Imperatives

So you feel like you’re out there all alone, like you’re off leading the charge with no support, like you’re being crushed by the weight of what you are attempting to do. You’ve been red-lining for the last two months, with barely time to eat, much less time to talk to people about what you are doing. And here we are, telling you that you have to start telling stories. “Are you insane?” you ask, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that? There’s no time for that! I’m running so fast I can barely keep up with myself.”

That, my friends, is the problem. You’re running too fast. You’ve taken off on the marathon of ministry as though it were a sprint. I’m not saying that to beat you up, I’m just drawing your attention to it. It happens all the time. I’ve lived that way, most people in our country live that way. We know there’s a better way to live life, but we feel so much pressure to take on an additional task, to spend sixty hours or more a week in the office, to launch a new initiative. We deal with the urgent, not the important.

Engineers have learned to add a margin to their calculations so that the building or bridge doesn’t collapse under excessive forces. Truck drivers know that they have to keep distance between themselves and the traffic in front of them or they’re going to wreck. Book publishers know that they must leave a margin because if they print all the way to the edges of the page the reader will be unable to read.

The pressure is to fill up the pages of our lives – edge to edge – and leave no margins. But if we live life that way we are unable to see what is happening. We must have times to reflect, to see what God is doing and hear what he is saying, to find the story that is taking place between the margins.

We weren’t created to live without rest. You can’t find and tell your stories without taking time to reflect on them. And you can’t be useful unless you take control of your time rather than having the waves of life toss you around. My friend Jay Pathak talks about this on a regular basis. He makes the point that In order to take control of your time you have to accept four things:

You have limits.

All of your time will be spent.

Urgent things will crowd out the important things…(unless)

…You get the important things into life first.

You have to make the decision to make the important the imperative. And then put it on your schedule.

So what are the imperative things? This is my list:

1) Time with Jesus – I have a morning routine that helps me with this. If you’re like me, when the alarm clock goes off the last thing you want to do is get up. So I start by talking with Jesus while I’m still half awake. I keep the conversation going until I finish with breakfast. Does this always happen? Nope. I’m constantly amazed by how quickly my groggy brain gets distracted. But even if I only make it part way, I’m at least in gear.

2) Time with people - I find it really difficult to keep a huge network of close friends. I’m just not built that way. I’m an introvert by nature and spend a lot of time alone. However, I do have a small group of people – maybe a dozen – that I strive to spend time with on a consistent basis. I set aside time for this at least once a week, usually more often. By the way, this group includes my family and my very significant other.

3) Time to plan – I spend 30 minutes every Monday morning to figure out what I need to get done this week. Then I cut it back to what I can accomplish. I also spend about five minutes every morning making a list of stuff to get done. If I don’t spend this time the week becomes a train wreck of random not-important stuff, and by Friday afternoon I’m beating myself up. I have to do this to keep myself on track.

4) Time to write – I have one or two mornings set aside each week where I sit down to write. Mostly I write for this blog. But that’s not really the point of setting time aside to write. I’m writing so that I can be aware of the stories I am involved in. I don’t have to be writing – I could be doing this by recording audio or video. But if you don’t sit down to reflect doing something like this, the stories are going to pass you by. To be honest, I’m still kind of bad about this, but I’m working to improve it. If you are in ministry you have to do something along these lines.

Those four items are all that on my “Imperative” list right now. I find that simple is best. There are other commitments that have a permanent home on my schedule, but I don’t consider them imperative, just a part of the landscape. I can back out of them if I need to without massive consequences.

Your list might be different; I’m not here to dictate what should be important for you (contradiction: I will say that telling your story needs to be somewhere on that list). But you have to have a list and it has to be written down, or you will end up distracted and stressed out. Build some margins into your life so that the rest of life in livable.