“MY COSMIC MISSION IS TO BE MY PRIORITY IN TIME” The Life Guided by a Cosmic Mission Part 6

Time is our most precious commodity. It’s far more important than money. You can always get more money but you only have a certain amount of time allotted in your life. When you waste time you are essentially wasting your life. Because your time is your life When you’re killing time, you’re killing yourself

Last session I talked about how to pray and write out a Life Mission Statement. We talked about writing out what your basic direction of life is based on what you believe is God’s will for you. But you could have the most eloquent Life Mission Statement and if you don’t know how to translate it into your schedule, into your time, it’s just going to be a dusty document. It won’t be worth much at all.

So we come to Step 5 of Mission Shaped Living… Ephesians 5:15-16 (Phillips translation) “Live life with a due sense of responsibility, not as those who do not know the meaning of life but as those who do. Make the best use of your time.”

I’m not interested in teaching you how to get more done. I want to teach you how to do less. Less not more. I want in this session to teach you to do less of what you don’t need to do. And how to do more of what God shaped you to do and what God put you on this earth to do. There are three simple parts to Mission Shaped Time Management…

1. I NEED TO DEVISE MY GOALS AROUND MY MISSION Mission driven living means you look at your life mission and base all your goals on what that is. Paul was a mission guided goal setter.

1. I NEED TO DEVISE MY GOALS AROUND MY MISSION 1 Corinthians 9:26 “I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step.” Why should I set goals for my life? Because it pleases God. When you set goals it pleases God. Why? Because goals are statements of faith.

1. I NEED TO DEVISE MY GOALS AROUND MY MISSION Goals are simply statements that say, “I believe God wants me to accomplish `this' by such and such a date. You see the Bible says … Hebrews 11:1 “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

1. I NEED TO DEVISE MY GOALS AROUND MY MISSION 2 Corinthians 10:13 (Living Bible) “Our goal is to measure up to God’s plan for us.” Whatever the mind can conceive, the will can achieve.” It’s not true – Singer… Remember the 4 questions from last session…

1. God wants me to get to know Him and to love Him (Centre) 2. God made you to become like Jesus (Character) 3. He made you to make a contribution to the world (Contribution) 4. He’s given you a unique life message (Communication)

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS Have you noticed that the urgent is not always important; it’s just urgent? They are two different things. The problem is with human nature we usually do the least important things first because they’re the easiest.

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS –Ecclesiastes 8:6 (GNB) “There’s a right time and a right way to do everything but we know so little.” So if you’re doing something and you say, “I don’t have enough time,” that means… –(a) You’ve got some things on that list that aren’t God’s will for you, because God would never give you more to do than He gives you time to do it, or –(b) You’re doing it in the wrong way. There’s a right way and wrong way to do everything.

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS Proverbs 17:24 (GNB) “An intelligent person aims at wise action, but a fool starts off in many directions.” Proverbs 16:9 (Living Bible) “We should make plans counting on God to direct us.” These plans must include people and relationships! There is no missional impact without relationships… There are at least 5 key relationships…

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS 1. MY PERSONAL LIFE Luke 2:52 “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature in favour with God and man.”

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS 2. MY FAMILY 1 Timothy 5:8 “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith.”

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS 3. MY CHURCH FAMILY Ephesians 2:18 (TEV) “You belong in God’s household with every other Christian.”

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS 4. MY WORK or MINISTRY TEAM Titus 3:14 (Phillips) “Learn to earn what you need by honest work and so be self-supporting.”

2. I NEED TO ORGANIZE MY COSMIC MISSION AROUND RELATIONSHIPS 5. MY WORLD &/OR MY COMMUNITY Romans 14:7 “For none of us lives to himself alone.”

We have seen that we need to devise our goals around our Mission We need to Organise our activities around Relationships… And now the final step to having a life that is prioritised by your Cosmic Mission…

3. I NEED TO HARMONIZE MY SCHEDULE AROUND MY COSMIC MISSION & IT’S VALUES “Harmonize” means “to bring into agreement”. Psalm 90:12 (Living Bible) “Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.”

If I were to tell you that a new bank has opened in Dhaka, Bangladesh and they have opened a free account for you and everyday at 7a.m. in the morning they deposit into your account TK86,400 and you can spend that any way you want to.

The only thing is at the end of that 24- hour day anything that you have not spent is debited out and you lose it. What would you do? You would figure out a way to spend Tk86,400 in appropriate ways. You’d try to withdraw as much of it out as you could.

Everyday God gives you 86,400 seconds not Taka’s! And if you use them, great. If you abuse them, not so great. If you waste them, it’s a bad idea because you’re wasting your life.

Mission Guided Time Management is really based on two ideas… Do less of what I’m not shaped to do and more of what I am shaped to do! Do less of what everybody else thinks I ought to do or the world thinks I ought to do and do more of what God has shaped me to do!

3. I NEED TO HARMONIZE MY SCHEDULE AROUND MY COSMIC MISSION’S VALUES Psalm 90:12 (Living Bible) “Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.” Proverbs 10:27 (Living Bible) “Reverence for the Lord adds hours to each day.”