Managing Your Time Wisely

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"A State of Bondage"

"Crazy Busy, Day 2"

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Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth remembers looking at the prayer requests at one of her women’s conferences. She noticed a recurring theme. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: One woman said, “I feel like I’m running in sixteen directions and not getting much done.”

Another woman said, “I have three small children, and I’m homeschooling. I feel overwhelmed daily with those responsibilities, along with dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc.” 

Another woman, a pastor’s wife, said, “I struggle with working in the church and taking carean of my family and my own sanity. There’s too much to juggle. I’m constantly tired, and I feel like I never conquer anything.”

Here’s another of life season. This woman said, “My father-in-law who has Alzheimer’s lives with me and my husband and my four children, ages six months to sixteen years. I feel as if somebody is always needing something from me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I don’t know how to keep myself physically and spiritually alive.”

Another card read, “I just changed jobs, and I’m working too many hours. I don’t know how to get out of my commitment. Please pray for wisdom as it is affecting the women I minister to in our church—not enough time.”

We have an enemy, and that enemy has deceived us. He has lied to us about our priorities; about what matters in life, and as a result, has put most of us in bondage.

Dannah: And, of course, this isn’t just a problem for women. Kevin DeYoung—a guy and a pastor—has the same struggles.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung: I get together with guys from my seminary once a year. We're friends. It's great. We hang out, we pray, we talk, and I realize after the years (we've done this for ten years now) every guy starts to have the same issues.

Okay, that guy's going to talk about his marriage, that guy's going to have something in ministry . . . and my friends just knew I was going to talk about, "I'm feeling overwhelmed; I'm feeling too busy." If you do that one year or maybe two, you think, Well, life just happens. But when it seems to happen every year, you realize, Maybe this is not so much external things I can't control as it is something going on in my own heart or head. Why am I like this?

Dannah: Can you relate?

Maybe you’re so busy you don’t even have time to listen to this program. I get it. More than you know! More than I’d like!

Well, if you can spare the next twenty minutes or so, I hope by God’s grace to make it well worth your time.

This is Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Dannah: I can relate to feeling busy. The other day I was literally in such a rush, I put my pants on backwards . . . and didn’t have time to fix them for thirty minutes!

I can’t promise you we’ll solve all your busyness problems in this one program. But we can take you to God’s Word to get valuable perspective. I want to help you take inventory of the decisions you are (or aren’t) making about you you use your time. Why? Because I want us to be sure we’re using our time well for God’s glory.

Let’s start with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She knows what it’s like to feel time pressures. And she has a really cool tip to help you pause when you feel more pressure coming.

Nancy: One of the practical things that helps me in resisting the tyranny of the urgent is learning not to say “yes” on the spot, to requests or to invitations that are not clearly in my current responsibilities. If it’s not obvious when someone asks me, “Would you do this? Would you take care of this? Do you mind handling this?” I’m learning not to say “yes” on the spot unless it’s obviously something that fits within my current responsibilities.

It’s so much better to say, “Can I let you know tomorrow?” I need to inquire of the Lord. I need to do the first things first. "P"—pray; that’s my first priority.

In the book of Nehemiah, we have the story of Nehemiah leading the effort to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. There came a point when some of the enemies of the work came to Nehemiah and tried to distract him. They were trying to get the work to stop. Let me assure you that Satan is ever at work trying to get you to stop doing the most important things. If he can keep you busy with the good things and keep you from doing the most important things, then he has succeeded—even if he never gets you to commit some major sin.

So these enemies of the work came to Nehemiah and said, “Come down off that wall. We want to have a meeting.” This is a distraction. It’s an interruption. Now, you have to learn to discern which interruptions are from the Lord and which are not of the Lord. But Nehemiah says in 6:3, “I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down.”

That’s what we need to learn to say to some of those distractions and those interruptions that we discern are not from the Lord. I don’t need other people around me to make distractions. I can make my own distractions. I can be distracted with the tyranny of the urgent without ever leaving my house, without ever leaving my bedroom or my study in the morning. I can find countless things to do that are good things, but at the neglect of the important things.

I need to learn to say, “What I’m doing is important. I can’t stop; I can’t come down.” Now, we need to learn to be sensitive to when there are things that are from the Lord that are opportunities that we need to respond to.

Jesus understood the difference between the urgent and the important. I think one wonderful illustration of that is found in John chapter 11, when Jesus received word that Lazarus was sick unto death. The Scripture says that He loved Lazarus. Lazarus was one of His dearest friends. Jesus loved the family of Lazarus. I’m sure that as a man, He wanted to immediately go do something, whatever He could, to help in this situation.

But the Scripture says when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He said, “I’m not going right now.” He waited four days, and by the time He went to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, what had happened? Lazarus had died.

Now, that seems like Jesus made a scheduling error. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but if you’re just looking at it from the surface of things, or how we often view things, it would look like Jesus made a mistake. But, of course, He didn’t. The fact is, the urgent thing was to go immediately to Lazarus and to keep him from dying. Could Jesus have done that? Of course He could have; He could have kept Lazarus from dying. That would have been the urgent thing.

But Jesus knew that God had something in mind that was more important than the urgent thing. The urgent thing was to keep Lazarus from dying; the important thing was to raise Lazarus from the dead.

You see, if Jesus had done the urgent thing, He couldn’t have done the important thing. And so He was sensitive to the will of the Father. He made a choice to wait, not to do the urgent thing.

Now, I can imagine people could have been criticizing Him. “Your best friend, or one of Your best friends, and You’re not going to take care of him? What will His family think?" Jesus was not driven by what other people thought. He was driven by obedience to the will of His Father. As a result, He could listen to God, wait on God, and then risk what others might think when He decided not to give in to the tyranny of the urgent. And as a result, He was able to do the thing that was truly important.

Dannah: Jesus had to keep His priorities straight. Of course, He did that perfectly. Wish I could. But isn’t it amazing that the Holy Spirit lives in us, helping us keep our priorities in line with God’s priorities?

To hear more of that teaching from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth you can visit ReviveOurHearts.com and look for the series titled “First Things First.”

Pastor Kevin DeYoung knows how important it is to establish priorities. He says, one of those priorities for him is taking a day of rest. He writes about this in his book, Crazy Busy. Oh, I like that title! He talked to Nancy about what to do when you feel crazy buzy.

Pastor Kevin: I’ve had people get in my face about this, in a good way, because it’s easy for me to use up all my seven days, and Sunday is the busiest day. I’m preaching. I try to take a different day off. I usually do. But often, I’ve had people say, “Kevin, did you really take some time off today?” So this is a problem for all of us. But God wired us.

I came across this story about Bernard Lagat. He’s a long-distance runner for the U.S. He’s been in the Olympics—just an amazing runner. One month out of the year, he pigs out. One month out of the year. Now, the rest of us kind of do it twelve months out of the year.

Nancy: Yes.

Pastor Kevin: But he runs; he's disciplined. One month out of the year, he says, “It’s the best month.” He puts on ten pounds. He watches whatever, and eats what he wants to eat. And it’s his way of sort of replenishing, recuperating, getting ready to hit it hard.

You see all throughout the Bible this pattern of rest and routine, of feasting and fasting. Morning and evening God gave us, and then there’s a weekly Sabbath, and then there’s monthly festivals, and there’s yearly festivals. And the problem with so many of us is we live these kinds of lives of rhythmless mush.

And technology feeds into that because you can be at home, and you’re still doing work. You’re pulling up your Tablet; you’re on the computer, and you’re still doing stuff. And then you’re at work, and you’re still trying to catch up with things that you should have been doing at home.

Rest bleeds over into leisure, bleeds over into play, bleeds over into work.

Nancy: There are no boundaries.

Pastor Kevin: No. There are no boundaries. There’s no rhythm. It’s all just kind of a mush, a conglomeration. We’re always on all the time. Last thing we do before we go to bed: Check the phone. First thing we do when we get up: Check the phone. People now are saying they get up in the middle of the night, and they’re checking the phone.

It’s without these kinds of rhythms that God gives us so that we can be on, and then we’re off. We’re playing. We’re working. We’re resting. We’re leisure. These are categories the Lord gives us to keep us sane.

Nancy: So, crazy busy pastor that you are, dad of almost six kids here . . . how do you do that? What are some of the practical steps you’re trying to take, you and your wife, and we’ll get her on here to talk about this, get her perspective on this, on the next broadcast.But, practically, what are some of the things you’re trying to do?

Pastor Kevin: Well, a few things come to mind. First, I’ll say: I’m a work in progress. I’m learning at this.

Somebody said to me once, “If you think of your day having three segments—kind of morning, afternoon, and evening—it’s hard to be on for all three of those.” So you need to think: Okay, I’m going to have something in the evening. So what can I do so that the morning I have time to be down and just breathe?

Most of us . . . In the morning the mom’s got a play date, and she’s got a Bible study, and she’s got something. And then in the afternoon it’s cleaning, and it’s getting ready, and she’s on. And then in the evening it’s a meeting, or it’s rushing the kids. You can’t go many days and really be vibrant with that kind of schedule. We just can’t. God made us with human limitations.

Nancy: We really press those, and we’re living on adrenalin—in which, in the long term, is really unhealthy physically.

Pastor Kevin: Yes. Maybe this sounds very simple, but perhaps the most important thing for anyone listening is just simply get more sleep. Now, I know there’s a lot of people saying, “Yeah, right. How am I supposed to do that?” There is a way. God made us. Sleep is the daily reminder that He’s God and we’re not. Some of us want to forget that, and we think we don’t need that reminder.

But there are studies and studies. People a hundred years ago got an average of nine hours of sleep, and now it’s seven hours, and for moms it’s less and less than that. D. A. Carson, if anybody knows that name—world class biblical scholar. I was reading one of his books, and he’s talking about how to fight doubt and depression. I’m expecting all these insights, and he says very simply, “Sometimes the most significant thing you can do to counter doubt and depression and discouragement is just sleep.”

Nancy: Or, for a mom, take a nap.

Pastor Kevin: Take a nap. Yes. That’s how God wired us. We need that. It’s amazing how much life looks different when we’re not fighting through grogginess, and we’re not getting our bodies worn down and beaten up, and we actually have some vitality and energy to do that.

We’re trying to put the electronics away. That’s another thing. Our kids are two, four, six, eight, ten. Every single one of them knows how to use an iPhone.

Nancy: That’s scary.

Pastor Kevin: We were in the car yesterday, driving, and our two-year-old said, “I want phone. I want phone.” This is the world we live in. And she knows how to go and look at the pictures. If we want to talk at the dinner table, we have to—everybody—Dad included—go put those in the box. Put those up on the shelf. If we don’t, we’re just going to be living this virtual life, which isn’t much of life at all.

So there’s all sorts of things—it starts with an awareness that it’s a spiritual problem. God cares about it. And the good news is, if it’s not just a personality quirk, but it’s really maybe a sin of worry or anxiety, or neglecting the Lord, there’s forgiveness for it, and God will help with it. That gives us hope.

Nancy: Grace. Thank God for grace for crazy busy people.

Pastor Kevin: Yes. That’s right.

Dannah: That. Is. Right! Kevin DeYoung and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth have been talking about the need all of us have to develop healthy patterns of work and rest.

Kevin writes about that in his book Crazy Busy. And you can hear more of that conversation from the Revive Our Hearts daily program. Visit Revive Our Hearts.com/weekend, and you’ll see a link there for the series “Crazy Busy.”

You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh, and we are looking to God’s Word to help us escape the perpetual cycle of feeling too busy. Denise appreciates hearing practical conversations like this. She wrote to us and said, 

Revive Our Hearts is an invaluable program to me, because it is so timely, biblical, relevant, and practical to my daily walk as a worker and as a woman with grown children and school-aged grandchildren. I recommend it often to those I know, and often quote things I’ve learned. Thank you so much for offering it.

In fact, Denise appreciated the ministry so much, she became a member of the Revive Partners. This is a group of people who make it a priority to pray for Revive Our Hearts, share the message with others and give each month. We stay in touch with our partners and send them a devotional called Daily Reflections.

Revive Partners are a big reason we’re able to bring Revive Our Hearts Weekend to you. This month we’re asking the Lord to provide at least 350 new Revive Partners. When you sign up, we’ll send you a welcome pack chock full of inspiring and practical resources. To learn more, visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

So far today we’ve heard about looking to God to set our priorities. And we’ve heard about getting in a pattern of work and rest. I think both of these actions could be called “numbering our days.” We’re told to do that in Psalm 90.

You know, I want you to hear from one of my favorite people here at Revive Our Hearts, Hugh Duncan. He’s a producer. He talked with our staff about Psalm 90. He says this chapter tells us that our days are marked by brevity, by futility, and by sin.

But Hugh reminds us, one person perfectly numbered His days.

Hugh Duncan: In John 17:4, Jesus is praying and He said, “I have glorified you [God] on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” Jesus probably lived about thirty-three years, but He did everything God wanted Him to do.

And then on the cross, John 19:30, He said, “It is finished!” So He completed the work, He perfectly did every single task that God gave Him to do, without sin. That transforms everything about the way we number our days.

So how does the gospel affect the ways we number our days? I’d like to explore how the gospel means that our days are marked not only by God’s anger, but by God’s mercy. Our days are marked not only by futility, but by purpose. Our days are marked not just by brevity, but by eternity. I think Psalm 90 gives us a few hints about this as well.

Psalm 90 begins, “Lord, you have been our refuge in every generation.” So if you’re just reading this not in light of the gospel, how can God be our refuge but He’s also the consuming fire who we’re terrified of? In Psalm 90:13, Moses is dealing with all these issues of how we spend our time. He says, “Lord—how long? Turn and have compassion on your servants.”

He seemed to know, “Something’s got to happen, because there are all these problems. This is very sobering when I look at how brief our days are, and how much toil and trouble we face.” So he said, “How long?”

And there’s another place in Psalm 90 that says to God, “A thousand years are . . . like a few hours of the night” (v. 4). Moses was living in the night, but to God the time was really fast. And the answer to this question, “How long?” was, “The time I’m going to send Jesus.”

God knew that brief night would come to an end, morning would come and God would bring light to the world. First Corinthians 15:47 tells us more about Jesus, the One who transforms our use of time. It says, “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.”

Jesus’ days were not marked by sin. He was not like Adam—being from the dust—but He was from heaven, and He was perfectly human. He was made from dust like we are, but He was also perfectly God.

He never rebelled against God’s will like Korah did, or like Adam did, or like I do. Yet, He was consumed by God’s anger. And so because of Jesus, not only are our days that are usually marked by God’s anger, they are now marked by God’s mercy, because of Jesus taking that punishment for us. 

Not only are our days marked by mercy but our days are marked by purpose. I think Moses hints at this, saying, “Let your work be seen by your servants, and your splendor by their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands—establish the work of our hands!” (Ps. 90:16–17). So God does have things for us to do.

I’m tempted when I look at the brevity of life and the futility of life and the sinfulness of life just to give up, like, “Okay, I’ll just drift through life. I won’t use this, because I can never do it right anyway!” But we actually have a very good reason to take on the work that God has called us to do.

And then He can establish the work of our hands and use tools like this to bring about His purpose.

I grew up hearing the phrase “born again” all the time. It kind of sounded like a cliché. It was on T-shirts, and I got kind of tired of that. But when you look at it in light of these issues about how we spend our time, it’s amazing we can be born again, have a new day come, a new life to live!

I want to go back to 1 Corinthians 15:47–49; I read the first part of this already, but I want to keep going: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.Like the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; like the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.”

So, I now bear the image—not of Adam, who is of dust—but of the Second Adam, who is from heaven. This means that I don’t have to order my days. When I come and do this job, I don’t have to be marked by fear of failure and procrastination. I don’t have to be marked by laziness. 

I have a new image, and I have been born again as someone who can work with all my heart. I can serve people, and I can hit deadlines. I am, by God’s grace, trying to grow at doing that.

I can live out another one of our ministry’s Cutting Edge Commitments, which is Faithfulness. And so, I don’t want to give up on this tool, even though my approach to it—in human terms—is marked by failure.

Also, when I think about, “Teach us to number our days,” I have to realize that, in one sense, the number of my days is zero, because all my days have been given to the Lord. When I die to myself, what I’m really doing is dying to all my time.

And so, as I number my days in light of the gospel, I have zero days. He has all of them, and they all belong to Him. 

Finally, our days are marked not by brevity, but by eternity. 

Moses says in Psalm 90:14–15, “Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days. Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen adversity.”

So Moses is making a bold request, you know like: “Our days are marked by sin, and we’re going to have seventy or eighty years of them; would you give us the same number in joy that we’ve had in adversity?”

And God said, “I’m not going to answer that prayer exactly like you prayed. I’m going to do way more than you could have imagined!” So we don’t have seventy or eighty years of joy for the seventy or eighty years of struggle, instead we have eternity.

So in one sense, I have to realize in light of the gospel that I have zero days. They all belong to Him. But in another sense, I have an infinite number of days. My wife’s great at living this out, because she has a lot of interests, a lot of things she wants to learn to do, but she’s really devoted her life to homeschooling and to setting aside her agenda. She doesn’t get uptight about it. She says, “I have all eternity! There are all these things I want to d;, I have all eternity to do them!

So what are some practical ways to live out the gospel as we all go about doing this, whatever version of this you’re doing? What are some ways that the gospel speaks to that? I have a few ideas.

Number one, I’m not going to give up. I have a tendency to drift, and I don’t want to do that. I do want to set goals, and I do want to use tools. I do want to do what I say. I do want to be faithful because time is short and the mission that we’re on really matters. It matters for eternity.

I can also use these tools because I’m a new creation in Christ. I can bear the image of the Second Adam, and I can have God’s power—even though on my own I am going to always fail when I try to number my days, but I have the Holy Spirit allowing me to do that.

And if you’re not like me, if you tend to be more of a task-oriented person, what the gospel says is that you don’t have to do anything to be right with God. In fact, you can’t do anything to be right with God. So yes, it’s great to check things off our list because it means we’re serving people, and we’re doing God’s work, but that’s not how you justify your existence. 

Jesus did everything God called Him to do, and He’s given you His righteousness. When I think of the way I like to spend time, I like to have periods of downtime. I like to have time by myself, because I like to think. I like being up here on the platform, but I like a lot of time to think by myself before I get here.

All of my life is kind of like that. I kind of need to be by myself to know what I think, so I can go talk to people and tell them what I think. But the gospel says that if I don’t have that time, it’s going to be okay.

If I was looking forward to, “Hey, I finally get some downtime tonight!” if someone needs me, I can serve that person through the power of the gospel. But you might be the opposite: “I love to be with people I love to be with people all the time. That’s how I know what I think, is when I can talk to people.” If they need time alone, then you can give them time alone and it’s okay, because all of our time belongs to the Lord.

To wrap up, I would like to pray, and I am going to pray by reading all of Psalm 90. You can read along with me, or you can close your eyes, or you can participate however you want. This is a prayer of Moses, the man of God: 

Lord, you have been our refuge in every generation.
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity, you are God.

You return mankind to the dust,
saying, ‘Return, descendants of Adam.’
For in your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that passes by,
like a few hours of the night.
You end their lives; they sleep.
They are like grass that grows in the morning—
in the morning it sprouts and grows;
by evening it withers and dries up.

For we are consumed by your anger;
we are terrified by your wrath.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
For all our days ebb away under your wrath;
we end our years like a sigh.
Our lives last seventy years
or, if we are strong, eighty years.
Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow;
indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away.
Who understands the power of your anger?
Your wrath matches the fear that is due you.
Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.

Lord—how long?
Turn and have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love
so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days.
Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us,
for as many years as we have seen adversity.
Let your work be seen by your servants,
and your splendor by their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us;
establish for us the work of our hands—
establish the work of our hands!

Dannah: Yes, dear Lord, establish the works of our hands. I love that verse!

That’s Hugh Duncan, reading from Psalm 90. That passage is full of insight for us. You can dive deeper into this chapter with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. This Monday through Wednesday on the Revive Our Hearts daily program, Nancy will walk through this chapter in a series called “Living in Light of Eternity.” To hear the whole series, subscribe to the Revive Our Hearts podcast or visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

That’s also where you can hear more from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and today’s guest Kevin DeYoung. Again, it’s Revive Our Hearts.com.

As you evaluate priorities, let me ask you this, what are you leaving behind to your children? Are you investing in things that will last, ways to pass on truth to the next generation?

Next time on Revive Our Hearts Weekend, we’ll hear from a woman with a terminal cancer diagnosis, but she’s planning ahead for her son by purposefully memorizing Scripture with him! Think about that. It will inspire you to keep passing on the truth to those coming behind. Please be back, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to greater freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

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