Ordering Your Private World is a book that I first read in college for a course in discipleship. I remember skimming through it and writing enough about the chapter headings to get a decent grade on the paper. Yet there were moments all through college and through other mentoring relationships that I’ve been in where the book kept coming up. Obviously again it has come up in this mentoring group. My biggest regret is that I didn’t read this book in its entirety sooner.

Ordering Your Private World speaks to the core of the inner life, or as the author calls it, the private world. It’s from this place of personal private life management that everything in the public world is affected.

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top. 

I think the section of the book that spoke the most to me would be the section on time management. In conjunction with the life goals I’ve recently been writing out, and this new stage of life I’m in with Rylee Kate and being a father, a husband, and having a new job in a new state… I’m being forced to learn how to better manage my time, not only during the 9-5 but also at home. I know that if I am not managing my time well at home, then I will miss out on some of the most memorable times in my life.

The author sums this up well in this quote:

Disorganized Christians rarely enjoy intimacy with God. They certainly have intentions of pursuing that camaraderie, but it never quite gets established. No one has to tell them that time must be set aside for the purpose of Bible study and reflection, for intercession, for worship. They know all of that. They simply are not doing it. They excuse themselves, saying there is no time, but within their private worlds they know it is more a matter of organization and personal will than anything else. If I am in a state of disorganization, the quality of my personal relationships usually reveals it. The days pass without a significant conversation with my son or daughter. My wife and I will be in contact, but our conversations may be shallow, devoid of self-revelation, and unaffirming. I may become irritable, resenting any attempt on her part to call to my attention things I have left undone or people I appear to have let down. The fact of the matter is that when we are disorganized in our control of time, we just don’t like ourselves, our jobs, or much else about our worlds. And it is difficult to break the destructive pattern that settles in.   

When I am disorganized in budgeting my time at home then my time at work suffers. When I am disorganized in budgeting my time at work, my home life suffers. Mostly when I am disorganized in budgeting my time with God in solitude, every area of my life suffers. It’s easy to get caught up in one area of life or the next and neglect that time. I believe that’s what the enemy desires the most, my time captured by something else. My attentions and affections wrapped up in a false idol of time.

Ordering Your Private World is necessary. It’s not just necessary for leaders. It’s necessary for everyone.