“yourtimematters!”
Psalm 90:1-12 (Message # 3)
The issue before us today is time. Not only does your family matter, but your time with your family also matters!
We are a people who live by the clock because time is very important to all of us (stop looking at your watches I just got started!). Benjamin Franklin said, “Do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.” Today I want us to think about the absolute importance of spending time with your family without neglecting the things of God or the house of God.
It has been said that we are a people who are slaves to time. We stay up late, sleep as late as we can, rush out the door to school or work, gulp down an unhealthy breakfast if we eat any at all, drive in our cars while applying make up, using the electric razor, adjusting our clothes, and talking on the cell phone. We rush, rush, rush everywhere, all day, everyday! We work 60 hours a week and complain that we don’t have any time for our families, so we rob God of his time on Sunday to go and do what we want to do all under the false pretense of spending time with our families.
As I study Jesus’ life I am continually amazed that He never seemed to be in a hurry. Although He had the most important and urgent job in the world, not once do we see Jesus rushing or running anywhere. He made time for all people. He made time to consider the flowers and the birds of the air. He had time to put his hands on the children and bless them. He had time to heal people and feed thousands. He had time to stop and talk to the woman at the well, the centurion whose daughter was dying, and a man born blind. Time was His friend.
The Bible gives us a lot of insight into how to make time your friend instead of your enemy. We must begin by realizing that God is not bound by time or space. He doesn’t wear a Rolex, does not have a Palm Pilot, and has never owned a calendar. God is the creator of time and He is greater than time. If this is true (and it is), then we need to immerse ourselves in God!
Let’s read our passage today . . .
Today as we consider TIME I believe God’s Word teaches us 4 important truths about our time and how this time relates to our families:
I. Time is Precious! (90:12)
God says that we should learn how to number our days. By this He means that we need to understand how time is a valuable and precious commodity of this life. All of us know how to number our years (we call it a “Birthday”- though some fudge on the truth as to the number of those years), but God says that every day is so precious; we should treasure it and number it as valuable for our lives.
So how valuable is an hour? As the business person whose flight was delayed for 1 hour and he missed his appointment in another city. How valuable is one minute? Ask the man who had the heart attack and a person sitting next to him knew CPR. How valuable is 1 second? Ask the person who hesitated for 1 second before swerving to avoid an oncoming car in his lane? How valuable is a fraction of a second? Ask the S.A. Spurs who were beaten by the LA Lakers in a playoff game with 4/10 of 1 second left on the clock. Let’s learn a couple of things about the value of time and the family:
A) THE MOST PRECIOUS ASSET TO SHARE WITH FAMILY IS TIME!
Parents, do you love your children? Give them some of your time. Husbands, do you love your wives and wives, do you love your husbands? Give them some of your time! Love is not spelled THINGS. Love is spelled TIME!
I can honestly say that I cannot remember many things my father bought me when I was a kid, but I can tell you in vivid detail about camping trips and fishing trips. I can tell you all about my dad coaching my Little League baseball team. I can’t remember all the things that Leslie has given me in the past 16 years, but I do remember spending time together, going places, and enjoying time with our kids.
ILLUSTRATION: A little boy was always trying to get his dad to go outside and play with him, but he dad was too busy working. One day the little guy asked his dad, “Dad, how much money do you make in an hour?” The impatient dad said, “I don’t know Son, I guess I make about $50.00 an hour when I’m working. Now please run along I am busy right now.” After about an hour later the little boy came back into the room where his father was working with a broken piggy bank and $25.00. He said, “Daddy, all I have is $25.00. Would you come outside and play with me for 30 minutes?”
B) YOU CAN MAKE MORE MONEY, BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE MORE TIME!
Have you ever heard the expression, “time is money?” This expression is not true! Time is much more valuable than money. Time is precious. It may be hard, but you can always make more money. However, you cannot make, earn, or create even 1 second of time. A.W. Tozer wrote: “Time is a resource that is nonrenewable and nontransferable. You cannot store it, slow it up, hold it up, divide it up, or give it up. When you kill time, remember it has no resurrection.” THE “T” IN TIME STANDS FOR “TREASURE”
II. Time should be Purposeful
Notice a couple of principles about being purposeful with your time…
A) YOU CAN’T SAVE TIME- YOU CAN ONLY INVEST IT!
Though time is more valuable than money, like money time can be spent or it can be invested. We live in an age that promises us time saving things. We have time saving appliances. People, especially men, like to take shortcuts to “save time.” All our lives are spent in trying to save time to do something else. Let me ask you for something: Where is this time you have saved? Show it to me? Do you have a running account of it? Where is it?
You cannot save even 1 second of time. However, you can invest your time by being purposeful with what you do with each second! We are all given the same amount of time every day. God gives each of us 86,400 seconds a day. If someone gave you $86,400 and told you to use it and invest it by the end of the day because there was not promise of more money tomorrow and any leftovers could not be kept, you would shop till you dropped. You would wisely invest the money you had been given and not 1 penny would be wasted. Yet, time, which is more precious and valuable than any amount of money, is continually wasted on meaningless activities. Where are you investing your time today? Are you being purposeful with the time God has given you?
Principle: You can’t save time—you can only invest it!
B) HOW PURPOSEFUL YOU ARE WITH YOUR TIME REVEALS YOUR PRIORITIES!
There are 168 hours in each week. The average person spends 56 of those hours sleeping, 24 of those hours eating and for personal hygiene, and about 50 of those hours working or traveling to work. That means that only 35 hours a week of “discretionary” time is left over. That is about 5 hours or less each day. THE QUESTION: Are you purposeful with that time? Where are you investing those hours in your own life? How we invest those hours of our lives show clearly our priorities. Are they spent surfing the web? Watching TV? Talking on the phone? Reading magazines?
Here are the real questions for us today: How much of your “discretionary” time are you devoting to serving the Lord and others through your church? How much of this time are you spending with your spouse, children, or family as a whole?
ILLUSTRATION: A study of 1,500 households all across the US representing a majority representation of the people in our country was conducted by the University of Michigan. The study found that mothers working outside of the home spend an average of 11 minutes a day personally interacting with her children. Fathers spend an average of 8 minutes a day personally interacting with his children. Meanwhile children watch TV on an average minimum of 2 hours a day. If our families are important them we will give them our time.
Side note: Be very careful using God’s time for family time. Spend family time (time with your kids and/or with your spouse) on your time and not God’s time. Sunday is not the day to go to the lake and miss church and excuse it as family time. Family time is to be spent on your time. How you spend your time determines your priorities.
Time is Precious / Time should be Purposeful
III. Time must be Prioritized!
God is the giver of time. All the time we have belongs to Him. We must be the managers of it! In other words, we must be careful to prioritize our time in such a way that it brings honor and glory to God!
ILLUSTRATION: (Illustration given to me on a piece of paper by a church member) Once a time management expert was teaching a seminar for executives. He placed a large, empty jar in front of the group. Then he filled the jar up with ½ dollar sized rocks and asked, “Is the jar full?” Everyone nodded and agreed the jar was full. Then he took sand and poured it into the jar and the entire cup of sand fit in the jar. He asked, “Is the jar full now?” Everyone readily agreed the jar was completely full now. The leader then poured 12 oz of water into the jar filled with rocks and sand. Then he asked, “What is the lesson?” The lesson was simple. Unless you put in the big rocks first, unless they were your priority, everything else would not have fit in the jar. If you started with the sand, only ½ the rocks would have fit. If you started with water, some of the water would be lost once the rocks went into the jar. He then told the executives, “The key to time management is determining in advance what your big rocks are! What are your priorities? Start with the priorities, then everything else will fit into your schedule.”
The key to managing time and making more of it available for our families and for the Lord is determining in advance what your big rocks / your time priorities really are!
Is giving time to God a rock in your life? Is being faithful in God’s house a rock? Is giving time to your marriage a rock? Is spending time with your kids a rock? If you don’t put these 4 rocks in the jar of your life first, something else will fill up this time! 2 principles:
A) EVERY MOMENT IS A GIFT FROM GOD THAT MUST BE PRIOTIZED AND MANAGED WELL In other words, you must intentionally seek out ways to uses your time more wisely each day!
B) IF YOU DO NOT PRIORITIZE AND MANAGE YOUR TIME, SOMEONE ELSE WILL! It is time you took control of your schedule! If you don’t run your schedule, someone else will! If you don’t set your time priorities, someone else will set them for you. Everyone wants to use up the time you are supposed to be spending with the Lord, in His house, and with your family!
TIME is precious / should be Purposeful / Must be Prioritized. .
IV. Time Ought to be Pleasurable!
The time you spend in God’s house and the time you spend with your family should be pleasurable. Let me give you a couple of practical ways you can your time can be pleasurable?
A) CONTINUALLY SAY “NO” TO FAMILY TIME ROBBERS!
Be honest . . . there will always be something else to do with our time! There will always be somewhere else you can be. However, if you are going to spend time with your family then you are going to have to learn to say a new word . . . “NO”. Everyone say it with me! Now was that so hard???? It is time we started saying ‘Yes’ to the Lord and ‘no’ to everyone else, including our boss, our friends, and others who are robbing family time from you!
Let me ask you a question: 50 years from now which is going to more important: Spending time with your family and your kids, or watching a sitcom on TV, reading the newspaper, or running around with your friends? Not one person on their deathbed has said, “I wish I had spent more time at work making a few more dollars!”
B) FAMILY TIME IS SHORT SO MAKE SOME HAPPY MEMORIES!
One of the great things I am continuing to learn is that I am only going to have my kids for a few more years and then they will be gone. I don’t want that time to pass by and me say regretfully, “Why did I give my time to everyone else, but not my kids? Why did I think it was so important to be a work 1 more hour? Why didn’t I coach their teams? Why didn’t I watch their school programs? How did I miss my children?” I can promise you before God that I am doing all I can to never ask those kinds of questions in my own life!
James writes in 4:14, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” What James is saying is the only time we are promised is the time we have right now so we had better make the most of it for the glory of God and good of our families.
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, we read these words, “God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” God has set eternity in our hearts. We can’t understand eternity, but we can know for certain where we will spend eternity. The time for that decision is now! The time you have now is all you’re promised, but it is not all there is. You will spend eternity in either Heaven or Hell . . . the difference is what you do right now with Jesus in the time you have to receive Him into your life! If you time is up today where would you spend the rest of your time in eternity?
Where are you investing your time today? Are you investing your time in the eternal things of God or wasting them on selfish pursuits? Are you giving time to your family?
