Today I found out about a very interesting function on my iPhone. If I go into Settings on my iPhone, and then click on Battery, I am able to see how I have used my phone in the last 24 hours (or the last week).  For instance, in the last 24 hours, I used Spotify to listen to music for 3.1 hours (I had it playing while we had friends over for dinner last night).  I spent 19 minutes on text messages, and I spent 10 minutes using my phone to read and respond to emails.

Seeing this accounting of my time on my phone was interesting. It made me think, “What would happen if I had that kind of accounting for all my time?”  For instance, what if I knew how much time I spend each day serving others?  Or, what if I knew how much time I spend on negative thinking (being irritated with someone or worrying about a situation), or how much time I spend on prayer?  How would that knowledge change how I operate each day?

There is no greater reflection of who we are than how we spend our time. I can say that living a life in service to God is important to me.  However, that is all talk, if my “time pie chart” shows that I spend 30% of my day gossiping.  I am what I do.

Now, we all fall into “time traps.”   For instance, worrying is a time trap.  We can start out with a simple problem.  Then, we mull it over for a while, and eventually we are obsessing about all the things that could go horribly wrong.  Before we know it, we’ve blown 30 minutes being upset about something that may or may never happen.

We certainly can get into time traps with our electronic devices. It is easy to spend a great deal of our limited free time surfing the Internet, reading online news and communicating on social media.  However, excessive amounts of time doing any of those things is not what God has called us to do on this earth.

It is a worthwhile exercise for each of us to take stock of our time, and how we spend it. I will admit that I spend far too much time looking at the online news and listening to news podcasts.  It is one thing to stay informed of current events, but I check the news at least every two hours.  Why?  I don’t have any control over the events that I read about, so why do I need to be so “informed?”  I don’t.  Reading the news once a day would be more than adequate.

How would my time be better spent rather than being a news junkie? Well, I could pray a whole lot more, or I could take some quiet time to read my Bible.  Or I could use that time to send other people notes of encouragement or thanks.  There are a million better things that I could be doing with my time other than reading about current events.

Unfortunately, my “time pie chart” would show that I am a person who prefers to read CNN.com and listen to the Bloomberg Law podcast rather than spend time with God. That is the stark reality of my time choices.  My actions speak volumes.

As Christians, how we spend our time matters. God has given us this beautiful gift called Life.  And with that gift, we are given moments to enjoy ourselves, and the time to spend with the people we love.  But God also has given us this time, in part, so that we can be a blessing on this earth.  And we can’t bless others if we are using large amounts of our time to engage in pointless activities.

This week, consider your own time pie chart. Are you choosing to spend your time in ways that reflect your values?  Or is your time being spent on things that don’t actually matter to you.  Stop wasting time.  Spend your time wisely so that your life authentically reflects who you really are.

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