I recently read this captivating illustration, and it challenged me…

Let’s pretend that your banker phoned you late last Friday and said he had some very good news. He told you that an anonymous donor who loves you very much has decided to deposit 86,400 pennies into your account each morning, starting the following Monday morning. That’s $864 a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

He adds, “But there’s one stipulation; you must spend all that money that same day. No balance will be carried over to the next day.  Each evening the bank must cancel whatever sum you failed to use.”

With a big smile, you thank your banker and hang up. Over that weekend you have time to plan. You grab a pencil and start figuring; $864 times seven equals over $6,000 a week times fifty-two. That’s almost $315,000 a year that you have available to you if you’re diligent to spend it all each day. Remember, whatever you don’t spend is forfeited.

So much for “Let’s Pretend”… Now let’s play “Let’s Get Serious.”  Every morning Someone who loves you very much deposits into your bank of time 86,400 seconds of time—which represent 1,440 minutes—which, of course, equal twenty-four hours each day.

Now you’ve got to remember the same stipulation applies, because God gives you this amount of time for you to use each day. Nothing is ever carried over on credit to the next day. There is no such thing as a twenty-six hour day (though some of us wish there were). From today’s dawn until tomorrow’s dawn, you have a precisely determined amount of time. As someone has put it, “Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you want to, but you can spend it only once.” (Taken from the illustrations page on ministry127.com. Source: Unknown)

Someone once said, “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back… Many things aren’t equal, but everyone gets the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We make time for what we truly want.”

As I read this, I was reminded that the problem is often not an issue with time, it’s an issue with me.  And I find that the same is true in many areas of life. 

The way that this challenged me personally was simply this – sometimes I need to change my faulty mindset about life and success. While we each have been given our own unique talents and abilities, we’ve each also been given the same tools to be successful – time, influence, and the will to choose. 

Yet all too often, our selfish requests to God go something like this…

  • “Lord, please give me more time… yet, what we should be praying is, “Lord, help me to better manage the time that I have been given.” 
  • Or “Lord, change my kids!”… when my prayer should be, “Lord, please help me to be the parent my kids deserve.”
  • Or “Lord, change my spouse”… when in reality our prayer should go more like, “Lord, help me to focus on changing what I can about myself to become all my spouse needs.”
  • Or “Lord, give me more money… but If we’re honest, this should be our prayer, “Lord, help me to better steward the money you’ve already given.” 

In other words, I’m learning that I can naturally become very selfish in my prayers.  Yet what I really need is to come to God not asking Him to change my circumstances, but asking for Him to help change me.  Because more often than not, I am the biggest part of my problems.  

I’m reminded of this guy named the Apostle Paul, who once asked God to change his circumstances, and instead, God told him that he wanted to change him into a trophy of grace.

2 Cor. 12:8  For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.  And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.  

You see, God can do any and all of the above things we might ask of Him, but often before He is willing to do His part, He is trusting us to do ours.

“Could it be that many Christians just keep spinning their wheels because they are expecting something miraculous of God while at the same time ignoring the fact that He is also expecting something practical of them?” 

I’ve always heard the phrase that “God helps those who help themselves.”  And while I know it’s not a statement from the Bible, there may be some biblical truth in it nonetheless.

God often wants to change our circumstances, but not always by changing our circumstances, but by changing us.  And thus, maybe my new prayer needs to simply become, “Lord, Change Me.”