Psalm 138: 8, Romans 8: 29, 1 Timothy 4: 8, 2 Timothy 3: 16-17

Matt Deaville

Whether you're a leader or not you need to apply principles that will develop you personally throughout your life. The God that I know wants to perfect me into His purposes (Psalm 138: 8) and becoming more Christ like (Romans 8: 29) will involve some serious refining, and we have some responsibilities that we need to invest some time into.

Here's something a good friend and mentor of mine shared with me a couple of months ago and its starting to help me focus on becoming a better person who enjoys more out of my life.

In particular here's four areas/responsibilities that you can develop, which apply to every individual. They're called rocks because they should be principles that are immovable from your schedule. The more you're dependant on your timekeeping/diary the more important it is to hold fast to four rocks.

1. Relational
- spending quality time with quality people is essential to your development.
- ensure you find a regular timeslot (i.e. monthly) to spend with someone over you who you trust to be accountable to who will speak into your life
- if you're a leader, make time for key people and plan regular timeslots for you to spend quality time with them
- ensure you spend good time with those who are you're peers
- with each of the above fight for time in your diary to have quality relations

2. Recreational
The older or busier you get, the easier it becomes to neglect yourself especially physically. So exercise in regular doses. Don't get too consumed with working that you neglect your health or your spare time. The Bible says this will profit you a little.(1 Tim 4: 8)

3. Spiritual
It sounds obvious but applying quality time in our devotions is a challenge to most. Work out a realistic time per day that you can devote in prayer, worship and the word, start with the achievable and develop from there. Also consider other aspects that will help your spiritual growth such as times of reflection/evaluation of goals in your life. (2 Tim 3: 16-17)

4. Educational
Its easy once we've finished school/college to neglect our education. Continue to educate yourself in different ways. My challenge is to read a book per month on various relevant topics to stretch my thinking, maybe you can handle that easily, maybe you need to think of other ways/things to do e.g. learning courses

The key to all of these areas is consistency, plot regular time slots to all of the above and keep at it. I have been told that most people are good at two areas without trying but aim to be great at all four of them.