If you ever saw The Matrix (one of the coolest sci-fi movies of all time, if you ask me), you'll remember what life was like in that movie. Everyone seems to be stuck in a cosmic compound, going through the motions of a dream-like existence, doomed to be forever incarcerated by an artificial and mechanized life form — unless, of course, our hero, Keanu Reeves, releases them from their bondage, gives them an escape route, and shows them the bigger picture.

Sound like your life — minus Keanu Reeves, anyway? Join the club. Most of us seem to be caught in our own version of the Matrix Maze. You might be feeling like you're confined in your own personal prison, with the freedom to do "what you really want to do" robbed by your parents, teachers, employer, maybe even God. Or you might not blame any of them, but feel like time's just always getting away from you. Between classes and homework and friends, you never feel like you're getting a grip on your life. You feel like you're just going through the motions.

Guess what? It doesn't have to be that way.

Maybe you've heard it said that we don't break God's laws — they break us. One non-negotiable is that He has given each and everyone of us 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week, and 365 days a year. Time is God's gift to us. How we use our time can be our gift to Him. Everybody uses time; some wisely, some unwisely. A wise use of this non-refundable commodity called time might be defined as:

Doing God's will for your life at any given moment.

Aren't you grateful that we have a loving, merciful, gracious God as our Creator and Lord and that He has given us, not only a way out of our slavery to sin, but also the means to see things (up to a point, anyway) from His perspective? We can at least begin to have the mind of Christ, get outside of the box, and think like He thinks. Here's the invitation to a higher plane that He extends to every believer: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." (James 1:5)

It's a simple plan: Ask God for wisdom and He promises to give it to us. But most of us are just arrogant enough to think we can handle it on our own and bring about the necessary changes in our life that we desperately need.

As the new year rolls around, maybe you're like hordes of other people who, after getting fed up with the way they operated this past year, make a list of resolutions of how this upcoming 12 months will be different. Well-intended priorities and goals are set, only to be discarded weeks later as legalistic or unrealistic, ditched to keep you from going nuts as you try to juggle them all.

And if you're like most college students, your main complaint is that "I just don't have enough time!" There's so much you'd like to do, if only there were more hours in the day. Life is swirling around you so fast you can barely breathe. The age-old adage always thrown at you, "Just wait 'til you get out of college, then you'll really be busy!" doesn't do anything but add to your depression.

Take a break in the action for a moment. Just for fun, get out your pen and take a little test with me. (Don't worry — no prep required!) I call it a Time Activities Analysis; it'll help you understand where all those precious hours are slipping away to. Take a typical school week and try to estimate how many hours you spend on each of these activities and write that amount in the blank (remember, total hours per week).

1. Social activities: dates, outings, etc. _______
2. In-class time _______
3. Homework _______
4. TV and movies _______
5. Reading (other than required for school) _______
6. Physical exercise _______
7. Sleep _______
8. Preparing and eating meals _______
9. Computer time (not school related) _______
10. Personal hygiene (showering, make-up, etc.) _______
11. Travel time _______
12. Personal errands _______
13. Work _______
14. Devotional time _______
15. Personal ministry to others _______
16. Other stuff (anything else you can think of?) _______

Total Number of Hours Listed _______

Now, let's do some math together. Add up the number of hours you listed on your Time Activities Analysis column and write it at the bottom. Below, take that same total and subtract it from the number of hours we have allotted to us each week (hint: 168). If it's a positive number, this represents the number of hours each week that are unaccounted for.

Total Number of Hours in a Week ______
Total Number of Hours Listed ______
Total Number of Hours Unaccounted for ______

Even the most popular, time-crunched, responsibility-laden students I've given this little quiz to seem to end up with 20-50 hours per week they cannot account for. It drives them crazy as they go back through their schedules and PDA's to scrounge up a few more hours here and there trying to prove to me just how hectic and stressful their lives are.

Congratulations are in order if you're the first student in history who can accurately report where all 168 hours of your week goes. But you'll have to keep reading with the rest of us mere mortals, because one small detail remains to be addressed. Why did you use your hours the way you did? I believe this will be the golden question asked of us when we come face to face with the Lord.

You may not have known that Moses wrote one of the Psalms, but in the 90th one, he impresses upon us the necessity to use the time God has given us wisely:

As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years, Or if due to strength, 80 years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away. (verse 10)

So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom." (verse 12)

I had a roommate back in college who took this passage literally. He judged himself a pretty healthy guy, so he projected living 80 years and then, having done the math and marked up his wall calendar, began working his way backwards, listing how many days he had left to live. There, staring at us each morning for breakfast, was a small box with a date in it and next to it a number such as 21,361. The next morning we would find that number crossed out, only to be confronted with the next little box, date and hand scribbled number: 21,360 and so on. Seeking obedience to Christ, he was numbering his days on his "World's Most Difficult Golf Courses" wall calendar, savoring each 24-hour period, in hopes that when He did meet His Savior in person, he would somehow be able to present to Him a "heart of wisdom."

Sometimes I feel like I have wasted so much of my time and in so doing, wasted so much of my life. Instead of getting under the pile about it though, I'm going to take the advice of pastor, teacher, and author Dr. Chuck Swindoll. His statement "It's never too late to start doing what is right" has always brought me a flicker of hope that I still have time to make my life count. In fact, Jeremiah taught us that the Lord gives us a fresh, brand new slate each and every day: "For the Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease. For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22.23)

I just about fell out of my seat the very first time I heard that passage read as a college freshman. I went back to my room to express gratitude to the Lord who gave me such an incredible promise. In the midst of all the painful, sorrowful lamentations Jeremiah was expressing, he could still see the awe-inspiring magnificence of a beautiful flower growing out of the dry, desolate ground. It could only be God's moment-by-moment, unfailing love in the midst of a dead and dying world.

In the next week or so, take a morning to get alone with God and His Word to determine what your priorities are going to be this year. Pray and think, and then set some challenging, but reachable goals that reflect the values that you know honor Jesus Christ. Make them as specific and measurable as you can, including a way (or person) to help you follow through with your commitments. Persevere through the year, not beating yourself if you miss a day or week. Get up, dust yourself off, and start again, knowing that either you (through Christ) will control your schedule — or it will control you.

Well, we're at the end of the article and no lists. How can the List Guy write an article and not include an inventory of things to know or be or do? Look again. I did include them! Don't tell me we're going to have to put mud in your eyes (like Jesus did in John 9) and ask you to go rinse it out so you can say, along with the once blind man, "I went and washed, and then I could see."

OK, OK. Since you asked for it, here's mud in your eye:

1. Ask God for wisdom and believe He will give it to you.
2. Know exactly where your time is going.
3. Count every day as a precious opportunity to think and live like Christ.
4. Start each morning with a fresh slate of the love of God.
5. Set and stick with your priorities, goals, schedule, and accountability.

Oh, I forgot one! Make sure you leave time for a movie or two. Me, I'm counting the days till the Matrix sequels.