Using Time Wisely

"Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." James 4:13-14

I know we are all guilty of wasting time. In fact, I doubt I know anyone who uses every moment of every day to its fullest. I am definitely guilty of time-wasting. I do it most days for at least a little while. There will just be that moment in the day where I'm tired of buzzing around and being busy, so I'll sit and do something that is inconsequential. Most days I'll waste time online- going from site to site, reading up on a few things. Sometimes I'll waste time by flipping through a magazine. On the best days I'll decide to waste some time by curling up with a book for a while- although those moments seem to be fewer and farther between these days. I tell myself it could be worse. I could be sitting and watching TV for hours, or playing computer or video games for hours. But is there really a difference? I do think I had a bit of an "addiction" to television. Thankfully, God presented an alternative to me one day, and after a month of no TV, it no longer is a controlling feature in my life. I do occasionally watch something now- with little or no remorse, but after I'm done watching the program I'm watching, the TV goes off. I don't feel like I have to sit and watch something. It's fantastic to be free of that!

I'll tell you what made the difference for me regarding TV. One day, as I was praying and reading my Bible, and watching a little GodTV online, I just felt a revelation of sorts. As it hit me that what mattered was what I was doing. I thought hard about it, and I thought of eternity. I thought of all the unsaved people around me, and I thought to myself, what if I knew, with absolute certainty that Jesus was going to return for His people during my lifetime. That moment could still be 2000 years away, or 200 years, or simply 20 years. But if I knew, with absolute assurance that Christ would return in my lifetime, would I live differently? Would it change my perspective and what I do from day to day? It really was something to think about. It made me realize that things like keeping up with a TV show really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. When I am standing before the Lord on the day of judgement, he's not going to say "I'm so glad you kept up with 14 seasons of Survivor. Well done." He's going to say "You watched 14 seasons of Survivor...that's 17 hours of reality television per season, which makes 238 hours that you could have been doing something for Me." Yikes.

That's not to say that moments of leisure and relaxation aren't important. They are, and every person has their different ways to relax. But when those moments of relaxation are controlling you...and causing you to waste away entire chunks of your time, you need to re-think your moments I think. I think of simple internet games like solitaire and such, and how many people play those during their days at work. When the boss comes into the room, you quickly turn them off, so you're not caught wasting your time during the work day. Shouldn't it be the same with our everyday life? We should be living as many moments as possible for Him, not living our moments for just one more round of online poker.

It's definitely something to think about, and something to reflect on. I can't pick your moments for you any more than you could pick my moments. God helped me take care of the TV control, now maybe it's time to identify another time waster and eliminate it. It's something to pray on, and something to ask God to show you- to show you where you are wasting your time, and how you could better use it for His Glory.