The Time Of Our Lives

"The Time of Our Lives"

James 4:14

James 4:13 Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

Introduction: What Happens Every 15 Minutes

Hands on Illustration: Set the timer for 15 minutes -- I am setting this timer for 15 minutes and 15 minutes from now it will ring and at that point I will tell you how valuable 15 minutes are in this world.

When the Timer goes off and rings this is what would have happened in the world!

Do you know - What happens in 15 minutes?

"Mission Maker Magazine", page 18, Edition 2008, (www.WorldChristianDatabase.org):

3,882 souls began life in the world

1, 721 souls meet Jesus face-to-face because they died

5, 448 people migrated internationally

201 children became homeless or family-less

1,137 rural poor migrated to cities worldwide

570 people moved into urban slums

34 people began supporting themselves only by collecting garbage

688 children under age five died from preventable starvation related causes in the world

5 Christians died for their Christian witness worldwide

"Time is an energy force which needs to be invested into eternity." The timing of an action or a word will determine whether it is a success or a failure. There is always a time factor tied to everything we do in life. So we have to be able to discern what time it is.

From a sermon by Michael McCartney, Energy Conservation, 1/28/2010

I. Our Plans

a. Wrong Planning -- ...today or tomorrow... It's not wrong to plan, but it is foolish to plan wrongly! The Lord doesn't condemn planning for the future but it is wrong to plan presumptuously.

b. Willful Planning -- ...we will go... We propose but God disposes.

The best laid schemes of Mice and Men

oft go awry,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!

Robert Burns, To a Mouse (Poem, November, 1785) Scottish national poet (1759 - 1796)

c. Worldly Planning -- ...buy, sell, and get gain... Some of you will say what's wrong with this; after all, a man's got to live!

Luke 12:15 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. 16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? 18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? 21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

ILL: TOMORROW

He was going to be all that a mortal should be

Tomorrow

No one would be better than he

Tomorrow

Each morning he stacked up the letters he would write

Tomorrow

It was too bad indeed he was too busy to see Bill, but he promised to do it

Tomorrow

The greatest of workers this man would have been

Tomorrow

The world would have known him had he ever seen

Tomorrow

But the fact is he died and faded from view, and all

that was left when living was through Was a mountain of things he intended to do

Tomorrow.

II. Our Problem

a. The limitations we have

Chuck Swindoll stated this in His book Living on the Ragged Edge and its focus is about the importance of our time:

Every morning someone who loves you very much deposits into your bank of time 86,400 seconds of time-which represents 1,440 minutes-which, of course, equal twenty-four hours each day.

Now you've got to remember the same stipulation applies, because God gives you this amount of time for you to use each day. Nothing is carried over on credit to the next day. There is no such thing as a twenty-six-hour day (though some of us wish there were). From today's dawn until tomorrow's dawn, you have a precisely determined amount of time. As someone has put it, "Life is a coin. You can spend it anyway you want to, but you can spend it only once."