Priorities

Events have happened in the past week that have caused me to reflect on how we choose what is important.  I work with several men each week either in groups or individually; face to face and via conference calls or Skype.  I have noticed a pattern emerging.  All of them,, regardless of the roles they fill, the culture or country in which they live struggle with using their time effectively.

At lunch today a friend outlined for me a system of prioritizing all of the roles that we fill.  He has just finished a book on the system so I will not give you details.  The short version is that one assigns priority and time to each role.  If you think this through it will become obvious that we have more roles than we have hours to assign.  Which means that we either have to find more than 168 hours in a week or eliminate some of those roles.  He shared that he eliminated roles.  I asked how he knew which roles he should eliminate based on how God had designed him.  He responded that I was the second or third person who had asked him that.

For those of us wishing to share our faith, and that should be all of us.  When we get busy, even with good things like leading Bible studies or teaching Sunday school, one of the first things to go is our time in the Word just for us.  We study to teach.  We study to share.  But the time to just study to be in the presence of God, just to bask in His glory, without the need to codify what we see there for other’s consumption slips away.

We need that.  Our ministry to our wife and kids demands it.  If we do not have that time, if it is not a priority, we will not be able to sustain godly relationships with them.