In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of making a choice regarding one's eternal existence. He warns against delaying the decision to accept Jesus Christ as personal Savior, as time is limited and uncertain. The preacher reminds the audience that everyone will be held accountable for how they have lived their lives and how they have spent their time. The sermon concludes with the reminder that the ultimate decision that determines one's eternal destination is what a person does with Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

If you knew that you only had six months to live, six months to live, that's about 24 weeks and only about 180 days, how would you spend your time if you knew for absolutely sure you only had six months? More than likely, every week would be more important. Every day would be far more important than today. In fact, you'd begin to count the minutes after a while because you knew that time was running out, as we say, and you only had a few weeks, a few days, and now maybe a few hours to live. How would you live your life? Well, none of us know how long we have to live and so the question is, what are we doing with our life now? Whatever how much time we have, what are we doing with it? Are you spending it? Are you wasting it? Are you investing it? Well, whatever time we have, that is whatever we plan to do, it has to be done within the framework of some time. And so I want to ask you, what are you doing with your life? And what are you living for? And what are you trying to accomplish and achieve in life? Are you just sort of responding and reacting to life or have you chosen to live your life? Well, I want to talk about this whole matter of time because our life is our time and our time is our life. And Paul gives us a very wise admonition in the fifth chapter of Ephesians, if you'll turn there for a moment. The fifth chapter of Ephesians and beginning in the 15th verse, the 15th, 16th, 17th verses, he reminds us of something that you and I need to be reminded of often, lest we allow our life, our time to drift and the days go by and the weeks go by and the months and the years. And one of these days you ask yourself the question, where is my life and where has it all gone? He says in verse 15, therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And Paul is saying among many things in this passage that all of us fall into one of two categories. Those who spend their time wisely, those who spend their time foolishly, those who spend their time wisely are wise men. Those who spend their time foolishly are foolish men or foolish women. He says, be careful how you walk. That is, be careful how you live. He says, making the most of your time or of your life because our time is our life and our life is our time. Now, as you think about your time, all of us like to think in terms of living a very, very long time, but that's not always the case. And so many people make plans years and years and years and they say, well, now one of these days when I retire, here's what I'm going to be and never live to retire. And so they work and they save and they plan and they store it all up so that when they're able to quit their work, they'll be able just to live a life of ease and pleasure and relax. And they never are able to do that because they don't live that long. What is it that you're living for? That is, what is it that you're investing your time in because your life is your time and your time is your life? Well, all of us are continuously being reminded of it. For example, most of us wake up with a time machine. We call a clock. The thing goes off and makes a noise. We wake up. We wear a time piece on our wrist. It's in our automobile. When you listen to the radio, they continue to remind you of what time it is. You're watching the television. They remind you of what time it is. We're always conscious and being reminded of time. You're driving down the expressway in some digital form over on the, on the billboard. There's something to remind us of the temperature and the time. And you check your clock or your watch. You have to be at work on time. Many people are paid by time. It's time, time, time, time, time. And we all seem to be caught in this pressure of time. How do we spend it? How do we invest it? And we say, how do we squeeze the most out of every minute? And some people are trying to squeeze more out of it than it's in, than there is in it. And so we're always constantly being reminded of it. But if somebody were to ask you, well, now, how do you define time? If you look in a dictionary, you get discouraged because there's a long, long paragraph trying to define time and probably nobody can do it very adequately. But somebody said that time is a dimension in which things change. The time is the stuff of which life is made. And the time is a space in eternity. And nobody can really probably define it adequately. But all of us know that we have some span out here in life that God's given us. We can all pinpoint the moment we were born. But what about the other end of that? Only God knows how much of a span of life he has given to you and to me. And all of us who are believers know that our time is the gift of God and that we're responsible for these days and years and months. And when we look at our time, the older we get, we say the less time we have on earth. And the younger you are, you think you know you have forever to do what you want to do. But the years go by. And when you're a child, when you're a kid, somebody says, well, you're going to be older before you think you are. And when you come along and you have children, those are grandparents say they're going to grow up before you realize it. They're going to be grown and gone. And we say, oh, yes. And so the years go by. And somehow we say time passes. Time doesn't pass. We are all placed in this segment of what we call time. And time is only a space in God's great eternity out there. And yet all of us feel the pressure of living in certain time restraints. And we see it every day. For example, in our relationships, we say, well, you know, fathers just don't have enough time at home with their families. And even in our work, you know, some people, they punch in by the clock. There's a machine. There's a time clock. They have to punch in that they arrived on time and they punch out and they work so many hours. So they're paid by the hour, how much time. And we're interested in how much time we get off during the year and how much vacation we get. And some people live from Monday morning till Friday afternoon at four or five o'clock time off. They have the whole weekend to be away from their work. And so it's time, time, time. Even in our leisure, we have to now plan and schedule leisure or we don't have any. And the whole sporting world realizes that their biggest enemy is the clock. Whether you're playing football, basketball, soccer, running track, the auto racer, horse racer, you name it, it's the clock. You only have so much time in which to play this game. You only have so much time. And the man who is racing, he wants to do everything he can to beat the clock. And somehow we find ourselves all caught up in schedules and time and pressure and getting up at a certain time and going to bed at a certain time, getting their own time, making this appointment. And, you know, anytime you're going to fly anywhere, what's the key issue? What time does it leave and what time does it suppose to arrive? It's not always what they promise, but they do the best they can, I guess. But the whole issue is time, time, time, time. And most people are only thinking in segments of this hour, the next hour, today, tomorrow. There are not many people who are thinking about time the way God thinks about it. He thinks in time as all against the background of eternity. And you see, those of us who are as the apostle Paul said, said that you and I would walk with eternity in our mind. Listen to what he said. He says in this 15th verse, therefore, be careful. Look at this. Be careful how you walk. What is he saying? Be careful how you live. And if our time is our life, what he's saying is be careful how you spend your time. Not as unwise men who think nothing of eternal things, but only the temporal things. He says making the most of your time, which is to make the most of your life. And then he says, so then don't be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, which all goes together. Time. And you see, even in this pressure of time, what have we done? We not only sit in these other aspects of life, but we'd like to crowd God into our time box. And somewhere back yonder in a few generations past, somebody got the idea that you go to church at 11 o'clock and at 12 o'clock church is over. That's before we had churches where we have more people than we have space. And therefore we have to have two services. And so some so early than others and some later, but the whole idea that the time to worship God is one hour during the week from 11 to 12. And after that God shuts it all down. You see, we want to crowd God into the same pressurized schedule and time box. We have everything else in and that we feel we're in. We only have one hour. We only have one day and just a portion of time to serve God or to worship God. And so we go to church on Sunday morning and we spend an hour. If you come here, you have to spend more than that because God can't be jammed into a box. That's not what worship is all about. Worship is our focus upon God, upon his word, upon what he's saying, what he's doing in our life, not a time slot. And so what happens is many people cheat themselves out of the blessings of God, because if he doesn't fit in a certain box and a certain schedule, then he doesn't fit. And so what do we have in our society? We have a society that has said, God, you're right about a lot of things, but you're wrong about some things. You can't make a living only working six days a week. So what do we do? We opened it all up on Sunday. And some of us can remember when on Sunday, the only thing open was the local drug store where you could buy medicine if you need it. And the hospitals and about everything else was shut down. But we decided somebody can't make enough money in six days, so we work seven days. And we've decided that God's schedule won't work. When he says six days, shalt thou labor and the seventh is a day of rest. We said, well, you're right about most of those commandments, but not that one. And so what do we have? We're probably one of the most unhealthy nations in the world. And we have the most progressive of it appears, but we've got more heart trouble and more ulcers and more strokes and more of this and more of that because we live under this pressure, this time schedule. That's not always all the reason for the stress and the tension in life, but it's a great part of it. And I'm not here to tell you that I have a simple solution this morning that'll settle all of your time problems because there isn't such a thing, but I do want to share something with you that I think will make a lot of difference in the way you deal with the pressures of time in your own life. We all have to deal with them. And what he says in this passage is that we should be wise enough. We should be wise enough to invest our time wisely. And to do that, you must know the will of God. Now being sensitive to time isn't something new with us. Turn back, if you will, to, um, to Job. He says in the seventh chapter and the, um, the sixth verse, he uses a term here when he says, my days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle and come to an end without hope. Now, if you've ever seen a weave machine, that shuttle just flies back and forth so quickly. That's what he's referring to here when he talks about the swiftness of time. The ninth chapter, the 25th verse, he uses another kind of comparison. He says, now my days are swifter than a runner. And then look, if you will, in Psalm 39, the 39th Psalm and the fifth verse, listen to what he says. Another way of saying it. He says, behold, thou has made my days as hand breaths and my lifetime as nothing in my sight. That is, he said, my life appears to be only just about as long as a hand breath, but you hold your hand up against the sky. That's not very long. That's not very wide. All of which is to indicate that all of us really deep down inside know that life is short, even at the longest. And we have one member of our fellowship who's over a hundred years of age and, and we make a big deal out of that. And we ought to, because there are not many folks who have the privilege of living that long, but what's a hundred years against the background of eternity about like one grain of sand on all the beaches of the world. Time is short, even at the longest it's short. And the issue is what am I doing with my time? Which means what am I doing with my life? Spending it, investing it, foolishly letting it drift by or wisely making my life count. And this is what he is thinking of here when he says, use it wisely. Now we've come a long ways in that time. We've come from pony express to federal express. We put jets in the sky to hurry across the nation. We have robots in our factories to make things work faster. We have computers and fax machines in our offices. That is everything possible. As we say, quote, save time. Now you can't save time, but we understand what we mean by that. We want to save time in this area to have more time over here. And what we have is a span of time in which we make the choices of what we do. If we can eliminate some labor here, we have more time here. And I was thinking the other day when I was studying and I walked in my study and all of a sudden it hit me and I thought, I can remember when I'd walk in here and here was the desk and the chair and the books and the bookshelf and a few on the desk and quietly I sat down and wrote out the outlines of my sermons. But now I walk in there and here's a computer over here and it makes a noise when it starts and a noise the whole time I'm working at it. Here's a laser writer. It makes a noise. Here's a fax machine. It makes a noise. Here's a telephone answer. It makes a noise. Here's a telephone. It makes a noise. Everything in the place is getting noisy, but it's all for the purpose of saving time. Now I'm grateful for every single piece of equipment because every single piece of it saves time, quote, so to speak. That is, I'm able to spend more time doing what is more important than getting up and carrying something somewhere and being sure somebody gets it. So all of us are sensitive to that and all of us are conscious of it and we don't want anything that's going to take us more time to do something we can take less time to do it in. But all of that catches us up in the daily affairs of schedules of pressures of time today and what happens is that those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ and know the value of time sometimes get caught up in the pressure of this and we forget that while we live in time we are persons of eternity. We have an eternal inheritance and while we're here on earth in this space called time you and I have a life that is eternal in its length. It has no ending. It's going to last as we say forever and ever and ever and ever. Now the question is what are we going to do with it? I can understand the man drinking away his time. I can understand the person frying their brain with drugs and wasting away their life. I can understand men and women who spend all of their life day and night working seven days a week to accomplish and to achieve more and more money, more and more acclaim, more and more praise, more and more prestige, more and more honors, more and more awards and one of these days end up leaving every single copper penny of it to their family to fuss and to fight. I can understand that but people who don't know Christ because they are people of time not of eternity but every single one of us who is a believer we have been given the gift of life so that every single second you and I have is a gift of life. That's what time's all about and that's what life is all about. My life is my time and my time is my life. The question is what am I going to do with it? You say well you do what you're pleased with it. The unbeliever that's the way he thinks but what does the believer do? Listen to what he says in this passage. Therefore be careful. What? Be careful about what? How you walk. That is how you live. Not as unwise but as wise men. Make the most of your time. Make it count. Let your life bear an impact. Not just spend time, react to situations and circumstances but make your life count. And I wonder how many of us see ourselves as persons of eternity not as simply of time. Now what we have to remember is this. No matter how we choose to deal with our time what we're doing is we are spending or investing our life. Now from from our viewpoint we see the pressure of it and we have to fight these schedules and the clock and all of this but from God's viewpoint how does he look at it? Well he sees that all the time pressures you and I experience come from one of two areas. One of them time pressures we place on ourselves. Secondly those are placed upon us by someone else sometime we can't do anything about. We have to live according to some other people's time requirements because that's what our vocation requires of us. But I want you to think about three or four very very important things and the first one is this. God has given you and me adequate time to do his will. He's always given us adequate time to do his will. That is God never requires of us more than he knows we can do. He never requires of us more in any given day than he knows we're capable of doing. So sometimes we put requirements on ourself and haven't you ended up today saying I didn't get a thing done not a thing when the truth is you lived 12 or 16 or 18 hours ever how many hours you were up you lived all of that time you did something. You made some choices to invest your time somehow in some way so you did do something. You may not have accomplished what you chose to accomplish. You may not have achieved what you set out to achieve that day. You said I had so many interruptions. Now listen to me. God has made time for us to do his will. That is he does that every day. Every day when you and I get up God has already so provided enough time for us to accomplish his will in that day. I didn't say that we'd be able to accomplish everything we want to do the way we want to do it the things other people always expect but God has always provided for us in every single day everything God has willed that we do because you see he guides and governs our time in ways that are best for us that will glorify him and that will be good for others and so when we have pressures with time and we think I just don't have time I just you know I just don't have time no there's not a single person who's ever lived who has any more time in any given day than you do all of us that is if you put your watch here beside mine they all have 60 seconds in every minute mine doesn't have 65 I wish to the goodness it did sometime it doesn't it only has 60 seconds my hours have the same as yours 60 minutes your days in mind are the same 24 hours in every day so none of us have any more time than the other all of us are making choices and the warning of Ephesians is that some people are making very unwise choices listen now when he says about your time your time is your life so we're making unwise choices about our life and some other people are making very wise choices about their life so when he says be he says be careful be careful how you spend it now the two things I want to talk about here why is it we get ourselves in all kinds of pressure with time and why is it that people live their lives they're just reacting they're just reacting to whatever happens they don't choose life they don't choose to make decisions they don't choose which way to go they let somebody else do the choosing for them listen if you don't plan if you don't plan your days in your life somebody else is going to plan them and more than likely someone else is not going to ask god how you ought to live today and so what happens the days go by and the weeks go by and the years go by and we look back and we think oh god what's been going on in my life where's the time gone what has happened and the problem is we leave god out of it now it's amazing to me how many christians operate on this fashion they get up in a given day and they do whatever they're going to do and they may have a little talk with the lord maybe on their way to work or when they get up in the morning shaving or dressing or whatever you're doing or and then you're on your way and many christians don't even do that and they sort of live the day and then at the end of the day they get in they either thank god for what's happened or complain about what's happened or bring something to his attention listen the child of god is a person of eternity you know what that means every 24 hours of my earthly life is a part of my eternal life the idea that we begin eternal life out yonder somewhere is not even scriptural eternal life began for you the moment you receive jesus as your savior it's just that this part of my eternal life is lived down here the rest of it is going to be lived in heaven but this is part of it so you say well you know i'm not going to get all involved in all this church business down here when i get to heaven i'm going to serve god eternal life began the moment you said yes to jesus that moment your eternal life began he says walk wisely now not after you get to heaven now what would you say to a man ma'am who said to you well now when i went after the ceremony the day we get married from then on no more women in my life but until then up until that day i've got lots of friends and hey wait a minute that's not the way it works commitment and love doesn't wait till some act goes on the moment you receive jesus christ as your personal savior your eternal life began right then and there and the bible says that when you and i get to heaven we're going to serve him forever most christians are waiting until they get to heaven where they don't have anything else to do but serve god what a distorted view of the use of our time the problem is we leave god out we have a fragmented idea of what belongs to god what belongs to us now as sunday that's god's time monday through saturday that's my time says who if time is a gift from god which it is life is a gift from god all seven days of the week 24 hours of every day 60 minutes in every single hour and 60 seconds in every single minute belong to god and they have been given to me and to you to live in this allotted time on earth until he takes us out of this life and carries us to a different life it's all his it isn't some his and some hours that's a very distorted view a non-biblical view of our time and so what we do with that idea in mind we sort of do what we please and then we then we we'll we'll give god a little bit i mean we don't want to totally ignore him then whatever happened to six days shall thou labor and the seventh is a day of rest you see we leave god out and one of the reasons that so many people's lives are so unproductive even though they've trusted jesus as their savior is the idea that we only think in terms of earthly things rather than heavenly we are persons agents of eternity we are already in it we're just down here in it and we'll be out there in it one of these days but right now we're down here in it it's already begun you can't wait till you get to heaven to be faithful to god wait till you get to heaven to start serving god wait till you get to heaven to start obeying god wait till you get to heaven till you get interested in spiritual things the moment you trust that jesus is your savior your eternity began right then and there we forget him we do our planning and our living without him except when an emergency comes and we get in trouble we have a need then we involve god don't you know that breaks his heart the second problem we have is the management of our time but you see if time is life what are we talking about listen i've read a lot of time management books and one thing they forget i'm going to bring it to you in just a moment but you see it isn't a question of managing my time it is a question of managing myself it's the management of our self that matters and god has said that there's some things that should be a part of your life in mind and there's some things that should not be a part of it we should choose death to thinking some things and some actions and some habits but what is our problem two things in mind probably one of them is the choosing of our priorities and the second one is discipline god has given to all of us an allotted time a space in listen a space in eternity in which we live down here and in that in that space what is life but a continuous series of making decisions the clock went off this morning you made a decision to turn it off and to rest a few moments longer or to get up you made a decision to get dressed you made a decision what you were going to wear you made a decision what you would have for breakfast you made a decision to come to church you make a decision all during this message to listen not to listen think about that think about this our whole life is one continuous decision making process in the matter of making decisions we choose priorities somebody says well you know i just don't have time no think about this now we don't like to admit this but let's think about it most of us most of the time not always do what we choose to do you say well i would make some different choices in my life maybe if you made some different choices in your life some of your other choices you'd find to be wiser you see it's a matter of priorities what's the most important most people in atlanta today are not in church you know why it's not because they couldn't come they have an automobile it's sunday they could come somebody's preaching all over this town you know why they're not in church they made a decision it's their priority they chose that on this sunday they would not invest their life in going to church and worshiping god that's a decision they made they can't say i don't have time and granted some people have to work on sunday but not most of the time they don't have to work from morning until night every sunday they could come on sunday night or on sunday morning or they can come on sunday they can go to church on wednesday it's a choice we make and what i want to ask is this are you making wise choices about your life what is the priority in your life you see the problem is is we believers are just about as undisciplined as the rest of the world we want to react to life don't don't make me think through what i'm going to do and sit down and plan it out just just i'll just do whatever comes naturally that's the way the pagan thinks not the way believers that i think he listened to what he said he said be careful how you walk be careful how you spend your time now there's a reason he said be careful because he knows it's easy for it to all slip by it's easy to waste it it's easy to use it unwisely it's easy for your life to pass by you listen he says no longer than a hand breath about like that and life's over he said be careful because you only get one trip and it's all going to be over one of these days and then when it's over then what and this is why he says be careful how you live discipline priorities these two things we should keep in our mind and let me ask you a question this may be a little tough on you but that's all right have you ever sat down in your life and said having trusted jesus christ as my personal savior and now that i'm a follower of jesus christ now that i'm a follower of jesus christ there are going to be certain priorities in my life that i'm going to settle once and for all i'm not going to have to settle them every week and every month and every day as a follower of jesus christ having decided to follow christ there's certain priorities i'm going to have in my life have you ever done that well my friend you certainly should have because when you chose to follow jesus christ there's certain things that became first have you ever sat down with the lord and said lord because you said in your word six days shalt thou labor and the seventh is a day of rest lord one of the priorities in my life is that on the lord's day i'm going to be in the house of god somewhere worshiping you praising you serving you adoring you opening the word of god listening to the scriptures being edified and reproved and rebuked and strengthened and encouraged god that is a priority in my life have you made it a priority that is if you ever decided there's no question you see i don't get up on sunday morning you would put me a different category but let's just put it down i don't get up on sunday morning every sunday to say am i going to church this morning am i not but some of you do i don't decide on sunday afternoon well am i going or am i not you see a long time ago when i trusted jesus christ as my personal savior one of the priorities of my life before i was ever called to preach that on sunday i was sitting on the second row on the end seat in right in front of the pastor because i knew somehow that's where i belonged on sunday morning it's amazing to me that so many people who are followers of jesus christ have never set a priority about something that god is very clear about do you have to decide every week shall i tithe or shall i not shall i give this week or shall i not my friend one time and once and for all you should set that priority in your finances you say well but i have to count every week no if you make it a priority you'll be amazed how you won't have to count it it'll always be there have you ever set that priority or do you have to decide every week shall i give shall on how much shall i give this week you see god has settled some things in our life and one of them is that part of our pressures in life are the result of wrong priorities mismanagement of our time leaving god out doing our own thing loving jesus when it's convenient but when i got something else to do i just don't do it now let's face it that must grieve the heart of a loving father especially when one day you and i said lord jesus i choose to believe you as my personal savior i choose to follow you all the days of my life you got in the baptismal pool and you were baptized dead to your old life risen to walk in newness of life a follower of christ now the moment you did that certain priorities got expected in your life and one of the reasons that we have so many problems even among believers is because we don't set priorities we just do our thing when and how we want to do it remember what we said a while ago we said god has provided all the time you and i need to do his will and listen to this god has provided time in your life and mine every day for himself that's god's schedule on god's schedule for your life and mine every day there is time for him now look at something i want you to see this it's beautiful think about this for a moment the life of the lord jesus christ he lived about 33 years 30 years of that time he spent as a carpenter i'm in a carpenter shop chiseling out furniture now you think now wait a minute 33 years the messiah now this minister of his he ought to be out preaching at least by the time he's 12 he should be out on the road jerusalem up to bethany over to jericho in other words really moving and covering ground because he only has till 33 but for 30 years stayed in one town nazareth then he began his ministry now you think now wait a minute he only has three years that's not very long in fact think about this jesus had about a thousand two hundred days approximately according to the calendar then and now let's say he had a little over a thousand days now think about his mission in life to fulfill the covenant promise of god in the old testament to israel to send him a messiah to redeem all of mankind to offer his life a substitute for the sin of the whole world he only had a three year span now that had been most of us we would have sat down with a map of that area and we would have plotted our strategy we have said i'm going to be here this day and there that day going to be preaching here in this synagogue that synagogue on this street corner and we've had it all worked out for three years and i mean that the apostles would never have been able to keep up with our speed we'd had it all worked out but here's the whole key and i think this is the thing above all else that god wants you and me to listen to carefully this morning you're not not going to be able to stop the clock change time alter the calendar you can break the hands off the clock won't stop a thing god understands that jesus with only three years with the greatest task any man who's ever lived had it's interesting what he did he preached one of his greatest sermons to one woman by herself at the well zacchaeus a publican and a sinner up in the tree waiting for him to come along to get a good look he stops he calls him down he takes time to go home and eat with him bartimaeus a blind poor beggar seated by the highway side jesus with throngs around him teaching them the bible says that jesus stood still call bartimaeus took time to heal him he spent a great deal of those three years with 12 men but the most important thing i want you to notice about the lord jesus christ is this i'll give you these passages you don't even have to turn to them they're short listen to this this is interesting with a man who only had three years the bible says and in the early morning while it was still dark he arose and went out and departed to a lonely place and was praying there jesus you don't have time to be praying the world's going to hell and you only have three years chapter six same book mark listen to what he says and after them bidding them to farewell he departed to the mountain to pray but lord what about all those folks who are hurting who are lost who are suffering luke chapter six listen to what happens he says and it was at this time that he went off to the mountain to pray and he spent the whole night in prayer to god he only got three years and you're gonna spend the whole night praying then chapter nine and verse 18 listen and he came about that while he was praying alone no man ever felt the pressure jesus felt you said well wait a minute he didn't have car automobiles and jets and all the rest no you know what listen jammed crammed packed crowded pulling yelling pleading crying everywhere he went throngs pulling at him he only had three years but here was the secret with jesus you never hear anything about him rushing over to bethany hurrying back to jerusalem quiet quiet on the inside accomplishing achieving and what was the secret of it all the one thing that you and i oftentimes neglect and that is that jesus christ listen to me carefully the priority of jesus christ in his three years of ministry had not changed from what his priority was in those early years as a carpenter the priority in the life of christ was time alone with the father that's it that's it that's the key to managing time that's the key to choosing right priorities that's the key to achievement and accomplishment of those things that have lasting and eternal value now you know think about this not only has god provided enough time for us to do his will but he's provided enough time every single day in your schedule and mine to spend time alone with him in his word and on our knees in prayer that that's part of his schedule that's part of his plan that's part of the way he wants us to spend our life our time in god's schedule for your life and mine there is always time to fellowship with him always time to serve him always time to worship him now i can look at my own life when i get hurried rushed frantic anxious thinking about all the things that i need to get done and how little time i've got to get them done i've lived long enough to be able to back up and say wait a minute hold it just just just wait a minute now just stop a second and ask myself the question why am i getting anxious why am i getting upset why do i feel the pressure and there's a very simple solution i can get on my knees before god and just say okay lord i've been running on my schedule i've been fulfilling my plans these are my expectations these are my goals now i lay them down and i want yours now my friend listen to me carefully there is instantaneous peace nothing's changed and all the time i've been praying the clock's been ticking away ticking away ticking away ticking away ticking away here's what happens when you and i spend time with the father the father grants us wisdom to know how to achieve and to accomplish the things that he set for us in less time than we can do it apart from him the question is not have i done everything that i need to do but have i done what the lord expected me to do that's what it's all about and you see what we've allowed is we've allowed things the pressure of time and circumstance to do what it has crowded god out of the life of his children and what we do is while we talk like christians we live like pagans only when we're in dire need do we call upon god i want to say something to you the wisest smartest most intelligent thing you can do as a young boy as a young girl is to make the priority of your life time alone with a father every single day now i give you a warning that's why he said be careful the devil will fight you every day you know why because he knows that the effectiveness of your life is not determined by your abilities and your talents and your experience but the effectiveness of our life is determined by the time not that we have to spend hours every day but where our priority is when you and i spend time with him somehow everything else we do has greater impact it makes eternal difference and when we get frantically doing our own thing and hurrying here and yonder doing other things i remember when i first went to seminary i was amazed because i just grew up believing that somehow the time you spend alone with god is the most important thing in your life and i'm reading oswald chambers he agreed with that so i thought god here's somebody who who certainly encourages me i remember going to seminary and i i could not believe the fellows i met who were so busy studying they had no time to pray and i want to say to you who my pastor friends my friend i understand all the demands of the minister but i can tell you this your effectiveness relates to your time alone with the father not getting up sermons not praying about the affairs of the church but being quiet studying the word of god for yourself humbling yourself before god listening to him absorbing him fellowshipping with him worshiping him that will make everything else in your ministry more effective and when you overlook that it's just you doing your thing in your flesh and it won't work but my friends you're in business and the same that goes for the pastor goes for you why do you think he said be careful be careful how you walk not as unwise men but as wise men be careful he said because he knows how easy it is for god himself to get crowded out of your life in mind so you see there's not a single one of us who can say i you know i just don't have time to spend 15 20 30 minutes every morning in prayer or reading the bible i don't have time to do that every day let me tell you what i have to do and what you need to ask yourself is this am i on my schedule his schedule am i doing my will am i carrying out his plan you see the reason we have so little peace and so much pressure is we bring it on ourselves because our set of priorities don't match his priorities and i want to ask you again have you ever sat down as a child of god and said now as a believer i should have certain priorities in my life and these are what they are one two three four however many they are so that you don't ever have to make a decision about that anymore this is the way it is now let me tell you what the danger is going to be for some of you you've already reached 40 50 60 whatever it might be maybe old and you've said well you know i've sort of gotten by this far i mean you know why should i start setting priorities and changing my lifestyle and start spending a lot of time with god now i mean even though he says you know after all it's um you have to be careful but i've lived this long why now i'm gonna tell you why i want to remind you of a verse in the scripture three passages romans 14 first corinthians 3 second corinthians 5 all of them say in essence this simple warning every one of us shall give an account unto god for our life which means our time and the way we spend it my friend there's going to come a day when i'm going to have to give an account but standing beside me is every one of you every single one of us is going to have to give an account we're going to have to give an account not only for gifts talents abilities whatever we want to call them possessions we're going to have to give an account for time irreversible irreplaceable time i either invest it wisely or spend it foolishly gonna have to give an account and life is one process of decision making one after the other choosing priorities wise priorities because of who we are followers of christ now i did a little figuring about something and i want to show you something interesting you see because eternity which has already begun for all of us who are believers and the truth is every person because once you're born you never cease to exist but you and i have already begun our eternal life let's say that you live to be 70 years of age and remember this that eternity now is divided into two categories heaven and hell because after the judgment everybody's going to spend eternity somewhere the bible speaks of eternal life eternal death separation from god fellowship with him everybody's going to one or two places suppose that you have 70 years to live that means you have approximately 25 550 days you have about 613 200 hours 36 million 792 000 minutes you got plenty of time over 4 billion seconds to live here's what i want you to think about 4 billion seconds to live do you know what makes the difference out there in eternity when the clocks all cease to tick nothing gongs anymore no stopwatches no sundials it's all over in eternity 70 years you have to live 4 billion 7 million plus seconds oh i want you to think about something where you spend eternity is determined by only one brief moment in those 4 billion seconds it is in that brief moment when you say to the lord jesus christ yes yes that takes me about a second yes there may have been years and years and years of learning and listening and being challenged to come to that point but in one fleeting brief moment in life out of 4 billion seconds yes you determine where you're going to spend eternity because you see in all of those years there's only one decision a person has to make that determines whether to spend eternity and that decision is this what shall i do with jesus christ the son of god and you only have two choices accept him or reject him listen carefully 70 long years 4 billion plus seconds and in one brief moment in time you make a choice that determines your eternal existence when there is no longer time but god's vast indescribable eternity isn't it a wonder that the apostle paul said be careful with your time be careful with your life because you're going to spend eternity somewhere and i wonder if you're seated here today or listening and you've never trusted jesus christ as your personal savior you've lived life the way you want to live it and you're thinking well one of these days i'm going to get things right that's what a lot of people thought who are now in hell in torment one of these days i'll make a change not any single one of us know how much time we have this i know and this you know you have less time now than you had when you turn on the tape recorder it just keeps getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and the question is not how long is your life but what are you going to do with it and i want to ask you one last question when you come to the end of life and all of us are going to get there and you turn around and look back and see all those 70 years how much of that time was spent doing anything that had eternal value to it now listen to me many of you are so gifted and so talented and so blessed financially and god's given you lots of wisdom and knowledge and understanding but you've so regulated and scheduled your life that you have scheduled god out of most of it and you know that i'm telling you the truth so that you only have one brief hour hour and a half on sunday morning that's it you cannot serve god because you don't have time to do all the other things that you have scheduled and serve god too would you not agree that is a very distorted non-biblical unscriptural sinful rebellious way to look at your time and your life because what you're saying my friend is i'm a follower of jesus but i got my plans and my schedule god has his some of you are young you've decided to be an engineer you decide to be a pilot you decide to be a doctor you decide to be an attorney have you asked god what he's decided you've got your plans when you're going to retire what you're going to do if you ask god about what he wants you to do in those latter years have you ever sat down and said god is a follower of jesus christ here are my priorities which are consistent with who i say i am lord jesus i pray the holy spirit will weigh such heavy conviction upon us that we will not be able to squirm our way out from beneath the truth of this message that the conviction of the holy spirit would pressure us to face up to the truth about ourselves that we would acknowledge that we have a sophisticated form of rationalized rebellion i'm going to have it my way oh god in jesus name i pray that the holy spirit would bring each one of us to face the truth to lay down our rationalizing our excuses and acknowledge to whom we said i choose to follow jesus that meant certain priorities that are non-negotiable not tradable and cannot be bartered i pray for someone today who needs to be saved that they'll recognize there's coming a time when there'll be no more opportunity it'll all be over and father for many who know that deep down inside they're wasting hours every week days every month weeks every year not really doing much of anything that has any lasting value oh god i pray the spirit of god but so convict them that they would face the reality of this passage be careful how you walk be wise and not unwise is my prayer in jesus name amen