Making the Most of What We Have, Part 6

You gotta learn to stay focused. You gotta learn to live your life on top of time.

Then you will actually build the quality of your life because if you give enough time to things that are important but not urgent, you will prevent some of them from becoming urgent. When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain. Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Well it's one of the most famous of Christ's teachings, the parable of the talents. Jesus was showing us how to be good stewards of all we've been given, our time, our talent and our treasure. And when it comes to our time, he said it's not only about how we spend it but when we spend it.

Today's message is straight ahead. Stay with us now or listen to any recent message online on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net. Now with this message, making the most of what you have, here's Pastor Paul Shepherd. We spent a lot of time covering how to utilize our financial resources in a way that pleases God. The goal is to hear the Master say one day, well done, good and faithful servant. Every one of us will give an account of our lives to God in our future. And therefore, we want to be doing the things now that will prepare us to hear the Lord say, well done. Now when it comes to our time, which we are currently focused on, we have talked about the importance of assessing the time God has given us, making sure we understand that God has given all of us the time we need to do his will. We have committed that we will no longer say I don't have enough time to do all the things I need to do.

Not true. God is faithful and he will give you the time to do what he has assigned to your life to get done. It is how we utilize that time that is important. So we talked about assessing the time God has given us. We talked next about the fact that we ought to dedicate a tithe of our waking hours to the will of God, to kingdom advancement, to spiritual development and to worshiping God. I want to encourage you to not only be a tither financially, which is very important in pleasing God, but also to be a tither of your time, to dedicate 10% of your waking hours to spiritual development, to worshiping God, to kingdom pursuits.

And we talked about that at length in the last installment of our series. And then we began talking about living your life on top of time. And what I mean by that is to live your life doing those things that are important as opposed to giving quality time to things that are relatively unimportant. If you really want to hear the Lord say well done about the way you used the time he gave you, then you want to make sure to be like Jesus. Jesus lived a very time conscious life. You see him say at the age of 12, I must be about my Father's business. Even though his public ministry didn't launch until he was 30 years old, at age 12 he knew that time is marching on and I need to be about my Father's business. He said later as his ministry developed in John chapter 9 verse 4, I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day, for night is coming and no one will be able to work. We've got to learn to get important things done.

And I want to pick it up there talking about how to live our lives from that purpose mindset. There are a lot of things that will eat up a lot of your time but when you stop and look at them, they're not necessarily important things. We said and as we closed the last message, not everything that is urgent is important. There are some things that are urgent and important but there are other things that are urgent but not important. And I left off talking about a ringing phone. Not everybody who wants to talk to you deserves your time now. There are some folks based on what they have to say, you can put them off until after you've gotten some important things done.

Now I'm going to help you if you let me because a lot of us act like a ringing phone just has to be answered now. Fact of the matter is if you are at that moment in your day doing things that you know to be important, now we talked earlier in the series about the kinds of things that are important. Worship and spiritual development are important. Family time is important. Parents, it's important for you to put something in your kids. Don't let them just sit up and live their lives playing some game and you haven't put anything into them because some of them have mastered Nintendo and have mastered manners. And I don't care how well you can play Xbox if you don't know how to speak and treat folk right.

If you don't know how to do your homework, if you don't know how to mind your business, you need to be taught. And so it's time for you to put some quality attention into your children. There is time for recreation. Part of God's will is for you to have fun and fillers in your life. It is time for rest. There's a time your body is designed, you need some sleep. You cannot keep burning the candle at both ends and think you're going to make it. And so all of those are things in the area of importance, time to minister and serve the needs of others.

God's given you time for that. So if you're focused on one of those things right now, then this might not be the time to just answer the phone because if the wrong person's on there, they'll tie you up, get your concentration broken. So what you have to learn to do is live your life focused on things that are important, which means if it's a time in your day when you can't answer the phone and it kind of doesn't matter who, then go on and answer live. Other than that, get voicemail or an answering machine. One of the best inventions of the 20th century was the answering machine.

Answering machine where you leave a message, nice little greeting, tell the folk to leave you a message. And I said as I entered the last message and don't lie on your answering machine. Don't tell people, I'm not here, leave a message. Because you might be there, but you're doing something else. And depending on the importance of this particular message you leave, I will respond at some point. You don't have to tell them what you're doing at all.

Tired of folk lying on the machine. I call up and they told me they're not there. So I started, Lady Heidi says, Pastor Paul, and just getting back to you. Hey, hey, Pastor. Hey, Pastor Lord, Pastor. Honey, Pastor's on the phone. Uh-uh, uh-uh.

Wait, wait, wait. You just told me you weren't home. How you going to witness for Jesus lying on the answering machine? You don't have to tell folk what you're doing. Just nice little polite greeting. Hello, this is your residence.

Please leave a name, phone number, message God bless you, beep. Everything you said was true. And depending on the nature and importance of that call, you'll get back to them sooner or later. And if you got those kind of folk in your life, I don't talk to machines. Well, you got a problem. Because I'm learning to live like Jesus and to stay focused on what's important. And not everything that is urgent is important.

Not every knock on your door is important. You got to learn to stay focused. You got to learn to live your life on top of time. And the more you spend time doing things that are important, especially things that are important and not urgent, then you will actually build the quality of your life. Because if you give enough time to things that are important but not urgent, you will prevent some of them from becoming urgent.

If you give, let me break this down. If you give enough time to proper rest and taking care of your body, you can prevent some of the problems you will have if you don't give enough time to it. After a while, your body will start screaming at you. You are not treating me right. You are not resting me enough. You are not getting me enough sleep. You are not getting me the right food. You're not getting me enough exercise.

The body will start talking to you. And you got to learn to listen to it. And so, things that are important but not urgent, you want to stay focused on them because in some cases you can practice prevention. You don't want your kids getting buck wild. Give them time while it's important but not urgent so that you don't end up having to go and stop in the middle of your day and go up to the school. Because you put enough in them at home where they know how to act at school.

And they don't have to break into your day. Because some of us were raised back in the day where if you messed around and didn't learn it right at home and went to school acting up, your parents would come up to the school. I have friends whose parents... My mama never had to come up to school after me. I knew better than to create that situation.

She never had to worry about... I was good at school. I knew how to handle my business. If I did something I had no business doing, I was real slick about it.

Because you had to protect your interest. Because I had friends who weren't as slick and they'd just get up there showing out at the school. And back in that day, I don't know what y'all do now, I just pray and intercede for y'all now.

I don't know what you do. This generation is a mess. Back in my day, your parents would come up there. I have friends whose mama's come up there, didn't even bother to put on her shoes, still had on her house shoes.

Come up there with house shoes. And you know, back in the day, they would let the parent go right straight to the class. Oh, these young folk are traumatized.

They never thought of anything like that. Back in my day, the parent could go right straight to the... I had friends whose mother was looking in the glass of the door.

Because somebody had called and said you were up there acting up, and he in there still showing off. And I look, I say, your mama, your mama at the door. And he looked and he would try to freeze by them, but it's too late.

And she would come open the door and say, come here. And now in front of your whole class, he had to walk out in the hallway. And of course, this is back in the day when corporal punishment was not abuse. Back in that day, and I had friends, no lie, I had friends who got a beating in the hallway of the school. You hear somebody's mama out there, didn't I tell you that... And it was a blow for every syllable.

Didn't I tell you not to... Didn't I tell you not to that... Touch somebody traumatized near you and just pray for them. Pray for them.

There's some folk traumatized, just pray for them. Be healed. So you got to learn to deal with things that are important before they become urgent. Well, if you neglect things that are important, it won't be long before they become urgent.

Here's Pastor Paul once again with the rest of today's message, Making the Most of What You Have. You have to take a vacation. Take one so that you can keep your mind and your body and your emotions in order. You need a break. You can't keep going. You cannot keep it up.

You can't just burn the candle and get away with it. At a certain point, you got to get away, come apart from everything you're doing so that you don't come apart. You got to take a break. But I'm in a season where my finances, I can't go to the Caribbean and all the fancy stuff I want to do.

I know what that's like. I've been in that season where you can't do everything that you want to do. But find out what you can do in this season and take a break. Take a cheap break but take a break.

Before I got to this season, sometime the break would just be just check into a place somewhere out on the outskirts of town and just go there and chill out and rest and relax your mind and get away from it all because you have to live your life in that zone of focusing on things that are important, important. Some things are both urgent and important. Some things are urgent but not important and you need to differentiate them.

Now, I want to also keep helping you now apply this. Let me give you another principle here. You've got to understand that Jesus himself did not allow other people. Don't allow other people to dictate your schedule. You got to learn to live according to what God has called you to do.

Don't let people guilt you into their schedule. Jesus did not do that. In fact, let me show you something. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus went to his hometown. He has now launched his public ministry and the hometown folk have heard of some of the miracles and the great things Jesus is doing. And he has to end up explaining to them why he can't waste much time among them because they were very familiar with him. Isn't that Mary and Joseph's boy? No, they call him a miracle worker and all that. They just used to live right down the street and they were very offended. Look at how Jesus handles it.

Luke chapter 4, beginning at verse 23, Jesus said, Surely you will quote this proverb to me, Physician, heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum. I tell you the truth, he continued, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was severe famine throughout the land.

Watch this. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them but to the widow at Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy at the time of Elisha.

Yet not one of them was cleansed, only Naaman the Syrian. Look at verse 28 of Luke 4. All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. Jesus said to them, Just because I did it some way else doesn't mean I can do it here. Just because I have worked hard and worked miracles among some other people doesn't mean that's God's agenda for me here. He said, So you can quote me to scripture all you want, but I'm about my Father's business. And frankly, one of the other gospels revealed to us and Mark's gospel reveals in chapter 6, the reason why Jesus didn't do much in his hometown was because of their attitude. It had more to do with their lack of receptivity to the supernatural.

They were so offended that he was a hometown boy until they didn't have faith to see him the way God had created him as the Son of God and the Savior of the world. And so Jesus knew not to spend a lot of time hanging around with faithless people. See, a lot of us have to learn that lesson. Many of you give too much time to weak areas and to weak people.

Oh, this is going to help you. If you're going to do the will of God with your time, you have to learn to play to your strengths. And he could have hung around there and tried to preach and preach and preach and get the hometown folk to have some faith, but that was not what the Father wanted him to do. The Father said, there are too many people around who already have faith, and I want you to be at the right place at the right time so that you can minister to them instead of fooling around with folk who aren't ready for prime time. And you have in your life a whole lot of people who are not ready for what God really wants done in their life, so they will not respect you or your time. What they will try to do is dictate what you ought to do.

You know you have them in your life. They try to act like everything is of utmost importance. You need to drop what you're doing and come right now. Jesus said to the hometown folk, it doesn't work like that. He said there were miracles that were worked for specific people at specific times, and he said, you've got to understand that that's the way God moves in my life. And I want to encourage you to operate like Jesus. Do not allow people to dictate your schedule.

Jesus gave you that time to do his will, and so you must be about your Father's business. When it's time to sleep, go to sleep. You don't even have to leave your phone on just in case. If you have the kind of people now, many of us can keep our phones live because our relatives and friends, close friends are respectful, and if you get a call in the middle of the night, you know it would be submerging.

But some of you all, you know you have some raggedy folk in your life who will not respect you and your need for rest, and so you have to force the issue. You have folks that will text you any hour of the morning, then turn off the text sound. I'm not telling you what I think. I'm telling you what I do. At a certain time when it's through, I'm done texting now. I'm done with all of this.

Turn that sound off. I keep my ringer alive because few folk have the number, and those that have it know how to respect my time. I'll keep the ringer alive, and if my phone rings at 3 in the morning, it is urgent and important.

I see to that. I have informed the people on the East Coast the difference in the time zones. You know, when you have a lot of friends on the East Coast, you know, you've got to straighten them out just because it's 7.30 in the morning where you are. You say, well, yeah, I think pastors should be up by 7.30. It's not 7.30 where I am. If it's 7.30 where you are, it's 4.30 where I am.

I promise you I'm not up. And so they're all informed, and they know how that. So if my phone rings at midnight, I know it's something urgent and important. But you have to know the people in your life. Help them respect your time. Set the proper boundaries. Tell them I'm about doing the things that I know God would be pleased with with my life and time.

If you need me, I will be there. But make sure it is a need, not a greed. Not a greed. You have some folk in your life who just think they can dominate your time.

Your energy just drain you dry. And you have to correct that pattern just like Jesus did with his hometown folks here. Now be forewarned. Note that verse 28 of Luke 4. The people got mad. When you do the will of God with your time, you're going to have some angry people in your life. I'm telling you now, there are going to be some people who don't like it, especially if they have gotten used to you being codependent with them and gotten used to just being able to tap into your time and your energy and just pop up on your job and just pop up in your life whenever they get good and ready, and you're supposed to drop what you're doing. And suddenly you start creating boundaries.

They're not going to be happy. But you have to say, oh, well, may the Lord bless you and help you to understand that I must be about my father's business. So you got to do that. Let me give you another pointer for how to please God with your time stewardship. Get good at saying no when necessary. You got to get good. Now some of you all, you're going to need practically need a prayer line for this point.

You got to practically lay hands on your poor oil on your head. Oh, God, help us. Some of us are lousy at no. Lousy at no. And I'm here to tell you, if you're going to do the will of God, no has got to become part of your vocabulary.

Why? Because it was part of Jesus' vocabulary. He's our model. You think Jesus just went around doing any and everything folks wanted him to do, when they want it, how they want it.

Not so. Thanks so much for joining us for today's Destined for Victory message, making the most of what you have. You know, one of the best things we can do with our time is to invest in the Great Commission. Pastor Paul Shepherd's mission here at Destined for Victory is to share the hope we have in Christ with as many people as we can, and you can help. For a monthly gift of only $20 or more, you can become a Destined for Victory partner, joining Pastor Paul and sharing the gospel all over the world through these radio and internet broadcasts. And as our way of saying thanks for becoming a partner, we'll send you one of Pastor Paul's most popular CDs, the best of Let My People Smile. This is Pastor Paul, we think at his very best, combining his great sense of humor with the timeless truths of God's Word. So please call us at 855-339-5500 and find out more about how to become a Destined for Victory partner. You can make your pledge right there over the phone, or mail your gift to Destined for Victory, post office box 1767, Fremont, California 94538. You can also become our partner from our website, pastorpaul.net. But if you can't become a partner, but would like to send a generous gift this month, Pastor Paul will send you his booklet, He's Alive. Included in this great resource are four compelling reasons why Christians believe in the resurrection of Christ.

That's He's Alive, our gift to you this month by request for your generous gift to Destined for Victory. You have to learn to say no to people who are trying to dictate to you things that are really not what God has called you to do at this point in time. You've got to be okay with saying no.

Some of us have to learn to say no and not feel guilty about saying no. And that's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, Making the Most of What You Have. Until then, remember, He who began a good work in you, will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.