How Do I Prioritize My Busy Life?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:04.000 | Welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:05.720 | This week we've been looking at what it means to follow God's will.
00:00:08.840 | On Monday we looked at the key to following God's will.
00:00:11.680 | Without this in place, following His will will prove, well, it'll prove impossible.
00:00:16.600 | That was APJ 1807, we covered that.
00:00:19.200 | And then on Wednesday we put that principle into practice, looking at one example of how
00:00:23.360 | to proceed with confidence in a real life decision, knowing that you are in fact following
00:00:29.880 | God's will.
00:00:31.640 | That was in APJ 1808 on Wednesday.
00:00:33.920 | And today we end the week with an email from a listener, and a super busy Christian man.
00:00:38.400 | How should this man prioritize his life when there isn't time to do everything?
00:00:43.440 | That busy man is Steve, and Steve lives in Sacramento, California.
00:00:47.200 | Dear Pastor John, I work as a physician, and I feel that my work demands too much of my
00:00:51.640 | time, much more than most other full-time jobs.
00:00:56.120 | Because of this, I never seem to have enough time to pray or study God's word.
00:00:59.840 | I also feel that because of my work, I do not have much time to devote to my family
00:01:03.400 | or to church.
00:01:04.400 | I know that the Bible has numerous passages about the importance of working hard for the
00:01:08.240 | Lord, such as Colossians 3.23.
00:01:11.160 | Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men.
00:01:15.360 | And Proverbs 22.29, do you see a man skillful in his work?
00:01:20.000 | He will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men.
00:01:25.240 | However, I also know that there are numerous passages about the importance of spending
00:01:29.560 | time in prayer and studying the word.
00:01:31.900 | How do I balance the importance for working hard for the Lord while still having enough
00:01:36.600 | time for God, spiritual growth, and my family when my job won't allow it?
00:01:41.920 | Should I accept that I will have to sacrifice much for my work, consider a career change,
00:01:47.600 | or do something in between?
00:01:49.760 | Besides the three possibilities that Steve holds out, there might be another way to think
00:01:57.040 | about the challenge he faces, and I'm going to get there in just a minute to suggest that
00:02:02.500 | he consider a fourth way.
00:02:06.100 | I do start with the assumption that except for rare seasons, he really should prioritize
00:02:14.360 | daily communion with God in the word and prayer, as well as leading his family in daily focused
00:02:22.040 | attention to God's word and in family prayer, and in seeing to it that they are serious
00:02:29.920 | participants in their local church.
00:02:32.760 | And now Steve may listen to me say that and say, "Did you even hear my question?"
00:02:38.240 | Well, yes.
00:02:40.240 | Yes, I did.
00:02:42.320 | So let me clarify one thing, because I was listening carefully, one thing that Steve
00:02:48.160 | said twice, and I just want to make sure that before I make my proposal to him that we get
00:02:57.080 | this clear, because it really does affect everything we do.
00:03:00.720 | Twice, he referred to working hard for the Lord.
00:03:05.840 | That's his exact phrase, working hard for the Lord.
00:03:09.840 | And when he says that, he is referring to his medical work, not any particularly focused
00:03:16.320 | Christian activity like personal evangelism or something like that.
00:03:20.200 | He's talking about doing a good job in his medical work, which in fact he should do.
00:03:27.200 | He's basing it on Colossians 3.23, "Whatever you do," like being a doctor, "Whatever you
00:03:33.840 | do, work hard or heartily as for the Lord."
00:03:40.640 | That's where he gets the phrase.
00:03:42.400 | So I'm not criticizing the phrase.
00:03:44.200 | I'm just waving a flag that it could easily be misunderstood.
00:03:51.240 | And I just want to make sure that when Steve or any of us speaks of "working for the Lord,"
00:04:01.160 | we realize that any true biblical conception of human beings working for the living God
00:04:11.280 | or the Lord, Jesus, means something fundamentally different than working for a human being.
00:04:22.840 | Three ways, at least, it's different, radically different.
00:04:27.160 | One, when we work for man, we really do add value to man's business or project or ministry.
00:04:36.280 | He is the lesser if we do shoddy work or no work.
00:04:42.000 | He is dependent on us or somebody doing what we do to have something he would not otherwise
00:04:50.480 | have.
00:04:52.880 | Working for God is never like that.
00:04:56.760 | We don't add anything to God.
00:05:00.280 | He is not dependent on us.
00:05:03.120 | He can raise up from stones anything or anybody he wants.
00:05:08.720 | Second, when we work for man, we really do earn.
00:05:15.640 | We really do earn just payment.
00:05:20.080 | Our employer owes us wages.
00:05:24.360 | Our work for him puts him in our debt.
00:05:27.760 | He commits a crime if he doesn't pay us.
00:05:32.240 | That's never, never the case with God.
00:05:36.080 | We never put God in our debt.
00:05:38.160 | He never owes us anything.
00:05:40.840 | Third, when we work for man, we rely upon ourselves, not on our boss, for the capacity
00:05:50.280 | to do what he hired us to do.
00:05:53.320 | That's never the case with God.
00:05:55.240 | We always are dependent on God for life and breath and mind and heart and emotions and
00:06:01.680 | intellect and energy and willpower to do what we're called to do.
00:06:06.840 | The basis for those three distinctions between working for man and working for God is Romans
00:06:12.920 | 11, 35 to 36.
00:06:15.160 | Who has given a gift to God that he might be repaid?
00:06:18.080 | The answer is nobody.
00:06:19.720 | Impossible.
00:06:20.720 | Inconceivable.
00:06:22.120 | Who has given a gift to God that he might be repaid?
00:06:25.600 | Why?
00:06:26.600 | For from him and through him and to him are all things.
00:06:30.860 | To him be glory forever.
00:06:33.160 | Amen.
00:06:34.160 | You can't give God anything in order to be repaid because he owns everything, including
00:06:40.160 | you.
00:06:41.840 | You are made by him, sustained by him.
00:06:44.840 | You exist for his glory.
00:06:47.760 | The other basis for this distinction between working for man and working for God is 1 Corinthians
00:06:53.760 | 15, 10, where Paul says, "By the grace of God, I am what I am.
00:07:00.240 | And his grace toward me was not in vain.
00:07:02.880 | On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them."
00:07:09.360 | And I don't doubt that Steve could say something like that probably.
00:07:12.800 | I worked harder than any of them.
00:07:15.340 | And then Paul adds, and Steve should add, and we should all add, "Though it was not
00:07:20.600 | I, but the grace of God that was with me."
00:07:25.880 | We do work hard.
00:07:27.520 | It's right to work hard as Christians.
00:07:31.240 | And when we work for God, the way we ought to realize that is that we are the receivers
00:07:40.560 | when we work for God.
00:07:42.500 | We are the ones being blessed.
00:07:44.680 | God is not being enriched by our work for him.
00:07:49.800 | We are.
00:07:51.040 | We are not earning anything.
00:07:54.220 | If we gain an inheritance through our work, which we do, it's all of grace.
00:08:00.960 | And in the process, we rely on the supply of God's sustaining grace at every moment.
00:08:06.840 | Working for God and working for man are fundamentally different.
00:08:11.020 | And Paul does call us to work for God in all our working for man, which really is a miraculous,
00:08:21.180 | amazing, profound transformation of all human life.
00:08:28.100 | Now against that backdrop, here's my suggestion for Steve to consider.
00:08:33.380 | It comes mainly from the Bible and partly from my own experience.
00:08:38.700 | In my 70 years of being a Christian, so this year I will mark being a believer for 70 years.
00:08:50.160 | In my 70 years of being a Christian, one thing I have learned is that from time to time,
00:08:57.320 | no matter how carefully we plan, we come to a point where we are expected to do something.
00:09:06.220 | And we look at the amount of energy that we have and the amount of time we have and the
00:09:12.240 | resources we have to do it, and we say, "That's impossible.
00:09:17.800 | I can't do it."
00:09:19.980 | Now sometimes that's true.
00:09:22.560 | And you simply have to call your supervisor or a friend and tell them, "Find somebody
00:09:28.960 | else."
00:09:30.960 | But it's not true as often as we think.
00:09:35.040 | And here's why.
00:09:36.040 | And I've discovered this over and over.
00:09:40.960 | God can do more in us and through us in five seconds than we can do in five hours without
00:09:50.640 | his help.
00:09:52.320 | Five seconds.
00:09:53.320 | Yes, he can.
00:09:55.100 | Or same principle, God can do more in us in five hours than we can do in five days.
00:10:05.260 | Here's one way I've experienced this.
00:10:07.280 | For example, there have been a series of crises in the church and I have spent so much time
00:10:13.160 | at the hospital and in the home of the bereaved that it is now Saturday evening.
00:10:19.560 | I have no sermon prepared at all, not even an outline for tomorrow morning.
00:10:25.640 | I look at my energy, which is spent.
00:10:29.160 | I look at the time left to me, even if I stay up all night, which is physically not going
00:10:35.600 | to work.
00:10:36.960 | And I say to myself, "This is impossible.
00:10:41.240 | I don't know what I'm going to do."
00:10:44.680 | And I get down on my knees and I preach to myself some crazy, wonderful, biblical reality.
00:10:53.560 | God can feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish of my time and energy.
00:11:04.020 | God can make a hundred-year-old man and a barren woman have a baby because the angel
00:11:09.440 | says, "Is anything too hard for God?"
00:11:13.320 | Jesus said to his disciples, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are
00:11:19.560 | possible."
00:11:20.560 | Paul assures himself, "God calls into existence things that do not exist, like hours in the
00:11:29.640 | day, to create a sermon that can't be done unless something impossible happens."
00:11:38.840 | I preach that to myself.
00:11:41.040 | I've done this numerous times, and I ask God for a miracle.
00:11:47.320 | And time and again, God has done what looked to me to be impossible.
00:11:55.400 | A sermon outline with true insight into biblical texts, ample application, comes before my
00:12:03.580 | mind not in five hours as it might ordinarily take, but in five seconds.
00:12:12.200 | It is as if the entire thing was built and then given to me complete in my mind.
00:12:23.120 | I go to my desk at 7 p.m., I ask for the miracle of wakefulness and energy, and at 11 p.m.,
00:12:33.040 | a full manuscript is written.
00:12:36.440 | Exhausted, I set the alarm for 4.30 a.m.
00:12:42.960 | And at 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon, sitting in my chair, I look back on two services complete
00:12:49.280 | and wonder, "How did that happen?"
00:12:52.720 | In other words, Steve, I'm suggesting that you might experiment with giving yourself
00:13:00.800 | to prayer and to your family in a way that you feel is biblically appropriate, and then
00:13:08.640 | asking for God to create out of nothing what you thought had to be given up at work.
00:13:17.800 | Now, that's a faith-building testimony.
00:13:19.640 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:13:20.640 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:13:22.480 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast.
00:13:26.480 | You can do all of that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:13:31.320 | Well, we are going to begin next week asking whether or not we should encourage non-Christians
00:13:36.760 | to pray for faith.
00:13:39.240 | Or is a faithless prayer pointless anyways?
00:13:42.680 | It's a rather interesting question, and I'm your host Tony Renke.
00:13:46.280 | We'll see you back here on Monday for it.
00:13:48.460 | Have a great weekend.
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