Handle situations patiently to avoid pressure

 PLANNING

Planning means we must make decisions – choices that determine our activities and priorities. If we do not, we can be sure that someone else will do our planning for us.

It is amazing to me how many Christians drift through life, making no goals or plans, aimlessly shifting from one place to another.

Emergencies may interrupt their lives for a season, but they soon return to their rud­derless ways. All of life and, thus, all of time is a gift from God.

We do not give God a por­tion of our time; it is all His. We cannot leave God out of any aspect of our existence; we cannot fence Him out of our families or work or play.

SET PRIORITIES

Faithfulness to God begins now in the time dimension. We do not wait until we are with Christ in heaven to be­come good stewards.

Handling time, therefore, is not so much a matter of time management – finding the right kind of datebook or scheduling format – but of managing ourselves.

That means setting person­al priorities. What is more important when you start the day; an extra hour of sleep or an hour alone with the Sover­eign Lord of the Universe?

Establishing priorities involves decisions concerning what is most important in light of your relationship to Jesus Christ.

When people are not in church on Sunday, it is not because they do not have transportation. They have prioritised their lives apart from serving and worshipping the living God. Once we con­sider and arrange our priori­ties, then we must have the discipline to order our lives according to those guidelines.

DISCIPLINE LIFESTYLE

Discipline is never easy. Time is often wasted because we do not have the discipline to follow our convictions.

If you are a follower of Je­sus Christ, then you must cul­tivate a disciplined lifestyle which is a combination of your genuine hunger for God and a dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit.

He will persevere through us if we give Him our opportu­nities and our devotion. Our willingness and obedience along with God’s enabling are essential.

The Lord has settled many of our priorities in His Word. We do not have to decide whether to go to church, min­ister to our family, or serve others, the scriptures clearly underscore their importance.

Once we base our convic­tions on God’s Word and His principles, the rest of our priorities will come into place in time.

THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS

Think about the life of Jesus. He lived thirty-three years, but thirty of those years were spent growing up and being in a carpenter’s workshop. Ponder that for a moment.

The Son of God, the King of kings, the Prince of Peace qui­etly, diligently laboured in a small town, hewing, sanding, and shaping pieces of wood. That was His life until the day He laid down His hammer and chisel to begin shaping lives into the image of His Father. Yet that part of His life lasted only three years. During that brief, incredibly short time, He did all the Father asked of Him.

Jesus taught multitudes, but He also had time to have dinner with various people, spending as much time in homes as He did in crowded villages.

He talked with the poor, blind beggars, and hated tax collectors, He visited women at the well and publicans and sinners at meals. What was His secret?

“And in the early morn­ing, while it was still dark, He arose and went out and departed to a lonely place, and was praying there” – Mark 1:35. And after bidding them farewell, He departed to the mountain to pray – Mark 6:46. And it was at this time that He went off to the moun­tain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God – Luke 6:12. And it came about that while He was pray­ing alone” – Luke 9:18.

TIME ALONE WITH GOD

Jesus had all the pressure of saving a sinful world. He had only three years to fulfill His public ministry; but we never read that Jesus rushed to Bethany or “scurried” to Jerusalem or “dashed” to Nazareth.

His life was always mea­sured to a diving tempo – even in the swirl of a crowd screaming for His crucifixion. The key for Jesus and the key for us to do the will of the Father is spending time alone with Him.

If, for Jesus, prayer could not be substituted, how can we think there will be another route for us? When we get alone with our Father, the peace and quiet of the Holy Spirit settles us and assures us. He saturates our hearts with the Lord’s presence and stills our minds with His calm.

There, in the solitude, God speaks through His Word by His Spirit – changing this attitude, convicting us of that sin, compelling us to this action.

WE HAVE GOD’S WISDOM

As we commit our days and resources to the Lord, we have His sure guidance. As we cast our plans and sched­ules before Him, we have His wisdom.

We look to Him to order our thoughts and direct our steps, not knowing the twists and turns the day will take. The wisest thing we can do to relieve the pressure of time is to spend time alone with the Lord Jesus Christ.

After all, He is the all-know­ing, all-wise One who knows our end from our beginning, who knows all about us and our future, and who can or­chestrate our days.

ETERNITY WITH CHRIST

We will all give an account one day of how we invested our time on earth. We will spend eternity in one of two places – heaven or hell. If you have not made that decision to spend eternity with Christ, I encourage you now to trust Him for the forgiveness of your sins, believing in Him as the Son of God who died in your place.

Only then will time take on real meaning. If you are a be­liever, I encourage you to ex­amine your life and establish godly priorities so that you are ruled by Him, not by others, then commit to spending qual­ity time alone with the Lord Jesus Christ each day.”

• By Dr Joyce Aryee, the author