1,000 minutes in the hands of God

You and I have lived 1,000 minutes over and over again.

In his book, The 1000 Minute Principle HERE , Tom Evershed writes:

Let’s start by supposing that you wake up in the morning at 0630 and go to sleep at 2310 [11 p.m.]. Looking at those times it’s not immediately obvious how much time you are actually awake during each day. Any quick calculations? Well, I can tell you that it is 16 hours and 40 minutes. There are no revelations there… until we count it in a slightly different way. This is exactly 1000 minutes.

We have 1,000 productive minutes a day.

Ryan Serhant has taken this principle and applied it to business. Ryan is a real estate broker, founder and CEO of SERHANT, and star of Netflix show “Owning Manhattan.” In THIS video summary we learn: The 1,000 minute rule is a time management philosophy that Ryan Serhant uses to optimize his life and business. Serhant believes that people have 1440 minutes in a day, but about 404 of those minutes are spent eating, sleeping, and family time. He says that the remaining 1,000 minutes are available for people to use to advance their careers and achieve their goals.

I AM NOT ENDORSING EITHER OF THESE INDIVIDUALS, but like the world carefully measures time, God has asked us to be cognizant of time, too. Psalm 90:12 says: Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. God even organized our time on earth into days as determined by the sun and moon. If God measures time in days, then so must we!

As Christ followers, how are we going to use our time?

When I read Ryan’s encouragement to use our 1,000 minutes each day to “advance [our] careers and achieve [our] goals, my heart responds with passion and my mind floods with bible verses. You and I can use our minutes to advance God’s Kingdom and achieve His goals for our lives.

We can leverage our 1,000 minutes for God!

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

There are practical things to learn about using our time wisely to meet our financial responsibilities, parental and relational demands, and maintain good health. But ultimately, all our time-saving efforts die with us. The bible tells us our lives are like a mist.  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4:14  We can’t grab, contain or control mist. Our life is hear today and gone tomorrow.

We can’t take anything with us.

This truth is sobering, but we can use our 1,000 minutes a day to leverage our lives for God’s Kingdom so the influence of our lives lives long after this life is over. In fact, the fruit of our labor in the Kingdom of God lives forever. And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. (Mark 4:26-27)

Here is the truth for all of us.

Those of us who are living this life with God’s Kingdom in mind are scattering seeds about God and Jesus into the lives of people. Our scattering looks haphazard and messy, but for those of us who are scattering, here’s the promise. When you and I get to heaven and see what God grew with our scattering efforts, we won’t know how He did it.

What God does with our efforts will look nothing like the seeds we planted.

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (Mark 4:30-32)

What God does with our 1,000 minutes will be far more than we can imagine.

Picture Explanation: Ralph Waldo Emerson put it perfectly when he said “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” And God promises that the creation of 1,000 minutes a day can produce results beyond our wildest dreams, and we won’t know how He did it.

Speaking of living a short life with eternity in mind: The inaugural co-ed online One Gritty Blink Bible study ended this week! If you want to join the next online study, click on the Oaks Ministries link in the copyright line and send me an email so I can place you on a list to be contacted to participate in a future study! Let’s not just focus on things in this short life, but also what counts for eternity.

Note: No part of my posts are derived from A.I. Thoughts and writing stem from my mind and heart as I process life week-by-week and continue to grow in my understanding of God and how to apply His wisdom to the world around me.

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