Introduction

Many years ago, Dr. Tony Campolo was teaching a class at the University of Pennsylvania when he turned an ordinary lecture into an unforgettable lesson. He asked a student sitting on the front row, “Young man, how long have you lived?” The unsuspecting student answered his age. “No, no, no,” said Tony Campolo. “That’s how long your heart has been pumping blood. That’s not how long you’ve lived.”

That’s when Tony Campolo told the class a story about one of the most memorable moments of his life. In 1944, his fourth-grade class took a field trip to the top of the Empire State Building—the tallest building in the world at the time. When nine-year-old Tony got off the elevator and stepped out onto the observation deck overlooking New York City, time stood still. “If I live a million years,” said Tony Campolo, “that moment will still be part of my consciousness, because I was fully alive when I lived it.”

Tony turned back to that same student and said, “Now, let me ask you the question again. How long have you lived?” “When you say it that way,” the student said, “maybe an hour; maybe a minute; maybe two minutes.”

Let me ask two questions. One, how old are you? Two, how long have you lived? It’s easy calculating age, much more difficult quantifying life. Why? Time is measured in minutes, but life is measured in moments. What are those Empire State Building moments for you? When was the last time, time stood still? And if you turned those moments into minutes, how long have you lived?

We are in a series based on the book, Win the Day. We’ve talked about five habits—flip the script, kiss the wave, eat the frog, fly the kite, and cut the rope. It’s time to wind the clock, Habit #6. If you have a Bible, meet me in Ephesians 5:16.

Time is measured in minutes, but life is measured in moments.

Time is a human construct

“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years,” II Peter 3:8, “and a thousand years are like a day.” That makes no sense in four dimensions of spacetime. Newsflash: God does not exist within the spacetime dimensions He created. There is no past, present, and future. The challenge we face is that four dimensions is all we’ve ever known! In the beginning, we were created in the image of God. We have been creating God in our image ever since. So, we timestamp God. No. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is the Ancient of Day. In the words of theologian Paul Tillich, God is the eternal now.

All of that to say this—creation was God’s way of starting the clock. We have been on the clock since God said, “Let there be light.” That said, the day is coming when we’ll cross the spacetime continuum and enter a dimension the Bible calls heaven. We think of heaven as a future destination, and it is. But heaven is invading earth. Eternity is invading time, right here, right now.

We live forward but God is working backward

“We are God’s workmanship,” Ephesians 2:10, “created in Christ Jesus to do good works prepared for us in advance.” This is where our holy confidence comes from. God is setting you up. God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go, and He’s really good at getting you there. He is ordering your footsteps. He is working all things together for good. Certainly, doesn’t mean all things are good. We live in a fallen world. Bad things happen to good people because of this thing called free will. That said, God can redeem and recycle the pain and suffering. And the same God who began a good work, will carry it to completion.

There is a fancy word in philosophy called teleology. It’s beginning with the end in mind. That’s who God is. That’s what God does. For us, the arrow of time moves in one direction—past, present, future. Then Jesus shows up and says, “Before Abraham was, I Am.” Wait. What? Joshua 6:2 is a great example as well. God says, “I will deliver Jericho into your hands.” No! That’s not what it says. It says, “I have delivered Jericho into your hands.” But that’s the wrong verb tense, right? It should be future tense. It hasn’t happened yet. So why is it past tense? That brings us to a third thought.

Everything is created twice

Everything was once a thought. There is an internal or mental or spiritual creation first. Then, and only then, is there a physical manifestation. That’s what imagining unborn tomorrows is all about.

The layout of Washington, DC—first existed in the imagination of Pierre Charles L’Enfant ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium