As a pastor and church leader, I never seem to have enough time. Although I am a good time manager, I generally run close or late on my deadlines. While I was praying recently, the Lord showed me a truth more crucial than time management. As with most of the Lord's truths, this principle appeared to be almost the exact opposite of reasonable and practical thinking.
Our most precious natural asset is time. It is more precious than money, knowledge or political power. In the natural, time management involves doing our best naturally to use time wisely, but redemption is a super-natural way of "buying more time." While time management is important, time redemption is imperative.
During the process of pondering this concept of time redemption, I was away from home on a ministry trip. After retiring late one evening, I received an inadvertent wake up call at 5:16 A.M. Since I don't easily fall back to sleep after being awakened by a loud ringing in my ear, I began praying for the Lord to help me fall back asleep.
Immediately I heard the Lord say, "Ephesians 5: 16. When I crawled out of bed to get my Bible, I found that Ephesians 5:16 provides the link to how we redeem our time: Paul said that we are to be "redeeming the time, because the days are evil."
The rendering of the Greek word redeem in Ephesians 5:16 means to rescue from loss. Since we cannot manufacture time, rescuing the time we have from loss is crucial. In fact, the primary root of the word here translated evil means wasting away or being devoured. That accurately describes what is happening with our time-it is being devoured!
While praying about this issue, the Lord showed me His plan for redeeming our time involved tithing our time. Just as tithing works in the financial realm, it will also work in the realm of time. When we tithe and give offerings of our finances, God will do two significant things: He will "pour you out a blessing," and "rebuke the devourer for your sakes" (Malachi 3:10-11). He said that if I would tithe my time, He would both pour out a blessing and rebuke the devourer in the realm of time. Having nothing to lose but more time, I agreed to try.
I work basically a 10-hour day, so I began tithing the first hour of my work day to the Lord. This is not my personal devotional time-it is a tithe of my work day. This tithe is not set aside for study or spiritual activity, but simply for worshiping or meditating on the Lord. On each day during the first week that I implemented this principle, I left work two hours early because I had accomplished every goal, although I had one less hour to work with.
How did it happen? God rebuked the devourer, and the interruptions, glitches and road blocks that normally crowd my day were removed. He also opened the windows of heaven and poured out a blessing on me as ideas and creative solutions flowed into my mind, and people called me with the answers before I could call them with the questions. God supernaturally blessed my efforts in a way I could not have imagined.
God wants to help you, too, but He responds to faith, not need. If you will begin tithing your time to God in faith, you will find you have more than enough time for everything He has given you to do. By tithing your time, you will also break the spirit of poverty that plagues most of us in the realm of time. You will no longer feel that you don't have enough time.
Redeeming the time is not just working harder, but rather it is giving God our time and operating in faith that He will rebuke the devourer and increase our effectiveness and time. The wake-up call that I received at 5:16 A.M. was not as inadvertent as I had originally believed. It was a prophetic wake-up call to me and to you. Don't wait any longer: Now is the time to redeem your time!
By: Steve Thompson