Prayer and time management

Nelson Searcy author of the Fusion book we studied this summer wrote about this on his blog:

One of my tele-coaching participants/pastors shared these two time management principles with me in a recent email:

1.  Always start the day with God. Just like tithing stretches money, time with God has an amazing way of stretching time!

2.  The next day principle. Whenever possible, get through your “to do” list, then do something you’d planned on doing the next day. This snowballs over time and greatly increases your capacity to get things done.

(Submitted by Glenn Edward Layne from First Baptist Church in Temple City, CA)

Two great principles! Thanks, Glenn!

So let me ask you:

Are you starting your day with God?

Are you starting your tomorrow before you finish today?

Nelson

Comment on prayer

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Good article. I also use the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) prayer model and really like the idea of adding a Psalm at the beginning (PACTS) to focus my mind and prepare my heart attitude. As for the short prayers, I tend to be a worrier, so whenever I am tempted to worry, I’m learning to train myself to use my worry time as prayer time for that particular need. It brings me peace, makes me realize how useless my worry is and how much more valuable prayer is, both for others and for me, and often leads to prayer in other areas “while I’m at it”. In fact, I often fall asleep by praying as it is so relaxing in many ways. – Nancy

Thanks Nancy for sharing these prayer tips.  That was one thing I also picked up from the Seizmic Shifts book by Kevin Harney that I could spent the last few minutes of consciousness before sleep overtakes me in prayer rather than thinking about what I didn’t get done that day and all that I had to get to tomorrow.  It is a time of surrender in prayer and thanksgiving.  I do this also immediately upon waking….it helps me focus on thanksgiving rather than right away strapping the burden of all that needs to be done that way.  – Melissa

New Online Resource

LifeChurch.tv has launched a new bible site.  It is called YouVersion and is still in beta form. I think that means that it is launched and as people use it they will be adding to it and working out the bugs.  It is designed to be a community site too so that you can study a section of Scripture in any version you like and highlight a verse and see who in the community has something to say on that…..most of these topics are tied to a video message by LifeChurch. Good thinking huh?  I like that you can program you favorite version to pop up all the time and there is a little screen to the right of the bible reader that allows you to journal your thoughts (this is private) as you read the Scripture.  Thousands of people are already using it and they have read millions of Scripture verse already.