Excellence

✤ We serve an excellent God

✤ He expects excellence

✤ Academic/professional AND spiritual excellence

✤ Two things:

a) Model of Excellence;

b) Steps to Excellence

a life of excellence and discipline

✤ Redeeming the Time

Time

✤ A measurement of existence

✤ A measurement of life; you will have lived 45 minutes at the end of this 45 minute presentation

✤ God has a high view of time

✤ Time is life. To waste time is to waste life, which belongs to God

Biblical References to Time

✤ Genesis 1, God working at specific times, anti-procrastination

✤ Proverbs 22:29

✤ Ecclesiastes 3:1, 9:10

✤ Daniel 9:24-27

✤ Mark 1:15, Galatians 4:4

✤ Romans 13:11, Ephesians 5:15-17

Purpose of Time

✤ Pupils should learn tact and system; they should learn to economize time and to make every move
count. They should not only be taught the best methods, but be inspired with ambition constantly to
improve. Let it be their aim to make their work as nearly perfect as human brains and hands can make it.
Education p. 222

✤ Your voice, your influence, your time-all these are gifts from God and are to be used in winning souls
to Christ. Testimonies Vol 9 p. 38
Proper use of Time

1. Prayer

✤ Every morning take time to begin your work with prayer. Do not think this wasted time; it is time that
will live through eternal ages. By this means success and spiritual victory will be brought in. The
machinery will respond to the touch of the Master's hand. God's blessing is certainly worth asking for,
and the work cannot be done aright unless the beginning is right. The hands of every worker must be
strengthened, his heart must be purified, before the Lord can use him effectively. {7T 194}

2. Memorize & Meditate

✤ My brethren and sisters, old and young, when you have an hourof leisure, open the Bible and store
the mind with its precious truths. When engaged in labor, guard the mind, keep it stayed upon God, talk
less, and meditate more. Remember; "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account
thereof in the day of judgment." Let your words be select; this will close a door against the adversary of
souls. {4T 588-9}

3. Exercise

✤ The time spent in physical exercise is not lost. The student who is

constantly poring over his books, while he takes but little exercise in

the open air, does himself an injury. A proportionate exercise of the

various organs and faculties of the body is essential to the best work

of each. When the brain is constantly taxed while the other organs are

left inactive, there is a loss of physical and mental strength. The

physical powers are robbed of their healthy tone, the mind loses its

freshness and vigor, and a morbid excitability is the result. {CT 295}

4. Make Day Day

✤ There are young men and young women who are very much opposed

to order and discipline... They pay no heed to rules for rising and

retiring at regular hours, but burn the midnight oil, and then lie in bed

in the morning... Would it not be well to break up the habit of turning

the precious hours into night and turning the hours of night into day

by the use of artificial light?... {SD 114}

5. Make Memos

✤ As far as possible, it is well to consider what is to be accomplished

through the day. Make a memorandum of the different duties that

await your attention, and set apart a certain time for the doing of each

duty. Let everything be done with thoroughness, neatness, and

dispatch... {SD 114}

6. Pace Yourself

✤ Give yourself a number of minutes to do the work, and do not stop to

read papers and books that take your eye, but say to yourself “No, I

have just so many minutes in which to do my work and I must

accomplish my task in the given time.”. . . Let those who are naturally

slow of movement seek to become active, quick energetic,

remembering the words of the apostle, “Not slothful in business;

fervent in spirit serving the Lord”. . . {SD 114

✤ Some who are engaged in domestic labor are always at work; it is not

because they have so much to do, but they do not plan in such a way

as to have time. They should give themselves a certain time to

accomplish their task, and make every move tell. Dullness and

ignorance are no virtue. You can choose to become stereotyped in a

wrong course of action because you have not the determination to

take yourselves in hand and to reform, or you may cultivate your

powers to do the very best kind of service, and then you will find

yourselves in demand anywhere and everywhere. You will be

appreciated far all that you are worth. {FE 316}

Pace Yourself

7. Use all Spare Moments

✤ Ministers should devote time to reading, to study, to meditation and

prayer. They should store the mind with useful knowledge, committing

to memory portions of Scripture, tracing out the fulfillment of the

prophecies, and learning the lessons which Christ gave to His

disciples. Take a book with you to read when traveling on the cars or
waiting in the depot. Employ every spare moment in doing something.

In this way an effectual door will be closed against a thousand

temptations. Had King David been engaged in some useful

employment, he would not have been guilty of the murder of Uriah.

Satan is ever ready to employ him who does not employ himself. The

mind which is continually striving to rise to the height of intellectual

greatness will find no time for cheap, foolish thoughts, which are the

parent of evil actions. {4T 412}

8. Be Consistent

✤ Men of God must be diligent in study, earnest in the acquirement of

knowledge, never wasting an hour... Many will never attain superior

rank in the pulpit or in business because of their unfixedness of

purpose and the laxness of habits contracted in their youth. Careless

inattention is seen in everything they undertake. A sudden impulse

now and then is not sufficient to accomplish a reformation in these

ease-loving indolent ones; this is a work which requires patient

continuance in well-doing. Men of business can be truly successful

only by having regular hours for rising, for prayer, for meals, and for

retirement. If order and regularity are essential in worldly business,

how much more so in doing work for God. {4T 411}

9. Use the Morning

✤ The bright morning hours are wasted by many in bed. These precious

hours, once lost, are gone never to return; they are lost for time and

for eternity. Only one hour lost each day, and what a waste of time in

the course of a year! Let the slumberer think of this and pause to

consider how he will give an account to God for lost opportunities. {4T

412}

10. Overcome Slowness

✤ It is not a virtue for men or women to excuse slow bungling at work of

any character. The slow habits must be overcome. The man who is

slow, and does his work at a disadvantage, is an unprofitable

workman. His slowness is a defect that needs to be seen and

corrected. He needs to exercise his intellect in planning how to use

his time so as to secure the best results. When one is forever at work

and the work is never done, it is because mind and heart are not put

into the work. It takes some persons ten hours to do that which

another accomplishes readily in five. Such workmen do not bring tact

and method into their labor. There is something to be learned every

day as to how to improve in the manner of labor so as to get through

the work, and have time for something else.

Overcome Slowness

✤ If you are under the control of slow, dilatory movements, if your habits

are of a lazy order, you will make a long job out of a short one; and it

is the duty of those who are slow, to reform, and to become more

expeditious. If they will, they can overcome their fussy, lingering

habits... {SD 114}