Time is life. When you give your time to a person or thing, you are giving your life. When you "kill time", you are destroying your life. When you use time well, you are using your life well.
God gives us life, but the devil tries to destroy life. (John 10:10) God said to Adam and Eve that they would die if they disobeyed him. (Genesis 2:17) But after eating the fruit that God said they must not eat, they did not stop breathing. What happened is that they stopped living the full life that they had lived before they disobeyed God. After they disobeyed God, their lives were controlled by fear. (Genesis 3:16-19) The devil argues that this is not death. (Genesis 3:4) But it is not the full life that God wants to give us. (John 10:10)
In many ways, sleep is like death. (1 Corinthians 11:30) When we sleep, we do not think of time. We stop almost all moving and thinking. It is very important for us to have some sleep, because it is a time when God fixes many things in our spirit and in our thinking. After a good sleep, we should be able to work and think much better. But people who do not have a reason for living (see Learning to See, part 1) often do not want to stop sleeping. (Proverbs 21:25) If we can give these people a reason for living, we can bring them back from the dead. (Ephesians 5:14)
Jesus has given us a reason for living. He shows us how God wants us to use our time. Because of this, we no longer want to throw away the smallest part of the time that we have received from God. (Ephesians 5:15-16)
The first step in using your time well is to listen to God. (Ephesians 5:17) If you are doing something, but you do not know why you are doing it, you are not fully alive. (Romans 14:23) All that you do should help you to become closer to God. (Colossians 3:17, 23) We can learn to listen to God at all times (even in our sleep). (I Thessalonians 5:17) If you do not know what God wants you to do, you should ask him, and he will tell you. (James 1:5) If you do this, and if you do it all the time, you will be able to hear God at any time. When you go to sleep, you will be listening to God, and in your sleep you will know that God is with you. At times, God will talk to you in a spiritual dream. (Acts 2:17)
The devil has many ways to destroy our lives. He can kill our time by encouraging us to use drugs that will put our minds to sleep. (Ephesians 5:18-19) He can destroy our time by making us foolish. (Proverbs 19:3)
Most people throw away most of their lives, by spending it in fear... fear of being without money... fear of what other people think of them... fear of going hungry... fear of dying. They use their time to work for money because of these fears. They are not free to do what God wants them to do because they fear that God will tell them to do something that will take them away from the god that they really serve, and that is Money. (Romans 6:16) Working for money brings them death; but working for love would bring them eternal life. (Romans 6:23; Luke 16:13)
The devil can destroy our time by making us turn our brains off and by making us just "space out". Some people make a religion of this way of dying. Like sleep, it is good to rest; but the reason for resting is so that you can live, and not the other way around.
Some Pentecostals encourage people to turn off their brains and to fall on the ground. They call it "dying in the spirit". It is a good name, because it is what happens to them. What they do not understand is that God does not want people to die; it is the devil who does that. When people make a religion out of turning off their brains, they become more and more crazy in all of their thinking. (Romans 1:28)
It can be difficult to wake up our brains, and to return to the truth. The devil in us fights against this. (Luke 8:28) And the crazy world around us is afraid of a person who is not crazy like them. (Luke 8:35-37) But if we will ask God to help us, he will teach us how to use our brains for him. (2 Timothy 1:7) Our brains can be "born again". (Romans 12:2) When this happens, we will start to see clearly the needs of people around us. We will try to use every minute wisely, to make a new world of love.
If you measure what you are doing, you will know if you are using your time wisely. We often run races and we measure how long it takes us to finish. In short races, one second can make a big difference. (1 Corinthians 9:26-27) In life, it is the person who uses his or her time well who will do the most for God.
Learn to fill every second with life. When you are tired from doing something physical, you should do something that uses your brain. And when you are tired of using your brain, you should do something physical. If you must wait for something, or if you must sit for a long time when travelling, use the time to study your Bible or to study some verse cards. (You should carry one or both of these with you at all times.) If you cannot study, you can use your time to pray and ask God to tell you what he wants you to do. Do not wait for someone to tell you what you should be doing with your time. Always ask God first.
When you do this, you will be buying back the life that the devil robbed from Adam and Eve by encouraging them to disobey God.
(See the tracts Measure it, and Time.)
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