There are a variety of ways to do this and one primary way is to become the boss of our phones. In fact, our phones have ways of helping us with this exact issue with the advent of screen-time limits and “do not disturb” settings. Because we have become accustomed to filling any gap in our day with distraction, we must resist the urge to fill any sliver of silence that might possibly come our way with noise. Instead, recognize it as a grace and take the moment to pray, whether it is at your kitchen counter with the mixer running or in the boardroom waiting for the meeting to begin.
Embrace Sabbath
The word sabbat (sabbath) is a noun and refers to a day or period of time which is set apart as holy. It is first mentioned in Exodus 16:23a:
He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord.”
However, the word sabat is a verb and is first mentioned in Genesis 2:2:
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
While the meaning of the words is very similar, the difference between the noun and the verb should not be underestimated. While the noun, sabbat, represents a period of time, the verb, sabat, represents an intention on what is to be done during that time. That intention is the act of resting. Stop slaving away, stop the hustle, stop the grind. Stop looking down and pause to look up. Stop doing and just be. After the Jews had been literal slaves to their jobs for several generations, they could not imagine a life that did not revolve around work. Are our lives much different? When we take time to rest in the way God intended, we actually become more productive, better balanced emotionally, and physically healthier. In essence, our personal bottom line is improved as much as the financial bottom line of large corporations like Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A that practice sabbath.
Choose Important Over Urgent
In a 2014 Twitter post, pastor and author Timothy Keller said, “Self-control is the ability to do the important thing rather than the urgent thing.” Benjamin Franklin articulated the same concept by saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” which was in regards to fire prevention. Franklin and Keller knew what we all instinctively know: continually choosing urgent (putting out fires) over important (learning how to prevent fires) is a sure-fire way to burnout (pun intended).
Jesus was seamlessly able to tend to both the urgent and the important. We see it as he heals a paralytic that came crashing through a roof as he was teaching (Luke 5:17-26), as he heals a woman with a bleeding disorder while on his way to heal a 12-year-old girl (Luke 8:43-48), and as he heals ten men with leprosy on his way to Jerusalem (Luke 17:11-19).
Jesus’ mission was clear and important: to seek and save the lost. So why even take time to heal? Maybe it is to teach us that there is always time for compassion if we are not focused on other distractions. Maybe it is to show what is possible if we eliminate the noise of the world and live out our mission from a place of rest and reflection.
Ultimately, we are only given a certain number of minutes, and as the Apostle John said, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4). Matt Perman states it well in his book What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done, “The entire purpose of our lives — what God wants from us — is to do good for others, to the glory of God.”