Redeeming Your Time

When was the last time you felt truly unrushed? In Redeeming Your Time, Jordan Raynor argues that modern people are drowning in busyness—not necessarily from work itself, but from disordered hearts, noisy minds, and unredeemed calendars. His solution isn’t another time-management hack or productivity app. Instead, Raynor insists that the answer lies in studying the Author of Time Himself: Jesus Christ. What if the Gospels didn’t only reveal how to live righteously but also how to live efficiently, purposefully, and peacefully?

Raynor’s main claim is bold: the way Jesus managed His limited thirty-three years on earth provides a perfect model for how we can order our own. By carefully observing Christ’s rhythms—from how He started His days in solitude, to how He set priorities, handled interruptions, and rested—Raynor suggests we can learn to be not just productive, but wildly productive in service of God’s purposes. Productivity becomes an act of worship, not self-glorification. The book invites you to adopt what Raynor calls a “grace-based productivity” mindset: peace first, then purpose, then practical stewardship of time.

A Different Kind of Productivity Book

Raynor positions his book amid a crowded genre of time-management gurus—David Allen, Cal Newport, Greg McKeown, and others—but he distinguishes himself by connecting spiritual formation with high-performance principles. He notes most books promise that better systems will produce inner peace. In contrast, Christianity teaches the opposite: we already have peace through Christ; our work and systems are simply a worshipful response to that gift. This “grace-based productivity” upends the usual self-help formula. You work from peace, not for it.

To structure his message, Raynor organizes the book around seven biblical principles, each illustrated through Jesus’s life and paired with modern “practices.” Each principle—such as “Start with the Word,” “Let Your Yes Be Yes,” “Dissent from the Kingdom of Noise,” and “Embrace Productive Rest”—translates sacred truth into tangible strategies. It’s part theology, part behavioral science, and part very practical instruction manual.

The Peace before Productivity

In the book’s introduction, Raynor uses the Gospel story of the storm on the sea (Luke 8) to dramatize how most of us live: as if our boats are swamped by waves of work, notifications, and anxiety. The disciples panicked; Jesus slept. The moment Christ calmed the storm becomes a metaphor for Raynor’s central premise. True order and calm in our schedules come only when we first anchor to Christ, “the Prince of Peace.” Every tactic that follows—the lists, the planning systems, the rest cycles—must remain grounded in the security of being loved children of God who work from a place of peace rather than striving for it.

He calls this the shift from works-based productivity to grace-based productivity. The former says, “Once I perform well, I’ll feel peace.” The latter responds, “Because I already have peace in Christ, I can now perform well out of gratitude.” This shift reframes ambition itself: we aren’t trying to ‘get ahead,’ we’re stewarding our days as an offering to God.

From Swamped to Stewardship

Raynor defines “redeeming the time” from Ephesians 5:16—to “buy up” time for God’s purposes. It’s not about squeezing in more tasks or multitasking (which he later condemns as “makeshift omnipresence”). Instead, to redeem time means aligning your minutes with God’s will—to “buy back” even ordinary work as eternal investment. Every email, meeting, or diaper change becomes sacred because every hour belongs to the Lord. Productivity becomes a form of faithfulness.

He structures the rest of the book around how to steward this calling through seven Christ-modeled habits: grounding in Scripture (Start with the Word), honoring commitments (Let Your Yes Be Yes), quieting distractions (Dissent from the Kingdom of Noise), choosing priorities (Prioritize Your Yeses), focusing your presence (Accept Your Unipresence), resting as command (Embrace Productive Rest), and working without hurry (Eliminate All Hurry). Each builds sequentially, forming a life that is both purposefully busy and spiritually unhurried—just like Jesus.

Why This Approach Matters

The modern productivity trap, Raynor warns, is idolizing efficiency. We fill our calendars in pursuit of self-worth and call it “responsibility.” The result: swamped lives with little peace. In contrast, Raynor contends Christians can leverage all the same tools—planning, prioritization, digital minimalism—but for a higher motive. The goal isn’t personal optimization; it’s kingdom advancement. Redeeming time becomes part of redeeming creation itself.

By grounding his system in the example of Christ—a man who balanced crowds and solitude, urgency and patience, purpose and peace—Raynor offers not just another framework but a holistic theology of time. Modern believers, he suggests, are not called to escape busyness but to sanctify it. We do that by seeing time not as a scarce resource we control, but as a sacred gift we steward. Only then can we, like the Savior, move through life calmly in the midst of chaos, accomplishing much without ever being hurried.

Raynor’s first principle—Start with the Word—roots everything else. To manage time like Jesus, you must first know the Author of time, His story, and your role within it. Raynor opens with the story of William Wilberforce, the British politician who led the abolition of slavery. Wilberforce’s conversion to Christ transformed an ambitious but unfocused life into one laser-focused on God’s mission. Yet his effectiveness, Raynor notes, didn’t begin with productivity techniques; it began with theology. His conviction that all time belongs to God reoriented how he spent it.

Five Biblical Truths about Time

Raynor outlines five scriptural truths that reshape our relationship with time:

• 1. Our longing for timelessness is God-given. Humans instinctively resist the limits of time because eternity is “set in our hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We ache for permanence because we were made for it.
• 2. Sin ensures we’ll die with unfinished symphonies. Every generation will leave projects incomplete—reminders that time is fallen and finite. Even Wilberforce lamented not doing more, despite ending the British slave trade.
• 3. God will finish the work we leave unfinished. Since Christ’s resurrection inaugurates the eternal kingdom, our labor for good will be completed by Him. Our efforts matter forever, not because we finish them, but because God does.
• 4. The gospel is both our rest and our ambition. Because we are accepted in Christ, we no longer work for love but from it. That frees us to work energetically without anxiety—to strive without striving.
• 5. We can know how God would manage His time. When the timeless God became flesh, He limited Himself to finite hours and choices. The Gospels, read as biography, show Jesus managing His time perfectly—working, resting, focusing, saying no, withdrawing to pray.

By absorbing these truths, you adopt a spiritually informed worldview of time. It shifts your daily planning from self-help to discipleship. Productivity becomes a practice of following Jesus’s footsteps through the hours of your day.

The Practices: Word and Prayer

Raynor builds two practical habits around this first principle. First, spend time daily with “the Author of Time.” Like Jesus retreating early to pray, this is more than a ritual—it’s a relational alignment that powers everything else. Scripture becomes a “keystone habit,” a discipline that strengthens all others, including focus, rest, and goal-setting. Second, he teaches “Pray What You Know,” turning theology into prayer. Each line of his model prayer reminds the reader of truths about eternity, unfinished work, and grace-based productivity. The act of praying through one’s understanding of time re-centers the heart before the day begins.

(Note: This approach resembles practices from John Mark Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Matt Perman’s What’s Best Next, both of whom Raynor cites as influences.)

Ultimately, starting with the Word cures the illusion that we control our time. It reminds us that all time is borrowed, that days are numbered, and that our role is to steward—not master—the clock. Only by beginning here can you manage time the way Jesus did: not merely efficiently, but eternally.

Raynor’s second principle draws from Jesus’s command in Matthew 5:37: “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” True time stewardship, he teaches, begins with integrity—honoring every commitment we make, from appointments to promises. The reason so many feel anxious and scattered isn’t just overwork; it’s broken trust between our intentions and our actions. Psychologically, this tension produces what researchers call the Zeigarnik effect: unfinished tasks nag at our minds until resolved. Spiritually, it mirrors what James calls “double-mindedness.”

From Anxiety to Clarity: Closing Open Loops

To fix the root problem, Raynor borrows from David Allen’s Getting Things Done system: capture every “open loop”—any commitment, big or small—into a single external system. He calls this a Commitment Tracking System (CTS). Your brain can hold only a few priorities at once; externalizing them frees mental RAM for focus and peace. Citing psychology experiments, he shows that even making a plan for deferred tasks calms the mind. This is how your “yes” becomes trustworthy—not by working faster, but by working transparently.

Building Your Workflow

Raynor lays out a detailed workflow: choose one system (digital or physical) to track everything, collect all tasks from every source (email, texts, thoughts), define them clearly (“What’s the next action?”), review daily and weekly, and maintain discipline. The goal isn’t obsessive planning, but peace-producing completeness. You can only relax when you trust your system. This honors Christ’s reputation of faithfulness, turning organization into worship. As Jen Wilkin notes, “Every act of faithfulness toward others is an act of faithfulness toward God.”

The Spiritual Dimension of Systems

For Raynor, productivity tools are spiritually significant when used rightly. Lists don’t save time; they redeem conscience. A cluttered inbox is a symptom of inner disorder. Yet stewardship over commitments mirrors divine integrity—“The One who calls you is faithful.” This intersection of theology and practical neuroscience exemplifies Raynor’s core contribution: transforming secular efficiency systems into spiritual disciplines of trustworthiness.

When you collect open loops, define your work, and review it regularly, you imitate Jesus’s focused intentionality. You move from scatter to stewardship. Every completed task becomes a small reflection of divine reliability—a lived-out “yes” that means yes.

In a world addicted to distraction, Raynor’s third principle may be the most countercultural: Dissent from the Kingdom of Noise. Citing C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters—where demons plot to drown humanity in noise—Raynor warns that our endless news cycles, social media feeds, and smartphone pings aren’t neutral; they are spiritual warfare tactics. The result, he argues, is not just information overload but attention poverty. Our inability to think deeply, pray attentively, or engage wholeheartedly undermines discipleship itself.

Why Noise Destroys Depth

Noise, he explains, limits our creativity, critical thinking, and peace. God designed humans for regular solitude, reflection, and boredom—the fertile soil of creative breakthroughs and divine encounter. Without silence, even prayer times become noisy. Quoting pastor John Mark Comer, Raynor notes that “the noise of the modern world makes us deaf to the voice of God.” If faith comes by hearing, modern believers’ greatest risk is losing the ability to listen.

Practical Disciplines of Quiet

• Let friends curate your information. Instead of doomscrolling, trust word of mouth for news that truly matters.
• Stop swimming in infinity pools. Avoid endless social feeds; choose finite, filtered content (like books and newsletters).
• Parent your phone. Set bedtime for devices. They’re tools, not masters.
• Take walks, embrace crevices of silence, and write to think. Creative clarity comes when the mind is quiet enough to make new connections.

Raynor points to figures like Martin Luther King Jr., C.S. Lewis, and William Wilberforce—leaders whose external productivity flowed from disciplined internal stillness. King called solitude a “moral obligation.” Jesus modeled the same, retreating frequently to solitary places for prayer. If even the Son of God needed silence, so do we.

Silence isn’t withdrawal; it’s revelation. Dissenting from the kingdom of noise doesn’t reject technology but reorders it under the King of peace. When you practice stillness, boredom, and reflection, you rejoin an ancient rhythm where creative ideas emerge, anxiety quiets, and God’s voice becomes audible once again.

Even after taming noise, you still face endless choices. The fourth principle, Prioritize Your Yeses, shows how to choose the right ones. Raynor illustrates this through basketball legend Tamika Catchings, who wrote on her mirror as a young girl: “One day I’ll be in the NBA.” Despite long odds, that vision organized her every decision—early mornings, practice, study, and sacrifice. Your yes only has power when surrounded by a thousand noes.

Jesus’s Example of Prioritization

In Mark 1, after a long evening of healing people, Jesus withdrew to pray. When crowds begged Him to resume, He replied, “Let us go elsewhere…that is why I have come.” That single sentence reveals a mission-centered filter. Jesus knew not every good thing was the necessary thing. His “purpose harder than steel” enabled relentless focus on His Father’s will.

The Five-Story Framework

Raynor introduces a memorable structure for aligning tasks with calling:

• 5th Floor – Mission: Your ultimate “why” (to glorify God in all you do).
• 4th Floor – Callings: The specific roles you choose (parent, artist, entrepreneur).
• 3rd Floor – Long-Term Goals: Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) that give fire to your roles.
• 2nd Floor – Quarterly Goals: Tangible, measurable objectives (he adapts Google’s OKR method).
• 1st Floor – Projects and Actions: Concrete next steps drawn into your daily plan.
• Basement – Posteriorities: The good things you intentionally leave undone.

This “five-story building” prevents misplaced hustle by forcing every task to align vertically with eternal purpose. You can only say yes with confidence when you know what deserves your no.

(In practice, Raynor’s method echoes Greg McKeown’s Essentialism and Stephen Covey’s “begin with the end in mind.” But his theological twist is distinctive: your calling isn’t self-chosen meaning—it’s discovered participation in God’s plan. Prioritizing your yeses becomes a spiritual discipline of trust.)

If Prioritize Your Yeses clarifies what to do, the fifth principle—Accept Your Unipresence—clarifies how to do it: with full attention. Humans are not omnipresent; only God is. Yet our digital multitasking imitates divine ubiquity, scattering our souls across screens and schedules. Raynor insists: You can’t be present everywhere, so be deeply present somewhere.

The Case against Multitasking

Drawing from Cal Newport’s Deep Work, Raynor explains the cost of multitasking through “attention residue”—the mental lag that remains after context switching. Even a brief glance at your inbox lowers IQ more than smoking marijuana, he notes. The path to meaningful work and relationships is depth: “the ability to focus intensely on one important thing at a time.” In a distracted century, depth is “the superpower of the 21st century.”

How Jesus Modeled Focus

The Gospels show Jesus accepting His human limitations. He worked, ate, preached, and rested sequentially, not simultaneously. When His family interrupted His teaching (Matthew 12), He remained focused on His immediate mission. Later, He withdrew privately with His disciples. Jesus chose His absence deliberately, proving that saying no to one moment was saying yes to another.

Habits that Cultivate Depth

• Check email and messages at fixed times; don't let others schedule your attention.
• Eliminate external distractions—notifications, unnecessary apps, cluttered desks.
• Schedule “deep work appointments” with yourself, as sacredly as meetings.
• Create margin for “shallows and serendipity”—those interruptions God may use to redirect you.

Each practice acknowledges human unipresence as a gift, not a flaw. You cannot work endlessly nor love everyone equally. But focusing on one person or task at a time mirrors Christlike incarnation—God Himself choosing to be fully present in a single body, place, and moment.

Accepting your unipresence liberates you from frenzy. You stop trying to be God and finally become fully human again—attentive, limited, and free.

What if rest is not the enemy of productivity but its engine? In his sixth principle, Embrace Productive Rest, Raynor dismantles the myth of the grind. Drawing from neuroscience and Scripture, he shows that bi-hourly breaks, nightly sleep, and weekly Sabbath are not indulgences—they are design features built by God for maximum fruitfulness.

The Science of Designed Rest

Our bodies operate in 90-minute ultradian cycles—peaks of energy followed by dips. Ignoring them leads to burnout; honoring them with fifteen-minute breaks rejuvenates focus. Likewise, Dr. Matthew Walker’s sleep research shows that skipping rest destroys creativity and emotional stability. Even dreams, Raynor notes, serve problem-solving functions (he recounts Shay Cochrane literally dreaming up a business breakthrough). Rest is not laziness; it’s how refinement happens.

Sabbath: God’s Time-Management System

At the weekly level, Sabbath models divine rhythm. Raynor reframes it not as legalistic ceasefire but as liberation—from Egypt, from hustle, from self-reliance. “The Sabbath was made for man,” Jesus said. It’s a weekly declaration that God runs the world while you sleep. His family’s practice—preparing Saturday, lighting a candle, feasting, celebrating—demonstrates that ceasing and feasting together renews both spirit and productivity.

Studies confirm the paradox: Chick-fil-A’s closed Sundays produce six-day profits surpassing seven-day competitors; Seventh-day Adventists live ten years longer on average. In short, resting God’s way actually multiplies time rather than wastes it.

By embracing rest as obedience and efficiency, you join Jesus, who slept in the storm and invited others to “come away and rest.” When you nap, Sabbath, or take a walk, you’re not pausing productivity—you’re trusting Providence. Rest is how finite creatures remember who’s infinite.

The final principle, Eliminate All Hurry, captures the heart of Raynor’s message: to be like Jesus is to be purposefully busy yet internally unhurried. He contrasts this with modern restlessness—our addiction to urgency and overcommitment. The antidote is careful planning, sacred boundaries, and a “time budget” that gives every minute a name before the day begins.

Counting the Cost of Time

Raynor notes that Jesus Himself modeled time budgeting in Mark 11. After entering Jerusalem and surveying the temple, Jesus delayed cleansing it until morning—He “counted the cost” rather than cramming one more task into a long day. We hurry, by contrast, when we say yes before we’ve calculated the hours required. Just as Dave Ramsey teaches every dollar should have a name, Raynor teaches every minute should too.

The Practical Framework

A “Time Budget Template” divides your ideal day into intentional blocks—time in the Word, deep work, breaks, messages, family, sleep. Raynor emphasizes adjusting it daily (via a short review and prayer) and protecting it fiercely by learning to say gentle, generous noes. Quoting Jesus’s compassion toward crowds and His withdrawals to solitude, Raynor shows discernment: sometimes love says yes; sometimes love says no.

To guard your calendar, he suggests the “encourage, decline, help” framework: appreciate requests, decline clearly (“I’m fully committed”), and offer help in a different form. This balances service and stewardship. Ultimately, saying no to hurry protects your ability to say a better yes to God’s leadership.

Fred Rogers becomes Raynor’s modern icon of unhurried life—wildly productive yet radiating calm “Fred-time” that slowed everyone around him. Like Rogers, we can lead fast-paced lives at a heavenly pace. Jesus’s calm in chaos isn’t unattainable; it’s invitational. By redeeming your time—anchored in peace, structured by purpose, and sanctified by rest—you, too, can live with a purposeful stillness that makes an eternal impact.