Time versus Money

My sermon yesterday morning during the Sunday service was on the subject of time.  As I reflect on that sermon, I realize that it was essentially an attempt to understand the highly elusive mystery of time by comparing and contrasting it with money.  Ultimately, my aim was to help my congregation improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their use of time.

The text for the sermon was taken from Apostle Paul’s letter to the Colossian Church, "…making the very most of the time {and} seizing (buying up) the opportunity." (Colossians 4:5).

I started with a simple comparison between time and money…

“Lets think and talk about time today.  Lets begin by comparing it to that other highly valuable resource – money.

Whereas you can see money, you can’t see time. You can only see the passage of time.
You can hold money in your hand, but you can’t hold time.
You can store money, but you can’t store time.

Because time can neither be seen, held, nor stored, its a highly volatile resource and extremely difficult to manage.

Yet time can be wisely used, spent, multiplied, and invested.

Though time cannot be stored, it can be saved, just like money.

To save time simply means that you’ve manipulated your activities in such a manner that chunks of the coming time is free of specific activities.”

A very important emphasis during yesterday’s sermon was the superiority of time over money.  I couldn’t emphasize it strongly enough…

“Time is more valuable than money.

A solid awareness of the superior value of time to money is fundamental to enduring greatness and whatever other desirables you can list.

Some people spend time to save money, others spend money to save time. The latter inevitably stay ahead of the former as long as they appreciate the value of time, and know how to re-invest it profitably.

If you shift your mindset from the paradigm of saving money, to that of saving time and re-investing it wisely, you’ll experience a strange phenomenon in your life – you actually begin to attract more and more ideas and opportunities to become more successful, and even make more money.”

I went on to outline seven tips on saving time.  Carefully reflect on these tips and see how you can employ them in your own life:

“7 tips on saving time

1. Use a simple daily to-do list to organize and schedule your most important tasks and meetings.

2. Utilize pre-existing free times and eliminate idle times. For instance, reduce excessive sleeping.

3. Firmly resist unnecessary interruptions and violations of your schedule by family and friends.

4. Work smarter by applying mind and creativity to tasks. Seek for sound and effective short-cuts to your tasks without compromising quality.

5. Share tasks through networking. In other words, get others to help you.

6. Delegate activities to others, usually by offering monetary or non-monetary incentives.

7. Use smart technologies to optimize and accelerate performance.”

One of the most important questions I asked during yesterday’s sermon was, “What’s the point in saving time?”

“Saving time is critical for those of us who enjoy constantly taking our productivity and efficiency to higher levels.

If the passion for discipline and excellence burns within you, you will continuously strive to push the limits, and your efforts would be enhanced by your ability to save time.

The whole idea of saving time is to put it to its best use, to high value, high yielding activities.

This means that you need to pre-determine what is the best use of your time. Then when you free up time – through delegation, technology, creativity, money – you plunge the time thus retrieved into these high value, high yielding activities.”

Of course, the most strategically significant question that I asked during my sermon yesterday was, “So, what’s the best use of your time?”

“I believe that the best use of your time is in doing anything that simultaneously satisfies the following conditions:

• Gives you joy – a deep inner sense of happiness, pleasure, and fulfillment.
• Improves the quality of your life and that of other people.
• Raises the quality and volume of your relevance to the human family.

For me its in this descending order (they can all be done alone, or in the company of one or more of my special and sweet peoples):

• Learning something (about people and things) that is new, refreshing, interesting, entertaining, relevant – in short, interacting with life-transforming and life-enhancing information.
• Musing over inspirations, ideas, strategies, plans, and jotting these down and converting them into specific decisions, guiding principles, and action steps.
• Sharing no 1 & 2 with others via writing, speaking, discussions, etc.”

After the sermon, I invited questions from the congregation and answered as many as I could within the available time.  All in all, yesterday’s service was so beautiful and refreshing. The Home Churches took their presentations to a whole new level of excellence.  I’m always excited to be able to share this aspect of my ministry with you.

Have a profitable, productive, and fulfilling week, in Jesus name.

So, what’s the best use of your time?