When you look through the years and see what you could have been, oh what you might have been, if you would have more time…*
Time is the most important “thing” you must steward after the keeping of your soul (Mark 8:37). Unlike anything else you possess, including money, once time is lost you can never get it back. You can gain back fame, fortune, and friends but never “time.” You are either profitable stewards of the owner’s resources: yourself, your talents and abilities and the time you are given – or you are not (Matt.25:14-30). Perhaps that’s why King David prayed, “so teach us to number our days O Lord, that we may attain unto wisdom…”( Psalm 90:12).
God is the ultimate “Father Time” who stands astride history as we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Knowing that we are responsible each and every day for how we spend that day is what makes us aware of our stewardship before God and hopefully determines what our actions are aimed at accomplishing. Are we cautious and calculating in what we endeavor to do, or do we take the day as it comes?
Ludwig von Mises, in his groundbreaking book Human Action lays out the reality of said “human action” and the determinative nature of all our actions:
Praxeology consequently does not distinguish between “active” or energetic and “passive” or indolent man. The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events. Wherever the conditions for human interference are present, man acts no matter whether he interferes or refrains from interfering. He who endures what he could change acts no less than he who interferes in order to attain another result. A man who abstains from influencing the operation of physiological and instinctive factors which he could influence also acts. Action is not only doing but no less omitting to do what possibly could be done.
We may say that action is the manifestation of a man’s will. But this would not add anything to our knowledge. For the term will means nothing else than man’s faculty to choose between different states of affairs, to prefer one, to set aside the other, and to behave according to the decision made in aiming at the chosen state and forsaking the other.[1]
People pray, literally, for more money. Yet what do they do with the money they have?[2] Do they give it away to charity? Do they attempt to fund Bible colleges and missionaries? Do they look for worthwhile young people to mentor and assist in funding their education or starting businesses?[3] Or do they buy big-boy toys or want to sit on the beach and play? Whatever their decision, it is a choice and effectively an “action” as Mises notes above.
Author Gary North in his book Tools of Dominion puts it best:
We live in a universe that is structured by the category of time. We necessarily live and act in the present. We cannot escape the constraints of time. We prefer satisfaction now. A brand-new auto-mobile (or anything else) is more valuable to me right now than the delivery of an identical car a year from now (other things – public tastes, market value, gasoline prices, etc. – being equal). I act in the present. I choose to do in a sequence of events those things that I am capable of doing with whatever assets I possess. I plan for the future, but I am not immediately responsible for the future, for I have no control over it. I am only responsible in the present. Thus, what happens in the present is more relevant for me than what I expect in the earthly future, since I must live in the present in order to get to the future. I am responsible in the here and now, not in the there and then. [4]
Your time management habits are indicative of your character, which will determine your ability as a steward to be wise and provident with what God has already given you (Proverbs 10:4, 9). Equally of note, how you answer the questions about your time preference should give you an indication as to why God does not give you more than you have.
Again, Gary North speaks to us clearly about stewardship and time preference:
Let us consider all this in more general terms. Biblically speaking, an individual is responsible before God in the present. He cannot escape this covenantal responsibility. As a person created in God’s image, he must place higher value on action in the present than action in the future. He is not yet responsible for what he will do in the future. Thus, an individual does those things first that he rates as most important in a calculated sequence of events. He places higher value on present goods and services than on future goods and services because he has a proposed plan of action: first, second, third, etc. in a plan of sequential events. He does not control future goods; he controls only present goods. He must act in the present. Thus, the goods that he owns in the present are worth more to him than those same physical goods in the expected future. There is a premium for present goods over identical future goods in the world of human action because of the time-constrained nature of covenantal responsibility before God. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. 6:34). Also sufficient unto the day are the pleasures thereof.[5]
What must be understood here is that what we do in life – inescapably echoes in eternity. Those who are unfaithful stewards of their time, talents and abilities are rewarded accordingly: it is an unpleasant reward, unfortunately. Yet it is their reward, as St. Paul notes in Galatians 6:7 regarding the law of sowing and reaping which manifests in time, history and on earth as well as beyond the world we see (Matthew 25:30-46).
Christian Liberty Homeschools offers a homeschool curriculum that will teach your child to read, write and count:www.homeschools.org
We also offer books that teach the meaning of logical economic theory and practice:https://www.shopchristianliberty.com/economics-work-and-prosperity-3rd-edition/
* “Take the Long Way Home,” Supertramp, 1979.
[1] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, (Fox & Wilkes: San Francisco, CA; 1996, 4th edition), p. 13.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xezVVNCTzGE
[3] https://www.garynorth.com/public/department37.cfm
[4] Gary North, Tools of Dominion, (The Institute for Christian Economics: Tyler, TX, 1990, 1997), p. 724.
[5] Tools of Dominion, p. 724-725.