Not Enough Time

I hear it all the time. You want to become a ‘better’ Christian, but you don’t know where to start. Everything the Church asks you to do requires time you ‘just don’t have’ to spare. Between your job, your family, and whatever ‘spare time’ you might enjoy, there isn’t any time left for Church.

Honestly, the lack of time isn’t unique to wanting to become a better Christian. No matter what you want to improve in your life, spiritual or professional, you will need to find time in your life. There are only 24 hours in a day. It normally means taking time from something else.

So, let’s start with your day. There are basically four parts to every day. These parts aren’t equally distributed, but they are equally important. The four parts of every day are: sleep, eat, self-care like bathing, and tasks to accomplish. Each part requires time measured in minutes.

If you know me personally, then you know many consider me a ‘little OCD’ when it comes to my schedule. When I was an undergraduate music major, I learned to break down my day in ‘assignable increments’ for practical purposes.

The increment has changed over time, but the concept has remained with me over the past forty years. When I was a music major the increments were blocks of twenty minutes. I needed twenty minutes to ‘get across the campus’ so it seemed like a natural starting point.

The increments will be different for everyone based on practical needs. Today, my schedule revolves around one-hour time blocks. Everything I do throughout the day is placed (I use GoogleCalendar) on my calendar every hour.

Once you figure out what increments work for you, then life becomes a little easier, albeit more structured. The next step is to figure out what I call the ‘nonnegotiables’ in my life. I must eat, sleep, and bath. But as a Christian I also need to pray, so prayer is a nonnegotiable in my life.

Along with the nonnegotiables are the immoveable parts of your life. If you have a job, whether you work for someone or are an entrepreneur, you must be ‘at work’ at certain times and for certain yours. Now, you can begin looking at your schedule.

I know it sounds silly, but you should be looking at your schedule as a full 24 hours, and I encourage you to include ‘sleep’ as a structured part of your schedule. Every successful person knows how much sleep they need and builds their lives around sleeping.

Most adults need an average of seven hours of sleep each day to remain healthy and productive. Sure, you can ‘survive’ on less, but you won’t thrive depriving your body of proper sleep. The same thing goes for nutrition. Being a better Chrisitan is thriving, not just surviving.

About now, you are wondering why I haven’t said one word about prayer and attending Church services. Doesn’t being a better Christian require prayer and Church? YES, but you already admitted you didn’t’ have enough time. Figure out the timing, and you find time for prayer.

I make it a policy not to be a spiritual father through this blog. How you should pray and what you should pray is between you and your spiritual father. I want to help you ‘find time’ for the prayer life you both agree is important for your salvation.

Once you have placed your nonnegotiables on your schedule, you are able to sit back and ‘find time’ for increased prayer and Church. You can ‘find time’ to attend Bible Study at Church, but not until you know what time you have, but I don’t want to end this post without an example.

Morning Scenario: Nonnegotiables include bathing, breakfast, prayer, leave for work. Let’s say you must be ‘at work’ by 9am. Here’s how my system works.

It requires thirty minutes to drive to work, so you must leave the house by 8:30am.

Your spiritual father and you agree that your morning prayers require thirty minutes to complete, so you must start praying by 8am.

Bathing and breakfast require thirty minutes, so you must be awake by 7:30am. That means you must be ‘in bed’ no later than 12:30 to get seven hours of sleep.

That’s how it works. By the time you include the rest of your nonnegotiables, like the thirty-minute drive home for dinner etc, then you can begin to add more time for the things you love, including more prayer, more church attendance, more scripture reading and more charity.

I promise you the hard part isn’t the scheduling. The hardest part is making decisions on what other priorities you want to ‘find time’ to include. With the help of your spiritual father, you will need to make choices between two things you want.

Over time, your priorities will change, and your choices today will not necessarily be the choices you make tomorrow. Frankly, if your choices don’t change, I might suggest you aren’t growing either spiritually nor personally. You aren’t who you were last year, and you won’t be next year.

I no longer live in increments of twenty minutes like I did in college. Life changes. Priorities change. Time changes. YOU change. I only hope the change is bringing us all to Live A New Life In Christ.