167 Hours a Week: The Opportunity for Your Kingdom Contribution
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
-Psalm 90:12
Every person with breath, has 168 hours in a week. If you are a Jesus follower, at a minimum, you will find yourself in a worship service at least 1 hour a week. That leaves 167 hours left in the week. What are you doing with your time? How are you investing those hours? How are you living out your calling through your kingdom contribution?
One of the saddest comments to hear is “I’m just killing time.” What would happen if this phrase was totally eradicated from the mouths of Christians? What kind of an impact could God’s people have in their current circles of influence?
Before you can find out where you want to go, you need to see where you are right now. Here are three ways to see where you currently are living and investing your time.
Take an inventory. If you are someone who utilizes technology, begin to track your time in a computer program. You can also just take paper or use a journal for this exercise. Regardless of how you keep track, the goal is to see how you are spending your day hour by hour. If you are really detail minded, you can break it down into half or quarter hour segments as well. The idea is to see where you are wasting or investing your precious hours each week. Do this for at least 7-10 days, so you will be able to discover some of the patterns you currently have in your life.
Bucket your findings. After you have plotted your time out over a few days, take an objective look at what you have written down. You will want to see various ways to group time spent on various activities. As you go back through your data, you may want to even color code your information. For instance, you may want to color the time that you slept in blue, since this color can represent calmness and rest. Color code the time with your family in meals, playing together, or just spending time together in yellow, since that brings joy or a happy color to mind. Doing this step will help you to visually see how much time is spent on various activities.
Reflect on your findings. Now that you have a visual of what the last 7-10 days looks like, here are some reflection questions to help you work through what you see:
- How much of my time each day is spent sleeping?
- What is my current time allotted for time with God?
- Where am I spending time with family and friends?
- How am I implementing play into my week?
- What is my kingdom contribution?
The older we are, the more we realize that indeed our days are numbered. We talk about being good stewards of our money, but too often, we don’t even think about our time. We can always make more money, but we can’t make more time. Taking a snap-shot of how we utilize our time, helps us to begin to be aware of how where our time goes.
Purpose in Your Prime helps Christian women in midlife discover their purpose for the next season life by gaining clarity and direction, culminating in an actionable plan for Kingdom contribution.
