Dealing With the Pressure of Time - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, December 6.

Is your calendar so packed with holiday activities that even important things get pushed aside? Today's podcast helps with rearranging priorities to properly deal with the pressure of time. Time is short.

Even at the longest it's short. And the issue is, what am I doing with my time, which means what am I doing with my life? Spending it, investing it, foolishly letting it drift by, or wisely making my life count? And what I want to ask you is this, are you making wise choices about your life? What is the priority in your life? You see, the problem is we believers are just about as undisciplined as the rest of the world.

We want to react to life. Don't make me think through what I'm going to do and sit down and plan it out. I'll just do whatever comes naturally.

That's the way the pagan thinks, not the way believers think. Listen to what he said. He said, be careful how you walk. Be careful how you spend your time. Now, there's a reason he said be careful about like that and life's over. He said be careful because you only get one trip and it's all going to be over one of these days.

And then when it's over, then what? And this is why he says be careful how you live, discipline, priorities, these two things we should keep in our mind. Have you ever sat down in your life and said, having trusted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and now that I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, there are going to be certain priorities in my life that I'm going to settle once and for all.

I'm not going to have to settle them every week and every month and every day. As a follower of Jesus Christ, having decided to follow Christ, there are certain priorities I'm going to have in my life. Have you ever done that? Well, my friend, you certainly should have because when you chose to follow Jesus Christ, there's certain things that became first. Have you ever sat down with the Lord and said, Lord, because you said in your word, six days shalt thou labor and the seventh is a day of rest. Lord, one of the priorities in my life is that on the Lord's day, I'm going to be in the house of God somewhere, worshipping you, praising you, serving you, adoring you, opening the Word of God, listening to the scriptures, being edified and reproved and rebuked and strengthened and encouraged. God, that is a priority in my life. You see, a long time ago when I trusted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, one of the priorities of my life before I was ever called to preach that on Sunday, I was sitting on the second row on the end seat and right in front of the pastor because I knew somehow that's where I belonged on Sunday morning.

It's amazing to me that so many people who are followers of Jesus Christ have never set a priority about something that God is very clear about. Do you have to decide every week, shall I tithe or shall I not? Shall I give this week or shall I not? My friend, one time and once and for all, you should set that priority in your finances. You say, well, but I have to count every week.

No. If you make it a priority, you'll be amazed how you won't have to count it. It'll always be there. You see, God has settled some things in our life. And one of them is that. Part of our pressures in life are the result of wrong priorities. Mismanagement of our time. Leaving God out, doing our own thing, loving Jesus when it's convenient.

But when I got something else to do, I just don't do it. Now, let's face it, that must grieve the heart of a loving Father, especially when one day you and I said, Lord Jesus, I choose to believe you as my personal savior. I choose to follow you all the days of my life.

You got in the baptismal pool and you were baptized dead to your old life, risen to walk in newness of life, a follower of Christ now. The moment you did that, certain priorities God expected in your life. And one of the reasons that we have so many problems even among believers is because we don't set priorities. We just do our thing when and how we want to do it.

Remember what we said a while ago? We said God has provided all the time you and I need to do His will. And listen to this. God has provided time in your life and mine every day for Himself. That's God's schedule.

On God's schedule for your life and mine every day, there is time for Him. Now, look at something. I want you to see this.

It's beautiful. Think about this for a moment. The life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He lived about thirty-three years. Thirty years of that time He spent as a carpenter.

I'm in a carpenter shop chiseling out furniture. Now you think, now wait a minute, thirty-three years the Messiah, this minister of His, He ought to be out preaching at least by the time He's twelve. He should be out on the road, Jerusalem, up to Bethany, over to Jericho. In other words, really moving and covering ground because He only has till thirty-three.

But for thirty years He stayed in one town, Nazareth. Then He began His ministry. Now you think, now wait a minute, He only has three years.

That's not very long. In fact, think about this, Jesus had about a thousand two hundred days approximately according to the calendar then and now. Let's say He had a little over a thousand days. Now think about His mission in life. To fulfill the covenant promise of God in the Old Testament to Israel, to send Him a Messiah.

To redeem all of mankind, to offer His life a substitute for the sin of the whole world. He only had a three-year span. Now if that had been most of us, we would have sat down with a map of that area and we would have plotted our strategy. We would have said I'm going to be here this day and there that day, going to be preaching here in this synagogue, that synagogue, on this street corner. And we would have had it all worked out for three years and I mean that the apostles would never have been able to keep up with our speed.

We would have had it all worked out. But here's the whole key. You and I are not going to be able to stop the clock, change time, alter the calendar.

You can break the hands off the clock, won't stop a thing. God understands that. Jesus with only three years with the greatest task any man who's ever lived had, it's interesting what He did.

He preached one of His greatest sermons to one woman by herself at the well. Zacchaeus, a publican and a sinner, up in the tree, waiting for him to come along to get a good look. He stops. He calls him down.

He takes time to go home and eat with him. Bartimaeus, a blind poor beggar seated by the highway side. Jesus with throngs around Him teaching them. The Bible says that Jesus stood still. Carl Bartimaeus took time to heal him. He spent a great deal of those three years with twelve men. But the most important thing I want you to notice about the Lord Jesus Christ is this.

I'll give you these passages. You don't even have to turn to them. They're short. Listen to this. This is interesting with a man who only had three years. The Bible says, And in the early morning, while it was still dark, he arose and went out and departed to a lonely place and was praying there. Jesus, you don't have time to be praying.

The world's going to hell and you only have three years. Chapter six, same book. Mark, listen to what he says. And after them bidding them farewell, he departed to the mountain to pray. But, Lord, what about all those folks who are hurting, who are lost, who are suffering? Luke chapter six. Listen to what happens. He says, And it was at this time that he went off to the mountain to pray and he spent the whole night in prayer to God.

He only got three years. And you're going to spend the whole night praying? Then chapter nine and verse eighteen. Listen. And it came about that while he was praying alone, no man ever felt the pressure Jesus felt. You said, Well, wait a minute. He didn't have car automobiles and jets and all the rest.

No, you know what? Listen. Jammed, crammed, packed, crowded, pulling, yelling, pleading, crying. Everywhere he went throngs pulling at him.

He only had three years. But here was the secret with Jesus. You never hear anything about him rushing over to Bethany, hurrying back to Jerusalem. Quiet, quiet on the inside, accomplishing, achieving. And what was the secret of it all? The one thing that you and I oftentimes neglect, and that is that Jesus Christ, listen to me carefully, the priority of Jesus Christ in his three years of ministry had not changed from what his priority was in those early years as a carpenter. The priority in the life of Christ was time alone with the Father.

That's it. That's the key to managing time. That's the key to choosing right priorities. That's the key to achievement and accomplishment of those things that have lasting and eternal value.

Now, you know, think about this. Not only has God provided enough time for us to do his will, but he's provided enough time every single day in your schedule and mine to spend time alone with him in his Word and on our knees in prayer. That's part of his schedule.

That's part of his plan. That's part of the way he wants us to spend our life, our time, in God's schedule for your life and mine, there is always time to fellowship with him, always time to serve him, always time to worship him. When I get hurried, rushed, frantic, anxious, hold it, just wait a minute now, just stop a second and ask myself the question, why am I getting anxious?

Why am I getting upset? Why do I feel the pressure? And there's a very simple solution. I can get on my knees before God and just say, okay, Lord, I've been running on my schedule. I've been fulfilling my plans. These are my expectations.

These are my goals. Now, I lay them down and I want yours now. My friend, listen to me carefully. There is instantaneous peace. Nothing's changed. And all the time I've been praying, the clock's been ticking away, ticking away, ticking away, ticking away, ticking away. Here's what happens. When you and I spend time with the Father, the Father grants us wisdom to know how to achieve and to accomplish the things that he's set for us in less time than we can do it apart from him. The question is not have I done everything that I need to do, but have I done what the Lord expected me to do? That's what it's all about. And you see, what we've allowed is we've allowed things, the pressure of time and circumstance to do what? It has crowded God out of the life of his children. And what we do is while we talk like Christians, we live like pagans. Only when we're in dire need do we call upon God. Now I want to say something to you.

The wisest, smartest, most intelligent thing you can do as a young boy, as a young girl, is to make the priority of your life time alone with the Father every single day. Now I give you a warning. That's why he said be careful. The devil will fight you every day.

You know why? Because he knows that the effectiveness of your life is not determined by your abilities and your talents and your experience, but the effectiveness of our life is determined by the time. Not that we have to spend hours every day, but where our priority is, when you and I spend time with him, somehow everything else we do has greater impact.

It makes eternal difference. And when we get frantically doing our own thing and hurrying here and yonder and doing other things, I remember when I first went to seminary, I was amazed because I just grew up believing that somehow the time you spend alone with God was the most important thing in your life. And I read in Oswald Chambers, he agreed with that, so I thought, God, here's somebody who certainly encourages me. I remember going to seminary and I could not believe the fellows I met who were so busy studying they had no time to pray. And I want to say to you who are my pastor friends, my friend, I understand all the demands of the ministry, but I can tell you this.

Your effectiveness relates to your time alone with the Father, not getting up sermons, not praying about the affairs of the church, but being quiet, studying the Word of God for yourself, humbling yourself before God, listening to Him, absorbing Him, fellowshipping with Him, worshipping Him, that will make everything else in your ministry more effective. And when you overlook that, it's just you doing your thing in your flesh, and it won't work. Now let me tell you what the danger's going to be for some of you.

You've already reached 40, 50, 60, whatever it might be, maybe old, and you've said, well, you know, I've sort of gotten by this far. I mean, you know, why should I start setting priorities and changing my lifestyle and start spending a lot of time with God now? I mean, even though He says, you know, after all, it's, you have to be careful, but I've lived this long, why now?

I'm going to tell you why. I want to remind you of a verse in the Scripture. Three passages, Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 3, 2 Corinthians 5, all of them say in essence this simple warning. Every one of us shall give an account unto God for our life, which means our time and the way we spend it. My friend, there's going to come a day when I'm going to have to give an account, but standing beside me is every one of you. Every single one of us is going to have to give an account. We're going to have to give an account not only for gifts, talents, abilities, whatever we want to call them, possessions, we're going to have to give an account for time. Irreversible, irreplaceable time. I either invest it wisely or spend it foolishly.

Going to have to give an account. And life is one process of decision making, one after the other. Choosing priorities, wise priorities because of who we are, followers of Christ. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of Dealing with the Pressure of Time. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia. Music