A story about investment.
"It's also like a man going off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master’s investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master’s money."
"After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: 'Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.' "
"The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master’s investment. His master commended him: "Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.' "
"The servant given one thousand said, 'Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.' "
"The master was furious. 'That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest.' "
"Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this 'play-it-safe' who won’t go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness."
From Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Matthew 25:14-30.
God’s good gifts.
Jesus told this story in Matthew 25:14-30 to help us guard against a very common evil. According to our abilities, God has entrusted his good gifts. He promises that one day he will return to reclaim all that is his. Though these gifts seem like they are part of our personal estate, they are really part of God’s estate.
For example, he has given us the gift of time. He has given us physical bodies. He has given us possessions. He has given us wealth. He has given us children. He has given us spiritual gifts. He has given us the gospel. There is no end to his good gifts. But all of these gifts are momentary. Our time, bodies, possessions, and wealth are good gifts that are on loan to us for only a short time. While we have these gifts, God wants us to use them for his glory. He wants us to leverage them for his kingdom and his purposes. He wants us to invest them wisely and not squander them away on lost opportunities and vain pursuits.
Until the day of Christ’s return we are mere stewards. We are trustees. We are servants. We are managers. We are administrators and overseers of God’s estate. Until the day of Christ’s return we have a responsibility and an obligation to our creator and master to invest our good gifts in a way that honors our master’s name. And this is what Christian stewardship is all about.
In the coming weeks we are going to talk about leveraging God’s good gifts. On the day of Christ’s return we want to bring honor to God’s good name and share in our master’s happiness, knowing that we have been good and faithful servants.
The gift of time.
One of the latest rages in our culture has been over time management. Amazon.com stocks over sixteen hundred books on this subject alone. The other day I saw a book called Time Management for Dummies. Colleges offer courses for credit in time management. Corporations make it mandatory for their employees to attend time management seminars. As of late, churches and Christian organizations have also jumped on the bandwagon.
Many Christians balk at the whole idea of time management. They reason that it is a secular doctrine and that it is a corporate invention designed to get more productivity out of its employees for less money. They reason that time management has its origin in the business world, and should have no place in a Christian church pulpit. But I think we should take a second look at time management. Time management is just a cleverly sloganeered way of talking about life management. It is another way of talking about the stewardship of our lives.
Time management is life management.
When you turn to the scriptures, you will not find the word time used very often. Instead the scriptures talk about life. A few weeks back I walked into a store while I was waiting for Lara to finish shopping. A clerk immediately asked me, "Can I help you? Do you have any questions?" I quickly declined the request and told the clerk, "No thanks. I’m just killing time."
This concept is foreign to the scriptures. Instead, in the Bible we discover that time equals life. Likewise, we discover that the end of time or the end of life equals death. That’s why John Boykin in a Christianity Today article wrote, "Time is life— nothing more, nothing less. The way you spend your hours and your day is the way you spend your life."
It is a bit misleading to talk about killing time. In reality we are wasting or killing life. The next time you are in a store and the clerk asks if you need help say, "No thanks! I’m just here letting a little more of my life trickle away."
Life management.
As Christians we are called to be good managers or stewards of our lives. Some of us have been given five talents of time and will live a long, full life. Some of have been given just a few talents of life. Some have just one talent of life left. Of primary concern to us as stewards is not how much time God has graciously given to others, nor even how much time he has given to us. The truth is that the Lord has already numbered our days. In Acts 17:26 (NIV) we're told that God has already determined the span of our lives. "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."
Our concern centers on how best to use the life we have left to accomplish God’s purposes. In another church a middle-aged lady and devout Christian contracted a terminal illness. As I remember it she was young and had children, though I cannot be for certain. The doctors told her she only had a short time to live and she quickly became bitter. She immediately questioned God. She vented her anger at everyone around her, including her doctors, family members, children, nurses, and orderlies. She was even venting to her closest friends.
At first her friends extended her a lot of grace. There is no telling how any of them or any of us would react if we were put in her shoes. But after a time she grew even more bitter and angry. So her friends met for prayer and felt led to confront her about being a good steward of her remaining life. They went to the hospital to tell her that stewardship is not about how much, but how faithful. They asked her to covenant to be faithful with the remainder of her life. They asked her to covenant her remaining days for God’s glory.
Too little time left.
Time management or life management is an issue of Christian stewardship. One of the reasons life management is so important right now is because we do not know how much time we will have in this life. Consider the following passages from the Bible.
Psalm 27:1 (NIV) says, "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth."
1 Chronicles 29:15 (NIV) reads, "Our days on earth are like a shadow..." In Job 9:25 (NIV) Job says, "My days are swifter than a runner; they fly away without a glimpse of joy."
In Psalm 39:4-5 (NIV) David prays, "Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath."
James 4:14 (NIV) says, "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (NIV) says, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."
Since life is so short, it is important that we ask the all-important question about stewardship. We should ask, "How should I spend my life?" One person noted, "We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them."
How are you spending your life?
Statistics show that we spend over thirty-two percent of our day sleeping. Studies show that the average working person spends less than two minutes in meaningful communication with her spouse and less than thirty seconds in meaningful communication with her children. Another study showed that eighty percent of the average workday is spent on things that have little to no value. On average there are seventeen million meetings each day in America. The average American watches twenty-eight hours of television each week. After a good night's rest, grooming, eating, a full day’s work, and an evening of television and internet, many have wiped out ninety percent of their day!
A U.S. News and World Report article noted that over the course of our lifetime we, "spend six months sitting at stoplights, eight months opening junk mail, one year looking for misplaced objects, two years unsuccessfully returning phone calls, and five years waiting in line."
Our dirty little secret is that all of us would like to become better stewards and spend our time more wisely. I think the words of Christian author Ingrid Trobisch are worth our consideration. "Time does not last forever, and therefore I do not want to waste a single moment of it. If I make good use of it, I will actually have more of it."
Putting first things first.
The absolute best book on life management, second only to the Bible, is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Habit number three in his book is entitled, "Put First Things First." In that chapter he points out that all of our activities can fall into one of four categories.
Some are URGENT and IMPORTANT. These include a health crisis, medical emergency, pressing problem, a deadline driven project, or a child who is hurt. These are activities that are in many ways non-negotiable.
A lot of our activities are URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT. This category includes interruptions, meetings, phone calls, doorbells, last minute requests from others, etc. These activities are in our face screaming for attention, but offer little return.
Too many of our activities are NOT URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT. This includes busy work, time wasters, trivia, junk mail, telemarketers and salesmen, computer solitaire, television, surfing the web, playing Nintendo, etc. These activities are easier to do than all the other activities and soak up our lives and time.
Last, too few of are activities are NOT URGENT and IMPORTANT. These activities include planning, studying, relationship building, spiritual discipline, prayer, Bible reading, goal setting, etc.
Because time equals life, we must insure that most of our life is invested in those activities that are NOT URGENT but EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
To what and who are you saying "no" to?
Covey points out that we are always saying "no" to something. Too often we are saying "no" to our families, "no" to our spouses, and "no" to our children. Too often we are saying "no" to God. We are saying "no" to the church, "no" to prayer, "no" to Bible study, "no" to Christian service, and "no" to worship. Too often we are saying "no" to making time for personal renewal. We say "no" to rest, "no" to study, "no" to sharpening the axe, "no" to setting goals, "no" to prioritizing our days, and "no" to self-discipline.
It seems that the non-urgent important things are typically the first things to get the shaft because they require the most effort and because they don’t always yield immediate fruit.
When I came on staff here last year there were hundreds of urgent things to focus on. I would come into the office and spend an entire day doing stuff and then at the end of the day I would look back and say to myself, "What did I do all day?" I couldn’t really account for all this stuff because it was urgent, but unimportant stuff.
What I was doing was all stuff that needed to be done. I was making copies. I was returning phone calls. I was typing newsletter articles and doing the newsletter layout. I was fixing computer problems which we continue to have every week. I was handling benevolence requests, talking to telemarketers, and following up on trivia.
Over the last year I have really had to work hard to pull the reigns in and try to focus on those essential things that will make the greatest difference for God’s kingdom over the long haul. I have Lesa, our church secretary, tenaciously fend off salesmen and telemarketers because they can easily steal thirty to forty minutes of my life. I have her make copies and return as many phone calls for me as possible. I have her sift through the mail and I have coached her in routing various requests through the other staff and members of this congregation.
We are continually in the process of streamlining our meetings so that they are always a productive and useful investment of our life and energy. Each week we sit down as a staff and plan our goals for each week so that we will focus on what is important and not get caught up in what is trivial. We delegate, delegate, delegate so as to make time for spiritual renewal, family, study, prayer, reflection, devotion, and character building.
I confess that each week I fail in the area of life (time) management. But at the same time, I get a little stronger at it and become just a little more focused and productive. Ingrid Trobisch is right. Time does not last forever. Your life does not last forever. We are but a mist that appears for a while and fades away. And we must not waste a single moment of life. If we make good use of our time, we will have more of it. If we squander our life, we lose it all.
Whether you have five talents or one talent of time left, you are called to be a good and faithful steward of your life. Your very life, every passing second, is a gift from God’s hand. So how will you use it? Will you leverage it for God’s purposes, or will you let it get soaked up by urgent unimportant things?
Faithful stewards.
In his book A Dangerous Grace, Chuck Colson tells a unique story. He was visiting an inmate sentenced to die on death row in Mississippi’s Parchman prison. Most of the death row inmates were in their bunks, wrapped in blankets, staring blankly at little black and white television screens, killing time. But in one cell a man was sitting on his bunk reading! As Colson approached him, he looked up and showed him his book. It was an instruction manual on Episcopal liturgy.
John Irving, who had been on death row for more than fifteen years, was studying for the priesthood. He was allowed out of his cell just one hour each day. The rest of the time he studied. Seeing that John had nothing in his cell but a few books, Colson thought that the least he could do would be to provide something for his brother. So he asked the prisoner, "Would you like a television if I could arrange it?"
John smiled gratefully. "Thanks," he said, "but no thanks. You can waste an awful lot of time with those things."
For the fifteen years since a judge placed a number on his days, John has determined not to waste the one commodity he had left to give to his Lord. He did not waste his time or his life. So this morning, will you covenant to become a good steward of your life? Will you become an excellent manager of your time?