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Time is running out, use it wisely!!! |
This is one of my speeches from last year on valuing time.
Your alarm goes off.
Immediately you are up and frantically getting ready for the day. You wolf down breakfast, kiss your children, hug a loved one, grab a bag and with a hurried goodbye over your shoulder head out the door.
If this was your day, an example your busy life and you realized that it could be about to end, is there anything you would have done differently? Would you have managed your time to have family moments? What about just spending more time at home or taking that one last moment to say "I love you"? Often our time flies too fast for us to realize that it is going by or remember that our days are numbered. Today I would like to point out the importance of valuing every second of our time and how often it gets taken for granted. Well, of course, the first step would be to define time. Psalm 90 says, “The days of our lives are seventy years” however time is a mystery. We sense its passing in our consciousness. We measure its progress with delicately adjusted instruments. We mark its flight and read the record it leaves behind. But the one thing we cannot do is define it.
The Bible teaches that time and life are tied together. Nature is like a huge clockmaker’s shop in which thousands of timepieces are ticking. The rotation of the earth marks the passing of day and night; the phases of the moon are the moving on of the months; the revolutions of the planets point to the march of the years. We speak of Father Time and visualize an old man with a long white beard who is holding a scythe in one hand and an hourglass in the other hand. But time is a thief. Time robs us of our health and strips us at last of everything that we have. So we have to learn to manage it around what is really important. In Psalm 90 verse 12, the author writes, “Lord, teach us to number our days that we might have a heart of wisdom.” The concept of numbering our days was explained to me like this: say you had a jar full of skittles, you wouldn’t think much of eating three or four, or eight. However when there’s clearly only six or seven left, you start valuing them more, scheming over how you can make them last a little longer or enjoy them a more. Same thing with our days, if we didn’t know exactly how many we had left, which we don’t, shouldn’t we value them as if every skittle moment was our last?
Of course we all have plans and ideas and probably even a schedule of how your day or week is supposed to work. However, unless God wills it, our calendar is useless. Proverbs 16:9 says “The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps." Only what the Lord determines will get done. Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn't plan, if I never wrote down at least what I needed to do each day I would never accomplish anything. However, it does mean two things that; 1, we cannot put stock completely in schedules, but in the Lord; And 2: we must put what is most important first. Our days are numbered and when our hour does come, we should not have to regret our use of time.
Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning 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 with all of it? Of course you would draw out every cent! Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every single 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 allows no overdraft. 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. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost. Time is often referred to as money, but it way more valuable than the riches of the earth, because time is the one thing you can never get more of. The clock is running. We must make the most of today.
Then what qualifies as a "good investment" you ask. And does that mean no leisure? No, having fun and relaxing is important. But there are 3 things that you should invest in week to week; they are devotion, spending time with the Lord as well as reading from His word, work, supporting your family, and third spending time with your family. Let’s pretend these three balls are the time you spend in devotion, work, and with you loved ones, and the sand is leisure time. If you focus first on the leisure, there will be no room for the important activities. But, if good investments are prioritized, the leisure will fit in around them.
So we need to use every moment of our time in worthwhile activities, but that’s not just in everyday decisions, if you get a platform to influence the crowds, how would you use it. The Bible speaks of the young Jew, Esther, who was never expecting the change in her life when she became queen, and as she was struggling with what to do about the plans to kill her people, the Bible tells us that Mordecai said to her, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther was able to use the unexpected change in her life that God provided her to save the Jews. We won’t always have the clear platform though. Sometimes we must seek out opportunities to speak out and proclaim Gods Excellency. Amid the stormy seas of life and against the background of eternity, the present moment flickers like the flicker of a lighted match. What will you do with your moment? Proclaim Gods glory? Will what you choose honor Him? Maybe you were brought in to the world for a certain time, to make a certain decision to honor God. The clock is always ticking. Time in itself is neither good nor bad except as we make it so. But it becomes a crucial test, sifting us through and through, minute by minute. How are you reacting to that test? How does it affect you? Are you growing daily in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ? Do you take advantage of every opportunity to study the Scriptures and to pray? Do you take advantage of every opportunity to witness for Jesus Christ? Every second of your life counts.
Often I worry about the time I have, thinking it may not be enough to do everything necessary. My motto often seems to be the words of Shakespeare, “Better three hours too soon than a minute to late.” Before an activity starts or we need to go somewhere, I will run around in a frenzy making sure everyone is ready to go to be exactly on time. When we get panicked about the time we have we need to remember Psalm 118:24 which says, “This is the day which the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.” No matter what comes our way we need to rejoice in the time that God has given us and use every moment of it to honor Him. Bill Keane says, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, that is why we call it the present.” Today is God’s gift and we need to enjoy every second. God will give us time in the day to do everything He needs us to accomplish, but it is our job to make sure we accomplish everything He has given us time for. Time management is a skill that comes with practice, and we won’t always make right choices about using our time, but it is about progression, not perfection, every day striving to spend more time in the important events.
Abraham Lincoln says, “In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” Is your life making a difference? How will you be remembered? Did you impact someone in such a way to change that person for good? As Christens we should be leaving a legacy for Christ, filling our years with life. Maybe, just maybe, we won’t all change the world, but we can influence those around us, sometimes without even realizing it.
The Huffington Post writes in 2013 that one of the top regrets of successful people is that they did not spend more time with their family. So if your life flashes before your eyes, will you find that you did not spend enough time at work or in free time? Or will you wish you had spent more time with your family and in God’s word? There’s a balance we have to find in time management, but if what is necessary comes first there will be time for everything else later. So the question that faces you today is what will you do with your time?
