Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Three time management lessons from the Life of Christ

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Ephesians 5:15-17

One of the best examples—if not the best—of biblical time management can be found in the life of Jesus. In “Ordering Your Private World,” Gordon MacDonald states, “When I look into the Bible, I am deeply impressed with the practical lessons on organization that one can learn from the life and work of Jesus Christ” (2007, 73). Jesus faced many of the same pressures and demands that ministers face today, yet MacDonald points out that He seemed never to have wasted a moment, never hurried, never had to play “catch-up,” and was never taken by surprise. Through his study of the life of Christ, MacDonald identified three lessons to be learned about how Christ managed his time.

The first lesson MacDonald identifies is Jesus’ clear understanding of His mission (74). He states, “[Jesus] had an overarching task to perform, and He measured His use of time against that sense of mission.” This lesson was illustrated in Luke 18 when Jesus stopped to heal a blind man on his way to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. The disciples, knowing that Jerusalem was still several hours away, got irritated with Jesus. However, Jesus momentarily laid aside the less important goal of making it to Passover for something he considered part of his prime mission. MacDonald notes, “Touching broken people like the blind man was a more significant matter, important enough for Jesus to invest His time.” Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus on the same trip was another example of how He organized his time based on the criteria of His mission. This criterion was written down by Luke in Jesus’ own words: “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

The second time management lesson from the life of Christ is that He understood His own limits (75). In order to fully identify with humanity, Jesus had to accept certain limitations as the incarnate Son of God. MacDonald asserts, “He shared our limitations but coped with them effectively—just as we must.” Jesus coped with his limitations by budgeting time alone with the Father. He set a perfect example “for the gathering of inner strength and resolve in order to compensate for one’s weaknesses when spiritual warfare begins.” This is exemplified in the forty days He spent in the wilderness before starting His public ministry, the night he spent in prayer before choosing the twelve disciples, His prayers on the mountainside after a physically draining time in Capernaum, the withdrawal to the Mount of Transfiguration, and His anguished prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was taken to be crucified.

Thirdly, Jesus lived out the example of time management in his training of the twelve disciples (76). MacDonald states, “With a world of millions to reach, Jesus budgeted the majority of His time to be with just a few simple men.” Jesus knew that His time of ministry on earth was short and that these simple men had an extraordinary job to do upon His departure. Thus, He budgeted time to share His Scriptural insights with them, to lead them by example and explain to them the deeper truths of His actions and talks with the crowds, to “debrief them when they returned from assignments, to rebuke them when they failed, and to affirm them when they succeeded.”

Jesus understood His mission, He understood his own limits, and He set aside time to train the ones who could effectively carry on His mission when He was gone. We, too, can put these lessons into practice to wisely redeem the precious, fleeting gift of time allotted to us in these evil days (Ephesians 5:16).

MacDonald, Gordon. “Ordering Your Private World.” Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.