I am stopping in for a quick post before I get back to the busy end of semester work!
Despite everything going on, I am always able to find more things to invest my time in. Balancing responsibilities, priorities, and life is tricky, so when I am asked to take on an additional activity, I always try to rate it on a scale of importance.
First I remember my current priorities:
- Jesus
- Husband
- Health
- School
- Personal Growth/Volunteer work
Then when a new and exciting opportunity presents itself, I try and see if it fits within any of those categories. If it doesn’t, I weigh the pros and cons based on the amount of time it will take and what I will gain from the experience.
Time is commonly a deciding factor for people when it comes to making decisions. If something is listed on my priorities and is important to me then I will ALWAYS make time for it. For instance, personal growth is on my list of priorities. It falls last but when it is paired up with anything that will help me grow spiritually it gets double bonus points, since Jesus time is number one on the list.
The problem has been that school and volunteer work have been monopolizing my time and taking away from the other things that are actually more urgent. Usually, I would have to recognize this on my own and find a way to make a change, but this time I was given a little help.
The college pastor, Brady Sharp, lent me a book called, Living by the Book by Howard G. Hendricks and William D. Hendricks to gain more structure and actually learn how to study my bible rather than randomly flipping through scripture.
At first, I was a little nervous that this book would be boring, hard to read, and filled with words and instructions that were over my head. After reading the first four chapters, it was nice to see that I was clearly wrong! The author uses the first four chapters as an introduction to the method he suggests for effective bible study, and relates to people with several different spiritual backgrounds.
I usually mark up my books like crazy; underlining and writing in the margin, but since I am borrowing this one, I have been taking pretty thorough notes! So far, I am excited about the information shared, simple as it might be (How to select a study bible), that I wanted to share ti with my readers and highly recommend it if you have a desire to grow!
I spend about an hour or two reading my bible, praying and spending time growing almost everyday. Not everyone has this kind of time, in fact I know it is extremely rare to have an extra 30 minutes, but I believe God organized my life this way and I am very, very thankful.
