Battling the Tyranny of the Urgent

If you have missed the last two weeks blogs, I want to encourage you to go back and read them on our website so you can understand the continued lessons from “Tyranny of the Urgent”.

For the last two weeks we have been blogging about battling the “Tyranny of the Urgent” a book written a long time ago by Charles Hummel.  I recently read this book and it impacted me in a way I didn’t expect.  You see,  much like you, Martha and I are busy.  We have a hard time sitting still.  We enjoy a busy schedule and until recently, we allowed the “Tyranny of the Urgent” to rule our lives.  But that is all changing.  On June 1st of this year, God called us to eliminate our crutch of depending on our business to provide for our radio show ministry and instead depend on Him to provide.    The business was keeping us busy.  We had many urgent things calling for our time.  God wanted us to focus.  Yet, we were too tired chasing the urgent to focus on the important.  That is all changing now.

On June 2nd Martha and I committed to starting every day with the Lord, alone in our quiet time with God and then together for a devotion and praying to start our day.

This has caused us to slow down. We are learning to listen. We are learning to trust and praise the Lord and wait upon Him, instead of worrying and being anxious.

This change required us to intentionally budget our time.  I can’t say that we have it perfected, but we are working on it.  Just like we budget our monthly expenditures to not exceed our monthly income, we need to budget our time for the important and be able to rebuff the urgent.  We mark off the time on our Outlook calendars for Quiet time, work , church, exercise, and getting 8 hours of sleep.  We have margin to accomplish new things when God brings them into our path but we are protective of our time when the “Urgent” attack.    C12 founder once said “You see we live in a microwave world, but we serve a crockpot God. “  The Lord is not honored by our darting about and our busyness. Jesus wants us to be at peace.  Are you? Do you have time in your schedule to see the people that God wants you to touch each day or are you too busy focused on urgent tasks?

Next week – missing the lost and hurting in pursuit of nothing…

About the Author, Jim Brangenberg

Jim's Mission: We are called to be examples of Christ to those around us. With that in mind, Jim is passionate about helping Christ followers connect their faith to their work!