Time is one of those things that doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wait for us to catch up to it, it doesn’t travel backward, and it doesn’t show favoritism. It is what it is. Time is a gift and a resource to us! But do we see it as such?
In this episode we discuss the importance of recognizing time and how we can steward it well in marriage. How can we make the most of our time together so that at the end of our life and at the end of our marriage we don’t wrestle with regrets.
We hope this episode of making time count in your marriage inspires you and challenges you to value your time with your spouse!
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– Hey we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.
– Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
– And today we’re gonna talk about making time count. Hey before we get started we just want to invite you as usual to subscribe to our channel so you get notified every time we upload a new episode.
– Also we love to hear from you guys so be sure to leave us a comment and let us know what stood out to you in this weeks episode.
– So this episode is about time. About how much time we have, and how little of it we have and how we perceive time, and how we perceive the value of time. This has been a conversation that we’ve had a few times in our life and it’s always around situations where we feel overwhelmed or like failures because we’ve dropped the ball over here, we’ve dropped the ball over there, we have all these things that we need to be doing, wanna be doing, can’t be doing, can be doing. And I think it’s a good conversation for marriages, especially ones that are chasing after God together to have together so that we can get a good perspective on our time.
– I think it’s a good topic too just in today’s culture. I think that the moment you probably said time people are thinking wait don’t talk about it ’cause it’s gonna pass me by. It’s fleeting and everybody knows that, and yet our culture tries to cram in so much and tell us to seize the day type thing. So, there’s a lot of people out there trying to do a lot of things and sometimes it can feel overwhelming or like we can’t breathe, and so taking that moment to just stop and evaluate our time, it’s important.
– Taking what moment though?
– I know, I know it doesn’t exist.
– When you think about your life all of us use words like oh I’m busy, I’ve got a lot going on. They’re filler words and they’re easy ways of not having to explain everything that’s going on in our life. But, just thinking about time and being busy, I also think about one of the last episodes we’ve published about social media and I’m thinking like oh but I find plenty of time to scroll.
– That’s true.
– So, it’s really I think something that has gotten out of whack.
– Yeah.
– We’ve lost our perception of time. The value of it.
– And I think our purpose of guarding it, I think especially as husbands and wives and parents, and I don’t know I just feel like maybe no one’s talking about this. But, we need to be guarding our time. I feel like it’s a really important thing to evaluate and consider often maybe regularly and we’re just not doing it. We’re not being encouraged to do it.
– Yeah, well I think we don’t guard it is because we don’t know the value of it. I’ve used that word a few times now and I’m just thinking about how we value other things. Money, we know money’s worth something because it could buy certain things and it can do certain things for us. So, we put it in banks and we save it up and we store it and we use it and we try to be wise with it if we can. Money has a value. Our cars have values because they do things for us, and we have all these value metrics for other things, but I feel like all of history people valued time much differently than we do in our current culture. I feel like time now it’s even though we say oh I don’t have enough of it or there’s only so little that we just throw it away. We throw it away hours on social media, video games.
– So wasted, yeah.
– It’s wasted on other things that are important we waste our time on. So maybe if we had the correct value of it, if we recognize like I wrote some notes here that just said we only have 24 hours in a day.
– Yeah.
– And, a quarter of that or more needs to go to sleeping.
– What a waste.
– Right?
– You totally want sleep when you die.
– Yeah, sleep when you die. You know for people like that live in California, we used to live. I used to commute two and a half to four hours a day or more depending on how bad the traffic was. If there was an accident, I was in traffic all night. Or a fire, which have been going on in California. So, a lot of our time spent in a car. A lot of our time spent at work. A lot of our time spent on the toilet. In a shower, if you were to just take all of the things that we do to just live, the time gets real… Like what we have left is not much. So, I think if we were to just realize man, time’s valuable. Do you recognize time as being valuable?
– I’m starting to.
– And then now we’re talking about it.
– Yeah, no I know. I think that it’s a message that God’s been trying to get through to my heart and I just haven’t stopped to take the time to really like hear him on this. But, this morning I was actually driving to a friends house, I was gonna drop her off some dinner and spend some time with our kids playing and on the way out there you know when you’re driving you see everything kind of pass by, like literally.
– Really fast.
– Yeah, physically.
– Which is a really good picture.
– It is a really good picture for how time flies but I don’t know maybe it was just the Lord speaking to my heart but I just felt like I’ve been going, going, going, and I really need to slow down more so what I specifically heard is like in my family life, and in my home management, and things that I do at home. I need to be slower. I don’t know, I would like to explain a little bit more, but that was the brief message.
– What’s awesome was God was kind of speaking to you through the Holy Spirit while you were driving and this was before I told you what our episode was gonna be on.
– Yeah, I asked you to text me so that on the way home I could be thinking about whatever the topic was gonna be.
– And you were already thinking about time, which is why we’re bringing it up, it’s just something that we need to recognize in our own life and how to capture the time that we do have. We call this making time count, and we always say we have to make time. Like, oh I just need to make time for getting healthy. I just need to make time for the Word of God. I just need to make time for playing with my son. We actually can’t make any time.
– Yeah, I was just gonna say that, we can’t make it.
– It’s a pretty funny statement, ’cause we can’t make any time. What we can do is sacrifice other things that we spend our time on. That’s the only way we can make time. That little statement I said capturing time makes better sense. Oh I need to capture time for the Word of God. I need to capture time for spending time with my wife. Because we all have 24 hours.
– Yeah.
– And we all only have so many years and minutes.
– You actually helped me a few years ago kind of understand this idea that we’re only given so much and at the beginning of the episode you started out by sharing how sometimes you recognize this struggle with time when we are faced with like failure and just struggles in our family life.
– Yeah.
– I was struggling a few years ago with feeling like I can’t do it all, but I want to do it all.
– We were in the middle of writing your first traditionally published book.
– Yep we were writing The Unveiled Wife.
– And we were moving, and we had our first son and just trying to being parents.
– Yeah.
– Just a lot of stuff going on in our life.
– So, we do what we normally do and what we like to do and we took a drive, we talk about that a lot.
– We drove up to the mountains.
– We took like a 45 minute drive and I’m just kind of spewing out this heart issue I’m having with I wanna do all of these things and I just feel like I can’t. How am I suppose to do this? And I think that the last thing we ended up talking about was working out. And I just need this time to do this, carve it out.
– Yeah.
– And what did you say?
– Well, I remember the conversation like, it wasn’t just you, I was thinking through these things too but you were like I gotta write this book, I gotta edit this book, I wanna be a good Mom, how to do I be a good Mom?
– Yeah, I’m nursing all the time.
– And I wanna get back in shape, ’cause we had the baby and you’re like I wanna get exercising. And then you were also talking about our social media, ’cause that’s a big part of our ministry. You’re like I want it to look better.
– How do I reach out to people through comments?
– How do I answer all those messages? It’s a lot. And I remember telling you that you can’t.
– Yeah, it was really actually annoying the way that you communicated it ’cause you’re so blunt about it.
– I don’t know if I was mean about it.
– You weren’t mean, I just didn’t want to hear that. I just didn’t want to hear that I couldn’t fit it all in.
– I was trying to be encouraging.
– No, it was encouraging.
– But it didn’t come off encouraging.
– No, no, no it was encouraging, I just didn’t want to hear that I don’t have enough time. Like, nobody wants to hear that.
– And what I went into I remember in that car ride, I was just telling you you only have 24 hours in a day, and you can’t work all 24 hours.
– Yeah.
– Man if we didn’t have to sleep, we would have so much more time, that’s insane. I said you are physically limited. You literally, every single person in the entire world that’s ever existed, doesn’t matter how strong you are, is limited.
– Yeah.
– In our physical abilities. No one can pick up a bus. Some people might be able to pull a bus, but we’re limited in our physical abilities. We’re limited in our mental abilities. We’re limited in our financial abilities. We’re limited in our time, we’re limited in every single way possible. We are finite creatures. Not infinite like God is.
– You gave me this illustration where you put your hands up. I remember you putting your hands up almost like you’re grabbing a bunch of things in your hands and you said you know, because we’re limited beings, we can only do so much with the time that we’re given, and if there’s something over there that you want to do, you have to let go of something else in order to do it.
– Yeah.
– And I remember that, just the idea and imagery that you gave me of putting your hands up and showing me how much I can fit in my hands really stood out to me ’cause I could see it. It was almost like oh, well that makes sense.
– I think I specifically gave you that because you were talking about fitness. And I said hey if you wanna spend 45 minutes exercising, you might have to spend 45 minutes left sleeping.
– Yeah.
– Or you might have to go to bed later. So you had to sacrifice something over here to do that other thing. ‘Cause if you kept everything the same, you weren’t gonna be able to accomplish all the other things that you wanted. So, it’s a good illustration to have. It’s just really taking all of our time and energy and ability and just realizing how much can be done with it. But, I think it’s more than that, because that’s what the world currently wants us to do is just fill our time with everything. But, it just doesn’t happen. You know we have some examples from our own life and from just the worlds perspective of what it looks like. What this time management thing looks like and how we have to sacrifice. So, the idea that we have so much time and ability and we’re limited is first of all just a good place to remember. A good thing to remember that we are limited. Like I told you that one day, and like we tell each other often still. We can’t do everything, but you know what happens, how this practically plays out especially when we are looking at other peoples live and we’re like how do they do that? You get emailed sometimes and they say how do you do everything?
– Yeah.
– And they don’t realize that we don’t do everything. Sometimes our sinks full of dishes.
– Right, because you can’t do it all. You have to sacrifice one thing for another.
– I haven’t gotten the oil change on my car yet and it’s like three months past the oil change due date.
– We’ve never gone that far.
– Not that far, it’s been getting pretty close lately. But like I hadn’t done that yet because I was filling up all my time with other things. And so we just, we let go of one thing to grab another. And what this might look like, and maybe the people listening know someone who has done stuff like this, or they themselves are. But like, you know people that are super, super successful. It’s rare that they’re successful in every area of their life, because they can’t be. And this is what you were struggling with, this is what many people struggle with. How can I be this amazing business person and this amazing mother and an amazing wife, and an amazing godly woman or husband or man. And then also be a awesome father. And all of these things equally. We just can’t. It’s not physically possible, we don’t have enough in us to do that. And so you see someone who is super successful and you think oh man, I think I want that kind of success. Well, you gotta calculate what it took for them to do that. They might have sacrificed their marriage. And we’ve seen that a lot. Lets think about ministry. We’ve seen pastors they’re amazing pastors, and they’re teaching their congregations and they loose their family over it. I don’t personally think that is a good balance. I would rather be a okay pastor and have an awesome family life. But I think that’s what we need to evaluate. What are we chasing? What are trying to hold onto or take on and do with our limited time, limited abilities, limited resources. And are we pursuing the right things? Are we using our time wisely?
– I think those examples that you gave or more of the severe ones that you see.
– The big, yeah we see those ones.
– Really big ones that can be really detrimental, but I think that if our time is mismanaged, even in the little things, it can really kind of backfire within our own families. And I think social media does play a role in the comparison trap of wanting to try and do it all. It’s hard because you see someone really good at this and then you see someone really good at that, and you’re piecing all these things together to make this perfect person that can literally do everything and you’re trying to fulfill that.
– I know, you bring up you’re feed and you’re like man this feed looks awesome.
– But all those other people that are really good at those individual things aren’t trying to do everything. They’re just doing the one thing that they’re good at and you’re seeing that and adding it to the list of things that you wanna try and do and accomplish.
– I think that’s a good example. Our curated feeds of all the people we follow and we turn it into one perfect person.
– And you’re like I wanna be that.
– How do we make our house beautiful and work all the time and go travel the world and it just doesn’t exist.
– Here’s the reality, if you’re gonna go travel you’re probably going to have laundry all over your bed because when you go to pack you have to do all the laundry and make sure it’s clean before you go. So when you get back, there’s gonna be a lot of laundry everywhere, right? That’s just like a simple example.
– Or if you’re traveling all the time you can’t have a home.
– Yeah.
– And so you want this beautiful home and you want this beautiful travel life. And these are big pictures things from a few people we follow.
– They’re just examples that we’re throwing out there.
– But, the people listening, they have their own things that they’re thinking of. They’re like oh man yeah, I’ve been wanting to this, and I’ve been wanting to that and I just feel like I can’t. And how does everyone else do it?
– Okay, I gotta tell this one story. So, my friend was getting into sourdough and I thought this is so cool and I so wanna do this. And so I start putting my time and energy into feeding this starter that she gave me, and for the first couple weeks, it was really great. It was like, you put it in a dark place for awhile and let it grow.
– We had bread every night.
– Oh my goodness.
– It was pretty awesome.
– It was amazing, and it tasted so good.
– Yeah.
– But after about two months of me trying to scramble and figure out how this sourdough things works ’cause I never done it before, I realized that I was letting certain things around the house go, or I’d have to rush out to get more flour because I was in the middle of baking something and I was not managing my time well just because I was so focused on trying to do this sourdough thing.
– And that was one little thing.
– It was just one little thing.
– But, it absorbed a lot of your time throughout almost every day for like a couple weeks
– Yeah, and I had to just let it go thinking okay I was learning and I learned this process and it was really cool but I’m gonna have to shelve this for a little bit and move on and figure out how it can fit into my schedule like in a normal way and not just at a frenzy. ‘Cause that’s what it felt like.
– I just recently went through a season of we have this home and there’s all these little things that we’ve been wanting to do that need to get done. We have our businesses. And our home life, and I just had this list of all these things that need to be done, and I would chase after one of them and I realized I would put so much energy into the one thing and it took up mental space and it took up emotional space and actual physical time. And I started telling myself okay, I have to either take one day and finish all of these things or realize some of these things, nothing’s going to change in our life if I did not do it.
– It doesn’t get done.
– I’m just thinking about the rims on our car are super dirty, and a friend of mine just keeps saying oh all you need to do is acid wash them and they’ll probably come looking beautiful, and every time I see him I’m thinking I gotta do that thing. It literally won’t affect anything in our life at all, and so I just tell myself I don’t need to do that.
– Nope.
– I don’t need to do that. It’s useless, it doesn’t matter. Maybe one day if I have this extra day and time and it just perfectly aligns in the moon and stars all… I’ll do it maybe. So, I’m just trying to practice. And that was like one little example. I’m trying to practice it in a lot of little areas. And then also recognizing where we waste time out of all of our things. Do you have areas in real life that you waste time? The bread thing was one example, but I feel like there was a benefit.
– I don’t like I was wasting time there ’cause I was learning a new skill and it was really important to me.
– It started getting to waste time though. You thought it was gonna be this thing on the side.
– I could just fit into everything else and it became a thing. Yeah, I would say that I don’t feel like I necessarily waste a lot of my time because I use it and I’m with the kids the majority of the day, but I think that I could definitely manage it better so that I was more efficient with my time.
– Right. That’s another thing, how efficient are we with the time that we do have.
– Yeah, I feel you asked me that just kind of on the spot and I’d have to seriously contemplate how I’m…
– Well I asked you because I have one specifically.
– Oh go ahead.
– Based off of that previous episode about social media, I waste time on social media.
– Oh, yeah.
– When I do it, there’s the conviction I get from the Holy Spirit when I’m doing it. I’m like scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and I’m like why am I not using this time that I’m scrolling to read the Word of God? I could be scrolling through the Word of God on my phone. I have it on my phone. I’m always a big advocate of using my physical Bible, and we always tell couples to just be in the Word of God physically. But, I waste so much time when I could be in this more.
– Yeah.
– I have this desire to know the Word of God, and yet I do things that are contrary to that desire. Like knowing social media really well. It’s literally this fruitful. So that’s one thing I waste my time. It’s something that I’m actively trying to change in my life.
– That’s good.
– So when I feel that prompting of like why am I scrolling, I’ll go to my Bible app and I’ll read a Proverb, I’ll read a Psalm. But I’m sure there’s other areas of my life I waste time too.
– So when we were talking about sacrificing one thing for another to make sure that we’re prioritizing the things that we want. Wasting time and things like that. How does that affect the family or relationships when we mismanage our time? Why is it important to value our time? Like, what’s the why?
– Well, again, we’ve been everything to steward. Our time is a gift. God’s grace is on you every morning, but the fact that we get a morning and that the sun rises is a gift from God, and he desires that our life and our resources and our energy and our time be used to please Him and to serve Him and to minister to the world and to our families and to our neighbors for him. So I think when we mismanage our time it’s just being a bad Steward with something He’s given us.
– Yeah.
– And again, it’s probably I’m say this, time is the most valuable asset we have. ‘Cause you can’t make more of it.
– That’s true.
– We’re only running out of it.
– And so much changes within time.
– Such a short period of time.
– So, everybody always tells you kids grow up fast, and it’s just so true. I feel like our kids are growing up so fast, and when we were considering this topic for today’s episode, I was just thinking about my drive this morning on my way out to my friends house, and how everything is going so fast, and how I feel like I just need to slow down. The reason that I felt that prompting was because these are just little examples but Elliot’s got these shoes that he got frustrated over ’cause he wants to learn how to tie them but he can’t. And I have three other kids who need to get ready and get in the car and make sure everyone’s got shoes on and instead of sitting there, teaching my kid how to tie his shoe with a gentle spirit, I’m like rushing everyone out the door. Yeah, I’m like hurry up everybody, come on let’s go. We gotta be here at a certain time. We gotta make this happen because I’m trying to fit so much into my day that I don’t have time to sit there and help you. I don’t have time to walk you through this process right now. That doesn’t happen everyday, but when it does happen it’s like I just missed that opportunity to minister to my child or to engage with them. I was telling you Aaron, going to the park and just being with them in a slow pace in my own heart so that we can engage with them in nature. And talk about why the leaves are falling off the trees right now.
– And how God created everything and all those little moments for walking in the Spirit. One of them is patience. I think that was a good point, I was just connecting is was you sitting with Elliot. Elliot has the same amount of time also, and what we’re doing is we’re being generous with our time. Or are we being hoarders of our time? Like, I’m gonna use it only for myself. ‘Cause I do the same thing. I’m like hurry get in the car, hurry get in the car, hurry buckle up, like it’s always like I don’t even know why I’m rushing them. We’re not even trying to be somewhere.
– I know.
– They’re learning something about us we probably shouldn’t be telling. We are hurried, and I think everyone does that. I think it’s because we know our times limited, but the same time we’re not managing our time well. If we just managed our time better, we would stop hurrying everything and everyone and stop to engage with them and be present with them.
– And I think that goes down to understanding the value of time, because if we valued our time we’d realize we’re not gonna have very many moments with our son learning how to tie his shoes, or our daughter learning how to buckle in, or our littlest son learning how to drink from a cup. All these little things that we may not value correctly, ’cause it takes time.
– And I would be careful to even for those listening to justify the way that you organize your time because like this morning when I was taking dinner over to a friends house who needed dinner, that’s ministering and that could be looked at as a good thing and yet rushing everyone out the door to get there by a certain time, it just kinda jolted everybody and I didn’t need to do that. I could have done it either in peace or said I can’t do that today.
– Well, we actually talked about this. Imagine if you or I or together we did that everyday, we wouldn’t be able to minister to our children, minister to each other.
– Yeah there wouldn’t be enough time for that.
– Minister to other neighbors. So, you can’t just look at ministering, well I need to do that because that’s the most important thing to do with my time. Because, there’s other ministering that needs to be done. We have to spread out what God’s given us. And it actually makes me think of a scripture we read to our kids this morning during family bible time.
– This is probably what prompted everything.
– It might be. And it’s in Luke 5, and I’m gonna read a few verses just so you have the context. It’s Jesus right after he heals a leper. It says, in verse 15, but now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. And you think oh my gosh. Jesus was healing people, his fame spreading. He just healed this man with leprosy, and now all these people are coming and flocking to him. And you’re like oh Jesus is gonna be touching people, healing people, and this is what it says. It says, but he would withdraw to desolate places to pray. You know? Jesus, the Savior, the perfect one. Emmanuel, God with us. All these people are coming to be healed and he’s like I’m gonna go pray.
– Yeah.
– Even Jesus didn’t just fill his time with all of these things that we thought would be the most important thing ’cause Jesus knew how to prioritize his time, he knew what he was there, and he’s like I’m gonna go pray. I’m gonna go recharge. I’m gonna go be alone in desolate places, places like that have nothing around, no one around. In darkness, and he’s gonna go and just be with God. And what’s funny is we say we’re busy, our time’s filled up. We have all these things going on. How often do we just go into desolate places and pray? Go into our dark room, get on our knees. I know that I don’t. And God’s called us to do that. And so I was just pointing out, I wrote here, even Jesus would quiet himself and pray.
– Yeah, and I feel like those opportunities to stop and pray and spend time with the Lord are just as valuable when you’re actually engaging with the children, praying for them. Like being a Father who goes before the Lord for them to ask for protection, to ask for good health, to ask for maturity and to ask for all of these things on their behalf is just as valuable as spending time with them. And so I feel like this needs to be prioritized.
– Yeah, and it goes too how do we value our time?
– Yeah.
– What are we doing with our time? Looking into our lives, and asking the Holy Spirit, and saying Holy Spirit show me areas that I’m wasting your time that you’ve given me. This is all your time, all the time that we have in a day is God’s. How are we wastin it? And that could be filling it with good things.
– Yeah.
– Oh we’re doing this, we’re doing homeschool. We’re going over here, we’re going over there, instead of maybe God is like I want you to dedicate some of your time to me. Just me, just being with me. Being in my Word, just being quiet. We’re trying to teach our daughter to be quiet and to be still right now, and are we doing that? Are we quiet and still? And letting God have some of our time. Letting him have a lot of our time. So, I think that’s really good, just recognizing that even things that we call ministry could be out of whack if we do too much of it. If it’s just all that and we’re not even doing other things that God’s called us to do. Man, time is a weird thing.
– Okay, so we titled this episode Making Time Count, and for the benefit of those listening and ourselves, how can we make time count? Like as a marriage after God, as husbands and wives who want to fulfill the Lords will and purpose in their life. What does time have to do with it?
– Well, like I said, it’s our most valuable asset, is the time that we have in a day, in our life. Ecclesiastes, Solomon says our life is like a breath. Which should give us some real perspective on how much time we actually have. It’s fleeting, it’s like boom gone. Here today, gone tomorrow. So recognizing that our times short. Paul says that a lot, recognize the times, that our time is drawing near, that the Lord’s returning. Just understand there’s an urgency for just guiding our families and ministering in our families and to our children. In ministering, guiding our neighbors. And doing the things that God’s asked us to do now when we have time. Today’s the day of salvation. Today is the day, don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has enough worries of its own. Today is the day. We get those words all the time ’cause God’s like no, no, today. You have today, and it’s the only thing you have. You’re not promised tomorrow. So, I think an urgency, a recognition of the value of our time. How does that stand with you? Do you feel the urgency in our own life?
– I do feel the urgency for us to just recognize the value of what we have and that it’s a gift and that the time that I have with you is a gift. I was actually just thinking about this also this morning. Not to get too in to detail or anything. But, the time that I have with you to be intimate that time is fleeting and I was just thinking as we grow older with each other, am I going to regret the time that I didn’t take advantage of being with you?
– I know, when we were younger and healthier?
– Yeah, and I was being convicted on that. I felt like the Lord was just saying you need to initiate more. You need to be engaged more, and I already am starting to regret the time that I haven’t been for whatever reason. And so, and I’ve enjoyed the times that we have been. So, I think that same way with our children, or as a family as a whole you know. The times that we have been slow and present and just laughing and playing. It’s so peaceful, and I love that. Time that we get to spend with our family, with our children. So, I think making that a priority and I think that the thing that it’s gonna require though I know for me is that when I feel that hurried spirit and when the words come out of my mouth hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, I need to stop and remember to walk in the spirit to be patient, and to choose to slow down. To choose to be present, to choose to say no even if that on the other side is really good. Whatever that other choice is for the sake of whatever other ministry I’m suppose to be doing.
– It’s almost like being diligent to spend the time verses wasting it. Like money, oh I’m throwing it away or how much do I got to pay for that?
– Yeah how am I investing with my time?
– How is that being invested?
– Yeah.
– So thinking about our time in those terms, those quantities, those units.
– I will say that a marriage after God does that well.
– And we need to do it better.
– We need to do it better, and I wanna challenge those listening to start today. To evaluate your time, evaluate what things you’re saying yes to, what things you’re saying no to, and what things you’re sacrificing for that grab of whatever it is you wanna try and fit into your schedule. And, to know that time is valuable.
– So I wanna end with a little bit of scripture, and then maybe we can give them a little bit of advice on how to look at our time. And, it’s in Ephesians 5 and I’ll just start in verse 15. And it says look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And so just make the best use of the time, and this is in reference to how we once were in darkness and now we’re in light. And it’s saying so, make the best use of your time. So, let’s be godly in how we look at our time. Let’s ask God how he views our time and would like us to use it. What are some of the little tips that we have on how we can look at our time and how our listeners can?
– Well I think the priority that you should look at would be is your marriage in balance? Are you spending that time with your spouse? Are you cultivating that relationship?
– Is time spent well there?
– Yeah, is time spent well there, because if that’s not happening, that balance isn’t right. Same, I would say, goes for your kids. If you’re not engaging with them, if you’re not spending quality time with them.
– Discipling them.
– Discipling them, teaching them, loving on them. Just being present with them without your phone or without friends around or without distractions.
– Yeah.
– I would say those are the key important things that I would recommend people stopping to evaluate. So, I just wanna remind them, the reason we’re bringing all this up in the first place is ’cause we wanna encourage you guys. We wanna encourage you to have peace, to recognize that you are not able to do everything. So, that’s the little bit of advice I wanna give is that they can’t do everything. To not be worried that they can’t accomplish everything and to recognize that they’re not meant to. They’re not meant to accomplish everything.
– My encouragement too would be to watch out for that comparison trap where maybe you look at your friends lives or maybe you know that neighbor across the street, or maybe on Instagram, someone on social media. And you’re taking bits and pieces from all these different people and you’re accumulating this list of the things you need to be capable of doing, the ideals within the home, and all of the little things that you think that you have to accomplish and just remember that not one person can do it all.
– And I would say take that list, and lay it at the Lord’s feet, and say Lord…
– What’s important.
– Yeah, what do you want me to do?
– Yeah.
– We should always be asking this, like Jesus did, we should go off in prayer. We say Lord, I have all these vision, dreams, ideas as a marriage we have these things we wanna do. What do you wanna us to do? What’s valuable to you? What do you care about? And what should we pursue, what should we sacrifice so that we can do these things that you don’t want us to do, and what should we sacrifice that you don’t want us to do?
– That’s good.
– And just be asking the Lord what he wants, like that’s what he wants us to do.
– And I think too something that we’re getting better at is just looking at our lives and saying how are we managing our time well? What are we doing that’s beneficial to the whole family and to the ministry that we’ve been called to.
– And what things are sucking our time and being able to cut it out, yeah.
– And so we wanted to have this conversation with you all because it’s something that we constantly are having conversations with. We forget and we get into this season of like we can’t do everything.
– Yeah.
– We have all these visions, we wanna do this, we wanna do that. We have all these books we wanna write, we wanna post, we wanna do these videos. Things that fit with what we’re doing. But, we can’t do ’cause we’re trying to also have a godly marriage. We’re trying to also have a godly family and to disciple our children and to have a decently clean house and to have our cars not fall apart and have our home not fall apart and have our lives not fall apart. So, just recognizing that it’s okay to not be able to accomplish everything.
– And if you’re feeling that overwhelmingness, if you’re feeling like you’re hurrying through life, we would just say just stop today and go do as Jesus did. Find a desolate place, a dark quiet place. Escape everything, and just spend time with the Lord to be able to evaluate all of this and maybe you’ll come out feeling a little bit more refreshed.
– Yeah, definitely do it as a couple.
– Yeah.
– Find that time. Maybe spend 30 minutes before bed and after everyone’s asleep, no one needs you and get into prayer with each other. Say, let’s ask the Lord how we can rest in him, how we can wait on him. As the Bible tells him, wait on the Lord and he will renew our strength. And so, we hope this encouraged you. We hope that it sparked some awesome conversation about how you value time. I know we’re gonna still talk about this.
– Yeah.
– And we also love to hear from you if you wanna leave a comment in the box below. So, we as usual, we thank you for joining us. We hope this blessed you, and we hope to see you next week.
– [Aaron Smith] Did you enjoy today’s show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
