Well, that was encouraging. Amen. Reminds us, indeed, that each of us need to play the man, which has been the passion of our monthly series together.
Some months ago, we challenged ourselves and charged ourselves from 1 Timothy to discipline ourselves unto godliness, to give ourselves to the work of Christ and the will of God, like an athlete gives himself to the game. I think we’re all mourning the fact that the college football season is over. Congratulations to the Trojans. Commiserations to the Buckeyes. But as we watch those games, whether we win or lose, I think we’re all challenged that these young men leave everything on the field, none more so than Tibo himself who we watched this past week. And from what I know of him, he has as much passion for Christ as he does for the game of football, and he picked that up from his parents, who were missionaries to the Philippines, who sold everything and headed off to serve Christ in a far-flung land. His brother’s a missionary. Tibo goes on different mission trips on a regular basis. He not only has a passion for football, but he carries that passion into his life, and that’s the way it ought to be. We need to discipline ourselves unto godliness.
In fact, just recently at the [inaudible 00:01:29] breakfast, Phil Stoner was telling me after the game, the speaker of a story related to Woody Hayes, and how in one game between Ohio State and Michigan, Ohio State was running away with the game. And towards the end, with only a few minutes to go, they clinched it with another touchdown, which really put the game beyond the reach of Michigan. But to everybody’s surprise, instead of going for a field goal, Woody Hayes went for two points, and he got it. And after the game, he was being quizzed by the reporters who kind of said, “You know what? The game was beyond Michigan’s reach. Were you not rubbing their noses in the ground? Why did you go for two points?” To which Woody Hayes replied, “Because I couldn’t go for three.” And there was a passion. There was a passion and a commitment to do what he set out to do with everything he had, to leave it all on the field.
And I want to challenge us this month and next month about another area that you and I need to discipline ourselves concerning, and that’s the issue of time. I want to begin a two-part sermon this morning entitled, There Is No Time To Waste. Guys, if we’re going to play the man, there’s no time to waste. The time is short. The days are evil. The night is far spent, and you and I need to give ourselves to the will of God and the work of God like we have never done before.
So, I invite you to take your Bible and turn to Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5, and we’ll begin to look this morning and it will spill over into next month, at Ephesians 5:15-21. This is just a marvelous life-changing passage in God’s Word. Paul is writing, probably around AD 60, somewhere between AD 60 and AD 63. It’s one of his prison epistles. He’s writing to the church at Ephesus. We’re on the second half of the book where Paul applies the gospel to life, and we have a series of gospel imperatives as Paul encourages them to be imitators of God, as Paul encourages them to walk worthy of the calling that they have indeed found in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:15, “Seeing then,” or “Seeing therefore that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God.”
We’re going to begin this morning around about verse 15. “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.” Why? Because we need to redeem the time. Why do we need to redeem the time? Because the days are evil.
Thomas Chalmers was a minister in the Church of Scotland some time ago. He was not known for his godliness. In fact, it seemed in his early years he was in the ministry for what he could get out of it personally. In fact, he really had a concept that some people mistakenly consider about a minister’s life that it’s a one-day-a-week job. In fact, he said in 1805 that after the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure, but that was all going to change.
By 1811, God would transform his life, and it would come about by the death of one brother and two sisters to tuberculosis. He himself contracted consumption and was set aside, and during that time, God got a hold of his life, and he emerged in 1811 a new man with a new ministry. In fact, he began to stir things up in the Church of Scotland. He began to bring a refreshing and reforming ministry to those churches, so much so that he made some enemies along the way who didn’t let him forget what he was like in his early lazy, hazy days of ministry.
In fact, in 1825, an opponent challenged Chalmers about his own words back in 1805. Chalmers had to confess his ignorance and his arrogance, and then he repudiated those earlier convictions with these words. Listen to these words, guys. These are challenging, convicting words. He said to his opponent about those early, reckless days, “I had forgotten two magnitudes. I thought not of the littleness of time, and I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity.”
Guys, those are challenging words. How easy it is for us all, let alone Thomas Chalmers, to forget about those two great magnitudes, the brevity of life and the length of eternity. How easy it is for us to forget that we will not live forever, and yet we will live forever, that this life is but the dressing room for an endless existence, and the brevity of time and the length of eternity needs to corral our thinking and to motivate our living. We need to take the heart, the imperative of Psalm 90:12, where we read, “Lord, help me to number my days and gain a heart of wisdom,” which basically means we’ve got to make the most of our days since they are so few.
Life is so short and eternity is so long, and we have got to buy up every opportunity to live to the hilt for Jesus Christ. We must count our days and then we must make our days count. That’s what we have before us here in Ephesians 5:15-17, especially, seeing then, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Therefore, do not be unwise but understand what the will of the Lord is.
Time is the stuff that life is made of, and we have got to make something of the stuff, time itself. Or as the old preachers would put it, “Only one life to live, ’twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Jesus will last.” If we’re going to play the man, there’s no time to waste. And in the context of our series, disciplining ourselves unto godliness will involve, invariably, the management of our time. Think about it. Godliness is active and progressive, and it is the result of an investment of time in spiritual disciplines. You cannot become something for God without giving yourself to it, and you cannot give yourself to it without allotting the time for it. Face the facts, guys. We cannot have a disciplined spiritual life without redeeming the time with kingdom passions and kingdom purposes. Our lives may be short in the light of eternity, but they can be significant for eternity if we’ll do what’s most important with the time we have.
That is Paul’s exhortation here to the Ephesians, and it’s an exhortation, by the way, fleshed out in the life of the Lord Jesus. Think about Christ for a few moments by way of introduction. Was his not a short life? He ended his days on Earth at the age 33. It was a short life but it was a significant life. It wasn’t a long life but it was a full life. In fact, Christ had so perfectly ordered his moments during those 33 years and arranged his days that when he ended his Earthly existence, he was able to pray to the Father in John 17:4, what? “I have glorified you on the Earth. I have finished the work which you give me to do.”
Guys, that’s challenging. God the Father gave God the Son two things. He gave him the gift of time and he gave him a work to do during that time. And the Lord Jesus Christ wonderfully and wisely completed the work given to him in the time given to him, and that’s the challenge of the Lord’s life to us. Will we do the work of God in the time that God gives us?
Now, if you think about that, that doesn’t mean that Christ did everything he could have done, right? He forgave one prostitute, but when he left the Earth, there were plenty of prostitutes plying their trade. He healed the sick, he raised the dead, but many went unhealed and many remained dead, which tells me he didn’t do all that he could have done, but he did all that God had sent him to do, and that’s how you take a short life and fill it. It’s not that you can do everything, but you must do those things that are a priority to God and have become a priority to you.
Can I put it like this? For Jesus to fill his life to fullness, although short, for him to do that necessarily involved the prioritizing of his time and the limiting of his involvement. Christ did not do all that he could have done, but he did do all that he had been sent to do. That’s why it’s important to note in his words, “I have glorified you on the Earth. I have finished the work which you gave me to do.”
Jesus didn’t zigzag his way to the cross. According to John 17:1, he was governed by the hour of his death from the moment of his birth. When you go to John 17:1, Jesus begins that prayer to the Father with these words, “The hour has now come.” And if you read the Gospel of John, you’ll find that the late hour is referred to on a number of occasions, that Jesus didn’t do certain things and go certain places, because he said, “The hour is not yet come.” We read in Luke’s Gospel, 9:51, “that he set his face as a flint to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus had made up his mind what the will of God was for him. He limited his involvement, he redeemed his time, and in a short life but a full life, he accomplished the will of God, and I want to be challenged by that. At the beginning of 2009, I want to challenge you by that. He redeemed the time and was able to redeem the world. He didn’t zigzag his way to the cross.
There’s an old story of the farmer who went out hunting with his hound dog. When the farmer returned, he was still fresh, but the old pooch flopped down on the hearth of the fire, exhausted. Someone asked what was wrong. The old farmer said, “Well, it wasn’t the walking. We only covered 10 miles, but there wasn’t an open gate he didn’t go through. There wasn’t a field he didn’t examine. There wasn’t a cat or a rabbit he didn’t chase. There wasn’t another dog he didn’t bark at. He must have gone 50 miles to my 10. And it wasn’t the path we took, it was the zigzagging.”
Guys, some of us are exhausted because we’re zigzagging our way through life and missing the boat. And Paul wants to challenge us, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time.” Study the life of the Lord Jesus and you’ll find out that he was never in a hurry. He was always determined, he was always deliberate, but he was never frazzled. He was never in a hurry. He never allowed himself to be harassed. How is that possible? You’d think that the tick of the clock would’ve sent the Lord Jesus Christ crazy since he knew he wasn’t going to live very long. How is it possible for him to live so deliberately?
Well, Christ never allowed the urgent things to crowd out the important. We do. Christ lived according to predetermined priorities. We don’t. Not everybody’s emergency was his emergency. He wasn’t just busy. He was busy with the Father’s business, which involved time away from people so that he could hear the Father’s voice. Christ redeemed the time by doing the Father’s will in accomplishing so great a salvation for us. And that’s the challenge, and it is a challenge, because I hear it all the time, and I’m sure sometimes I even utter it myself, “Oh, there’s just not enough time.” Have you said that recently? That is not a true statement. There is enough time. Jesus Christ had enough time to accomplish God’s will. I believe you and I have enough time to accomplish God’s will.
I’ll give you two verses to follow up on, but in Ephesians 2:10, we’re told that God has prepared certain works for you and I to do. Okay? Ephesians 2:10, what do we read? “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” God has certain things that he wants us to do, certain accomplishments that he wants us to achieve. The question is, can we get it done in our lifetime? Well, if we turn to Psalm 139:16, I want you to see something. Here’s what the psalmist said, “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they were all written and the days allotted, fashioned, prepared for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
Put those two verses together. Before you and I were born, certain works God planned for us. And before you and I were born, the very length of our days was decided. Now, unless God’s playing some kind of game with us, I assume from that that he has given enough days to do those works. Certainly true of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was able to say, was he not, to Timothy, his protégé, “I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” And in the verse before that he says to Timothy, “Fulfill the ministry.” And I think what Paul was saying to his young protégé is, “You fulfill the ministry. I was able to fulfill mine.”
Oh, my friends, God has given us enough days to do what he has called us to do. The question is, are we walking circumspectly? The question is, are we redeeming the time? The question is, have we got a foggiest idea of what the will of God is for us?
And that’s why I want to spend this morning and next week looking at this critical passage, because the implication of what we have said, just by way of introduction, is this, if you and I fail to reach our potential, if you and I fail to fulfill the purpose of God in our lives, it’s not because we didn’t have enough time. It’s because we didn’t use the time we had wisely. It’s because we added our will to God’s will. It’s because we said “Yes” to things we should have said “No” to. It’s because we fail to rest and allow our souls to catch up with our bodies. It’s because we get up in the morning without preset priorities, and we allow other people and other things to lead us around all day long. We’re like the man who jumps on his horse and rides off in all directions. There is time to do all that God has called us to do if we’ll redeem the time and understand what His will is.
Well, let’s begin this morning. There’s three things in this text I want to see. We’re only going to cover one of them. We see that Paul urges them to be perceptive in verse 15, “See then that you walk circumspectly.” He then encourages them to be preemptive in verse 16, “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” To redeem means to buy back. And then he encourages them to be prescriptive. In verse 17 through 21, he encourages them to live according to God’s prescribed will, to understand it, to undertake it. And if we have time next time, we’ll look at the fact that one of the ways in which we fulfill God’s will is to be filled by the Spirit. God’s will is that you and I live every day under the control of the Holy Spirit. That’s how we accomplish God’s will. That’s how we understand God’s will, through the filling and insight and work and ministry of the Holy Spirit.
So, we’re going to look at this text. We’re going to see that Paul tells us that we can number our days by redeeming the time. Let’s look first of all at be perceptive, verse 15. This is part of a chain of gospel imperatives. This is the third, therefore, in chapter five alone, look at 5:1, “Therefore, in the light of all that Christ is to you and has become to you in redemption,” going back to chapters 1, 2, and 3, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.” Look at verse 7, “Therefore do not be partakers with them,” speaking of the sons of disobedience, speaking of a rebellious world. And then in verse 15, “See then,” the word then can be translated therefore. In fact, it is in the Greek. “See therefore that you walk circumspectly.”
Paul is laying down the law for these believers. He’s encouraging them not to play the fool. “Therefore walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.” This is the second half of this letter. Paul has moved from doctrine to duty. Paul has moved from understanding what the gospel is to understanding what the gospel does, and so his concern in chapters 4, 5, and 6 is about their conduct. That’s where chapter 4 begins. Look at chapter 4:1, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.” The word walk worthy, or the idea of walk, is conduct. You see, they had walked once according to the course of this world. Chapter 2, in verse 2, he says this, “In which you once walked according to the course of this world.” They once acted impulsively according to their sinful desires, in the impulses of their flesh.
But Christ got a hold of them. A new principle laid hold of them. A new power was invested in them, and therefore those who have experienced Christ, Paul expects to live a Christian experience. They’re to live in a certain way. They’re to be marked by certain behavior and certain belief. That’s why the early Christians were called, in Acts 9:2, “those of the Way.” They lived a certain way. What was that way? He said of himself, “I am the way.” Those who’ve experienced Christ will live a Christian experience. That’s what’s going on here, and we’re picking up one of those imperatives, and what is the imperative in verse 15? Don’t be a fool. Be wise. Here, then, Paul emphasizes that they were to live in such a manner that they would be characterized not as fools, but as wise.
How would you be categorized this morning in the way you act, the investment of your time, in what you give your heart and soul to? Paul says, “I hope you’d be categorized as a wise man, not a fool.” This is just one of a number of contrasts here in chapter 5. Paul loves his contrasts. They begin up in verse 8, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” There’s a contrast between darkness and light. Here’s another contrast here in verse 15, between the fool and the wise. There’ll be another contrast in verse 18 between those who are controlled by wine and those who are under the influence of the Spirit.
So, Paul sets up this contrast between the fool and the wise man, and the Christian ought to be marked by wisdom. Who is the fool, and who is the wise man? Well, the fool is the kind of person who lives with disregard to God’s lordship and life, okay? The Bible tells us, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” He acts recklessly. He acts with total disregard and abandonment, without any conscience or thought about his final accountability to God.
And therefore, since there’s an absence of God and the mind of God displayed in the law of God, then he becomes wise in his own eyes. He makes up his own rules. He lives according to his own dictates, not according to God’s Word. And that’s what the book of Proverbs tells him, and the Psalms tells, “The fool has said in his own heart, ‘There is no God.'” The fool is wise in his own eyes. Self forms the circumference of his thinking, and the Earth constitutes the horizon of his living. He’s earthbound and he’s hellbound. That’s the fool.
What’s the wise man? Well, the wise man is the kind of person that, out of fear of God, out of recognition that all life relates to God, and therefore has moral consequences, since God is holy, the wise man is the kind of person that out of fear for God anticipates his every action and its consequences in the light of eternity and moral excellence. The fear of God, says Proverbs 1:7, “is the beginning of wisdom.” “He acknowledges God in all his ways,” Proverbs 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
The wise man is the man who finds reality in Christ, because in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom. Christ is the divine logos, the divine thought. He is the mind of God revealed in flesh. He’s an exact representation of God. The wise man finds reality in Christ and builds his life upon the foundation of God’s Word. Jesus said, didn’t he, in Matthew 7: 24-25, “The wise man is the man who builds his house on the rock, and the wise man is therefore the man who builds his life on the solid rock of God’s eternal unchanging Word.” Heaven and Earth will pass away but it won’t. So, that’s the point.
What’s the point? The point is that the Christian is no longer haplessly walking into the buzzsaw of God’s wrath like a fool without Christ, stumbling in the darkness. No, rather, the Christian now has “awakened out of his sleep.” Verse 14. He’s come out of the darkness into the light and he’s taking deliberate steps in the light of the knowledge of Christ and Christian truth, and he’s making his life count for eternity by buying up every opportunity to further God’s will on Earth. That’s where we’re at here in this verse. That’s the context, that’s the surrounding emphasis of Paul, and that’s why he comes now to say, “Here, see then that you walk circumspectly.” Wise man walk circumspectly. Those who walk in the light walk circumspectly. Those who have awakened from sleep and are alive in Christ, they walk circumspectly.
And I want to spend a few minutes just digging into this word. Paul wants these men to walk wisely before God and before men. A Christian is not to go around in circles. He’s deliberately and decidedly to walk in the light as God is in the light. The Christian is to take special care about their conduct. That’s basically the meaning of this text. The Greek word is akribos. It’s translated over in Matthew 2:8 of Herod’s telling the wise man to look carefully for the child, to look diligently for the child. It’s used in Luke 1:3 of Theophilus’ treatise of the gospel in the Lucian account, and how he came to understand the message of Jesus Christ perfectly, intently, deliberately.
It’s a word that speaks of care and attention and strictness. It carries the idea of a strict adherence to a standard. We might put it like this, it means toeing the line. See then that you toe the line, and don’t act like a fool, but be wise. It means being serious about your Christian life, giving due concern to the things of God.
Just recently I picked up, for a couple of bucks, a little commentary on Ephesians by Lewis Talbot, founder of Talbot School of Theology, which is attached to this day to Biola here in our community. And in it he renders circumspectly to pick the way. It’s this idea of being careful and deliberate and choosing your steps carefully. He says this, “Circumspectly means to pick the way, to be careful how we walk, as though we were walking on a ground filled with broken bottles.” You’d pick your way through that very gingerly, wouldn’t you?
In fact, it reminded me often of how I saw out the backyard of my grandmother’s home in Belfast the top of her walls. They were embedded with broken glass as a kind of extra means of security. And often you’d see the cats in the neighborhood walking along the tops of the walls, and gingerly stepping in between the glass. That’s the picture. See then that you walk carefully, circumspectly. Think about your next step. Pray about your next action. Wonder about what you ought to be doing next with weightiness.
Bottom line, guys, as we head to a close, this word and this thought carries the idea of paying close attention to what you’re doing, of being picky and precise about your relationship with God. It bothers me that the church is infected with this kind of laissez-faire idea of the Christian life. Guys, we need to graft the strictness of it, the weightiness of it. We can’t forget the two magnitudes, the brevity of life, the length of eternity, the judgment. You and I have got to take our walk with God seriously. God gave everything in giving us Christ, and we must give Him everything back. We must conduct ourselves with strict conformity to His will and to His Word. Everything worth doing is worth doing well, and if that’s true of many things, how much more true is it of the Christian life? The one thing that truly counts. If we’re not deliberate, we’ll drift.
And that’s my challenge in closing this morning. If we’re not deliberate about our Christian life, we’ll drift. That’s why Paul says, “Hey, wake up.” He says, “No, this is no time for sleepwalking in the Christian life.” Verse 14, “See therefore that you walk circumspectly.” You’ve got to buy up the time. You’ve got to use your days well. The days are evil. You only get one shot at discovering and doing God’s will, and according to John, “This world is passing away, and he who abides is the one who does the will of God,” 1 John 2:17.
Is there anything more serious than that? Can I be speaking to you this morning on something better than this, something more important than this? No. This is an imperative that needs to grab us. The health of our souls and the holiness of our lives require constant attention. We must take pains over our sanctification. We need to give attention to our prayer lives, guys.
James had to remind some Christians that they lacked things because they failed to pray, and he had to remind others that they lacked things because they misused prayer when they prayed. James 4:1-3. We need to give attention to an increasing study of God’s Word. Peter, in his swan song to a number of churches in Asia, challenges them to add to their faith knowledge, which is to be found in the sure word of holy scripture. Read about it in 1 Peter 1-5. In fact, he says, “Give diligence to your calling and election.” “Don’t be dilly-dallying,” he says. Don’t dither. “See then that you walk circumspectly.” Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and on and on it goes, so that you don’t fall short of the grace of God. Be diligent.
We’ve got to give attention to our commitment to the local church. The writer to the Hebrews needed to remind some Jewish Christians with a kick in the pants that they must not forsake the assembling of their selves together. The local church is like an electric socket that we plug our Christian life into. We benefit from the electricity of good teaching and heartfelt worship and Christian fellowship, and the Hebrews were falling away because they had stopped attending the church. And they needed to be more diligent about that, so much the more as they saw the day of his return drawing near, Hebrews 10:24-25. And we need to give attention to our service and the deployment and employment of our spiritual gifts, okay?
Ephesians 2:10, we quoted earlier, God has got certain works for us to do. There are works that we’ve all got to do, and then there are certain works that some of us have got to do, and they’re pre-planned. And God has gifted us both physically and spiritually to that end, and you and I have got to understand what the will of God is and do it, because the days are evil, and you better be redeeming the time.
Paul had to say that to young Timothy, a young pastor who was kind of muddling his way through the ministry, and he has to write to say, “Hey, look, you’re my son in the faith. I love you and I’m about to give you a slapping.” In chapter 1 of his secondary, he says, “You need to stir up the gift that was given to you by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, the body of elders.” The word to stir up is the image of a fire that’s dying. It needs to be fanned, given oxygen.
Oh, guys, A.W. Tozer said, “As with life, so with the Christian walk, it all tends to wilderness if it goes uncultivated.” You don’t cultivate your garden, it’ll be overgrown by weeds. You don’t take care of your body, it’ll begin to vegetate and degenerate. So much so with the Christian life. Nothing happens in the Christian life by chance, and that’s why Paul says, “See then that you walk circumspectly,” diligently, strictly. Take these things with the seriousness that they deserve, because the clock is winding down. The night is far spent. It’s time to waken up, redeem the time, understand the will of God, and do it.
Here’s a closing story. I don’t want to forget this story for a long time. I just came across it recently. I was reading something of the life of Charles Simeon. I was intrigued to learn that this Cambridge preacher and professor had mentored that wonderful missionary, Henry Martyn, who for a time was at Cambridge himself. Martyn was a brilliant student with a bright academic future ahead of him. He enjoyed glittering accolades from his peers and professors, yet to everybody’s surprise, he gave up a very comfortable life. He gave up a very bright future and took a little church, a little non-conformist, evangelical, unfashionable church in England. In fact, he wasn’t there too long when at the age of 24, to everybody’s surprise again, he packed his bags and headed to India to be a missionary.
His life story’s worth reading, guys. He wasn’t there very long when his health began to deteriorate. In fact, it took him a year to get there, and he was no sooner there when he began to fail. In fact, he died seven years later at the unholy age of 31, seven years. But his short life, like Christ, was a full life. During those seven short years, he managed to produce translations of the New Testament in Urdu, Arabic, and Persian, translation work that other missionaries would build on for years to come. Many would come to Christ through the work of Martyn, but while he was there, while he was alive, he only saw one convert in seven years, but he stayed in the trenches for the glory of God.
Here’s the interesting part of his life story, and you’ll read about it when you read the life story of Charles Simeon, his mentor at Cambridge. Two days before Henry Martyn died, a portrait of Henry Martyn was sent to his old professor, and he hung it proudly above the mantelpiece of his fire. And then he received the devastating news some time later that the young man had perished. It is said that for many years, looking at that picture, he would say to his guests, and I quote, “See that blessed man? No one looks at me as he does. He never takes his eyes off me. He seems always to be saying, ‘Your years are short. Be serious. Be earnest. Don’t trifle, don’t trifle.'”
Guys, I’m capable of trifling, capable of wasting time, capable of saying things, saying “Yes” to things I should say “No” to, of adding my will to God’s will and not accomplishing all that God has called me to be. And it’s the same for you. One life to live, ’twill soon be past. Only what’s truly done for Jesus will last. Don’t trifle, don’t trifle. See then that you walk carefully.
Let’s pray. Oh God, this morning we pray for an inrush of eternal understanding. Help us to see this Earth and this planet and time and space as but an island surrounded by an ocean of eternity, and someday that ocean will engulf this planet. As the old hymn writers put it, “Time will be no more, when the morning breaks, eternal, bright and fair.” Oh God, help us not to be fiddling while hell is burning and heaven is beckoning.
Oh God, this year may we as men be serious, deliberate, careful about our walk with you. Oh God, help us to watch what we watch. Help us to enjoy leisure time, but help us not to become lazy. Help us to be careful about the choices we make, less in doing many good things we fail to do the best of things. Oh God, help us to redeem the time, because the days are evil and the time is short. Help us to be challenged by the Lord Jesus, who was able to say, “I have finished the work which you give me to do.” God, it’s not the duration of our lives, it’s the donation of our lives that really matters. God help us, as Jim Elliot said, “to be all there wherever we are, and to live to the hilt what we perceive to be the will of God for our lives.” And everybody said “Amen.”