There is a great song by Mark Shultz named “1,000 Miles” that I have been listening to recently.  It talks about how he would walk 1,000 miles, a gruelling trip, just to be with God.  It has a really profound message - he wants to be with God so much that he would go through something really hard just to be with him.  It is one of my favorite songs for that reason.

But if you think about it, wouldn’t each one of us, if presented with the chance, walk 1,000 if we knew that God was waiting at the end of the road?  I’m sure that the motivation of being close to our Creator would carry us past the temporary troubles of sore feet and tired legs, and help us to put our heads down and strive toward the finish.

If we got off the straight path that was laid out for us to travel, do you think that we would intentionally wander even farther off, until we didn’t even know where the original path was?  No!  As soon as we found ourselves off the right track, we would do everything within our power to get back on it, no matter how scratched and bruised we got in the process.  Nothing would get in the way of our reaching the final goal.

Time management is something we all struggle with. It is something that God has put on my heart lately, and so I thought I’d write a few posts about it. I’m hoping that this will be the first in a series on godly time management.
The Slippery Slope
Peacemaker Ministries in their description of conflict management uses the illustration of a slippery slope. At either end are the two extremes, murder and suicide, and in the middle is the most godly option, mediation. They use this analogy because it is extremely hard to consistently turn to that middle part of the slope, the godly part. I think that this concept can be applied to many things other than just conflict. One of these is time management.

The Slippery Slope of Time Management has the same layout as the Peacemaker’s Slope. At one end of the spectrum is the extreme of being totally sluggardly, while the extreme of completely over-scheduling yourself is at the other end. In the middle is the ever-elusive middle ground of the godly balance between having too much and too little to do.

I’ve heard a lot of sermons and read a lot of articles lately about evangelism and everything mixed up with it.  Some people say that we should all be out on the street handing out tracts as often as possible, while others think that we should just lead quiet lives and set good examples for our neighbors.  I’m not going to side with either of these views in this article, but I’d like to give you a basic overview of both sides of the issue.
The Two Views
The most important place to look for answers and insight is the Bible.  Who would be better to look to besides the Creator of the universe Himself?

Take a look at Matthew 28:16-20 with me.  It says this: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.  Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  This is what many call “the Great Commission”, and most actively evangelical Christians use it as a reason for their work.  It’s hard to get past those words: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…”  Is this definite proof that we should all go “make disciples of all nations”, or was Jesus only addressing the Apostles?  There are reasons for both sides, which I will mention below.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I went down to the Dominican Republic for a week in January.  Though I’ve been down twice before, none of those trips were quite like this last one.  Before I tell you what happened to myself on the trip, I want to give you a brief overview of what we normally do down there.

The organization that we go down with is called Meeting God in Missions.  They are a really great organization run by Jim McDonald, who has gone on over 100 trips to the DR in his lifetime.  Everyone who goes down gets the same kind of t-shirts that say “MGM” on them so we can recognize each other easily.  It helps to give us a team spirit.

MGM has their own large compound in the DR, and that’s where we all stay while we’re down there.  From that place we go out into surrounding villages to minister to the local peoples’ needs, physical and spiritual.  The compound is nice, with a second floor, open-air room that we like to call the “Upper Room”.  In that room, we have our morning devotions, led by Jim McDonald.  Before each of those lessons we would sing a few hymns, and I got the privilege to lead the singing for the week, which was a great experience.

Every day we would get up, and after having devotions, we would eat breakfast in the huge dining hall and leave for a village.  For the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon, we would stay in the village and help out the Dominicans who lived there.  We set up stations for the medical, dental, and optical people to work at, and whoever needed help would go to one of those stations and get taken care of.  Whoever wasn’t at one of those stations was doing one of two things - witnessing or helping with the kids.  I spent most of the time with the kids, though I went with one of the elders of my church on a witnessing expedition once, and that was an interesting experience for me.  Working with the kids involved telling them Bible stories, giving them coloring pages, and basically playing with them for the day.