Leverage: Time

Time is the most non-renewable resource we have at our disposal. Statistically, the average person has about 4,000 weeks of life and many waste or misuse them. However, God invites us to leverage the time and season we're in for the sake of what matters most. 

In this episode, we explore Paul’s call in Ephesians 5 to “be very careful how you live… making the most of every opportunity.” Your time is a gift, but it’s also a responsibility. And too often, we either drift through it or feel crushed by it. Jesus offers a better way. A way to live with clarity, purpose, and intention in the exact moment you’ve been given.

This is an invitation to stop wasting your life—and start living it on purpose.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There was a TED talk released called The Battle for Your Time by Dino Ambrossi from Project Reboot. And in it, he shared that the average life is about 4,000 weeks. I think I have a I think I have a graphic up here that's actually from his talk. And and in it, he was speaking specifically about the the the plague among young people and the way that ultimately, if something didn't shift or change, how young people were eventually going to steward their lives. And ultimately what he was trying to reference was that if something doesn't change, they're going to waste their lives. And so he put this graphic up and he showed, just kind of zooming out and going, man, this is this is the life that we have. This is the time that we have. And he broke down based on statistically, this is how people steward their lives. And you'll notice that there are some really large categories filled with a lot of time. And then at the bottom there, there's a few, there's a few dots left that aren't taken up. And when I saw this, it gripped me. Like I remember feeling it viscerally in my chest. I mean, I felt it. And and the reason the reason I felt it is because I looked at that and I go, and no one did that on purpose. Right? You look at that and you go, no one lived their life that way on purpose. No one looked at it and said, that's exactly how I want my life to go. That's exactly how I want to steward the time that I have. He he actually gave some extra time here. The average life is around eight, is a you know, 72, 75. Some people just use 80 years. This guy gave you 90. So I mean, I would love that. But but no one looks at this and goes, yep, that's exactly how I want this to go. That's exactly how I want to use this. And yet, that's how the average person lives their life. That's how the average person stewards their time. That's where their life goes. My my heart around this entire series, like the heart around all of it, is that no one wastes their lives on purpose. Last week we talked about gifts. No one wastes their gifts on purpose. Today we're talking about time. No one wastes their time on purpose, and yet it happens. We drift into wasted lives. We drift into misused lives. So even if even if you don't necessarily feel like you're wasting your life, but you're you're maybe you're spending it and investing it in things that ultimately aren't eternally significant, that you get to the end of your life, and yet you still have regret, not because you wasted time, but because you misused it and you put it where it didn't belong. And so you may have left a legacy in some kind of way, but it's not the legacy that you wanted to leave. Or the one that you wanted to pass, or you're passing off a legacy, but it's not to the people that you wanted to pass that legacy off to. You may have built a great name for yourself and your company, but your kids don't know who you are. You may have built a great name and a great legacy for yourself with a lot of accolades and statistics, but the people that you really wanted to speak well of you at your funeral aren't there. No one does this on purpose. And yet, so many do it. And in my heart for all of us, however long that God has gifted you to us, whether that is for this hour and a half today, or whether it's for some weeks, some months, or Lord willing, maybe even some years, what we believe our calling is, is to help you and equip you to live in such a way that you don't get to the end of your life having wasted or misused it. Our lives should not look the same as everyone else. As followers of Jesus, our lives should not look the same as everyone else's. That there's no reason that a follower of Jesus should get to the end of their life and this is the way that it was spent. No way. And yet, yet, it happens to followers of Jesus. Statistically, if you look at it, the track record between people who are outside the church and outside relationship with Jesus and the people who are inside the church and inside a relationship with Jesus, there's not a ton of difference in the way that their lives end up expressing themselves. Maybe some different apps, some different devotion time on the Bible app. Maybe Sundays look a little bit different once every six weeks statistically. But but the reality is so much of our lives end up looking the exact same way. And yet our lives should not look the exact same way. We should be known as the most intentional living people in the world. We should. Not necessarily the most serious or the most aggressive or the most but or the most religious, but the most intentional. That we should have an intentional vision for the way that we live our lives and we should invest our time intentionally. Did you know that Christians actually invented the mechanical clock? Fun fact. Christians invented the mechanical clock. Why did they invent the mechanical clock? Well, it was invented by monks who lived so intentionally. They created the mechanical clock to be able to track time so that they could steward it well. The whole reason they invented the clock was so they could steward time well. Sarah Olsen Smith said it was the Benedictines, a monastic order going back to the fifth century that invented the first clock. They have a life of work and worship organized around prayer throughout the day. They invented the first clock as a way to ensure that those prayer times happened with regularity and precision. At first, the clocks didn't have minute hands or even a face. They just controlled the bells to ring at a particular time. The word clock is derived from the Middle Dutch word for bell. Clocks with minute hands and watch faces came centuries after those first mechanisms for ringing the bell. The purpose of those original clocks was to call people to prayer. They enabled people to order their lives around their practices of faith. By the 16th century, clock towers were built in town squares with minutes and second hands. The bells ringing through towns were not primarily to call people to prayer, but to work and to the markets, a reality that remains true for us today. So what was originally created by Christians in order to steward their life well for the sake of Jesus, to revolve their lives around hours of prayer where they could spend their life with the Lord ends up becoming a slave master that tells you when to work and what to do. And so we Christians were the ones who first created the clock for the sake of stewarding our lives. But now we are just as deformed and untrained when it comes to time. We don't know how to view time, we don't know how to steward time, and we don't know how to live in our time. There are uh two common ways to approach time. I call it, I call it the gift orientation and the mission orientation. That some people orient their lives and view time as a gift. They look at it and they go, man, time is such a gift. The fact that we have any of it at all, and they walk around and they have this like blissfulness towards life. Can you believe that we woke up today and we have time? This is amazing. And then you have mission-oriented people who are like, time is running out and we have to steward every single second for the sake of what matters most. And these two people marry each other. Okay. This is typically what happens. Or they become best friends, or they they they get in community. And you have someone who is like, but isn't in the calendar. Do you have it in the calendar? And someone's like, What's a calendar? Yeah, you know him. You know him. I'm the I'm the guy that for my was it for our anniversary for your birthday? I think it was for your birthday. I bought my wife a calendar. It's Christmas. Oh, it's Christmas. Sorry, I don't even know. But for Christmas, she's like, Oh my gosh, what is it? It's a calendar. It's an electric calendar. So, so my wife is is gift orientation when it when it comes to time. Just life is such a gift. And and and she has this beautiful bliss and joy that just radiates off of her around every single day being a gift. I am mission orientation. Okay. Every second, we just lost a second right there. We just lost it. How do you steward it? Did you do, did you do good? And like that's how that's the way that I typically kind of uh kind of approach life. And and and we can frustrate one another when it comes to. She's like, chill out. And I'm like, hurry up. And and the way these things tend to happen is like the the gift orientation person, they might drift, if they're not careful, into into some waste, right? They might waste some time, they might not be have as much urgency as they need to. But the but the mission-oriented person drifts towards anxiety and angst, right? Constantly stressed, constantly stressed, so serious. Never heard either one of those things ever in my life. But but when you think about this, like most of our heated moments in our lives have to do with time. Like a lot of the heated moments in our lives have to do with time. And even when you think of regret, did you know that all of regret is ultimately time-based? That's all it because what is it? It we poorly stewarded moments. That's what regret is. Moments that we poorly stewarded. They're time-based. Two of my favorite movies actually are about time. One of them is literally named About Time. And this is this is my favorite. My favorite, it's it's actually kind of a rom-com. Anyone ever seen this? About time? Man, you gotta watch it. You gotta watch it. Fellas, even if you're like, I ain't I ain't gonna watch that, watch it. Okay, it's a great movie. Uh but the reason the reason it's funny is because even as a rom-com, it has a very serious undertone, which is why it like works for me. I'm like, that's a I'm like taking notes as I watch movies. Okay, he's like, oh, well, you just watch the movie. Like, did you see that? It was amazing. It was a point, it's a great sermon point. So, about time, beautiful movie, beautiful movie. And it's all about making the most of time. And it revolves around the men in this one family. And the men in this family have the ability to travel, to travel in time to different moments of their lives. They can always travel back in time to different moments of their lives. And and and it's and it's a really beautiful, beautiful concept. And and kind of the guide of the movie is there's a father and a son, and the father's trying to teach his son how to use this gift, how to use this gift of being able to travel in time and steward and steward these moments. And so by the by the time you get to the end of the movie, the whole concept of the movie is he t he tells his son to live each day twice. He says, the first time, the first day you have, he said, Man, live that day in all the hurried and all the busyness. However, you would naturally kind of get up and grunt through this day, be frustrated at the things that you get frustrated, be impatient in traffic, do all the things that naturally everyone would do. He said, and then live that day again. He said, and the second time you live it, live it completely differently. Pay attention to all the beautiful things. Take your time, be patient, find the beauty in the ordinary, see people, love them. And then he says this amazing part at the end. He said, and now I've just learned to live that way, and I don't have to live each day twice. He's just learned how to steward his time well and to be present in the moment. And then there's another movie called Living. Living. And this movie is haunting, haunting, but redemptive. And the whole point of this movie is a man who has wasted and misused his life. And he gets this awful diagnosis towards the end of his life, and they're saying, Hey, you have months to live. And he looks up and he goes, I don't know how it happened. It was just one second drifting into the next, one day drifting into the next, and then I didn't realize who I'd become, what had happened to me. And it's the story of wasting his life. Now, these are two beautiful movies, but they're both movies. The reality is you don't have the ability to go back and relive every single day. You get one day, and how are you gonna steward it? So today I I have I have ultimately three things that I want you to walk out with today. They're not points, they're just three things that I was looking at. I was going, man, what do I want people to walk out with today? It's these three things. First and foremost, oh, I just want to I just want you to walk out with some vision, some vision for your for your life, some vision for the way that you steward your life and steward your time. To kind of zoom out today, get out of the grunt of everyday chaos in life, and to zoom out a little bit and to get new vision around the way that you leverage and steward your life. Give it new purpose, give you, give yourself kind of a new endpoint and a new goal. And you're going, man, if this is the person I want to become and this is the kind of life that I want to live, I got to zoom out and get some vision around everything that everything that I do in the way that I steward every second of my day. Second, I want you to take responsibility. I want you to have some responsibility for the moment that God has placed you in in history. And Acts 17, uh, the apostle Paul speaking at the Areopagus to the Greeks, he said, Did you know that God has placed you, He's appointed the very space and time of your life? And he goes on to say that and he did this, that you might seek him. You might seek him. And so the reality is true for you and me as well. That God, for whatever reason, chose this moment in this place in this space of time to put you here. And the question is, are we gonna take responsibility for our moment, space, and time? Are we gonna take responsibility for the role that we play in our generation? Are you gonna take responsibility for your life, for your time? And then third, I hope you walk out with some hope. Some hope that God can redeem your time. God can redeem lost time, God can redeem misused and wasted time. Maybe you're here and you're and you're looking around and you're going, okay, I see this 24-year-old who's over here and I'm 60. And I wish I could go back to that moment and live my life differently. Can I tell you this? That God can do more, God can do more in the last 20 years of your life and use you in ways that you only dreamed of. And He can He can take over and He can redeem the first 40, the first 50, the first 60. That's good. So today the question we have is is who can teach us how to live this life? Who can teach us? If only there was someone who existed outside of time, stepped into time to show us how to leverage and steward our lives. The beauty of Jesus is that we actually believe that he's the the eternal God who exists outside of time. From eternity past to eternity future, Jesus is there, sitting enthroned, ruling and reigning. That's part of the Godhead. And yet, the beauty of the incarnation is that Jesus stepped into human history to live a life with human limitations, with 24 hours every single day, and he taught us to live life well. That's what Ephesians chapter 5 is about. I'm gonna read it again for us. The apostle Paul writes, Be very careful then how you live, not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity. Someone say making the most. Because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. So, how do we live this kind of life? Well, the first thing Paul says is you need to live carefully. You need to live carefully. Live carefully. This this word, this word, some some of your Bibles may actually translate it this way: pay careful attention. Pay careful attention to how you live. How many of you audit your time? How many of you at the end of the day audit the way you just spent your day? How many of you sit down at the end of the day and you go, How did I leverage today and did I leverage it well? How did I steward the hours that I was given today and did I did I steward them well? I don't think many of us do that. Most of us, if you if you have any financial responsibility at all, you you you probably have a budget of some sort that you look at, that you kind of keep track of where every dollar goes. And yet many of us, we don't do this with our time. And time is the most non-renewable resource that we have at our disposal. You don't get you don't get them back. And so do you budget your time? Do you audit your time? How do you do you pay careful attention to your life? Do you pay careful attention to your time? Do you pay careful attention to how you live? Because you do not want to live an accidental life. You don't want to live an accidental life. This this word careless, this idea of being careless is literally just means without intention. So, so so he says pay careful attention. So, what does it mean to be careless? To not pay attention. And what you notice about this is that this the idea is just kind of drifting and reacting, right? Like what tends to happen in our lives, a lot of times is we just we just drift into one thing to another and we react to things. We drift and we react. And that's someone who who is not intentional about the way that they're living. They're not paying careful attention to the way that they're living. They're they're they're being careless without intention. And so it brings us to the question: do you have a vision for your time? Do you do you have do you have an even an idea of where you're wanting to go, who you're wanting to become, how you want to steward your time? Do you have an idea of the priorities that you have in your life, the things that are most important and where they're and whether where they're placed in your calendar, right? Do you do you have an intentionality with the way that you steward your time? And the the the bigger question is, does that does that intentionality align with the will of God? Are the things that are important to you the things that are important to God? Are the things that you prioritize, things that you should be prioritizing in this season of your life? Do you have a vision and intentionality with your time? What do you orient your time around? Every single one of us, if you if you if you track your money just like you track your time, you find out what's most important to you, right? You don't you don't have to try to tell me what's most important to us. Just let let us see how you spend your time, how you spend your money, right? And that shows us what you most value in life. And and and how awful would it be if what you actually most deeply value and what you say you most deeply value is not actually where you invest your life. Man, I know so many people, so many people that you ask them, man, what what's your biggest dream and ambition in life? And they would go, I want to be the best dad. I want to be the best mom. I want to be the best husband, I want to be the, I want to be the best wife, I want to be the best friend, I want to, I want to, I want to change the world. You know, whatever it may be. Everybody has all these different dreams of all that they want to do, all that they want to become. And my question is, does your is your life actually oriented in a way where that's happening? Or if we looked at it, would you go, no, no, no, that's not that's not actually what you most want. You're drifting and you're reacting, and it's taking you away from the in from the vision and intention that you actually have for your life, or that you say you have for your life. Going back to even how Christians invented the clock, right? Is they invented the clock because their life revolved around sacred rhythms, right? Because they lived their life with intentionality. They had sacred rhythms that that that kind of that all of their life was oriented and structured around. And they created the clock to simply be able to live into those well. And and and my question for a lot of us is man, do we actually have rhythms? Do we actually have structure to our days and to our life? Or do we just kind of let our days happen and drift and go about? There, there's there's also a warning that I want to happen, because what I don't want to do is I think the pendulum can swing the opposite way, like we talked about earlier, is you can go from carelessly living to cautiously living, right? You can swing from this idea of total freedom to living out of fear. And what we don't want is people who are afraid in their lives, right? Like that I was just talking about with them with a mission orientation orientation that can kind of drift you into angst and anxiety to where actually time becomes something you fear. That when I when I'm in my unhealthy space, when I when I have a day that's with that that feels wasted, it literally it literally brings anxiety to my life because because I have an unhealthy relationship with time. And so it can I can operate out of fear. The the idea of careful is with a great deal of care, right? With a great deal of intention. But caution is all about avoiding risk and danger. If you're gonna follow Jesus, if you're gonna follow Jesus, you can't live a cautionary life. You can't live a life that's avoiding risk and avoiding danger, because to risk, to avoid risk and danger is to avoid faithfulness to Jesus. Because following Jesus is gonna entail some risk. There's gonna be moments that he's gonna call you to take steps of faith, and you're not gonna be able to calculate all the things to make sure that you're not going to make any mistakes and that it's all gonna be a clean transition. When we planted, there was literally so many conversations around all the ways that this was a terrible idea. Like, like in the flesh, terrible idea. Financially, terrible idea. Season of our family, pretty bad idea. Like there was just so many reasons of why we shouldn't do this on paper outside of, but the but the driving factor was the fact that the Spirit of God had compelled us to something that we could not not do. And so, and so we did it. But we couldn't, we couldn't live in a way that was avoiding risk or avoiding or avoiding danger because this was a risk. This what this did feel dangerous. It was there was a reality of it. If this doesn't work out, we have no idea what we're gonna do or where we're gonna go. Like genuinely, it was just like, man, if if if God doesn't move, if God doesn't breathe on this, if if if people don't respond, if we don't, if if this doesn't happen, like, oh my god, like what are we gonna do? Everything, all of our chips are in on this. And there's other people in the room, they're the exact same way. All their chips are pushed in on this. You can't live a cautionary life and follow Jesus. And so, and so the the goal isn't to isn't to live cautiously, but to live carefully, to keep you focused on the purpose, the will, and the intention of God. Living cautiously makes you idolize certainty.

unknown 20:04

Right?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

When caution is what's driving you, you idolize certainty. There's so many of us can how how many of you pray this prayer? God, would you would you give me clarity? Would you give me clarity? How many of you are looking for clarity versus how many of you are looking for certainty? Right? Like, hey God, would you would you let make sure I know that this is gonna go great? And then I'm not gonna fall on my face and everything's gonna go great. I'm gonna you're gonna like because you're idolizing certainty. Because your root thing, your your what's rooted in your heart is fear, security. So what you're so what you're so what you're what you're wanting is is what you're idolizing is security. You're not worshiping Jesus, you're idolizing security. That's what's deep in you, and what you want is certainty. And what Jesus is saying is follow me.

unknown 20:56

Right?

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Follow me. Is your life oriented around me? I'm gonna take care of you. Seek first the kingdom. All these things will be added to you. I'm gonna take care of you if your life is oriented around me. The second thing he says is live wisely, live wisely. So he says, he says, live carefully, live with great intention. And then he says, live wisely, not foolishly. The idea of wisdom in ancient literature was simply this wisdom meant living in alignment with reality. That's that's the definition of wisdom, is living in alignment with reality. And what what tends to happen in our lives is that the fool is someone who is constantly living against the grain of reality. Someone who is who is constantly living against the way that the world works, living against the will of God, living against the way the time works, living against the way that all of these things operate and work. Uh, and it leads to this exhausted, burnt out, kind of visionless, tired life because you're constantly living against the grain of reality. In Romans chapter one, Paul describes what a fool is, and he really says three things. He says, a fool is someone who exchanges their worship for something that's not worth worshiping. Someone who misplaces their treasure from eternal things to temporary things, and someone who disobeys God's word. So disobeys the will of God. A fool is someone who exchanges their worship. So their heart and their life is oriented around things that are not worth your life orienting around. So in Romans 1, he says they they they exchange the glory of God for created things. And they begin to worship things. Now for that culture, it may mean literally carved idols. In our culture, it can mean all kinds of things that may not be material things. It can be deep idols, like we talked about security, significance, some of those other things. And then it can be things like wealth, sex, adrenaline. It can be accomplishment, accolade. It can be all kinds of stuff that we orient our lives around of how can we get more of these things? Money. How can we get more of these things? And we're exchanging the glory of God for something else that bears the weight of our soul and we orient our lives around it. He says, that's a fool. Misplacing our treasure from things that are eternal and actually last forever. He says, seek first the kingdom and all these other things will be added to you. The context of that passage is actually talking about wealth and greed. It's in the context of anxiety, and anxiety that's rooted around the fact that we're worried about the stuff that we have. Did you know there's two things that Jesus talked about more than anything else in the Gospels? It was the fear of man and it was the love of money. It's the two things he warned against the most. That there's something that happens as where we where we invest our treasure gets a grip on our hearts, gets a grip on our lives. Why? Because it reveals what we value. And when we misplace our treasure, that's a fool, foolish thing to do. And the third thing is disobeying God's word or disobeying the will of God. That God is, God is trying to tell you and reveal to you, I've created you in my image a certain way. I've created life to work a certain way. I've created create, I've I've created all things to work a certain way. I've created you with limitations to make you dependent upon me. I've created you so that you need sleep. I've created you so that you have all of these things. He's like, I'm I'm created you this way. And when you when you live your life misaligned with the will of God, you end up being a fool. But this is the good, this is why the gospel is so essential to if we're if we're going to leverage our lives well, is because when you encounter the love of God, it reorients and reorders the desires of your, it reorders the desires of your heart, reorients your life. When you encounter the love of God, John Tyson said conversion isn't just about getting your worldview right, it's about the satisfaction of your heart's deepest longings and affections. That's what God wants to do with his love. He wants to reveal, he wants to reveal his heart and his love to you in the person of Jesus and what he's done on the cross. And he wants to reorder the desires and reorient your life. And when you, when you encounter the love of God, this happens and it plunges you into a satisfying love that ultimately fills your heart. And what happens when that, when, when God does that, is you stop exchanging your worship. You stop misplacing your treasure and you stop disobeying God's will. Why? Because you know that his will is good for you, because he loves you. And so the calling for us is we we need to live in present time in light of our eternal relationship with God. I think a lot of us, at least what can tend to happen for me, is we actually begin to live our lives in light of our past regrets. And so rather than living our lives in in light of the future vision that God has for us, of the promises of God, with the hope that we have for what God's doing in our lives now and into the future, we actually begin to live enslaved by our past regrets and they begin to dictate our lives. I don't want to do that again. I don't want to be like that again. I never want to make those mistakes again. And so now I'm gonna live this way. And Jesus is going to know. You don't need to be driven by shame and condemnation. That's not the good news of the gospel. What you need to be driven by is the love of God and the hope of the future. The promises of God in your life. So there's a lot of us, you we live our lives, and our dream is to not be like something. So there's some, there's like I've sat across some men, I just don't want to be like my dad. Just don't want to be like my mom. I just don't want to be like that. I don't want to be like the old me. And Jesus is going to do the whole purpose of this for you to get a vision of Jesus and not talk about who you don't want to be based on your past, but who you do want to be looking in looking in the face of Jesus. I want to be like him. I want to live life the way that he wants me to live life. I want to have my heart full of the goodness of God with the hope of the resurrection, driving everything in my life. And this leads us to the third thing, which is leveraging your time for what matters most. So he says, he says, live carefully, live wisely. And then he doesn't say leverage your time for what matters most, because but it's the name of our series. So I really wanted to make this third point the name of our series. What he does say is making the most of the opportunity, right? Making the most of every opportunity. That's what he's saying. Leverage, leverage, make the most of every opportunity. AW Tozer once said, When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection. Not going to get more. Not going to get more, more time. When it's gone, it's gone. Psalm 90, David writes, Lord, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. To know, God, like, like, like there, there is a there's a limitation on my life. I have a certain amount of years that have been allotted to me, and I and I want to know that. I want to live in light of that so that I can live, so that I can gain a heart of wisdom and live well. One of the things that's that's important to realize is the way that God views time. I think I think this could be life-changing for some of you if this really connects. Is there's two Greek words throughout the scriptures that God uses to talk about time. It's chronos and kairos. And I think I I think this could be life-changing for some of you. Andrew Lang writes about the difference between Kronos and Kairos. He says, Kronos and Kairos represent two distinct Greek concepts of time. Kronos is quantitative, linear, and sequential time, measured by clocks and calendars, while Kairos is qualitative, opportune, or proper time. Kronos is about duration and quantity, whereas Kairos focuses on the significance, moment, or deep time. Okay? So the word used here when he talks about making the most of your time is the word kairos. So he's not what Paul is not saying, what Paul's saying is not, so hey, make the most of the of the seconds and hours and the seconds, minutes, hours that you have. What he's saying is make the most of this specific season, this opportunity, this opportune time that God has given you. Make the most of it. Make the most of it. And I think there's some of you that you, that, that, that we get really stressed out because we we view this idea of the of what God's given us with the life that God's called us to, and we view it as a dot, right? And we say, that's God's mission, that's God's purpose. And so we look at our lives in comparison to everyone else. We look at our lives in comparison to the faithful person that we have in our head. And we go, if my life doesn't look like that, then I've failed the calling or the will of God on my life. And we even kind of misinterpret or misunderstand passages when it talks about being conformed to the image of Jesus or living like Jesus. Or we even look at the apostle Paul and we look at that life and we go, that's the kind of life we're supposed to live. And we look at it as prescriptive rather than descriptive. And the reality is Jesus fulfilled the assignment that God had for his life. Right? God had a calling on Jesus' life, and Jesus fulfilled that calling, that assignment that he had. Paul had a specific assignment and calling on his life. And Paul fulfilled that assignment, that calling on his life to be an apostle that takes the gospel to the nation, specifically to the Gentiles. You have a specific assignment and calling on your life based on based on the moment and the time and the season that God's placed you in. And what tends to happen is you have the mom of three small kids comparing herself to the 24-year-old single woman. And going, man, I wish I could, I wish I could make as much of a difference in the kingdom as that 24-year-old who's able to serve and do all these different things. Look at all the mission trips she's able to go on. Man, I wish I could do that. I'm just a mom. I'm just a mom. And you look at it and you go, no, no, no, no. You're being faithful to the assignment and the calling that God has placed on your life. You're not just in anything. That's the assignment and the calling that God's placed on your life. And the 24-year-old can be faithful to the assignment and the opportunity that God's placed on her life. And the beauty of this is that we can leverage our seasons for the good of one another who happen to be in different seasons. That you have an opportune time that God has placed, that God has placed you in, and you can leverage that for other people who are no longer in that time or in that season. The retired couple who have a lot more time on their hands can leverage their time and leverage their resources for young people. Young people who have who have time and opportunity on their hand can leverage their time to serve the young family. The young family can leverage their home to create space for the single people to enter into their home and experience family. And we can leverage all of our opportune seasons well for the sake of one another. Because it's Kairos, it's not Kronos. The season and the opportunity that God's placed in your that God's placed you in. I heard an old pastor by the name of Larry Osborne a couple weeks ago, and he he said he said something that I was like, gosh, that is such gold. And he said, he said, you need to give up fulfilling your potential for the sake of fulfilling your calling. You need to give up fulfilling your potential for the sake of fulfilling your calling. And it was transformative for me because one of the things that I butt up against is how to be a faithful husband, faithful father, and fulfill all the potential that I feel like God's placed in my life. And he told a story about he he loves to write books and he's gotten to write a lot of them. But he when his son was about seven years old, Larry was working on working on a book, and a seven-year-old came in, talked to, talked to his mom, and said, I hate it when daddy writes books. And she goes, Why? He said, Because he doesn't have time to play catch. So they talked about it that night. Larry Osborne didn't write another book for 20 years. Because the assignment that he had on his life was to play catch with his son. So some people may look at him and be like, man, but how many books could Larry Osborne have written in those 15 years? He goes, Yeah, there was potential that I could have done some things, but it wasn't my calling. It wasn't my assignment for that season of my life. In Acts 13, 36, during a sermon, that uh David is is mentioned in this sermon. I think this line is just beautiful, and it said, David served God's purpose in his own generation, then he died. David served God's purpose in his own generation, then he died. What this essentially means is that David fulfilled God's assignment for his life in his time, and then he died. That that's God's will for you. Is that you fulfill the calling and the assignment that he's placed on your life for this moment, and then you go be with him. Potential is all that you could ever be and all that you could ever accomplish. Calling is your specific God-given assignment. Potential is all that you could ever be and all that you could ever accomplish, and calling is your specific God-given assignment. And another one of the things that that that Larry said is he said, the moment I got married, the moment I got married, he said, fulfilling all of my potential was no longer an option. He said, The moment I had my first kid, fulfilling all of my potential just got a little bit harder. He said, and every kid after that, he goes, but every single one of those things was God's mission and assignment that he had for me. This is why Paul, when he writes to the church in Corinth and he talks about being a single bird, he says, Man, I wish that everyone would be single just as me. Why? Because when you're single, you don't have the same worries and concerns and burdens that people who are not single have. Is he saying that to villainize marriage and family? No. But he's just, he's acknowledging the fact that your calling shifts the moment that you have more responsibility in your life. And he says, no, no, that's now your calling. That's now your assignment. There's someone that I he actually have his book on the table, A.W. Tozer. And A.W. Tozer has written some amazing things, amazing things on prayer. And he's known for a life of devotion. People used to say that that he would pray for like 24 hours, 30 hours at a time. People would go in and they'd be like, oh my gosh, he's still praying, he's still doing this. He wouldn't receive money for book sales or for speaking opportunities. And people were like, oh my gosh, A.W. Tozer is amazing. Can I tell you something about Tozer and his legacy? His family hated him. Because while he was gone or in his prayer closet or whatever else, his wife was digging in the trash looking for something to eat and a way to feed their kids. That's not faithfulness. It's not faithfulness. Did he add value? Absolutely. Can we learn from him? Can we learn? Absolutely. But I truly believe in the way that he was living in those moments, he wasn't fulfilling his God-given assignment. He wasn't fulfilling his calling. And I think it could have been because he was idolizing or pursuing his own potential. And I think some of us we need to lay down, lay down some of our potential for the sake of being faithful to the assignment that God's placed in our lives. Unless, unless what you're pursuing, what you're pursuing is your own accomplishment rather than well done, good and faithful servant. And I want you to know I'm as ambitious as any of you. Like this is my idol. Like I'm saying this from a place of this hit me and it hurt me. Because I feel that tension of all that I want to be and all that I want to accomplish. And I also know I miss bedtime too much. And I don't want to be the one who has accolades in this life, but then finds out I wasn't faithful to the calling that God had placed on my life. Because my priorities weren't the same as the Lord's. So how do we fulfill our calling and assignment? In in Ephesians chapter 5, the the scripture that Paul uses is he is he he uses this idea of discerning, of discerning. He says, He says, understand what the Lord's will is. Understand what the Lord's will is. He says, this is the key to living your life well, is understanding what the Lord's will is. And this word literally means to discern what his will is, what his desire is. And when it talks about his will, literally the way that it's translated, it paints a picture of God's desire, of God's dream, of God's wish. So it's saying, like, man, God's will is God's desire, his dream, his wish for you and for all things. So how do we make the most of the opportunity that he's given us in the moment that he's placed us in? Uh the first thing is you need to discern your personal moment and season. We just talked about this. You need to discern your kairos. Discern the moment that God has you in. Once again, once again, there's somebody who's in their 20s who you cannot live the same way as someone in their 40s, who cannot live the same way as someone in their 60s. And when you live against the seasons and the stages of life that God has you in, it leads, it leads to that foolish, unwise, exhausted living because you're not embracing the season that God has for you. I I was at a I was at a retreat with or at a day of prayer with some other pastors and church planners. And there's this, there's this pastor and church planner that I really look up to and I have for a really long time. And one of the things that I really admire about him is is it feels like he's able to squeeze more into 24 hours than anyone else on the planet. And and I look at that once again. I'm a guy who has a lot of ambition. I'm like, I want that. Like I want to just make the most of it every single day, and I want to produce as much as I possibly can, as much as I possibly can. So I shot up my hand. I go, dude, how you do it? How you do it? Like I'm looking at the way that you live your life, and I'm like, how do I get my life to produce as much as your life was produced? And he goes, How old are you? I was like, I'm 30. And he was like, You don't need to do what I'm doing. He was like, guess what? I got two kids. They're both grown and out of my house. He's like, I've never known more or had more availability than I do right now in this season. So I'm able to produce more than I've ever produced in this season. He said, dude, when I was your age, you know what I was doing every morning? Playing with my kid at the playground, walking him to school. And dude, when he said that, I was just like, oh, this is my this is the moment I'm in. People have acknowledged there's different stages and seasons of life. Birth to 18 is known as the dreamer phase. Most most kids, they they mimic to be able to figure out how do we relate in the world. Have you noticed that if you're ever around a little kid, they they kind of say things that they've heard, right? For better or for worse. Like our kid is saying a lot of things. We're going, where did you hear that? Like right now, he goes, he goes, Hey, don't worry, I got this. Don't worry, I got this. And we were like, where did he hear that from? And then the other day, we were riding in the car, and Katie was like, You do that all the time. Like you say that all the time. And so he just mimics. So he's trying to figure out, like, okay, when do you say that? How does that apply in the world? Because he's trying to figure out how to relate to the world. And he's dreaming about what life is about, what's going on. His mind is constantly going a million miles a minute. And this really happens throughout all of adolescence is you're dreaming, you're trying to figure out what is life all about. But then in your late teens and in your 20s, you get it, you move into what's called the discovery phase. You become an explorer and you're trying to figure out who am I? Who am I? This is why, this is why so many students, right, they graduate and they go off and they begin to live in a way that was like not at all the way that they were brought up. Right. And every every parent gets terrified because they're going, what happened to you? And they begin to hate the, you know, hate schools and hate education systems. Like, no, no, it's part of the, it's part of the season of their life. They're trying to figure out who am I? Who am I? What is like who is what is my unique identity? What do I have to offer? And that kind of carries throughout their 20s. So you're trying to experiment, you're trying to figure out. We have people who are 20, 25, 26 right now, and they're so stressed out that they're not living in what they feel like they're so like like exactly what they're supposed to be doing for the rest of their life. Why, why do I still not know what I'm supposed to be doing? It's like, because this season is still in discovery phase. You're still trying to figure it out how you're gonna leverage the rest of your life, and you're figuring out who you are and what God's called you to. Then your 30s and 40s, these are the commitment years. These are the builder years. These are the years that you build things. I'm I'm 30. We planted this church right after I turned 30. And it was like, all right, cool. This is what we're gonna dedicate the next, you know, however many decades of our lives to, is, is building this thing. And this is because in our 20s, we we let God kind of take us through our 20s and kind of narrow things down to where I think this is what God wants to call us to. So let's dedicate, let's commit to this for the next couple of decades. Your 50s and 60s, it's all about legacy and mentoring. And you're you're trying to figure out, man, who can I help? So if you're in your 50s and 60s and you don't have names on a list of people of young people that you're investing your life into, I would challenge you and encourage you, you need to have a list of people. You need to have people that you're mentoring and passing things off to. What tends to happen is that when when when older people have more wisdom, more knowledge, more experience, more skill than at any other time in their life, they actually invest it the least. Right? That's what tends to happen. Because they retire and they begin to kind of coast the rest of their life. And it's like you've never had more to offer than you do right now. And yet so rarely do they turn around and reinvest in the next generation. And then from 70s to the end, it's all about giving. And your question is, man, what can I leave behind? What can I leave behind? Because you're thinking about the end. You're thinking about it. So once again, like you have to figure out what season you have to discern your season of life. What is God calling you to in this season? What Kairos moment are you are you in? What's the assignment that God has for your life right now? And to know that it doesn't, it doesn't mean that it's gonna be God's assignment for your life for the rest of your days. Like God gives new callings and new assignments and new dreams to people as they walk with Him, but you don't get there by not being faithful in this season. God's never gonna call you to be unfaithful now for the sake of getting you somewhere else later. Be faithful now. Be faithful where God has you right now and continue to have your hands open for what God has for you later. The enemy wants nothing more than for you to waste this season with your eyes set on another one. Because guess what tends to happen? When you finally get to that season, you'll waste that season because your eyes are set on another one. But if you can get in the habit of being faithful and rooting your life in the moment, man, God can do some amazing things through your life. The second thing is to discern the kingdom moment or the kingdom season. So, what I mean by this from a macro level is you need to know the story of God and what he's doing throughout human history, right? So God created all things, the fall of humanity happens, Jesus comes in to redeem all things, Jesus raises from the dead, ascends to the Father, sends his spirit, it becomes the era of the church. And the next chapter of the story is Jesus' return to restore and renew all things. And so here we are between those moments of Jesus' resurrection and ascension, the giving of the Spirit when Jesus returns. And so we need to live in light of that story of what God has called us to in a macro level. But then there's a second, the second reality is a micro level. And this is where you're paying attention to the work of God around you. So you're paying attention to this, to the moment history that you find yourself in and the story of God, but you also need to pay attention to the micro moment that God has you in. Henry Blackmey has a famous quote. He says, Find where God's working and join him there. Attach your life to the work of God. Look where he's moving and working around your life and join him there. What's he doing in your neighborhood? What's he doing in your workplace? What's he doing in your family? What's he doing in your heart? What's he doing? And how can you throw your life and partner with him in what he's doing in the world? And then thirdly, you need to discern the cultural moment season. Paul says, the days are evil. The days are evil. What's he talking about? He's going, man, these current days that we're in, this current culture that we're in, he's like, man, it's an attack and it wages war on your soul if you're if you're going to pursue the will of God. The reality of our culture is that it is committed to deforming you out of out of what Christ longs to form you into. It's committed to leading you out of what Christ longs to lead you into. It wants to distract you out of God's purpose and will for your life. It doesn't have to look like crazy rebellion or or or awful sin. It just has to look like distraction and waste. So how do we live faithfully or counterculturally in the moment that we find ourselves in? Have you looked up to see the are you paying attention to the culture? Not just the culture of the world or the culture of America or the culture of the West, but the culture of the places that God has you in. What are the idols that exist in the lives of people around you? What are the broken places and spaces that exist around you? What are the what are the problems that just consistently present themselves in front of you? Do you have a certain kind of person that tends to always come to you that has consistent types of problems and issues? And how do you help? How do you live counterculturally, faithfully in that context? And also how do you help guide other people in the midst of it? If you live in a if you live in a in a business environment where a lot of your life is oriented around business, you probably have a lot of people who their entire life is stressed around how much money they make and how high on the ladder they can climb. How can you live counterculturally in that? How do you live counterculturally in that? Or maybe you're in a in a in a more progressive space, or maybe you're in an uber conservative space, and both of them have their own idols. How do you live counterculturally in the midst of those spaces? Jesus is God, the author of time, who existed outside of time and then stepped into time to show us how to leverage our time. In John chapter 13, there's this interesting, there's this interesting phrase. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer gar outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, dying, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him. I want you to notice in this text what Jesus discerns. He discerns the Father's will. It says that he knew that the Father had put all things under his power. He had come from God and he was returning to God. So Jesus discerned the Father's will, he did the Father's will, then he returned to the Father. And that's the calling of your life. Just to discern what God's will for your life is, to do it, and then go see him at the end of your life. To stand before him and hear, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. And in Mark chapter 1, we this was in our reading this past week. It says, very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Simon Peter and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed, Everyone's looking for you. Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there. That is why I've come. In the context of this passage, Jesus was doing amazing ministry, and crowds and crowds and crowds of people were flocking to come and see him. And what the disciples expected was that this Messiah, who they believed in the moment, was here to overthrow Rome and rescue the nation of Israel, not knowing that what Jesus had come to do was actually to lay down his life for the sake of rescuing them from sin. But what they thought he was going to do is to go where to go where the momentum was. And then he says something surprising, let's go somewhere else. And what drove that? He said, I know why I've come. I know why I'm here. You know, Jesus wasn't enslaved to the external pressures but was submitted to the will of God. And my question to you is, how many things are directing and driving your life that are external pressures and not the will of God? Or maybe your own expectations, your own desires, your own anxiety driving and directing your life, but not the will of God. I'll leave you with this. Hebrews chapter 12 says, And let us run with perseverance, the race marked out for us. You see that? The race marked out for you. That God has a race marked out for you. It says, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Once again, what he's communicating is that Jesus was faithful to his purpose, to his mission, and now he's seated at the right hand of Father because he's completed it. And then he says, consider Jesus. Consider Jesus who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. He says, Man, don't grow weary and lose heart, trying to live your life intentionally faithful to Jesus. Don't lose heart. Don't grow weary. Yeah, you're surrounded by people who are not doing that. And it can, and it can wage war on you because no one else is living with the intentionality that you're trying to live, that you're trying to live in. He says, Don't grow weary, don't lose heart. Keep being intentional. Run with perseverance, the race that's marked out for you. He has an assignment, he has a calling, he has a purpose for your life. Not just a grand purpose for all the years of your life, but this season, this moment for your life. And you can be faithful in that season and you can be grateful in that season. Don't lose heart. Don't be weary. We're gonna move into a time of response. There's a couple of different people that are kind of on my heart as we think about this. And one of them is the person who you've like you're just kind of drifting in life. You're just drifting. And you just need a new fire in your belly. You just need you just need passion reignited, vision reignited for your life. To remember why God's put you here. And to live your life in submission to the will of God and get a fresh vision for your life to get a new fire in your belly. Amen. If that's you, we would love, we would love to pray for you. We'd love to pray for you. To pray a new passion for the glory of Jesus and the mission of Jesus in your heart and in your life, for a new vision for what he has called you to and the purpose that he has for you in this season. I think some of you, you need freedom from an ungodly pressure. You are so anxious and you have so much pressure in your life because you're trying to, you think God's God's will for your life is a dot, and you don't know if you're finding it. And what God wants to free you up to do today is go, no, no, I have so much for you. Seek first my kingdom and I'll take care of you. I have something for you in this season, I'm not gonna let you miss it. If you follow me, if you submit to me. And I think some of that can be driven by religion. You just have a you just have a poor idea of the love of God. You feel like you feel like God's looking at you, going, If you don't, if you don't get this right, I'm gonna take everything away from you. That's not the heart of the father. If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will he who is perfect give good gifts to those who love him? And I think some of you are just comparing yourself to other people. And you're allowing what's happening in other people's lives to drive the vision of your life rather than Jesus. And so I'm gonna move this into a time of prayer. We've got a prayer team uh located in the back. We're gonna have some up front as well. And uh man, we want to pray for you. Yes, you can sit there, you have access, you have access to the throne through Jesus. You absolutely do. I think there's also a gift you can receive when someone else can hear your heart and pray for you and pray over you.