Most time management coachers, spend a great deal of time teaching people the skills and mindsets needed to get things done. That includes everything from setting priorities to planning to managing tasks. Divine time management is not only about including a Bible study time in your daily schedule but also about an entirely different approach to thinking about time. God doesn’t want us to idolize our ability to control ourselves and manage our lives. Instead, God desires us to put trust in Him at the center of all we do.
As Psalm 127:1-2 (NIV) encourages us: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves.”
To experience this shift, we need to begin by letting go of the wrong goals for time management (that seem so right) and pursuing the right aims. Here are a few of the wrong goals that we can easily slip into:
Control: Thinking we have things handled and don’t need God’s help
Pleasure: Looking to feel good as much as possible
Achievement: Focusing exclusively on getting things done
Being the Super ____: Being there for people to the extreme to gain self worth
Do any of these wrong goals sound familiar? I know that I’ve fallen into these worldly goals more often than I would like to admit. But the good news is that we can return to God, ask His forgiveness, and redirect our hearts toward His desires for our time management. It’s as simple as this, just say, “God, I’m sorry for [wrong goal]. Please help me to understand your goals for my time and to put trust in you at the center of how I use my time.”
As James 4:13-16 (NASB) warns us, it’s critical as Christians we recognize that God is Lord of our time: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.’ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.”
Let’s put our trust in God, not ourselves, with our time management today.