Spending the Treasure We Call Time!

 John Randolph said, "Time is at once the most precious and the most perishable of all possessions." We often talk about "spending time" and that is a very accurate phrase. Besides meaning to pay out money, another definition of time is "to concentrate one’s time or energy on an activity; to pass time; to use up." Each day each of us spends 24 hours which is 1,140 minutes which is 86,400 seconds. Like money itself, time can be spent and invested in that which is necessary and good and wise and wholesome . . . or it can be spent foolishly on that which is cheap and tawdry and harmful. Someone observed that time is a daily treasure attracting many robbers. Consider the following few sentences about time from Lloyd Cory, quoted by Charles Swindoll in his book, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart (p 71): "Time is significant because it is so rare. It is completely irretrievable. You can never repeat or relive it. There is no such thing as instant replay. That appears only on film. It travels alongside us every day, yet it has eternity wrapped up in it. Although this is true, time often seems relative, doesn’t it? For example, two weeks on a vacation is not at all like two weeks on a diet. Also, some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week! Ben Franklin once said of time, ‘. . . that it is the stuff life is made of.’ Time forms life’s building blocks. The philosopher Williams Jones said, ‘The great use of time is to spend it for something that will outlast it.’ " No wonder then, that God’s timeless word admonishes us, "See then that you walk circumspectly (that is, carefully), not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is" (Ephesians 5:15-17). 

The year 2021 now stretches out before us. This year "time will fly" as swiftly as ever. For some it will seem to go faster than for others. As a good brother in Christ once told me, "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes." Not really, but older people will tell you it feels that way. An unknown author said, "When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept; When as a youth I dreamed and talked, time walked; When I became a full grown man, time ran; And later as older I grew, time flew." Soon I shall find while traveling on, time gone." Like coal and oil, each moment of time is a non-renewable resource – once used up, gone forever to never be replaced. And our time on earth will run out. In the words of the ancient inspired wise man Ecclesiastes 3:2 there is "a time to be born and a time to die." Death, of course is not the end, for the Bible further declares that "man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment" (Hebrews 9:27 NIV). Since 1939, the beautiful but haunting words of "Into Our Hands" (Ruth Johnson Carruth) have urged Christians to think about how we are spending the treasure we call time: "Swiftly we’re turning life’s daily pages, Swiftly the hours are changing to years; How are we using God’s golden moments, Shall we reap glory, Shall we reap tears?" The year 2021 will be filled with 525,600 golden moments. Each will hold potential for prayer, kindness, sharing God’s love, and serving others. Where will you spend eternity? The truth is, you won’t "spend" eternity. In the hereafter you will live somewhere forever – with God or apart from Him. Whether we reap glory or tears depends on how we use the treasure we call time. Remember – you are spending your time, and can never get it back. Think about it, and spend it wisely.

          by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

 

 

 

Forgive, or Forfeit Forgiveness!

  The great English poet Alexander Pope [died in 1744], published his "Essay On Criticism" in 1711. That poem is the source of the familiar saying, "To err is human; to forgive is divine." The saying echoes the Bible’s teaching that all accountable human beings sin (even those who are Christians – Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:8-10), and that God forgives sin when people meet the conditions He has laid out in the Gospel (Acts 2:37-38; Colossians 2:10-13). Pope’s saying hints at something Jesus taught clearly and forcefully – those who claim to be His disciples must work at having a forgiving spirit. The Lord said in Matthew 5:14-15, "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you." That’s pretty blunt stuff. And the Lord didn’t leave much wiggle room. He didn’t qualify what kind of trespasses. He didn’t say, "You have to forgive other people of the lightweight stuff or the stuff that’s really not all that serious or the stuff that is easy to get over." He just jars us with one of the heaviest demands He ever laid out for those who would be like Him – if we forgive, God forgives us. If we don’t forgive, God won’t forgive us. "That’s hard," you say? Indeed. But before you decide God will let you off the hook for being unwilling to forgive, recall the cross where God’s bloodied and battered and blasphemed Son, with not a single sustainable charge of sin against His pure and innocent soul, prays from a cross to which His hands and feet are nailed – "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:34). A few weeks later the Father did forgive many of them who complied with Gospel conditions (see Acts 2:36-41). Does what you see at the cross suggest to you there was anything easy as God, through His Son, brought to completion His ages-long plan to be able to righteously and justly forgive your sins and my sins and anyone else’s sins? All of this is why William Arthur Lloyd is right when he says, "We are most like beasts when we kill. We are most like men when we judge. We are most like God when we forgive."

 Elizabeth O’ Connor reminds us, "Forgiveness is a whole lot harder than any sermon ever made it out to be." One clear message from the cross is that forgiveness is horribly difficult and costly. To forgive us cost God His Son, and cost the Son excruciating physical torment and agony, let alone the unimaginable spiritual pain and torture He suffered there in His soul. If it proved that costly to God and His Son to forgive our sins, why would we expect it to be easy to forgive others who have trespassed against us? By the way, before I forget to say this, can you imagine how costly it would have turned out for us if God and His Son had been unwilling to pay the price to forgive us? Yes, to forgive is sometimes very, very difficult. As some sage noted,"To err is human, to forgive is unusual." It may be unusual for those who don’t know Christ to offer forgiveness. But the call for those who claim to follow Jesus could not be more plain or direct – "And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32). Burton Coffman’s commentary on this verse provides a succinct if sobering summary of the New Testament’s teaching on God’s demand that we be forgiving – "The watchword for Christians, and for all people, is, ‘Forgive or forfeit forgiveness.’ " Think about that when you struggle to forgive. 

         by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

 

Talking About Jesus!

 A six-year-old boy stirred his parents interest on the way home after church one Sunday. The child said, "My Sunday school teacher must be Jesus’ grandmother." When they asked why, he replied, "Because she talks about Him all the time." As my wife and I prayerfully and joyfully await the arrival of our first grandchild, I am being told by veteran grandparents that "there’s nothing like it" and, "You’re going to love it!" I already know grandparents love to talk about their grandchildren! They are extremely evangelistic about them. They will talk to you about a grandchild as long as you will listen, and sometimes after you’ve already quit listening! I’m already talking about my first one, telling everybody about his arrival and his name, and he’s still in the process of getting here! Anyway, the subject of this little piece is not grandchildren or the grandparents who talk about them. My subject is Jesus, and how the apostle Paul would not stop talking about Him! Paul was all in all the time, when it came to preaching Christ. His sermons and letters to congregations are saturated with teaching about Jesus Christ. He was, as we sometimes say, "bent" on preaching Jesus. To use his words in 1 Corinthians 1:2, "I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." In 2 Corinthians 4:5 Paul wrote, "For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake." Acts 26 records the sermon Paul preached to King Agrippa. The centerpiece of that sermon is found in verse 23 where Paul proclaimed to the king that Christ had suffered and risen from the dead. Near the end of that sermon, the powerful king told Paul in verse 28, "You almost persuade me to be a Christian." In Romans 16:25 Paul asserted that God is "able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ" (Paul’s gospel in the sense Christ committed to him the task of taking the gospel of Christ to the Gentiles).

Then there is this statement in Paul’s writings at Colossians 1:27b-28 – "... which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus." This wasn’t a part-time or past-time activity for Paul, or some- thing he did for 30 minutes on Sunday mornings. Because he was convinced Christ alone was every person’s "hope of glory," Paul gave himself completely to the task of preaching Jesus. Verse 29 makes clear his intentional goal and unceasing aim is to preach Christ – "To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily." What came out of his mouth was a result of a work he credits God was doing in his heart. When Paul opened his mouth, Jesus and the gospel spilled out because that’s what Paul was full of! In Colossians 3:4 he refers to Christ as "our life." Paul filled Colossians with Christ! "Jesus" occurs 5 times in chapter 1 plus two more in the book (total 7 times). "Christ" occurs 9 times each in chapters 1 and 2, eight in chapter 3, plus two more in chapter 4 (total 28 times). "Lord" occurs 13 times in the book. Combine these references to Jesus and the grand total is 48 times, in a total of 98 verses in the letter. Wow! – on average Paul made a reference to Christ in every other verse! According to tradition, Paul did finally quit preaching Jesus – when they cut his head off outside Rome about 68 A. D. Everybody needs Jesus and the hope He alone gives. God bless us to talk about Him to everybody we can anytime we can!

 by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN