“What is 3R Thursday?”

3R Thursday is a short devotional that contains Ramblings, Ruminations, and Reflections published most Thursdays to equip Christians with practical theology and philosophy.

Previous devotionals can be read here.

Now up, forward, and through 🤝 

3R THURSDAY: High-Leverage Activities for Christians

The concept of “leverage” is widely discussed among entrepreneurs. It’s the idea that a certain activity (or input) can have different results (or outputs). Or in other words, leverage is the difference between what you put in and what you get out. 

For example, if the man’s goal is to move the rock (whatever this metaphorical rock may be), he would be better off using a longer lever or a bigger fulcrum (i.e., better leverage).

Why?

Because by doing so, his input (strength, work, force, etc.) can decrease to move the same rock or he can maintain his level of work to move a bigger rock.

Input x Leverage = Output

We only have so many hours in the day. How we spend those hours is very important.

If we are goal-oriented, then we should steward those hours well and recognize that some activities are not worth pursuing because they do not move us toward our goals.

Other activities move us in the right direction, so we should focus more of our time on these activities—those that have a higher output—what I’m calling “high-leverage activities”—than on time-wasting activities or “low-leverage activities.”

As Christians, how should we incorporate “high-leverage activities” into our lives? What inputs have the highest “leverage” or produce the greatest outputs?

Arguably 1 hour of reading the Word and actively praying yields more spiritual fruit in our lives than 1 hour watching TV or scrolling on our phones.

If that’s true, then we can reasonably conclude that more time in the Word and actively praying are high-leverage activities (as opposed to low-leverage activities like TV, scrolling, etc).

Why then is it so difficult to commit more of our time to high-leverage activities and so easy to default to low-leverage activities?

If this is a question you’ve been struggling with as well, I encourage you to listen to Josh Fields’ sermon series entitled The Devoted Disciple.

While listening to these sermons, I was convicted about how little time I was in the Word and actively praying; that’s what great preaching does!

With this conviction, I created a simple checklist of where I was in the Word that day (Bible reading plans are great for this) and whether I actively prayed during my time with the Lord. As you can tell, I added other high-leverage activities (e.g., loving my wife, playing with my boys, lifting weights, eating protein, etc.) so I can focus on what’s most important in my day-to-day life. Your high-leverage activities may look different than mine; that’s okay.

I encourage you to reflect on how your walk with the Lord could mature by considering the high-leverage activities in your life. 

Paul reminds the Ephesians in Chapter 4 that:

The grace of God will continue to sanctify our walk with the Lord; it’s not by our works that we earn salvation or grow in the Lord.

However, we are called to put off our old self and put on the new self.

Be renewed in the spirit of your mind by focusing on high-leverage activities.

Hope you have a blessed week.

See you next Thursday,
CFW