The Bible gives us at least five tips for how we can manage our time in a God-honoring way. In this post we’ll at the first.
Tip #1: Budget your time.
Genesis 1:1 reads “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” As we continue reading we see that God budgeted time in his week for each part of his creation.
- He budgeted time on day 1 for making light.
- He budgeted time on day 2 for making sky.
- He budgeted time on day 3 for making land and vegetation.
- He budgeted time on day 4 for making the sun, moon and stars.
- He budgeted time on day 5 for making the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air.
- He budgeted time on day 6 for making the land animals and then us (the pinnacle of his creation).
- Finally, God budgeted time on day 7 for rest from all his work.
God budgets his time, so how much more so should we! Why do we need to budget our time? It’s for the same reason we need to budget our money – because we don’t have an unlimited amount! If we had an unlimited amount of money we could just spend it however we wanted and we’d never run out. But since we have a finite amount, we have to budget it. The same goes for our time.
Now when it comes to budgeting money, there are certain categories to allocate your income to:
- Giving
- Saving
- Housing
- Utilities
- Debt
- Food
- Transportation
- Clothing
- Medical/Health
- Personal
- Recreation
In the same way, there are certain categories you have to budget time for. There’s at least five of them:
- Faith – you need to budget time for God
- Family & Friends – you need need to budget time for being with those you love
- Finances – you need to budget time for stewarding your wealth
- Fitness – you need to budget time for stewarding your health
- Fun – you need to budget time for hobbies and things you enjoy doing
In my next post I’ll give you some insight into how much time to allocate for each category, but for now I just want you to see that God budgets his time and we need to follow his example (Ephesians 5:1).