I have to tell you that I have entered 2012 wanting to find a new way. I’ve been running pretty hard so I’ve been asking God to show me a better way to do things as I know I cannot continue at the pace I’ve been going.

He has been revealing some cool things to me and bringing things to my attention at exactly the right time. One of those things was a monthly email I received last month from my friend Patrick McBane from Marketplace Solutions. I’ve included his email here although I’ve modified it a bit to fit the season we’re in:

As we depart the Christmas season and enter into a new year, it is a great time to evaluate our lives. During the holiday season, we’re exhorted from all directions to embrace the true spirit of Christmas. But how do you keep your eyes on Jesus when you’re under siege by the pressures of Christmas marketing, travel plans, deadlines, family drama, bills, and everything else that encroaches into the spirit of the season? Now as we enter into a new year and back into the normal routine of work and the accompanying stress, it’s even easier to forget all about Jesus. For many of us something’s got to change and prayer can be the key.

As we pray it’s important to ask for the things that matter and that move us closer to our Heavenly Father.  Let’s read these two key scriptures together:

“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” - Matthew 6:33

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” – Psalm 90:12

“What does that mean, “to number our days aright”? Well, let me ask you another question. If I were to ask you, “What is the thing in your life that you find hardest to manage? What is the thing that you so often find yourself short of, that you don’t have enough of?” What would you answer?”

(Seriously… take the time to answer these questions before you go on)

Derek Prince once answered this way, “You might perhaps think money, but in my experience there’s one thing that’s much harder to manage than money, something that I’m much more often short of than money and that is time. I believe time is the hardest thing to manage properly in our lives. I believe that the stewardship of time is perhaps the supreme test of our discipline and our real Christianity. And so I pray like the psalmist, “Teach me to number my days aright.” Teach me to set my priorities aright, teach me to give enough time to the things that matter most.

“You see, your priorities of time really indicate the values of your life. Things that have low priority probably will drop off the bottom of the list. If you don’t give high priority to the things that really matter, your life will be out of order. So you, like me, need to echo that prayer, ‘Teach me to number my days aright, teach me right priorities, teach me to manage my time.’”

Based on those questions you answered above what will you adjust so that your Short-Fall is eliminated? What will you bring the King of Kings this year? I’d encourage you to bring Him the gift of time.

Here is a great prayer for us for 2012: Heavenly Father, thank You for the gift of Your Son – Jesus. Thank You for eternal life – a dimension of time with no constraints as we know them today. Bring that eternal perspective into view today. Thank You for Your patience with a stubborn, often unwilling people that find time slipping through our fingers day after day – year after year. We ask that you would Teach Us to Number Our Days. Teach us to spend our TIME extravagantly on You and those You have given us to love all around us. Redeem the time that we have wasted on unnecessary things so that we can use it for Your purposes, plans and glory.