Any time I’m talking with a leader, pastor or person who feels like they’re spinning their wheels, but going nowhere fast, I bring up Covey’s Four Quadrants. There’s urgent and important, not urgent and important, urgent and not important, and not urgent and not important. So many of us spend so much time in that first one that’s urgent and important. The problem is that we’re constantly on high alert, putting out fires and handling issues of the moment, but never getting to do anything about the future. Life can feel unfulfilling when we are constantly just handling today’s issues, yet they must be taken care of. There’s a feeling that God has more for us, but we can never get to it when we’re on the treadmill of urgent and important constantly.
In 1 Samuel 23 and 24, David had been anointed as king a while back, but found himself nowhere near the palace. Instead he was living in caves in the wilderness. He was running for his life from King Saul. Instead of leading a nation, he was leading 400 men who were outlaws, running from their own problems. Every day was living reactively to the problems that presented themselves. They were in survival mode just trying to hide from those who wanted to kill them. What David didn’t k ow was that God wasn’t wasting the years of hiding and hanging out with criminals. God was preparing him for the future and shaping his heart to trust God over his circumstances. His living in the urgent and important quadrant wasn’t blocking God’s purposes, but rather building him for those purposes.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end” (NLT). Life has trained us to live in the moment and to deal with today’s problems. It feels unfulfilling because God has built you with an eternal mindset. Yet God doesn’t waste today’s problems. He sees the bigger picture of your life that you can’t see while your battling today’s problems. It can feel like you’re going nowhere fast, but God is shaping you for the future. He’s at work in the important and not urgent quadrant that prepares you for the purposes He created you for. While the things that are urgent and important seem to dominate you today, God is at work shaping your future.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 