Twenty Steps to Successful Time Management

Twenty Steps to Successful Time Management

1. Clarify your objectives. Put them in writing. Then set your priorities. Make

sure you’re getting what you really want out of life.

2. Focus on objectives, not on activities. Your most important activities are those

that help you accomplish your objectives.

3. Set at least one major objective each day and achieve it.

4. Record a time log periodically to analyze how you use your time, and keep bad

time habits out of your life.

5. Analyze everything you do in terms of your objectives. Find out what you do,

when you do it, why you do it. Ask yourself what would happen if you didn’t do it.

If the answer is nothing, then stop doing it.

6. Eliminate at least one time-waster from your life each week.

7. Plan your time. Write out a plan for each week. Ask yourself what you hope to

accomplish by the end of the week and what you will need to do to achieve those

results.

8. Make a to-do list every day. Be sure it includes your daily objectives, priorities,

and time estimates, not just random activities.

9. Schedule your time every day to make sure you accomplish the most important

things first. Be sure to leave room for the unexpected and for interruptions. But

remember that things that are scheduled have a better chance of working out than

things that are unscheduled.

10. Make sure that the first hour of your workday is productive.

11. Set time limits for every task you undertake.

12. Take the time to do it right the first time. You won’t have to waste time doing

it over.

13. Eliminate recurring crises from your life. Find out why things keep going

wrong. Learn to proact instead of react.

14. Institute a quiet hour in your day – a block of uninterrupted time for your most

important tasks.

15. Develop the habit of finishing what you start. Don’t jump from one thing to

another, leaving a string of unfinished tasks behind you.

16. Conquer procrastination. Learn to do it now.

17. Make better time management a daily habit. Set your objectives, clarify your

priorities, plan and schedule your time. Do first things first. Resist your impulses

to do unscheduled tasks. Review your activities.

18. Never spend time on less important things when you could be spending it on

more important things.

19. Take time for yourself—time to dream, time to relax, time to live.

20. Develop a personal philosophy of time – what time means to you and how time

relates to your life.

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8 Ways Satan Keeps You From Worship

8 Ways Satan Keeps You From Worship

Satan wants to keep you from worshipping the One he hates. He wants to keep you from doing the right thing, whether that is spending time alone with the Lord in Scripture and prayer, attending and participating in public worship services, or any other thing that will draw you closer to the Lord. Here, courtesy of Thomas Brooks, are eight ways Satan will keep you from worship.

Here’s how I would encourage you to use the list. Think of the times that you decide to stay in bed instead of getting up to read the Bible; think of the times you scrapped family worship for no good reason; think of the times you stayed home from church instead of going to worship. Think of those things, and see which of these temptations is the one Satan brings to you.

1.      He makes the world look beautiful, attractive and desirable. Many people profess Christ and see him as desirable for a time. For a while they enjoy private and public worship and do it all with enthusiasm. But before long Satan presents to them worldly things and makes those look more beautiful and desirable than Christ, and many souls are drawn away. “Where one thousand are destroyed by the world’s frowns, ten thousand are destroyed by the world’s smiles.”

2.      He makes you aware of the fact that those who worship the Lord have often faced danger, loss and suffering. There are many men who would obey the Lord and worship him, except that they fear the consequences. Satan loves to present the high cost of obedience. This was the case for many in Jesus day: “Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue” (John 12:42).

3.      He gives you an awareness of the difficulty of worshipping well. Satan will whisper, “It is difficult to pray well, it is hard to spend time with the Lord and to persevere until he speaks to you through his Word, it isn’t worth the effort of going to church and being warm and friendly and engaging with other Christians.” Whatever God tells you to do, Satan will present it to you as a great burden or as something you do poorly, and in this way he will keep you from it.

4.      He leads you to wrongly understand the implications of the gospel. Christ has done everything for you and given everything you need in his death and resurrection. There is nothing left for you to do but rejoice in Christ and to serve him out of the joy of salvation. But Satan will lead you to make wrong inferences from what Christ has done, encouraging you, for example, to believe Christ has freed you from the need or desire to spend time with him or to gather with other Christians. He will allow you to see the gospel, but do all he can to make you understand it all wrong.

5.      He shows you how many of those who follow Christ with obedience are poor and despised. Satan will ensure you see that those who are most interested in worshipping God are the poorest and most despised of all. You can see echoes of this in John 7: “The Pharisees answered them, ‘Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed’.”

6.      He shows you that the majority of the people in the world, along with the great and mighty of the world, do not worship the Lord. Satan will ask, “Don’t you see that the great, the rich, the honorable, the intellectual elite, the wise, the most honored, and the sheer majority of people do not trouble themselves with worshipping the Lord? You would be much better off to be like them. After all, why would you think that you, of all people, have this figured out?” To have success here he will intentionally draw your attention away from Exodus 23:2 and many similar passages: “You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice.”

7.      He fills your mind with unimportant and distracting thoughts while you are attempting to worship. He afflicts you with so much distraction and futility that you are tempted to say, “I have no desire to hear from the Lord in his Word, no desire to speak to him in prayer, no desire to spend time with other Christians in worship services.” He crowds out the very thought of worship by the sheer weight of lesser concerns.

8.      He encourages you to take comfort in past performances of your religious duties and in that way he convinces you to stop trying. He reminds you that in the past you read so much and prayed so much and spent so much time in worship. And having reminded you, he convinces you that you have earned the right to coast for a while. “You already know this. You’ve already done this. You’ve already prayed this. You’ve been to better worship services than this.” And through it all he inclines you to rest from worship.

Source: http://www.challies.com/reading-classics-together/8-ways-satan-keeps-you-from-worship

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