Redeeming Your Time

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Collin Hansen
We sense that we’ve been created for more than this life and that we feel that we’re living on borrowed time. How does the infinite inform the finite? If I’m living for eternity? How do I manage my day? Jordan Rainer offers seven biblical principles for being purposeful, present, and wildly productive. In his new book redeeming your time, published by Waterbrook. These principles include starting with the word, eliminating all hurry and prioritizing your yeses. He frames the whole book and the gospel as managing our time, the way Jesus managed his Jordan rights. For Christians, the key to being wildly productive is realizing that we don’t need to be productive. Once we realize that God accepts us, no matter how many good things we do, we want to be productive for his agenda.

Collin Hansen
As a loving act of worship. The learn in this book how to say no more often, Jordan writes in order to do more, most of us need to do less and rest more. The book mixes time tested productivity tips with time lists, biblical wisdom, and Jordan joins me now on gospel bound to discuss selective ignorance inbox zero. And the connection between our priorities and our posterior Ortiz will also discuss his forthcoming children’s book the crater in you do in April, also from Waterbrook. Jordan, thank you for joining me on gospel bound.

Jordan Raynor
Yeah, happy to be here, Collin. Thanks.

Collin Hansen
Jordan. This is not like a lot of other productivity books that people will see you list Kevin D. Young Jen Wilkin and Tim Keller, among the Giants, whose shoulders you stood on to write this book, well, how did they contribute to your work?

Jordan Raynor
Yeah, these these voices were huge in in shaping my faith, and also this book, specifically, I mean, without Keller’s, work, and specifically, every good endeavor, I don’t think I would have written this or any of the other books I’ve written. Kevin De Young’s crazy busy was so helpful in thinking about time management, one of my favorite categories of books through a gospel lens. And then Jen, who I just think, is one of the best Bible teachers in the church today, specifically, in her book, none like him, had a terrific, terrific session on sex or not just our obsession and longing for timelessness and resting in the fact that only God is going to be working and finishing our unfinished symphonies in this life. It’s a really beautiful language. It’s just so grateful for Jen and Kevin, and Tim, and everything they’ve written in this vein. Continuing

Collin Hansen
on that theme, what does make your book unique in the productivity genre?

Jordan Raynor
Yeah. And there’s 60,000 Time management books on Amazon today, which is just a laughable number, just a silly number. And I’ve read a lot of the perennial bestsellers in this category, right? Yeah, I spent 10 years as a tech entrepreneur. So Ty major was always really important to me. But there are two big problems I had with the best selling books in this category. Number one, they tend to be centered on works based productivity, right?

Jordan Raynor
Nearly all of these books, say that, hey, if you’re feeling swamped and overwhelmed, you’re feeling stressed, follow my system and follow it perfectly to the tee get through the whole thing. And then at the end of this long road, you’re going to find this deep soul satisfying peace. Yeah, as a Christian, I’m not buying it right. Like I’m starting with the opposite. Because of Jesus, I can believe that I am loved and accepted by God, regardless of how productive I am. I have peace with God says Romans five one. So yeah, I care about time management, because Paul commands it and Ephesians 516 Redeem the time, because the days are evil, but I don’t do it to get peace. I do it as a worshipful response to this secure peace that I have been given through Christ. So I just think that’s a pretty different base for books. That was the first problem I have with the books in this category.

Jordan Raynor
The second is I’ve never read a time mantra book that accounts for how the author of time managed his time when he came to earth, in the person of Jesus Christ, right. Yeah. John, Mark comer is written really beautifully about this, that we come to the Gospels, almost exclusively for theology, and ethics. And we can forget that the Gospels are biographies of how Jesus of Nazareth lived his life and no, they don’t show Jesus with a to do list right or smartwatch or a calendar or anything like that. But they do show him dealing with distractions while he worked, right? One time a man literally dropped through the ceiling. As Jesus was preaching, right. They showed Jesus fighting for solitude.

Jordan Raynor
They showed Jesus seeking to be busy without being hurried. In other words, the Gospel biographies show Jesus facing the exact same challenges we face today. So What I did with this book with redeeming times I said, alright, what are the seven timeless time management principles? We can see in the Gospel biographies. And then I’ve mapped those seven principles to more than 30, wicked practical practices that help us live out those principles in the 21st century. The thing

Collin Hansen
that’s different about your book you write, the mission of your life is to glorify God. Period. Full stop. Okay, well, now what Jordan? I mean, how do you turn that concept into a plan for living?

Jordan Raynor
So in this chapter, the book all about prioritizing our yeses based on the this idea that Jesus himself prioritize this time on Earth, I offered this metaphor of a five storey building, right? If you imagine the top floor, the fifth floor of this building is your mission in life, which is to glorify God, we don’t get to choose our mission, because we have been made and created by the god universe, and our mission is to glorify Him. A level down from there, though is where we start to have agency and choice. The fourth level this building is callings, right?

Jordan Raynor
And what I’m really trying to get across in this, this section of the book is is helping Christians feel a sense of agency and choice here because I think way too many Christians are making discerning their life’s work into their life’s work. And we got to get off the bench because there’s Kingdom building work left to do a level down from their long term goals to help prioritize our to do lists in our time, a level down from their second floor, our quarterly goals, first floor, you got projects and actions, your daily tactical to do list. And then the basement of this five storey building doesn’t even deserve to be called a story. It’s the basement. It is our posterior 40s. Right. Peter Drucker coined this term. Basically, it’s the avoid at all cost list. So once you’ve defined here’s what’s important, my to do list for today, for this week, for this quarter, you gotta have an avoid at all costs list that you keep out of sight and out of mind until your priorities are accomplished, or until God calls you on to a different task.

Collin Hansen
And Jordan, I like to see in this book, you are an inbox zero guy. Yes, we’re in the club. Yes, together on that. It’s not an invitation to my friends and colleagues to send me emails, please do not do that. You can tune out this section. But what is Inbox Zero supposed to have what to do with the gospel? Now we’ve got some friends with 10s of 1000s of unread emails, you know who you are? Yes, they would probably say, Hey, I mean, grace abounds to me and my unread emails. So what’s the big deal?

Jordan Raynor
100%. And by the way, I’ve been that person with 10,000 unread emails before. Here’s why this matters. Because for many of us, in our modern context, unread emails represent unfulfilled commitments. And Jesus has commanded that our yes be yes, this is the second principle, the book chapter two, we it’s all about being keepers of our word, so that we can be better keepers and representations of the world, Jesus Christ. And in the book, what I’m basically doing is helping readers get to inbox zero, and stay there every day with just about 30 minutes of work each work day. But here, if you’re one of those people out there, sitting there with 10,000, unread emails, pro tip, it’s in the book, I’ll give it to you now. Just give yourself some grace. Mark the oldest 9000 emails as read and move on with your life because you know, you’re never gonna read, you know, you’re never gonna respond.

Collin Hansen
It’s true. It’s very true. Yeah. Free Free Advice here on golf. Yeah. And now this is part of your subtitle on the book. But how am I supposed to be both present? Yeah, and wildly productive?

Jordan Raynor
Yeah, these things are inextricably linked. We can’t be wildly productive. Unless we are fully present and focused on one thing at a time. I think we see Jesus modeling this in the Gospels. One of my one of my favorite scenes, is when he’s preaching and it’s the scene where the disciples come in and say, Hey, Jesus, your family’s outside wanting to see you. And this is where he says he’s talking about who was his mother, who’s his father, who were brothers sisters, but we miss in our preaching on this passage. We missed this like, fascinating BS story, which is that Jesus ignored his family, right like Jesus like kept on preaching.

Jordan Raynor
He didn’t say, all my family’s here, guys, you know, the rules God first family second work. Third, he kept on preaching, he was fully focused on the task at hand and elsewhere in the Gospel biographies. You see him fully focused and attentive on his friends and his family. We got to do the same thing. We know that multitasking is a myth, right? We’ve got to learn to accept and get comfortable with the fact that only God is omnipresent. And it is impossible for us to achieve that for 33 years in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus accepted the human limitation of what I call uni Press. And we are arrogant and fooling ourselves to believe that we can be present in multiple places at the same time. And until we get that we can’t do deep work at the office, and we can’t cultivate deep relationships at home that enable us to be wildly productive.

Collin Hansen
Hmm. Wow. I’m guessing this next question is, is related to that in terms of the presence? Yeah. Now you distinguish between hearing God’s word Yeah. And listening to his voice. Explain. Explain why you did that. Yeah.

Jordan Raynor
So I’m not entirely sure my theological footing, here’s a call, and you could call me out where I’m wrong here. Now, the

Collin Hansen
reason I asked the question, yeah, exactly. I think I can see what you’re getting at. But go ahead.

Jordan Raynor
Yeah, here’s what I’m trying to get at. We spend a lot of time hopefully reading God’s word and hearing his voice and what he has to say to us in His Word. But as I tell my kids all the time, there’s a big difference between hearing me and listening to me. And for me, I found that to really listen to the word. And what I mean by that is seeing how the word is connecting to my life, to my relationships, and to my work, I have to sit there in silence, literal silence, in front of the word, not reading, just listening to how the Holy Spirit is connecting what I just read in the inerrant Word of God to what’s going on in my life.

Jordan Raynor
My point is, we don’t make time for silence and solitude. And when we don’t have time for silence and solitude, it’s nearly impossible to hear how the Holy Spirit is connecting God’s word to our circumstances in our life, and how God is calling us to live out the word on a database database. So that’s what I’m saying. We need to put a little bit more quiet back quiet.

Collin Hansen
Oh, I like that. I like the way you put that. Now, earlier in my career, Jordan, I felt compelled to be the guy who knew the information. I was the person who saw the tweet, I’m the person who read the article. But I’ve I’ve shifted to now I let my staff and friends they curate most of this information for me. And I see that in this book. This is actually what you commend. Yeah. And describe the benefits of selective ignorance.

Jordan Raynor
Yeah, man, Let’s preach. So you mentioned Jen Wilkin. I gotta give Jen props. I love this quote from her. I quoted her in the book. She says, Our insatiable desire for information is a sign that we covet the divine omniscience right? We must observe God’s good boundaries for how much information we can process. And in this chapter, the book is chapter three, the third principle about dissenting from the kingdom of noise. I offer a few ways on how to do this a few ideas on how to do this, my preferred way is, I just stopped reading the news 100%.

Jordan Raynor
About five years ago, six, almost six years ago. Now, I just stopped cold turkey. And what I wish somebody had told me before I made this decision, is that my friends would unknowingly voluntarily curate the news. For me, I hear about every single thing that matters to my life and work. I live in Florida. Hurricanes are pretty important to me. I hear about every hurricane days before in Florida. I’m a huge Tim Keller fan. When Tim tweeted that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Eight of my friends texted me the news within 10 minutes of the news breaking. And I hear about all this without spending a second on cnn.com without spending any almost any time on social media. Right? My friends are bringing this news to me so that I could stay focused on the work I believe God’s called me to do.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, it works, especially in the era of the text message. Yes, you will, you will have you will find you might not be the first. But if you can live without being the first you will still be up to date on everything you need to know. And you will not be bothered by tons of things that you don’t need to know. Amen. That you don’t want to know. I love that you also in this section commend reading more books. Yeah, because they’ve been so carefully curated, many of them at least in along in a long process. And I will say that’s probably what has filled that void for me. Less time on the news, less time tracking everything on social media, more time reading more books, and I think that’s been a good trade off.

Collin Hansen
I’m wondering, this is a big question. But wondering, is there a is there a secret to success because your book is full of great advice. But in the end, it just really seems to come back to simple truths, such as one that you’ve alluded to already. Keep your posterity’s on hold until your priorities are accomplished. It looks like I mean a lot of the the wisdom that you get that you call from Jesus to the gospel is concentration focus. Yeah. Depth is that pretty much the secret right there you

Jordan Raynor
Listen to depends on how we define success. I define success in one word stewardship, stewardship. That’s it, right. And so I think there’s lots of, quote unquote, secrets to this in our modern context. And that’s what I’m spelling out in this book. But I think the biggest secret, you mentioned it before con, is realizing that we don’t have to be productive. Because when we can rest in the gospel, the gospel is this double edged sword that also enables us to be wildly ambitious for our work for God’s work. And for his mission in the world. Every single night when I put my three young girls to bed, last thing I tell them, I say, Hey, girls, you know, Daddy loves you, no matter how many bad things you did today.

Jordan Raynor
And they say, Yes, I said, you know, I also love you, no matter how many good things you did today, no matter, it doesn’t matter that you brought home 100 on your test, right? I say Who else loves you like that. And they say, Jesus, we’ve got to hear those same words spoken over our time and productivity. This is the quote unquote, secret to success. Realizing that God doesn’t need us to be productive, he loves us equally, regardless if we have inbox zero, or 10,000 unread emails, and that is what motivates me to be productive for his purposes, because working to earn some of these favor, is exhausting. But when we’re working in response to unconditional favor, that’s intoxicating. And that is the purest, cleanest fuel that is going to enable us to press on to do the good work that God has prepared in advance for us to do

Collin Hansen
love that. Well, we’ve we’ve been talking with Jordan Reiner about redeeming your time, seven biblical principles for being purposeful, present, and wildly productive. It’s new from Waterbrook. But we’re gonna turn and ask a couple questions about his latest book, two first children’s books called the creator in you also from Waterbrook. Now explained to us, Jordan, how your book helps children see the sixth day, not as the end of creation. But the beginning that seems to be the organizing principle and an important one.

Jordan Raynor
That’s the big idea. I mentioned before, I’ve got three young daughters seven, five, and two. And, Collin, I’ve read my kids, so many books about the creation kind of Genesis one, and they all drive me bonkers. They all follow the same pattern, day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, the end, and I want to scream because we’re burying the lede. In a lot of ways. The six day wasn’t the end of the creation. It was just the beginning. It’s when God passed the baton to us his image bearers, and issued the first commission, which is to fill and subdue the earth to take the garden and mold into the eternal city of God.

Jordan Raynor
And when we don’t preach this, we can’t possibly expect our kids to see their current and future work with God given purpose, and enthusiasm, and joy. And so that’s what I wanted to do this in the way I did it. It’s a really short book, if you’ve read it, call on you. doorsets 387 words, right? It’s a it’s a three act play in three minutes, right? After one is showing God working and using the language of Scripture uses and using this working language and showing him creating the world to is the critical part I say in the book, after the after we see got craziness.

Jordan Raynor
Now you might think that this is the end. But this is just the beginning. God created you to look like him to act and work and create with him. Because while six days got created a lot, there are so many things that he simply did not and that takes us in activities or activities, passively passing the baton. Act three is showing kids creating, filling and subduing the earth on all culminates in Hey, this work that you’re going to do today in the future, building tree forts and someday building cities and towers and ports, is showing the world with the career goddess like it’s glorifying him. I don’t use that language. But that’s what we’re saying. In this short children’s book,

Collin Hansen
you’ve referenced my favorite spread graphic spread in the book, which is beautiful, this tree fort in the foreground, in this great city rising in the background. How did you learn Jordan is to see the city as the ongoing work of God’s creation. Was that something you knew as a as a child?

Jordan Raynor
Oh my gosh, no, geez, I didn’t know this until I was, I don’t know. 2627. And I’ve got Tim Keller, to credit for every good endeavor was a life changing moment. For me reading that book. I know theology of work. I grew up with an experience. I think it’s very similar to many in the church today, believing that the only work that God’s work is sharing the gospel because the only thing that matters for eternity our souls, right? It’s just obviously not what Scripture teaches that we’re moving towards the Garden City. And remarkably, here’s the most remarkable part that God has invited us in to that project, God could have created the entire world, not six days in one day in a second. But instead, he has chosen to do his work in partnership with human beings and he’s still doing it today Jesus could have brought the kingdom and full of Easter. He didn’t. He invited us to KO garden, the eternal kingdom of God along with him.

Collin Hansen
Well, if you’re interested in that, I have a feeling a lot of you will be checked out new book creator in you from Jordan Reynard out in April 23. Wherever you’re listening to this also from Waterbrook, in addition to look before that, from 2021, redeeming your time, seven biblical principles for being purposeful, present, and wildly productive. I’ve got my final three now with Jordan Reiner first, Jordan, how do you find calm in the storm?

Jordan Raynor
Oh, man, I gotta go for walk without my phone.

Collin Hansen
That’s the key. Right. That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. And as long as it’s not actually storming outside. Yeah,

Jordan Raynor
that’s exactly which is a regular occurrence here in Tampa.

Collin Hansen
Right. Yeah. So are you are you a you pray while you walk? You think while you walk you? Do you clear your mind completely as you are? Yeah,

Jordan Raynor
it depends. It depends on the situation, right? Sometimes it’s prayer. Sometimes it’s structured thinking, like, I have certain variables that I need to think through in my head, and I’m thinking through it, and other times gets really unstructured. I’m just going for a walk because I can physically feel anxiety rising with my body. And I don’t want to help let it out. By yourself or by myself, always by myself. Oh,

Collin Hansen
yeah. All right. Second, then Jordan, where do you find good news today?

Jordan Raynor
The good news that I’ve been thinking a lot about, I alluded to it before is old news. It’s 2000 years old. But Jesus rising from the dead, and choosing to be mistaken by Mary as a gardener. I’ve been really digging into this really thinking about this. I just think it’s the most beautiful symbol of the purpose of the Christian life, right that Jesus is King of this world, not Caesar, not that the kingdom, the kings of this earth today. But that he didn’t bring the kingdom in one fell swoop.

Jordan Raynor
He’s chosen to do that work in partnership with human beings, which is exactly what God has been doing since Genesis one. God inaugurated the first creation creates Adam and says, I’m not going to finish this, you’re going to garden it, you’re going to finish it creates a bride, for the first Adam to help them cultivate the first creation. And then at the garden of the tomb, that first Easter Sunday, Jesus chose us to be mistaken for gardener. The last Adam and nog are in the final creation. And just like the first, the last out of his got his bright Eve to help them cultivate the final one. That’s good news. Right? The Kingdom is coming. And it is coming, at least in part, through the work that you and I are doing every day. Hmm,

Collin Hansen
amen. Last question, then Jordan, what’s the last great book you’ve read?

Jordan Raynor
You know what? The last great book I read. It was the annotated notes to Hamilton, on Hamilton the revolution, which is it’s a biography of the show, which is a fascinating journey of creation. But then I just think Lin Manuel Miranda is one of the greatest right I was people ask me, How do you prepare for writing books? I say i i I read Tim Keller. I watch Aaron Sorkin wrote The West Wing of Moneyball, and I listened to Lin Manuel Miranda, that’s it. And so yes, I just I just really enjoy his work. So that was a great book. It was really fun to read.

Collin Hansen
And the key of that question is you just got to not think whatever comes to your mind. That’s right. Let it come out. There it is. You’re not trying to give some sort of great answer. Yes. Right. Trying to say, Well, Jordan, Reiner has been my guest check out redeeming your time seven biblical principles for being purposeful, present and wildly productive and then pick up the crater in you both from Waterbrook Jordan, thanks for joining me on gospel bound. Thank you. Caller