Building Margin into Our Lives (Redeeming Your Time Week 4)
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Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Matthew 6:25, ESV
Rejuvenate with God. As believers, keeping our spiritual bodies healthy is very important to our overall health, too. Make spending time with God through prayer and devotions a priority every day.
Rejuvenate with others. Fellowship with friends and family on a regular basis can help spur you on to keep fighting the good fight. Consider joining a small group or weekly Bible study; if you’re already part of one, stick with it.
Rejuvenate your body. Don’t forget to pay attention to your body and its needs. Eat healthy meals and avoid too much junk food. Establish a good sleep habit. Get regular exercise to invigorate your mental and physical well-being.
Rejuvenate your mind. Read or listen to books. Listen to music or podcasts. Watch movies. Indulge in a new or old hobby, like knitting, sewing, woodworking, or clogging. Pick something that refreshes you mentally and carve out time to do those things on a regular basis.
Rejuvenate at home. Take a few minutes each day to just be by yourself. Sitting on the front porch for 15 minutes before the children come home from school, taking a bath a night after everyone’s in bed, or walking around the block during your lunch hour can create a little oasis within your day.
Finally, keep in mind the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10, where Jesus admonishes Martha to be more like Mary, who sat listening to Jesus. As DeYoung put it in Crazy Busy, “Martha isn’t doing anything bad. She’s just being pulled away from what is better. … We must make learning from him and taking time to be with him a priority. The priority, in fact.”
Let’s keep in mind that what Jesus really wants is time with us, and when we focus on making that our top priority, all our other worries and concerns about time and our schedules will be more manageable.
Now that you’ve completed this Bible study about time, do you have more time? While none of us can add a “single hour to his span of life,” as Luke puts it (12:25, ESV), we can become better stewards of the days, hours, and minutes God has given us.
The purpose of this study was to help you live the life you need to live by refocusing our priorities to the things of God, such as consistent time spent in his Word and prayer “because being with Jesus is the only thing strong enough to pull us away from busyness,” Kevin DeYoung noted in Crazy Busy. And he’s right—We can’t and won’t say no to more busyness unless and until we say yes to more of Jesus.
I think it’s fitting to close this study with this thought from DeYoung in his book: “We will keep choosing dinner rolls over the bread of life. We will choose the fanfare of the world over the feet of Jesus. We will choose busyness over blessing. It’s not wrong to be tired. It’s not wrong to be overwhelmed. It’s not wrong to go through seasons of complete chaos. What is wrong—and heartbreakingly foolish and wonderfully avoidable—is to live a life with more craziness than we want because we have less Jesus than we need.”
Let’s all choose more of Jesus this year and beyond, and let the mantle of busyness fall to the wayside.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/skynesher
