Make Your Time Count
By Rick Warren
“Use your time in the best way you can.” Colossians 4:5 (ICB)
If you want to get ready to be used by God, there are a few steps you need to take. First, as we looked at yesterday, you need to get to know Jesus Christ. Then, you need to start using your time in view of eternity.
Colossians 4:5 says, “Use your time in the best way you can” (ICB). Time is your most precious resource. It’s far more important than money. You can get more money, but you can’t get more time.
In this life, you only have a certain amount of time allotted to you. You can’t make time, you can’t borrow time, you can’t save time, and you can’t extend time. You can only use it. We all have the same amount of time every week: 168 hours. If you don’t learn to manage your time well, you cannot manage anything else in your life—because your time is your life.
How you use your time is one of the ways God tests you on Earth as you prepare for eternity. He’s watching to see how you manage your time now to determine what he’s going to have you do in eternity.
One of Satan’s strategies is to get you so busy doing unimportant things that you don’t have time for life’s important things, like preparing for eternity. Satan knows that he doesn’t have to get you to sin; if he can’t get you to be bad, he’ll just get you to be busy.
The Bible tells you exactly what you should be doing with your time in Acts 20:24: “My life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus” (NLT).
God wants to use you—but he can only do that when you’re investing your time in the most important things. You’ve got to use your time in view of eternity. You’ve got to ask yourself, “How much of what I’m spending my time on is going to count five or 10 years from now? How much is going to count in eternity?” Then you’ve got to refocus.
Use your time in view of eternity so God can see that you are focused on the main thing—his purposes.
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This devotional © 2018 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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