Lovers of God

How you spend your time / money is really important

Unless we are a part of the rapture, we all have to die someday.

If you were to know that you have just a few days to live, what would you tell your kids?

Perhaps you would tell them a bunch of financial details. Or how you would like to be buried or remembered. Or some intimate secrets that you shared with no one before but now feel compelled to bring out into the open.

When Jesus had only a few days left to live, He said a few things to His disciples. Surely, they are important and worth listening to. Among them is the parable of the talents, described in Mt 25:14-30.

His point, as paraphrased by me, is this: God has given you three things: time, money and talents. Use and invest them wisely while you can. You will have to give an account at the end of the age concerning how you used them.

When eternity begins, all the currency of the previous age becomes useless. Whatever power a person has goes away. Whatever fame one has accumulated will then be forgotten. Whatever assets one has accumulated in terms of real estate and bank balances are no longer usable. Only that which was invested in the kingdom of God will remain.

If you really believe that Jesus is coming again and will reign forever then you will use the time, money and talents you have to acquire assets in His kingdom.

Life comes up faster than we imagine. Here is how it typically goes…

The first twelve years go just learning to sit, stand, walk, talk, read and write, and become aware of our environment. We have a lot of free time, but we can’t really do a whole lot for God with it because we are still learning. If we are wise, among the other things we do, we will learn as much as we can about God. We don’t have much money to use for God’s kingdom, and we don’t have much talent yet.

The teenage years go quickly as we become aware of the opposite sex and as we focus on studying and preparing to earn a living. In these years we still have free time, and we can do something useful with it, like studying God’s word, and learning to recognize the voice of God among other voices. During these years, we begin to form an opinion about things, and we begin to understand that we have a flesh that is out to destroy us. We begin to realize that we have to engage in battle at many fronts (peer pressure, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sex, money, stealing, bullying, power, and so on) just to keep pure. In the spiritual realm, this is the time when the men begin to be separated from the boys, so to speak. These are the best years to get saved. We have a little more money and we can do something useful with it. And we are identifying and learning to use our spiritual gifts.

Then, in the early twenties, comes college (or trade school), where we do even more studying and preparing to earn a living, and then actually start earning a living. The free time that we had in our teenage years becomes smaller, but our income increases and our spiritual gifts, if we’ve been faithful in developing them, begin to become useful. The battle for personal purity remains and will continue till the end of our life. Some earlier temptations diminish in strength but new ones arise.

Somewhere in our twenties, or early thirties, the majority of us get married. Now we are no longer as free as before because we are attached to another human being. Then come our kids – one, two, three, or even more. The next twenty years, up to our late forties or mid-fifties go in raising kids. There is hardly any free time or spare money. Workplace stresses and complexities in interpersonal relationships bog down many of us. We try to coast along while we use our spiritual gifts in the context of a local church. In almost a flash, our twenties, thirties and forties have gone, and now we turn fifty.

From fifty to seventy-five, we build up our finances to help us through retirement, and we try to serve God as best we can, if God has found us faithful enough to give us a part in building His kingdom. We tend to focus on our children’s problems, and on our grand-children.

After seventy-five, our health begins to limit what we can do and where we can go. We become physically dependent on others. Physical limitations make it difficult for us to use our time and spiritual gifts to serve God. Giving money for the building of God’s kingdom is perhaps all that we can do.

So then, with all these things in perspective, how you spend the few hours of the weekday evenings, and the weekends, and the vacations, over the years, becomes a differentiator and separator of the godly and the ungodly, and all that is in between. A single bad habit can wreak havoc. A single expensive or time-consuming hobby can cost you a lot in eternal reward. Whether you overspend your time watching videos, watching movies, watching sports, on social media sites, shopping, or entertainment, it really doesn’t matter too much – all of it is wasted.

On the other hand, time spent earning money (when not overdone), doing physical exercise, learning about God, thinking usefully, disciplining oneself, learning skills, gathering knowledge, encouraging oneself and others is useful.

The words of Moses in Ps 90:12 are worth remembering.

Ps 90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

Our life on earth is very short. The eternity that comes afterwards is very long. It is critical that we use the short resources to tremendously amplify our benefits through the length of eternity. That is what a heart of wisdom will do.