“I have never had as much trouble with any man as I have with myself.”
D. L. Moody
“Amen!” to that! I have given myself far more trouble than I have been given by anyone else. The chief trouble I have given to myself is the inability to make myself do what I should do. Self management or self-control has been a life-long fight for me.
Zig Ziglar once said, “The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.”
“Amen!” to that! I have made this trade far too often.
What I want most is to honor God and love my wife well and serve faithfully at CBC and share Christ with the people God puts in my path and be physically fit and give help to my friends and be generous and build time margin in my life and build financial margin into my life and keep my house and cars in good condition and build emotional margin in my life and love my kids, grandkids, and parents well and on and on and on… Trouble is there are too many times when I trade all this for a game or games of hearts on the computer.
I think there is a time to “veg out” with a game of computer hearts. But I don’t think that is all the time or even most of the time or even very much of the time. There is a time more often to manage myself and make myself do what I should do and what I want to do in order to have the things I want most—please see the list above.
In the Wisdom Literature of the Bible God gives some instruction on the issue of self-management—here is a small sample of His large volume of instruction:
- Proverbs 12:24, 27. “The hand of the diligent will rule, but the
slack hand will be put to forced labor. A lazy man does not roast his pray, but the precious possession of a man is diligence.”
- Proverbs 16:32. “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.”
- Proverbs 6:6-1. Paraphrase: “Look at the ant and learn something about diligence and self control.”
- Proverbs 24:30-34. Paraphrase: “Look at the field and vineyard of a sluggard and learn something about diligence and self control.”
“The precious possession of a man is diligence.”
Wow! The precious possession of a man is not a Rolex or a Lexus or a pallet of gold bullion. The precious possession of a man is diligence. I will take a pallet of that!
In his book The Three Boxes of Life author Richard N. Bolles gives a serious list of self-management skills. I am listing them here for your reading pleasure. I hope this is some help to you in the fight with self-management:
- Ability to choose, or make a decision.
- Alertness.
- Assertiveness.
- Astuteness.
- Attention to details, awareness, thoroughness, conscientiousness.
- Authenticity.
- Calmness.
- Candidness.
- Commitment to grow.
- Concentration.
- Cooperation.
- Courage, risk-taking, adventuresome-ness.
- Curiosity.
- Diplomacy.
- Easy-goingness.
- Emotional stability.
- Empathy.
- Enthusiasm.
- Expressiveness.
- Firmness.
- Flexibility.
- Generosity.
- Good judgment.
- High energy level, dynamic-ness.
- Honesty, integrity.
- Initiative, drive.
- Loyalty.
- Open-mindedness.
- Optimism.
- Orderliness.
- Patience, persistence.
- Performing well under stress.
- Playfulness.
- Poise, self-confidence.
- Politeness.
- Punctual-ness.
- Reliability, dependability.
- Resourcefulness.
- Self-control.
- Self-reliance.
- Self-respect.
- Sense of humor.
- Sincerity.
- Spontaneity.
- Tactfulness.
- Tidiness.
- Tolerance.
- Versatility.
To me this is such a helpful list. “The precious possession of a man is diligence.”
I don’t know the whole answer about gaining diligence and self-control but it seems to me that part of the answer is constantly reminding myself about the things that I want most.
Pastor Dave:
Thanks for your thoughts on diligence and self-management! I have attached below a fiction piece I wrote as an assignment for the professional writing course I took several years ago. The details are culled from actual facts of history, and Jack and Evelyn were my Mom and Dad! He did in fact ferry troops to Omaha beach. I’m glad I’m alive because I was born after he returned. If you have seen the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” you know what a miracle that is.
Lee Anderson
The Golden Chains of Prayer
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of….
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Sunday morning, June 3, 1944.
As she sat in church that Sunday, Evelyn imagined Jack sitting beside her. She did that a lot these days, to ease her mind. That was because not only wasn’t he here with her, but often she didn’t even know where in the world he was at any given moment. And it was a very dangerous world right now. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she hadn’t received a letter from Jack for months. That wasn’t like him.
As Pastor Edwards continued his message, Evelyn put away her feelings, at least for the moment. Tomorrow morning she would go back to the office to work for Secretary of War Henry Stimson. She’d continue to send obituary letters to families who’d lost a son, confirming the details of his death.
Such simple words. Such sterile language. Yet they would explode in the mind of some real person somewhere, when the letter arrived, and their world would change forever.
What a horrible thing to get in the mail, she imagined.
Then she shoved the thought out as quickly as it had barged in. There are some things you don’t have to think about, Evelyn, she reminded herself. But she had been crying herself to sleep lately, and her emotions were raw.
Suddenly, she emerged from her sleep-deprived fog. Pastor Edwards was concluding. “This is a time of world-wide fear and uncertainty. Let us remember the
words of our Lord Jesus Christ, as recorded in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 29: “…not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.”
On Monday morning, Evelyn was back at her desk, staring at her Royal typewriter. For her, the War had become agonizingly personal, no matter how she tried to be “objective” about her work.
When she finally dragged herself home that evening, she didn’t have much appetite. But she put food in her mouth anyway. She was exhausted, not so much from work, but from uncertainty. She decided to go to bed early and get some extra rest.
Before she slipped under the covers, she knelt by the side of her bed, a habit maintained since childhood, and prayed: “Dear Heavenly Father, please keep my sparrow–
my Jack–from falling today.”
Then she pulled the covers up to her neck and cried herself to sleep–again.
. . .
That evening, the troops had been deployed and battleships were on their way. Nearly three million soldiers were preparing to slam against Hitler’s Atlantic wall in France. D-Day was set in motion. Half-way across the world, Evelyn tossed and turned in her bed–she tried to sleep, but she couldn’t–something was wrong. Jack was in danger–she could sense it. She poured out her heart to the Lord again: “Dear Heavenly Father, I can’t sleep with worry over Jack. You know what kind of protection he needs right now–even if I don’t.”
…
It was Tuesday morning, 6:30 AM on June 6, 1944, and Jack Anderson retched until his stomach was empty.
Then he forced himself to re-focus on his orders: Ferry five loads of 200 men back and forth from the mother ship to Omaha Beach.
He knew that Evelyn would be praying for him even now, even if she didn’t know what kind of danger he might be facing. She was a sensitive young woman–a woman of prayer, and, on more than one occasion, her prayerful “woman’s intuition” had protected him from harm.
He entertained one more fond thought of her and then the landing craft lurched forward, and Jack and his first load of men were dumped into the shallow water a short
distance from shore. Withering machine-gun fire spat from the Nazis on the cliffs overhead. Men all around Jack began to fall.
…
On Tuesday morning, Evelyn knew that if she endured another sleepless night, she’d need to call in sick. She couldn’t type accurately if she kept falling asleep at the keys. Unknown to Evelyn, her prayers, (and the prayers of multitudes of women throughout the Free World) had been preparing the way for the Allies’ Normandy invasion in subtle ways.
Years before the invasion, Juan Pujol Garcia, a flamboyant Spaniard, was recruited by Great Britain’s Secret Service as a double agent. Garcia was trusted as a valuable spy by the Nazis, but his information was entirely fabricated. He had persuaded the Third Reich’s top commanders that any invasion at Normandy would be a decoy for a major assault farther down the coast of France, near Calais.
That evening, Evelyn, her mother, and the entire neighborhood gathered around the kitchen table. They carefully positioned the radio in the center so that everyone could hear clearly. President Roosevelt offered a prayer for the nation, and then concluded his remarks:
“Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a countenance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words
of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts….Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.”
…
Several months later, Jack took out his paper and pen: “Dearest Evelyn. Please forgive me for not writing, but the Navy would not release any correspondence until the Invasion was over. I so appreciated your prayers throughout these past several months, more than you will ever know. Remember that plaque your Mom gave us last Christmas–the one with “Prayer Changes Things” on it? Well, I want to keep it on the desk in my study in our new home. When I get home I’ll tell you everything that happened during the last several months.”
….More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of….
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
istory.
Thanks again for your good aim with that hammer! I need daily reminders on this issue. I read another quote recently that is pithy and applies here:
“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” – Jim Rohn
I keep this one at the top of my “Quotes” document to keep reminding myself to remember what I really want.
Fight the good fight, keep your eyes on the Lord, the war is already won!