You were made for more than to just barely get by or merely survive. You were made to come alive in Christ, to strive toward Him and thrive in your life. We are called as Christians to be more than conquerors through Christ, Who loves us and lives through us.
As believers, we have this beautiful promise in the Bible:
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-Romans 8:31-39
Today, we are kicking off a new series called, “Thrive”, and we are going to take a practical look at the power of the Lord at work in our personal life.
The best kept secret in the body of Christ is the blessed life that offers a greater clarity, higher quality, and deeper integrity. The secret to seeing your signature life is finding your path, and fulfilling your purpose. At this significant place where your earthly path collides with your heavenly purpose that has been sovereignly planned, we discover the dynamic life that we have always desired to experience.
We receive a greater clarity for life as we solidify our vision.
We represent a higher quality of life as we simplify our passion.
We reap a deeper integrity in life as we specify our mission.
The sole purpose of this study is to reveal the secret of seeing your signature life develop from only a dream to an everyday reality. The desire of my heart is for every disciple to discover the dynamic life and their heaven-sent, God-given destiny!
Friends and Family,
Does your faith need refueled?
Does your focus need refreshed?
Does your future need refined?
There is a rich and rewarding life as a result of your relationship with the Lord that is waiting to be redeemed. This is the journey of a lifetime in which you will experience a thrilling and fulfilling existence, the time of your life.
Let me ask you a question:
“What is free yet it is priceless, you cannot own it, but you can use it, you cannot store it but you can spend it, once you have lost it, you can never regain it?” The answer is: Time
Time is the most valuable, unpredictable, perishable resource known to man. Time is really the only capital a human being has, and the only thing he cannot afford to lose. A sad reality, people usually take time for granted until they realize they have little left of it.
What is the cost of loss moments? What is the cost of loss memories? Loss time cannot be regained, only regretted. How many loss moments or loss memories will it take that cannot be regained, only regretted before we begin redeeming our time, making the most of every moment?
Someone once said, “Time waits for no man, therefore it is obviously a woman.” Time marches on, and waits for no one. Time will not wait for you to catch your breath… time will not wait for you to find your feet… time will continue to march on like the sun, to the beat of a different drum. As sure as the sun will rise and as sure as the sun will set, time marches on.
For the next few moments, we are going to discover the truth about our time in life on earth, and how we can treasure our time in light of eternity.
The truth about your time in life on earth:
The measure of our life is reflected by the treasure of our time.
The influence of your life will be revealed by how you invest your time.
There is a level of eternity wrapped up in every moment daily.
We make our life monotonous by our focus on routines, while God wants to make our life momentous by our focus on a relationship with Him.
What one chooses to exchange for their time will determine the overall experience of their life. The significance and magnitude of your life is determined by small moments of time.
Although these small moments of time are seemingly insignificant, in light of eternity, they are larger than life, and ultimately invaluable.
If we desire to thrive in our life, then we must discover the time in our life… When you begin to expose the time in your life for what it really is, you will begin to experience the time of your life, and life the way it was really meant to be.
Let's think about the life-transforming lesson found in Psalm 118:24:
This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.
The heart of the lesson in this little verse is centered on three life-changing principles. Principles that have personally influenced and impacted my life in a very radical and practical way.
God is giving to us on a silver platter a new way to look at today.
First, We Should Acknowledge Today as a Gift from God and Be Thankful
How many people are taking their last breath, and would do anything for just one more day? If they could only have the day I take oftentimes for granted, how grateful would they be?
Adversities in life are great opportunities in life to reorder our priorities and reorganize our responsibilities. A person that receives the devastating news from their doctor of a life-ending diagnosis, will discover a different life, because they no longer will look at their time on earth as limitless, but look at their time on earth as limited. Who said, you have to wait until the diagnosis to discover a new life, to look at each moment of every day in a different light?
The word, “made” in our key verse is the same word for “created” in Genesis 1:1… just as God made the world that we live in, He made this moment that we live in the world.
He created this moment to make Himself known to you and to make Himself known through you. This is the purpose of our life is to point to Christ, to reflect His love and to represent His life.
On this side of eternity, we will never be fully able to comprehend what a valuable gift has been given to us with each moment of every day. Nevertheless, we should always be thoughtful of the Giver and thankful for the Gift.
His presence makes me thankful for all of the presents. When you are living in His presence, you cannot help but to be thankful for all of the present moments, He has graciously provided for you.
The psalmist says a beautiful prayer that every believer should pray on a regular basis, “Teach us to number our days, and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.” (Psalm 90:12).
Imagine that you won a special lottery and each morning when you wake up there is a bank that credits your account with $86,400 dollars.
It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day.
What would you do?
Draw out every cent, of course!!!
Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME.
Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours.
There is no going back. There is no drawing against the “tomorrow”. You must live in the present on today’s deposits. This is a gift from God each day to you, and it is up to you, with all that He has given, what you will do. How are we investing our lives today? Are we investing more in the temporary and less in eternity… more in the things that will pass, and less in the things that will last? How are we investing our lives today?
The question is not if the clock is running each day… The question is, are we making the most of every moment.
When you kill time, it echoes throughout eternity… every breath you take in life was bought with price, the Lord Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice… Can you imagine if someone gave you something of such value, it was deemed priceless, yet when you received it, you began to break it, tear it to pieces, throw it down, stomp on it, and walk out of the room… Would that person believe that you loved them? In the same manner, when we kill time, waste our lives, miss those invaluable moments, we may say to God that we love you with our lips, but we say something else entirely with our lives. You cannot kill time, without it echoing throughout eternity.
We should be thankful for all that we have received from Him, and the best way to show our thankfulness is to give the best return to Him. Giving to Him our hearts, our lives, our all.
Secondly, We Should Approach Today by the Grace of God and Be Careful.
Evidence that we look at our life as limitless, would be putting off for tomorrow, what should be done today. Many people develop the destructive “when and then” mentality. This is built around the notion when this happens or that happens, then we will really start living for what matters the most.
After hearing a lecture from his parents about school and procrastination, a young boy replied, “Mom, I am going to stop putting things off, starting tomorrow.” We should not put off for tomorrow what could be accomplished today.
Tomorrow is a mystical land where 99% of all productivity, motivation, and achievement is stored.
Perhaps no place on earth will echo with eternity quite like a cemetery. When you walk through the old monuments and grave markers, it brings thoughts to your mind of the lives they represented. I wonder in fascination what it must have been like to live hundred years ago. How life must have been like without the technological advances and modern conveniences that have revolutionized our 21st century lives.
Some monuments include facts or sayings, Bible verses or memorials, but each person’s life really comes down to what transpired between those two dates. How they traded their moments of time, and piece by piece their life. I wonder in my hard of hearts, what did he live for? Whom did she love? What were their passions? What were their biggest mistakes or greatest regrets?
Ephesians 5:15-17 says, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time for the days are evil. Be not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”
The word, “circumspectly”, being careful and cautious… it is like running through a field of cows toward the house, you have to watch for cow patties… you are careful yet you are running! Redeeming the time means to buy up the opportunities that life offers to you, making the most of every moment.
This one little dash between the two dates is one big deal.
In a world, where you don’t have control over many things… for instance, you didn’t get to decide where you were born, who are your parents, the time period or culture you experience… and eventually not even the dates on your gravestone. We have no clue when our time on this earth will be up. It could be the next day, next week, next year, or decades away. Only God knows, and our lives are in His hands.
Psalm 31:15 says, “My times are in your hands…”
Nevertheless, there is one thing we have a vast amount of control over in our lives, and that is how we decide to spend our lives. How you decide to use that little dash of time between the two dates will be determined each moment of every day.
I must be careful how I handle the precious moments… these precious moments that pass so quickly each and every day, are fragile and fleeting! I am responsible for how I handle these precious moments, and I will be held accountable for how I handle these precious moments.
How are you spending your life? Are you living the dash, knowing fully who you are, and why you are here? Are you dashing to live, hurriedly and frantically spending precious moments of time chasing things that really don’t matter, when it is all said and done?
When you recognize your time on earth is limited, you respond to your time on earth in a new light.
For instance, Floyd Mayweather is a well-known boxer who was a five division world champion and just retired from professional boxing undefeated. There was a clip of him circulating around the internet, burning his money ($100 dollar bills) like it was nothing. He was recognizing his wealth.
He has generated over 1.3 billion dollars in pay-per-view revenue.
A person that is worth a 100 million dollars can burn a 100 dollar bill every hour, for over 114 years. This is astronomical wealth and hard to comprehend.
What is a hundred dollar bill to Floyd Mayweather? What is a hundred dollar bill to Kory Ferree? They are totally different.
When you feel like your life is limitless, you will have no trouble in burning time. What is the urgency, what is the hurry… When you feel like your life is limited, you will treasure your time, and see moments in a new light.
No matter how much we run from the idea, it is a fact. No matter who you are, how young or old, what measure of success you’ve attained or where you live… mortality is the great equalizer.
Every tick of the clock, testifies to the fact of another moment being left behind. There are moments in our lives that we definitely wish that we could repeat, but we will never be able to regain.
Instead of this idea, inhibiting us or imprisoning us, my prayer is that it will empower us to engage life on a new level, and experience God in a new way.
I emphasize quite a bit, living every day in light of eternity, and discovering your heaven-sent, God given destiny. The reason why, is you can become lost in the aimless distractions of the world, and miss out on the endless attractions of the world to come.
You can always convert time into money, but you can never convert money into time. You cannot buy a single moment of time, no matter how much you may own, how wealthy you might be… in a world that values money and cannot get enough of it, may we value time… for money may buy you possessions, yet time can buy you experiences…
This life will soon be past, and only what is done for Christ will last. Your relationship with people, your service in the kingdom, and influence in the world will live on after you are gone.
I once heard of a guy who went to the doctor to get the results for his annual physical. The doctor met with him and said, “I’m sorry, Bob. I’ve got some bad news for you. The tests show that you have a terminal disease. You only have six months to live.”
As Bob let the news sink in, he asked, “Is there anything I can do, any experimental drugs or treatment? There has to be something I can try.” The doctor thought for a moment and said, “There is one thing. You can move to the country and buy a pig farm and raise pigs. Then you can find a widow who has fourteen kids, marry her, and bring all of them to live with you on the pig farm.”
Bob looked puzzled at the doctor and said, “And that will help me live longer?” The doctor said, “No, but it will seem like the longest six months of your life!”
This points to a vital principle, you can live every day without energy or passion, look at each moment casually rather than intentionally, go through the motions, listless and discontent, wondering is this all life has to offer.
This will make life seem long, but it will not allow God through your life to satisfy your deepest longing. You were born for such a time as this, don’t miss it. You are alive to thrive not just survive. Too many times, we are just getting by until the sweet by and by, but what if God has something more in store for us.
You were made for more than to occupy a limited space on this earth until God calls you by His grace home into eternity.
Your view of time will determine your value of time. How you measure your time will influence how you manage your time. I want to make sure in my life that I place a greater emphasis on the things that will last rather than the things that will pass. I want to invest more into eternity and less into the temporary.
Thirdly, We Should Accept Today for the Glory of God and Be Joyful
The only way that we can live for eternity is to embrace the moments each day as a gift from God, experience the moments each day by the grace of God, and embark on a journey with the Master each day for the glory of God. We must live on the tipping point between the everyday and eternity.
The purpose of life is the pursuit of God and the praise of His glory… to know Him and grow in Him… to experience His love and to express His love… to serve Him by serving those around us… it is living fully and freely in His presence today, not just waiting for Heaven someday.
I’m not conveying that people should just live for today… express what they are feeling each moment, act on every spontaneous idea that comes to their mind… but what I am saying is that as God’s people we should see the purpose of our lives is the pursuit of Him, the praise of His glory, and we should seek throughout the days of our lives to please Him.
Making the most of every moment, by treasuring the time, He has given us today.
You will have bad days as a believer for it rains on the just and the unjust, but you handle your hard times differently… You always have a silverlining in every storm… no matter what you face in this world, God has the power by His grace to make it work for our good and for His glory. When you know the Son, it causes you to sing in the thunderstorm and dance in the rain… and it causes other around you to question their unbelief.
My wife is an amazing cook, and I am a more well rounded individual because of it… the best I have ever known in my life. When she makes something for dinner I just hang on every bite. I savor the taste in my mouth. Her food is so good it will make your tongue slap you up side your head…
Around the dinner table you hear, “Hmmm.”
The Psalmist said, “Taste and See the Lord is good.” When people look at Christians they should say they live differently… they cherish the gift of life… and celebrate the giver of life.
Each moment, we should say, Hmmm. The Lord is good. Instead of scarfing down the moments, savoring the moments. Enjoying each bite. I like to praise Shanna for dinner every night. I will say it over and over, how good it is.
In the same manner, I should savor the moments in my life and sing praises to my God for His excellent greatness.
When I am glad in it, God receives the glory from it.
How you spend your time, says everything about how you see your life… how you see your time influences in every way how you will spend your life. If I were to give my three children $100 dollars and say this is yours to buy me a gift on my birthday, and please pick out anything that your heart desires… what if Jordin brought me back a ten dollar item and pocketed the 90 dollars, how would that make me feel? What if Jackson brought me back a fifty dollar item and pocketed the 50 dollars, how would that me feel? What if Joshua brought me back 100 dollar item and he had nothing to show except for the gift in his hand, how would that make me feel?
This is a silly analogy, but it is no mystery that God has given us so much, with each passing moment with every pressing day, what will give to God in return? Ten dollars, Fifty dollars, or Hundred dollars? Will we say, this is the life you have given me, this life I give to You… Everything I have, everything I am, everything in my life is due to Him, for that, what does He deserve from me? Half-hearted worship, lackadaisical service, a non-existent prayer life, God forbid
After He made all the time for me, will I make time for Him? Why did God create this moment or that moment? I believe He created this moment and that moment to cultivate a relationship with you… that you could encounter Him, getting a glimpse of His glory, and experience more of Him, as the author and finisher of your faith, your journey, your story.
Conclusion:
In his letter to the church at Colosse, Paul wrote, “Walk in wisdom in the world, making the best use of the time.” (Colossians 4:5)
I believe if we are to make the best use of our time then we must acknowledge today as a gift from God and be thankful… approach today by the grace of God and be careful… accept today for the glory of God and be joyful.
Every second history is being read, and we must not forget that every second history is being written… the history of our relationships, the history of our church, the history of our lives… What you do with today, will determine what they say about you tomorrow… What will be said of us, when all is said and done… we are writing history today that will be read tomorrow, by our children, grand children, great grand children, and so on.
A young man learns what's most important in life from the guy next door. It had been some time since Jack had seen the old man.
College, girls, career, and life itself got in the way. In fact, Jack moved clear across the country in pursuit of his dreams. There, in the rush of his busy life, Jack had little time to think about the past and often no time to spend with his wife and son. He was working on his future, and nothing could stop him.
Over the phone, his mother told him, 'Mr Belser died last night. The funeral is Wednesday.' Memories flashed through his mind like an old newsreel as he sat quietly remembering his childhood days.
'Jack, did you hear me?'
'Oh sorry, Mom. Yes, I heard you. It's been so long since I thought of him. I'm sorry, but I honestly thought he died years ago,' Jack said.
'Well, he didn't forget you. Every time I saw him he'd ask how you were doing. He'd reminisce about the many days you spent over 'his side of the fence' as he put it,' Mom told him.
'I loved that old house he lived in,' Jack said.
'You know, Jack, after your father died, Mr. Belser stepped in to make sure you had a man's influence in your life,' she said.
'He's the one who taught me carpentry,' he said. 'I wouldn't be in this business if it weren't for him. He spent a lot of time teaching me things he thought were important...Mom, I'll be there for the funeral,' Jack said.
As busy as he was, he kept his word. Jack caught the next flight to his hometown. Mr. Belser's funeral was small and uneventful. He had no children of his own, and most of his relatives had passed away.
The night before he had to return home, Jack and his Mom stopped by to see the old house next door one more time.
Standing in the doorway, Jack paused for a moment.
It was like crossing over into another dimension, a leap through space and time.
The house was exactly as he remembered. Every step held memories.
Every picture, every piece of furniture....Jack stopped suddenly.
'What's wrong, Jack?' his Mom asked.
'The box is gone,' he said.
'What box?' Mom asked.
'There was a small gold box that he kept locked on top of his desk.
I must have asked him a thousand times what was inside. All he'd ever tell me was 'the thing I value most,' Jack said.
It was gone. Everything about the house was exactly how Jack remembered it, except for the box. He figured someone from the Belser family had taken it.
'Now I'll never know what was so valuable to him,'
Jack said. 'I better get some sleep. I have an early flight home, Mom.'
It had been about two weeks since Mr. Belser died.
Returning home from work one day Jack discovered a note in his mailbox. 'Signature required on a package. No one at home. Please stop by the main post office within the next three days,' the note read.
Early the next day Jack retrieved the package. The small box was old and looked like it had been mailed a hundred years ago. The handwriting was difficult to read, but the return address caught his attention.
'Mr. Harold Belser' it read.
Jack took the box out to his car and ripped open the package There inside was the gold box and an envelope. Jack's hands shook as he read the note inside.
'Upon my death, please forward this box and its contents to Jack Bennett. It's the thing I valued most in my life.' A small key was taped to the letter. His heart racing, as tears filling his eyes, Jack carefully unlocked the box. There inside he found a beautiful gold pocket watch.
Running his fingers slowly over the finely etched casing, he unlatched the cover.
Inside he found these words engraved:
'Jack, Thanks for your time! -Harold Belser.'
'The thing he valued most...was...my time.'
Jack held the watch for a few minutes, then called his office and cleared his appointments for the next two days.
'Why?' Janet, his assistant asked.
'I need some time to spend with my son,' he said.
'Oh, by the way, Janet...thanks for your time!'
You were made for more than to just barely get by or merely survive… you were made to come alive in Christ, to strive toward Him and thrive in your life. We are called as Christians to be more than conquerors through Christ, Who loves us and lives through us.
If we desire to abundantly live and thrive in our life then when must discover a new look at the time that God has given to us: Be Thankful, Be Careful, and Be Joyful.
I hope this message is a blessing to your ministry, and faith journey. You can visit our website at www.npbclife.org to hear the audio version of the lesson.
The material in this message is a collaboration of different resources: 30 Days to Live by Kerry Shook; www.illustrationexchange.com
