How to Have the Time of Your Life

If I asked you what you would like to have more of in your life, what would you say? One of the things we did and are continuing to do as we start The Crossroads is we are doing surveys throughout the community asking people four questions: What are your top three favorite radio stations? What do you think are the three greatest needs of the community of Anna? Why do you think most people don’t attend church? And if you were looking for a church for you and you’re your family to attend, what three things would you be looking for? And question number three, why do you think most people don’t attend church, what do you think is the number one answer we have received for that question? Time. They don’t have enough time.

You know, time is a non-renewable resource. Once you’ve used it up, it’s gone. Every one of us, from the moment we are born, have a certain amount of time on earth, and you can’t get any more of it. And so, one of the most important things you can do with your life is figure out how to make the most of your time. Did you know, if you are the average person, you will spend two years of your life trying to return phone calls to people who aren’t there? You will spend six moths waiting for the traffic light to turn green, eight months reading junk mail, and five months tying your shoes. You will spend three years waiting for somebody, five years getting dressed, and six years eating. You will spend twenty years working, twenty years sleeping, and nearly eighteen years in front of a television set. Your time is your life, and however you spend your time is how you spend your life.

Let me ask you this, if somebody told you that at the beginning of each day, they were going to give you $86,400, but at the end of the day, whatever you didn’t spend was going to be taken away from you, what would you do? You’d try pretty hard to spend that money, right? Well, each of us, at the beginning of each day, are given 86,400 seconds, and when the day is over, they’re gone, and you don’t get them back. So, one of the most important things you can do is figure out how to use the time in your life. Read with me Ephesians 5:15-16: “Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” God doesn’t want you to waste your time. He wants to use you to make a difference, to impact other people, to fulfill his purposes for your life.

But there are a thousand different things that war for control of your time. Getting to work, getting the laundry done, getting the kids to school, washing the car, mowing the yard, shopping for groceries. One of the greatest tools that Satan has that he uses against you is busyness. Because if he can keep you busy, if he can use up all your time, then you don't have time left to do the things that God wants you to do. So, I want to offer you today five biblical principles for how you can have the time of your life.
The first one is pray. You will multiply the time you have in your life if you dedicate time to prayer. Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, once said, “I have so many things to do today that I have to spend an extra hour in prayer just to get them all done.” Now, that’s contrary to the way a lot of people think. A lot of people say, “I don’t have time for prayer, I don’t have time for a quiet time, I don’t have time to spend with God, I don’t have time for church because I have too many things going on in my life.” Luther understood that he had no hope of getting all the things done in his life without God’s help.

Maybe the reason so much of the time we don’t get things done and we don’t have time in our life for God is because we are trying to live our lives without God. And as a result, we have to work harder and struggle more to get things done.

I’m pretty sure Jesus had the most important responsibilities that any human being has ever had. He had three and a half years to take a group of teenage fishermen, a tax collector, a former terrorist, and turn them into a force that would change the world and start the church. He had sick people to heal, give sight to the blind, cause the lame to walk, and raise people from the dead. And he had to give his life on the cross for the sins of man. But, I want you to look at what Jesus did at the height of his popularity. Luke 5:15-16: “Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” The more the crowds were demanding his time, the more time Jesus spent getting away to pray.

So, how does prayer, spending more time in prayer, give you more time in your life? Spending time in prayer gives you two things. It gives you power. If you devote your schedule to God and you ask for God’s blessing on the things you have to do today, suddenly you aren’t trying to do everything in your own strength. You have the power of God to do the things in your day. When you ask God to bless your day, suddenly problems that you couldn’t work out just seem to work themselves out, people who were wasting your time now become helpers in getting things done, computers that weren’t working right run fine, traffic goes your way. Prayer opens up the power of God in your life to get things done. It’s like my weedeater. When I was a kid, my dad trimmed the yard with a little pair of metal shears, and it took him forever. But w/ my weedeater, I can do all the trimming in our yard in about 30 minutes. Greater power gets things done faster.

Then prayer also provides clarity. It helps me to look at the things on my to do list and understand what really needs doing. Look at Ephesians 5 again, and look at the next verse, verse seventeen. “Act like people with good sense and not like fools. These are evil times, so make every minute count. Don't be stupid. Instead, find out what the Lord wants you to do” (Eph. 5:15-17). How do you find out what the Lord wants you to do? You pray. Prayer helps you to figure out what the Lord wants you to do. A lot of the reason why we don’t have the time of our lives is we are trying to do things that God never intended for us to do. Prayer helps you figure out what you are supposed to do.

The second way to have the time of your life is prioritize. You need to be able to look at your life and your schedule and figure out what’s really important, because not all things are of equal value. Some things are more important than others. Look at Philippians 1:10: “I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns.” What really matters? One of my most important responsibilities as pastor is helping you to figure out what really matters in life.

Now, I’ll just tip my hand to you, the most important thing in life is your relationship with God and living for his purposes in your life. Jesus said, “Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern” (Mt. 6:32-33). If you will orient your life around God and his purposes for your life, then everything else will make a whole lot more sense. Did you ever play with a Rubick’s cube? Did you ever throw one against the wall? I am told that the secret to solving a Rubick's cube is in knowing that the center squares never move, and every other piece has to be oriented to the center. And that’s true with life. You put Christ at the center, and all the other things in your life will make a whole lot more sense.

So, let me give you a very quick and basic list of biblical priorities for life. #1 God and your relationship with him, #2 your family, spouse then kids then parents. #3 God’s purposes for your life, celebrating God’s presence in worship, connecting with God’s family in fellowship, growing as God’s people in discipleship, showing God’s love in ministry, and sharing God’s message in evangelism. And really, the first three should prioritize everything else in your life. After that comes work and getting the house clean and making it to soccer practice and all the other stuff in life. Now, the truth of the matter is, for most of us, myself included, the things that take the most of our time are things that come lower on the list. The trick is, to be used by God, to give priority to the things that come high on the list.

So, you’ve got to prioritize. And you’ve got to prioritize in two ways. Prioritize life as a whole, and prioritize your schedule for each day.

And that really leads to the third thing which is plan. You’ve got to have a plan for what you are going to do with life. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to see happen? How are you going to make that happen? The Bible uses the example of ants, Proverbs 6:6-8: “Go to the ant, you sluggard consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” In other words, to get things done, you have to have foresight. You have to be able to look ahead, make a plan and follow through on it. Look at Proverbs 21:5: “Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.” You need to plan. There’s a popular saying: If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

Now, what does planning mean. It just means you look at what you want to accomplish and you figure out, what are the things that need to happen for me to accomplish that? So, you need to plan for your year, your month, your week, and especially your day. What do I want to get done today? Now, how am I going to get those things done.

But let me give you this warning. The Bible is very clear that you have to include God in your planning and that if you don’t you are asking for disaster. Jesus tells a story about a rich man who has his life all planned out and has his retirement accounts in order and plenty of money and security, and he says to himself, "I've got it made. I can sit back and enjoy all my wealth and security." And God says to him, "You fool. This night your life is required of you. And God takes his life. You have to consider God's plan in your planning. Proverbs 16:3: “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” So, this goes back to the first one. You plan with prayer. You seek God’s plans for your life. Planning is not about saying, “This is what I want to do.” It’s about saying, “God what do you want me to do and how do you want me to do it.”

And here’s how planning helps your time. You plan with a schedule. You devote certain segments of time to certain tasks. So, you plan.

Now, the next one is one I’m bad at, and that is don’t procrastinate. Procrastination will kill your time, because stuff starts backing up on you. I learned this in college. If you don’t get started on papers when they are assigned, they all come due at the same time, and you are swamped. If you are a procrastinator, let me give you a verse, Ecclesiastes 11:4: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” Don’t put things off, don’t wait for perfect conditions. Now, do you know what kinds of things we tend to put off doing? Things that we don’t like doing or that are going to be uncomfortable, distasteful, or unpleasant. Now, let me let you in on a life secret: The things that we put off doing because they are unpleasant will not be more pleasant a week from now. In fact, they will probably be more unpleasant. Case in point: cleaning the refrigerator. What happens the longer you put off cleaning the refrigerator? It grows more mold and requires more work and more time.

There is a direct proportionality to the things we put off doing and how long it takes to do them. In other words, the longer you put something off, the longer it will take to do it. Whatever needs doing, don’t wait for perfect conditions, don’t wait until you feel like it. Do it now. Proverbs 6:10-11 says, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest-- and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.” Procrastination is a robber. It robs you of time, it robs your of spending time with your family, it robs you of finances, it robs you of peace of mind. Don’t procrastinate.

If you want to have the time of your life, pray, prioritize, plan, don’t procrastinate, and then this is the fun one, play. Play. Now this one seems counterintuitive. If you want to have the time of your life and make the most of your time, how can you take time to play. But it’s true. You need some margin in your life. You don’t need every minute scheduled with things to do. And I can demonstrate this biblically. God commands you to take one day out of seven where you don’t work, where you stop what you are doing. It’s called a Sabbath, and Sabbath literally means to stop. God is so serious about you having some margin in your life that he commands that you take a day off for worship and for rest. Now, I want to focus on the rest part. Three things you need from a good day of rest: relaxation, relationships, and recreation. Relaxation. You need time to rest. It's okay to take a nap on Sunday afternoon. In fact, for some of you, the most spiritual thing you could do right now is take a nap. You need to be rested to be used by God. Relationships. You need to spend time with other people. Recreation. Have fun. Play. Enjoy yourself.

You see, here’s the thing, God wants to use you to do incredible things in life. God wants you to use your time to make a difference and change the world and live out his purposes for your life and he wants you to have fun doing it. God doesn’t intend for you to live your life so stressed out that you can’t enjoy it. 1 Timothy 6:17: “Their trust should be in the living God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.” The Bible says two incredible things. God has created all things for his glory, and he has given all things for our enjoyment. The two are not mutually exclusive. God receives glory when we take delight in the the things he has created. You need to intentionally schedule margin in your life, schedule fun, schedule recreation. And I have discovered that you have to be intentional about it or other things will eat up your down time. Look at what Jesus said in Jn. 10:10: “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” Now, Jesus did not mean a full schedule. Jesus wants you to experience a fulfilling, meaningful, blessed life. He wants you to experience life the way he designed for you to have it.

I heard about a man one time who computed how many Saturdays he had left in his life. He had about 1,000. So, he went to the store and bought 1,000 marbles and put them in a jar. And every Saturday he would take out a marble as a reminder to him not to waste the Saturdays that he had left in his life. So, let me ask you, what are you doing with the marbles you have left in life? Jesus said, “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work” (Jn. 9:4). Time is limited. Jesus is coming back soon. So, what are you giving your life for? What are you using your time for? Are you using your time in the best possible way?