Redeeming the time

Reviewing the priorities of our life to make the most of the time.

Billy Pinheiro (Brazil)

"See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is" (Ephesians 5:15-17).

I want to emphasize verse 16 of this quote: "...redeeming the time, because the days are evil". "Redeeming the time" is buying the time, taking even more advantage of the time, because we are living in very difficult days. And if we are still not experiencing this, those days will come, and we will need to look to the Lord to encourage and strengthen us.

We all have twenty four hours a day, but it seems that there are so many things to do, we have no time for the Lord. Something is wrong with us. In these days, the Lord has touched my heart, to put some things in order in my life, because for some time, in recent years, there are things which are very important to the Lord that have been put to one side.

The priorities of our life

When we think about how to use our time for the Lord, the first thing we need to see is what the most important things are, what are the priorities. Although we are a heavenly people, we are living on earth. We are not of this world, but we live here. And we need to look to the Lord and ask Him what the priority is for this life that He has for us.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians, the Lord led him to put things in order of priority. And the first priority is our life with God. As you read the following verses that we looked at, we see that there is a sequence. The first is in verse 18: "Do not get drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and praising the Lord in your hearts; always giving thanks for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another in the fear of God "(v. 18-21).

Here, the thing which the Lord puts first, is our direct relationship with him. The number one priority for us is our life with the Lord. But Paul continues to write. The second thing that he mentions is the relationship between husband and wife. (Eph. 5: 22-33). This is a second priority for us, those who are married. The third thing that Paul talks about is children, family. (Eph. 6: 1-4). The fourth priority in the sequence is about our work, about servants and masters. (Eph. 6: 5-9). And finally, he speaks of our ministry, our spiritual warfare, our service towards the saints and our prayer life. (Eph. 6: 10-20).

So if we want to order our time according to the will of God, it is important to see these priorities. Therefore the Lord is saying that we must live prudently, as wise men and women, not as fools. We need to seek to know the Lord's will.

What is the Lord's will for us? Long ago, when I began to follow the Lord, I had no clarity on these priorities. So, for some time, my life's priorities were reversed, and there is always loss when that happens. In this issue of redeeming our time, we need to first see the priorities of the Lord. Many times we have observed amongst the people of God much loss, disaster and hurt caused because these priorities have been reversed.

It is quite natural that in the first place we should have the Lord. It is clear in the Word. We need to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things will be added to us. But often we reverse that order. If we look for the other things first and not the kingdom of God, we will receive neither the other things nor the kingdom of God.

It is very harmful when we don’t observe these priorities according to the will of the Lord. Sometimes, we have many excuses for not doing His will. When Jesus spoke to the scribes and Pharisees, he was calling them to attention because they said if they offered something to the Lord and neglected their parents, that was fine. And the Lord said, "No, you are making void the word of God."

We often say we want to serve the Lord, and we ignore our parents or our family, inverting God's priorities. Sometimes we are married, we want to serve the Lord, and we put the work first. But God tells us that we must be faithful in little things, and he will put us in charge of much. Often, being faithful in the little things means paying attention to our families. This is very important.

I have known servants of the Lord, who after many years of working in God's work have said that if they started over again, they would not do as they did, because they had left their family greatly damaged because of the work of God.

Do not misunderstand me; I don’t mean that we should not be in the Lord's work. But you need to have a balance. For there to be harmony in our lives, so that our time is well spent, we need to have that order of God very clear in our hearts.

Sometimes we put our work first, and strive hard. Often this can be a deception of Satan. Remember the people of God in Egypt? One of the strategies of Pharaoh was to demand more work from the people. Pharaoh said, 'You have too much leisure time, so you want to offer sacrifices to your God. Therefore, I'm going to take away the straw and you’ll have to produce more bricks'.

That is a system that prevails today as well. God's priorities should be in place; we mustn’t live foolishly, but as wise men and women. Then the Lord will show us His will, how to lead a balanced life. When we have the right priorities in our lives according to God's order, He will give us wisdom to have the rest in order.

Counting today before the Lord

The second important point when we think of redeeming the time is knowing how to number our days before God. When Moses was at the end of his life, he prayed: "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12.)

Moses had a lot of intimacy with the Lord. God spoke to Moses as a friend, face to face. Still, Moses was asking for wisdom. How much more do we need to ask for wisdom to count our days?

In God's Word, especially in the Old Testament, God has many examples of counting the days of Israel, and there are also examples of lost days and years when God didn’t count Israel’s time.

It may be that many times our days are not being counted by the Lord. If anyone has not had an encounter with the Lord Jesus, we want to say that, spiritually, you haven’t had a single day in the presence of the Lord. You need to repent, to believe in the Lord Jesus and confess Him as Lord, and then he will save you, and something wonderful will happen to you - you will be born again, and will have your first day of life before God.

Some of us were born again twenty, thirty or fifty years ago. But that does not mean that all those years were counted before the Lord. Sometimes our days have been consumed by things that are not pleasing to the Lord and have not been lived in His presence, not been lived in the order that God has established. And we need to return to the Lord, and offer the same prayer as Moses did.

The Allegory of the Locust

I want to read a verse in the book of Joel. There is a promise of God here, "Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, my great army which I sent among you." (Joel 2:25).

God's people had lived far from the Lord's will, and for that reason those years had been lost. But now the Lord is promising them that He would restore the years that had been consumed.

Sometimes we look back, after some time following the Lord, and we are frustrated because it seems that many things were not worth it; It seems we wasted a lot of time and did not have God's priorities steadfast in our hearts; it seems that the time was consumed, that it had no value.

The Lord promises us that He will restore those years. Perhaps we have wasted a lot of time up until now, but the Lord can make everything new for us again. The Lord will restore the lost years. No matter how many years there were, there is hope for us all. The Lord is wonderful. He can restore the lost time. Perhaps now we can look to the Lord and he will give us a new opportunity.

Here in Joel it is saying that the years of God's people were consumed by locusts. That was an act of discipline from the hand of God. In the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord says that when a person was not living according to His will, God would allow the locust to consume all His work.

The Lord is saying now that if we turn to him, He will restore the years that were consumed by locusts. The Lord can show us what the locust has been. Maybe it's a busy life, no time to seek the Lord, or a heart that’s grown cold, or disobedience.

The locust can consume our years before God, and can devour all the fruit of our work. So it is important that the Lord opens our understanding and shows us what it is that has been like a locust in our lives, so that our days are numbered in His presence and we can say like Paul at the end of his life: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith "(2 Tim. 4: 7).

Paul completed his course because without any doubt, his years were counted before God. Thank God, he can give that testimony that he completed his course. We have the testimony of Paul that God is faithful, and God can make sure that we also complete ours.

If our years were consumed by the locusts it will not be easy to finish our course. On the contrary, it might be that we don’t even finish it, and that would be a terrible thing before the Lord. But thank God for His goodness; again and again He speaks to us with love, draws us to attention as a loving Father and shows us the way forward. Thank God, he is powerful and kind to restore the years that were consumed.

Feeding on locusts

There is a very important character in the New Testament who lived in the victory of God: John the Baptist. Do you remember what his food was? Locusts! This is a wonderful testimony of the Holy Spirit. Those things that can consume our years, are the same things that can also lead us to number our days before God and make us strong in Him. John the Baptist ate locusts. The locusts didn’t consume him, instead, he fed on them.

Often afflictions, problems between brothers, family problems, health problems, financial problems and all sorts of things, can consume our years. But if we go before the Lord, all those problems will make us wiser and will lead us to count our days before God. We will grow stronger before the Lord.

When we remember the people of God who left Egypt to enter Canaan, before entering, the inhabitants of Canaan seemed to them like giants, and they felt like locusts. And the people grumbled before God. But two of them, Joshua and Caleb, proclaimed that the Lord was with them, and therefore, these giants would be like bread for them.

I don’t think it was in vain that the Lord has recorded that John the Baptist ate locusts. John the Baptist was a Nazarite, a person consecrated to the Lord. And as you recall, a Nazarite could not cut his hair, he could not touch dead things and could not drink wine. When we want to count our days, we need to devote ourselves to the Lord as Nazarites. Growing our hair, not physically, but spiritually, means to deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow the Lord, day by day.

It’s not that wine, which gladdens the heart of man is sinful. But here, spiritually, it is a figure of the fact that many times, out of love for the Lord, we have to let go of things that are good, in order to dedicate ourselves to Him.

Another thing that a Nazarite was commanded to do was not to touch dead things. Spiritually, this tells us that we should not touch things that in the eyes of the Lord are dead. We need to stand before God in consecration, since He is the only one who can help us, because in ourselves we have no strength. With His help, His Spirit, we can go ahead and beg Him to help us, so that our days are counted before the Lord.

The Lord has told us to redeem our time. May He help us in these evil days, to run our race so as to bring glory to the Lord, and when we arrive before Him we can hear that wonderful phrase: "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your Lord."

Message delivered in Temuco, in May 2006.