All the stats tell us that we can work hard, spend long hours and still be amazingly non-productive.  Because your purpose in life, first as a son or daughter in the Lord, but then to reach today’s youth culture with Christ in a relevant way, is so huge, the Enemy will want to divert you time-wise.  Your time is a precious gift and the Bible says to redeem your time, so in my Youth Leader’s Coach this month, “Time Management Secrets in an Over Scheduled World,” I share some things I’ve learned from The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Swartz and other principles I’ve learned over the last 39 years that helped me balance many demands on my time and energy over the years.

Full engagement requires drawing on four very separate but related sources of energy and you have to work on all four of them:

1. Physical Energy:  Drinking enough water, doing enough exercising, eating healthy foods.
2. Emotional Energy:  Reflected in our ability to expend and recover emotional energy.  Train yourself to run sprints and not marathons.
3. Mental Energy:  Capability of reading new things, using your mind, being intellectually sharp, expanding what you think about.
4. Spiritual Capacity:  Let yourself have some spiritual replenishment.

By learning a few simple principles and adding a few specific rituals to your life, it can help you in all these areas to maximize your time.