Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, New Year’s resolutions are a common practice for a lot of us.  I’m curious how many of you have started the year by making some resolutions, maybe about losing some weight or getting in shape in a different way or getting your financial house in order.  How many of you have made some resolutions?  A lot of us do that.  It’s been my practice over the years at various times and in various ways.  I’d love to talk to all of you in about 30 days to see how you’re doing on that.  Because the reality is we all kind of start the new year making resolutions or resolve to do this or that, but we’re not very good at carrying through on those redirections and being as resolute as we need to be throughout the year.  We start the year with a bang of firm intentions, and we end the year with a whimper of sad regrets.  Right?  Isn’t that how it usually works?

0:01:20.2

It does in my life.  I look back at what I might have journaled on New Year’s Day or a couple days after or a couple days before.  And, ah, I didn’t get after this like I wanted to.  I like to get into the gym two or three times a week. And I’ve noticed in the last few days the gyms are crowded.  I go there, and I’m, like, “What are you doing here?  You’re not here during…that’s my place to work out.”  But another 30 days, and they’ll all be…you know, it’ll be back to normal.  It’s just kind of how it is.

0:01:47.1

Well, today I’m beginning a series of messages titled “I Resolve.”  I don’t know about you, but I need a little help in not losing my resolve a week or two weeks or three weeks into the year.  By the way, the word “resolve” means to come to a definite or earnest decision about something.  Are there some things in your life, maybe some things in my life that I need to come to a definitely and earnest decision about this?  Now is the time.  This is the year when finally…and you fill in the blank.  And you’re not going to lose your resolve.  By God’s grace and with His help, you’re really going to make some changes this year.

0:02:28.5

Well, don’t be offended by me saying this, but I really don’t care whether you lose that weight or get the six-pack that turned into a cooler last year, you know, get that back.  That’s not what I want to be resolute about this year.  That’s not where my heart and my intention is.  When I think about saying, “I resolve to do this or that,” my resolve falls into three categories of life- my time, my talents and gifts and the opportunities that come with them, and the treasure.  You know, I resolve to be a better steward of my time.  I resolve to be a better steward of my talents.  I resolve to be a better steward of my treasure.  Really it begins by understanding, friends, that all of life, however you categorize it, is a sacred trust.  Do you believe that.  Do you believe it firmly deep in your soul that all of life, all of my time, all of my talents, all of my treasure, it’s a sacred trust?  That’s what the word “stewardship” implies.  It’s kind of a churchy term, stewardship.  You may find it in some other realms of life, but we talk about stewardship a lot in the church.  And we categorize them in these three ways.  And I don’t know about you, but every once in a while, I need a reminder about how my time, my talents, my treasure, this is a sacred trust that God has given to me and that all of my life is that.

0:04:01.8

Jeremiah 10:23 says, “I know, Lord, that our lives are not our own.”  Have you come to that firm resolve and understanding that your life in terms of your time, your talents, and even your treasure doesn’t belong to you?  It doesn’t belong to me.  And this is why I want to say at the beginning of this series and for us collectively to say this together- I resolve to view my life going forward as a steward and not an owner.  Can you say that with me?  I resolve to view my life as a steward and not an owner.

0:04:40.5

A steward is basically a manager who has been entrusted to care for somebody else’s property, and in this case, all of life.  Jeremiah says, “I know, Lord, that our lives are not our own.”  I cannot claim title, deed and ownership to my time, my talent and my treasure.  And I’ve already messed it up right there because I said my time, my treasure and my talents.  If “my” and “mine” are what pepper your language as you talk about life, we’ve missed the point all together.  And it’s really hard as followers of Jesus Christ, who call ourselves Jesus followers and Christians and disciples of His, to make that transition from an ownership mentality to a stewardship mentality that says, “My time is not my own.  My talents are not my own.  And my treasure is not my own.  All of this is on loan to me from God.  And I’m to master this and to steward it and to care for it for His glory.”

0:05:42.5

You know, Jesus told a number of stories.  We call them parables.  And 16 of the 38 parables that are recorded in the Gospels have a stewardship theme to them.  And a story might go like this.  One of the central characters is a master, maybe a business owner who goes away for a period of time and entrusts his business to a steward, to a manager.  And one day the master comes back and calls the steward into account.

0:06:12.2

Luke 16 talks about the unrighteous steward, or the steward that squandered his master’s wealth.  And that steward was called into account.  One day the Master is coming back, friends.  And He will call us into account for the stewardship of the time, the gifts and talents that He’s given to us and, yes, even the treasure- the money that He has entrusted to us.  Of the 16 parables that had the stewardship theme, most of it is about money.  And oh, what a difficult transition that is for us to make to go from an ownership mentality—“What’s mine is mine, and I’m going to keep it.  Get your grubby hands off my time, my talents and off my money.”—to a stewardship worldview that holds things loosely and says, “God, how would You like for me to invest my time?  How would You like for me to invest my gifts and my talents?  How would You like for me to invest the treasure that You’ve entrusted to me?”  I resolve to view my life as a steward, not an owner.

0:07:14.1

Now, today I want to talk specifically about the stewardship of our time.  And let’s just begin by asking, what is time?  We ask all day long, what time is it? We ask it of our clock.  We ask it of our cell phone.  We ask it of one another.  What time is it?  A better question might be, what is time?  And you might think there is a simple answer to that question, but, boy, when you start going down the road to answering the question, what is time, it gets really complicated.  For instance, when you ask the philosopher, what is time, he’s going to circle around the Milky Way giving all kinds of philosophical answers as to what time is.  You ask the businessperson, what is time, he’ll give you some practical steps to time management.  We’ll get there in a little bit.  We’re going to get real practical in this a little bit later in the message.  You ask the scientist, what is time…For instance, if you could sit down with the late Dr. Stephen Hawking, the brilliant astrophysicist of our time, and ask him, what is time, he would pull a book off the shelf that he wrote called The History of Time.  And Stephen Hawking tried to wrap his brilliant brain around the concept of time, and he even had a difficult time doing that.  He came to the conclusion it all started with the Big Bang, and it will end with what he called the Big Crunch.  I don’t know.  What is time?

0:08:42.5

And then we can ask the theologian.  Ask the theologian, what is time?  That’s where I want to go this morning.  I want to give a biblical understanding of what time is and then talk about things that we need to resolve as it relates to the stewardship of our time.

0:09:01.1

Number one, time is a creation concept.  It’s a creation concept, not a cultural concept.  Outside of the world of theology in the Bible, a lot of people will talk about how the idea of 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 365 days in a year, that’s a cultural thing and those are arbitrary numbers that we landed upon.  Man invented the clock, right? But, no, God invented time.  We go back to Genesis, Genesis 1 and the creation story there.  And we learn that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh.  Why do we have a 7-day week?  It’s not arbitrary.  It’s built into the creation story and the created order itself.  And we read in chapter 1 and verse 5, “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” A little bit later, “There was evening and there was morning, the second day.”  And there was evening and morning, the third day.  And it repeats itself all the way through six days, and then God rested on the seventh day.  The Hebrew word for day is yom, and it literally means a six 24-hour day.  Now, I know there’s a lot of debate and discussion about that and trying to talk about evolution and creation and all that.  I can just tell you that both science and the Bible verify a six 24-hour day creation.

0:10:32.6

My point is simply this- time itself that we measure with clocks and seconds and minutes and hours and calendars and days and years and months and all that, it’s a creation concept.  The God who is eternal created time, created you and I in His image and placed us in time.  Time matters to us because we are timebound creatures.  We give a lot of attention to the turn of the calendar page this time of the year because, well, time matters.  Time flies, and “where did the time go” and all of that.  And the older you get the more sense you get that time really does fly by and it’s going fast.

0:11:16.9

Secondly, time is the rhythm of life ordained by God.  I kind of alluded to that in the Genesis account.  The 24/7/365, again, is not arbitrary.  God built this into the created order.  It’s not accident, for example, that the earth tilts on its axis, rotates and then revolves around the sun the way it does.  I’m taking you back to your life science class in grade school, right?  It takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate once on its axis, producing the rhythm of one day in nature.  It also takes approximately 365 days for the earth to make one revolution around the sun, producing the rhythm of one year and the seasons of fall, spring, winter and summer.  This is more than just life science.  This is the cadence of life.  It’s the rhythm of life by divine fiat.  By His creative force, God set forth the universe in a way that makes life possible on earth.  And built into life is the pattern and the rhythm that God ordained, that He ordained for us.

0:12:34.8

Genesis isn’t the only place where we bump into the rhythm of life.  The book of Ecclesiastes also introduces it to us.  Let’s go to Ecclesiastes 3.  In your Old Testament find the Book of Psalms.  And then to the right of that is Proverbs and then Ecclesiastes.  It’s 12 chapters.  Let’s focus on chapter 3 verses 1-8 for just moment.  Written by Solomon under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Solomon is musing about the meaning of life.  And he comes to the matter of time.  And he says in verse 3, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”  That’s his way of saying there is a rhythm to life.  And he goes on to describe that.  He says, “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; and 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; 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.”  And already some of you are tapping your toes to the old song that The Birds made famous.  “Turn, turn, turn.”  And they took these rhythmic lyrics from Ecclesiastes 3 and turned it into a bestselling, top-charting song back in the 1950s or ‘60s.  The rhythm of life ordained by God.  There is a time for this; there is a time for that.  We’ll talk later about how God has perfect timing in all things a little bit later.

0:14:30.2

But we’re asking the question, what is time?  Well, it’s a creation concept.  It is and rhythm of life ordained by God.  Thirdly, time is not eternity.  And we need to make a distinction between the two.  Time is not eternity, and there is a difference between the two.

0:14:49.5

Now, Moses understood this.  Go with me now to Psalm 90.  And I love Psalm 90, especially at this time of the year.  I return to it once a year if not often throughout the year because Psalm 90 is the one psalm in the Book of Psalm—it has 150 psalms—the one psalm that is attributed to Moses.  And Moses’s life, you know, he lived to the age of 120.  And his life could easily be broken into three sections of 40 years.  The first 40 years of his life he grew up in all the luxury and the privilege of Egypt.  Went to the finest of schools, ate the finest of foods.  Some would even suggest that he was in line to become Pharaoh of Egypt itself.  And then one day around his 40^th birthday Moses saw a Hebrew and an Egyptian fighting.  And he got into that tangle, and he struck and killed the Egyptian.  He fled into the Midian desert and was there for the next 40 years of his life.  I mean, here is this guy who had the equivalent of an ivy league education and all the privilege and opportunity that went with it.  He’s banished to the backside of the desert for 40 years now, herding sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro.

0:16:13.4

And it was at the age of 80 that the burning bush experience happened for Moses.  And the Lord said, “No, I still got plans for you,” and sent him back to Egypt.  And the “let my people go” thing with Pharaoh took place.  And finally, Moses, the great deliverer of the Hebrews and the leader of the exodus, leads them out of Egypt.  And for the next 40 years of his life he is leading this rebellious, grumbling, complaining group of Hebrews around the wilderness for 40 years, all the way up to the edge of the Promised Land.  And then it’s Joshua, after Moses’s death, that leads them into the Promised Land.

0:16:51.0

Many people believe that Moses penned Psalm 90 near the end of his life because he is very reflective on time itself.  He begins by saying, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”  He begins in history.  And then he quickly moves to creation, “Before the mountains were brought forth or you ever had formed the earth and the world.”  And then he lands in eternity, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.”  Moses is going to go on and reflect on all the years of his life and the time he has spent and comment on the brevity of life.  But he is doing this from the perspective of knowing that God is eternal.  And for him to have a real perspective on his life in time, he needs to have a perspective on eternity.  He says, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.”  And it’s hard for us as timebound creatures to get our minds around the concept of an eternal God who never had a beginning, who will never have an end, who is to infinity and beyond.  He is the eternal God.  “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.”  And Moses goes on.  Verse 10, he says, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”  I mean, he is just describing the brevity of life.

0:18:27.1

Elsewhere in the scripture James describes life like a mist.  It’s like a vapor.  Compared to eternity, we’re here and gone in such a brief time.  And I’ve discovered as I get older that time really does fly.  And the more experience you have with time and the older you get, the more it just seems like, “Wow, this goes by so fast.”  A young person, even an early person in their 20s doesn’t have that perspective.  They just seem to think that they have so much time ahead of them.  Then you reach a certain age and you (0:19:00.0) realize you’ve got less time ahead of you than you have behind you.  And some that are even down to weeks and months maybe.  And we say time flies.  And Christmas time we tell the kids it’s 25 days until Christmas, and they go, “Oh, I can’t wait that long.  It’s so long.”  And parents and grandparents are saying, “I’ve only got 25 days to do my Christmas shopping.”  Yeah, time flies.  And Moses is at the end.  He’s saying, “These 120 years have gone by so fast.”

0:19:32.7

Verse 12, he says, “So teach us, Lord, to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”  Teach us to number our days.  He’s not asking the Lord to send him the new calendar he can put upon his wall or download the new app on his iPhone or his Android so he can keep track of time.  He’s not looking for a stopwatch.  He’s looking for wisdom.  Wisdom to have (0:20:00.1) perspective on the number of days and to see it in light of eternity, where he began in verses 1-2.

0:20:09.5

So what is time?  Well, time is a creation concept.  Time is the rhythm of life ordained by God.  Time is not eternity.  Still haven’t landed on a definition yet.  The best definition I’ve ever seen or heard came from a pastor named Stephen Olford.  Olford says, “Time is a fragment of eternity given by God to man as a solemn stewardship.”  That’s really good.  That pretty much says it all.  Time is a fragment of eternity given by God to man as a solemn stewardship, a sacred trust.  And now is the time of the year when we need to reorient our thinking because, I’ll you what, time is passing.  It comes to us like the waves of the sea and just keeps coming- 24 hours in a day, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds every day.  You can’t stop it from coming.  You can’t store it up in a bank account.  You can’t manage it or manipulate it.  You can’t borrow it from somebody else to get more time.  But imagine if somebody deposited into your bank account $1440 at the beginning of every day.  But here’s the catch.  You’ve got to spend that money $1 every minute.  Use it or lose it.  Can you imagine that.  $1440 dollars every day deposited into your account.  But every minute that goes by, you lose a dollar.  Do you have a plan for spending that money?  Well, that is how time comes at us, 1,440 minutes every day. But you use it, or you lose it.

0:22:09.4

The question is, how do we resolve the stewardship of our time, this gift that God has given to us, so that we impact eternity and glorify God and accomplish all the purposes for which He has created us and placed us in time? Some say time management is the way to go.  I came out of the business world years ago.  I read so many books about time management, went to time management seminars and learned a lot from all of that.  But here is the misnomer about time management- you can’t manage time any more than you can manage the waves of the sea that just keep on coming.  The best you can do is manage yourself within time.

0:22:50.4

So time management is really self-management.  Ah, now we’ve gotten into the realm of the Holy Spirit because Galatians 5 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is self-control.  And if we’re going to manage ourselves within time and maximize the time that God has given to us—not fritter it away and waste it away—but maximize it and fulfill every purpose for which God has created us time, we need the help and the assistance of the Holy Spirit.  We need to walk by the Spirit, be filled with the Holy Spirit so that He would develop in us that spiritual fruit of self-control and all of that.

0:23:32.8

So keep that in mind even as we resolve three things about the stewardship of our time.  Are you ready for this?  I resolve to redeem the time.  To redeem the time.  Where do I get that word “redeem”?  Well, Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “See then that you are walking circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.”  Well, how do wise people walk?  “Redeeming the time.”  Redeeming the time.  Why?  Because the days are evil.  Colossians 4:5 says a similar thing.  “Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time.”

0:24:13.8

Now, a lot of people view time as a currency that we spend.  We say things like, “Well, I spend my time here.  I spend my time over here.”  No, the Bible looks at time as a commodity we must buy back because the days are evil. The evil one is doing everything he can to make us waste our time, to be bad stewards of our time, to fritter away our time because he understands time is short.  He knows that.  And he doesn’t want us to get gripped with the idea that, yes, time is short to fulfill every purpose that God has created me to fulfill here in time.  And so because the days are evil and because the opportunity to fast forward and advance the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is limited in time, we’ve got to redeem the time.  We’ve got to buy it back.

0:25:04.6

How do we do that?  How do we do that?  Now I want to get into some practical, practical steps about redeeming the time that’s going to sound a little bit like a time management seminar.  But there are some practical things that we can learn.  What’s you’re going to be maybe surprised on is that these practical steps…we’re going to find biblical roots for these and examples of these.  For example, stop procrastinating.  Stop putting off until tomorrow what needs to be done today.  Proverbs 24 says it this way- “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a robber and want like an armed man.”  Are you a sluggard who, when it’s time to get up and get after it, you pull the sheets over you?  You’re covered.  A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.  Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?  The procrastinator.

0:26:04.5

Some of you have made yourself the president of the “’round to it” club.  “One of these days I’ll get around to it.  One of these days I’ll clean out that closet.  One of these days I’ll get my yard in shape.  One of these days I’ll take off those 10 pounds.  One of these days I’ll get serious about my relationship with Jesus.  One of these days I’ll follow hard after Him and actually read my Bible every day and pray.  One of these days I’ll get around to it.”  Listen, at the start of the year you need to fire yourself from president of the “’round to it” club and stop procrastinating.  The procrastinator, the sluggard, the one who sleeps and slumbers, only fulfills a fraction of the any of the purpose for which God created him or her.

0:26:57.6

Secondly, start delegating.  Now, again, this sounds like a business principle, the fine art of delegation.  But it’s so important when it comes to redeeming the time because, again, you can’t store up time.  You can’t borrow it from somebody else.  You can’t buy more time.  Time is what you have.  You can’t manage it or manipulate it.  But through the art of delegating certain tasks and responsibilities to others so that you can focus your time over here…through the art of delegating you’ll leverage your time.  A lot of businesspeople, even pastors in ministry, they fail at this point.  Their organization will only grow as large as what they themselves can physically do.  And they’ve got all the tasks right here.  They may try to delegate to another person, and then they micromanage that person and get in the mess of everything.  And as a recovering micromanager from about 25 years ago, I know the problem that causes in your staff and so forth.  I love to delegate today.  There is a lot of stuff going around here that I know nothing about because we hire good people, gifted people, called people, pay them well, give them a job description and free them up to go do it and expect the world out of them.  Right?

0:28:26.3

Now, the art of delegating is not a business principle.  Actually, the business community learned it from the Bible.  You can go all the way back to Exodus 18.  And we run into our friend Moses again.  Moses had to learn how to delegate some responsibilities, or he could never lead nearly 2 million people out of Egypt and around the wilderness to the edge of the Promised Land.  And in Exodus 18, which is actually two chapters before he climbs Mount Sinai and comes down with the Ten Commandments…Two chapters before that here is Moses.  And he is sitting on this eat, and there are people lining up to get some time with Moses to ask him about this, to ask him about that.  You know, “Moses, what do you think about this?  Could you rule on this?  Could you give us some advice on this?”  Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, shows up, comes to visit.  And he says, “Son, come here.  You’re going to have to change the way you lead here, because this isn’t going to work.”  And Jethro, who had a very booming agricultural business…remember, Moses was on the backside of the desert herding sheep for his father-in-law for 40 years.  Jethro was a pretty wealthy guy and had a good thing going there.  Jethro had learned you’ve got to set up captains of 100, captains of 50s and captains of 10 over here.  He laid out a management structure for Moses and a way for him to delegate responsibilities.  And that’s where the principle comes from, Exodus 18.  How wise of God to drop that into the scriptures, and we’re still learning how to be good delegators.

0:30:08.3

Number three, plan your work.  The old adage is true- if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  I’m a planner.  I get my planner out.  I write things down.  Everything goes into my calendar.  Everything ministry related, personally related.  Everything has a time block.  The first thing I do is I block out my sermon preparation time, because I know if I don’t put a priority on that and I don’t block out that time and communicate to my staff when I’m in sermon preparation—unless it’s a death in the family, and it better be yours or mine—unless there is something really, really serious, I can’t be interrupted.  I plan my work.  I work my plan.  And everything is in my calendar.  I’ve learned to get a little margin in there for the unexpected things that come.

0:31:01.8

Now, there’s a way to plan even as a believer in Jesus Christ that crosses over into presumption.  We get our plans in place, we get too far down the road, and then we say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to pray about this.  Lord, will You bless my plans?”  And He says, “Well, if you had just come to Me first, I might have given you a different plan.”  That’s why James says in James 4 to the business leaders, “Don’t go into the city and say, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this and this and this, this year.’  Say, ‘If the Lord wills.’”  Deo volente is the Latin phrase.  If the Lord wills, we’ll go do this and this and this.  It kind of aligns with Proverbs 16:9- “A man plans in his heart, but the Lord orders his steps.”  That’s good balance.

0:31:46.0

Plan.  Work your plan.  Pray first, ask the Lord to download into your heart and into your mind the plan for tomorrow, the plan for next month, the plan for this year, the five-year plan for your business or your ministry.  He’s already got that figured out.  A man or woman plans in his or her heart, but the Lord directs his or her steps.  And I always leave some wiggle room for where the Lord might lead us in case I didn’t get all the plan or our team didn’t get all the plan.

0:32:22.2

Number four, work with your natural rhythms.  We’re talking about ways to redeem the time.  Why?  Because the days are evil, and the days are short.  Work with your natural rhythms.  What do I mean by that?  I’m a morning person, and I didn’t figure that out for a long time.  But I can get more done between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. than I’ll ever get done between 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.  And my family has figured this out.  My mind is mush after about 7:00 p.m. at night.  I’m a morning person.  And when I was in college, I remember I tried to keep up with all the people who would cram for tests the night before and stay up real late.  “Oh, come over to this study group.  We’re going to cram all night long for this 9:00 a.m. exam.”  And they’re up until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and by then my brain is mush.  And I walk into the exam, and I can’t even think straight.  I would have been better had I gone to bed at 9:00 and gotten up at 4:00 and studied from 4:00 to 9:00.  But I didn’t figure that out for a long time in my life.  I’m the morning person.  My wife is the night person.  She’s the night owl.  She’ll get more done between 9:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.  Me, lights out early if I’m going to be ready to go.

0:33:41.8

I see a pattern like this in scripture.  Look at Joshua.  Joshua was Moses’s successor.  And as Joshua was leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, you read the book of Joshua and just pay attention to this phrase- “And Joshua got up early in the morning.”  “And Joshua got up early in the morning.”  As they were getting ready to take the city of Jericho, “And Joshua got up early in the morning.”  I kind of get the impression Joshua was an early morning guy.  You figure out your natural rhythm—and here is the challenge—give God the best hours of your day, give Him your best thoughts.  Give Him your best thoughts.

0:34:20.9

Lastly, learn to say no.  A lot of people don’t know how to say no because they’ve never established their biblical priorities.  They don’t have any priorities in life.  And as the days and weeks and months of the year them, there is this responsibility and this demand on their time and this request over here.  And they haven’t learned their default yes or no.  Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount after a sermon about worry.  He says don’t worry about all that stuff about what you’re going to wear and what you’re going to eat and all the necessities of life.  He says don’t worry, trust God.  And then He finishes up in Matthew 6:33, and He says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”  What are all these things?  All these things you worry about.  You get your biblical priorities straight, and that starts with what matters in the kingdom of God.  You get your biblical priorities straight, learn to say no to those things that do not fulfill your priorities and the purposes for which God created you.  And you’ll be focusing on the things that, with the best investment of your time, accomplish the purpose that God has given to you.

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That’s a lot in the area of “I resolve to redeem the time.”  Secondly, I resolve to spend time with Jesus.  I resolve to spend time with Jesus.  I remember reading the work of a time management expert years ago.  And he categorized time this way.  He said we have focus time, we have free time, and we have family time.  You know, just kind of manage yourself around that- focus time, free time, family time.  Not a bad way to think about the categories of time and time management.  I added a fourth, and I put it at the top.  I call it formation time.  And I’m talking about what we call spiritual formation in the Christian life.  You might be more comfortable with the term discipleship.  But spiritual formation is giving ourselves to the kinds of spiritual disciplines in cooperation with the Holy Spirit that form us into the image of Christ.

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The apostle Paul in Galatians he says, “I am in the childbirth, as it were, until Christ is formed in you.”  And I think the analogy there is very intentional.  We know the time that it takes for a child to form in a mother’s womb.  It’s going to take time for Christ and His character to form in you and to form in me.  And that introduces us to this idea of spiritual formation.  What kind of time are you willing to resolve that you’re going to spend with God this year?  Being in church on Sunday is part of that.  That’s part of your spiritual formation and mine.  Being connected in a small group, a life group, a part of your spiritual formation.  You need to find the time to do that.  Get connected to a life group this year if you're not already connected to one.

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And then your personal time with the Lord, that’s formation time.  Now is the time.  This is the year you need to resolve to spend time with Jesus.  And this was the practice of Jesus’s life.  We don’t pull these spiritual disciplines out of thin air.  We see it in Jesus’s life too.  Mark 1:35, look at this.  “And rising very early in the morning while it was still dark Jesus departed and went out to desolate place, and there he prayed.”  Now, listen, friends, if Jesus thought it was necessary to start His day this way, to get alone with His heavenly Father and this was His practice, how much more important it is for you and me.  But some of you have not made the definite and earnest decision, the resolution to spend time with God.  Now is the time to do that.  Don’t let another year go by with a bang of firm intention ending up with a whimper of sad regrets.  And when you look back you say, “You know, I wasn’t in church very often.  I was there whenever it was convenient for us to be there, when we didn’t have ball games to go to or this to go to.  I wanted to get connected in a life group, but I never did.  I started reading through the Bible, but by the first of February I got so far behind I lost interest.”  That’s the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians and who say they go to church these days.  We lose our resolve so quickly.  I resolve to spend time with Jesus.  That formation time is at the top of my list.

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Lastly, I resolve to rest in God’s perfect timing.  And He does have perfect timing.  There are some of you who are waiting on God to do some things in your life, and you’ve been waiting for a long time.  Maybe you were waiting this time last year.  And you thought last year was the time, but you’re still waiting.  And it’s really testing your faith.  I don’t know what it is.  We could talk about a whole host of different things.  But we’ve all been in God’s waiting room before.  Here is just a reminder at this time of the year, as we turn the page on the calendar as timebound creatures and give thought to time, to by faith resolve to rest in God’s perfect timing.

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You know, Jesus had an amazing sense of the Father’s timing.  And He operated His ministry in step and in stride with the Father’s perfect timing.  John 7.  Read that chapter sometimes, and you’ll find Jesus’s earthly brothers trying to pressure Him, saying, “Now is the time, Jesus.”  They weren’t really sure about the messianic stuff, but they saw a burgeoning ministry.  And they came to Him with a marketing plan and said, “Jesus, now is the time for you to go show Yourself at the Feast of Tabernacles.”  John 7, “For not even his brothers believed in him.  Jesus said to them, ‘My time is not yet come, but your time is always.’”  Why did Jesus have the sense that now was not the time even though the momentum of the crowds…I mean even His own earthly brothers were saying, “Man, now is the time.  Go capitalize on it.”  “No, now is not the time,” Jesus said.  A little bit later in John 12:23 we have this- “And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’”  Now He is heading to Jerusalem for the Passover.  It wasn’t the time earlier.  And Jesus was in step, in stride with the Father’s timing.

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I have found over the years to get in step and in stride with that, I’ve got to do a lot of waiting, a lot of praying.  And it’s usually at time not of my choosing.  Even Christmas gives us some sense of God’s perfect timing.  Galatians 4:4 the apostle Paul is reflecting on Bethlehem.  And he says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son.”  Do you have any idea how long people had waited between Malachi and Matthew?  Four hundred years without a word from a prophet of God. All they had were promises and prophecies from 600, 700 years earlier.  Certainly now is the time.  Certainly now is the time.  Certainly in our generation God will send Messiah.  And generation after generation passed.  But in the fullness of time when God, who is eternal, looked into time and said to His Son, “Now is the time.  Go.”  And He sent the angels, and Bethlehem took place.  God has perfect timing.  And as you and I are waiting on Him in this year, we wait in faith.  We rest in Him.

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John Maxwell wrote a book many years ago called The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.  And one of the leadership laws he talks about in there is the law of timing.  I think this is really good.  It works in a lot of different places.  But he envisions four different scenarios.  The wrong action at the wrong time leads to disaster.  Unfortunately, too many of us have been there.  The right action at the wrong time, well, you’ll get some resistance.  It may be the right thing to do, but it’s the wrong time and people are resisting the idea.  I’ve been there in ministry.  Sometimes it takes some time to work through different issues and all that.  It’s the right thing to do, wrong time. Wrong action at the right time is a mistake.  You know, you don’t have the action plan down to begin with.  Maybe you go ahead of the Lord.  You didn’t let Him download His plan.  Well, the right action at the right time is success.

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Do you know who always operates in the lower right quadrant there where it’s the right action at the right time?  That’s where God operates.  And it’s not our job to pull Him into one of the other quadrants.  My plan, my time.  Or my plan, your time.  Or your time, my plan.  It’s to align our plan to His plan and let Him choose the timing of that.  Because He will always determine the right action at the right time.  And you’ll be amazed by the success of it.  So rest in that.  Trust Him.  If it isn’t coming together right now, if there’s resistance or some disaster, come back to the drawing board, get down on your knees again.  A man plans in his heart, but the Lord orders his steps- the frequency of those steps, the pace of those steps, where those steps go.  And the right action at the right time leads to the success that we all want, right?  That makes sense, doesn’t it?  Rest in faith in the Lord’s perfect timing.

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Let me finish with this little poem written by Rudyard Kipling—I love this—called God’s Minute.  

I have only just a minute,

Only sixty seconds in it.

Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.

But it’s up to me

to use it.

I must suffer if I lose it.

Give account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute,

but eternity is in it.

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That’s the perspective that we need.  That time flies.  Time is a sacred trust, and eternity is in that time.  And what we do with this sacred trust called time will impact eternity to the glory of God.  I resolve to be a better steward of the time that God has given me this year because I don’t know how much more time I’ve got.  None of us does.  Our life is but a vapor, and it’s but a mist.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Maximize that time and redeem the time.  Rest in God’s perfect timing.  Spend time with Him.  All of these kinds of things that we put into practice.

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