Good morning. As we think about our lives, our lives revolve around time. It’s all about time in our society. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn with me to Psalm 90, and since we are talking about time this morning, hurry up!
As you are turning there, imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Obviously, we would draw out every cent, we would let nothing go to waste.
Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every 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 carries over no balance from one day to the next. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against “tomorrow.” You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so that you can get the most out of it. The clock is running. Make the most of every day.
The truth is, many people today struggle with time management. For many of us, we never seem to have enough time to do everything we want to do. We always say to ourselves, “I’ll do it when I get around to it.”
But that extra time never comes in most of our lives. We feel constantly pulled in many directions at once. Others are unsure if they are spending their time effectively. It seems no matter how hard we try we never feel as though we are managing our time well. This morning I am going to give us God’s time management plan as we look at the word TIME.
I heard a story about a man who worked at a factory. One of his main jobs was to blow the factory whistle at 5:00 to indicate the workday was over. He walked to work each day and passed a jewelry store where a beautiful grandfather clock was displayed in the window. Every morning, he stopped and set his pocket watch to match the time on the grandfather clock. One morning the storeowner was out front sweeping the sidewalk and the factory worker asked him how he kept such accurate time on the grandfather clock. The jeweler said, “Oh, I set it every afternoon when the factory whistle blows at 5:00.”
People today live by the clock, because time is important to all of us. Benjamin Franklin said, “Do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.”
Many frustrated people seem to always fight the clock, habitually, as a way of life. They stay up late, then they sleep as late as they can and then rush frantically to school or work. And many times in life, we find ourselves doing too many things at the same time, thinking that we are saving time. We always seem to be in such a rush.
But as I study Jesus’ life I am amazed that He never seemed to be in a hurry. Although He was doing the most important job in history, and even though He knew He only had a few years to do it, He never ran. He made time to consider the flowers and the birds of the air. He had time to put His hands on the little children and bless them. Time was His friend. But for many of us, time is our enemy.
The Bible gives us some great insight into how time can become your friend rather than your enemy. Basically, God exists in a realm that is not bound by time or space. God doesn’t wear a Rolex or even a Timex. He doesn’t have a Day-Timer or a PDA. He is the Creator of time, and He is greater than time itself. So, in order to make time your friend, you need to totally immerse your life in God. In Psalm 90:1-4, 10,12 we read, “1”
Today, in order to understand how to get the most out of our time, we are going to use the 4 letters in the word TIME to help us learn its true importance.
T – Treasure:
God says that we should treasure time as a valuable commodity. You number your years, or at least some of you do, but God says every day is so precious that we should treasure it and number each day.
To realize the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade. To realize the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.
How valuable is an hour? Ask the businessman whose flight was delayed an hour and he missed an important business deal. How valuable is one minute? Ask the man who had the heart attack in the restaurant and an EMT happened to be sitting at the next table and CPR saved his life. How valuable is a second? Ask the person who barely missed a head on collision with an oncoming car. How valuable is a millisecond? Ask the Olympic swimmer who missed qualifying by six-tenths of a second. You see, time really is valuable, and we need to treasure it.
Treasure every moment that you have. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the “present!” You can make more money but you can’t make more time. Have you ever heard the expression, “Time is money?” Well let me tell you, it’s not true. Time is much more valuable than money. It may be hard to make more money, but it can be done. But it is totally impossible to make more time. Time is more valuable than money.
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “Time is a resource that is nonrenewable and nontransferable. You cannot store it, slow it up, hold it up, divide it up, or give it up. You can’t hoard it up or save it for a rainy day. When it’s lost it’s unrecoverable. When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.”
So, understand that you should treasure time as the most valuable asset you are given in this world. The next letter in the word TIME is:
I – Invest:
We use a lot of phrases with time that aren’t really possible. You can’t buy more time and you can’t really find more time. We speak of making time, but that’s impossible too. You can’t save time, you can only invest it.
Time is more valuable than money, but it’s like money in that it can be spent and invested. It’s different from money though, because while money can be saved, time can’t. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Forever. In the early 1970’s Jim Croce wrote a song that said, “If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do, is to save every day ‘till eternity passes away–just to spend them with you.” Now those are great lyrics, and it would be nice if we could save time, but you can’t. In fact, a few months after he wrote that song, he was tragically killed in a plane crash in Louisiana at the age of 30. So you can’t save time.
We have all kinds of time-saving appliances like microwave ovens. Guys love to take short cuts in order to “save time.” Show me some of the time you’ve saved, where is it? You can’t save it you can only spend it and invest it. At a graduation commencement at his alma mater, Wheaton College, Billy Graham said, “Time is the capital that God has given us to invest. People are the stocks in which we are to invest our time, whether they’re blue chips or penny stocks or even junk bonds.”
Another thing that we learn is that where you invest your time reveals what is most important to you. There are 168 hours in each week. The average person will spend about 56 of those hours sleeping, about 24 of those hours in eating and personal hygiene, and about 50 of those hours working or traveling to work. That means there are only about 35 hours a week of “flexible” time left over. That’s about 5 hours per day. So the question is, “Where are you investing those hours?”
If I were to follow you around and observe you for those 5 hours each day, after about 10 days, I could probably tell you what is most important in your life. You might not like it, or agree with it, but for some of you, surfing the Internet is most important to you. For others of you, watching television, or reading magazines is what’s most important. Some, even after work is over, you are still focused on work. A few will prove to have God and family as their top importance. While others will be focused on fun and recreation.
How much of that free time are you devoting to God? How much are you devoting to your family? A study of 1,500 households at the University of Michigan found that mothers working outside the home spend an average of 11 minutes a day on weekdays, and 30 minutes a day on weekends with their children not including mealtime. Fathers spend an average of 8 minutes a day on weekdays and 14 minutes a day on weekends in different activities with their children.
Have you ever heard this excuse? Some dad or mom will say, “I don’t spend much time with my family, but the little time I do spend is “quality time”.” I don’t really like that phrase, because it is most often used as an excuse for not spending much time together. “Quality time” is really a lie, because all time has the same quality. It’s like talking about “quality money.” If I offered you a hundred dollar bill, would you say, “No, it’s wrinkled. I’d rather have that new, crisp $5 because it’s of better quality.” Of course not.
And in life, we need to realize that there is no substitute for investing a large quantity of time with God, and with your family. If they are important, you’ll indicate it by the amount of time that you give to them. So we need to invest our time in worthwhile things. The next letter in the word TIME is:
M – Manage:
I remind you this morning that all the money we receive comes from God and we only manage it. The same can be true of our time. God is the creator of time, and He alone controls it.
A time management expert was teaching a seminar for executives. He placed a large, clear open-mouthed jar in front of the group. Next, he put 7 or 8 large rocks into the jar until it was full. “Is the jar full?” he asked. Everyone nodded. Then he took pebbles and filled up the jar with the small rocks until they reached the rim. “Is the jar full?”
By now, they didn’t answer. So, he poured fine sand in. “Is the jar full?” Some nodded. He proceeded to take a pitcher of water and filled up the jar again. “What’s the lesson about time management?” he asked. Hands shot up, and everyone agreed “No matter how busy you are you can always fit more things into your schedule.” “Wrong.” he replied. “The lesson is this: unless you put the big rocks in first, they never will fit in. You must figure out what the big rocks are for you.” So, I ask you that question this morning. What are the big rocks in your life? Giving time to God? Giving time to your marriage and to your children? If you don’t put those big rocks in first, someone else will fill up your jar for you and there will be no room left over for the big rocks.
Every moment in life is a gift from God that must be managed wisely. There is an entire field of study called “time management.” In almost every business in America, consultants are hired to teach busy executives how to better manage their time. Time management is a hot topic. In his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes, “Time management is a misleading concept. You can’t really manage time. You can’t delay it, speed it up, save it, or lose it. No matter what you do time keeps moving forward at the same rate. The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.”
The Bible uses another word. Instead of managing your time, it speaks of “redeeming” the time, which is an even better idea. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:15, “See then that you walk not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.”
I like the way that it says it in the NIV. Paul says, “Be very careful then, how you live, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
Emmett Smith was a great football running back, but he wasn’t the biggest, or the fastest, or the strongest. What he excelled at was running with his eyes open, and he was one of the best at seeing holes as they open and then running through them. That’s the way we should live our lives. We should be looking for every opportunity to invest time wisely, then darting through them. When an opportunity passes, it can’t be reclaimed, it is gone forever. That’s what it means to redeem the time, or to make the most of every opportunity that God gives us.
Another thing that I have learned is that if you don’t manage your time, someone else will manage it for you. You can’t save time, or even waste time, you are going to spend it somewhere and invest it in some way. If you don’t control your schedule, someone will always be happy to do it for you. Some people complain they just don’t have enough time to spend with their family. You’ve got exactly the same amount of time as everyone else; you just aren’t managing your time wisely or managing yourself wisely.
The most important time you will invest will be with God. Your relationship with God, and the tasks that He gives you to carry out are of the greatest importance of you live. Second to that, is the time that you invest in, and spend with your family. Many of you remember the song, “The Cat’s in the Cradle.”
If you are not familiar with that song, allow me to play it for you at this time. As you listen to this song, make it your prayer that this is not the way you will be with your family, and be thankful that it is not the way that God is with us. Listen to the words to this song.
“Play Cat’s In The Cradle”
Now, you’ve heard the song, but here’s the rest of the story. Harry Chapin’s wife, Sandy, actually wrote the words to that song after their son Josh was born. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. When their son was 7, Harry was performing 200 concerts a year, and Sandy asked him when he was going to take some time to be with his son. Harry promised that he would get around to it. In fact, he even promised to make some time at the end of the summer. But he never made it. That summer, a truck hit Harry’s Volkswagen bug and he was killed.
So we need to lean how to manage our time wisely. And the final letter in the word TIME is:
E – Enjoy:
The time you spend with God, and the time that you spend with your family should be enjoyable. It should be the best time of your life. Here are a couple of ways to enjoy your time.
First, say no to time robbers. There will always be something else to do. There will always be somewhere else you can be. But if you are going to make spending time with God and spending time with your family a priority you are going to have to learn the power of that little 2 letter word, “NO!”
You need to understand that when you say, “YES” to God time, and when you say “YES’ to family time, then you have already said, “NO” to everything else. But many people allow interruptions and other demands distract them from their time with God and their time with their family. What is most important to you? Is your time with God important? Is your time with family important? Then they should be enjoyed. Nobody on their deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at work.” or “I wish I had spent less time with God.” or “I wish I had spent less time with my family.”
Several years ago, Ken Griffey, Jr. was invited to the “Players Choice Awards” where he was to be awarded the player of the decade award. That’s a big deal, and that is on national television. He beat out players like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire to win this award. But when he found out when the award was to be given, he decided not to attend. He had something more important to do. His five-year-old son, Trey, was playing in his first baseball game, and Ken wasn’t going to miss it.
You need to learn to say, “NO” to some of the things that take you away from your time with God, and your time with your family.
Here’s another reason to work on enjoying your family time. Secondly, we need to learn how to say yes to happy memories. We need to make our time with God a happy memory. We need to make our time with our family happy memories as well. Your kids are only going to be with you for a few years, so you must make the most of it.
James writes in James 4:14, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
Here is an activity for you. Turn to the person next to you and say, “You don’t have very long to live!” So, when we realize that life is short, and we can never make more time, we need to make sure that we make good memories with God, and with our family.
Now, as we begin to wrap thing up this morning, a lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics. We spend 8 months of our lives opening junk mail, 2 years of our lives playing phone tag with people who are busy or who are not answering, 5 years waiting for people who are trying to do too much and are late for meetings. We have so much technology and are easily accessible, yet still not succeeding in saving time. We’re a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society. We’re chronically rushed, chronically late, and chronically exhausted.
What we need to realize is that TIME is God’s precious gift. And with it, we need to lean how to treasure our time, invest our time, manage our time, and enjoy our time.
Ecclesiastes 3:17 tells us that, “There is a time for everything…” I am so excited! I found something that I have needed for a long time. It is so great, I wish I had one for each of you. Here it is! Do you know what it is?
This as a round TUIT. I guard it with my life. Tuits are hard to come by, especially round ones. It will help me to become a much more efficient worker. For years you’ve heard people say, “I’ll do it, when I get a round tuit.” So now that I have one, I can accomplish all those important things I put aside until I got my round tuit.
We all need to get a Round TUIT, don't we? The Bible says, “There is a time for everything…” That means a time to work, and a time to play. A time to study, and a time to watch TV. A time to do nothing, and a time to spend with God and with family. A time to do what it is that God wants you to do. God expects us to make good use of our time. He doesn't want us to just fool around until we get a Round TUIT.
But, because we all have the tendency to say, “I’ll take care of that when I get around to it.” I have made enough Round Tuits for all of us to have one. As you are leaving today, I will be out in the lobby, and make sure that you get a Round Tuit. Put it in your wallet or in your purse. And the next time that you think you don’t have time to do that important thing in your life, pull out this Round Tuit and remember that we need to make the most of every opportunity that God gives us.
In closing, let me read what one webpage had to say about the Round Tuit. It said, “Tuit's are hard to come by, especially round ones. After years of searching I have finally managed to obtain a round Tuit. No longer will I have to wait to do all those tasks I have put off. So guard this one and never lose it. Don’t let anyone take it away from you. Now that you have one, there should be fantastic results. I have heard people say, “I'll be faithful to the Lord just as soon as I can get around to it.” Thankfully, it is finally here! And now that you have your very own round Tuit, many things that have been needed to be done for the Lord should finally get done.”
It goes on to say, “Have you ever said, “I'll go visit a Friend as soon as I get a round Tuit.” Or “I'll read my Bible when I get a round Tuit?” Perhaps you have used one of these: “I'll go to church or join an organization if I get a round Tuit.” “I'll help my parents or neighbors,” “I'll help the needy,” “I'll say a prayer for someone,” “I'll do a good deed,” “I'll tell a friend about God,” “I'll tell someone I love you,” “I'll visit a sick friend,” “I’ll spend more time with my family,” “all when I get a round Tuit.”
Well, these are all in the past. Great new things will be in store for you in the future. FOR NOW YOU HAVE A ROUND TUIT.”
Let’s Pray!
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