Time is increasingly mentioned a problem among Christians, isn’t it. “Not enough time,” we say. But what exactly is the problem with it? Is it that we don’t have enough time? Or is our problem with time that it is misused?
In the home, we are told, the average father spends approximately seven minutes per week in meaningful conversation with his children. We know that one out of two marriages is failing. One of the primary causes is that husband and wife are simply not spending time talking together. In the assembly, there is often little time spent in prayer or lack in leadership, in shepherding, in visiting. This cannot help but contribute to the lack of life in some of our assemblies.
In our personal lives, we all have a tendency not to spend enough time in prayer and Bible study. One of the wonderful assets of Christian living is that our heavenly Father is always available. I, as a father, am not available to my children at all times. But our heavenly Father is always there. He never runs out of time, never requires an appointment to see Him. But how often do we avail ourselves of that opportunity? Responsibilities press in on every side. And somehow the most important things tend to get pushed out.
That’s the problem with this irreplaceable resource, isn’t it? So let’s see what the Word of God has to offer as a solution. The Bible has a tremendous amount to say about time. Here are some principles on the handling of this precious commodity.
First of all, life is brief. “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14). It’s a wisp of a cloud, a breath in the chill air. Our lifespan is seventy years, but if by strength, eighty (Ps. 90:10). And you know, we in medicine haven’t improved on that at all.
At high school graduation, one-fourth of your life is gone. At thirty-five, one-half is gone. And it’s all downhill from there. We begin to lose the capabilities that we had. No wonder the Wise Man says in Ecclesiastes 12:1, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,” and then describes the failing human body.
God controls our human destiny. “My times are in Thy hand” (Ps. 31:15). “In Thy book the days were all written that were ordained for me” (Ps. 139:16). “Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass” (Job 14:5). God has determined the amount of time that you and I will have on this earth. He knows the days, the moments, the months, the years that we will have. He has set our limit.
Our lifespan can be shortened. We read, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (1Cor. 11:30-31). A solemn warning indeed.
God is the Lord of time. He created time. He controls it. “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth…they shall perish; but Thou remainest…Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail” (Heb. 1:10-12). In 1 Timothy 1:17, the Lord is given a very interesting title: “Now unto the King eternal….” He is the Architect of time. He sees the future, of course, as well as the past and the present. And not only that; the Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever. He can be trusted with our time.
We are stewards of our time. Psalm 90:12 is an excellent motto for this coming year. “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Peter calls us to have the same mind as Christ. Then he adds that we should “no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God” (1 Pet. 4:2-3). Paul warns, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5:16-17). We will give account at the judgment seat where our life’s work will be tested to see what sort it is (1 Cor. 3). Will it endure the fire? The sooner we begin, the more time we have to invest.
We are to invest our time with an eternal perspective. As sons of the King Eternal, we should think in eternal terms–not just longevity on earth, with its prosperity and accomplishments–for the world is passing away with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. There are only two things on earth that last forever: the Word of God and men’s souls. We ought to invest our time in those. Someone has said that you can tell where we place our values by looking at two things: our checkbook and our calendar. But where our treasure is, there is our heart .
Paul instructs those with earthly resources “that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life” (1Tim. 6:18-19). The Lord Jesus said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Mt. 6:19-20).
We are to live in the expectancy of the imminent return of the Lord. “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works…and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Heb. 10:23-25). “But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer” (1 Pet. 4:7).
Our plans are to take into account the Lord’s will. “Go to now, ye that say, Today or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow…ye ought to say, If the Lord will…” (Jas. 4:13-16). They were leaving God out of their plans; it is the height of arrogance to think that we will have another day apart from God’s will.
There is time to accomplish all God’s will. This is remarkable to me. Jesus lived thirty-three years on this earth, a relatively short life. He had thirty years of preparation and three years of public ministry. He had the same twenty-four-hour days that we have. He didn’t have the conveniences and so-called time-savers. Yet He could say, “I have finished the work…” (Jn. 17:4). What was the key? The rest of the phrase is: “…which Thou gavest Me to do.” He could say, “I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me” (Jn. 6:38). And thus the way to accomplish our life’s purpose is to do His will.
If you want to look at a day in the life of Christ, look at Mark 1. There was no rush in His life. He was always available. There was no waste of time in His life. When He went even for a drink of water, with the woman at the well, He turned that encounter into a spiritual one. He often spent time alone with His Father, sometimes a great while before dawn. And yet there was time to rest. He told His disciples, “Come apart and rest.” Jesus was not entangled by the things of this earth and so could live wholly for God.
The brevity of time requires that we take our biblical commitments seriously. First, there is commitment to God (Mt. 22:36-38). Our obedience then grows from our love to God (Jn. 14:21). Worship stems also from the love of God. If we love someone, we will spend time with them. Our time in the Word and in prayer is an expression of our commitment to our relationship with the Lord.
There must also be commitment to the family, to our spouses. Real commitment involves real cost. Look at Deuteronomy 6, beautiful verses about the family and passing on our heritage. We are told to instill these godly values, not just a devotional time once a day, but by weaving our love for God into the whole day. It’s a way of life as we rise up, as we sit in the house, as we walk by the way–taking the common things of life and applying them like Jesus did, with the parables.
There must be commitment to the believers. We are to love one another even to the point of laying down our lives for one another. Paul said he would gladly spend and be expended for them. We’re told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together and to exercise our spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ.
What of commitment to our vocation? Some think that work is a curse. It isn’t. God gave work before the fall. Man was to tend the garden, and work was to be pleasurable. But the fall made it burdensome. There is a misconception that work is to earn a living. But that’s not the reason we work. There are only two reasons in the Bible that we work. One is because we are commanded to work (2 Thess. 3:10). The other reason is to glorify God and so witness for Him (Mt. 5:13-16). “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Col. 3:23), to “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things” (Titus 2:9-10) by the way we work in or out of the home.
How am I going to do all of these things? I want to comment on three words: prioritizing, compartmentalizing, and balancing.
Do I put the responsibilities of my life into some kind of list, arranged by importance? No, we can’t say that one command is greater than another, with the exception of the greatest command. By attempting to assess relative importance on our own, we are violating the teaching of Proverbs 3:5, not to depend on our own understanding. I don’t think the answer is in setting priorities. Priorities assumes we don’t have enough time. Unbelievers work on priorities because for them, there will never be enough time. But one of the principles already established in this study is that there is enough time for the believer to do all the will of God. Instead, we should “prove what is excellent,” “prove what is that good…will of God.” The question is not whether I think it is important, but does the Lord want me to do it? If He does, He will provide the time and resources.
I don’t think the answer is in compartmentalizing our life, either–dividing our lives into the holy and profane; into the sacred and secular. It is important to realize that we are all in full-time work for God. If you are doing His will, you are fulfilling the call of God.
Rather than prioritizing or compartmentalizing our lives, we need to find the biblical balance. Of course we can know what God’s will is (Rom. 12:1-2) if we are willing to do it. Then we can see how our time should be ordered. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy. We still have to make choices, to approve the things that are excellent (Phil. 1:9-10). We will need to do “spring cleaning,” discarding things that may not be wrong in themselves, but that clutter up our lives.
As with the Lord (Mk. 1:21-35), there will be busy times in our lives. Paul said there were times when he was pressed on every side (2 Cor. 4:8). And we will certainly have to give up some things. Jesus was hungry at the well of Sychar. When His disciples came back with food, they said, “How did you get something to eat?” He replied, in effect, “Doing the will of God is My food.” We may have to deny our rights for others (Rom. 14), or to give up sleep sometimes, like the Lord Jesus did–give up our leisure time perhaps. And always be ready for interruptions.
There are also some spoilers of our time. Over-commitment will do it, perhaps like Martha. Materialism will rob me of eternal things: “Be content with such things as ye have: for He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5). Worry can do it: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow…Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Mt. 6:34). Laziness can do it: “Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger” (Prov. 19:15). Or procrastination–the thief of time: “And another also said, Lord, I will follow Thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house” (Lk. 9:61) Wasting time on amusement: amuse means “not thinking.” Philippians 4:8 tells us what to set our minds on. It is amazing how fanatical we can be over sports, but we don’t get excited about the things of the Lord. We can cry over some piece of fiction, but we don’t have any misery over sin. We can laugh at some comic, and yet hardly rejoice when someone is saved. So it is when our mind is pinned to the wrong world.
Lack of organization will make us poor investors of time: As they say, If we aim at nothing, we are sure to hit it. A time chart is helpful here for two reasons. First, if you fill it out accurately, it will help you see where your time is being spent. It is amazing when the average person finds out that he has about thirty-five hours of unaccounted-for time. Or the amount of time that is wasted each week, then multiplied by 52 weeks!
The second thing it will help you to do is to schedule your time so that you can carry out the commitments that God has for you to do. You can adjust your time allotments, shortening and lengthening to suit.
Being in God’s will, often two activities can compliment each other. Taking a drive to the store can be coupled with family time. We have a little practice in our house. If my wife and I leave, we take one of the kids with us if at all possible so we get a little time with them. Like packing a suitcase, you can put your socks in your shoes to save room. So teaching children how to be caring and visiting the aged can be done together.
When all is said and done, when I look back at the end of my life, I would like to be able to say with Paul, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:6-8). But the greatest reward would be to hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant…enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Mt. 25:21). Well done, good and faithful steward, of the time that God has given you.