The Mature Man: Biblical Perspectives on Being a Man in Our Time By Thomas Bjerkholt

The mature man, who is he? He is responsible. He takes responsibility for his own life and that of others. The mature man is responsible and grown up, in contrast to the one who is irresponsible and childish. He takes personal and moral responsibility – in his home, at his work-place, in the church and in society. The Bible calls us to realize this mature man. And I am deeply convinced that the exhortations that are addressed to men and fathers in the New Testament will contribute to this taking place. Many are obviously skeptical to that today. Because question-marks are being put to the validity of the exhortations, both to those that are directed to the man, but, not least, to those directed to the woman. But let us approach the subject by listening first to some voices from our own time.

A Modern, Insecure Man

What do today’s people think about being a man or a woman? The answers are not unambiguous. One can sense insecurity. Men especially have become more insecure about what it means to be a man and a father. The ideal of equality can lead to the blurring of the differences between the sexes. But the thoughts and emotions are not always in accord. Listen to what the well-known Norwegian author Erlend Loe says in an interview:

We have grown up in a time of fundamental changes. Not of the kind ‘the nation must be built up, we’re threatened by an external enemy’, but of something as important as what is a man and what is a woman. Boys and girls were meant to be so very identical. Even as a child I realized this was rubbish … And so they (the parental generation) have upset the gender role pattern, which is good, completely necessary, but it has had some consequences. I believe my generation will experience long term effects with relation to something as big as daring to believe in love. You only have to speak to people who have been the victims of divorce; they struggle for years afterwards … The number of possibilities and amount of information means you have to be a rock to see what is important. There is so much garbage. I think many get lost there. And when the responsibility for your life only depends on you, I think the development will leave many disappointed and half-bitter destinies behind in the ditch (from the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet 06.02.04).

This is thought-provoking! Loe sees the necessity of questioning the traditional gender-roles. But at the same time he sees that the extreme equality principle is what he calls ‘rubbish’. The question of what it means to be a man or a woman is for him ‘fundamental’. But then there is also the problem that ‘the responsibility for your life only depends on you’ … It’s here that we Christians can answer : No, God has created us as man and woman, each with our own identity. And the responsibility for our lives doesn’t rest on us. We have a divine word that points to a design for being a man and for being a woman!

Longings in Our Own Time

Are we who want to follow the apostle’s words about men and women promoting an old-fashioned and reactionary masculine ideal? When we still want to claim that God has given the man a special responsibility in the home and the church, are we then upholding a masculine ideal that is oppressive and outdated? No way! For there are many voices in our time that express a longing for this mature man who takes responsibility.

In an interview with Dagbladet (The Magazine 12.01.02) the well-known Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad says this among other things:

I dream of a "Carl Larsson home". A large, white house at Vindern (a place in Oslo) with garden furniture, a jug of fruit juice here and a bunch of flowers there. And then I stick my head out to the children on the veranda and call out that the buns are ready …

What does your future husband look like? He must be someone who wants something. Who has a project that is greater than himself. And greater than me (!) One who pulls me along with him and has drive. If not I get exhausted. Since I am so self-willed he has to be someone who stands up for himself and says: "Yes, Åsne. We’re doing it" I don’t think it’s so easy to find him.

No, he isn’t so easy to find! But perhaps we can help her by boldly building up men of authority in the image of Christ through our preaching and teaching! Because it is after all thought-provoking to read what Åsne Seierstad says. She wants a strong and mature man who desires something. Thus she confirms something that I’ve always claimed: No woman wants soft men they can manipulate how they want. They want kind, but mature men.

Listen to another voice of the time, the well-known Norwegian crime writer Fredrik Skagen. He has helped to start an organization called ‘Men against violence’. The main aim of the organization is to work towards men behaving with respect and courtesy towards women, respecting boundaries and refraining from any kind of violence. In an article in Adresseavisen newspaper (15.04.02) he says the following : "Some people think that this [the work of the organization] is going to be an affair for soft men. They’re wrong, completely wrong. It’s a part of the very most important aspect of a man’s identity to take care of women and children. That’s what it’s about, that and nothing else" (My italics).

What else are these voices other than a cry for mature, adult men who will be both strong and mild, firm and sensitive? The way is not far to what the Bible calls us men to be. No these voices are in fact confirming what the Bible says.

A last example. Let me take a detour to something that happened in my student days at theological college, in the beginning of the 70s, when the feminist movement seriously hit our society and lead to the college altering its view on women priests. "Man and woman" was strenuously debated. Professor in Systematic Theology, Leiv Aalen, took part actively in the debate. I remember that many laughed at him when he once said something along the lines of "the man represents to a greater degree the active and persistent principle, the woman the more passive and receptive". This was really to speak "against the current", and as I’ve said, the old man was laughed at. But look : At Aruna Development and Culture Centre in Son in Norway the couple Lisbeth Lind and Øivinn Øi work with courses on living together. In an interview with the newspaper Aftenposten (22.01.95) they say: "We try to accentuate and not least to enhance the typical gender differences. And because in our culture we’ve been so preoccupied with smoothing over them, that in itself becomes an important thing. – While the woman in her foundation is love itself and constitutes its passive principle, the man is created to love, to be the practicing part. Because he constitutes the firm, unshakeable principle, it matters more for the woman to find a man she likes the ‘direction’ of and whom she can stretch herself after, than to influence him to see things differently. Otherwise she can quickly end up with a weakling or the negative cold shoulder". This couple would scarcely have laughed at professor Leiv Aalen! But theological students did. Now those who’ve been quoted here will scarcely rejoice over a view that leads to a No to female pastors, But my claim is that what we read here about man and woman is closely tied up with the masculine ideal that we find in the Bible, yes, amazingly close to the Bible’s thoughts about men and women and their differences.

The Need for Positive Manliness

Today’s men are often insecure about their own identity. The reasons can be many. But one of the main reasons is undoubtedly the fact that so many boys grow up alone with their mother, or experience difficult situations when a new partner moves in with her. The absence of a good man is a fundamental problem for all too many young boys. The fact that so many boys today grow up without a faithful and good father at their side is, according to the Norwegian social anthropologist Jan Brøgger "without historic parallels". The results of this are among other things an increase in violence, because male energy isn’t being channeled in a healthy way. The police inspector Arne Danne in Stockholm said therefore in an interview several years ago, "The reason for the violence is that men no longer bring up men. In the whole of the western world the need is the same : positive manliness".

Jesus of Nazareth : The True Man

Eivind Berggrav, who was a bishop in Norway, wrote the book The Man Jesus in 1921. He characterizes Jesus with these qualities : wise, manly, strong and free. He stresses the balance in Jesus’ personality : "In Jesus’ character there is a remarkable interaction between the authoritarian and the mild", he says. Jesus has power and strength in himself. He is the man of action who wants to improve, change, lift and ennoble. Berggrav compares Jesus to the male figures within Buddhism and Islam : "When we think about Buddha’s crossed arms and place him next to Jesus whose hands are always active, then in spite of all its spiritual refinement and beauty Buddhism nevertheless becomes a bed-ridden religion". On the other hand in Islam the man appears as one-sidedly cold and oppressive. "He may have a certain fire, but lacks depth and warmth", writes Berggrav. In the book The Wild Man Richard Rohr is preoccupied with similar ideas. The man’s energy has to be tamed, he says. The man’s authority must be a compassionate authority. Manliness implies action, responsibility, decisiveness.

It is this we find in perfect balance in Jesus. He is the Lion of Judah. He is the Lamb. He grasps the whip and clears out the temple court. He cries at the grave of Lazarus. He had the courage to reprimand the Pharisees and the scribes. He dared to show weakness when the trial was at its hardest—in Gethsemane. We see that love and strength, tenderness and firmness, mercy and truth are in perfect balance in him. Therefore Jesus is in a special way the true model for all men.

Ephesians 5:25-33

The Christian man is obliged to live in the same way that Jesus did in relation to his bride, the church. There is no text in the whole Bible that will protect women and children better than a brave and practical preaching of this passage. For this is how the husband must live, says Paul : Just as Jesus invests his whole life in service for his bride, so shall the husband’s life be a continuous service for his wife and his children. We sing about Jesus : "He walks by my side, he leads me along, he doesn’t grow tired as I do. And in mercy he guards me the whole day long, he never lets me down". As men we can feel a great inadequacy in relation to such an ideal. Who of us does not get tired? No, we are only human beings. None of us can be wholly and completely like the Master. But what a marvelous picture to aim at! The man Paul portrays for us is the one of authority and maturity who takes responsibility. He is a servant. He wants to lift and protect his bride, love like Christ, forgive, comfort, listen, lead. God has laid on him a responsibility that every husband should be aware of—in Jesus’ name.

C.S. Lewis has some interesting observations on this: "Christian law has crowned the husband. It has given him—or should I say ‘inflicted on’ him—a kind of leadership. The perfect embodiment of this leadership is not in the husband we all wish to be, but in him whose marriage is more like a crucifixion. The anointing for this dreadful coronation is not seen in the joys of a man’s marriage but in its sorrows. The husband who has a leadership that is Christ-like—and that is the only kind that is allowed—will never give up". Lewis is thinking here of the difficult marriage where the partner is difficult, demanding, unloving—and whatever it may be. As Christ loves sinners and endures, so will the husband’s Christ likeness become extra distinct when he remains faithful during "the bad times".

To Call the Man to Responsibility and Give Him Courage

In Isaiah 32:2 we find a beautiful picture of the good man: He shall be "like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land." This is a picture that is wholly in line with what modern psychology has said about the ideal relationship between the man, the woman, and the child : The woman must embrace the child, the man must embrace both the mother and the child! The man as protector and guardian, as life-giver and as the firm rock. Again: We will never manage it fully. We need God’s grace and power. But is there a more lovely picture to paint for our time?—A young couple visited me in church a while ago. They were living together. "I don’t know if I dare get married", he said. No, this lack of courage to take on commitment and responsibility marks more and more people. The young of today can "bungee jump", seek the challenges of extreme sport and set off for remote corners of the world in search of adventure. But the courage for commitment and responsible love "in good days and bad" is being lost by steadily more and more. The Church of Christ and we who preach God’s word must give them that courage and call them to their true image, in Jesus Christ!

Jesus Jr By Ray Ortlund

"Our local deity is not Jesus. He goes by the name Jesus. But in reality, our local deity is Jesus Jr.

Our little Jesus is popular because he is useful. He makes us feel better while conveniently fitting into the margins of our busy lives. But he is not terrifying or compelling or thrilling. When we hear the gospel of Jesus Jr., our casual response is “Yeah, that’s what I believe.” Jesus Jr. does not confront us, surprise us, stun us. He looks down on us with a benign, all-approving grin. He tells us how wonderful we really are, how entitled we really are, how wounded we really are, and it feels good.

Jesus Jr. appeals to the flesh. He does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. He is not able to understand them, much less impart them, because Jesus Jr. is the .magnification of Self, the idealization of Self, the absolutization of Self turning around and validating Self, flattering Self, reinforcing Self. Jesus Jr. does not change us, because he is a projection of us.

It is time to tear down Jesus Jr. It is time to rediscover the real Jesus. Still today, even to us, his invitation stands: “Come to me” (Matthew 11:28)." Ray Ortlund blog

Exultation In God

“Christian exultation in God begins with the shamefaced recognition that we have no claim on him at all, continues with wondering worship that while we were still sinners and enemies Christ died for us, and ends with the humble confidence that he will complete the work he has begun. So to exult in God is to rejoice not in our privileges but in his mercies, not in our possession of him but in his of us.”

John Stott

C. S. Lewis on True Love

"When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased."

- C. S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)

All in One

"When the Lord divided Canaan among the tribes of Israel, Levi received no share of the land. God said to him simply, “I am thy part and thine inheritance,” and by those words made him richer than all his brethren, richer than all the kings and rajas who have ever lived in the world. And there is a spiritual principle here, a principle still valid for every priest of the Most High God. The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever."

A.W. Tozer, "The Pursuit of God"

Lord I want to want You

From A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God:

    O God, I have tasted Your goodness,

    and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.

    I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace.

    I am ashamed of my lack of desire.

    O God, the Triune God,

    I want to want You;

    I long to be filled with longing;

    I thirst to be made more thirsty still.

    Show me Your glory, I pray,

    so I may know You indeed.

    Begin in mercy a new work of love within me…

    Give me grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland

    where I have wandered so long.

    In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer as Answers to the Lord's Questions

From J. I. Packer's Praying the Lord's Prayer:

    We need to see that the Lord's Pray is offering us model answers to the series of questions God puts to us to shape our conversation with him. Thus:

    What do you take me for, and what am I to you?

    Our Father in heaven.

    That being so, what is it that you really want most?

    The hallowing of your name; the coming of your kingdom; to see your will known and done.

    So what are you asking for right now, as a means to that end?

    Provision, pardon, protection.

    How can you be so bold and confident in asking for these things?

    Because we know you can do it, and when you do it, it will bring you glory!

Invitation to the Pain of Learning

Mortimer J. Adler

(1941)

In Adler's view of education, learning is not something one acquires externally like a new suit. It is, in his own words, "an interior transformation of a person's mind and character, a transformation which can be effected only through his own activity." It is as painful, but also as exhilarating, as any effort human beings make to make themselves better human beings, physically or mentally. The practices of educators, even if they are well-intentioned, who try to make learning less painful than it is, not only make it less exhilarating, but also weaken the will and minds of those on whom this fraud is perpetrated. The selling and buying of education all wrapped up in pretty packages is what is going on, but, Adler tells us, it is not the real thing. This essay was published in The Journal of Educational Sociology (February1941.)

G.V.D.

ON E of the reasons why the education given by our schools is so frothy and vapid is that the American people generally-the parent even more than the teacher-wish childhood to be unspoiled by pain. Childhood must be a period of delight, of gay indulgence in impulses. It must be given every avenue for unimpeded expression, which of course is pleasant; and it must not be made to suffer the impositions of discipline or the exactions of duty, which of course are painful. Childhood must be filled with as much play and as little work as possible. What cannot be accomplished educationally through elaborate schemes devised to make learning an exciting game must, of necessity, be forgone. Heaven forbid that learning should ever take on the character of a serious occupation-just as serious as earning money, and perhaps, much more laborious and painful.

The kindergarten spirit of playing at education pervades our colleges. Most college students get their first taste of studying as really hard work, requiring mental strain and continual labor, only when they enter law school or medical school. Those who do not enter the professions find out what working at anything really means only when they start to earn a living-that is, if four years of college has not softened them to the point which makes them unemployable. But even those who somehow recover from a college loaf and accept the responsibilities and obligations involved in earning a living-even those who may gradually come to realize the connection between work, pain, and earning-seldom if ever make a similar connection of pain and work with learning. "Learning" is what they did in college, and they know that that had very little to do with pain and work.

Now the attitude of the various agencies of adult education is even more softminded-not just softhearted-about the large public they face, a public which has had all sorts and amounts of schooling. The trouble is not simply that this large public has been spoiled by whatever schooling it has had-spoiled in the double sense that it is unprepared to carry on its own self-education in adult life and that it is disinclined to suffer pains for the sake of learning. The trouble also lies in the fact that agencies of adult education baby the public even more than the schools coddle the children. They have turned the whole nation-so far as education is concerned-into a kindergarten. It must all be fun. It must all be entertaining. Adult learning must be made as effortless as possible-painless, devoid of oppressive burdens and of irksome tasks. Adult men and women, because they are adult, can be expected to suffer pains of all sorts in the course of their daily occupations, whether domestic or commercial. We do not try to deny the fact that taking care of a household or holding down a job is necessarily burdensome, but we somehow still believe that the goods to be obtained, the worldly goods of wealth and comfort, are worth the effort. In any case, we know they cannot be obtained without effort. But we try to shut our eyes to the fact that improving one's mind or enlarging one's spirit is, if anything, more difficult than solving the problems of subsistence; or, maybe, we just do not believe that knowledge and wisdom are worth the effort.

We try to make adult education as exciting as a football game, as relaxing as a motion picture, and as easy on the mind as a quiz program. Otherwise, we will not be able to draw the big crowds, and the important thing is to draw large numbers of people into this educational game, even if after we get them there we leave them untransformed.

What lies behind my remark is a distinction between two views of education. In one view, education is something externally added to a person, as his clothing and other accoutrements. We cajole him into standing there willingly while we fit him; and in doing this we must be guided by his likes and dislikes, by his own notion of what enhances his appearance. In the other view, education is an interior transformation of a person's mind and character. He is plastic material to be improved not according to his inclinations, but according to what is good for him. But because he is a living thing, and not dead clay, the transformation can be effected only through his own activity. Teachers of every sort can help, but they can only help in the process of learning that must be dominated at every moment by the activity of the learner. And the fundamental activity that is involved in every kind of genuine learning is intellectual activity, the activity generally known as thinking. Any learning which takes place without thinking is necessarily of the sort I have called external and additive-learning passively acquired, for which the common name is "information." Without thinking, the kind of learning which transforms a mind, gives it new insights, enlightens it, deepens understanding, elevates the spirit simply cannot occur.

Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work-in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think. To make boys and girls, or men and women, think-and through thinking really undergo the transformation of learning-educational agencies of every sort must work against the grain, not with it. Far from trying to make the whole process painless from beginning to end, we must promise them the pleasure of achievement as a reward to be reached only through travail. I am not here concerned with the oratory that may have to be employed to persuade Americans that wisdom is a greater good than wealth, and hence worthy of greater effort. I am only insisting that there is no royal road, and that our present educational policies, in adult education especially, are fraudulent. We are pretending to give  them something which is described in the advertising as very valuable, but which we promise they can get at almost no expense to them.

Not only must we honestly announce that pain and work are the irremovable and irreducible accompaniments of genuine learning, not only must we leave entertainment to the entertainers and make education a task and not a game, but we must have no fears about what is "over the public's head." Whoever passes by what is over his head condemns his head to its present low altitude; for nothing can elevate a mind except what is over its head; and that elevation is not accomplished by capillary attraction, but only by the hard work of climbing up the ropes, with sore hands and aching muscles. The school system which caters to the median child, or worse, to the lower half of the class; the lecturer before adults-and they are legion-who talks down to his audience; the radio or television program which tries to hit the lowest common denominator of popular receptivity-all these defeat the prime purpose of education by taking people as they are and leaving them just there.

The best adult education program that has ever existed in this country was one which endured for a short time under the auspices of the People's Institute in New York, when Everett Dean Martin was its director, and Scott Buchanan his assistant. It had two parts: one consisted of lectures which, so far as possible, were always aimed over the heads of the audience; the other consisted of seminars in which adults were helped in the reading of great books-the books that are over everyone's head. The latter part of the program is still being carried on by the staff of St. John's College in the cities near Annapolis; and we are conducting four such groups in the downtown college of the University of Chicago. I say that this is the only adult education that is genuinely educative simply because it is the only kind that requires activity, makes no pretense about avoiding pain and work, and is always working with materials well over everybody's head.

I do not know whether radio or television will ever be able to do anything genuinely educative. I am sure it serves the public in two ways: by giving them amusement and by giving them information. It may even, as in the case of its very best "educational" programs, stimulate some persons to do something about their minds by pursuing knowledge and wisdom in the only way possible-the hard way. But what I do not know is whether it can ever do what the best teachers have always done and must now be doing; namely, to present programs which are genuinely educative, as opposed to merely stimulating, in the sense that following them requires the listener to be active not passive, to think rather than remember, and to suffer all the pains of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps. Certainly so long as the so called educational directors of our leading networks continue to operate on their present false principles, we can expect nothing. So long as they confuse education and entertainment, so long as they suppose that learning can be accomplished without pain, so long as they persist in bringing everything and everybody down to the lowest level on which the largest audience can be reached, the educational programs offered on the air will remain what they are today-shams and delusions.

It may be, of course, that the radio and television, for economic reasons must, like the motion picture, reach with certainty so large an audience that the networks cannot afford even to experiment with pro grams which make no pretense to be more palatable and pleasurable than real education can be. It may be that the radio and television cannot be expected to take a sounder view of education and to undertake more substantial programs than now prevail among the country's official leaders in education-the heads of our school system, of our colleges, of our adult education associations. But, in either case, let us not fool ourselves about what we are doing. "Education" all wrapped up in attractive tissue is the gold brick that is being sold in America today on every street corner. Everyone is selling it, everyone is buying it, but no one is giving or getting the real thing because the real thing is always hard to give or get. Yet the real thing can be made generally available if the obstacles to its distribution are honestly recognized. Unless we acknowledge that every invitation to learning can promise pleasure only as the result of pain, can offer achievement only at the expense of work, all of our invitations to learning, in school and out, whether by books, lectures, or radio and television programs will be as much buncombe as the worst patent medicine advertising, or the campaign pledge to put two chickens in every pot.

Time Well Spent, BY R.C Sproul

Time Well Spent (excerpt)

By R.C. Sproul

Time is the great leveler. It is one resource that is allocated in absolute egalitarian terms. Every living person has the same number of hours to use in every day. Busy people are not given a special bonus added on to the hours of the day. The clock plays no favorites.

We all have an equal measure of time in every day. Where we differ from one another is in how we redeem the time allotted. When something is redeemed it is rescued or purchased from some negative condition. The basic negative condition we are concerned with is the condition of waste. To waste time is to spend it on that which has little or no value.

I am a time waster. When I think of the time I have wasted over the course of my life, I am hounded by remorse. This guilt is not a false one fostered by an overactive work ethic. The guilt is real because the time I have wasted is real time.

The late Vince Lombardi introduced the adage, “I never lost a game, I just ran out of time.” This explanation points to one of the most dramatic elements of sports—the race against the clock. The team that is most productive in the allotted time is the team that wins the game. Of course, in sports, unlike life, there are provisions for calling time-out. The clock in a sports contest can be temporarily halted. But in real life there are no timeouts…

Given my propensity to waste time, I have learned a few tricks to help me beat the clock. They may be helpful to some of you.

First, I realize that all of my time is God’s time and all of my time is my time by His delegation. God owns me and my time. Yet, He has given me a measure of time over which I am a steward. I can commit that time to work for other people, visit other people, etc. But it is time for which I must give an account.

Second, time can be redeemed by concentration and focus. One of the greatest wastes of time occurs in the human mind. Our hands may be busy but our minds idle. Likewise, our hands may be idle while our minds are busy. Woolgathering, day-dreaming, and indulging in frivolous fantasy are ways in which thoughts may be wasted in real time. To focus our minds on the task at hand—with fierce concentration—makes for productive use of time.

Third, the mind can redeem valuable time taken up by ordinary or mechanical functions. For example, the mechanics of taking a shower are not difficult. In this setting the mind is free for problem solving, creative thinking, or the composition of themes. Many of my messages and lectures are germinated in the shower. When I used to play a lot of golf, I found that the time I had between shots was a great time for composing messages in my mind.

Fourth, use your leisure time for pursuits that are life enriching. Leisure time is often spent on avocations. Reading is a valuable use of time. It enriches life to read outside of your major field or area of expertise. Augustine once advised believers to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible, since all truth is God’s truth. Other avocations that are enriching include the arts. I like to study the piano and I dabble in painting. No one will ever mistake me for a serious musician or an accomplished artist. But these avocations open up the world of beauty to me that enhances my view of God and His manifold perfections. I also enjoy working cross-word puzzles to warm up the little gray cells and to expand my vista of verbal expression.

Fifth, find ways to cheat the “Sand Man.” Several years ago I had an epiphany about time management. Though my life-long pattern had been to stay up late at night I realized that for me, the hours between 9–12 p.m. were not very productive. I reasoned that if I used those hours to sleep I might secure more time for more productive things. Since then my habit has been to retire between 8–9 p.m. when possible and rise at 4 a.m. This has effected a wonderful revolution for my schedule. The early hours of the day are a time free from distractions and interruptions, a marvelous time for study, writing, and prayer….

Sixth, use drive-time for learning. Driving a car is another mechanical function that allows the mind to be alert to more than what is happening on the roadway. The benefits of audio tape can be put to great use during these times. I can listen to lectures and instructional tapes while driving, thereby redeeming the time.

Finally, in most cases a schedule is more liberating than restricting. Working with a schedule helps enormously to organize our use of time. The schedule should be a friend, not an enemy. I find it freeing in that the schedule can include time for leisure, recreation, and avocation. It helps us find the rhythm for a God-glorifying productive life.

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[The article “Time Well Spent: Right Now Counts Forever” was written by Dr. R.C. Sproul and published in Tabletalk magazine (September 1997, pp. 4–7). This excerpt is reprinted by the kind permission of Ligonier Ministries.]