Josh: 0:07

Welcome to Made for Good, the podcast where we explore how to live out our purpose through acts of goodness, out of a biblical truth. Hey, I'm Josh

Mark: 0:14

and I'm Mark. Today we're going to talk about one of the most valuable resources God gives us. That's time. Unlike money or possessions, we can't store it, we can't regain it, we can't expand it. Once a moment's gone, it's gone. What do you think? One of the biggest ways people waste their time today?

Josh: 0:38

Well, I think there's several, but the biggest, I would just say distractions. It's one of the biggest culprits. I mean, think about it social media. We binge watch shows because we can stream anything without commercials now, my kids don't even know about commercials, by the way or we just scroll endlessly on our phones. We don't often realize that we're just wasting our time throughout the day.

Mark: 1:01

That's so true, and the Bible actually warns us about this. Ephesians 5, verse 15 and 16 says look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of time because the days are evil. God is really telling us here to be intentional with our time, not just avoiding sin or avoiding doing the bad things, but to make sure that we're using it for things that matter. It's kind of a conversation of good versus even better and what we want to do in any of this, in all of our time, we want to make sure that we're bringing glory to God.

Josh: 1:43

Right, and one of the clearest biblical examples you kind of hinted at this of a struggle with time is found in Luke 10, with the story of Mary and Martha. Martha was busy preparing and serving, while Mary she was sitting at Jesus' feet listening to Him. So Martha was doing a good work. I think we struggle with that. Was one doing something bad and was one doing something good? But there was a part of this story where Martha complained that Mary wasn't helping and listen to Jesus' response in Luke 10. This is found in verses 41 and 42. Martha, Martha, you're anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.

Mark: 2:28

Yes. So Martha wasn't doing anything wrong. In fact, she was doing something very good. She was being hospitable Right, and Mary wasn't doing anything wrong in that she was not helping Martha. They were both doing good things. But one of those things, according to Jesus, is the better portion or the good portion, and Jesus said that Mary was choosing the better option here. Martha was distracted. She couldn't see the better because of the good things that she was trying to do. She really missed the best thing, and that's being in the presence of Jesus and hearing him and learning from him. What if Martha was sitting there beside Mary? Do you think at some point maybe Jesus and Martha and Mary would get up and maybe go prepare the food together? If they were both sitting there listening, do you think that they would have gone hungry? No, they would not have gone hungry. They would have eventually gotten to the food, the sustenance that they need. And so, to be very clear, Martha wasn't doing anything wrong here.

Josh: 3:51

You look back at those two verses that verse 41 and 42, this really is a tough lesson for us to learn. I mean, how often do we get caught up into a busy task? The responsibilities are like you said. They could be good things, but the reality is we could be neglecting what's most important time with God.

Mark: 4:08

Let's look at our main challenge today, our main mission. We're talking about redeeming the time. Ephesians 5.16 tells us to redeem the time because the days are evil. You know, if you think about that phrase, the days are evil. You know, there are lots of ways we can look at that, but one of them is that, as we mentioned before, you can't store it, you can't preserve it, it's just going and it's expiring. As we talk, the day is expiring and we let time just slip away.

Mark: 4:44

You know, we've got some statistics here that we'd like to take a look at and you know, this is probably a little bit dated. It may even be more, you know, in 2025. But the average person spends about two and a half hours a day on social media. That's the average person. Two and a half hours a day on social media that's the average person. I think if you're between, if you're a teenager, maybe into your 20s, it could be as high as four or five hours a day on social media.

Mark: 5:19

Americans, specifically, on average spend about eight years of their life watching TV, just consuming watching TV. You know, josh, today most people spend more time on their phones than in a meaningful conversation with another human being. We just. You know, there's a specific physiological issue that a lot of people have in their necks because they are looking down. We live in a college town. You're driving through town. My wife always has to remind me the students are back. They walk into a crosswalk without even looking up from their phone, and that's real. It's dangerous. But older adults do it as well. We're not immune. We like to maybe point fingers, maybe we don't. We're not on social media as much, but we're probably wasting time watching TV or doing something else whole time.

Josh: 6:12

We went to Chick-Fil-A recently

Mark: 6:12

I know where this is going.

Josh: 6:20

We were eating in the restaurant, uh, trying to make sure our kids didn't tear something up. Those two people just stared at their phones the whole time, not having a conversation

Mark: 6:30

maybe they were having an argument via text which is a great way to have an argument right, they were just sitting there going back and forth typing furiously.

Josh: 6:39

I will say though uh, the stats that you gave, that's really really uncomfortable for me to listen to, especially like 8 years of our life watching TV. It's just insane. One of the things going back to Jesus, he set an example of just intentionality, like in John 9, 4, where he said we must work the works of him who sent me while at stay, night's coming, when no one can work. Jesus understood the urgency of using his time wisely, the same urgency that should shape really how we go about our days.

Mark: 7:15

You know that, working the works of him who sent me. There's the intentionality right. There's the purpose. We go back to our foundational verse that we based this podcast on, in Ephesians 2.10, where we were created in Christ for good works. There's the purpose, there's the mission of why we are created. You know, obviously we want to spend eternity in heaven with God, but we're here, we're on the earth. What should we be doing? Well, if you're created in Christ, you should be doing good works right, because that's what we're made for, and he purposefully established those beforehand, and that beforehand is before time.

Mark: 8:01

And so this is hard. This is, this is our reality check. You know, when we look at we already mentioned a little bit of it this, this the biggest time wasters of our lives, the endless scrolling, hey, and it's not just social media, you know. It's not just. You know, figure out what our latest pop star is doing or not doing, or whatever. It can be online shopping I mean the microphone that's sitting between us here, josh, I don't know. I probably spent a few hours because you know I can't just go buy something. You know, I've got a, I've got a research, I'm an engineer, I got to research and I need data, and so I'm going to watch, you know, 15 videos of reviews.

Josh: 8:52

You're going to maybe send me three of them. Well, I'm filtering for you.

Mark: 8:55

I'm filtering just so I'm giving you the good stuff that that we can. We can make our, our, our selection, informed selection. But it's hey, it's also news, you know, it could be sports. There's just this, the end. Endless scrolling.

Josh: 9:10

Yeah.

Mark: 9:11

You know. Another one is the entertainment. I mean binge watching our favorite Netflix, you know series or Hulu or Prime or Apple.

Josh: 9:24

I want to admit something here. I went to a birthday party for a child last weekend, had my phone watching the Auburn game.

Mark: 9:34

Yeah, I've never done that, Josh. I don't know why. What is your motivation behind that? But you mentioned game. I mean video games today, the amount of time that people Luckily I never got into video games. You know, I had the one. The one I have is in a museum somewhere right now. That's the Pong or something it's. I'm thankful that I really never was bit by that, but I know a lot of people will do it and it's a way for them to relax.

Mark: 10:04

You know, from Elon Musk all the way down to you know, your, your average college student. It's a way to decompress and I get that, but it's mindless and it's not something that we should waste too much time on. Another one is just overcommitting. We say yes to everything. We spread ourselves too thin and you know that is something that is very, very hard for us to say and to say no or no, thank you. I'm sorry, I just don't have the time to spend in the way that I would want to spend on that project. I just but we say yes and we just stack things up over and over and over and over on top of each other.

Josh: 10:48

I would say we probably have. Most of our listeners are Christians and this is something that we really struggle with. But you said something to me a couple of years ago that I can say no and I don't have to have an explanation of why I'm saying no. We get so uncomfortable because we just say yes, but the times where we get bold enough in the confidence to say no, we feel like well, let me give you this big story of why I can't say no.

Mark: 11:11

Yeah, we defend the no Right

Josh: 11:12

and we don't even have to do that

Josh: 11:13

We can just say no politely.

Mark: 11:15

Yeah Well, and the politely matters. I appreciate you thinking of me, but, no, I'm not going to be able to do that and you can end it there. You don't have to go. You can virtue signal. Look, I'm volunteering at the food bank and I'm, you know, I'm doing all these other things and you know I just don't have. I don't have the time. Graciously, decline and over a period of time. This is what we hope in this podcast is that we figure out how, as it says back in Ephesians 5, and we first talked about we want to use wisdom not as unwise, but as wise. We want to use wisdom on how, and part of the wisdom is saying no to the things that don't really matter. Another one that can contribute is just being disorganized, just losing time because we don't really plan ahead, and that's something that it's a tool. Planning can help us manage our time a little better. They have these things I don't know, josh, have you heard of them? They're called calendars.

Josh: 12:22

What's that?

Mark: 12:23

It's a calendar. It starts with a C, not a K. You can get them on your phone. You can get them on your computer. Even in the ancient times, they printed them on paper, wow, and we hung them on the wall way back in the old days.

Josh: 12:38

I'll have to Google that.

Josh: 12:49

Yeah days, I'll have to Google that.

Mark: 12:50

Yeah, yeah, there's a video.

Josh: 12:51

I'm sure here's something else to think about. Are we prioritizing the urgent over the important? We fill our schedules with tasks, but we forget about our time with God.

Mark: 12:54

You know, there is something called the Eisenhower box. It's four quadrants. It's a picture of a square with four smaller squares inside of it and we've got important, not important, urgent, not urgent. So it doesn't take a genius to figure out the not important, not urgent things we shouldn't be doing at all. So the not urgent but important are things that we need to. Those are the hardest. They're important but they're not urgent. We have to make time to do the important things.

Mark: 13:45

If someone is going to ask you to read a scripture at church, you're going to read it because there's an emergency there. You're going to. You're going to read your Bible. Before you get up in front of a group of a few hundred people and read the Bible, right, um. So you're going. It's. It's urgent and important. You need to do it right now. Urgent and important, you need to do it right now. If it's urgent and important, you need to do it right now. Someone is suffering. You know the need. Someone is sick. Get on that right now. And here's the thing If it's not important but someone else thinks it's urgent, there's where we waste a lot of time as well.

Mark: 14:31

If you look at that, those four quadrants. We shouldn't be spending any time in the not important whether it's not urgent or not important or not important but somebody thinks it's urgent but it's really not. So what we want to do is spend our time on the important, urgent things. So that's being responsive to a need when we see it, and the other part is not really urgent but it's important, it's about.

Mark: 14:54

One of those examples would be things like building a relationship with somebody Not super urgent, yeah, I need to spend more time with them. Okay, then make time for that important aspect of what you're trying to do and leave all the non-important stuff out of our daily life. You know, jesus really modeled this when it comes to the balance that he had in his life. He prayed, he served, he made time for other people. He actually made time for himself because he would withdraw, and I have a feeling that a lot of that time that he withdrew was he was in conversation with God and he was building his own relationship with God, building his own stamina to do what God had asked him to do when he came to live his life here on earth. We have to take an honest look at where our time is going and ask and here's a super important question when we're trying to think of that Eisenhower box, is this drawing me closer to God or is it pulling me away?

Josh: 16:06

I was just thinking about what you said early on in the podcast and putting it together with what you just said. We start looking at time. As we don't get it back, it does change our mindset with it altogether. Well, let's, let's shift gears to our mission for this week for everyone. This, I'm going to be honest, this one's a little bit.

Mark: 16:23

I got a feeling you're going to, we're going to, we're going to hurt some feelings.

Josh: 16:27

Yeah, we may get a bad rating. It's a little uncomfortable even for us, because you know we'll be falling suit with this too, but the first thing that that's a part of your mission is audit your time. What that means is we're asking you to track where your hours are actually going each day and identify where you're wasting your time.

Mark: 16:47

So can you, can you do that?

Mark: 16:49

So you write that down with a piece of paper, like in pencil,

Josh: 16:51

apparently you guys had calendars that you printed out and you had on the wall, so you probably could write it, but there's apps for that too.

Mark: 16:56

Oh, there's an app.

Josh: 16:57

Yeah, you got it. The second thing that we're asking to do this and this really goes hand in hand with auditing your time is removing one major distraction. This is the one that's hard for me to even say. We're asking you to choose something, whether it's social media there's a lot of forms of that

Mark: 17:15

except the made 4 good social

Josh: 17:18

yeah that's approved.

Mark: 17:19

Yeah, okay, that's a pretty pretty good.

Josh: 17:22

So social media, tv, excessive phone You've talked about a number of ways that we could do that and we're asking you to cut it down this week. So, to be clear, choosing something meaning one we want you to cut it down this week and then we want you to replace that with something meaningful. So, in other words, instead of scrolling, use the time for maybe something I don't know, like prayer, bible study or serving with someone in need.

Mark: 17:49

OK, I got a bonus for you and it kind of fits in to that last one that you mentioned. But here's a novel idea how about spend 30 minutes this week having a meaningful conversation with somebody? I don't know, maybe a family member. Maybe go meet a friend for coffee Josh and I do that all the time or maybe praying with someone who needs encouragement, but we're talking about 30 minutes of conversation. I'm talking about conversation with your voice, maybe best in the same room with the person. Obviously, you could call somebody on the phone and have this conversation, particularly, you know, if it's a family member that lives far away. Right, have a 30 minute conversation with a real person. And I don't mean maybe you know the service support desk at the local store where you're trying to get something returned. These are meaningful conversations. This is about wanting to know how they're doing and is there something that I can do? You know, to help? I can do to help. So that's the bonus challenge.

Mark: 19:08

So we've got about four things that we want to try to do this week. I'm just going to review them real quick. We're going to audit time. We're going to turn on that feature on our phone where it tracks our time, how much would we use? We'll not be surprised what that is.

Mark: 19:22

We're going to try to remove one of those major distractions. It could be something on the phone, but it also could be I don't know YouTube TV that's one that I spend a lot of time in. Or it could just be other types of excessive phone use, you know, scrolling through news or whatever, and when I just cut that out, we're going to replace that with something that's meaningful. So instead of that scrolling, we're going to use time for prayer or Bible study. We did an analysis previously, josh and I did, where we found out that if you took the two and a half hours a day that people spend on social media, how long, if you spent two and a half hours a day reading your Bible, how long would it take for you to read the New Testament? You could do that in a week. One week, if you just took social media out and put the word of God in, you could read the entire New Testament in a week,

Josh: 20:25

which is wild, and you know.

Josh: 20:25

Also, with the Bible app, it could read to you.

Mark: 20:29

Okay, Do you know how to read right?

Josh: 20:31

I do, but it's also fun to have someone read to you.

Mark: 20:34

Okay, Well no, I get that and I do that sometimes too, and particularly like when you're doing something where you can just check out in your mind, like exercising or working in the yard. Just pop the headphones on Sony Walkman, pop that in and listen to the Bible. Actually, it's probably more like AirPod Pros these days.

Josh: 20:56

Yeah, there you go.

Josh: 20:57

Well, I wanted to say one of the things we'll try to do after this episode is we're on every form of social media. We have X, instagram and Facebook. We'll try to do after this episode is we have, you know, we're on every form of social media. We have X, instagram and Facebook. We'll try to put this list out there for a reminder, because I do like that. We said it, you know, try to say it multiple times. We also understand these missions. There's a lot to them sometimes, so we'll get these put out there on our forms of social media.

Mark: 21:19

Okay, well, look. That's it for today's episode of Made for Good. If this conversation inspired you to make some changes, maybe it was challenging to you and you want to hear more about it. Make sure you subscribe and don't miss the next one.

Josh: 21:40

Well, we hope that you found this valuable. Consider sharing with a friend Until next time. Go out and use your time wisely. You were made for it.