The Value of 60 SECONDS. By Eddie Long
Think about the value of 60 seconds—that’s exactly one minute of your time. You can waste your life as you watch those seconds tick away so easily. Or you can realize that they are valuable and during those seconds your life can change.
You no longer have to live a defeated life, wondering where you’re going and what lies ahead. You can make a decision during the next 60 seconds that not only will change your life, but that decision can lead you to greatness.
Greatness? Yes, that’s exactly the word I used.
Greatness may not be fame or immense wealth. It may not mean having the world know who you are, but there are other kinds of greatness.
For example, you can change your children and your children’s children and the generations that follow them. And it can all be traced back to you and the choice that you made.
Greatness starts with a choice. A decision. You can decide to be great.
It starts when you realize the value of each 60 seconds in your life.
Here’s something for you to think about: Actress Halle Berry makes $30 a minute because of who she is. Tiger Woods makes $175 a minute because of what he does. Steven Spielberg earns $675 a minute because of what he gets others to do. Bill Gates is worth more than $6,500 a minute because of what he gets the world to do.
Those are extreme examples, and they’re all about money. But you can use your seconds to turn your life into great value. Just think: You can change your life in 60 seconds.
You can start a journey to become someone you’ve never been before. You can move from defeated, poverty-level living to victorious, prosperity-rich living. Only you can make that choice.
Each of us operates with seconds that add up to minutes to hours to days to months and to years. Most of us pay little attention to the seconds that tick away in our lives.
Only when we become aware of how much time has passed do we awaken, shake our heads, and wonder how so much time has gone by with so little accomplished.
Those seconds are important.
It’s not the monetary value of time that’s most important. It’s the inner value, the deeper values that make your life more meaningful. Jesus Christ gave what we call the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. That commission empowers us and teaches us to become everything God wants us to become.
And it can begin during the next 60 seconds. It can begin for anyone. It can begin for you. Right now.
I can teach you to follow the principles that will change your life and, in the process, empower you. The more people I empower, the more valuable each of my minutes becomes.
Their minutes are tied up in my minutes. By that I mean I can teach other people and guide them (and so can you) and they become more valuable to themselves and to society. As others become more valuable to the world, that adds value to my minutes.
60 SECONDS TO THINK
Try to imagine that you have just started to live your last day on earth. You know you will die tomorrow. Think about the questions below because the time will come when it truly is your last day on earth.
Take 60 seconds to answer each of these questions:
1. What are three ways in which my life mattered?
2. Who will remember me and what will they say about me?
3. What have been the three most important things in my life?
4. To what did I devote most of my time and my energy?
5. What greatness have I accomplished?
Eddie Long
Eddie Lee Long was an American pastor who served as the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, from 1987 until his death in 2017
