"If you’ve flown anywhere in the past 30 years you’ve heard the familiar instruction, “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, put your own oxygen mask on before helping your children.” Some planes now have videos showing calm mothers putting on masks before helping their four year olds who are never screaming or panicking even though the plane door popped open 4 miles above the earth and 500 mile per hour winds are rushing in.
While those videos may not be true to life, they do illustrate a principle of getting our own oxygen supply in place first so we’ll be able to help those who need us. Oxygen is vital. Going without it very long means certain death.
Jesus emphasized the priority of getting spiritual oxygen when He told us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Unless you take time to get your own supply in place first, you’ll be useless to help anyone else.
Remember, seeking God first redeems the time.
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The English language is strange. For example, how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
In the same way two other words sound similar but are opposites. They are oversee and overlook. God often gives us projects to oversee. It may be with our children, our church or our work. Overseeing makes us feel important. But when our subordinates don’t do what they are supposed to do, we get tempted to overlook instead of oversee.
Delegation is a great time management skill. It allows us to multiply what we can accomplish in a day. But what we have to remember is that as a rule, people don’t do what you expect. They do what you inspect.
That’s why no one is really qualified to be an overseer unless they are willing to not be an overlooker and confront slothfulness in their subordinates. Remember, when we know we’re accountable, we’re more likely to redeem the time.
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"You know computers have taken over your life when you would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon or when the thought a CD referring to something at the bank never crosses your mind.
Computers are a big part of our lives today. And that’s why learning to organize computer files has become such a necessary time management skill. As your number of files grows, you’ll need to continually break them down into smaller subfolders to keep them manageable. If you run into a situation where they can’t be broken down by category you might consider alphabetical subfolders such as A-D in the first, E-H in the second and son on.
Also store your data files in a different folder from your program files. It makes them easier to locate and to back up. For more ideas, click on the “organizing your hard drive” link on our website.
Let’s stay useful to God by organizing our computers to redeem the time.
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"Perhaps the most frightening verse in all of Scripture to me is Luke 12:48 where Jesus said, “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” It is frightening because it is hard to imagine anyone being given more spiritual resources than most of today’s Christians.
Think about it. For most of the history of the Christian church there was very little access to Scripture. There was precious little teaching of salvation by faith in Christ alone and good Christian books other than the Bible were rare indeed. Today we have Christian media available practically everywhere and more Bible helps than we could read in 1,000 lifetimes. In light of that fact, what will God require of us?
Don’t be so proud of what you have accomplished until you realize that the real test, is what you have done, compared to what you could have done with all of the resources God has given you. Viewing things from that perspective will make you want to redeem the time.
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