Ep #03: How To Make the Most of Your Time

Episode Transcript

Austin: All right. Welcome back to the Second Half Stewardship Podcast. We're so glad that you have joined us and today we're going to be talking about the idea that the topic that God owns time. Last week we talked about God owns money. The time before that, we talked about just this idea that God owns everything. So, Spencer, you want to recap a little bit of that, what we talked about last week of God owning money?

Spencer: Yeah. So again, God owns it all is our theme. We're working our way through these different examples. And when we think about money, the Bible tells us that we're either going to serve God or money. And so we make that conscious choice that we're going to serve God. Now, that plays out in a lot of different ways, and we need to reflect on those and got into that last week.
I think this week is going to be fun because actually in a lot of ways, time and money can be interchangeable.
And so we recognize that upfront that as we think about God owning our time, we can spend our time to make money, we can work harder, we can work longer hours. We can also move in a different direction there. But if we think about our role as stewards, since God does own it all, not just our possessions, that holistic view should give us a little bit better traction.

Austin: So I've got a question for you. Okay.

Spencer: All right.

Austin: When does it rain money?

Spencer: Oh, man. Can you tell me.

Austin: When there is change in the weather?

Spencer: Oh, wow. Wow.

Austin: All right. We're going gold. Going gold on these dad jokes.

You know, as I think about this idea of God and time and how I relate to time, I feel naked without my watch. I'm just going to be totally candid. Not and I'm not always glad about that. I as I was getting ready and I was about to walk out the door this morning. I looked down and I saw my wrist was naked and I thought, do I have any other clothes on?
You know, and I worked for several years with international students and one of the beautiful things that I noticed about some other cultures is they don't view time in the same linear fashion that I do. There's not necessarily this I start in my time is based on my production. What am I going to finish today? Their time was very much circular.
It was relational. It was, Oh, I'm here with you in this moment and we're going to be fully present where I would kind of have my hands out in front of me as I'm having lunch with a student and I'm kind of glancing down and trying to figure out, am I going to be late to my next meeting?
And this person, they may have kind of an idea of what time it is, but but they were fully present with me in that moment. You know, it's hard for me to get out of the water of linear time, but I think it's a beautiful thing to be reminded that my vision of my time, my vision of the time that I have here on this Earth is linear and that it will end.
But it's also circular in that God is with us in the present and the past and the future. He sees it all. And, you know, it's just a beautiful thing to remember that our time is not always what we see it as.
Spencer: Well, and we talked about that even that last episode, Psalm 139:5 you, him, me in behind and before you have laid your hand upon me. So there's a sense that God is ordaining our movements and but that's hard when we think, well, I, you know, this isn't working out according to my plans, you know, because I have that same sense of it's tough to release sometimes that linear view of will I be late?
Or, you know, can I be fully present in this moment when there's other things that are going on in my mind there as well?

Austin: So some areas where we're going to go today, we're going to look at what culture says first. YOLO. You only live once. So live it up. Do whatever you want with your time. What are some of the things that culture tells us, Spencer?

Spencer: Well, I mean, in so many ways, I mean, it goes back to, you know, that paragon of wisdom, Ricky Bobby, who said, you know, if you're not first, you're last, you know, if you've never seen it, Talladega Nights, you know, some funny moments there. But really, in all seriousness, that is a direction of our culture that if we can't achieve, if we're not right there, you know, kind of setting the pace, then, you know, what is our life?
What is how do we justify our existence? You know, I think of Harold Abrahams, you know, in the movie Chariots of Fire, you know, if you think about that, he said, I have 10 seconds to justify my existence. And he was spending all of his time towards trying to win this gold medal. Yeah. You know, and so his energy was completely focused on justifying his existence.
And and that can be a pull, you know, for us that we use our time in that fashion rather than knowing God's already justified our existence. He loves us. There's nothing more we can do there. So we need to just act like we're stewards, like we are loved because we are.

Austin: When I think about some of the CEOs of major corporations that are really heralded as these gifted leaders, and it's the people that work 80 hours, 120 hours a week and just burn every relationship around them for the sake of the company, for the sake of what they're going to be doing. And I think at the heart of it is that we don't like that we're temporal, we don't like that our life will end at some point.
It's a hard thing to wrestle with at my time on here, on planet Earth is limited. Yes, I get to go be with the Father in eternity. That still scares me because I don't understand, I can't comprehend eternity. However, this idea of wanting to be remembered forever, it allows me to kind of get outside of that , “Oh, I am temporal.”
And that's what the culture I think sells us on is like sell your life so that you can be remembered forever. And I think it hit me maybe five years ago or so, 100 years after I die, there will probably be very few people that remember me. And that's not a bad thing. Like I'm going to live a normal existence.
Yeah. So what do I do with my time? How do I serve the Lord with my time?

Spencer: Well, on a lighter example, there we were. We were doing a presentation and preparing and realized that one of the markers was that one of the parts of the the bond world had not been so bad in the first four months of this year since 1842. And, you know, it's 180 years ago. And think back who was president in 1842, I couldn't tell you.
I couldn't even get close. And it turned out, you know, it's John Tyler, but even the leader of the United States. He's written in history. You can read about him, certainly. But, you know, if you asked somebody passing on the street, probably one in a hundred could tell you maybe, you know, who was president in 1842. Right.

Austin: So we're going to look at Ephesians 5:15-17 as our first passage. And, you know, the first half of Ephesians Paul is reminding the church in Ephesus of who they are in Christ. We've got that beautiful passage that we've been memorizing in Ephesians 2. By grace you have been saved, but God, who is rich and His mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, he laid down his life for us.
You know, we were reminded of who we are by Paul. And then then in the second half, he's exhorting the Christians in Ephesus to live into their faith. And he says in Ephesians 4:1, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. And so Paul is expounding on this when he says in Ephesians 5:15-17, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of time because the days are evil.
Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. So, Spencer, what are what are some thoughts that you got on that?

Spencer: Well, I think, you know, walking in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called, I mean, what a calling we have the God of the universe who has who owns it all, who invites us to be stewards and not from a sense of, you know, him pushing down directives in a way that is commanding that that's not loving to us.
But he's laid down his life, loving us. And so we have this amazing Father who loves us and invites us into that worthy into that calling that we can live into in a worthy manner. So it's an amazing opportunity there, just that context overall. And then, you know, he he moves on and says, we need to be careful, you know, how we walk.
Not as unwise wise, but as wise, again, making the best use of our time. So again, we are stewards there looking at our time and how we use it as a tool to honor and glorify God.

Austin: And so, you know, as I think about this too, if, if I'm not seeking God with my time, then I'm going to be likely sucked into wasting my time. You know, I am really good on my phone of forgetting what time it is, even if I have my watch on and the little clock on the top has a time.
If I if I'm not seeking God, I'm going to get sucked into spending my time elsewhere and using my time. I need to find places of rest and where I can check out. It's not always bad, but I want to also be a person that that checks that. Am I actually making good use of that time this time that God has given me?
It's a real challenge to think, am I spending and my using my time well?

Spencer: I think it's that for all of us, you know, and in some ways, again, we have the culture moving against us because, you know, whether it's on a phone or whether, you know, you hate to give this example, but, you know, folks who walk into a casino, there is no reference to time because the casino wants to trap a person in there.
And so there's so many of the different applications on a computer or a phone that do the same thing. They don't want to show you how much time you're spending there because they're trying to entertain, they're trying to help you just check out and that in many ways can be antithetical to what the Lord could do, you know, in that time.

Austin: So let's look and see what Jesus says and how he responds to time. So Luke 5:15-16, it says. But now even more than the report about him went abroad and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But He Jesus withdrew to desolate places and pray.

Spencer: I mean, amazing. There you have in that day a tremendous celebrity, thousands of people following him, looking in many ways, rightly, if they were sick, if they were infirm, if they had not heard the word of the Lord wanting to be healed, wanting to grow spiritually, they're chasing him. And yet Jesus knew the way he could use his time, at least in some regards, was spending time with the Father, you know, there as well, and making sure that that was a core element.

Austin: And I think for Jesus, you know, being connected with the Father allowed him to then go and spend his time well with the people that were around him, both his disciples, and then the crowds that the sick knew they could come to Jesus and be healed. And Jesus knew that He needed to come and be refreshed by the Father in silence and solitude and prayer to be in a desolate place, as the Scripture says, to get away from the crowds so that he could serve them well.
He knew that to give his life, he needed to get away and to be alone and to be with the Father. It's really beautiful that that we have Jesus to look to you and say, I need time and space to get away, to be in silence and be with the Father.

Spencer: Well, and it really goes back to even that first episode of, you know, that we highlighted what we want to be core values. You know, within the podcast, it goes back to Jesus's teaching. There's, you know, two commands love God, love others, you know. And so to be able to love others on a consistent basis, oftentimes we really need to carve out that time before the Lord.
And we have Jesus, as you said, as an example, you know, there he needed that silence, that solitude, that connection, you know, with the Father.

Austin: You know, and and one thing I have realized or I've started to pick up is this idea that we don't always live into holy time. You know, in the Book of Leviticus, we're going we're going back into a very often quoted biblical chapter and verse in Leviticus 25, God has is setting out for his people the year of Jubilee and the year of Sabbath rest.
I have never celebrated either of those now. I haven't been alive for 50 years, so maybe a year of Jubilee has not hit me. However, I don't know if I've ever heard of anybody celebrating a year of Jubilee or a year of Sabbath rest where you lay the land fallow. And and then in the year of Jubilee, you resolve all debts.
You know, I've never heard of this happening, so I'm just going to read off some of these passages from Leviticus Chapter 25. It's really challenging to hear what the Lord says is beneficial for these people of Israel, because it's hard to keep. We don't know how to rest. We don't know how to spend time away. So Leviticus 25:1-4 and then 10-12 says the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord for six years.
you shall sow your field and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord you shall not sow your fields or prune your vineyard, the land gets a Sabbath to the land gets time. And then he says, it continues, and you shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.
It shall be a jubilee for you when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. The fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee for you, and it you shall neither so nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines, for it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you.
You may eat the produce of the field. It's. It's beautiful. It's. It's God saying if you walk with me and follow me, I'm going to provide for you. That's that's at the heart of what he's saying here is that we need to trust him, that we can work and we can do put in our time. But he is ultimately the one that provides I can't imagine not working for a year and still God providing for me.
It's just it's impossible for my my brain to comprehend.

Spencer: Well and it really we go back to that time it was impossible for the Israelites to comprehend too you know, even from manna, you know, being provided they when manna was provided originally they went out and they wanted to hoard it and then they end up getting, you know, maggots and disease and other things because God said, no, I will provide day by day.
So we have that tendency. I feel that same pull and really you look at our culture and when we compare ourselves to other countries in the West, our people take the least amount of vacation work the most hours. We're just, you know, part of our cultural M.O. in the United States is that we're going to work harder, longer, you know, try to prove ourselves, try to like Harold Abrahams, you know, define our worth by what we can produce.
And what God is saying is clearly no, I am the one that does that for you.

Austin: This really flies in the face of that idea of the Protestant work ethic. You know, we but we do. We want to work hard while we are given work. But Sabbath allows our hearts to enter the Lord's rest. And in this passage, Sabbath allows the land to enter the Lord's rest. If we really believe that God's kingdom is coming here and in eternity, the land will be given, rest to everything is going to be recreated and made beautiful again.
And these are meant to be foretaste of that that we look forward to a time that we see in some ways in the present, but we look forward to a time when that eternal rest is given and it's just time is really profound.

Spencer: Well, and I love the, the different ways that we see this in our texts today because we see it from a standpoint of Paul saying that we need to really be aware of how we use time. So there's a sense that we are stewards, there's this responsibility. But then, you know, we look at Jesus's life and we see the way that he carved out space for rest.
He carved out space for connection with the Father. And we see even going back to the Old Testament that it was always the pattern of God that He wanted to provide that that element of rest, that element of time, of connection, you know, with him. Because that's when, you know, the people of Israel were given opportunity to worship.
It was on those days, you know. So it's very difficult to, you know, worship if we have no space, you know, the quote and I forget who it was that said, you know, in the United States, we worship our work. We work at our play and we play at our worship. You know, and so as we as we put things in a disordered way, we don't have our time, you know, ordered well either.

Austin: Absolutely. And, you know, as I think about my life, you know, I joke that I can get sucked into my phone, but I really can. And it was designed for it. But I know that it was designed for it. But before I know it, ten, twenty, thirty minutes of me sitting next to my kids is gone like they're playing.
And I'm not I'm not attentive to them. I'm not attentive to their needs and their wants because there's this this draw to look back down and to see what's the next thing what's. And I've tried to take as many things off my phone as I can, but the draw still comes back to I can just waste a lot of time there.
And it's not honoring my relationship with my kids when I'm at home. I'm just not taking captive that time. Whether it's if I'm alone, then it just is so easy to get back drawn back into that or to the next show on TV or to anything else that's not really taking captive that time and saying, God, how are you wanting to shape and use me today?

Spencer: Now I find as well, you know, being drawn into those stories, you know, oftentimes be it a book or a movie or, you know, listening to it on Audible, you know, I mean, The Hunger Games would be a great example. You know, for me, I listen to that story and I'm plunged into this world that's really a godless world.
You know, no one is looking to the Creator to come and have any kind of say. You know, in this it's a page turner, it's a suspenseful thriller. But, you know, I find myself, you know, in in circumstances like that, oftentimes being drawn into a story that is, you know, that I'm taking in for entertainment, you know, value or taking in because it's suspenseful or what have you there.
I think one of the things that we can do as we think through that desire for rest in looking at Jesus's example, is we carve out spaces, you know, for that. One of those that's been so helpful for me is getting away to a monastery, you know, and doing that at least once a year for a couple of days, because I'm able to enter into different rhythms with monks who are praying six or seven times a day, and they're praying the Psalms and, you know, they're working and going back between work and prayer throughout the course of a day.
But it just reminds me that there is a different rhythm that I can engage in and and that my work, you know, I look at these men who have been doing this for decades and see that there is an example that I can be drawn to of really walking with the Lord in the midst of work and having kind of heaven shot through in all aspects on a day to day basis.

Austin: So, where can we go from here? Just like we suggested. And we recommended memorizing Ephesians 2:4-6 last couple episodes we want to think about today is is memorizing 1 Corinthians 4:2. We surfaced it a couple episodes ago but it says, “moreover it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.” And again, this is faithful in a broad sense of faithfulness.
We want to be faithful with our time. We want to be faithful with our money. So memorizing that, moreover, is required of stewards that they be found faithful. It would transform my mind when I've got scripture soaked into it.

Spencer: Right. Well, and if we do that for, you know, weeks, then even that can come into our purchasing decisions or decisions about how we use time, you know, much more easily through the day. Yeah, so awfully powerful. The other thing, of course we've encouraged you if you don't have a pattern or haven't had a pattern historically of praying, the Lord's Prayer is to wake up or to go to bed praying the Lord's Prayer.
We're actually thinking that you could add to that or supplement that with the prayer attributed to Saint Francis. That really helps us to think about each step in life with respect to our time and how we use that, says, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace where there's hatred, let me sow love where there's injury, pardon where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope where there is darkness, light where there is sadness, joy. Oh, divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood, as to understand, to be loved as to love for it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” If we offer ourselves in that way so many good reminders of who we want to be as stewards of time, of possessions, of those relationships as well.

Austin: Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to pose a couple questions that we want you to to think on, to process on, maybe to journal. So one is, what does it look like to use time to build my relationship with God? I can use my time to build it through prayer, through reading scriptures, through silence and listening. We want to deepen that intimacy with the Father.
And so how will you do that? How will you use your time to build that relationship with God?

Spencer: And then the second question is, how is the Lord inviting you to use time in service of others? So we think about, again, building the relationship with God and then serving others, and where might you be tangibly serving and then being intentional in conversations or other ways that you may serve because the Lord invites us into a lot of different opportunities in terms of how we use our time with intention with other people.

Austin: Yeah. So if you guys like to read, we've got a couple of books for you. The first is “The Practice of the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence, and the second is called “The Game with Minutes” by Frank Laubach. I think it takes his name. Yeah.
Spencer: So, you know, and you've probably heard of Brother Lawrence, you know, a monk who just assiduously spent time praying as he was washing dishes mainly, but just moved through his entire day, using his time to connect with the Lord, even as he served others. So an amazing example you may not have heard of Laubach, an amazing man, but he basically started to recognize that he could focus his time so that he was coming back to his relationship with the Lord and listening to the Lord he was trying to do that every minute of every day in some way or another.
And so, you know, he even kind of crafted this way of thinking through, okay, during a sermon, you know, how often am I coming back to just listening to the Lord, listening to what he's saying in the midst of this. So a great example for us. You know, I think one of the things, if we can have people that we look up to, those saints who have gone before us, we realize we don't have to do this.
We don't have to come up with a new game plan, you know, on our own. We can we can say this this worked for this person. Let me, you know, try to walk in that same manner.

Austin: So, in following up and wrapping up, Brother Lawrence says, “let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God, perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity. We should establish ourselves, in a sense of God's presence by continually conversing with Him.”

Spencer: And as we do that, He gives us the energy, you know, to serve him. To serve others.

Austin: He does. So, Spencer, what's coming up in the next couple episodes?

Spencer: So, the next couple of episodes, we're excited to talk further about how God owns it all, particularly with respect to our relationships next time, and then that episode thereafter about how he owns our experiences and our gifts as well. So we'll look forward to seeing you on upcoming podcast slash video. Austin, anything else for today?

Austin: Just again, if you guys find any value in this share it with one friend and then maybe talk about it with that friend, Spencer. And I find it really helpful as we're preparing these episodes too, to walk through this together. So find a friend. If you think it's going to be valuable for them, share with that one friend and then come back if you have any questions, we'll put our email address down in the show notes and you can reach out to us with any questions that you have or post and comments on YouTube. So thank you guys. So much for joining. Take care.