Not Time to Waste

No one wastes an evening like modern man. Let God be merciful regarding our past evenings and gracious toward our future evenings. (Cf.) God gives us the evening. Evening belongs to God.

The time between your dinner and your sleeping is your evening. We wake and pray. We attend to our duties before the Lord. We enjoy the blessings and provision of dinner. Now it is evening. What will you do? The “timing” of evening varies from person to person and home to home. I trust you can apply evening time devotional principles to your own situation.

Not all your evenings will be the same. There will be variety. But it does not need to be random and pointless variety that you never think about. Give it purpose. Think about it. Plan it. Pray about it. You really can have fruitful evenings devoted to the Lord. You can evenings that help you and your family grow in Christ, glorify God, and advance the kingdom of God. What a joyous and liberating prospect.

My main goal in the evening is to serve my family well. I want to, by God’s grace, lead well and set a good example. I once heard in a sermon on manhood, “Go to work and work hard; go home and work hard; and go to bed tired.” I was convicted. My evenings are different now. They are not about what I—in my delusional self-obsessed heart—think I am entitled to. They are about serving the Lord by serving my wife and children. I have a long way to go; but God is merciful.

God is ever present, always working, and everywhere watching. Yes! Even in the evening. Even in your bedroom. Jesus sees your thoughts and desires. He measures your decisions; He cares about how you spend your evenings. I am trusting in God with my evenings. He is my only hope if I want to be selfless instead of selfish. Without the Holy Spirit, I’d be demon disguised as a person. And my evenings would be a time where the universe revolved around my wants, felt needs, and shallow indulgences. God help me.

The evening, then, is not time to waste. It is time to utilize with purposed faith and wisdom. It is time to offer to the Lord in a rich variety of ways. First, admit there will be variety. Second, accept that you won’t be able to do everything every evening. Third, commit your evenings to the Lord by faith—trust that He will use them for His glory and your benefit. Fourth, do not divorce evening as a unique time where you do not have a servant’s heart.

Before dinner, you worked hard to serve the Lord in your duties at work, school, or home. After dinner, work hard to serve the Lord by serving your family. If you live alone, I trust you can apply the principle in a fitting way. What principle? The Lord holds the evening in His hand. Serve Him with joy.

Serving and Resting

You can do many things you can do to make evening fruitful. First, you can do things to serve your family. These will be easy to spot if you look for but a moment and have a heart to serve. How can you serve your spouse, children, parents, or siblings? Do not drift away into the imaginary world of entertainment and gaming. Always remember that people are more important than things. People need encouragement; the television does not. Children need love; power tools do not. Siblings need friends and care; toys and games do not. Love people. Serve people. Pour into people. This is what family is for. If you everyone in the family has a heart to serve, love, and lookout for the others, what a joyful and happy home!

Second, you can find rest and enjoyment in good things from God. Rest is not inherently bad. Entertainment, toys, tools, games, sports, and leisure are not inherently bad. They can be sinful if the content is sinful, e.g., raunchy music, movies, and so forth. Why would we let our children soak in ungodly content into there impressionable minds and hearts? They also can be sinful if—regardless of the content—they are given undue priority. They can, in other words, become idols. Wood is not sinful, but wood fashioned into an idol is used for sinning. Not all entertainment is sinful, but entertainment treated as a god is used for sinning. Good things become sinful things when they rule over us. Good things should remind us of God’s goodness. They should not rule our hearts, schedules, or priorities. Only God should do that.

You will often need to rest in the evening. Take time for leisure. These things are good, not bad. “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). Enjoyment is from God’s hand. And, “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; [13] also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man” (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13). Being joyful in common graces and feasting is a gift from God. These things are not to be avoided, much less disparaged as sinful. No! They are good. They are from God. But they must always remind of God and his goodness rather than distract us from God and his goodness.

Enjoyment is from God, but it should never compete with God. “Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 5:19). It is evening. You worked hard, you enjoyed dinner, and now what? First, you might serve your family. Second, you might find rest and enjoyment.

Seeking the Lord

Third, you might devote special time to God’s Word. Stop. Get alone. Sit down. Open your Bible. Pray for God to open your heart and mind to His will. Read. Contemplate, study, take notes. Enjoy the Bread of Life. Paragraphs, sentences, and phrases in the Bible are from God. The words in the Bible are your best friends! See the nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositional phrases, and so forth. What do they say? What do they mean? How do they show you God? What do they require of you? What promise do they deliver to you? Whatever these words tell you is true. Read, therefore, and carefully consider God’s Word. It is a mercy to the helpless sinner.

The Bible shows us God and His plan for our lives. It shows us His holiness, moral character, commandments, and principles of wisdom. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Ps 119:105). In the glow of God’s holiness, the Bible also shows us our sin, guilt, and corruption (Rom 3:9-20). The light shines in the darkness. The Bible, therefore, also shows us our need for forgiveness, salvation, and moral sanctification (Rom 3:21-6:23). The Bible shows us our need for a Savior; and it shows us our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord of Light has the power to pluck us from the grip of Satan and transfer us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Light, the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col 1:13-14).

Read, therefore, and meditate through the Bible. It is God’s Word, an oasis for the dying traveler and bread for the starving beggar. We need God more than anything. He comes to us in His Word by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. Evening is a wonderful time to give special attention to the Word.

Fourth, you might devote yourself to secret prayer. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). In the first place, reading the Bible must supplemented by praying to God. It is not just that the Bible tells us about God, but also that God speaks to us in and through the Bible. We read words; we hear from Him in heart and mind—this is a matter of faith! God is invisible and inaudible in normal circumstances; you can only see Him by faith and hear Him by faith.

The mind and heart must receive God’s Word with gladness and joy, humbly submitting to His truth and gratefully enjoying His mercy and grace. This is the way of faith. “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Since we are dealing with Spiritual matters, you must pray. We must speak to God through prayer even as we hear from God in His Word. There is no mechanical formula or modern shortcut to this. Trust in the Lord. Ask for help. Wait upon Jesus. And devote yourself to the Word and prayer.

Jesus gave a rough outline for the basics of prayer:

[9] “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

[10] Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

[11] Give us this day our daily bread,

[12] and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

[13] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’” (Matthew 6:9-13).

I use a five-point “structure” derived from the Lord’s prayer:

(1.) Worship God for who He is and what He is like (verse 9)

(2.) Invoke the coming of God’s power, kingdom, will, and Holy Spirit (verse 10)

(3.) Ask God for necessary provision, protection, and providence (verses 11 and 13)

(4.) Thank God for all that He has, is, and will do or give (centrally, Christ!) (this is the flipside of #3)

(5.) Confess sin, weakness, and a desperate need for mercy and grace (verse 13)

Here it is in short form in new order. This order helps me remember. It is a useful guide for me.

(1.) Worship (2.) Thank (3.) Invoke (4.) Confess (5.) Ask

Still, I do not hold mechanistically to the order! When my mind is exhausted or if I am emotionally spent and distracted, then the order becomes extremely useful. It enables me to begin praying in a fruitful and focused way. The goal is building and maintaining a balanced prayer life. If all you do is ask for things, you are way out of balance. Do you even know the One of whom you ask? If you know who He is and what He is like, you will express words of admiration, adoration, and reverence to Him. Prayer begins with worship. There are other ways to be out of balance. You might always confess sin but never invoke God’s mighty intervention to deliver you from the path of sin and temptation. You might always thank God for what He has given you but lack the boldness to ask God for things according to His purpose and will. If you do not have a balanced or healthy prayer life, the first step would be to devote yourself to praying for one. Only God can give you this.