Waste Management

Yesterday I wrote about the things that take up our time that might be misconstrued as time wasters even though they are beneficial (read that here.) Today we want to look at those things that actually drain energy from us. These might indicate ways that we squander our time and influence without realizing what we are doing.

We waste time when we:

• Allow forgiven sin to continue to cause us shame. When we genuinely confess sin to God and seek His forgiveness, we have to leave that in our past. God has cleared the slate and we only damage ourselves when we continue to stay sorrowful once we are forgiven.
  
• Make the same repeated mistakes without learning from them. We are all imperfect and will stumble in our thoughts, words, and actions. When we continue to do the same foolish things we are proving our own stubbornness and causing tremendous damage to ourselves and those close to us.
  
• Ignore opportunities to share Christ with people around us. God is constantly placing people in our path (divine appointments) and we can choose to ignore these moments due to lack of recognition, fear of rejection, or apathy. This is wasting our personal story and a chance to change someone's life for eternity.
  
• Fill our schedules with busyness that has no eternal impact. We can inflate our own ego by having a personal agenda that keeps us constantly moving but never influences the Kingdom. We waste tremendous time when we are consumed with creating a persona that has the appearance of impact, but really only satisfies our ego and deep need to feel valued.
  
• Fail to see the value in our loved ones. We have a limited number of conversations, times of investment, and experiences with the people we love. We can choose to use each one wisely or allow our emotional state to short circuit these by either causing negative impact or having zero influence at all.
  
• Put off what God is calling us to be part of. God will work through our choices and even our inaction, but we often fail to realize the significance of each day's opportunity to mature and develo our faith. 

We can work to eliminate the obvious small-impact time wasters in our life, but are we willing to tackle the difficult areas?