Time Belongs to God
New Years often causes us to reflect on what is important.
Time is important. It’s a subject that interests me, and one of my favorite songs is called “Time.”
So I liked the insert that was inside our bulletins in church yesterday:
Discovering Life in Giving Time
by H. Joseph Miller
I understand that the Bible teaches that God made time. It belongs to Him. Furthermore, He controls my time (Psalm 31:15), a precious commodity whose quantity He controls while its quality depends greatly upon my right choices.
Valuing time is mark of spiritual maturity. The Bible challenges me to consider the purpose of life after the wisdom of the Word of God and not after the wisdom of an evil world. (Ephesians 5:15-16). This means that I must dedicate myself to proper time management by keeping God in the center of my life. (Colossians 4:1-5). I must be devoted to Him so that I will work out His purposes in honorable employment (Luke 10:38-42). My needed leisure time should re-create me to fulfill God’s intended purposes in my life. Since time belongs to God, I can never obediently leave Him out of my plans.
In this biblical sense, every day of my Christian life is the Lord’s Day. Nevertheless, Sunday is that special Lord’s Day of celebrating the Resurrection. The Scriptures ask me to give it wholly to corporate worship and service through the local church (Acts 20:7; I Corinthians 16:2; Hebrews 10:25; Revelation 1:10). To make my work what I live to do for Good, not just what I do to live, I must worship properly.
This means that I must impose God-honoring priorities upon all my time. I should eliminate those things that waste my time by keeping me from my God-honoring priorities.
Perhaps I should evaluate how I use each day and accept the changes the Holy Spirit prompts through the Word and prayer: Do I need more time for Bible study and less time for reading other material or for watching television? Am I giving godly priority to the Lord’s work and my family with my work schedule? Can I do something about that?
The Lord has given me authority over the time He has entrusted to me. It is a responsibility with accountability to Him-a divine stewardship (Luke 14:28-30).
