SERMON BRIEF
Date Written: November 12, 2010
Date Preached: November 14, 2010
Church: OPBC (AM)
FOUNDATIONAL ELEMENTS
Series: Miscellaneous – Thanksgiving/Thankful Heart Sermon
Title: Are You Thankful for You Time?
Text: Ephesians 5:15-16
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Introduction:
There was once a middle aged man who was considering going back to school to get that degree he had always wanted. But he was balking at the idea because he was now over 50 and what good would it do him now.
He went to his dad for advice and his dad asked him how long it would take to get the degree. The man told his dad it would take 3 years of going to school full time. His dad then asked him how old he would be when he graduated after those 3 years. The man said 53.Then his dad asked him, “Son how old will you be then if you don’t get the degree?”
The point of the story is that TIME marches on. Regardless of any decisions we make in our lives – Time marches on! Time is like land in a lot of ways, because there is only so much of it!
Time Management and motivational speaker Denis Waitley once had this to say about time …Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people cannot buy more hours. Scientists cannot invent more minutes. And you cannot save time to spend it on another day! Even so, how much time have you wasted in your past, you still have an entire tomorrow. Success depends upon using time wisely…
Frank Tyger, the great cartoonish once said this about time, …If a man gives you his time, he can give to you NO GREATER and more precious gift…
So if these men, both of whom I have NO idea as to their faith background… if they say this about time, then it stands to reason that this principle is even more true when it comes to our Christian walk and how we live our lives! Amen?
Many of us fail to see this… but for the Christian believer, TIME is valuable! We all have only the amount of time that God gives each one of us… 24 hrs in a day, 7 days in a week and 365 days in a year! But within that 24 hr day, we have 1,440 minutes, OR 86,400 seconds… the point is that as believers we ALL have only a certain measure of time in which to live and do what Christ has called us to do…
And I fully believe that when we stand before Him on the final day… that day of judgment… and He looks at our life, we are going to have to answer to Him on how we managed that time He allotted to us.
What will you answer when called to give an account of your time here on this earth? Will you be able to say that you did all you could? This is something we all will have to face, and something we need to address in our lives on a daily basis. But let’s look at time… and what it really is for us…
First we have to understand that like everything else in the universe…time is a gift from God. So when we begin to see TIME as something God has given to us to redeem for His kingdom… this puts TIME into a different perspective for the believer! It falls into the realm of stewardship…God owns time, He gifts time to us and we are the stewards of HIS time that He has gifted to us...
2nd we must understand that like with time, GOD created and owns all things, and whatever He chooses to gift us with, we are merely the tenants or stewards of that gift from God. So we are going to be held accountable to Him for the use of all those gifts.
But this gift of time from God is a very special gift because all other gifts that He blesses us with conditioned upon this one particular gift from God of TIME.
Others may have more talent than we do…but we ALL have the same amount of time! The rich do not receive more time than we do and the poor cannot receive any less time than we do... The most powerful person has NO more time than you or I do… the weakest person on earth has just as much time as you or I do…
All here on this world have the 24 hrs per day that God has given to us to do what we have been called to do. We all have the SAME amount of TIME! Jesus, Himself was very urgent and careful about the use of this God-given gift of time. Jesus said in John 9:4 [ESV], …As long as it is day, we must do the work of the One who sent Me, for night is coming, when no one can work…
We have to always remember how valuable time is for ALL things and that time comes directly from the one who created ALL things… and that is God, Himself…
And when we begin to understand where time comes from and Who is giving this precious gift of time to us… then our question should be, -How can I best use this time God has given me?- or to put it in a more ‘Baptist’ framework… -How can I be the best steward of the TIME God has given to me?-
Do you understand that the way YOU use your time is your stewardship of that gift from God? And when it comes to stewardship of anything… we have to understand that there are going to be those who are faithful and there are those who are not faithful.
Faithful or unfaithful, we are all stewards and we will be all of our life! We cannot escape it, we cannot change it! We are stewards of the time that God gives to us. We are stewards of the time God gives us each day!
You may choose to use time that gift in a wrong way OR you may make the choice to use the gift of time in a right way. Far too often tho’ we find ourselves…
Wasting FAR too much of our life wishing for something we don’t have or cannot get… like MORE time! We can have NO more time in this life!
Being careless and lackadaisical when it comes to the time we DO have!
And finally, when it comes to using time the wrong way…we can allow ourselves to become a slave TO the time that God has blessed us with as a gift.
In thinking about the time we have and the fact that it is a gift from God… we need to be thankful FOR that time because that time is VALUABLE! And that leads me to the passage that we see this morning… a passage that gives us a very clear and concise message …make the very most of you time… (v16)
Let me ask you a question this morning… Have you ever wished away an opportunity? Have you ever sat and daydreamed about how great an opportunity would be, but then you did NOT take advantage of the time God provided for you to take advantage of that opportunity?
I know I have been down that path and I know the feeling of failure and shame I have in knowing that I have let God down… that I have failed to be a good steward… that thru my actions I have been UNTHANKFUL for the gift that God has given! Have you ever been there?
Do you remember when you were a kid? It seemed as if time creeped by so slowly and that it took forever for things like our birthdays OR Christmas to roll around. I can remember as a young boy, sitting and wishing the time away wishing for my birthday or Christmas to be there… I believe that is a sign of an unthankful heart and attitude toward the gifts we receive from God.
I know that there are many of us here this morning who use your time in the wrong way! It may be because you simply don’t know how to use it. Many of us simply fly through life, trying to take the road of least resistance and we do NOT stop to relate to or find out why or what needs to be done!
We are too busy wishing what we could have or obtain… and so our time gets wasted. In regards to being careless with our time I can see 3 things that may hurt us in redeeming the time as a believer… they are that we are…
Careless with our time (knowing what to do and when to do it, and then DOING what needs to be done WHEN it needs to be done is key for the believer…)
Careless with our prayer (When we are out of sync with God in our prayer life is when we begin to stumble and stammer in our walk with Him and this makes it very difficult to ‘redeem’ the time for the believer!)
Careless with our money (when we are careless with our money we leave ourselves vulnerable to situations and circumstances that will overwhelm us and steal the time that we should and could be using for the Kingdom)
When we are careless in this manner we can be oppressed by time. Time can become our ruler. Here is a quirky fact that most of us may OR may not realize… did you know that in America we have more ‘time saving’ devices and we have LESS time than any other culture in the world! I believe that we do NOT appreciate the ‘time’ God has given to us… and I believe that reveals an unthankful heart and attitude from us toward God.
In our country we need to step back and take a different perspective on time. We all seem to be obsessed with the hectic and frantic pace of our life schedules. We all seem to be people who are living their lives dashing here and there. We make the presumption that ANY person that busy must be a very successful person.
However, the reality of the situation is that when we use time… this wonderful gift from God… in the wrong way… then time passes and with it our expectations and hopes go unfulfilled…just like a bud falling from the tree without ever blooming.
Remember ALL time is a gift from our Creator…and it is as if we are thumbing our noses in His face by disrespecting the gift of time by wasting it OR by wishing it away. Many of us find ourselves using this gift of time the wrong way. However, I am here to tell you this morning that we can use this gift in the right way, and we can find out how by going to the Word of God…
In our passage today it reads like this: Eph 5:15-16[ESV]: 15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Now when we look at this passage the first question that comes to MY mind is how? How can I make the most of my time? How can my time be used MORE for the pleasure and delight of my Savior? How can my life reflect a thankful heart and attitude through my better use of this gift of time?
Well, as I studied this I came up with 4 specific actions that I believe we can take to make the most of our time here on this world… 4 actions that reflect a truly thankful heart and attitude for the gift God has given!
We must determine what our priorities are!
As believers, WE have to decide what comes first in our lives! We have to establish what has top priority in our life. We have to understand that we CANNOT do everything, and that we can only accomplish ONE thing at a time! So, we have to decide what is most important… in the eyes of God… for us to accomplish!
Have you ever heard the phrase …one has to spend money to make money… I also believe that this phrase applies to time as well! We must be willing to INVEST invest time into what God is calling us to so that we can save time for the things God desires. The person who is willing to learn this… the person who is efficient is the person who is going to get the most work done!
We must learn to MAKE the time to do the important things…the things God has called us to do… and we cannot fall back on the excuse of ‘I don’t have time!’ We have to make that time! The phrase, …I don’t have the time… reflects an ungrateful heart and a thankless spirit toward the great gift of time that God has given us… a gift given by Him to accomplish HIS goals, HIS plans, to further HIS kingdom…
We must determine in our hearts… we must establish in our actions… we must prioritize the most important tasks and get them done…make time to get them done. This reflects a thankful and grateful heart and attitude. But not only should we establish our priorities, the 2nd action I can see is…
We must change the pace of our activities.
This is a necessary action if we are going to avoid stress, high blood pressure, heart disease and a host of other illnesses that can and will rob us of our health. Jesus understood this and wants us to understand it as well…Mark 6:31 [ESV]
31 And he said to them …Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while… For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.
Have you ever wondered how some people manage to get so much done in the average day? They seem to be able to get WAY more done than the average person. How do they do it? I believe it is those people who have the right priorities and they stop and take time to think about what needs to be done.
These people take time to think, pray and meditate and from these SEEMINGLY inactive moments they draw from rich resources of mind and spirit that gives them purpose and direction. This is one meaning of what Paul was saying when he says that we must ‘redeem our time’
The great painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci Once was once accused of wasting time, he responded to his critic by saying, …When I pause the longest, I make the most telling strokes with my brush…
WOW! Now that concept seems to be lost within our culture today, we all seem to be running around so much and so fast, but the fact of the matter is that we do not need to continue with this hectic and frantic pace! What we truly need is a change of pace.
Redeeming the time by meditating and focusing on the right pace is a reflection good discipleship. Look what Jesus says in Luke 14:28-30 [ESV]
28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'
We are to prioritize our tasks, and we are to change the pace from time to time to redeem our time… but the 3rd action we must take is similar to the 1st but more detailed:
We must utilize our time in the right way…concentrate on primary things.
Let’s face it, in life there will always be those things that distract us and take our minds and attention away from what is important. Life cries out, LOOK AT ME! But, as believers WE cannot become distracted from our primary goal in serving Him. Our time is finite and it has to be used the right way, we must focus upon the things of importance… and as believers that would be the things of God… things with eternal significance!
Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are called to focus on the primary things of God FIRST. We read this in Matt 6:33 [ESV] where Jesus said, …seek FIRST the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you…
When we research that phrase in the Greek, we find that it is BOTH a command and a promise…all rolled into one! Jesus is calling us to PUT God first… it is a command for all disciples, but He also telling us that when we DO put God first, we are going to benefit from it!
Paul was a man who could have been distracted by the things of this life…even after his conversion, but Paul understood that we are to focus on what is important. Paul says in Phil 3:13b-14[ESV], …But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus...
Paul was saying that he was NOT going to waste time worrying about the things of the past… it didn’t make any difference to him what those things were either. Some of what Paul did in his early years were good things and some of what he did was an affront to God, but Paul was NOT going to focus on them… or allow them to distract him from what WAS important!
All the accomplishments and all the mistakes were in the past, mistakes had been forgiven and Paul counted any accomplishment before he was saved as something he could give up. What we see in this passage is that Paul was concerned about the main thing!
Prioritize matters, Change our pace in lives, AND concentrate on the primary things… are all critical actions to allow us to be the thankful and grateful recipients of God gift of TIME in our lives… BUT the 4th action I can see that we must take to make the most of our time is…
We must dedicate our time to GOD!
I have been dancing around this all day today but now I want us to face it head on… our time, ALL of it is to be focused on God! We have learned that to be His disciple we are called to deny ourselves… and for that very reason our focus is to be TOTALLY on Him and His calling in our lives!
With that in mind, we must be willing servants that surrender and submit our time to God. To do this we must understand what time is and that it is a gift directly from God…
With his typically Puritan emphasis, John Milton said that he was to live in each minute, ‘…as ever in my great taskmaster’s eye…’
But a great a writer as Milton was and as timeless as his work of Paradise Lost is… I believe Paul’s says it better in 1 Cor 10:31 when he said, …whatever you do…do it for the glory of God!
As disciples for Christ, it is incumbent upon us to offer God ALL of who we are! This is not just our money, this is not just our talents, this is not just our energies… but we must also learn that we have to give ALL of our time to Him… we are called to ‘redeem our time’ in Him!
That is what I mean when I say that as believers… as a church… as a fellowship of believers, we can do a much better job when it comes to the stewardship of our time!
Where do we get time? We have established that ALL time is a gift from God! We must learn HOW to best use that wonderful and great gift of time. Prioritize our efforts, pace our lives, focus on the primary goal and dedicate our time to and FOR God…
But I have one final question for you this morning, …What will result from all this time on our hands? What will be the fruit that we can bear when we become a truly good steward of the time God has given us?
I can see 3 answers here that will help us to know how important time is to all of us.
First I believe that we will multiply ourselves in God’s Service. The person who is organized, motivated and dedicated in the use of time is the person whom God can use…
2nd I believe that we will advance the work of the Kingdom. When we give of ourselves then Kingdom work happens! When we share Christ and place our entire focus on Him… we will find that there is NOTHING we cannot do!
3rd we bring glory to God! The faithful and thankful heart that cherishes and manages their time is fruitful! And a fruitful Christian brings glory to God in Heaven. Jesus said to His disciples the night before He died …By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples… John 15:8 [ESV]
In the final analysis it is only when we recognize the gift of time from God and reveal our thankfulness and gratitude by deliberately paying attention and giving primary allegiance to the things of God that we can move forward in our walk with Him! If we can learn to do these things, evil will flee and all darkness will flow out of your life.
So the how about you today? Are you thankful for what God has blessed you with today? Are you grateful in your heart for the gift of time that God gives to all of us? Are you willing to prioritize your time, change the pace of what you are doing, ensure you are focusing on the priorities and finally dedicating your TIME to God!... Are you there yet?
For the most part this morning I spent my time sharing with you how to be thankful and grateful for the gift of time God grants us, but my time would be wasted this morning if I did not take the time to share Jesus and His love for you…
This morning I want everyone to hear me when I say, Jesus wants you to know Him and know the salvation only HE can bring. We are ALL sinners before a holy and righteous God… we cannot ‘earn’ heaven on our own, we cannot please God by our own actions!
Scripture tells us that we are all sinners and eternally separated from God. The sin in our lives is the barrier and there is NOTHING we can do to remove this sin stain that blots out God from our lives! The Bible tells us that sin leads to death… In fact Romans 6:23a tells us that: The Wages of Sin is death… there is a payday that comes to ALL sinners… that payday is DEATH!
The Bible tells us that there is only ONE destination for the sinner and that is an eternity separated from a loving and merciful God, tormented in the hell that was created for those who reject God. The Bible also tells us that there is NOTHING we can do to avoid this fate on our own… we are eternally doomed!
But that is where Jesus comes into the picture. Although we can do NOTHING to pay for the sin in our lives, Jesus was willing to sacrifice His own life for our eternal salvation… Jesus died on the Cross of Calvary and has paid the price you’re your sin! This is where the 2nd part of Romans 6:23b comes into play when it tell us …but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord…
Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world. His death on the Cross paid the price for your sin… That is the GOOD news of the Gospel of Jesus… He has paid the price we could never pay… He has opened up an avenue to heaven that we could never have opened.
Today you can know Him as Savior… Scripture tells us that those who confess Him with their mouth and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead…that they will be saved! You can know salvation today… you can leave here today knowing that your eternal destination is sealed. Do you want to know Him today? I tell you to use WISELY the time you have on this world…for you do not know what day will be your last… come today and give Christ your heart… come today and know salvation.
As Bro Steven comes to lead us I encourage you to step out and come this morning and give yourself to Christ… would you stand as we begin to sing…
