USA Today recently published some very interesting facts on how the average American spends time. This is what it said.
In a lifetime, the average American will spend:
- six months sitting at stoplights. (It’s better than running them and breaking the law.)
- eight months opening junk mail. (I stopped opening it)
- one year looking for misplaced objects. (Guilty!)
- two years watching television. (Not in a row!)
- five years waiting in line. (McDonald’s drive-through.)
- six years eating. (After you finally get through the drive-through!)
This is what I call the “power of accumulated time” principle. Right now, you can make this principle work for you, rather than against you. The best way to stop wasting time is to learn to create schedules for your free time. When you plan out your time and stick with your plan, your productivity in every arena of life will increase like clockwork.
Commitment Prayer
Father, I pray that You will lead me in establishing the right priorities in life. Help me to make the very best of each spare moment of my existence. I want all that I do to be pleasing in Your sight. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
by Blaine Bartel.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Blaine and Lori Bartel didn’t set out to build a place like this. They became it.
Blaine once lived at the top of the ministry world—national TV, a booming youth movement at Church on the Move, and a growing church in Dallas. But while the stage lights were bright, the darkness underneath was darker. A secret 23-year sexual addiction buried everything he valued—his marriage, ministry, finances, reputation, and identity.
Crushed and barely holding on to life, he spent over a year in deep therapy, wrestling with shame and fighting for healing. Then, somewhere on a windswept highway between Kansas City and Tulsa, he heard the voice that lifted him out of the soil:
“I am not going to give you a recovery. I am calling you into resurrection.”
Everything changed.
Blaine found complete freedom and began decoding a Jesus-centered path that leads men out of the grave and into new life. For more than a decade, he’s been guiding other men through that same resurrection.
Lori was walking her own road—rebuilding after 17 years married to a chronic alcoholic, carrying both the wounds and the courage of a woman who refused to stay broken. She was searching for purpose, for peace, for somewhere her heart could breathe again.
Then God crossed their paths.
They met over pasta at Ti Amo (“I love you”—God’s little wink).
A year later, in a simple wedding wrapped in hope, they said yes to each other and to a calling bigger than themselves.
Today—13 years in—they share one mission:
To pull men out of addiction and to rebuild the marriages addiction has shattered.
House of Resurrection is the fruit of the very ground that once tried to bury them—a sacred space for honesty, healing, and brand-new beginnings.
They are joyful parents of four grown kids, proud grandparents of two, and happiest anywhere with lakes, beaches, sunshine, and reminders that darkness never gets to write the final chapter.
