Demandsage reports: “The average US screen time has reached 7 hours and 3 minutes.” That is on average. That is each day. Extrapolate that over a year and it adds up to 2,573 hours spent on a screen. That is about enough time for one man to build a 1,500 square foot house from scratch. To be fair, not all the time spent on screens is squandered. But even if half of it is, that leaves 1,286 hours unaccounted for per year. That is the equivalent of 161 8-hour work days. Compare that to the 52-104 hours Christians spend on corporate worship in a year (6½-13 work days) and it’s pretty clear there is an imbalance. 

Brothers, what is your priority? There are many things that may vie for your attention, but what are the things you must get to? There is no singular answer to that question if dealing with the specifics. Life circumstances such as being single or married, or having children or not will set the demands and priorities of your time. Personality and preference will change areas of interest. Even location will change available activities. However, in a general sense there are identifiable priorities; a central responsibility that applies to all men. It is the concept of stewardship. Today I want to think about the stewardship of time.

For the sake of this article, the following working definition of stewardship will be used: “The responsible management, care, and use of resources entrusted to one’s care for the benefit of the one to whom they ultimately belong.” In this case the definition will be applied to time.

Time is a limited commodity. The Lord has only given so much of it, and even set its exact amount for each person. Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” So how should a Christian interact with that truth? Stewarding time to the glory of God involves avoiding two ditches. The first is overworking, and the second is overplaying because both forget that time is to be used for the benefit of the Lord who gives it.

Labor

Time is not only for production. Productivity is a biblical virtue. For example, the apostle Paul worked very hard. When among the Thessalonians “we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:9). Biographies of great men in church history describe tremendous work ethics. John Wesley and George Whitfield accomplished so much because they worked incredibly hard. For a contemporary example, Yahoo Finance reported that during the launch of Tesla’s Model 3, Elon Musk was working an astounding 120 hours per week. Though the intensity of these men may be somewhat admirable, this kind of dedication is not commendable for most people. A case could even be made that it is not biblical, or at least not wise because time is not only given for work.

• Worship. The Lord has woven into His creation the idea of Sabbath. In the Fourth Commandment, the Lord says that man is to labor six days and rest one (Exodus 20:9-10). Life is not only about the project. Weekly worship is woven into creation as an essential use of man’s time.
• Rest. The festivals prescribed by the Lord in the Old Testament, like the Feast of Booths, give examples of prolonged week-long breaks from labor (Leviticus 23:33).

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