Dr. Ron Sumners
January 25, 2009
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 deletes whatever part of your balance you failed to use during that day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!
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 that you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance to tomorrow. It allows no overdraft. Each day opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use today’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 as to get the utmost in health, happiness and success. The clock is running. Make the most of today!
I heard a story about a man who worked at a factory. One of his jobs was to blow the factory whistle at 5:00 to indicate that the work day 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 man said, “Oh, I set it every afternoon when the factory whistle blows at 5:00.”
People 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, and then they sleep late and then rush frantically to work or school, gulping down an unhealthy breakfast in the car, applying their make-up, or using a razor at the stop light, talking on their cell phone, all at the same time.
As I study the life of Jesus I am amazed that He never seemed to be in a hurry. Although He was doing the most important job in the world (redeeming the world), and although He knew that He had just a few years to do it, He never ran or hurried. He took time to consider the flowers and the birds of the air. He had time to put His hands on little children and bless them. Time was too precious to squander and miss people along the way. Time was His servant; not the other way around!
The Bible gives us some great insights into how time can become your friend rather than your enemy. God exists in a realm that is not bound by space or time. 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. So, the first step in making time my friend, is to totally immerse yourself in God
READ PSALM 90: 1-4, 10 & 12
Let’s use the four letters in the word TIME to help us learn its importance.
T = TREASURE
God says that we should value time as a valuable commodity. You number your years, but God says that every day is precious. We should treasure it!
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 is delayed an hour and he misses an important business meeting that could make or break his year! How valuable is a minute? Ask the man who has had a heart attack in a restaurant and an EMT happened to be sitting at the next table and gave immediate CPR, saving the man’s life. How valuable is a second? Ask the person who barely missed a head-on collision with another car, but swerved at the last second. How valuable is a millisecond? Ask the Olympic swimmer who missed the Gold metal by six-one hundredths of a second. Time really is valuable. Learn what that can mean for your family.
Treasure every moment that you have with them. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift… that is why we call it the “present!” I heard someone say, “Yesterday is a cancelled check and tomorrow is a promissory note. The only thing we have of value is today!” You can make more money, but you can’t make more time.
Have you ever heard the expression, “Time is money?” 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. A.W. Tozer 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 or save it for a rainy day. When it is lost it is unrecoverable. If you kill time it cannot be resurrected.”
So, understand that you should treasure time as the most valuable asset you are given in this world.
The next letter is “I”. That stands for INVEST.
We use a lot of phrases about time that aren’t really possible. You can’t buy more time and you cannot save time. We speak of making time do certain things. That is not possible. We can change our priorities but we cannot create more time. If you don’t have the time to do what the Lord wants for you to do – change your priorities.
Time is more valuable than money, but it is like money in that it can be spent and invested. It’s different from money. 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, I’d save every day ‘till eternity passes away – just to spend them with you.” Those are great lyrics and it would be nice if we could save special moments, but you can’t. In fact, just a few months after he wrote that song, he was killed in a plane crash at the age of thirty. You can’t save time!
We have all kinds of time-saving appliances… like micro-wave ovens and steam washing machines. People love to take short-cuts in order to “save time.” Show me some of the time you have saved! Where is it? There are no rollover minutes in real time.
Billy Graham spoke at a graduation service at Wheaton College and said, “Time is the capital that God has given us to invest.” People are the stocks we invest our time in. Some are “blue chip” and some are junk bonds.
Where you invest your time reveals what is most important to you. There are 168 hours in every week. The average person will spend 56 of those hours sleeping. About 24 of those hours are spent with eating and personal hygiene (bathing, brushing teeth, etc.) 50 hours are spent working and traveling to work. That means that there are only 38 hours a week left for discretionary time. That is about 5.4 hours a day. Where are you investing your day?
If I were to follow you around and observe you for those 5.4 hours, after about 10 days, I could tell you what the most important thing in your life is.
For some of you surfing the web or talking and looking at “My Space” or “Face Book” would take at least a couple of those hours every day. For others of you watching television or DVD’s is a priority.
How much of your discretionary time are you devoting to the Lord? A study of 1,500 households found mothers, working outside the home, spend an average of 11 minutes on weekdays and 30 minutes on weekends with their children, not including meal time. Fathers spent an average of 8 minutes a day on weekdays and 14 minutes a day on the weekend with their family.
Have you ever heard this? “I know that I don’t spend much time with my family, but the little time I spend with them is quality time.” I don’t care for that excuse, that’s all it is: an excuse for not spending time with the family. Quality time is a misnomer, because all time has the same quality!
Consider this past second; was it any more important than the second before? That is as foolish as talking about the quality of money. If I offered you a hundred dollar bill that was tattered and old, would you receive it? Would you be concerned about the quality of the bill? No! It will spend just as well as a brand new bill. I will take all the tattered, old hundred dollar bills that you are willing to give me. There is no substitute for investing large blocks of time with your children and spouse. That investment will produce the greatest dividends down the line.
The third letter in the word Time is “M”.
We are all to manage the time that God has given us. That is true of our money also. God is the creator of time and He 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 seven large rocks into the jar until it was full. “Is the jar full?” he asked. Everyone nodded “yes”. Then he took gravel and poured it in until the jar was full. “Is it full!” he asked. Some were afraid to answer at this point. He then poured sand through the rocks and gravel until the jar was full. “Is the jar full?” he asked again. He then took water and filled the jar to the brim. He asked, “What is the lesson about time management for the jar?” One man said, “No matter how busy you are you can still cram something else into your schedule.” “Wrong!” said the leader. The lesson is: unless you put the big rocks in first, they will never fit. You must figure out what the big rocks are for you and take care of them first.
If you don’t put the big rocks in first, someone else will fill up your jar for you.
Every moment is a gift of time from God and it must be managed wisely. There is an entire field of study called “time management.” Stephen Covey writes in his popular book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, “Time management is a misleading concept. You really can’t 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 about “redeeming the time.” Paul writes, “See that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:14-15)
The phrase “walk circumspectly” means to be constantly looking around to make the most of every opportunity. Emmett Smith was a great running back with the University of Florida and then the Dallas Cowboys. He was not the biggest or the fastest or the strongest. What he excelled at was running with his eyes open. He immediately recognized a hole and darted through it. That is the way that we should live – with our eyes open; seizing the opportune time when God sets one before us. When an opportunity passes, it cannot be reclaimed. You can’t save time, or even waste time. You are going to spend it somewhere and with someone. If you do not control your schedule, someone will be happy to do it for you.
The most important time you will ever spend, after the time you spend with God, is the time you spend with your family. Many of you remember the song by Harry Chapin, “The Cat’s in the Cradle.”
Play DVD
Did you know that Harry Chapin’s wife, Sandy, actually wrote the words to that song after their first son, Josh, was born? It became a self-fulfilling prophesy. When their son was 7, Harry was performing 200 concerts a year and Sandy asked when he was going to take some time to spend with his son. Harry promised to take some time at the end of the summer. He never made it. That summer, a truck hit Harry’s VW bug and he was killed. I was a big Harry Chapin fan and his death was a real loss to me.
The final letter is “E” = Enjoy.
The time that you spend with friends and family should be enjoyable. It should be the best time of your life. Since that is true: say NO to family time robbers.
There will always be something else to do. There will always be somewhere else you could be, but if you are going to make spending time with your family a priority, you are going to have to learn the power of that little word – NO! When you say “Yes” to family, you have also said “No” to everything else. Moms and Dads still allow interruptions that steal time. A thousand years from now, what is going to be more important, spending time with your family, or watching a football game on television. No one, on their deathbed (and I have been there many times in the last 40 years), has said, “I wish I had spent more time at work.”
Several years ago, baseball player 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! He beat out many players including Barry Bonds, the all-time home run champion. When he found out when the award was to be given, he declined to attend. He had something more important to do. His five-year-old, Trey, was playing in his first T-ball game, and Ken was not going to miss it. I’ve always liked Ken Griffey Jr. as a player. He seems to be just as dedicated a father.
You need to say “no” to the time robbers. You also need to say “yes” to happy memories. James 4:14 tells us, “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.”
Life is short. So, make some happy memories. Treasure time, invest time, manage your time and enjoy the time that God gives you on this earth. We don’t get “Do-overs.” Take the great gift of time and invest it for the glory of God.
Comments