Al Gordon led an interesting seminar at Worship Central entitled ‘Do the maths!’ Despite not wanting to do any maths at all (!), it was a useful way of looking at the busyness of our lives and allowing God to speak into our schedules.
He started with the number 1, reminding us that we only have one life to live and need God’s help if we are to live well.
Then he looked at the addition sign:
What do we need to add in to our lives to improve them? We might need to make more time for prayer, but it could also be that we need to spend more time with our families and friends or need to add in something just for ourselves that will help us to relax or grow fitter.
Next was the subtraction sign:
Sometimes we need to remove things from our lives. This doesn’t just apply to bad habits or sinful practices (though obviously these need our attention!) Sometimes we have allowed ourselves to say ‘yes’ to too many things and are overloaded in a way that God never intended. It is difficult to be ruthless with our time, but since we cannot change the number of hours in a day, what we need to look at is how we actually occupy our time. Sometimes we fritter time away (watching TV, on the Internet, on mobile phones etc.) and we may need to have more discipline in our lives to focus on God more.
Next came multiplication:
What is God already blessing in our lives? Where are the highlights? Perhaps we need more of these things! In gold mining, once the seam of gold had been discovered, this needed to be mined in order to gain the maximum yield of gold.
The next step was the percentage symbol:
Often, what distinguishes one person from another is how they manage their time. Those involved in leadership often give time for themselves, but Christians often feel guilty if they do this. We need to look at how we spend our time and what percentage of time we give to each activity.
Then we looked at division:
Jesus wants us to ‘give away’ things – not just belongings, but often we can ‘give away’ some of the jobs we do so that other people can grow into ministries. That means relinquishing control at times. Delegation is an important principle to learn; we must never be possessive of the ministries God has given us or think that we are the only people who can do these things. God often blesses what we share with others.
Finally, we looked at a less familiar symbol:
This is the symbol for infinity, which was related to eternity in this workshop. How are we going to bring the infinite into our lives? Worship involves every part of our lives and we need to seek God in every aspect of our lives so that the eternal perspective is visible in our everyday living.