Sometimes a phrase or sentence – even a word – can save you a lot of time. Recently, I spent hours doing a mundane little task because I didn’t first receive some crucial information.

I bought a new program that tracks and keeps all the information about my sermons in one place.  But there’s a learning curve. I’m learning how to build scripts, portals, and containers.

It might sound fun – like I’m working on a time machine – but it’s just a database. When I’m done it will be slick, but I still have lots to figure out. I worked on it pretty much my entire day off this week, and I’ll need to spend several more off hours to get it working right.

When I’m done, it will be awesome … in a nerdy, database kind of way. From just one screen I will be able to plan, research, grab resources, catalogue … and clean up after breakfast! It’s like sitting down to do your taxes and having all the information you need in front of you … and not having to get up to find some receipt, address or your son’s tuition information.

I enjoy figuring out how to use this program but what I don’t like is doing work to correct the mistakes I’ve made. I have been watching instructional videos of a guy explaining different aspects of the program. I have a new appreciation for people who have to listen to me preach every week.

The difference is people listen to me for a half hour or so, once a week. I’ve been listening to this same whiney-voiced guy for about 10 hours straight! You can imagine how annoyed I am with him right now. And when, about 5 hours in, he said that it is better to set up a numbering system BEFORE you enter your data, my mood turned really ugly towards him.

I have been building my database while I’ve been learning. In the process, I have already imported 980 records! These are records of my messages, titles, themes, and passages, dating back to 1997!

But then my friendly little instructor says I need to give a specific or unique number to each record in my database. And in a casual way he says, “You will save a lot of time if you do this before you import your data.”

I felt like reaching into the computer and grabbing him, not to hurt him, just to shake him a little and scream into his ear, “Why didn’t you say that right at the beginning?!” It was just one sentence. He could have said it in the introduction. It would have saved me hours! I had to manually go back into every record and number them. What a waste of time.

It was a long, boring task, and a few times I lost track of the numbers and had to go back and correct the sequence. But now that it’s done, and I’m further into my learning, I see how essential it was for me to make that little correction.

Here’s the thing: Life is just like that. At the beginning, we don’t know everything we need to live a godly life. We learn as we go and often find that we’ve made some mistakes along the way. The sooner we discover those mistakes, the easier it is to correct them. That’s why it’s good to keep short accounts with God.

That’s life!

Paul

Question: What do you wish you had known ten years ago? Leave your comment below.