Budget Your Time for Spiritual Growth

“We all have the same 24 hours in a day” is one of those things people say without thinking about how wildly inaccurate it is.

There are 24 hours in a day, true enough—but variables like your family, your community, your job, your geographical location, your socioeconomic status and your health are all going to determine how flexible those hours are and what exactly you can afford to do with them.

If you don’t think that’s true, then try telling a single mother with three kids and two jobs that she has the same 24 hours as a millionaire bachelor with a bottomless trust fund. Or tell a subsistence farmer in Ghana that he has the same 24 hours as a landlord in New York. Or tell an elderly retiree with poor mobility that she has the same 24 hours as a teenager on summer break.

The point is, my 24 hours and your 24 hours might be the same length, but I can pretty much guarantee you, they don’t contain the same potential.

Look at principles, not numbers

In this article, we’re going to talk about budgeting your time for spiritual pursuits. But I think it’s important to preface that discussion with the understanding that we don’t all have the same 24 hours in a day. For some of you reading this, it might be a trivial thing to clear out a big block of your schedule every day for Bible study. For others, it might be a logistical nightmare.

That’s why we’re not going to talk a lot about numbers.

We’re going to talk about principles.

Our relationship with God requires effort

Spending time with God and digging into His Word is important.

Where will you carve out time for God today? No, not just important. Vital. When our relationship with God weakens, so does our spiritual health. And ultimately, without that relationship, we have no hope of a future beyond this life—and no way to embrace our purpose in this life.

Prayer, Bible study, meditation, fasting and fellowship are all valuable tools for bolstering our connection with God (so valuable that we wrote an entire book about them)—but if you’re anything like me, you don’t need to be convinced about why they matter.

You need to know how to find time for them.

Don’t wait for time—set it aside

The answer isn’t complicated, but it isn’t easy either.

We’re not going to find time.

Life doesn’t work like that—at least not in my experience. The “cares of this life” that Jesus warned about in Luke 21:34 are like a gas—give them space, and they’ll expand to fill it.

The perfect amount of time to spend with God isn’t just going to appear in your schedule. There will always be something else that needs your attention, and any vacancies will be filled by the next most urgent item on your to-do list.

Time for God must be carved out.

Intentionally. Specifically. Deliberately.

Goals don’t work without systems

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, has a lot to say about how to form a positive habit. He makes the point, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.”

“I want to be better at Bible study” is a goal.

But “I will spend 30 minutes every morning after breakfast reading three chapters of the Bible” can become a habit—part of the system that will get you to your goal.

James Clear advises “stacking” the habits you want to form onto habits you already have. Don’t just say you’ll get to it in the evening—say you’ll do it right before you eat dinner, or immediately after you brush your teeth.

To that end, we’ve provided a template you can use to plan some of the habits you want to form or improve. Be specific about what you’re going to do and when—and be mindful of what you can do with your 24 hours—and you can start to build the habits that will take you where you want to go.

Make the effort, even when it’s not the ideal

I can’t tell you how much time to take or when it should happen, but I can tell you it’s probably going to require moving things around.

Maybe that means waking up a little earlier or staying up a little later. Maybe it means getting creative during your lunch break or while your kids are napping. Maybe it means taking a hard look at your daily schedule and figuring out if there are any noncritical activities you can afford to remove or shrink.

(If you get your lunch packed the night before, will you have time in the morning to talk with God? If there’s a show you like to watch in the evenings, can you commit to reading a chapter of the Bible before you start watching? Are there 15 minutes during the day when you can take a walk outside and meditate?)

It won’t work perfectly. Even with the best of intentions, the ups and downs of life will make it hard to stay consistent. But knowing how vital this time is for our relationship with God, we have to keep making the effort to make this a lasting habit.

Maybe your 24 hours aren’t as flexible as you like. Maybe there’s just no room for the long, uninterrupted prayer and study sessions you wish you could do. But it’s not a matter of that or nothing. Find what you can do, and do that.

Where will you carve out time for God today?

Learn more about strengthening your relationship with God in our free book Five Tools for Spiritual Growth.