investing your time wisely - t3 does not equal eternity series › ... › 2018 › 05 ›...

INVESTING YOUR TIME WISELY - T3 Does Not Equal Eternity Series

of 15 pages 4/8/2018

Good morning Life Fellowship. Please join me in prayer.

‘Lord, thank you so much for allowing us to come together and worship you

today. We thank you for your rich grace, your mercy, your forgiveness, the joy that you

give us, and the peace that you give us. God, we want to pray that you would help us to

always bow our heads before you in our heart. May the posture of our heart be one of

bowing before you, of recognizing our sense of dependence upon you, of leaning into you.

I pray, God, that we would be directed by you as a church, that you would help all

of our church leadership to flourish in their walk with you, to love you and to honor you.

I pray that you will comfort those in our church family who are in need of comfort and,

give direction to those who are in need of direction.

I pray, God, for our local church families as well, that you would be with Lake

Norman Baptist Church, with Bethel Presbyterian, with Christ Community Church, with

Mosaic, with Elevation, with The Cove, with Lake Forest, with the Church of Good

Shepherd and all the different churches around. Be with these churches, Lord, and help

these leaders that are there to lead faithfully and humbly.

I pray, God that you will help us as a church to be wonderfully at work in

partnership with other local churches. We thank you for the opportunity to be one

church in this community, and we thank you that all we can do is play on the strums of

the instruments that has been handed us. Lord, we have a faithful calling to be faithful

here in our church and in our community. I praise you, Lord, that you can use all the

different churches together in great ways.

I thank you for how you can take our lives and make a difference. God, we can

get so overwhelmed by world need that we can just shut down, so I pray that you will just

help us to make a difference in our context. God, we pray that right now as we seek to

open up your word and to grow and to reflect that you will do some deep work in our

lives. I pray, God, that your Holy Spirit would fall fresh upon us, that we would

experience your power working in and through our lives.

We pray for those in need of healing that you would in your Spirit powerfully

heal. We pray for those in need of clarity that you would provide that. We pray for those

in need of the strength to let go of something they have in their lives that they would find

that strength. We pray they would trust in you to help them to walk with you.

May you be our ultimate. We thank you God that you are the King of the universe

and we humbly ask that you would gloriously work in our midst right now. In Jesus’

name. Amen.’

I have always had a fascination with time. There is just something about the idea

of time that gets in my head, you could say. I know as I think about the concept I have

always been intrigued by the idea of why it is that as we get older it seems as if time goes

by more quickly. We have heard this before when we were younger, ‘You just wait and

you will see how fast time goes when you get to be my age.’ And I remember hearing

something that really helped make sense of that concept to me. It was the idea that when

you have to live one year of time at the age of four to become five it is twenty percent of


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

your life. So one year is going to seem like a long time. So then to live one year at age

nine to age ten is more like ten percent of your life. And that is still a pretty good chunk.

By the time you are nineteen and waiting to become twenty it is only five percent

of your life. Folks, if you live to be ninety-nine that one year is only going to be one

percent of your life. So in the name of maybe Einstein’s theory of relativity - no, we

won’t bring that in. But it does seem as if time is kind of relative in that way. Now I am

not bringing out E equals NC squared on you at all, but just this concept of the longer we

are alive, the quicker time seems to be going by.

I have always been intrigued by the idea of an hourglass also. There it is and

there I am and we are just working out this piece of time. I have been working on this

artistic piece for a while and I still have a lot of work to do on it. I have shared with you

before that I really like surrealism. And surrealism is the artwork of combining our

dreams with reality which doesn’t always make sense but there are things that you can

see in a dream.

The particular imagery that I have been working on is an hourglass. It won’t

come out all that clearly but what I did on the top of it is I made a world. Basically when

God created the world He created time. God is timeless; He exists and stands outside of

time but He creates this world where time is. Basically the sand of time, so to speak, is

flowing through a light bulb. And the light bulb is to represent that we are supposed to

be light in the world. That is how we are supposed to be. God wants us to live in this

world as light.

Now the only place that we can really live is right here, folks, in the moment, in

the present. I didn’t put any hour hands on the clock that I am creating. Why? It is

because all we have is right now. There is the future and there is the past but all we have

is right now. The future comes and then it becomes the past. And as the sand runs

through the hour glass so it is that all we can do is live in the moment. I need to work on

hands next, which will represent God’s hands holding time in His hands.

So for each of us all we have is one life to live. The Psalmist reminds us by

saying, “Teach us to number our days.” And then we need to recognize how few there

are. Why? It is so that we can spend them as we should. You and I, while we have

differences of abilities and differences in our backgrounds and education and

experiences, what we all share in common is time. In fact it took every breath you have

ever taken, every night of sleep you have ever had, every trip you have ever been on,

every conversation you have ever had, every nap you have ever taken, every stop light

you have encountered, all of that happened to get you to this moment right here.

It has been a long journey but now you are here. And we share in this idea of

time. So we are going to do a three part series where we talk about making the most of

our time, making the most of our treasures, and making the most of our talents. Ken

Blanchard, the author of ‘The One Minute Manager,’ said this, “The three most important

decisions that we will ever make in our lives is who is going to be our master, who is

going to be our mate, and what is going to be our life mission.” Our master, the King of

the universe, has created time. The timeless God creates time and we live in time. And


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

God wants us to maximize our lives, to make the most of our lives. Jesus came that you

and I could have life and have life abundantly.

But time is running out. It is slipping away. The end will be here before we

know it. I have always had this fascination with the time concept. And I am sure you

have too because you are living in it and it is hard not to think about it. So we just want

to provide some wisdom today, wisdom to help us to know how to make the most of our

time, wisdom to know how to make the most of our treasures, and wisdom to know how

to make the most of our talents. We want this to be a church that makes good decisions

because when we make good decisions we have less regrets.

Maybe you are wondering what we will do after this three part series. Well, then

we are going to do a series that is actually called ‘Rembrandt’s Brush.’ Now some of you

may be thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, are we going to become a heretical church? Like,

what is up with the Bible?’ Well, let me just say this to remind us always that the church

exploded and grew in the book of Acts, and there was no New Testament yet. Does that

mean I don’t believe in the New Testament? Of course not. But it means that a church

can grow on the teaching. When Peter got up and talked he didn’t tell them to turn to the

book of Joel, though he talked about Joel. When Jesus taught He didn’t tell people they

were going to be walking through the book of Leviticus, though He did talk about

Leviticus.

So we will be going back and doing another book of the Bible soon, but we take

breaks from time to time to do a short term series or to hit another topic. If I was going to

teach on the Trinity I wouldn’t ask you to turn to the book of Hezekiah in order to do an

in depth look at the Trinity. That would have to be done systematically. So sometimes

we take topics that way, like with marriage or finances. And in this series it is time,

treasures and talents.

So now you are wondering what is ‘Rembrandt’s Brush’ going to be about? It is

going to be a series where what we really want to talk about is how we are passionate

about the arts at Life Fellowship as you can see by the staging. We want to do maybe a

summer series that we call ‘Rembrandt’s Brush.’ And Rembrandt painted a lot of gospel

passages so I will preach the passage that it on the artwork. We will turn to that

particular passage, but then we will look at Rembrandt’s perspective on it. And we are

going to ask artists in our church to bring some of their works and display them out in the

foyer as a way of saying we are passionate about artistic giftings at Life Fellowship

Church. So we will show art and talk about art and what it means.

After that we will probably jump back into the book of Psalms for the summer.

And then we are working on a series about the tabernacle in the Old Testament and really

lay all of that out by explaining the sacrificial system and how all of that worked. And

then how Christ fulfilled that. So we are really excited about that and that will have us

steeped in the Old Testament for quite some time.

But for today I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes Chapter 3.

Now the book of Ecclesiastes was written by the kohelet, which is a title that means ‘the

preacher.’ Commentators that are conservative in nature will believe that this particular


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

preacher, the kohelet, is Solomon. Solomon was the third king of Israel. Saul was the

first king, David was the second king and then his son Solomon was third. Solomon was

the last king of the United Kingdom. We know that after Solomon the Kingdom was

divided into the North and the South. The Northern Kingdom was Israel and the

Southern Kingdom was Judah. And we look forward to the end where we will ultimately

be under the unifying Kingdom of King Jesus, that one great Kingdom.

Now Solomon was given more wisdom than anyone before him, or anyone after

him, minus God becoming flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. And Solomon sought to

find meaning and fulfilment in life. And this phrase “Under the sun” comes up over and

over again. Solomon is sharing his gleanings he learned under the sun. That is,

Solomon helps us to understand the vanity of vanities, of trying to find meaning and

fulfilment under the sun absent from a divine perspective, absent of living with a God’s

eye view on life. Solomon sought to gain lots of skills, and he was a great builder, he

was a great planter, and he loved pleasure. He was a hedonist, he was an entrepreneur,

and he set out on lots of endeavors. He had lots of power and he also had a harem.

And what Solomon would conclude was that absent of a healthy dose of fear and

respect of God was all vanity. Life is like an hourglass; it is slipping away. Time is

running out. And Solomon would learn after going on this adventure, so to speak, of

trying to figure out what life was all about that there was an emptiness of philosophy

apart from God. He learned that there was emptiness in the hedonistic lifestyle. He

learning there was emptiness of work without an understanding that it is something that is

God given. He learned there was emptiness in living for himself. He would conclude

what man ought to do with his time, what man ought to do with his life was to fear God

and to enjoy Him forever, to have a respect for Him.

So what I want to do as we tap into Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 is come to this time

chart, so to speak, where we learn about time. We are going to talk about time, and we

are just going to learn what it is that we need to know if we are going to make the most of

our time. The first thing I would share is that God ordains the ticks of the clock. And

we see that in the first eight verses. The word time in the first eight verses is used many

times, like twenty-eight times. There are fourteen opposites that are used in the first eight

verses as well, where there are contrasts made. And we are to understand that everything

is under God’s sovereign and providential care. Let’s read the first eight verses of

Ecclesiastes Chapter 3.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.”

We have to figure that Solomon lived about a thousand years before Christ. And

he is going to give us not an exhaustive list, but he is going to hit on some things that we

experience during our time on earth. He says there is “A time to be born, and a time to

die,” and that is our life, right?

When I was in Ireland I spent some time in a cemetery. I get that it seems pretty

morbid, but I am kind of intrigued by cemeteries. I am also intrigued by tombstones and

the inscriptions on them. While I was in Glendalough, Ireland there was this particular

cemetery where Celtic Christianity really experienced some great traction. And I noticed

these tombstones that went back into the 1700’s. I found myself just mesmerized

thinking about it. So I started tweaking a little bit and it doesn’t take much for me to

tweak, and I just sat there and considered these tombstones. And I soon found myself

going around trying to find one that would trump this one or that one, trying to find one

that would be older still.

There were these family tombs that were there, and you could learn about Joe I

being born in say 1752 and dying in 1798. And then there might be Joe II who was born

in 1785 and dying in 1835. There might even be a Joe III that was born in 1820 who died

in 1880. It just would go on and on. And I found myself sitting there thinking about how

Joe II might have stood right there with Joe III weeping for Joe I. And I just felt the

moment of that.

And I thought about the tears that were shed at this place where I was standing. I

thought about our lives and how we basically spend all of these moments, and then it gets

compressed into basically an epitaph at the end of our lives. A statement of what our life

is all about. And I wonder if we have a statement of what we want our life to be about?

There is a time to be born and a time to die, and God has numbered our days. We don’t

know when that will be.


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

I also thought about this whole idea of myself. Right now I was born in 1973 and

there is a dash mark, but that death date is going to be filled in someday. I think about a

man I saw at a meeting this week who struggled with drugs and alcohol. I just found out

that he was found in a hotel room after an overdose. His mom went looking for him on a

Tuesday and they found him dead in a hotel room on a Wednesday. I had seen him

hanging out with his baby earlier that week and now he is gone. I didn’t know when I

saw this young man earlier in the week who was probably born in the 70’s that his end

date would soon be there. But it can happen so quickly.

We are working out our chunk of time now. We are working out this existence

that we have been given and it is a gift. Our life matters and God wants us to invest our

time wisely. He wants us to invest our treasures wisely. And He wants us to invest our

talents wisely. He wants us to be prioritized in the way that we live our lives. He wants

us to invest in those who are close to us and make a difference.

Now I don’t know what you want on your tombstone someday, but I can tell you

that I have prayed this prayer hundreds of times that I will be best kind of person that I

can be rather than what I can acquire or what I can possess. It is more important to have

substance in our hearts. My prayer for years has been, “God help me to be an authentic

man of humble integrity that passionately loves you, my family, the unchurched and the

body of Christ.”

You see, we have to figure out what we feel God is calling us to do. How are you

going to make your investments? How do you want your life to be remembered? We

need to strive to become like Jesus. We need to love God, love people and celebrate the

gospel while we live here. We need to pursue at all costs a passionate God-centered life.

That is what we want to do here at Life Fellowship.

So there is a time to be born and a time to die. I know that Andrew Carnegie, the

great philanthropist, wanted to be able to have an extended life. He said that he would

pay two hundred million dollars for ten more years. Folks, that is over fifty-four

thousand dollars a day and something like thirty-eight dollars a minute. That is how

much he wanted it. But we can’t pay for ten more years of life. Our days are numbered.

So we should be asking God to teach us to number our days as Solomon said. We should

be asking Him to teach us to maximize our lives. And we should be asking Him to teach

us to invest our time wisely and to make the most of our time.


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

Maybe you are wondering why we are doing a series called T-3? It is because we

all are going to have to figure out how we are going to live with the time we have. We

are all going to have to figure out what we are going to do with the treasures that we

have, and we are all going to have to figure out what we are going to do with our talents

to make the most of them.

I know in my own life I have been thinking about some of these things. Heather

and I have talked about this, and we have asked each other what it is that we need to do to

absolutely set our lives up so that we can make the most of it. We have had

conversations about what it might look like for us to save so that we could be in a

position by the time we are sixty years old that we would have the freedom to do what we

want to do. Maybe it could be staying in our role at Life Fellowship, or maybe it would

be something else God has in mind for us. We know we need to be setting up a fund so

that we can give extravagantly to whatever we want to give to with our life and with our

treasure. So we are having these conversations because we will be empty nesters in just

one more year.

“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up

what is planted.” Unfortunately I have to pluck up everything that I plant because I

have a brown thumb. “A time to kill, and a time to heal.” Notice it doesn’t say murder,

just a time to kill. Unfortunately in this world that we live in, because of oppressors we

end up with wars at times, which is very sad. It is a necessary evil that we live with. It

makes us look forward to the reign of King Jesus where there will be no more wars.

“A time to break down, and a time to build up.” You know God has to break us

down before we are able to be built up. Broken grain produces bread. Broken clouds

produce rain. A broken horse is fit to be run by a jockey. Broken Christians are able to

be used by God. We need to get rid of our pride. God loves a broken and contrite heart.

He does not want us to be stiff necked. He does not want us to be stubborn. He wants us

to be impressionable, teachable, humble, malleable in His hands.

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh.” Don’t you just love a good hearty laugh?

I do. I love laughing so hard that tears flow down my face. And I hate when I am

laughing about something so hard when I know deep down I shouldn’t be laughing about

this, but it is just really funny. I have had that happen before. There are some funny,

inappropriate people and I have to do my best to keep myself from losing it. I can get


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

the humor in something when I am not sure it is all that funny. I love when it is

something really clean and I can laugh about it.

You know what I laugh the most about? It is when we can just share about our

own stupidity, our own mistakes, our own accidents and our own foolishness. You see,

the thing that we are often scared to reveal the most is the thing we try to conceal because

it may make us look stupid or silly. But we need to learn to just lay it out there. We are

funny people but we often conceal all the funny things that we do because we are so

insecure. And we just need to share the dumb things that we do.

Resist the temptation to feel like you have to show yourself as this super spiritual

person, that you have it all together. Honestly we just need to talk about what it is like

when we feel judgmental. Are you ever judgmental? Some of you may be judging me

right now. ‘Where is his belt?’ Well, I still don’t have one and I know I need to buy one.

I don’t know how to tie a tie. And I don’t have a belt because I don’t often tuck shirts in.

But when I decide to dress up sometimes I just have to hope it all works.

So we just need to learn to share our hearts, folks, and to be real. If you are

experiencing some great things, that is wonderful. But don’t try to come off as being

super pious. Just be super real, super authentic. People can relate to that. People can

smell out the inauthenticity, the disingenuousness of our lives. So there is a time to

laugh.

There is also a time to weep. Maybe this is a weeping season for some of you.

Are you struggling today? Are you hurting? Are you anguishing on your insides? That

is part of this life that we go through. We can experience agony and hurt for a time. But

we have to remember this about trials. We are either heading into one, we are in one, or

we are on our way out of one. We can’t quit before the miracle happens. Don’t throw in

the towel. When you are struggling, when you are suffering, when you are agonizing,

when you are hurting, you need to learn to trust that God will see you through it.

“A time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Now there is never a time to dance for

me, folks, I can tell you that right now. I don’t dance because when I do it is not pretty.

My wife dances. We were out eating breakfast yesterday at the Metro Diner and our

waitress could bust a move. She was dancing away to Michael Jackson and then my wife

joins her and they are dancing back and forth and I am thinking, ‘Please God work in

these ladies right now.’ Now I am glad that they feel freed up, but music does not make

me want to move. I enjoy the sound of music but I don’t want to move to the sound. For


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

me if I were to start dancing it means I have had too much to drink. I would have to be

off the wagon.

“A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together.” When you

gather building materials there are some you don’t need and others you do need. “A time

to seek, and a time to lose; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a

time to keep, and a time to cast away.” Sometimes we hold on to certain relationships

but sometimes the relationships may become destructive so we need to let them go.

There are things that we might need to let go in our lives so that we can grow.

“A time to keep, and time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time

to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate.” Shouldn’t we

all hate some things? Of course it doesn’t mean people, but we should hate injustice.

We have to be careful that we don’t harp on the idea of just love, love, love or we may

start loving things that are immoral. We need to hate injustice and oppression while we

can love people who are unjust and people who are oppressive. We can hate the actions

of people without hating the person. “A time for war, and a time for peace.” God

ordains the ticks of a clock so we need to make the best use of our time. God in His

sovereignty is in control of time. He makes sense of the nonsense.

Verse 9 says, “What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business

that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything

beautiful in its time.” Everything that would work in accord with Him, everything that

would trust Him, everything that would recognize Him is beautiful in its time. We have

to be careful that we don’t draw conclusions and interpret events in the midst of our pain,

or we might interpret something as fact believing God has abandoned us, or we are

forsaken.

We need to make sure that we realize when we are going through trials. Our first

question shouldn’t be, ‘How do I get out of this?’ Rather we need to learn to ask God,

‘What can I get out of this?’ There is something to be gained in the midst of the furnace,

in the midst of the trials. If we are being honest we will realize that we grow the most

when we have been brought low, when we have suffered, when we have struggled. It is

in the letting go that we find the embrace of God. Sometimes we procrastinate with our

growth because we hold on to a relationship, or to something that God wants us to

surrender to Him. Maybe it is an idea, or some kind of self-made dream. But we have to

learn to let go.


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

And God will use our pain. He will use our hurts. He will make sense of the

nonsense in due time. In fact the Scriptures tell us this in II Corinthians Chapter 1 and

verses 3 through 5. “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the

Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that

we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which

we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings,

so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

In other words God comforts us so that we can comfort others. We go through

pain and we stay silent about it and cover it up so no one will know when God wants to

use our story. The way we stay healthy is looking to comfort others whereby we were

once aching. When others are troubled we can then be able to give them the same

comfort God has given us. We can be sure that the more we suffer for Christ, the more

God will shower us with His comfort through Christ.

Why did Christ go through everything that He did? “He was tempted in all ways

yet without sin.” It was so that He could relate to us as the great high priest. I think

about being in the ministry sometimes, and there have been times when I have thought,

‘God, I would like to not have to relate to all these things.’ And I can tell you that I

know what it is like to relate to the drug addict, and to the alcoholic who is struggling

trying to stay clean. I know what it is like to relate to the person who is overcome with

lust trying to get their heart in order and pure. I know what it is like to have doubted this

whole thing we call Christianity and the emotional torture that comes along with it.

I know what it is like to have lost loved ones that were very close. I know what it

is like to perform the funeral of a friend that took his own life because he could never get

clean. I know what it is like to struggle with hard core anxiety, hard core panic, massive

worries and fears. I know what it is like to feel insignificant, like I am not making a

difference, and to be hopelessly depressed. I know what it is like to struggle in marriage

trying to figure out how we can get out of conflict. I know what it is like to be Type A,

impatient with people. I know what it is like to struggle trying to raise kids when it is

tough. I know what it is like to stick my foot in my mouth. But you know what - through

all of that God has used these things to give me a message as a minister, so that I can

comfort others in the midst of their hurts and suffering.

Many times what we want to do when we see people in those spots is to panic.

But God has given all of us a story and we should be thankful for that. I remember as a


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

young man how I couldn’t get into the military. I failed the entrance test three times.

Talk about feeling insecure. The third time I only got a 27. I couldn’t even get into the

United States Army - that is how uneducated I was. The one thing I had going for me

was I had a good arm and I could throw a baseball.

But honestly I wasn’t even consistent with that because my anxieties would get in

the way. I was the athlete that did not know how to keep the stands in the stands. Instead

I brought everything into my moment and I felt the weight of it, worrying about so and so

being here and worrying about blowing it. I knew when a scout was watching me and I

couldn’t handle the pressure. But I can tell you that my being able to play sports was the

one thing that kept me busy and away from all of the crud I was involved with.

I was so insecure because I knew I had cheated my way through community

college. When I went to the California State University at Chico I sold my car so I would

have some money for college. Then I drank that money away. I took a student loan and I

drank that away. And within a few weeks or so I wasn’t even going to class during my

first semester. I had packed a U-Haul thinking I was going to graduate from college, but

I didn’t even get through the first few weeks because I could not control my drinking.

I had baseball tryouts and I was so hoping I could make the team because I had no

life outside of baseball that I could see. I knew I needed to stay clean because I had

tryouts on Monday. And I knew I had to get out of town for the weekend and stay clean

or I wouldn’t be ready for tryouts on Monday. I drove 3 ½ hours away to spend the

weekend, so I could avoid drinking and so I would be ready for tryouts on Monday. But I

show up at a friend’s place and got inebriated that very night.

Had I had good grades I could have probably gotten a scholarship. But I was too

unstable and I didn’t make the effort. I had hurt my back the week before the tryouts so

when I threw the ball it went over the backstop. And pitchers aren’t supposed to throw

baseballs over the backstop. I was completely humbled, and I knew in that moment that I

wasn’t going to be a baseball star, and now my life didn’t make sense. God was bringing

me to the end of myself in that moment.

I remember thinking as I took off my cleats standing at the backstop and looking

at the mound that I was kissing the game good bye. Baseball was the one thing that I

had spent so much time preparing for. I had traveled to play in Hawaii, to Arizona and

other places to play baseball, but I knew it was now over. As I stood there on that

baseball field there was total emptiness on my insides. I had no idea what I was going to


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

do with my life. I was uneducated, I was an alcoholic, I was promiscuous and I didn’t

know what I could do with my life.

But God by His grace helped me to put down the baseball and to pick up a Bible,

and I fell in love with Jesus. And before I knew it He started bringing some freedoms

into my life. My life has not been a bed of roses, there have been trials after trials, but by

His grace He showed me that He could use even me.

Quinn Smith, an author in our church said this: “He took my broken and turned it

into beautiful.” God takes broken things and makes them beautiful. Maybe someone

here today might be feeling ashamed, maybe someone here today is feeling insecure,

maybe someone here today is feeling unworthy. God can help you with those

weaknesses and make you into someone who can be used by Him. And then you can be

someone who can encourage others. We are fellow travelers. We all limp, we all

struggle, but God can use us.

I was a guy who used to stutter over his words. And I never would have thought

earlier in my life that I would be able to stand up before people and communicate truth. I

never thought that I would be able to go and earn a doctorate with high honors when I

couldn’t even pass a test to get in the military. But that is the kind of stuff that God can

do. Author Philip Yancey said it like this: “Faith means believing in advance what will

only make sense in reverse.”

So when we stand in our moment, in our mess, in our pain and in our confusion,

we don’t try to interpret life from that stance. We trust God and we move into the future

with Him. At some point we will see how He takes our broken and makes all things

beautiful in its time.

God creates in our hearts a curiosity for the future as well. In verse 11 we see that

He has put eternity into man’s hearts. “He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Also, He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has

done from the beginning to the end.” Do you want to know what caused so much of

my doubt and anxieties? It was because I was trying to figure everything out from

beginning to end. And we can’t do that. We can understand that He is the Creator of all

that we live in, but we have to learn to trust in Him and to rest in Him. God has given us

this vacuum, this void inside of us to help us to seek Him and realize that only He can

make meaning out of what is seemingly meaningless, that He can fulfill us, that there is

hope beyond the grave through Him.


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

God creates in our hearts an ability to enjoy life now, right now, in this moment.

Verse 12 says: “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and

to do good as long as they live, also that everyone should eat and drink and take

pleasure in all his toil - this is God’s gift to man.” In other words, God wants us to do

good, to be virtuous, to be moral. He wants us to enjoy life. He wants us to enjoy our

work. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have life abundantly.”

Now I have to tell you that there have been times in my life where I have been an

emotional martyr. I have thought that God just wanted me to emotionally suffer with

anxiety, worry and fear. But we are supposed to look at our anxieties, our worries and

our fears and try to find out what is causing them. I have been reflecting lately about

God’s heart for humanity’s emotional state. The Scripture teaches us the kind of

emotional state God desires for us. He doesn’t want us to be overcome with guilt. He

came in the person of Jesus to pay for all of our sins so that we wouldn’t be guilty and so

we wouldn’t feel guilty.

He also doesn’t want us to feel shame. When Adam and Eve ate from that

forbidden fruit, what did God do? He came to rescue them so that they wouldn’t feel

shame. He doesn’t want us to live feeling insecure. He came to give us some identity.

“If anyone is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation.” He doesn’t want us to be loaded

down with fear. He tells us, “Fear not for I am with you.”

He doesn’t want us to be anxious. He tells us, “Be anxious for nothing but in

everything by prayer and petition present your requests to God.” He doesn’t want us to

worry. He said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be

anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” We need to stay in the

moment, stay in the now.

God doesn’t want us living with regrets. “There is therefore now no

condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” He wants us to become like children

in our hearts toward Him. And that is what God is teaching me. He is letting me know

that I need to learn to trust Him more. Sometimes Pastor Bobby struggles trusting God

enough, and when I don’t trust Him enough I can doubt, I can feel anxious, I can feel

fearful and I start craving things that the earth has to offer. And that is when I need to

remember to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own

understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your

path.”


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

I want Life Fellowship to be the kind of church where we become like little

children in our hearts, to be teachable, to be adaptable, to be humble and impressionable.

We need to set aside our religiosity and run hard and fast after the heart of God, living in

the now, and making the most of the moments celebrating life together.

Finally, we need to remember that right now counts forever. As I have told you

before I am stirred by R. C. Sproul, the late philosopher and theologian, who said this:

“If I had to take all of life and compress it down into one phrase I would shout out to the

world, ‘right now counts forever.” Our time will be up before we know it. It is running

out. Someday my tombstone will read ‘1973 - ?’ because I will come to an end. All of

our days are numbered and we will then give an account for our lives.

Verse 14 says, “I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing

can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear

before Him. Verse 17, “I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the

wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.” We are all going to be

accountable when we stand before God for the way we have lived our lives, for the way

we used our time, for the way we used our treasure and for the way we used our talent.

We need to take our time and surrender our life to God. We need to take our treasure

and surrender it to God. We need to take our talent and use it for God’s glory.

Here are some questions for reflection as we wrap up in light of today’s passage.

Where am I wasting too much time? What are the unproductive relationships? What are

the unproductive hobbies? What are the things that I am doing that are not a good use of

my time? Where am I struggling to trust God as it relates to His timeline for my life?

Maybe you are at a backstop moment looking out at the mound of life and you

are overcome wondering how in the world God can take this mess and turn it into a

message. But that is what God loves to do. The quicker we surrender the quicker the

building process can begin.

Where am I using my time wisely? Where is it that you really feel like it is a

good use of my time? Find it and then invest in it, keep doing it with your time. Do you

sense God’s pleasure in the way you use your time? What areas of our life do we need to

reevaluate in order to better use our time? Maybe that is a good question to have with

your spouse or some of your friends at lunch today. Where do you need to reevaluate

your use of time?


of 15 pages 4/8/2018

And what about your treasure, where does your money go? What do you use it

for? And your talent, are you using it or are you burying it? Are you using it in the

church? And if you had to stand before God today and give an account for how you are

using your time, treasure and talent - do you feel ready? Now I don’t really like that

question a whole lot. I want to feel ready; I know I have been fighting to make the most

of this thing called life. It has been hard at times, it has licked me at times, but if He

came right now are we ready?

Here is today’s takeaway. Remember that life is but a mist. Make the most of it.

As James said in Chapter 4 and verse 14, “What is your life? For you are a mist that

appears for a little time and then vanishes.” Listen to me, folks, this is your life - here

today and gone tomorrow. And right now counts forever.

Paul wrote in II Corinthians Chapter 6 and verse 2: “Behold, now is the

favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” If you have been putting off giving

your life over to the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to encourage you right now to trust Him, to

give your life to Him, to surrender to Him. Tell God you want Him to take your time,

your treasure and your talent, and ask Him to help you surrender your life fully to Him.

You were born at a certain time and there is a dash right now before the end of your life.

We don’t have to regret our past, we can reflect on the past, but we need to move into the

future making the most of our time, treasure and talent for the Lord. Let’s pray.

Thank you, God, for your word. I pray that today is a sober reminder to all of us

that we are like the mist that floats through the air, and in the grand scheme in the length

of time that has already passed, we are but a drop. Help us to be present and to make the

most of our time. Help us to make out a list of what a life without regrets would look like

to us and to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the

actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew

and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases.

investing your time wisely - t3 does not equal eternity series › ... › 2018 › 05 ›...

Documents