You didn’t get this for Christmas, but you will for the New Year …

God’s gift of time to us is one of the most precious gifts He gives.

An unidentified writer once took a spin at describing the value of time …

If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,000 that carried over no balance from day to day … Allowed you to keep no cash in your account, and every evening cancelled whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day, what would you do? Draw out every cent every day, of course, and use it to your advantage! Well, you have such a bank, and its name is TIME! Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it rules off as lost whatever of this you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balances, it allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account with you. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow.

You can think of rolling into a New Year as God depositing into your bank of time another 365 days … potentially, that is. Some of us will experience all of those days, some won’t be given as much time, and none of us know exactly how much time God has designated for us. But whatever time God gives us is precious, because it is time that makes up the fabric of our lives.

And just as many of us aren’t so wise with our spending of money, we’re often not very wise with how we spend our time, either. Henry Blodget detailed for Businessinsider.com just how foolishly we spend any “free time” we gain …

Most human beings get about 75 years of existence. That’s about 3,900 weeks. Or 27,000 days. Or 648,000 hours.

We spend about a third of those hours sleeping, a number that hasn’t changed much over the centuries.

What has changed is what we do with the remaining time.

There are 168 hours in a week. 56 go to sleeping, which leaves 112 for everything else. 150 years ago, we spent about 70 of those 112 waking hours working.

Thanks to the remarkable productivity enhancements we have made over the past 150 years, the average workweek in most countries has dropped by about 30 hours …

So what do we humans do with all the extra hours our miraculous progress and productivity enhancements have allowed us to create for ourselves? We spend them watching television.

According to the most recent international data, the average person in developed nations spends 4 hours each day (28 hours per week!) watching TV.* It would seem that we use some 93% of our new found freedom from labor on the passive absorption of mostly mindless media.

*Data Source: Mediametrie, Eurodata TV Worldwide.

So as we stand on the brink of a New Year, with God about to make another big deposit in our time banks, just how should we spend that priceless gift in 2019? Let’s look to the Bible for some guidance …

1. How we spend our time should bring glory to God and should be pleasing to Him.

“So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better … And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father,” Colossians 1:9-10, 17.

“So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him,” 2 Corinthians 5:9.

2. It’s okay to enjoy yourself!

“So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God. For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him?” Ecclesiastes 2:24-25.

“Even so, I have noticed one thing, at least, that is good. It is good for people to eat, drink, and enjoy their work under the sun during the short life God has given them, and to accept their lot in life. And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life — this is indeed a gift from God. God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past,” Ecclesiastes 5:18-20.

“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life,” John 10:10.

3. Apply some wisdom to your use of time.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace,” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

“Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days,” Ephesians 5:16.

4. Be productive.

Read the parable of the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit … When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father,” John 15:5, 8.

“Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better,” Colossians 1:10.

5. Make time to do what God has called all Christians to do – be ambassadors for Christ.

“And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!’” 2 Corinthians 5:18-20.

Talking about spending the precious gift of time, the end of a year is a good time to take stock of what you’ve done with the last big deposit of time God gave you, and consider how you might better spend another year of time should God bless you again with a New Year.

How are you going to spend your time in 2019?

Scotty