Episode 148. Redeeming Your Time with Jordan Raynor
Jordan, welcome to the show. I'm so thrilled to have you. Thanks for having me, Rebecca. This is going to be really fun. We were talking before we hit record, and I've been so excited for you to write another book so that I would have a reason to have you on the show, because I feel like my people are just really going to love you because we were cut from the same cloth in that we love creating things and speaking and writing.
From a very gospel centric place and bringing that into the work that we do. And I'm thrilled to see you do a book on time because. It matters so much. And I'm so, so excited for us to chat about that today. Your new book is called redeeming your time, seven biblical principles for being purposeful, present, and wildly productive.
And I want to hear the story behind your time story. Like, why did time matter to you? Why did you want to write a book about it? Yeah, so I've always been a really intention. Guy. Right. So I spent the first 10 years of my career as a tech entrepreneur, I started in sold a couple of different companies all while building a very young family.
Um, I'm 35 now. And so I've always been obsessed with time management stewarding my time. Well, as Paul says in Ephesians five 16, redeeming. Our time because the days are evil because we are running out of time to do the work that God has called us to do in this life. And so, because my obsession with this, I've read more than 40 books on this topic over the course of my career, but I have three major problems with them that really kind of are the birth story of redeeming your time have number one.
Most, almost every time management book on the market is what I would call works-based productive. Nearly every time management guru says the path to P if you, if you're feeling swamped in this season of life, the path piece has founded implementing their system. Right? So go do time management exercises, X, Y, and Z.
And then you will find people. As Christ followers, that's crazy. Right? Like we have peace in the person, Jesus Christ. And we manage our time. Well, as a response of worship, that's just a very different starting point for a book. That's reasonable. One problem. Number two, with other time management books is they fail to account for how the author of time mainly.
His time when he came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ know Christian or not egg is really hard to argue with the fact that Jesus was the most productive person to ever step foot on the earth. And yet, I don't know of a single time management book that is looked at the God. Biographies right. To see how steward is time.
That's crazy. We'd be foolish not to study these. And I know a lot of people don't think that the gospels have a lot to say about how Jesus walked, but they do a lot, in fact, right. They don't show him walking around with a to-do list or a calendar. Yeah, but they do show him fighting distractions. Like the guy who dropped through the roof while he was preaching, right.
Fighting for solitude, seeking to be busy without being hurried. Right. So they showed Jesus facing a lot of the same challenges that you and I, Rebecca and our listeners face as we seek distort our time. But he was infallible God. So we can assume that he managed his time. Perfectly. So I'm going to write a book that studied this, and that's really what we're giving your time is right?
These seven timeless time management principles from the life of Christ napped to more than 30 hyper practical practices that help us live out those principles here in the 21st century. And that really brings me to the third problem I have with other time management books that are really the reason why I wrote this one.
A lot of times the animal books fail to connect all the pieces of the time management. Right before I wrote this book, if I was, if you and I were going out for coffee and you probably don't struggle with time management, so this wouldn't be an issue, but then you're like, Jordan, I'm swamped. I don't know how to get on swamped.
I would recommend a dozen books to you. Is it the last thing you want to hear? Right. But I did that. You don't have the time to read one book much less 12, but I would do that because all of those books focus on a critical piece of the time management puzzle, but no one book kind of connected all the pieces together.
And that's kind of what I've tried to do with this book. So that's kind of my perspective and the story that brought me to writing on this particular topic. Yeah, Jordan, that matters so much. The first thing you said is I think the root of a lot of our problems of the books that are, I see flying off shelves and target and Barnes and noble right now is they may be approach.
Okay, how do we, how do we be successful in our work or, or our call, the call on our lives? That feels so overwhelming. It already feels overwhelming. And. And then rather than the core message being the gospel and, and there's some principles that certainly help us be efficient and, and work well and, and steward our time.
Well, but, but the core of it being something greater than our own success and our own glory, that that is why we read books. That don't impact our lives. That is why we read books that leave us feeling like we're not enough, or that we just can't quite do enough to get to. Whatever it is. Right. And so I love that you're stopping and being like, wait a minute.
No, the narrative is, is wrong. The narrative is, is, um, what steering us in the wrong direction. So I think that matters a lot. And even the title of the book, redeeming your time comes from Paul's words in Ephesians five 16. I would love to hear why are Paul's words here so meaningful to you and what does that idea of redemption of time?
Yeah. Yeah, short answer is the why it's important me is because I believe this is a huge part of our response to the gospel. I think Paul makes us really clear in Ephesians, you know, but Paul basically spends the first four chapters of Ephesians reminding his readers of the gospel and Ephesians five one.
He reminds us readers as their status as dearly loved children of God. They goes on to basically answer the question. Okay, Paul, what is our response to our adoption? As children of God. And he says redeem the time he says, see, then that you walk circumspectly. Some translations say carefully, not as fools, but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil.
Uh, that's a patient five, I think 53 16. Paul is essentially saying that this is part of the response to the gospel. It's redeem our time, manage our time as carefully as possible. And we don't do it. I love that you already pointed this out. We don't care about time management so that we can be more successful, right?
That's not the purpose, the purpose. It's surface and more specifically service to the Lord and his agenda in the world. Right? So what's his agenda. Why should we care about Redeemer time? Because we're our time allows us to do more good works for others that bring glory to God. See Jesus' words in Matthew five 16, create for his eternal kingdom, make disciples impress the Lord's commands on our children.
See Deuteronomy six and just enjoy God in his good blessings. As Paul talks about Philippians. That's why we care about redeeming. Right. That's why Paul commanded us to redeem our time. And it's part of the reason why I care so deeply about this topic. Yeah. I agree. And you know, we've talked about this a little bit, but I'd love to give you the chance to dig into it more.
The real core premise of the book is Jesus is the solution. The gospel is the solution to our time management challenges, but maybe, you know, listeners listening today. And they're like, okay, great, Rebecca. But like, what does that actually mean to me on a Tuesday? Right. Like unpack out. Totally I'll I'll I'll I'll do it by telling a story.
Right? So the gospel of Luke, actually a few of the gospels, we hear this account of Jesus going on the sea of Galilee with his disciples. Right. And, uh, I love the language Luke uses because when the storm comes. Luke says the boat was being swamped. And I love that he, that we translate to that word. Cause that is exactly how we feel today.
We don't feel swamped by wind and waves less. Unfortunately you're in Texas, Louisiana being swamped by, um, not to make light of that, but, uh, we do feel swamped by our, to do list by our hurried schedules. Two ways. Jesus is the solution to our time management prompts, our feeling of being swamped. You'll never want again.
He gives us peace before we do anything, right? Look at the disciples in the boat, the disciples in the boat didn't do anything to calm the chaos around them. They trusted the sleeping God man in the boat. Right. And second again, to kind of reiterate what I already said a few minutes ago. Jesus shows us how the author of time would manage his time.
I don't think we, we really appreciate it. We talk a lot in our churches. About how Jesus was 100% God. And yes he was, but we don't talk very much about the fact that he was also 100%, man. This is the doctrine of the incarnation, right? Jesus was constrained for 33 years to a single. And a single time, one moment in time, that's wild.
Right. And you know, we read the gospels. John mark has written a lot about this, um, that we read the gospels for their theology and for their ethics. And that's it. And those are good things. Of course the gospels have a lot to say about that, but Matthew mark, Luke. Our biographies of how Jesus walked. And when you and I read a biography about, I don't know, Steve jobs or Oprah or whatever today sure.
We care about what they said in the big speeches they gave. But we also pay attention to the day to day habits, lifestyle that they lived, and we try to emulate what they did so that we can have similar results. So if we want to walk in the way of the way. We would be wise to look at the gospels and say, how did Jesus walk?
And again, that's what this book is all about. These seven timeless time management principles, for example, principle number three, Jesus frequently dissented from the kingdom of. Jesus spent a ton of time and what the gospels call lonely places or solitary places that stands in stark contrast to the way that we live our lives and do our work today.
That is a timeless principle, and it's going to look different for Jesus as to how he practiced that in the first surgery and how we practice it today. But that's what the book is all about. Let's look at these principles and then map them to modern day practice that help us walk like Jesus walk. Yeah, that's so good, man.
There's so many things I'm thinking of there. And one of them is I think sometimes, and I'm having to confront this in my own life. Sometimes we think we just can't do whatever that time thing is that we, we know God's calling us into whether it's rest, Sabbath, even, even just seeing the people around us.
Like I was so convicted during the pandemic. As I read through the gospels of just how much Jesus just stopped and noticed, and served and loved the people around them. And there were times last year where the only person that we got to maybe talk to outside of our spouse was, you know, the girl checking us out at the grocery counter every week.
And I started realizing like, man, I know her name because I see her name tag, but I don't, she's checked me out for the last 27 weeks in a row. And I have been so busy listening to a podcast in my earbuds or answering an email while she's scanning my groceries. And, um, and I'm really just keeping myself in that constant state of stress.
And, um, I'm totally missing an opportunity to share the love of Christ with somebody. I don't know if she knows the Lord. I don't know. You know, she's been helping people find. Toilet paper and all the things all day, and she's having a really rough season. So I want to see her. I want, I want to show the love of Christ to her in this moment.
And so I just began asking God to help me not miss that, especially in a season where I could get some good practice because life looks so different. And so I think that, I think there's two critical things. You already. Th that, that we have to do in order to seize those moments, to redeem those moments, those times for God's glory and for the advancement of the gospel.
Number one, we got to get comfortable being bored. We have to descent from the kingdom of noise, and we're used to listen to a podcast every three minutes that we have free at the grocery store. And number two, and this one's hard for me. Uh, We have to resist the urge to hurry. We have to embrace productive.
Busy-ness right. Jesus was crazy busy in the gospel so much so that his family thought he was out of his mind didn't want to count. Right. Literally, those are the words that they use that we translate. She was busy, but he was never hurried. Right. He was never busy in a way that made him frantic or anxious.
Um, he always had time to look the, the people in the eyes right. And see what was going on in their lives and stop and care for them. And again, that's such a stark contrast to the way I live my life. A lot of times, Rebecca. So that's been really convicting for me and something. I haven't really gotten that.
Yeah, yeah, same here. But one of the things that I think is going to be really impactful to our people is, cause I know a lot of my listeners struggle with this is the fact that the gospel is our ultimate source of both rest and ambition that we can hold. We get to hold both of those in our lives we get.
But ambition is a word. Hustle is a word, those types of words trip us up and we. Been a part of a culture that has perpetuated that in a not gospel centric way. And so what does this mean for listeners? How do we hold both? What does that look. Yeah, I think you see this all throughout, uh, especially Paul's letters, right.
You know, Jesus was crazy busy. Paul, th the amount of time that Paul talks about how hard he worked is crazy. Right. So hustle, if you want to call it, that can be a really good thing. I'll try to answer the question this way. Every night, when I put my girls to bed, I have a, seven-year-old a five-year-old and an almost two year old.
I tell them. I say, Hey girls, uh, you know, daddy loves you no matter how many good things you do. I say, yeah. I was like, you know how many, you know, daddy loves you, no matter how many bad things you do. And they say, yeah, I was like, who else loves you like that? And I always say Jesus or, or Kate, my five-year-old, uh, theological stickler will say, ah, God, the father, God, the son and God, the holy spirit.
I love this adorable match. She's she's a writer. She's the best. But like, we've got to hear those same things. Those same words, spoken to us in the context of steward our lives and being productive, right? God doesn't need you and me Rebecca, to be productive, to write these books, to have this podcast, if we die tomorrow and he wants this work to continue, he's going to do it, Joe 42, his purposes will not be the warded, but if we're honest with ourselves, I think a lot of times we need ourselves to be productive in order to feel a sense of self-worth.
And again, there's certainly proper ambition. In the gospels for being productive because we believe our work is a means of advancing the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. But we've got to recognize the truth that the gospel frees us from the need to be productive. Right. The good news of the gospel is that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.
And because we did nothing to earn our salvation, there's nothing we can do to earn any more of it or lose an ounce of it. Right. No matter how productive we are in this life. Our status as adopted children of God is secure. And ironically, that's the truth that leads us to want to be wildly productive because to earn someone's favor is exhausting, but working in response to unconditional favor.
Intoxicating right. You want to take big swings. You want to be productive for the first time it's given you that security. That's how the gospels, this double-edged sword of arrest. And, um, Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. You know, one of the things that I have been so convicted of lately is just the amount of time that we intake information, right.
We, whether it's online, the news, all the things. Okay. You have a really interesting perspective on the news that I actually wildly agree with, and I want to talk all about it because, so there were some times in 2020 that. I remember even saying to my spouse, like I just can't, I can't talk about it anymore.
Like I, I actually like for the rest of tonight, like I just need to not, I need to not talk about what's going on in the world anymore. And, um, I, for the most part do not watch the news either. And I just, I want to hear your, your philosophy on this. I want to talk, not watching the news. Let's let's go.
Yeah. So, uh, I consume zero news. I don't watch it read it. I don't, uh, listen to any podcasts. Uh, nothing, none, none of the things. Um, and enlarge. I started this probably six years ago and it's been one of the most life-changing practices of my life because I was recognizing that news. Wasn't making me informed.
News wasn't, uh, providing me with any information that was relevant to my call-ins. It was just making me. And anxious. Right. And I had enough of it, so I just stopped. But here's the ironic thing. Here's what I found. It was one of the, one of the 32 practices. I shared the book. Uh, I found that I'm actually not totally ignorant surprisingly.
And my secret is that once I started eliminating my time consuming information, my friends started curating the news. For me, I hear about every single thing that matters to my life and work. I'm a huge Tim Keller. Brianna love Tim Keller. When Tim Keller tweeted that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Eight of my friends texted me the news within 10 minutes of the news breaking. Right. I hear about everything I hear about hurricanes. I hear about pandemics race rights. I'm a huge Taylor swift fan. I hear about every new surprise Taylor's album dropped. I hear it all. And I hear all these things. Without having to spend a single moment waiting through the 99.9% of content on news websites, social media, that's totally meaningless to my life.
My friends do it for me. They do it willingly. And honestly, it's kind of a bizarre form of delegation, right? Like I've delegated. No that I've done it. And that sounds selfish, but here's the deal. Like I tried to give it to my friends to stay off of new services, but they don't, most of my friends are going to continue to feast at the all you can eat information buffet and that's their choice.
Uh, in the meantime, I know that they are going to willingly naturally and sometimes unknowingly curate that information for me. They're going to bring me back, uh, the banana pudding from the buffet so I can enjoy. But I don't have to get out of my seat to go to the line. So, uh, my advice to you is this is a great way to descend from the Kango noise.
Just like your friends, curate news for you, and, uh, probably have a lot less anxiety and anger. Yeah, I agree. I think there's a couple pockets in our lives. News is one of them. And I think social media for a different reason than, than maybe one would expect is another way that we waste a lot of time. And the reason I say that, so a good reminder of that for me, was watching the movie news of the world.
Have you seen that Tom Hanks movie? Oh, Okay. So he goes, it's set back in, I think the civil war and he goes around and travels and tells the news. He reads the newspaper to people and it was this revelation for me of like wait a hundred years ago, people had to like pay a nickel to come and listen to the guy that actually said.
Really going on in the world, but they didn't, we didn't have the tools that we have now to just have this instant influx of information. And so how freeing must that have been to live in a world where you didn't have to know what was going on, states away from you? I feel the need to know what was going on in EV you know, all over the world.
And that's just not the world that we live in anymore. And so that was interesting to me. And also while we're on the time subject, I think we feel this great responsibility to every person that we've ever known online. Right. So you can't see everybody listening. Can't see Jordan laughing and shaking his head, but I came to realize like five or five years ago or so it's like, man, I want to go to my best friend from high school's baby shower.
I really do. It breaks my heart that I saw pictures of it. And I, I wasn't there, she lives in another state, Jordan. She lives on the other side of the country. Why do I feel personally responsible for her baby shower? Because I deeply loved her and was so close to her in a completely different season of my life.
And I think we all feel that to some degree, do you like, do you struggle? Uh, I don't anymore because I just stopped using social a long time. Not, not altogether. I still, all my accounts. I check time popping Instagram for a few minutes every day. And that's it. But, oh my gosh, when I was on Facebook every day for years, but I, the fact that I'm so anti news antisocial, if you talk to me 10 years ago, this would sound radical.
I was addicted to noise, uh, especially news, especially. So I can totally empathize and recognize what you're talking about, but I, I don't recognize it for the last five years of my life. And I'll tell you what, these last five years I've been more intentional. I've had deeper relationships and I've been way more productive, uh, than I ever have been in any other season of life.
And I don't think those two facts are coincidental. I think the Lord has used those decisions. To make me focus to turn down the noise so I can be creative. So I could just think and hear my own thoughts. And most importantly, listen to what God's telling me. It's impossible to listen to God's voice. If we're constantly drowning in noise, right.
That's reason. Number one to dissent from the kingdom of noise on a daily basis. Yeah, I agree with you. I admire that a lot about you, because I also think with the work that we do, you have to put boundaries around it, or you're just going to subject yourself to group think all the time and what you write in the words that come out of your mouth are going to be, uh, a summation of everybody that you admire and follow online too.
And I, I, I certainly don't want that. I want to speak and write from a place that. Is God driven and gospel driven and, um, what he's really putting on my heart. And we have to put some guard rails in place or that's not going to happen, you know? So, so yeah, that whole thing has been something that I've, uh, I've wrestled through in the last few years, especially since, um, and listeners will know this.
I got married a couple of years ago. I moved nine hours away from Tennessee where I grew up in, had lived my entire. And so there's also, I think in seasons of change, there's a wrestling out of that. Like, I have friends there. I have friends here I have to serve and love on the community that God has given me right now in this season.
That's what we see evidence of in the gospels. Right. And so what does that mean? That means that every time I come and visit my family, I can't also be spread so thin trying to. Rekindle every bit of the community that I had in another season, you know? Um, so that's, that's a very real thing in this season of my life that I'm having to navigate in a whole new way.
So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, another part about time that I, I don't want us to kind of skip over is Sabbath. I would love to talk about Sabbath and. Kind of the shift for you from kind of this legalistic, chore, maybe idea of Sabbath that maybe we grew up with and, and how it's a crucial part of your life now.
Yeah. Yeah. So growing up, uh, I hardly ever thought about Sabbath. I grew up in the church, but, um, yeah. Okay. That's super interesting. Really. So you grew up in the church and never saw anybody. Yeah, no, not, not, well, no. Yeah. I didn't know a single family growing up the treated Sunday any differently than any other day of the week.
And yeah, like from time to time, I would hear about the fourth commandment, but it just seemed like one of those rules, everyone was comfortable ignoring kind of like, you know, driving under the speed limit. Like, I don't know. Yeah. Like as long as you don't mow your grass, as long as you don't mow your grass on Sunday, like you're fine.
Uh, and in those rare moments, they didn't think about it. It did seem like this legalistic chore this day filled with things I couldn't do rather than a day filled with joyful things I could do. Uh, but then a few years ago I was in a particular crazy season. I was releasing my first book called the create.
And, um, I re-read what Jesus himself said about Sabbath and it totally changed my perspective. And mark chapter two. Jesus said Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So, so yes, throughout scripture we see the Sabbath is about ceasing, about stopping our labor productive, talk, whatever, not mowing the grass, whatever it is, but it's also a day for feasting on the word and the gifts that God has given us in and through.
Our work, right? Uh, th th the best picture I've ever seen of this, uh, I had a therapist years ago helped me kind of piece this together, but you imagine there's this enormous banquet hall, right. And there's a beautiful table in the middle. It's filled with the most incredible foods you can imagine. And right there at the head of the table is Jesus, right?
And all week long, you and I are the servers we're running around the table. We're serving Jesus and his guests. We're busy. We're hurried, right? Sabbath is first. Invitation to CSPAN that work put down the food tray, take off your apron, catch your breath. But, but here's where the analogy breaks down because in a restaurant, the servers takes their breaks in the kitchen or in the parking lot.
Right. They're invited to cease, but they're never invited to feast at the table with their guests, but you and I, Rebecca, you're our lizards, our cocoa heirs with Christ. See Romans eight, 17. We are adopted children. God, we aren't invited just to cease from our work. We're invited to pull up. Next to king Jesus and feast on his goodness and his gifts.
That's what Sabbath is. So for my family yet, it's, it's seizing. We don't talk about productive things. We don't do productive things. We don't do laundry, we don't do dishes. Um, but it's even more about what we feast on, you know, more time reward than we can. During the week time with our church family feasting in a literal sense on food, we get takeout from the best places in town.
We get crumbled cookies almost every weekend, right? We just enjoy the gifts that God's given us. And it is by far the most life-giving thing. My family does every, my, my kids are seven, seven. They have no concept of time. Right? Uh, all they know is that when I, when I explain a week, it's like, guys, it's the time in between Sabbath Sundays.
And they get it in every morning when they come out of the rooms, like it's out of Sunday yet. I'm like kids, it's Tuesday, we've got a long way to go. Uh, but, uh, but they're excited about. That's really cool. I love that. You're modeling that for your kids. I talked with Ellie Holcomb last week and she said something that I will never forget about time.
We were talking about just, it was a similar conversation and she said, Um, probably going to butcher it, but she said he sets a face for us and we often will settle for the crumbs underneath the table. Yeah. And man, that's so true of how we see our time and how we see Sabbath so often. So I think that matters so much.
And, um, you know, before we kind of jump into our bonus conversation that I'm really excited to have with you. I want to talk about the word. No, because. As you know, our, our primary audience is, is female. I don't know Jordan, you may disagree with me. I feel like women may struggle with the word no more than men.
Do you agree with that? I can't say that I've heard a long time ago not to speak on behalf of women, even though I'm not going to do it. I'm not going there. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. I just know how many conversations I have about this. Very struggle with my people. And so, as we talk about this very gospel centric, look at times.
How does the word no play into that. And how do we maybe view it from a different way? I'm so glad you asked this because I do think this is a huge struggle and I think Christians just, aren't finding great resources about the word know in our broader culture, right? There's a, there's a really popular Ted talk, uh, from a few years ago that I think really accurately summarizes kind of modern thinking outside the church on this topic.
Uh, the advice is basically. If, and unless you can say hell yes. Say no. Right. So bless this thing you're presented with. It's like so exciting to you, you should say no. And like, I get it, like I get the appeal of extreme criteria because we all need help be more selective in what we're saying yes. To, but rule sets like hell yes or no are entirely self-serving and out of step with the example of Christ.
Right, right. Um, so really good scene of this in, uh, Matthew 14. Jesus had just heard the news that his friend and cousin John, the Baptist had been beheaded. Uh, and when Jesus heard about this, he, uh, it's one of the times we see him withdrawing by a boat to be alone. Uh, Matthew, I think it's 14, 13 says, uh, Jesus withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.
So understand. Jesus, just one of the John, the Baptist was dead. All he wanted to do is be alone, but the crowds wouldn't let him. So the crowd saw Jesus in the boat, on the sea of Galilee. And there literally Matthew 14 tells us they're running along the shore, waving Jesus to come in because they wanted to be with them.
The last thing Jesus wants to do in this. Is spent on with a crowd of people. Right. So what's he gonna do? Surely he isn't thinking of the crowd's requests. Oh, wow. That's going to be awesome. Yeah, let's do it right. And if there was ever a time that we would understand Jesus saying no it's right then, but he didn't.
He came into the shore, he saw the large crowd and it says Matthew 14, 14 said he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Right. So now to be. Jesus. Didn't always say yes to requests like this frequently in the gospels. We see him say no, go, go check out mark chapter one, Jesus had a very deliberate note to people's requests.
So, but it just leaves us in this place of, it's not as simple as hell. Yeah. Or no, the Christian is a sacrificial life and we need to think about how our student, our time through the lens. Of Jesus. So it's a constant battle wrestling with, what do we say yes to what do we say no to, and in the book I outline what for me.
At least some really helpful questions that I analyzed to decide when to say yes when to say no, I'm not sure the time to get through them, but, uh, they're all there. There's eight questions right there to help you work through it. Yeah. No, that's so helpful. I want people to go grab the book, so they get that.
I'm going to say the name of the book. One more time. It's called redeeming your time. Seven biblical principles for being purposeful, present, and wildly productive. The book comes out today. I love when we get to. All right, so this is. I asked this to release on October 19th. Cause I'm going to give you her listeners in absurdly over the top incentive to buy the book.
I want you to tell them all the things. All right. So I hate author pre-order campaigns. I think there's, I seriously it's like, or like peer my book and get like a downloadable bookmark, honestly, who cares? Uh, so, um, I like going over at the top. So the whole book is about helping you walk like Jesus walked in the first century.
How do we manage this time today? In 2021. So I'm going to give away a trip for a winner and a friend of their choice to go walk where Jesus walked on this ethic to Israel. Yeah, you're going to the holy land days, I'm paying for everything. Uh, yeah. So we're just gonna give away this awesome trip to the holy land and, and, and listen, I know a lot of us aren't comfortable traveling internationally right now.
Right. Uh, so we're giving the winner three years, uh, to book their trip to Jerusalem, or they can opt for. Cash prize, which are basically like five grand. So, uh, the books out the day go get it on Amazon or wherever you get books. That's step one, then go to Jordan rainer.com before midnight Eastern on October 23rd, Saturday, October 23rd.
There's a form right there. You can enter the sweepstakes and when this trip of the cash prize or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Um, okay. We don't even have time. We're going to go there for a minute. You've been, you've clearly been to. I haven't, I've never been Jordan. You have to go. I'm probably, I'm not committing to this, but I'm probably going to hate the winters there for dinner that, okay.
How fun is that? Okay. You win, you just win for pre-order bonuses. That's incredible. I think that's amazing. I think that's incredible. My husband and I went in 2019. It was right before the pandemic. We're so thankful when we look back at those memories, it was, we lived in a world that was totally untouched by the pandemic.
It's still sometimes feels like a dream. I mean, there are times where I'll go. Like we actually went to Israel.
Man the first time you go it's so you're, you're taking in so much and you're having to rewrite so much of the narrative of what you have pictured in your mind, especially if you grew up in the church, right? Like if you grew up with a flannel board and VBS and all the traditional things, right. You're you're rewriting what you think.
Sea of Galilee looked like you're rewriting. What you thought Mount Carmel would, would look like when you read in the old Testament. And so there's just a lot of that that feels very overwhelming and really just emotional. I cried so much, we would be headed somewhere. Yeah. And it's I, I had to, before I went, I remember leaving Aviv and heading to Jerusalem to where we were staying and our tour guide read the Psalms of ascent to us as we were ascending to Jerusalem.
And I just looked at my husband and I, we were both just like weepy and it w it was the best. But I would say if I probably had a couple memories that were my favorite, we took a walk, a worship tour on the sea of Galilee, and that was. Amazing to just picture you're in a boat. That's similar to what you would have been in, in the time of Jesus.
That was amazing. And then we did a day in Jerusalem where we went and saw, you know, there's a couple, couple sites that argue to be the one where Jesus was buried and resurrected and, and just, you know, I remember my husband saying. Okay. Whether this was it or not, we are in Jerusalem. We are in what is to be a, this is what it would have been, even if this isn't the one.
And so we took communion and, um, just had a time of worship, uh, there at the garden tomb. Uh, yeah, I mean, I just, I journaled about it and I, I haven't actually picked up that journal in a while, every once in a while, I'll pick it up and I'll just read every day I would come back to the hotel and I would write about what I experienced that day, because there was so much that even.
A day later, I would think like, man was Capernaum yesterday or, you know, and so the first time you go, it's just a lot of underwriting of what you thought. And a lot of, um, just putting real memories to what we read in scripture. And so I will never read my Bible the same. Every time you read about somewhere that you've actually stood, it changes everything about the way you read scripture.
So I believe it. I can't wait for you to go those places. All those places are on the itinerary. Good. How awesome would it be if one of your listeners won this trip or the amazed I swap maps about it? Totally. Totally. Well, I'm, I'm excited to hear about your first trip. You're going to love it. So, yeah.
Well, I love that. We got to end on that note. I'm excited for everybody to go grab the book and enter to win the trip. That's amazing, Jordan. I have loved this conversation about time, about your book. I can't wait for listeners to go grab it. Thank you so much for being with me today. It's been a joy.
