I'm a big fan of object lessons. Whenever I have the opportunity to teach at church, I always try to think of an object lesson that would apply to whatever I'm teaching about. For me, someone is always more interesting when they have some kind of visual aid. So, as a result, I'm constantly on the lookout for good object lessons---kind of like how I'm always looking for good stories.
The first time I saw the demonstration I'm about to share was probably five or six years ago, but it's one of the coolest (and most challenging) object lessons I've ever seen. If you want to this one for yourself (it's pretty easy---I think you should), you'll need a tape measure.
There are twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week, so there are 168 hours in a week. Pull the tape measure out to 168 inches, or fourteen feet. If you can lock the tape measure so the tape doesn't get reeled in, go ahead and do that.
So far, so good. At least I'd hope so. If you can't measure out fourteen feet with a tape measure, well . . . Anyway, getting the tape measure pulled out is the easy part. Each inch (obviously) represents an hour of your time, and every two feet represent a day.
Here's where things start to get difficult. Add up the number of hours you set aside for God each week and see where you measure up. Remember that every inch on the tape measure represent an hour.
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How'd you measure up? If you're anything like me, you probably didn't do as well as you thought you would. You go to church and Sunday school every week. That's three hours. Maybe you go to prayer meeting or Bible study during the week for a couple of hours. Let's say you volunteer at church for a few hours a week. Maybe you even spend an hour a day reading your Bible and praying. What does all that add up to? Fifteen hours, if you're generous? Not even a full day. Rats.
We may think that we set aside lots of time for God, but when we actually add it up and measure it out, we realize that it's not really that much. If you have 168 inches on a tape measure and you take away fifteen, there's still a lot of inches left. In the same way, taking fifteen hours out of the 168 we have each week isn't really too substantial.
I think one of the main reasons we measure up so poorly is that we're very good at compartmentalizing our lives. Whether we realize it or not, we schedule everything and reduce our time to a bunch of time slots. The time we spend at school is school time, the time we spend at work is work time, and the time we spend watching TV is TV time. If we only schedule a few hours of "God time" into our week. we shouldn't be surprised when we're only able to measure out a few inches on the tape measure.
The whole notion of having separate time slots for God is just plain wrong. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, "Thou shalt worship me only on Sundays from 9:00 to 12:00." In fact, there are plenty of verses that say the exact opposite. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says that everything we do should be done for God's glory, and Romans 12:1 says that we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God.
The Bible also says that we should "Pray continually." (1 Thessalonians 5:17) Obviously, we can't spend our entire lives walking around with our eyes closed and heads bowed. You'd probably run into a lot of stuff if you walked around like that, and crossing the street would definitely be an interesting endeavor. We can, however, constantly maintain an attitude of prayer, which is what the verse is telling us to do.
Prayers don't necessarily have to be long. Things like "Thanks for the beautiful morning, God," and "Please keep me safe as I drive in the rain, Lord," are perfectly acceptable prayers, and they're great for keeping us focused on God throughout the day.
David, the man who wrote most of the book of Psalms, spent a lot of time meditating on the Scriptures. (Psalm 77:12; 119:97, 148) This is something that we can (and should) do as well. Keeping God's Word on our minds will influence our thoughts and actions so that they glorify Him.
As Christians, everything we do---regardless of whether we're at home, school, work, or church---should be an act of worship. When Jesus was on earth, He was fully devoted to always following the will of His Father. (Mark 14:36) Jesus never took a break; everything He did was done to bring God glory. Let's make it our goal to live like that.
How many hours are left in the week? How many of them do you plan on devoting to God?
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