Shownotes
Are you running on empty? Do you end each day with a to-do list that never seems to get shorter, no matter how hard you work? You're not alone—but there's a better way.
In this solo episode, David Schmidt tackles one of the most critical issues facing Christian business owners today: The Corruption of Time.
Drawing from Scripture and the life of Jesus, David exposes two enemies of your spiritual life that are quietly destroying your peace, your relationships, and your ability to honor God in business—hurry and distraction.
Join us as David unpacks why Jesus was frequently interrupted but never distracted, how He lived a full life without being in a hurry, and what it means to actually finish your work each day the way Jesus did.
This isn't about time management hacks—it's about learning the way of Jesus so you can have peace, rest, and joy even in the midst of a full life.
Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:
How can we honor God in our business?
Learn the way of Jesus when it comes to time. Jesus was interrupted often, but never distracted. He lived a full life, but was never in a hurry.
When we chase after hurry and allow ourselves to be pulled in every direction by distraction, we choke out our spiritual life—and with it, our ability to operate our business for God's glory.
One challenge from today:
Ask yourself this question at the end of each day this week: "Did I finish the work God gave me to do today?" Not everything on your list—but the work He called you to. Learn to say, as Jesus did, "I have finished the work You gave me to do" and rejoice in that.
More About David Schmidt
Free Resource: What God Says About Business: 5 Uncommon Truths for the Modern Business
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Newsletter also comes with Bible verses for business success for you to read, apply, and be inspired by.
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Website: redeemingbusinesstoday.com
Mentioned in this episode:
Leadership GPS: Christian Business Coaching
Are you looking to integrate your faith and business but don't know where to start, book a time to discover if Christian business coaching and training might be right for you. If you are dissatisfied with your current rate of improvement, desire a clearer vision of what God says about business, or even what those first steps may look like, let's talk.
What God Says About Business: 5 Uncommon Truths for Modern Business
If you want to go deeper in your walk with God and integrate your faith and business this is the tool to make it happen. God has laid out the path to success without the regrets and emptiness that come with success the world's way. Download your FREE pdf resource today. A 10-minute investment of your time will return a lifetime of transformation.
Transcripts
God made everything good. In the beginning, God created heavens and earth, everything, every day he created, he said, this is very good. But you know, when sin entered into the world, death and corruption also entered in. You know, food is good, but the desire of food has been corrupted and so we now have gluttony. Money is good, but the desire for money, the love for money has corrupted this and now we have
and people are greedy, which is bad. And so we see that everything that God has created is good, but sin began to corrupt every good thing that God has given to us. And that affects your business today. And so today I have this question, what is the corruption of time? What is the corruption around time? If God has made everything good and time is good, what is that corruption?
How has our passions and desires toward the gift of time that God has given to us been corrupted? It is interesting that the time is this never ending, but yet scarce resource. It's kind of an oxymoron. Never ending and yet is scarce. Time cannot be stored. You cannot multiply it. You cannot save time for later. You cannot stop it or start it. Time just goes forward. Everybody has 1,400.
40 minutes each and every day. When you use them up today, you get 1,440, tomorrow as well. You use time constantly whether you like it or not. Whether it's intentional or unintentional, every minute, every second continues to pass by you constantly. Yeah, true, some people accomplish more than others, but that's a different subject. But you know, it's not all about accomplishing things. Sometimes time is being somebody.
being present in the moment. So there again, what is our question again? What is the corruption around time? You know, we need to understand God's purpose for time, first of all, to understand this. So going back to Genesis, looking at day four, on day four, God created the sun, the moon and the stars for signs, for seasons, for days and for years. And God said, it is good.
You see, before then time just was, it was, but there's no sun or stars to help regulate and say, hey, there's a morning, evening, first day, second day and all that. That all started with creation and God put these things in place on day four for us. God is eternal. We are finite and God has made us days and nights so that we can help manage this thing called life. I once read a book.
the Pilgrim's Progress it was. And the book that I actually read on Pilgrim's Progress had no chapter divisions. It was just one long big book. And it was a super hard book to read because my mind is used to all these little divisions in chapters. And I believe the same thing is with days. God made days so that we can divide our life into little sections and days and weeks and years.
That's time. Genesis 2, we see that first reference to work where it says on the seventh day, God rested from his work. He worked six days and then he ended his work. He finished his work and he rested. He said he sanctified that seventh day, made it holy. And for you and for me and for all eternity, he has now sanctified and set us up a work rest cycle.
Work, rest, cycle, work six days, rest on the seventh day. We also have Genesis 3, where God came to Advent Eve in the cool of the day to fellowship with them, to talk with them. Moses talks about in Psalm 90, he says, teach me to number my days that I may apply my heart to wisdom. So there's a good use of time there. Paul in Ephesians 5, 16 says, redeem the time for the days are evil. And so,
How we use our time is not just, ⁓ do whatever we want, but there's a specific good use of time. There's a way in which time is good. Time is good. We need to work with time. Time is good to rest, to fellowship with God, with others, to be zealous for good works, to walk in righteousness. Yeah, to be obedient to God. That is the good use of time. But what is the corruption of time? What is the corruption of time?
Corruption generally enters in when we either desire to have more than what God allows, gluttony, or we desire to get something or use something in a way that God does not allow, such as stealing money versus working for money. Those are two reasons why these passions that were good have now been corrupted into something bad. But you're looking at the corruption of time, yes, there's a number of them.
We're going to talk, I give you two, two corruptions of time. First of all is hurry. Hurry is a driving or pressing forward in motion or business. Hurry is the pressure, urgency to do more, urgency to haste. You know, where it's sometimes necessary to be in haste, it's never necessary to be in a hurry. There are times for emergencies. There are times where we need to lay aside everything else and be in haste. ⁓
Emergencies are one way of that. My daughter had a baby a few months ago and there was urgency about getting her to the hospital for this birth. ⁓ But hurry, hurry is different. Hurry is just that constant pressure and urgency to do haste all the time. Hurry is that relentless drive for more. It's that workaholic. It's essentially that greed for more where you have certain amount of things to do.
but yet you want to do more and more and more with the time that you have. This is seen by some people who say, am crazy busy. I don't have time to help you. I don't have time to call back and show the love of God to people. It shows up with our unending lists and to-do lists that are never finished. It's interesting that if you go to the grocery store,
Many of us will write a list of things out that they need and only buy the things that they need. Well, sometimes we buy extra things in there, but we don't go and say we're going to buy the whole store. We don't have one of everything on our list. We only have so much money, so much time, so much to room in our cart. But yet...
What do we do with our time? We treat time as if we have all the time in the world. And so we make this big, long laundry list of things to do to use up our time and our work then never is finished because we have this greed and relentless drive for more and more things to do. And so we're hurried and pushed along in life, running from one thing to the next to the next. And that drive sometimes is internal.
Sometimes that drive is unintentional. Sometimes that drive is from the outside. So that need for hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry all the time is one of the distractions and corruptions of life. I'll tell you this, my friends, that hurry, being hurried is an enemy of your spiritual life. Let me repeat that. Hurry is enemy of your spiritual life. Why? Because friendships take time. Friendships take time.
If you are married and you go back in your history for when you met this person who's going to be your spouse someday, what do you do? You spend lots of time getting to know that person. You spend lots of time being with that person, desiring to be with that person. Relationships, deep, lasting relationships takes time. It's the opposite of hurry. And when you look at your spiritual life, your spiritual life is relationship
with God. And just like any other relationship, that relationship takes time. And so hurry and busyness is a enemy of your spiritual life. We do have one example of this in the scriptures of Pharaoh in Exodus chapter five. If you remember, Moses went to Pharaoh and said, let Israel go out into the wilderness for three days journey. We're gonna sacrifice unto the Lord our God.
and we're gonna bring everybody with, we're gonna bring all of our animals with and nobody's gonna be left behind. Pharaoh's first response to this was, you guys are idle. You guys don't have enough to do. You guys don't have enough to do, so therefore your mind is set on going and having a rejoicing and a party and worshiping your God. And so he takes away the straw from them. He takes away the straw and says, go make brick, because you are idle.
He's wanting to keep Israelites busy, hurried, rushing around, gathering straw, making bricks so they don't get beat. And so that they will not think about going and serving their God. Hurry is an enemy of your spiritual life. The second corruption of time we're gonna talk about today is that of distraction. Distraction is literally to draw apart.
is to pull in different directions and to separate. And just like hurry, distraction is the enemy of your spiritual life as well, because distraction is pulling you in a different direction than what you need to go. They are distracting you from the ways and purposes of God. Jesus had a parable of the four soils. There was the hard soil, rocky soil, thorny soil, and the good soil.
That's soil number three, the thorny soil. When he interpreted it to his disciples, he said, those who fell among thorns are like they which having heard the word, they just go their way and are choked with the cares, with cares, riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to perfection. I tell you friends, ⁓ everybody has cares. Everybody has cares. Whether you have a little money or a lot of money, everybody has cares.
And so this thorny soul is going to choke out your spiritual life, whether you're poor, middle-class or rich. It says the cares of this world you're getting choked out by. The riches of this world, the riches of this world, because riches are interesting thing. We're not gonna get into it today, but they are one of those deceitful resources that are here. Because if you have a Godly character,
riches and wealth can be used for great good. If you don't have a godly character, riches become deceitful, riches will master you, you'll start to love money, and your character can change. so riches can be used for good or for evil, but riches have a tendency to choke out the word of God because you tend to rely and rest and trust in riches rather than in God.
Who cares? Riches, pleasures. My friends, here in America, people are pursuing pleasure on a grand scale, just as they did back in Rome. They pursued pleasure. And whether you're poor or rich or anywhere in between, people pursue pleasure. this pleasure is a distraction from the way of God. It's a distraction from your spiritual life. It's the enemy of your spiritual life. And Jesus warned.
There are certain people who hear the word of God and they just go away. And that word is choked by cares, riches, and pleasures of this world.
We've had a garden in the past. And I remember one time my son Noah, he was in charge of weeding the corn patch. He wanted to grow corn, so I let him grow corn. ⁓ So I let him grow corn and I didn't really keep up on it very well. And as a youngster, he did not weed the garden very well either. And so the end result on end of the season, ⁓ we had corn and we had a lot of weeds in there.
And honestly, the corn ended up being about two feet tall and the weeds were probably 18 inches tall, about almost as tall as the corn. And there was no fruit on those corn stalks. There was little corn ears that came up, but when you open up those ears, there was nothing on them. And so that was just a perfect example of this third soil, that thorny soil, that the weeds grow up and choke the word. My son, if he had just weeded the garden, the corn would have grown up tall.
and produce fruit, but he did not.
Thornish soil, distractions, hurry is going to destroy your spiritual life. The solution to this hurry and distraction, my friends, is the way of Jesus. Is the way of Jesus. In Matthew 11, 20 through 30, Jesus says, come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light, and you will find rest.
for your souls. If you want to eliminate the hurry and distraction of life and get rid of these storms, learn the way of Jesus. Learn to view work how he viewed work. Learn to view time and purpose how he did. I find it super interesting when I start to study the life of Jesus and about work. Two different places he talked about, well, he talked about work a lot of times, but in John 4.35 he says,
My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. John 17, 4, he says, I have finished the work you have given me to do. Now I want to ask you this question. How many of you could say on a daily basis, I have finished the work I needed to do today? I finished the work I needed to do today? Chances are most of us do not.
Say that. We have these big long lists of things to do and we just plow through them and by the end of the day we're like, well, I just have to wait till tomorrow. I'm not finished and you go home and you're not quite easy because you still have lots of things to do and you never reach that finish line because you continually add to these things all these different things you need to do to make your business better. Jesus says, I have finished the work you've given me to do. This is before the cross.
And then later on at the end of when he was dying on the cross, he said, it is finished. So when he said he's finished here, it wasn't finished with all the work God has given to him, but it was finished up until that point. Day by day, Jesus was finishing the work that God gave him to do. It's interesting when you look at the way of Jesus, Jesus was interrupted lot, but he was never distracted. He lived a full life, but he was never in a hurry.
We have the example of Jairus' daughter. Jairus comes to Jesus and says, Lord, help me. My daughter's dying, interruption, not a distraction. So Jesus goes and he's gonna go to Jairus' house and heal his daughter. While on the way, there is this other lady that comes behind him and touches his cloak and heals him. Jesus turns around and said, who touched me? And spends a few minutes dialoguing with this lady and healing this other person. ⁓
while Jarius was waiting anxious because his daughter's dying. While Jesus is talking about this this lady, a servant comes to Jarius and says, your daughter's dad don't bother the master anymore. But Jesus, not being hurried, not being in haste, said, okay, we're done with you. Jarius, don't worry about your daughter. We got her taken care of. ⁓ Don't fear, just have faith. Jesus interrupted, not distracted.
Interruptions are from the outside, distractions are from the inside. We get distracted by ourselves with things around us, and those two are very, very different. So what is the corruption of time? What is the corruption of time? These storms, these cares, riches, and pleasures choking out your spiritual life, bringing no fruit to perfection. They're a hurry, which is that constant drive for more, never resting, never stopping.
and distraction being pulled from a different direction. My friends, are you weary of this rat race? Are you weary of the long hours and desire to have peace, rest and join in your life? Are you rising early, retiring late, eating the bread of sorrows? That's vanity, my friends. God's given you peace. God's given you rest, rest and sleep. My friends, learn the way of Jesus. Learn the way of Jesus. Learn how he viewed time.
how he used time. Yes, he was had busy times. Yes, he had also alone times, peaceful times, restful times, times focused with his disciples, time focused just with his father. He was interrupted, never distracted, full, never busy, never in a hurry, never rushed around. He had peace and joy and rest. And that's the way Jesus and you too can have this joy and peace.
in the midst of your full life with a hundred thousand things to do, what do you need to do today? You can finish your work day by day. If you'd to learn more about the way of Jesus and how he managed his time and actually finished his father's work on a day by day basis and had peace and joy along the way, I encourage you to email me at David at RedeemingBusinessToday with time in the subject line. And I have a gift for you to help you along on that journey. But yes, beware.
of the corruption of time and hurry and distraction because these will choke out your spiritual life. If they choke out your spiritual life, you're not gonna be able to operate a business in a way that honors God because you're gonna be too busy getting strangled out with everything else. So I urge you to turn to Jesus today. He is the way, the truth and the life. Go to him, learn of him, walk of him, that you may find rest for your souls. God bless you.
