GUEST ARTICLE

Some Thoughts on Time

[The following selection may seem extreme to some of our readers.  It may seem legalistic.  It may even seem unrealistic.  However, Fomum’s seriousness in dealing with this matter of time use has convicted me—and it may convict you as well.  Read with an open mind and let us derive as much good from this as possible.  RH]

1. Time is one of the greatest gifts that God has given to man.
   
2. God is so good that He has given every human being the same number of hours each day, that is, twenty-four.
   
3. God has no favorites as far as time is concerned.  He has not given some people ten hours a day, others fifteen, and others twenty-four.
   
4. Time is a very perishable gift.
   
5. People may vary in natural and spiritual endowments but what ultimately makes a difference between them at the human level, is how they used the time that God gave them.
   
6. Your time is not yours.  It is God-given.  It is God-vested.
   
7. Each person meets each second, minute, hour and day twice.  He meets it the first time when it comes upon him.  He will meet it the second time at the Judgment Seat of Christ to give account for that second, minute, hour and day.
   
8. Much money can be gained in a short time.  Time cannot be gained that way.
   
9. Every second, minute, hour or day that is lost is lost forever.
   
10. A fool may waste money but the greatest fool wastes time.
    
11. The easiest way to lose time is to do it one second at a time.
    
12. I once met a fool, a great fool, the greatest fool.  He wasted a second every second and soon found out that a month of thirty days, he had wasted 259,000 seconds.
    
13. The Enemy ensures that he steals your time one second at a time and, in that way, prevents you from realizing it.  It is neat and skillful stealing.
    
14. The person who wastes fifteen minutes every hour will waste twenty-five years if he lives to be one hundred years.
    
15. A man who sleeps eight hours a day and lives to be seventy-five has actually spend one-third of his entire life sleeping, that is, twenty-five years.
    
16. The believer who tithes his time should give God 2.4 hours every day and 16.8 hours every week.
    
17. The believer who is taking God more seriously should give God not only a tithe or ten percent of his time, but also an offering of five percent.  In this way, he will give God 3.6 hours each day.
    
18. The believer who gives God a tithe or ten percent has 20.4 hours each day, left for him to decide how to invest it.
    
19. The believer who gives God less than 2.4 hours of his time a day is stealing from God.
    
20. Those who do not tithe their time and money are robbing God.  If they tithe only money, they rob God.  If they tithe only their time, they rob God.
    
21. “Will a man rob God?  Yet you are robbing Me!  But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’  In tithes and offerings.  You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of You!” (Malachi 3:8-9).
    
22. God cannot demand a tithe and an offering from a man that does not include a tithe and an offering of his time.
    
23. Those who give God a tithe of their time and an offering of it will find that they are blessed. . . .(Malachi 3:10-12).
    

Zacharias Tanee Fomum, The Use of Time, pp. 8-11.