What is your most valuable possession? When you first read this question your mind may quickly scroll through a balance sheet that lists all of your possessions, looking for your asset with the highest value. For most people, you hear their home is their most valuable asset, but for those whose net worth is substantial, that is seldom true. Instead, is it your business, one of your real estate holdings, or your investment portfolio? No matter which asset you may select as the most valuable, you will have picked the wrong one. Our materialistic culture drives us to think of our things when we think of our valuables, but there are other non-material things that are worth much more.
I would suggest to you that the correct answer to this question can be found by looking on a different balance sheet. Many years ago I heard Bob Buford, a self-made multimillionaire and author of the book Halftime: Changing your Game Plan from Success to Significance, speak at a conference. Right in the middle of the presentation he made a comment that was so profound and struck me so deeply that I do not think I really heard anything else he said for the rest of his presentation. He paused, gave a reflective look, and then commented, “It seems insane to me that a person would be willing to trade what he has a shortage of—time—in order to gain more of what he already has a surplus of—wealth.” You cannot read this once and fully absorb it, so look at it again. “It seems insane to me that a person would be willing to trade what he has a shortage of—time—in order to gain more of what he already has a surplus of—wealth.”
So, what is your most valuable asset? It is the time that you still have “banked” in this life. Your “time on this earth” account is all too quickly shrinking with every day that passes. And the most troubling part of this time account is that we cannot see how much we have left. Is it days, months, years, decades?
We often hear people ask the question, “How do you spend your time…?” This is a very accurate way to phrase how we use our time: we spend it. Unlike your financial accounts that you can make additional deposits into and build the account in the future, you can make no additional deposits into your time account. The total number of days allotted to us was deposited into our time account before we were even conceived. King David confirms this in Psalm 139:16, when he acknowledges, “And in Your book were written all the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” So, all of us will spend our time on something—and once it is spent, it is gone.
The truth of Bob Buford’s comment is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the story of the rich farmer we looked at earlier. After another excessive bumper crop season, he says,
This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’
Luke 12:18-20
How pathetically sad. He was willing to trade what he had almost nothing left of—time—in order to gain more of what he already had a surplus of—wealth. And then to add insult to his folly, God goes on to say of this man, “So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). He did not die rich—he died broke.
In Psalm 90:12, Moses asks God to help him use his time account wisely. He prays, “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” Paul said it this way in Ephesians 5:15-16, “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.” And not only are the days “evil,” they are also very limited.
It seems to me that we need to manage our time account with even greater care than we manage our investment accounts. And we should be very leery about making any withdrawals out of our limited time account—“spending our time”—in order to make additional deposits into our already substantial—and temporal—investment accounts.
I have consistently heard from affluent Christian families their honest acknowledgment that they have a lot more money to give away than they have time. It is considerably easier for them to make a gift from their surplus wealth than it is to make a gift from their over-used and ever shrinking time account.
Keep this in mind: it is not in how much of our wealth we give; it is in how much of ourselves we give that allows us to fully experience the joy and blessing of giving. We have too much wealth in this country to experience much sacrificial giving from our material possessions. But we have precious little to give from our time account and that is where we learn to give like those who have little.
Wealthy families are beginning to catch the vision and see the power of short-term family mission trips to needy countries. Can you guess what proves to be the greatest obstacle in pulling off such a trip? It certainly is not the cost. That is the easiest part of the trip. The hardest part of the trip is finding the time for all of the members of the family to make the trip—to make a difference. The problem is time, not money.
When I was a young boy, I spent a good bit of time visiting my grandmother. She was a zealous and committed Christian woman and everywhere you turned in her small home, there were signs of her faith—a Bible on the coffee table—plaques and pictures on the walls—Bible verses on the refrigerator. There was one plaque in particular that made a significant impact on my thinking as a young boy. I did not realize it then, but I do now. The little plaque read, “Only one life ‘twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.” My entire life, for the most part, has been one continuous effort to use the brief time that God has allotted me to do something that will have an eternal impact. Without this ultimate, eternal objective, life is correctly summed up by Solomon, “All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:17 niv).
What is your most valuable asset? How are you using your most valuable asset to do something that will last for eternity? Our cry should be, to paraphrase Isaiah 6:8, “Here I am Lord, [spend] me”
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E. G. “Jay” Link, is the President of Stewardship Ministries, a teaching, training and mentoring ministry for professional advisors and ministry leaders to equip them to effectively serve believers who have accumulated surplus, material possessions. He is the author of three books, “Spiritual Thoughts on Material Things: Thirty Days of Food for Thought,” “To Whom Much is Given: Navigating the Ten Life Dilemmas Affluent Christians Face” and “Family Wealth Counseling: Getting to the Heart of the Matter.” Mr. Link may be reached via email at jlink@StewardshipMinistries.org.
