Having explored several scriptural themes that cast light on the stewardship of time, let’s turn to a few critical practices that will strengthen and foster our wise allocation of time.
The first practice is planning our lives around prayer.
It should be clear by now that a simplistic attitude of “taking life as it comes” does not exemplify good stewardship of time.
Of course, paradoxically, we should take life as it comes, but only after we have attempted to plan wisely the days the Lord has given us.
Our plans will rarely work out just the way that we’ve imagined them, so there’s plenty of room to hold these two ideas together, planning wisely and taking the present as coming from the Lord’s hand.
On the planning side, we have talked about allocating our time well at work; bringing the same intentionality to time with loved ones; and setting aside Sunday as a day of rest, prayer, worship, and communion with God and others.
It is especially the practice of the “sabbath rest” that should characterize not only our Sundays, but each and every day.
This doesn’t mean dedicating each and every day to rest in the same way we dedicate Sunday.
Rather, it means being aware that a part of each day ought to be set aside for rest, not only the physical rest of sleep, but the spiritual rest of leisure and, above all, prayer.
Once we have reached the point of diligently clocking our hours, planning them out, and making them count, we ought next to see that our attitude toward regular prayer is equally committed.
We might be familiar with fighting for hours and minutes of productivity at work.
Are we as familiar with fighting for those morning or evening moments of serious prayer?
The value of a proactive approach applies to prayer as well.
We don’t just take leftover moments for prayer; we don’t give God the scraps of our lives.
Instead, we give him the first fruits.
In other words, when we arrange our time, we give our time to him first— not necessarily first in the day (although that is a proven practice), but first in priority.
First, we give him our hearts and our time; then we plan the remainder of our day around the other tasks, obligations, and blessings that he’s given us.
Continue to reflect today on these ideas of regular rest and prayer.
As you do so, ask the Holy Spirit to move you to daily give God the first fruits of your time.
