I had the opportunity to meet with a young woman from our church family who has been serving as a missionary for the past eight months in Cambodia, and is now home for a month before returning to continue to serve Jesus there. I asked her what is one of the most important things she has learned during her time here and after giving it some thought replied, “I had forgotten how intentional you have to be in order to spend time with God. It’s easier to serve God in a third world country than it is here.” Then she added, “Do you know what I mean?”
I do. Having invested short periods of time many times in places such as Cambodia, Mexico, and Cuba, I know what it’s like to have the lights go out when it gets dark, meaning it’s bedtime. That can be as early as 8:00 or 8:30 pm. That means I’m awake at 3:00 or 4:00 am and I don’t have to get up until 6:00 or 7:00 giving me three or four hours to do what? To be with God. To pray. To read the Bible. In short, In those places I start my day steeped in God and His word. It makes it much easier to serve God, when I have already invested the first several hours of the day with Him.
Then there’s here. While I could go to bed at 8:00 or 9:00 pm, I seldom do. After a long day of work, I want to “wind down.” That usually means watching a television show with Nancy. A good thing to be sure, but not the best thing. After a long day of work, it would be better to catch up with Nancy and then go to bed. That way I would be able to get enough sleep to stay healthy, to be refreshed, and still get up early enough to invest the first two to three hours with God.
What does that have to do with leadership? Because I’m a pastor, that has everything to do with leadership for me. After all, I serve God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so investing the first several hours of the day with Him is the best way to lead as a pastor. If you’re not a pastor, but you’re a believer, the idea of going to bed early and getting up early is hardly a new concept for leadership. Benjamin Franklin, one of the great leaders of history said, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
Distractions keep us from it, or distractions can keep us from it. The young woman pointed out that it takes so much more intentionality to serve Jesus here in the U.S. than in Cambodia. The pace of life may be the biggest distraction we face here. We are expected to go from 0 to 60 in as little time as possible in everything we do. I noted last week that I am in a particularly full time right now, that I’m going through a two-week period with a lot of additional hours, and night meetings every night. I’m on the downhill side of that with only six more of those meetings to go. I have to say I enjoy the pace. I like going sixty.
That’s part of the distraction. Whether we like the pace or not, most of us keep it. It threatens our health over time. It threatens our effectiveness over time. It threatens our leadership over time, because Benjamin Franklin wasn’t wrong. Starting the day early regardless of our belief system gives us a head start on everyone else. If we start the race several hours before everyone else we don’t have to sprint to be ahead. We can even start the day “sharpening our saw,” as Steven Covey called it. We can prepare ourselves for what’s coming. We can get instructions if not from God and His written word, then from other sources of wisdom. As we do those things we set ourselves up for success.
The distractions will come. They are part of our lives here. The only question is: Will we handle them intentionally? Will we set a course for our days, weeks, months and years that keep the main thing the main thing in our lives. As we do, we grow as people, as husbands and wives, as moms and dads, as leaders. How we handle the inevitable distractions of life determines how well we serve God or whomever or whatever it is we serve. I remember a cartoon in a Christian leadership magazine that showed a pastor sitting on the couch with his calendar in his lap. His wife stood behind him and she spoke these words, “God loves you and everyone else has a wonderful plan for your life.”
How true. If we don’t live our lives someone else will. If we don’t set the agenda, someone else will. By definition, leaders set the agenda for our own lives, and help others set vision-based agendas for their own. That requires an intentionality that slices through the distractions and brings us to a point of clarity that allows us to keep the main thing the main thing. It’s easier to do that in Cuba, Cambodia and other places in the developing world. That means in order to do it here, we must be intentional.
Here’s to leading better by being more intentional about cutting through the distractions–today!