Time
If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,000 that carried over no balance from day to day, allowed you to keep no cash in your account, and every evening cancelled whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day, what would you do? Draw out every cent every day, of course, and use it to your advantage! Well, you have such a bank, and its name is TIME. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it counts as lost whatever amount you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance and allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account with you. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow.
Indeed, time is a gift we receive each day, but how we use it is up to us. The Bible has a good bit to say about the importance of using the time we have been given wisely. Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Pay careful attention to how you live- not as unwise people but as wise- making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” These and other verses related to time teach us that time is limited, precious, and divinely ordered. As believers we should live intentionally and prioritize what matters most and try to maintain an eternal perspective.
When you think about prioritizing your time, your relationship with God and time with your family should be at the top. If your relationship to God is important to you, then you should prioritize spending time with Him, worshipping Him, serving Him, and being part of a community of people (a church) that also prioritizes these things. Family should also be a priority when it comes to how we spend our time. When we make spending time with our family a priority, we show them that they are important to us. As someone has said, “Children spell love T-I-M-E.”
Work and rest must also be prioritized if we are to maintain balance in our lives. Work is a gift given to us by God in order that we may provide for our needs and the needs of our family. Whatever work we are doing, we should remember that ultimately, we are doing it for the Lord. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, do it from the heart as something done for the Lord and not for people.” All work big and small is ultimately service to God.
From the very beginning of time, God showed us that rest must be a priority in our lives. After God had created the world and everything in it, Genesis 2:2 tells us, “On the seventh day God completed his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” Did God need to take a day off? Certainly not! God never gets tired. But He took a day off as an example for us. God designed our bodies in such a way that we can’t just keep going and going; we are not the Energizer Bunny. Getting adequate rest is important in keeping our mind and body healthy.
If you would like to see if you have a healthy balance when using your time, I suggest keeping a time journal. Write down your daily activities and how much you spent doing each one. This was something I did as part of my DMIN Project, and it helped me see if less time should have been devoted to some areas and put into other areas.
Blessings,
Pastor Randy
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