Many of us find ourselves wasting time, which is our most precious commodity. When combined through a week (or a life), we spend thousands of hours doing senseless things and wonder why we don’t get the most important things done.
Just think of wasting 2 hours a day on something mindless and worthless (which is easy to do). That’s 14 hours a week (almost two whole workdays!). Over a year that’s 730 hours, or 91 eight-hour workdays—3 full months of workdays wasted!
As a consequence, we accomplish far less than we were designed to do. Does God have anything to say about time management?
God’s Plan for Our Time
Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:15-18 NASB).
We must be INTENTIONAL about our time: “Be careful how you walk.” We must think intentionally about this issue, or it will never be addressed. And we must be intentional every day and throughout the day.
We must REALIZE that we don’t have much time: “Making the most of your time.” Everyone has a certain allotment of time. Each day that passes means my time is 24 hours shorter. Time is individual. I may have 30 years left or 30 hours, but one thing is sure: I do not know the amount of time left, so every hour is precious and important.
We must REDEEM the time: “Making the most of your time.” (“Making the best use of the time,” ESV; “Buying up for yourselves the opportune time,” WUEST). This means we must aggressively pursue using time in the right way, taking hours that would be wasted and turning them into hours used for God’s glory.
We must understand the NATURAL FLOW of the world: “The days are evil.” The world around us is consumed with evil. Most of the world does not know God or even acknowledge Him. Therefore, they have no interest in godly, heavenly things. If we are not intentional, we will find ourselves swept right along into the world’s use of time. “Everybody is doing it” becomes our thought, and Paul warns us against this mindless misuse of God’s gift of days. What others are doing with their time is almost never what I should be doing with my time.
We must remember that the issue of time is a SPIRITUAL ISSUE. “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.” I have no idea, as a fallen human, how to best use my hours. But God does! If I will turn in continual submission to Him, asking Him to fill (control) me with His Holy Spirit, He will lead me. He will set my agenda. He will guide my schedule! We will find Him leading us “in [all] the paths of righteousness [rightness] for His name’s sake,” like the good Shepherd that He is (Psalm 23:3).
“You have all the time you need to gracefully do everything God asks you to do,” I once heard Adrian Rogers say. The problem is, we are doing many things that God is not leading us to do. Imagine what could be accomplished in God’s kingdom if every believer redeemed the time!
One day very soon, we will stand and give an account before God of all the days/hours He ordained for us. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required” (Luke 12:48). May He find us good stewards who have filled each hour with God-initiated steps for His purposes and glory.