Proverbs 27.1
“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”
Scripture reminds us to have a wise and humble view of time. We must wisely make the most of the time we have, and we must humbly recognize that the future is not guaranteed.
One of the important messages in the bible is this: Don’t spend your time; invest your time. Ephesians 5.15-16 says it this way: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil”. The word that this passage uses for “make the best use” is exagorazo, which is a marketplace term. It means “to purchase or redeem.” The King James Bible translates it “redeem the time,” which is a very accurate description of what scripture instructs us to do.
Every day you make decisions about how to invest your time. You can spend your time living by the world’s standards, or you can invest your time living by the standards of the kingdom of God. You can spend your time guided by the impulses and desires of the old nature, or you can invest your time with intention and purpose guided by your new nature in Christ.
The point is that in order to invest time wisely, we must first “look carefully” and then we must “redeem the time.” The easy thing is to follow our impulses and get caught up in the popular activities and habits of our culture. The natural thing is to spend our time the same way and on the same things as everyone else. But God says, “Don’t spend your time like everyone else. Stop and think before you give your time to something. Look at your time from a kingdom perspective. Redeem the time. Buy it back from the sin nature and from the world, and then re-invest it in things that really matter.”
James 4 and Proverbs 27.1 communicate this same message: “Don’t be presumptuous about your goals and plans. Don’t assume that time will unfold just the way you plan. Plan for today and tomorrow, but make sure you honor God as you do so. Whatever time God gives you, make it count!”
This is enormously practical advice. Time is a critical resource. Unless time is managed well, very little else will be managed well. How we invest our time determines our effectiveness. God gives us three resources to invest every day: Attention, Time, and Energy. Of the three resources, time is the only one that is non-renewable. Attention can drift, but we can refocus and get it back. We expend energy, but we can recover and re-energize. However, once time is spent, it’s gone. We cannot get it back. Nor can we save time and store it up for future use. Time is a fixed and non-renewable resource. Once it is spent we can’t recover it. Each of us already has all the time we will ever have.
Our effectiveness is determined not by how much time we have, but by what we do with the time we have. We must be wise and effective stewards of the time that God has given us. Look carefully at where your time goes.
Today is a gift from God; you will not get a second chance at it. Invest wisely.
