Spiritual Health: Redeeming the Time

We live in an overloaded world, don't we? We have more technology designed to help us save time than ever in human history, yet it seems that we don't have enough time to do what needs to be done. We have microwaves, cell phones, answering machines, palm pilots, computers, fax machines, email, call forwarding, call waiting, caller ID, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers. Yet, we are overscheduled, overloaded, overworked, overdriven, stressed out, breathlessly running to the next event, and our lives seem fragmented and unfocused. We believe, if we think about it, that Shakespeare really was right.

Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We feel that sometimes, don't we? We're part of the rat race. But as the famous philosopher Lily Tomlin said, the problem with the rat race is that even if you win the race you're still a rat

but the reality is we're not rats are we we're human beings we want our lives to have meaning and purpose and that's what i want to talk about today i want our lives to be lives of meaning and purpose. We want to use our time well. We've been assessing our spiritual health. Seven essential questions if we want to know. And today is the last of the seven essential questions.

I'm going to come back to that quote, but let me give you the questions we've had so far. Here was our question number one. Are we broken and mournful over our sin? An important question if we're going to be spiritually healthy. Secondly, are we increasingly governed by God's word in our lives?

Thirdly, are we quick to forgive? We don't harbor those grudges. We're forgiving people. Question number four, are we growing in our compassion for hurting people? Question number five, are we growing in godliness?

Sixthly, are we living first for Christ? And today's question is, are we consciously choosing to devote our time to the right stuff? Are we consciously choosing to devote our time to the right stuff? And that's where we're going today. Let me read our text of scripture and then we'll pray.

And the text of scripture we're going to look at today is on your handout. The NIV has a good translation, but I decided to do my own because I think maybe this translation captures a little better the text. It's Ephesians 5, 15 to 17. Therefore, examine carefully how you are living, not as unwise people, but as wise, making the best use of your time because the days are evil. For this reason, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Let's pray. This day, Lord, as we think about our time, how we use it, the time you have given us, I pray that you will help us to be willing to examine ourselves, to see how we stand in our use of time, to be willing to understand where we can be better stewards of that time you have given us. And I pray that we will be willing, whatever it takes, to devote ourselves to those things that are most important in life and to the mission to which you have called us. For it is in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

How many of you have ever read Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau?

just a handful of you you need to go read that book something the row was not a christian but the row was looking at some things that every christian should look at he went and lived by a pond called walden pond for a season of his life because he said i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if i could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life. Do you ever have that sense? You really want to live deeply. You want your life to have meaning and purpose. You want to suck the best out of life but life just seems to fritter away and you just seem to lose those opportunities that come way. Well, that's what I want us to try to deal with today, to help ourselves avoid just letting the life fritter away and be sure we are consciously choosing to devote our time to the right stuff.

So here are four directives if we wish to devote our time to the right stuff. Now in your text, and I'm going to point this out to you, and this is how I try to organize my lessons typically. I let the text drive the lesson. There are four imperatives or commands in this text. I'm going to point them out to you.

Look at your text. The word examine. That's the first command. The second command is making the best use of your time. It's a participle, that ing word, but it's an imperative participle.

So that's the second command. The third command is don't be foolish. command is understand. So examine, make the best use, don't be foolish, and understand. And that's where we're going. So first directive, if we want to be consciously choosing to devote our time to the right stuff, is this. Let's examine carefully how we are using our time. And that word examine carefully is the idea that we will put our lives under intense scrutiny and try to understand what we are doing with our lives and how we are using our lives. In other words, I think the command is telling us to take an inventory of our lives. Step back from the hustle and bustle and take an inventory of life. How do you use your life in a typical week or in a typical it go? How much of it do you give to work? Civic clubs, social activities, to family, to shopping, to watching TV, to going to the movies, to leisure activities. And the idea is to step back and try to get a picture of where we're plugging in all this time. You know, those of us who are about our ages. Most statisticians tell us that in 72 years of life, when we're 72, most of us will have watched 12 years of television. Now that's for those of us who didn't grow up with 200 channels as children. We had five or six. Those who are growing up with about 200 channels as children are going to spend anywhere the estimates are, anywhere from about one-fourth to as much as one-third of their lives watching television.

That's about six to eight hours a day.

Now, that may seem high, but that's what the statistics are showing with some people. So the question is, where are we spending that time taking an inventory? And there's a reason to take an inventory, right? We need to see those things that are getting the highest priority in our lives so that we can begin to understand, are we plugging in our time and doing the right things? As Roger Merrill said, doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.

So by taking an inventory, we're trying to see where are we devoting our time, and then we're going to examine, are we devoting it to the right things? Or as Stephen Covey said it, who wrote The Seven Habits of an Effective Leader, He said, why climb the ladder of success only to find that your ladder was leaning against the wrong wall? And if we don't take an inventory, we may not understand that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Or we may just keep on doing things faster and faster and faster, but never doing the right things if we don't take an inventory. Everybody understand?

here. By taking an inventory, it's going to show us something about our lives. For some, and I think this would be a relatively very, very small minority, we may just find, see we're lazy. We're just not doing much of anything. But I think for most of us, it's going to be in the other direction. We're going to find we are very, very busy people. But you know, in ancient thinking, laziness and busyness were both part of the same sin.

It was the sin of sloth. To be slothful was to be lazy. It was to not do enough stuff. It was to be unwilling to work. But it was also considered slothful to be overly busy.

Because then you weren't prioritizing your life on what was most important. You weren't choosing to do the right things. that also was considered slothful. So either direction, being overly lazy or overly busy can be a real problem. But we've got to first take an inventory and see where we fall.

The second thing that we need to do after taking our inventory is we need to determine how to make the best use of our time.

the some of the older translations say redeeming the time and i want to make a point here about the word time it's the greek word kairos not the greek word chronos and that's an important distinction the word chronos is the word from which we get chronometer which was your time piece, your watch. And that's chronos is a word that's very much concerned about the quantity of time. How much time do you have? What did you get done in that time? But the Greek word kairos, while we translate it time, is not so much worried about the quantity of time. It's not concerned about how did you squeeze every second out of the minute by squeezing more activities into the minute. Kairos is more concerned about the quality of your time. Did you use the time for the right thing? It may have been only one thing that you did instead of 10, but Kairos wants to be sure that it's used for the right thing. So the implication that we have from this text, redeeming the time or making sure we make the best use of our time is first this time is a limited gift from god and we're to use it well maybe we sense this the older we get how many more thanksgivings do we have how many more christmases do we have how many more times will we get to hug our children in this life. And there is a real sense when we talk about making the best use of our time, we are to be conscious that time is fleeting. The psalmist said, show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days. Let me know how fleeting is my life. Psalm 39, 4. That was my that was my theme verse for one year a couple of years ago. Psalm 39 4. Show me oh Lord my life's in and the number of days. Let me know how fleeting is my life. So if we've got limited time we want to make the best use of it. Wise living consists in making the best use of time. We're to live as wise people not as unwise. So when we take our inventory of life and see how we're living our lives currently, we want to step back and say, are we living wisely? In other words, are we making the best use of the time? Thirdly, we want to be sure that we're using the time in a qualitative way, not just a quantitative way. I've been to the, how many of you have been to one of those money, excuse me, one of those time management seminars? Anybody ever been to one of those? They had one of those for lawyers several years ago. It's one of those things where they tell you, you know, only touch a piece of paper one time make a decision and then don't do not change unless new information comes once you schedule an event don't change it unless something more very much more important comes along they give you all these little tips and what they're trying to do is to help you squeeze more things into a minute being able to do more stuff the scripture said I think the scriptures teach us.

Don't worry about doing more stuff. Don't try to squeeze more things into your day, into your minute. Figure out what is the right stuff. Be sure your lives are focused on things that matter. That at the end of the day, make a difference.

Don't let your life be frittered away by the unimportant. So when I say make the best use of time, I am not pressing us to do more. In fact, I may be pressing us to do less, but to be sure we're doing the right thing, the right stuff. I think it's important in this thinking about this to distinguish between the urgent and the important. There's a little booklet a guy named Charles Hummel wrote that has sold thousands and thousands of copies.

It's only about this thick. You can read it in about 15 minutes, but it's called Tyranny of the Urgent. and in the book he talks about how we are constantly fighting this battle as human beings between doing that which is urgent the thing that's pressing us the thing that somebody's demanding we do versus doing that which is important and I think it's helpful when we begin to think about how are we going to make the best use of our time to be able to step back and say, hey, is this really important or is somebody in my life just making it urgent, though it may not be all that important? Do you have lives like that? You know, somebody described a typical day as a series of interruptions. And sometimes we're just interrupted by things that are urgent.

Somebody wants something right now, even though it may not be important. I think it might be helpful sometimes to do a diagram and think about is this thing I am doing, where does it fall in this grid? Is it really important or is it unimportant? Is it urgent or is it not urgent?

And if something is both important and urgent, that probably ought to take top priority, shouldn't it if it's both important and urgent but if it's unimportant and somebody's just pressing me to do it even though it's unimportant or there's something making it seem urgent but I realize it's unimportant that shouldn't take top priority if it's not urgent and important it probably should take higher it should take higher priority than if it's urgent and unimportant And then, of course, if they fall in this quadrant, it's not urgent and it's unimportant. Well, that's just absolute last place. So sometimes I think it's helpful to be able to think about our activities and say, all right, where does it fall in the grid of life? This should be number one, I would argue. This should be number two.

Always focus on the important first. And then the unimportant is going to come later. Everybody follow me? there the text of scripture says that we're to redeem the time or make the best use of time because the days are evil that's kind of an interesting comment in in the context of the use of time i think what in the context here what the apostle paul is trying to tell us is that the days are full of all sorts of moral evil people engaged in all sorts of things they shouldn't be engaged in but i think in the context here what he's saying the moral evil we're having to avoid is the evil of being distracted away from doing that which is most important that which is best and the evil that we fall into so often is getting caught up in the inconsequential the trivial the unimportant the game trivial pursuits characterizes so many of our lives Focusing on things that make no difference at all. There's a war out there for our time, folks.

And the enemy wants to fill it up with anything that distracts us from doing that which is eternally important. And he doesn't care much what it is. It can be something that looks sort of good. It can be something that looks bad. He loves TV because it will suck your mind and suck your heart and waste your time like nothing else.

It may be the greatest time waster of our day. I'm not saying never watch any TV, but I'm saying it's one of the great time wasters. But it's one of those things that I think the enemy loves because it distracts us.

every activity the enemy wants to just be a noisy unimportant event something that focuses on the temporary something that has no eternal significance and it is a battle day in and day out if you start thinking about this stuff if you start saying I want to make the best use of my time you are going to be in the midst of a battle that will be a very difficult one in your life as you try to control your time in a way that honors God and makes the best use of it. The third imperative is let's avoid foolish behavior. Now Paul doesn't stop to tell us what the foolish behavior is. If you read earlier in chapter 5 and the end of chapter 4 of Ephesians, you're going to see that Paul really encourages us to live as children of the light, not to walk in darkness to devote ourselves to the things of God and I think in this context the idea of foolish behavior is to live with the notion that one day is to live without the notion that we will one day meet our maker to live foolishly is to live in such a way that we don't give any consideration to the idea that our lives may be shortened in a moment. To live foolishly is to live as if we are in control of every turn in our lives. And to live foolishly is to devote our things that devote our lives to things that are trivial, inconsequential, things that just distract us. Those are foolish things. Instead of focusing on foolish behavior, we are instead to our lives is. That's the fourth imperative. Avoid the foolish behavior, the distractions, and instead understand what God's will for our lives is. I think that Paul is talking about God's moral will here. How does God want us to live? And I think you really have to think about God's moral will in the sense of priorities. What is God's will? God's will is that God comes first.

First, you love people. Second, our lives are here to glorify God. We are to exhibit and live lives that are spirit filled, exemplifying those qualities of the spirit like love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. These are all things that are part of God's moral will for our lives. The question is, when it comes to making the best use of our times, is there any evidence that God is first in how we use our times?

Is there any evidence that other people really do come before ourselves in the use of our time? Is there evidence that we are living in such a way that we glorify God? These are all things that we need to examine when we take the inventory of our lives and devote ourselves to the things that God says should be priorities. And always keep in mind the distinction between the eternal and the temporary. There are not many things that are eternal.

What's eternal? Somebody tell me some things that are eternal. The word of God is eternal. It will last forever.

What's that? Life is eternal. Okay. Meaning people are eternal. I heard somebody else say something.

Souls. Okay. People. Our souls are eternal. God is eternal.

Those are things that we're to be devoting our lives to. But you know what? I find myself fighting all the time. I get at the end of the day and I look back and I say, you know, I spent most of the day with stuff that is temporary.

That has no eternal significance. No eternal consequence. And you know, we all have to deal with some of the mundane things of life. We've got to take out the trash. We've got to fill the dishwasher.

We've got to empty the dishwasher. We've got to wash the clothes. affairs of everyday life. That's part of living. That's part of caring for people often, those mundane things of life. But I want us to be careful that we make sure that we're focusing more on those things that have long-lasting eternal significance. So here are my lessons for life to try to help us do that. Lesson for life number one, focus, focus, focus for life is fleeting.

Find your mission for Christ and do it. Whatever he's called you to do, whatever mission it is, focus on it and do it. John Piper, who's a pastor at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, had a plaque on his wall when he was growing up as a child. It was in the kitchen. His parents kept it there.

And the plaque had a little poem that said this, Only one life, it will soon be passed. only what's done for Christ will last. And that was a constant reminder to him throughout his childhood days to focus and focus, focus on what was important for life was fleeting. You know, you can't do it all. You should not do it all.

You shouldn't even try to do it all. But you should do and focus on that mission that God has given you to do in this life. Fight the distractions in life. And I think one way, folks, that in this country particularly we can fight the distractions so we can focus is by living more simply. It is amazing, I think, if we took an inventory of our lives, how much time we spend on our stuff.

It's amazing. Shopping for it, caring for it, keeping it up, improving it, remodeling it, repairing it, paying for it, etc. So much of our lives are consumed by our stuff. And it's all going to be burned up and gone and worth nothing. So why do we treat it as if it's so important in this life?

I think this is one of the great sins of our American culture, particularly for Christians in America. We're so consumed by stuff. I'm a consumer-oriented, I deserve it all, I want it all, and I'm going to get it all mentality. I found personally, and I'm a slow learner, it took the loss of a son to make me focus on this stuff and start to try to figure it out. But one of the most freeing things in my life is starting to let go of the stuff.

And I'm still learning, but letting go. I want to own less. I want less stuff so that I've got more time for things that are important. It's an important lesson for us, I think. Second lesson, let's write out an inventory of our lives.

And I'm suggesting that we actually do this. Get out a piece of paper. Keep it simple. But begin to write down the major areas where you're devoting your time. Where am I devoting my time?

Just list it out. List the civic clubs. List the social things you do. List the committees. And then step back and look and say, where should I be devoting my time?

And start to think about where the focus should be in your life. And then what do you do? You begin to cut out the things that are unnecessary, just filling time, so that you can do the things that are more important. Now, when I went through this exercise in my own life, was a very slow learner and this I was up into my 30s before I was even thinking about this kind of stuff with any seriousness I began to cut out some civic clubs because they were feeling a lot of time but not really accomplishing a whole lot I had to get off of some committees committees will burn your time in a heartbeat folks we meet way way way too much and talk talk talk way too much I had to get off some committees I finally got to a point that I'd cut out about everything I I could figure out how to cut out, and I still wasn't where I was supposed to be, and I felt a calling to go do this thing called Josh's Way, and I said, how can I do Josh's Way? Well, the only way I could do it was to figure out how to control work.

So I went to my law partners, and I got them to agree that I could go part-time. And I began to actually reduce the amount of work for pay that I was doing so I could vote time elsewhere. And that may not be the course you take, but it was an analysis I had to go through to figure out how to do what I needed to do. Unless we do an inventory, we won't figure out how to do it. Next lesson.

Let's remember activity does not equal productivity.

And sometimes, quite frankly, when we're so busy, we're just not getting much done. We need to step back and realize that productivity is different from just mere activity. Fourth lesson.

Unplug regularly and rest. and when I say unplug regularly I mean control the technology in life I love technology I have a palm pilot I have a cell phone I use email rightly used they are great tools but they are very invasive tools into our lives and I submit to us that personally and with our families we need to find times when we turn off the phone cell phone, that we will not look at the email, we turn off the TV so that we can relax, unwind, think, and enjoy the quiet and the time together. It's not easy to do. Try making it completely silent in your home. It will be a battle. But we need those times of silence to develop relationships and so we can think. We need time to rest too. That's why we need to unplug.

We need to get a good night's sleep. Sometimes when you're frazzled and things are just too tough in life, have you gotten a good night's sleep lately? One of the best pieces of advice my mama ever gave me. If things aren't going well, get a good night's rest. Things will look better in the morning. And you know what? That's often very true. And our rest needs to include our Sabbath rest.

God commanded that we take a day a week to rest. We need it, folks. Some of us say we rebel against this command. You know, like God is being mean to us to tell us we shouldn't work on the Sabbath. We need it.

God loves us. He commanded us and gave us by His grace this day to rest. and enjoy it. And not to take it is sin.

So, this afternoon, joyfully, don't do anything.

You know, it's alright if you want to do some things, but don't feel compelled to go clean out the attic or go cut the grass or do it. Take a day off and enjoy it. And let your batteries recharge next week. Go take a nap.

And love it. And enjoy it. Plan ahead. Get ready. And be early. Life is used better with a little planning.

If we get ready a little bit before the event, there's some things that need a little preparation. Well, go ahead and do a little early. Don't wait till the last second. It's amazing how much more enjoyable life is with just a little getting ready. And be early.

For about the first five years of my legal career, I was always late to every appointment because I was trying to do too much. And finally, I had a partner who said, you know what? You need to just leave earlier to get to where you need to be and stop working on this other stuff. It's very commonsensical. If you want to be early, leave earlier.

Don't wait until five minutes before you're supposed to be at church to start getting ready to go to church. I was late this morning in the first service, so I'll confess. but being early really does, I think, help put a little calm on events and you can enjoy the event more than when you rush in late, rush in frazzled, dragging the children behind you, as I've done many times in my life. Don't drift. You'll never reach your destination.

Some of us just go with the flow. Whatever happens, we just kind of float. We're here for a purpose, folks. Plan your life and then live your plan. Don't let events just move you without doing what you can to try to plan the events.

And then treasure the moment. Sometimes we're so frazzled, we miss the great moments in life. Andrea Seou wrote this after her husband died. Listen to these words. Andrea said,

so many times to be kind to people. And I love the poem that says, I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it. For I shall not pass this way again.

Treasure the moments. Treasure the moments. Go home and hug your children, if you haven't done it recently. Hug your spouse. if you haven't done it recently and enjoy the moment.

Let's make the best use of our time. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that we will be people who are conscious that we live within your eternal framework and having that consciousness, I pray that we will choose to live to the best, devoting our lives to those things that are important, eternal, sacred, and significant. and battling to avoid those things that distract us from that which you would have us about. For it is in Christ's name we pray. Amen.