Mike Glenn is Senior Pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Luke 12:35-40Anyone who knows me knows I have a hard time managing my time. No, I don’t have a hard time. I just don’t do it. It’s not that I don’t have all the tools I’m supposed to have. I’ve been to all the workshops. I have all the gadgets. It’s just that I’m a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy. If I’m doing something and even when I like what I’m doing, if I get a call from you and I like what you’re doing more, then I’m going to go do what you’re doing. Then I’ll get back to what I was doing.
I don’t ever understand how much time something will take. So I over-commit, thinking, “Sure, I can do that. It won’t take that long.” It always takes a lot longer than I think it will. So when somebody says to me, “Can you come speak at this?” I answer, “Yeah, I’d love to do that,” and it takes a lot of time to get ready to speak and speak well. So I end up being over-committed and frustrated because I’m trying go get too much done.
Advertisement
Despite the national industry that exists on how to manage your time, I’m lousy at it. Most of us are. Most of us don’t understand what time is. There is a wonderful book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. It’s one of those books everybody bought but nobody read. So you read about time from this great physicist and you get to the end of the book and realize he doesn’t understand it either.
Biblically speaking, time is the space God has created for us to have a relationship with Him. And one more thing, you don’t have as much of it as you think you do. That’s why in Luke 12:35-40 Jesus warns His disciples to watch:
Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
People were always pressing Jesus. They always wanted to know when it was going to happen. “When are You going to restore the Kingdom of David? When are You going to establish the promise that we got from the Old Testament prophet? When are You going to announce who You are and run off these pesky Romans so we can establish the Kingdom of David right here in Jerusalem and of course, as humble disciples, we can take our place of power with You?”