How Should Christians Use Leisure Time?

Question 11196.

Leisure time trips up more Christians than almost any other ordinary part of life, because we tend to swing between two unhelpful extremes. Either leisure feels like something to feel guilty about, a waste of hours that should have gone to something more productive or more spiritual, or it becomes an unexamined default, hours poured into whatever is easiest without a moment’s thought about whether it is doing us any good. Scripture does not treat rest and enjoyment as suspicious. It treats them as part of how God built us, and I want to work through what that actually means for how you spend your evenings and weekends.

God Built Rest Into Creation Itself

Genesis 2:2 to 3 records that God rested on the seventh day, not because He was tired, but because rest is built into the rhythm of a completed, good creation. Exodus 20:8 to 11 grounds the Sabbath command in that same creation pattern, and while I do not hold that New Testament believers are bound to observe a literal seventh day Sabbath in the way Israel was under the Mosaic law, the underlying principle that human beings are made for rhythms of work and rest, rather than for unbroken labour, carries straight through into the New Testament. Mark 6:31 shows Jesus Himself telling His exhausted disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” If the Son of God thought His followers needed deliberate rest, I am not going to argue I can skip it.

Leisure Time Is Not a Spiritual Compromise

Some Christian circles carry an unspoken assumption that anything not directly evangelistic or devotional is time wasted, and I think that assumption does real damage over the long run. Ecclesiastes 3:1 to 4 lists “a time to weep, and a time to laugh” and “a time to mourn, and a time to dance” as part of the God ordered shape of life under the sun, not as a concession to weakness. 1 Timothy 6:17 describes God as the one “who richly provides us with everything to enjoy,” language that would be strange if enjoyment itself were spiritually suspect. Leisure time spent well, a walk, a meal with friends, a hobby that genuinely restores you, is not a departure from godliness. It is one of the ordinary means by which a good God cares for creatures He made with bodies, emotions, and limits.

What Makes Leisure Time Good Rather Than Wasted

That said, not all uses of leisure time are equally wise, and Scripture gives us real categories for sorting that out rather than leaving it to pure preference. 1 Corinthians 10:31 sets the broad principle, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” which does not mean every leisure activity needs an explicit spiritual justification, but it does mean nothing is exempt from the question of whether it is genuinely good for you and honouring to God. I find it helpful to ask three simple things of any way I spend free time. Does it actually restore me, or does it leave me more tired, more irritable, or more spiritually numb than before I started? Does it feed anything unhealthy, whether an appetite, a comparison, or a habit I would rather my pastor did not know about? And is it something I could do with a clear conscience if Christ walked into the room, which He does, since He is already there.

The Danger of Leisure That Never Ends

The opposite failure is just as real as false guilt, and in my experience more common. Leisure time can quietly expand until it crowds out prayer, family, church commitment, and the ordinary work God has given us to do. Proverbs 6:9 to 11 warns the sluggard about the poverty that follows endless rest, and while few of us think of ourselves as sluggards, the modern version of that warning usually shows up as hours lost to scrolling, streaming, or gaming that were never actually chosen, only defaulted into because they required no decision at all. Leisure that restores you is a gift. Leisure that has become the organising centre of your week, displacing everything else, has stopped functioning as rest and started functioning as an escape, and those are not the same thing even though they can look identical from the outside.

Leisure Time and the Rhythm of the Week

I have found it genuinely helpful to think in terms of rhythm rather than rules, since a legalistic list of approved and forbidden leisure activities misses the point almost as badly as no reflection at all. A week with no rest in it will eventually break you, physically or spiritually, usually both. A week with no real work, worship, or service in it has stopped being rest and become drift. The healthiest pattern I have seen in my own life and in the lives of people I have pastored over many years involves deliberately protected time for both, work done with diligence because Colossians 3:23 tells us to work “as for the Lord,” and rest taken without guilt because the same God who commands the work also commands the rest.

Practical Wisdom for How You Actually Spend Free Hours

Practically, this means being honest about what your leisure time is actually doing to you rather than assuming an activity is fine simply because everyone else does it, or assuming it is wrong simply because a previous generation frowned on it. I have written more fully about the specific questions around entertainment and where discernment is needed there, and the same principles apply to leisure more broadly. Choose activities that genuinely restore rather than simply distract. Protect rhythms of rest rather than letting busyness swallow them or letting leisure swallow everything else. And hold your free time loosely enough that if the Lord interrupted it with a genuine need, a friend in crisis, a family member who needed you, you would not resent the interruption as a theft from something sacred.

Leisure Time as a Family and Community Gift

Leisure time spent entirely alone can restore in one sense while missing another dimension Scripture cares about deeply. Hebrews 10:24 to 25 urges believers not to neglect meeting together but to use those gatherings to “stir up one another to love and good works,” and the same relational instinct applies to ordinary leisure time as well. A shared meal, a game played together, a walk taken with a friend rather than headphones in and world shut out, does something a solitary hour of screen time rarely manages, it strengthens the actual relationships that make up a healthy church and a healthy family. I do not think every leisure hour needs to be social, since solitude has its own real value, but leisure time that is always solitary by default, never chosen deliberately but simply defaulted into because it is easier than coordinating with other people, tends to leave a person more isolated over time rather than more refreshed.

I have watched this play out clearly in pastoral ministry. The believers who seem most consistently joyful and resilient are rarely the ones with the most leisure time available to them. They are the ones who have learned to spend the leisure time they do have well, in ways that connect them to God and to other people rather than simply occupying the hours until the next demand on their schedule arrives. Leisure time, used wisely, becomes part of the glue that holds a healthy Christian life together rather than a separate compartment disconnected from everything else you believe.

I would also say, gently, that leisure time spent with a guilty conscience the entire way through defeats its own purpose. Half hearted rest, taken while inwardly convinced you should really be doing something else, restores almost nothing and simply adds a layer of low grade anxiety to whatever activity was meant to refresh you. If you have decided a particular use of leisure time is wise and God honouring, receive it fully rather than nervously, since a distracted, guilt ridden version of rest is neither genuine rest nor genuine productivity, and it serves no one well, least of all you.

Rest well, and rest without apology, because the God who made you also made the evening you are about to enjoy.

So, now what?

Take an honest look at how you spent your leisure time this past week. Was it restorative, the kind of rest that left you more able to love God and other people afterwards, or was it the kind of drift that filled hours without actually giving you anything back? God is not stingy with rest, and He is not impressed by exhaustion pretending to be devotion. He made you to work and to rest, and both, done well, bring Him glory. What would it look like this week to rest in a way you would not be embarrassed to call an act of worship?

“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”

Mark 6:31 (ESV)