A Strategy for Living in

The past 10 days have been momentous ones for our congregation. In that short space of time, two families in our church have had babies, and two families in our church have said good-bye to loved ones. Two individuals have started out at the beginning of life, two individuals have come to the end of life, and the rest of us are somewhere in between on that continuum.

Last Wednesday afternoon, I sat at the bedside of one of our own members and talked with her about these things. She is, as you know, gravely ill. She is in the final stages of cancer and she’s facing her own imminent death. Her plans, her dreams, her thoughts of the future have now telescoped down to thinking about the next few moments and hours and days. How do you face life in that situation? How do you live in the valley of the shadow of death?

Well she had the answer. She said you accept each moment of life as a gift from God and you live it for him.

And it occurs to me that that is a pretty good strategy for living for ALL of us, not just for her. Our life is measured in moments. And every moment of life is a gift from God. What are we going to do with that gift?

If I were to hand you a check for half a million dollars today, what would you do with it? Well, you can probably think of a lot of things you would do with $500,000. You might buy a new car or a new house. You might pay off all your debts. You might decide to take an extended vacation and travel the world. You might even decide to quit your job and go back to school, or maybe start your own business.

But if you were really wise, you would take that money and invest it in such a way as to yield a continuing return. You’d put that money to work. By investing the money rather than just spending it, you’d be able to reap dividends far into the future. That’s the difference between spending and investing.

I want you to realize that at midnight tonight, we are going to be given a gift that is far more valuable than money. We are going to be given the gift of time!

Midnight tonight marks the beginning of a new year. A year comes out to 365 days, or 8,760 hours, or 525,600 minutes. In other words, tonight at midnight, God is going to hand each of us a blank check for over half a million minutes.

How are we going to spend them? Are we going to fritter them away on things that don’t really matter? Or are we going to invest them? Are we going to have something of eternal value to show for them at the end of the year 2001?

What we need is a sound biblical strategy for living in the year 2001—a strategy that will enable us to wisely invest the moments of time God gives us. And we can find such a strategy in the book of Ephesians, chapter 5.

Paul is writing to the Christians at Ephesus. He’s encouraging them to live in a way that is pleasing to God. In fact, in Eph. 5:1 he says “Be imitators of God…” and in v. 2 he says “and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us…” So our template for living is God himself. Christ’s character is our pattern. And in the ensuing verses of ch. 5, Paul elaborates on what kind of lifestyle that will lead to.

In verses 3–7, Paul says that it will not be an immoral or impure lifestyle—because that is not in keeping with the character of God.

And then in verse 8ff, Paul draws two contrasts—a contrast between light and darkness: he says “Live as children of light” (v. 8). “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness” (v. 11). A Christian is going to walk in the light because that is the character of God—God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

The second contrast he draws begins in verse 15, and it’s the one we want to zero in on today. It is the contrast between wisdom and foolishness.

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.

He says “Be very careful how you live”. That word careful is the word “akribos” in Greek. It means “to be exact, accurate, precise”. It’s the opposite of being careless, or sloppy. If a workman comes over to work on your house, you want him to be careful, because you’ve got a lot invested in your house. If a mechanic works on your car, you don’t want him to be sloppy or careless—you want his work to be precise and accurate, because there’s a lot riding on it.

And that’s the way God wants us to regard our lives—not carelessly or haphazardly to live whatever way we please, but with care and respect, because we are literally His property. We are to live wisely and not foolishly.

Living wisely is going to involve making the most of every opportunity (KJV - “redeeming the time”)

The English phrase “making the most of…” translates a single Greek word, which means to “buy, or purchase out of”. You would use this word in the marketplace, where you would purchase an item out of a merchant’s stall and then take it out of the marketplace and into your home where you can use it and profit from it.

As long as it is in the marketplace, it is doing you no good. It is only when you redeem it from the marketplace—purchase it out from all the other items—that it begins to benefit you.

Paul says this is what we need to do with the time God gives us. There’s a great flood of time coming at us. It washes over us like a great river and flows past us in a torrent. We need to be alert to seize opportune moments of that time—to purchase them out and use them for God. Why?

Because the days are evil. Evil is anything that is contrary to God’s will and God’s purposes. The Bible depicts evil as something that is utterly wasteful, unproductive, and chaotic. Rather than contributing to wholeness and usefulness and beauty, evil leads to corruption, decay, and disintegration. And—Paul says—this is the character of the days in which we live. Evil has gained a kind of momentum in our world that, if left to itself, will result in chaos.

And if we are going to live wisely and alertly for God, we are going to have to actively counter this momentum of evil in our lives. And the only way to do that is given to us in v. 17…

Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.

The fundamental problem with a fool is that he’s either living life with the wrong purpose, or he’s living life with no purpose at all—he’s just being swept along with the tide. Someone has said that following the path of least resistance is what makes rivers crooked. Paul says “Don’t be like that! Don’t let yourself just be swept along with the evil currents of our time. Don’t be a fool! Understand what the Lord’s will is.”

The word “understand” here is about more than just head knowledge. It means putting that knowledge into action; applying what you’ve learned. Back in verse 10, Paul said “Find out what pleases the Lord” so that you can do it. Understand what the Lord’s will is and do it. Doing the Lord’s will is the only way to invest your life wisely. It’s the only way to redeem the time. It is the only way to swim upstream against the current of evil.

And Paul follows with a number of examples of what it means to understand and do the Lord’s will”…

• • v. 18 - don’t get drunk on wine but be filled with the Spirit

  • v. 19 - Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord,

  • v. 20 - always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  • v. 21 - Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

  • etc.

It seems to me that if we’re going to apply the truth of these verses and implement a wise strategy for living in 2001, we’re going to have to do three things.

1. know our purpose for living

2. build our priorities around our purpose

3. manage our time according to our priorities

If we are going to live effectively, we need to know why we’re living. We need to know the purpose of our existence. We need to know the reason we’re here. We need to know our mission.

The Bible teaches us that we have been placed on this earth to serve God. We are not here by accident—the end result of a random combination of molecules. We are not here just to have a good time and then die. We’re not here to just do whatever we please.

As human beings, each one of us has tremendous value—a value that is given to us by God. And we can only find fulfilment as human beings when we give ourselves to serving and loving Him. We can’t find happiness and satisfaction by going out and pursuing it as an end in itself. We can only find it as a by-product when we seek to live for God.

Jesus said “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:35-36)

The Westminster Confession puts it this way: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Our mission is to focus our lives on God and to draw other people to God, so that together we can appreciate His excellence. That is our mission; that is our purpose.

And that is the first and most basic question we need to settle when we consider how to invest our time: it’s the question of purpose. And that leads us to the matter of priorities.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to be at the controls of a 17 foot speedboat on Lake Erie. As we headed under the Peace Bridge into the Niagara River, it was important that I keep the nose of the boat pointed toward our destination. The Niagara River has a very strong current with a mind of its own. A few miles downstream, as you know, the Niagara River takes a rather interesting drop!

The river had a different agenda for our boat than the one I had. That is why I had to actively keep the boat pointing in the right direction. That was my strategy. I didn’t look at the scenery going by. I didn’t engage in small talk with the other people in the boat. Priority #1 was to keep the nose of the boat in the right place, so we could get to where we wanted to go.

The first principle is to know your purpose. The second principle is to build your priorities around your purpose. Your priorites will be determined by your purpose. If you believe that you are here to love God and serve Him, that’s going to determine the set of priorities by which you govern your life. But if you believe that you’re here to just basically have a good time, to live a comfortable and successful life and then die, then that’s going to be what shapes your priorities. People always prioritize around their purpose.

Have you ever noticed that we can always find a way to do what we think is really important? I have a lot of friends in Western New York. And it never ceases to amaze me (and amuse me) how people will travel three hours to sit on a concrete seat in an ice-cold stadium in a snowstorm to watch a Buffalo Bills game, but the same people can wake up on a Sunday morning, look out the window, and decide to skip church because it’s raining.

The people who go to the football game, come rain or shine, do so because they believe somewhere deep down in their hearts that God really put them on this earth to be Bills fans. That’s their purpose for living, so that’s what shapes their priorities.

You prioritize around your purpose. If you think something is really important, then you will find a way to do it. So the flip side of that principle is that your personal schedule is probably going to reveal what you believe to be really important in life.

When Jesus was in his last year of ministry, he retreated for a little while with his disciples to the northernmost part of the country. They stepped out of the mainstream for awhile. He had things he wanted to teach his disciples far from the crush of the crowd.

But when he finished doing that, he knew it was time to go to Jerusalem. He had a date with destiny there. So the Scripture says “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” People along the way tried to dissuade him from going, but Jesus knew the reason he had come to earth was to die on the cross. He knew his purpose, and so he shaped his priorites around that purpose.

Principle 1 - Know your purpose

Principle 2 - Build your priorities around your purpose

Principle 3 - Plan your day according to your priorities

When you look at the way you spend your time, it all comes down to saying No to some things and saying Yes to others. But that’s easier said than done! How do you decide what you’ll say No to and what you’ll say Yes to?

Most of us manage our time according to the “urgency model”; we say Yes to things that are most urgent. We poke our stick at the nearest alligator. We make a To Do list, and we place the most urgent things at the top of that list. But the problem with the urgency model is that not all things that appear to be urgent are really important.

Have you ever thought about all the junk mail you get? A management consulting firm in Pittsburg estimated that the average person spends eight months in a lifetime opening junk mail.

Junk mail is covered with messages that scream URGENT - PRIORITY HANDLING - SPECIAL LIMITED TIME OFFER - EXPIRES SOON - OPEN IMMEDIATELY, all in an effort to capture your attention. That mail comes all dressed up in the costume of urgency, but it is really just garbage. Just because something appears to be urgent doesn’t mean it is important!

Urgent things crowd into our lives, clamoring for our attention, and we respond to them without stopping to ask the question “What is really important? What are my true priorities?”

Now, of course, some things that are urgent are truly important. If your child has an accident and gets hurt, it is both urgent and important that you take him to the hospital. But you will find that most of the urgent things that blind-side us each day are really not all that important in terms of our true purpose and priorities.

So we have to be able to develop the ability to say No to the things that do not fit in with our God-given priorities. And the best way to say No to those things is to have a bigger Yes burning inside of us.

But if you live your life responding to the urgent, you will run yourself into the ground. You will burn out, and you will be ineffective in the way you invest your time. I know people like this. They are always running. They never seem to have enough time. Their lives are filled with frantic activity, but are they really accomplishing anything of lasting value?

When you look at Jesus, one of the fascinating things that you notice about him was that he was never in a hurry. Yet he was the most purposeful individual who ever walked this earth. He accomplished more than anybody who ever lived. That’s because he knew his purpose; he developed his priorities around that purpose; and he planned according to his priorities.

There’s another side to this issue. Just as you find that most of the urgent things in life are really not important, you will also find that the truly important things in life are not urgent.

Take a mundane example: your car. Your car needs periodic maintenance. It needs the oil changed every five thousand kilometers. Is your mechanic standing over you waiting to hit you on the head with a wrench if you don’t do it? No. What happens if you let your car go beyond five thousand kilometers without changing the oil? Nothing.

Not right away, anyway. Your car still runs. But the longer you let it go, the worse it runs, and the chances are greater that you are permanently damaging it. And if you let it go too long, you’ll wake up one morning and your car doesn’t work anymore. Then you’ve got a crisis on your hands! You see, if you ignore the important things in life, they have a way of becoming critically urgent. Desperately urgent. Even tragically urgent.

Changing the oil in your car is pretty humdrum. What about the important relationships in your life? Your marriage isn’t going to fall apart if you don’t invest time working on it today. But put enough of those “todays” together, and it will fall apart.

Same is true of parenting. Your child isn’t going to turn against you just because you didn’t invest time with him, and hug him, and tell him you love him today. But put enough of those todays together, and your child will grow up wondering whether you do love him.

Same is true of your spiritual life. You’re not going to fall away from the Lord just because you didn’t read the Bible and pray today. But put enough of those todays together, and your love for God will grow cold.

The most important things in life don’t necessarily come with a sticker marked URGENT on them. The only way to identify what’s really important is:

1. to have a clear view of your purpose

2. to have a solid set of priorities built upon that purpose, and

3. to plan your time according to your priorities

I once saw a picture of a very unusual farm out in Nebraska. The farmer had sown his field with a variety of crops in a bewildering arrangement. If you were to have walked through his field, you would have come upon a strip of alfalfa, followed by a patch of corn, then an area of soybeans, then another strip of alfalfa. The arrangement would have made little sense.

But if you had flown over that farm in an airplane, you would have immediately understood why the crops were sown that way. The farmer had carefully and painstakingly produced an example of “crop art”. Using the natural colors and textures of the various plants, he created in his field a beautiful picture which could only be appreciated from above.

In order to do that, the farmer deliberately selected and sowed the seed at the proper time. He prioritized his daily schedule around his ultimate purpose. And when the seed began to grow, it might have looked confusing from ground level, but that isn’t where the farmer’s perspective was. He was always thinking of it from a higher vantage point.

When the year 2001 is over, I wonder how many of those half million minutes will turn out to have been well-invested?

“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Let’s make the New Year count for Him.