Barriers: Redeeming the Time

Last updated on January 21, 2023

Welcome back to our series on barriers to spiritual investment.  So far in the series, we’ve talked about our expectations of time and learned the difference between chronos and kairos time. We took some steps to practice transforming the automatic activities of our days from minutes ticking by on the clock to meaningful minutes engaging with God. Last post, we reflected on our time obligations, how we feel about them, what matters to us, and took all those to God in prayer.

In this post, we’ll cover some practical steps for redeeming our time and buying it back from the places where it is currently enslaved.

Go grab your notes from the last post. The ones where you spent time really looking at your time obligations, asking yourself how you felt about them and anything that isn’t getting your time, and bringing it all to God in prayer.

Buying it back

Let’s start with scripture. In the New Testament letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul says,

Pay careful attention, then, to how you live — not as unwise people but as wise — making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:15‭-‬16 CSB

The phrase “making the most of the time” is also rendered as “redeeming the time” in other English language translations.

In this instance, and also in Colossians 4:5 (another letter by the Apostle Paul to a neighbor church to Ephesus), redeeming means to re-claim our time from poor use for good use and from good use to better use. 

Notice it does not mean crammed with as many productive things as possible.  It means kairos use.  Meaningful, not meaningless.  Purposeful, not aimless.

So let’s look at this in terms of our desire to increase our spiritual investment.

We live in a western culture in which hustle is holy and progress is prized. But if we have determined that spiritual investment matters to us, then we are challenged in these verses to re-claim our time for good use according to God’s standards of good. 

Based on your notes about what matters to you and what God is teaching you, what can you conclude needs to change about your time obligations? Where can space be made for what God is directing you toward?

Choose one area that matters to you and work through the following questions:

• Which obligations are getting in the way of making space for this area?
• Are any of those obligations able to be handed off immediately or transitioned to someone else?
• Are any of those obligations not actually necessary at all? Can you back out of them?
• Have your motivations for continuing any of those obligations changed to the point that it’s time to just stop and go in a new direction?

Count the Cost

As we consider shifting our obligations, and redeeming our time for better, more meaningful use, it’s important that we count the costs that go with the change. These are points of pain, loss, and even grief. If we gloss over them, we lose the ability to move forward in full conviction because we naturally resist this pain. If we are prepared for it, expecting it, we have more agency to choose to move through it to what is better on the other side.

Consider whether any of these costs are part of the particular time redemption exchange you’re working through:

• Are there goodbyes you’ll need to say or relationships that will be different?
• Are there indulgences that you’ll need to scale back on?
• Is there a loss of return on investment of time, energy, money, or other resources you’ve given?
• Would this cause a season of disorder in the professional, family, or other people group systems you are a part of?
• Do you have fears you will need to confront and find freedom from in order to succeed in this transition?

Once we can clearly see what the costs are to reorienting our time obligations with meaningful purpose, such as investing in our own and our community’s spiritual growth, we can sort through those costs and decide if we are willing to pay them.

Redemption comes with a price. A price that must be paid. Redemption requires sacrifice. Sacrifice of our plans. Sacrifice of our money. Sacrifice of our sense of security. Sacrifice of our felt ability to control. Sacrifice of our own views of ourselves, others, and even sacrifice of what we think we might know about God. Redeeming what is lost is costly.

In each step in our spiritual journey, individually and collectively, we are faced with the challenge to our hearts: is it worth it to give this up for that? How we respond to that challenge is significant in whether we grow, stagnate, or wither. We have to decide. Indecision is a decision.

Let’s say that we’ve answered these questions and worked through how we feel about the answers and we’ve decided that it is worth it to us to incur the cost for redeeming back our lost time and investing it in our spiritual development.

Now what? It’s time to…

Pay the Redemption Price

Where do we begin and how to we keep going?

Identify the first step you need to take.

Perhaps a personal example will help here. When I recently went through this process with the Lord, I knew I needed to clear out some group commitments from my weekly schedule so I could spend more time working on this writing work and also for filling up my own spiritual reservoir to be better equipped to pour out to you all for as long as he grants me to be a voice for him. In order to do that, I had to step out of some responsibilities that I loved, but were no longer for the season God was moving me into. That meant leaving gaps in an organization I truly care about. It meant not being available anymore when they got into a bind and could really be served by my expertise. It meant not seeing those people anymore and that many of those relationships would fade over time.

It also meant I had to have a hard conversation with the leadership of that organization. Before I could do any of those other things, I had to sit in a room with two people I highly respected and who had put so much trust and confidence in me, and let them know I wasn’t going to be around anymore. That was hard. It ended up working out wonderfully and there were no hard feelings or any of that. But I didn’t know for sure until I went through it.

Perhaps the first step you need to take in redeeming your time is to have a hard conversation like I did. Or maybe it’s not that intense for you, and it means you need to set a limit on your device so you’re limiting your indulgences and making room for popping open your Bible app or getting out pen and paper to write out a prayer.

Whatever that first step is for you, it’s much easier to take it when you

Tell someone about the change you’re making

Friend, this part matters so much. Even if you’re one of those people who always goes it on your own and you don’t need a buddy group to work out with. Knowing that someone else knows what you are up to and making yourself verbally articulate why and what makes a big difference in the likelihood that you will actually pursue the change.

I had one friend I went over it all with beforehand. When I was still nervous about that meeting. She was the first person I checked in with after that meeting, and a week later after I was still mulling it over and sorting through how I felt about it and what I would do next. It was so important to have that person.

Choose someone who cares about you as a person. Someone you have regular contact with, if you can. Ask them to check in on how you’re doing. Schedule your check-in if you need to. Even if it’s weird. Perhaps especially if it’s weird.

Let redeeming your time be real to you by bringing it into community with others. If you’re already in a community of people who pray, also ask them to pray for you as you move through this.

And once you complete that first step. Tell your person/people about it! Share your emotions and thoughts with them. Let them encourage and challenge you. Then set the next step, share it, and take it!

Keep talking to God about it

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6 CSB

It is important to stay connected with people as we do the difficult and costly work of redeeming our time, but we must also remember that even the most well-meaning people can guide us onto crooked paths that seem right to us.

To combat this, make regular time, as often as possible, and certainly more often that you consult people, to talk to God about what you’re moving through. New feelings and thoughts and barriers will come up. Talk to God about them. Never leave something out of your conversations with God that you make time to bring into conversations with people.

He delights to see you redeeming your time and your daily life for good and better things, like getting to know him more intimately as he walks beside you in this hard process.

He knows the hard road of redemption. He knows it in his flesh and in his blood. He knows the hindrances that get in our way. The outward ones and the inward ones. And he knows the way. The whole way, through to the end of the race.

As a personal witness to the goodness and faith-worthiness of God in all of lives difficulties and transitions, I can tell you that he will make your paths straight when you rely on him. There are many, many other stories of others who will tell of the same truth. People alive today, and people long passed from this time.

I leave us today with hope, inspiration, and truth demonstrated by our dear big brother, Jesus. The all-time pro at walking this road to redemption.

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2 CSB