“I don’t have enough time.”

Who among us does not say or hear that phrase numerous times in an average week? Motivational speaker and author, Zig Ziglar, had this to say about having enough time, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24 hour days.” I started reflecting on that quote yesterday and have been trying to figure out how well that jives with my own life experience.

When I was in college, I barely had enough time to study and have fun, even though my class load and work-load was much less than a full-time job. Then, I graduated, and got a “real-job” working 45-50 hours a week, and enjoying a 50 minute driving commute each day, each way. The “real job” dealt a crushing blow to my free time. I got married shortly after getting a real job, and that placed some new requirements on my time. I had to “make time” to continue developing and growing my relationship with my wife. Shortly after getting married we had our first child. I honestly thought we would never make it. Staying up for most of the night, trying to take turns, being beyond completely exhausted for months at a time.

If my 23 year old self were to meet my now 45 year old self, the 23 year old self would fall over dead if he knew how much more “busy” his life was going to get. The 45 year old me would say, ‘You have no idea how much free time you have with only one little baby.’

As I write this, I am preparing to go out of town on a weekend youth retreat. I will be going to a convention center 3.5 hours away and will be sharing a hotel suite with 10+ high school boys for the next two and a half days. I now have four kids, who range in age from 11-22. I have come to realize, from experience, that older kids can be a much greater demand on your time than younger kids. I am coaching my 11 year old competitive little league team which practices 2-3 times a week or more pre-season, and consumes almost every evening and weekend during the season. My wife and I have 3 additional kids living with us for the last year who are ages 17-22.  Just keeping the toilet paper and the orange juice in-stock, and maintaining the house, plumbing, etc., is a rather time-consuming set of activities.

I have been a small business owner for the last several years, which has been both very rewarding and very exhausting and time-consuming at the same time. Our family works hard to have several family dinners every week, and we are heavily involved in growing our lives together spiritually and are engaged in many outside church-type activities, this youth event being one of them.

I am getting out of breath just writing it out. My wife and I have date nights most every week and we do our best to invest in the marriage relationship. The younger, 23 year old me, would never have imagined how much he was going to be stretched the older he got. However, as I look back on it, I don’t feel that much more stressed out now, than I did 22 years ago. I have the same number of hours in the day, I just make more more efficient use of that time now than I did. To Zig’s point, I have better (or more demanding) direction now than I did 22 years ago. But, it’s more than just the direction. I have been neglecting physical fitness for the last couple years. I have a great deal of “direction” that I should be doing it, but I am not. I have had a few false starts, so I know it can and will fit in my schedule. I have come to find out that making effective use of my time is much more than direction. It is discipline and most importantly accountability.

Owning your own business gives you plenty of accountability to be disciplined. If you are not disciplined, you can quickly lose everything. Reading the bible consistently was very difficult in my early years. For the last few years, I have consistently read the Bible almost every day, and have read it cover to cover going on 4 times now in the last couple years. Why? I always had the direction; but I lacked the accountability to be disciplined.

For the last few years, I have intentionally scheduled a daily, 20 minute phone call with a good friend, to “ponder” a daily Bible reading and what it means in our lives. Direction + Discipline + Accountability = Effective Use of Time. I used to exercise religiously. By religiously I mean, Christmas Eve, New years Day – every day, for several years. I would sometimes workout at 5AM and again at 11PM the same day. How did I get it done? My workout partner was not only a good friend, but was a fanatic about working out and being on time. He gave me a serious amount of accountability to be disciplined in that area. When he had to move out of the area several years back, guess what? I worked out for a few days more out of sheer conditioned instinctive response, and then never worked out consistently again. Why? Lack of the accountability required to maintain the discipline.

So, looking back at my own experience over the last 20+ years, I can say Zig Ziglar is right, or, at least “partially right.” Direction is a necessary, although not the sufficient condition to making effective use of time. You need to add discipline to the mix; but, that still is not enough. I could not find the author of the following quote, but it is so true nonetheless, “Accountability beats discipline every time.” True tha! Accountability makes my weak discipline strong. If I ever want to be consistent working-out again on a regular basis, I will have to find a consistent workout partner and we can hold each other accountable to the discipline of working-out. In my life I have found that Direction + Discipline + Accountability = Effective Use of Time.

Several years ago, my wife Vicky and I heard about a new ministry outreach to street kids in the Philippines called Face the Children (FTC). During the initial fundraising banquet, we listened to Jeff Pessina, the leader of Philippine Frontline Ministries, share stories of street kids he intersected with and those stories broke our hearts. Since then I have been blessed to have taken more than a dozen trips to the FTC facilities in the Philippines, many with my wife, my kids and their friends, good friends from my church; as well as have the opportunity to work alongside my business partners to establish and grow a missional business in the center of the city that Philippine Frontline calls home.

On each of theses dozen plus trips, I have prioritized spending time both with kids in the FTC program, as well as kids living on the streets who are unwilling to come into the program. I expected to use my love and passion for kids as well as my years of parenting experience to really have an impact in the lives of those kids, and I expected to feel fulfilled from my investment in them. While I have had a positive influence on many of those kids over the years, those experiences have really caused me to question my faith – and not in the ways you might think. Most people expect I would question how a loving God could allow terrible things like kids living on the streets; however, having been raised by a father who has two doctoral degrees, one in the philosophy of science, I had already wrestled with those kinds of questions long before coming to the Philippines, and I have come to logical conclusions on those questions; conclusions that do not contradict my beliefs and understandings about God and the world we find ourselves in.

After a few initial experiences with abused, abandoned, and dangerously neglected kids, I realized that they needed a message of hope and encouragement. I couldn’t think of anything more encouraging than Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” Explaining to hurting kids that God created them to be masterpieces, and that they have important work to do that has been commissioned by God before they were even born, was always received warmly and with a smile. I was surprised at how it made ME feel when I would explain this to the kids – deep down I felt disingenuous. While I believed Ephesians 2:10 philosophically, I didn’t believe in it realistically. God’s spirit was convicting me that I really didn’t believe Ephesians 2:10. I didn’t believe it for myself, for my wife, for my own kids, for the kids in the youth groups I led, the other families in my small groups I attended, etc. I desperately wanted to believe it for the street kids; but I realized that if I really believed it myself, my daily life would look a lot different than it currently did. I quickly began to feel like a hypocrite.

I had two choices: first, to abandon Ephesians 2:10 and find some other ways to encourage the street kids, or second, to begin a life-long journey of trying to believe Ephesians 2:10 in my life, in the lives of my close relationships and casual acquaintances. If I did that, I would have the integrity I needed to envision people I didn’t know very well, with the Ephesians 2:10 message. I chose the to start the Ephesians 2:10 journey back in 2006 and I have found it to be a difficult journey. You have to consistently believe the best about yourself and others close to and far from you, want the best for them, and take initiative to envision, plant and cultivate the best in them and in yourslef, which sometimes means weeding out things that choke out and destroy the best. You have to hold these beliefs in spite of the day to day realities of selfishness, pride, failure, and the tendency to favor the good at the expense of the best, both in your own life and in the lives of others.

I have struggled to make progress on this journey, and sometimes it feels like I have taken two steps backward for every one step I take forward. But I believe that most people, if not everyone in the world, is waiting for someone to unleash the masterpiece that each individual desperately hopes is inside of them. I believe the future of the Christian church is closely tied to the envisioning of Ephesians 2:10, and all of the related fallout from making that vision a reality. This fallout includes outreach to the poor, the fight for social justice, and following Jesus. Please check out the about us page and check back for more about the journey of living out Ephesians 2:10.