Eight Time Thieves

Eight Time Thieves

One commodity of which we have a limit supply is time.  There are a number of Bible verses admonishing us to use our time wisely; but most of us let what time we have here on earth slip away from us.  We allow time thieves to steal our time away. We have identified eight of those time-thieves below with the hope that we can help you guard again these bandits. 

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.  Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15 NKJV

Time Thieves

1. Trying to change the past

Trying to undo what is already done is a bandit that eats lots of our time and can rob us of our future.  You cannot change the past.  If you have wronged someone or sinned against God, then seek forgiveness and move on. 

Philippians 3:13-15 (NKJV)
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.

2. Trying to escape the present

Trying to escape the present

Sometimes the affairs of the present day and/or the future are so overwhelming that we seek to just blank-out.  We fill our day with unproductive activities like watching television or reading novels so that we do not need to face the daily obligations of responsibilities.  Therefore, we waste time.  For some this can be one of the signs of serious depression; but for most of us, it is a sign of a need to refocus on the hope and blessings that are awaiting us in the adventure of life. Don’t let the thief of the present steal your valuable time.

 Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

3. Dreaming away the future

Everyone knows a dreamer that is always dreaming big dreams but never acts on them.  Perhaps, we all have a little bit of that dreamer in ourselves.  Of course, there is always an excuse for never initiating the dream. Hours or even days are lost in dreaming.   A person can dream their future away; and time lost in fantasizing can never be found.

Proverbs 22:13 (NKJV)
The lazy man says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets!”

4. Worrying 

Worry is perhaps the greatest cat burglar of all time.  Anxiety sneaks into the mind and causes us to spend needless time worrying about things that never come to pass.  Some say that ninety percent of what we worry over never amounts to anything.  

Matthew 6:25-36 (NKJV)
"Therefore I say to you, do not worry 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?  Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?  So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

5. Procrastination

Generally speaking, we tend to put those things off that we do not like doing or are fearful of doing.  Here is where procrastination becomes a time thief.  First, we spend more time finding excuses for not doing it than if we had just done it!   Plus! What is often the case; the job we have put off becomes more difficult and takes more of our time and money to remedy. 

Ecclesiastes 11:-4 (NKJV)
He who observes the wind will not sow, And he who regards the clouds will not reap.

6. Punishing Yourself

Have you noticed how much time people spend on beating themselves up for a mistake?  It’s often more time than it takes to correct the mistake.  Take this example: John installed a storm door only to discover he had it swinging the wrong directions.  John was so upset over his error that he spent the next three hours sulking in angry.  Three hours of wasted time and energy. 

This time crook (Punishing Yourself) delights in stealing time from Christians.  Many Christians have wasted a ton of time by being reluctant to serve God because of past sins.  Don’t lose another moment of time.  If you have sought forgiveness, then you have found forgiveness.  Move on!

1 John 1:9 (NKJV)
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

7. Pleasing Others and/or Seeking Approval/Praise from Others

Living your life for others can be very exhausting and time consuming.  While it is natural to want to do nice things for people you love, pleasing others can become compulsive.  If you self-worth is based on the approval of others, there is a good chance most of your time will be spent unproductively.

Galatians 1:10 (ESV)
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

8. Never Leaving the Starting Gate

A race horse will never win a race if it doesn’t leave the gate.  The best way to make the best of the time the Lord has given you is to live it!  

2 Timothy 4:7 (NKJV)
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Psalm 90:12 (NKJV)
So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

There is something better...we look for that blessed hope!

The land of darkness and the shadow of death. Job 10:21

THIS represented the highest thinking of that age about the future. There were gleams now and again of something more; but they were fitful and uncertain, soon overtaken by dark and sad forebodings. How different to our happy condition, for whom death is abolished, whilst life and immortality have been brought to light! The patriarch called the present life Day, and the future Night. We know that in comparison the present is Night, and the future Day. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us put on the armour of light." 

For us, too, there is something better. We wait for his Son from heaven; we look for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. "As the waters of the sea are held between two mighty gravitations, the moon now drawing them towards itself, and the earth drawing them back again, thus giving the ebbing and flowing tide, by which our earth is kept clean and healthful, so must the tides of the soul's affection move perpetually between the cross of Christ and the coming of Christ, influenced now by the power of memory and now by the power of hope." It is said of the late Dr. Gordon: "Hardly a sermon was preached without allusion to the glorious appearing. Never a day passed in which he did not prepare himself for it, in which its hastening was not sought for with prayer." "Yet a little while [Greek, how little! how little!] and He that shall come will come." The attitude of every believer should be that of waiting: with loins girt and lamp burning, let us be ready to meet our Lord.

"The Best is yet to be,
The Last for which the First was made."

-F. B. Meyer

Life Is Too Short*

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Galatians 6:9

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice...) Hebrews 3:7

"Life is too short for us to put into manifestation much that we would choose. Even with a good choice, life is too short for it. But I tell you one thing, life is long enough so that when Truth is presented, and there is an occasion for us to make a decision; or a surrender; or die a death; or accept a Truth—right here is where we do it, but the fruitage—the real fruitage—of it, won’t always be seen here. We aren’t here long enough; the real fruitage will be projected in the things yet to come." -John Wright Follette, Golden Grain

Good-Old-Days?*

Are you living in the past? Some people miss the present and hinder the future because they are stuck in the past. They can only remember the good-old-days, so much so that they have no time to create some new good-old-days. 

The Christian needs to balance his life with the wisdom gained from the past so he or she can live rightly today while planning for a better tomorrow.  Solomon said, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10 ESV).

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility of our future." -George Berrnard Shaw

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future." -John F. Kennedy

"Learn from the past, look to the future, but live in the present." -Petra Nemcova

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