Titus 3:8-12: Doctrine and Devotion Series week 18

The average person today wastes a lot of time. I read some statistics this week for 2024, talking about the average time a person spends on their phone or in front of a screen. I learned that:‌‌ The average person spends 7 hours and 11 minutes in front of a screen every day‌ Screen time accounts for 38-43 percent of waking hours; in some countries as high as 60%‌ A typical internet user spends 4 hrs and 16 minutes on the internet on their phone each day‌ People spend an average of 3 hrs 24 minutes watching tv every day‌ Mobile phones are the most widely used internet device, accounting fort 55% of web traffic‌‌ What a large amount of time wasted on things like entertainment and pleasure. One of the things perhaps we waste most in our life is time. We spend far too much time doing what we don’t really need to, and far too little time doing what we should. We waste a lot of time. There are things we waste in our spiritual lives as well. We waste time, we waste opportunities, we waste our efforts pursuing things that God doesn’t want us to pursue—so much waste! But many times we are not aware. We just go threw life rolling with the punches, navigating, surviving but not thriving. Do you resonate with that? The tendency to let your guard down spiritually and maybe you don’t stop trying, but you’re not trying really hard. This is a tendency we have in our spiritual lives—we waste. We get distracted. We pursue other things. ‌‌ But as Paul prepares to close the book of Titus in our text this week, he addresses the tendency we all have for this type of distraction; for spiritual waste. We waste our effort and energy on other things. And Paul calls us back to putting our focus and efforts into the right things that God wants us to focus on. This really is the foundation for spiritual maturity—Paul calls us spiritual maturity in our lives, and he does so in three specific areas of our lives, and he helps us to think through these areas and tries to get us to stop wasting those on ourselves or other things. So as we look at our text this morning, Paul reminds us that when we invest in our spiritual lives in the way God wants us to, we can never go wrong. In fact, God wants us to put him first in every area of our lives, and Paul helps us to do that in our text today. Our big idea for today is this: ‌‌ BIG IDEA: Nothing is wasted when spent on God