Hold your hands out in front of you? Can you see it? Look carefully!
It’s flowing through your fingers, like sand on the seashore, or waves in the ocean, or the sunlight at high noon. You can’t hold it; it just races through your hands at a rate of speed that takes your breath away.
You run after it, with no chance of catching it. You continue to charge hard, to get a rope on it, to throw a bag over it, set a trap for it, all to no avail. It’s always just ahead of you.
And there it goes, fast as light, and just as easily grasped.
Here’s the thing that maddens. Regardless of what you do, it produces an inescapable result. Specifically, what you do with it produces an inescapable result. You can’t avoid the consequences of its movement through your hands. Its investment always produces a result, and it’s an investment you make every minute of every day, every day of every week, every week of every month, etc.
Yes, I’m talking about time.
Till now you might never have considered it an investment. Maybe you hadn’t viewed the hours of the day as an asset, your asset, no one else’s, something you will put to work on one thing or another. But here it is, here’s the crux of the issue: good, bad, or indifferent, all of us make choices every day with how we are going to spend the next 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 5 years. Making this investment choice is a stone-cold certitude, and none of us gets a pass on putting this asset to work.
Now take a look again.
This time, when you look at your hands, close your eyes for a moment, keep your hands right in front of you, and imagine you have the very power of Almighty God right there, right in the palms of your hands. Envision every promise He’s made ready to be loosed by what you put your hands to do. Now, say this and believe this:
“Then the LORD your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand…” (Deut. 30:9 NKJV)
And declare this: “God, everything I put my hands to do, everything I hear from You, will be blessed and be a blessing for many.”
Cool, huh?
When you put your hands to the things He is breathing on, things He is leading you to do, the labor and efforts born out of the dream life you share with your our Father, heaven comes to earth. People are healed, saved, delivered, and comforted. A child gets to play toss, to their mirthful, laughing delight. A baby gets clean diapers on and food put into their ravenous, happy gullets. Raw materials are changed into work products of beauty and usefulness which delights others and command good prices. Sermons and songs, prayers and petitions are written and spoken with unction and power, calling the dead to life, giving light to the simple, encouraging the faint-hearted, making strong those who work in the Great Harvest of souls and bringing His saints into intimate nearness with Him in the Presence.
So what can you do? You see this river called time flowing through your fingers, and you want it to earn more. You want to create the memorable, the redemptive, the fun and productive with these hands He has given you. How to assess, plan, and redirect?
Can I suggest this? Get yourself some ruled paper; a spiral-bound college notebook works great, like this:
Now make it into a place where you can write down everything you do, in sequence, day by day, with hours/minutes for each item. One page per day.
Do that for a week, then look back over the week with a red pen and put a line through every task you did that you should have said “no” to. You’ll know which ones they are: ask Holy Spirit to help you.
Now take a green pen and make a simple note of what you might have done instead of doing the items you’ve lined out in red.
Trust the system. Repeat this every week for 3 weeks. Watch what happens week by week. Watch what happens to the quantity of red-lined items. And when you do something that you had suggested to yourself the week before, take that same green pen and write a simple congratulation to yourself – “Way to go”, “That felt great!”, “I made that person smile”, etc.
At the end of these three weeks have another look at those hands of yours. Now, what do you see? I see you growing happier with what your hands are finding to do now that you’re redirecting the investment of that priceless asset of yours into things that really matter. The things that bring joy to you and others, things you hear Papa whispering your ear in His still, small voice.
Right there, see? Right in your own hands. You have the power to transform nations and change history. Time’s a-wastin, get busy with it! Dream with God, make a plan, go and do it now.
