Time for the Kingdom (4)
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5.15, 16
Kingdom time?
Most of us would be surprised, I think, to discover how much of the precious gift of time we invest in activities other than seeking and advancing the Kingdom of God.
One reason this happens is that we have never learned how to conduct our daily lives from a Kingdom vantage point. The work we do, our relationships at home, taking care of the everyday business of staying healthy and managing our affairs—for many believers, indeed, perhaps most, these are not typically looked upon as Kingdom activities. All these concerns fall somewhere outside the bounds of the Kingdom economy—perhaps in the getting-and-spending economy of our secular and materialistic age.
Do we even consider whether the Kingdom of God has anything to do with how we do our work, take care of our yard, converse with friends, or use our “free time”? These are all “non-Kingdom” time for most believers, with the result that hours and hours of time each week, given to us by the Lord for the purposes of advancing His Kingdom, are simply lost to merely temporal and fleeting ends.
“Kingdom time” is, for most of us, church time, when I’m with my Christian friends doing my Christian thing.
Here there is a need, if we are to make the best use of our time for the Kingdom of God, for more focused study in Scripture, to understand how the mind of Christ teaches us to approach our daily tasks and activities for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
The Bible is given to teach and equip us for every good work (2 Tim. 3.15-17). Every work appointed to us, every expenditure of energy we undertake each day, should be a good work, a work in line with the Kingdom economy of God. Paul instructs us to conduct every aspect of our lives as unto the Lord, rather than to men—even, that would include, ourselves (Col. 3.23, 24). But we’ll never understand or begin to practice this teaching—and thus, we will continue to squander precious Kingdom time on fleeting activities—until we give ourselves diligently and continuously to the task of learning how the Kingdom economy shapes our thoughts and practices in every area of life, all the work we’ve been given to do in these last days.
Kingdom time all the time
A second reason we waste so much time is that we don’t follow Paul’s command to walk circumspectly concerning how we use our time each day. For the most part, we don’t pay the kind of attention to the Lord’s gift of time as the Lord does.
Paul says we must not use our time like unwise people, people who have no regard for how the wisdom of God or seeking the Kingdom plays out in the time of our lives. They who are unwise rarely think about God and His will; they have their own ideas about how to use their time (Prov. 14.12). As believers in Christ and citizens in His Kingdom, we are called to live as wise people, trusting in the Lord with all our hearts and in all our ways acknowledging His Lordship over our lives and time (Prov. 3.5, 6; Eph. 5.17).
So we need to develop a means for paying close attention to how we use our time, in order both to live wisely in the time of our lives, and to be sure in our own hearts that we have made the most of the moments granted us for the work that is before us each day.
I used to teach a time management course for businessmen, and one of the activities I required of them, early in the course, was to keep track of how they used their time in 30-minute blocks for a week. I gave them a card marked off in seven daily segments, each divided into 30-minute blocks, and instructed them to write down their activities as they completed them each day. Then, at the end of the day, I told them to tally up the wasted time from each day.
Typically, my students would scoff at the idea that they wasted any time. They were busy people, forward thinkers, men of focused action! They didn’t waste time!
Except, as it turned out, they did. Hours and hours of it, every week. Amazing what a little circumspection might reveal about the time of your life.
Track your time
We’re no different. It might be an interesting activity for you to track your time in 30-minute blocks for a week or so, to pay attention to whether you’re living as a wise person, using your time for the progress of the Kingdom, or like the unwise person, frittering away God’s precious gift.
You might be surprised—or chagrined—at what you discover.
We must do something to determine where the time of our lives is going. And we need to keep this up continually. All time is, for those who are in Christ Jesus, Kingdom time, time for learning the secrets of the Kingdom and putting them to work in our lives. Time is a precious gift, and we who know the Lord must be diligent to make the best use of all our time for the glory of Christ and the progress of His Kingdom.
For reflection
1. What does it mean to “conduct our lives from a Kingdom vantage point”? What are some of the obstacles we must overcome in order to do this?
2. What would you suggest as a workable practice for paying more careful attention to the way you use the time of your life each day? Would it help you to improve the use of your time if you were accountable to someone for the way you use time? Why or why not?
3. What warning does Paul include in Ephesians 5.15, 16 concerning the way we use our time? If we don’t use our time consciously and carefully for the Lord and His Kingdom, what could happen to the time of our lives?
Next steps—Preparation: Are you up to the challenge posed above? Download the worksheet, “The Time of Your Life” and take a look at how you are using God’s precious gift. Commit this activity to the Lord, and review it when completed before Him in prayer.
T. M. Moore
Give thanks
If you have found this meditation helpful, take a moment and give thanks to God. Then share what you learned with a friend. This is how the grace of God spreads (2 Cor. 4.15).
Other columns of interest this week: This week in our Read Moore we begin selections from our book, Understanding the Times. This book will be a valuable companion to our study of “The Kingdom Economy.” In our Crosfigell column we’re following Brendan, a 6th century Irish saint, as he pursues the Kingdom economy in his extraordinary adventures. Our daily Scriptoriumcolumn takes up the Gospel of John this week in our continuing series, “Jesus throughout the Scriptures.”
Thank you.
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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
