Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, August 12th. You've probably felt like it would be helpful if you just had a couple more hours in the day. While you can't stretch the daylight, today's Life Principles message shows you how to maximize the hours you do have. You see, we wear it on our wrists most of the time.
And we hang it on the wall. And more than likely, you've got more than one clock and one calendar in your home. Why are we so hung up about time? Because time is very precious.
And we should be investing every minute of it. That doesn't mean I've got to be busy every minute, because rest is an investment in time. You ever thought about, at the end of the day, asking yourself the question, and I'm sure you have, What have I really accomplished today?
What have I really been doing all day long? Everything about our life's wrapped up in time. Now, when I think about that and I think about the life of Jesus and how He lived out His life, you say, Well, was He interested in time? Yes, He was.
Think about this. From the time He was thirty, He only had a thousand days to perform the greatest, most important, miraculous, far-reaching event in all of human history. And that is at Calvary.
Calvary was a very short period of time. When it came to the fact they nailed Him there, He hanged there for a while and He died. Most important thing in His thousand days was that event. And then, of course, He was resurrected. Jesus was not anxious. Jesus was a man of prayer. And here's what I've discovered, and I've read many, many biographies. The great men of God who've made an impact upon this world have been men and women, not just men, men and women who were men and women of prayer who knew it to be a priority in their life.
And I wonder how much time you spend. You say, Well, I'm not a pastor. It has nothing to do with it. It has to do that you're a human being. It has to do that God has a will and a plan and a purpose for your life.
And that will, that plan, that purpose is going to unfold within a span of time. Some people have lived a short period of time and made an awesome impact. Other people who lived a very, very long time made no impact at all. Think about living your life and nobody ever regretting that you died. Think about living your life and when you're gone, nobody shows up at your funeral. Something's missing in a person's life when you don't have any relationships.
When you haven't built any relationships in life when you're gone, who cares? Very important how we live our life. So, you say, Well now, what's all this got to do as far as time is concerned? And I go back to Ephesians chapter five and listen to this verse. Verse fourteen says, For this reason, it says, Scripture, awake sleeper, arise from the dead.
Christ will shine on you. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, listen, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. That is, by making the most of our time, what He's talking about is simply this.
And that is, we want to use our time very wisely. So, think about a given day in your life. Let's just say a typical day in your life. Now, this is one of those messages you need to be honest. In fact, you should be honest about all of them. But think about it for a moment. Just be honest with yourself for just a moment.
How much time in any given day do you spend totally undistracted, quietly, alone, talking to your heavenly Father? He gave you your life. The only reason you're here is because God gave you life. You say, Well, my parents didn't want me. God gave you your life. It doesn't make any difference how you got here. God gave you your life.
You owe it to Him. Now, watch this. This is the way many people live their life. Christians, here's God in their life. They'll tell you, I'm saved. I've been baptized, member of the church. I go to church.
I give a little bit once in a while or maybe every Sunday. I do pray sometime and so God is in my life. But in reality, here's what's going on.
This is the way they think. You know God's there, but in your mind you're thinking about other things. What are you going to do when you get to work? You get up in the morning and start thinking about God. You're thinking about what you're going to have to eat. How are you going to dress? What's going on in your life?
What I want you to see is this. What about your relationship with Him? You see, the most important thing in your life is your personal intimate relationship with Him. And that has to be nurtured. The most important thing in your life is your personal intimate relationship with Him.
And how is that developed? You say going to church and worshiping God, all that is absolutely true. But in order to develop that kind of relationship, there must be time undistracted, not concerned about anything else, but your personal intimate relationship with Him through His Word and through time you spend in prayer. Now, it is life's greatest time-saver and most productive use of a person's time.
And I'm going to give you fifteen reasons in a moment to show you why it is. How you and I can make the most of our time and make it most productive. So, I want to ask you this question. When is the last time you got up in the morning and the first thing you did was open the Word of God and spend some time with Him, talking to Him about the day, who you're going to meet, things you don't know are going to happen, your divine guidance and direction, your protection, your watch care of you, your family, people that you meet that you want to possibly talk about Jesus if you get the opportunity. That is, how do you start your day? As a follower of Jesus Christ, how do you start your day? Listen, your day is a gift from Him.
He shut it down in a split second. How do you start a day given to you by Holy God for the purpose, listen, for the purpose of bringing Him honor and glory by the life that you live and the relationships you build? How do you start your day?
Well, I will say to you this, I've learned long time ago the most important thing in my life to make my life the most productive is not what I do. It's being quiet and listening to Him and reading His Word. For example, and I'll just read you the few verses that I read just about every other day. Sometimes some weeks I'll read it every day because it says something to me. Here's what it says. I am your servant, Father.
Give me understanding that I may know your testimonies. It's time for the Lord to act. Therefore, I love your commandments above gold, yes, above fine gold. Therefore, I esteem right all your precepts concerning everything.
I hate every false way. Establish my footsteps in Your Word. Do not let any iniquity have dominion over me. And I could go on with a few of the verses.
You say, where is that? It's a hundred and nineteenth Psalm and it begins a hundred and twenty-fifth verse. You say, why do you read the same thing over and over again?
I'll tell you why. Because I want to be reminded every single day that I am His servant, that I need Him to guide my footsteps because I don't want any iniquity to develop in my heart. I love His Word. I don't ever want to love anything more than I love His Word. That will keep your heart clean and pure and your life productive. But you have to find the passage that speaks to your heart the most.
So now, looking at the life of Jesus and how He spent His time in prayer, how does that affect our time? So, I'm going to give you sort of phrases and you can just write down what you want. But write them down. Because listen, your time will be more productive and you'll have lots less wasted time and time that'll bring you more joy and more happiness in your life.
So, let me start with the first one. That's this. Here's how prayer works. When emergencies arise in prayer, we get clear, timely direction, eliminating confusion.
That is, when you and I are in prayer and we're talking to the Lord, it's a way of life. Emergencies arise, listen, we know what to do. In the twentieth chapter of Second Chronicles, when Jehoshaphat was being invaded by three foreign armies, when he heard the news, here's what he did. Jehoshaphat was afraid, turned his attention to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. First thing he did is he went to his face to cry out to God. You see, if you and I began the day with Him and reading His Word, we're ready. That is, God, He knows how to make us ready to face those things in life that we can't plan because we don't know about them ahead of time.
And then, this kind of praying prevents us from making wrong decisions, causing us costly delays and long-range repercussions. The sixteenth chapter of Acts, here's what happens. Paul is headed in one direction. In fact, he is planning to start his missionary journeys at this point to go east, which would have been into the countries that we know as Near East, Iran and Arabia and all the rest of those countries. Instead, in prayer, God spoke to his heart and said, No, I don't want you to go in that direction. Then he had this vision in prayer and he saw this one in Macedonia saying, Come over and help us. Watch this. This is so historically important. It was a turning point in all of human history.
Because instead of going east and evangelizing that part of the world, God said, I want you to go west. Suppose, Paul said, Nope, that's my plan. This is what I believe is the right thing to do and I've already planned this. I'm sticking with it.
No. Let me tell you why we get in trouble. Many people say, Well, I want to do what's right. And they pray. And after they pray, they decide, Well, I do feel this, but I think since I've already planned this, I'll go this way. You must always give God time if He wants to change your plan. And I can think of many times when I had chosen and made a decision about something and then get down to praying about it and I'd have a different feeling. Now, God didn't give me twenty-five reasons for changing my mind. I just all of a sudden got a little uneasy about doing what looked right. I'd already planned, had it all set up, and as long as I was on my feet, thing to do.
Get on my knees, not the thing to do. I can tell you, every single solitary time I've obeyed Him, He blessed me, and the times that I decided I was going to do it myself, I missed it. Because listen, our knowledge is limited, our wisdom is limited. God's wisdom, listen, He already knows all the details. We don't know all the details. Because you see, sometimes it takes time to know what the details are, and He who sits above all time already knows what they are. So if He says, don't do that, don't do it, you'll get in trouble. I've told people that in their dating relationship, about finances, about many, many things. Well, I know that sounds right, and pastor, thank you very much.
Here's what I think. Can you tell me that God told you to do this? Well, no, I can't say that, but I don't know that God speaks to me that way. They give me all these excuses for not getting on their knees and finding out what does God, well, you know, God doesn't speak to me that way.
He will if you let Him, give Him time. God wants to show you the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Then of course, another good reason for prayer and the way it helps us is it eliminates worry and anxiety about something because that always wastes time. And you recall, for example, in Philippians, and you know this passage by heart, in Philippians the fourth chapter and the sixth and seventh verse, what does he say? He says, don't be anxious about anything, but do what? Spend your time in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. And he says, listen, the peace of God will surround you, garrison you about, protect you in those kind of times.
God will protect us. Listen, fretting, anxiety and all the rest does nothing but waste time. Why should I wring my hands over something that God already knows all the answer to and all I have to do is just wait for Him? Listen, you can start down the wrong path.
Watch this carefully. You can start down the wrong path out of ignorance. But if you will begin to ask God, now Lord, I want you to confirm I'm heading the right direction and if I'm not, I want you to stop me. What will He do? He will stop you. He may first of all give you a signal in your spirit that you're getting uneasy about it. Then you have to decide, is my uneasiness God's voice or is this just something going on inside of me? Remember this, He's living on the inside of you.
He desires to protect you. Make the right decisions. Head in the right direction. And when He sends you a signal, don't just try to explain it away, well, that's just my feeling. And listen, if God tells you something, you know it's from God and you're, every one of your friends says to you, don't do it, you have to decide who you're going to believe.
Then of course, it produces a sense of calmness and peacefulness, making us more productive. And the wonderful thing about starting the day with Him is this, you open your heart to Him today, Lord, I want you to speak to my heart today. I'm available for your instruction today. I want you to guide my steps, let no iniquity come into my heart. I want to listen carefully to you. I want to be sensitive to your will today. When you start the day off, listen, in the Word of God and talking to Him, you say, well, is God going to speak to me?
Yes, He will. He says in one of my favorite verses, it's real simple. The entrance of your Word, entrance of your Word into my heart gives me light.
What light? Light of understanding of what God is saying to us. And then of course, what we're doing is we are inviting God into our activity to guide us to make us productive.
When you say, Father, I want You to guide me today, what You're saying is, I'm inviting You into my life today, Lord, and I want You to guide me in all the decisions that I make. I want to make wise decisions. I don't want to waste my time.
I want to spend my time wisely. So I'm asking You to guide me and to help me. Will He do it?
Yes, He will. What does He say? He says, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean to your own understanding, it's inadequate. In all of your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight instead of wasting time trying to figure out, well, Lord, what do You want me to do? And listen, He gives us confidence and that confidence is going to make our decisions more productive, more enjoyable, because we're doing what He's called us to do. Oftentimes, people will say, yes, I love God. I don't have time.
How many times have I heard this? I don't have time to pray. There is no such thing. I don't have time to read the Bible.
There's no such thing. That is, I either choose in His gift of time to me to acknowledge Him and to recognize Him and to follow Him, or I decide I'll take this time and use it myself. Now let me ask you a question. If we believe, and we do believe, and know that He is omniscient, knows all things past, present, future, if He knows that, do you not realize that He will guide you to make the most profitable, lasting, effective, fruitful decisions you can possibly make? Because He knows what they are. Not fretting and worrying and being anxious about it, but listening to Him, reading His Word, letting Him speak to your heart, inviting Him into your life, confidence that He'll take care of it. And when I think about that, I think about the fact, if I'm praying, I don't have to fret over things.
If I've asked Him to give me direction, I expect Him to give me direction. And many people say, Well, you know, I have prayed about it. And then they add that terrible word, b-u-t. That is, I have prayed about it, but.
Well, but what? Has God singled you out not to speak to you? Now if you're not a believer, none of this works.
When you reject His Son, you shut Him out. You say, Oh, but I pray and God does nothing, so no. So which God are you praying? Is it the Jehovah of the Word of God? If you're praying to the God of the Bible, He says, If I regard iniquity in my heart, He'll not hear me. You cannot live in sin and have God speak to you except to convict you of your sin. And to get that straightened out, then other things work.
But prayer changes everything in life. This is what I discovered in life. I watched this growing up. I watched people get to a certain age, say my present age and even a little bit younger. Here's what I watched them do.
They were just active and then here's what I heard. Well, you know, I can't come to prayer meeting anymore. I can't come to a Sunday night church anymore. You know, at this age it doesn't work. Or, you know, I can't come to church every Sunday morning at this point in my life.
Well, let me ask you a question. It just may be that you're getting old because you're ignoring God. In other words, why should God keep your energy up? Why should He keep your intelligence up? Why should He keep you sharp? Why should He keep you fruitful in life if all you're going to do is just sit around and just sort of waste your time? Listen, there are a lot of wonderful things in life, but there's nothing in life that God intended for you and me to enjoy or to participate in at the expense of spending time with Him.
Nothing. Thank you for listening to Prayer, our time saver. 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.
