It’s About Time Series

We are stewards of all that God has given us, including time.

• At the last retreat, Rev Koh shared quite a bit on this – about the wise use of time.

• One month has passed since we heard his messages, and I wondered if we did let the message sink in. Are we using our time wisely today, or wiser today?

• One way to remind ourselves is to put a value to time – like $1 per second, and you have $86,400 in your account each day. No carrying forward. You are going to lose everything if you do not use it. You will want to draw out every cent!

• I read another illustration that day – if you have 90 years on earth, that’s 32,850 days. If you are 20 today, you will have 25,550 days left. Think about it in terms of money – it doesn’t take long to spend $25,000. That’s a year or two for your university study, a deposit for a decent HDB house. It isn’t a lot.

So we want to use our time wisely. And that does not necessarily mean we need to squeeze as much as we can into a day.

• Making ourselves busy does not imply you are using time wisely. People tend to think that way - especially in a city like ours where efficiency and productivity is very much our culture – be busy.

• We try to fight the clock - stay up late, sleep less do more, rush to school or work, catch a quick bite on the train, and talking on the phone at the same time.

As I study Jesus’ life, I am amazed that He never seemed to be in a hurry.

• Although He was doing the most important job in history (redeeming the world), and although He knew that He had only a few years to do it, He never ran.

• He made time to consider the flowers and the birds of the air. He had time to put his hands on the little children and bless them. Time was His friend.

• Have you ever wondered why didn’t the Father allowed Jesus to live until aged 60? He would have 30 years on earth to do more miracles and good deeds. Isn’t that nice? The answer is it was not necessary. The mission can be completed in 3 years. Staying on serve no purpose.

• Why do you want to stay on foreign soil when the war is over?

We need to live a purpose-driven life. What is important is not the length of time, but what we put into that time. Is our time purposeful or purpose-filled?

How can I make time my friend? Let’s read Psalm 90:1-4, 10, 12.

Let’s use the four letters in the word TIME to help us remember.

(1) TREASURE IT – Plan Your Time

Make time our friend, not our enemy. We often say we are fighting against time.

• Let’s be proactive – plan the use of our time.

• If Jesus can, without a watch, without a PDA or an iPhone, I think we can do better.

• God says we should treasure time as a valuable commodity. We usually number our years – celebrates birthday, anniversary – but here it says to ’number our days’.

• Every day is so precious we should treasure it and plan to use it wisely.

Rev Koh shared this illustration at the retreat

To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a grade.

To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask the businessman whose flight was delayed an hour.

To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask the man who had the heart attack in the restaurant.

To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask the person who barely missed a head-on collision in a car accident.

To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, ask the Olympic swimmer who missed qualifying by 0.1 second.

You can make more money but you cannot make more time. Treasure it by planning your day.

• A. W. Tozer wrote: "Time is a resource that is non-renewable and non-transferable. You cannot store it, slow it up, hold it up, divide it up or give it up. You can’t hoard it up or save it for a rainy day–when it’s lost it’s unrecoverable. When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection."

The next letter in TIME is: (2) INVEST – Spend it on People

If time is always moving and you cannot slow it down or add more to it, then we cannot really SAVE time. We can only INVEST it.