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Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” One translation says, “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” So, on this last day of 2022, I want to talk about “redeeming the time.”
First, I want to tell you what I am not going to talk about:
- New Year’s Resolutions – I promise, I will not even mention them again because we all know that generally we don’t do so good by them, do we? They come and go pretty quickly, so I won’t even talk about them.
- Setting New Year Goals – Not going to talk about goals for the New Year. Oh, it’s not that we don’t need goals to keep us on track, but that’s not what I’m talking about today.
- Going on a Diet – I promise, I won’t mention it again!
- Turning Over a New Leaf – not today. Won’t talk about that today.
Just going to remind you that none of us has unlimited time left on this earth. Our days are numbered, only God knows the number, but there is a number and as people often say—when your number is up, your time on earth will be up. So, we need to think about what it means to redeem your time because as Christ-followers, we will be held accountable for the use of our time.
Does that mean we should work all the time, chalk up lots of hours doing things, make sure we punch our imaginary time clocks and try to impress God and everyone else that we are busy? I don’t think so. But what does it mean to “redeem the time”?
Well, when you redeem something, you buy it back so you regain possession of it. So, to me, redeeming time means taking stock of where I’m wasting time and getting it back. It is recognizing that you and I have been given a gift of time from God, and God wants us to live in continual awareness that our time is passing—and passing quickly—and it will be gone and wasted if we don’t redeem it—make the most of it.
Jesus said this to his disciples: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4 ESV). He certainly was aware that his time on earth was limited and he wanted to be sure that he redeemed that time by doing the works that God his Father sent him to do. He was the best at making the most of every opportunity.
And you know, that meant he had to say “no” sometimes. He chose to take on human flesh and limit himself to a body like ours, so he had to make choices about the way he spent his time while here on earth. Remember the time he told a man that he could not arbitrate an argument he was having with his brother? He said he was not sent to do that, so he didn’t. That’s redeeming the time. The disciples at one time had a crowd waiting in one town, expecting him to come speak to them and heal them as he had been doing, but he simply told them that it was his job to go to other towns. He said “no.”
Are you good at saying no? I must admit that I am not. And that can keep you from making the best use of your time because none of us can do everything we might like or want to do. Redeeming the time is making better and better choices of how you spend your time.
Someone said that we don’t drift toward righteousness. When you drift in a boat, for example, you just let the boat go wherever the water takes it. No directing the boat in the right direction, but just letting it drift. That’s easier than rowing the boat, fighting the waves, trimming the sails, but it won’t get you anywhere.
When you drift in your spiritual life, that’s when you just let life and its circumstances take you where they will. You don’t do the intentional and sometimes hard work of staying alert, being disciplined, steering your life in the direction it should go. So, you drift away from righteousness, not toward it.
Sadly, I think that’s the plight of many Christ-followers. They never intended to fall away from their commitment to Christ, but they just started drifting, letting things go, taking it easy, not doing the things they used to do, and they wake up and discover they’ve drifted a long way in the wrong way. They find themselves doing things and going places they wouldn’t have thought of a few months or years ago, but they started drifting.
Dr. D.A. Carson wrote this about spiritual drifting:
People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
Does that ring any bells with you? You see, drifting is usually very gradual and slow so that you hardly recognize it until you’ve drifted a long way. So, if you find that you’ve been drifting lately, ask yourself how much time you’ve lost, how much you’ve wasted while you were drifting. And think of where you might be now if instead of drifting, you had purposely set your sails to grow in your faith, in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
I promised no resolutions or goals in this message, but here’s what I also promise. I promise that if you start this new year with a desire to stop drifting and start guiding your spiritual journey in the way it should go—to redeem your time—then 2023 is going to be an exciting year for you. We never drift toward righteousness, but thanks to God’s Holy Spirit living within us as believers, we have the power we need to live holy and righteous lives, and that is where the fulfillment and contentment and excitement happens.
2 Peter 1:3: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
Because of the divine power of our Lord, we have been given what it takes to stop drifting away from the abundant life that Jesus promised us and move in the right direction toward a godly life. A life not only pleasing to God, but equally pleasing and fulfilling for us. It’s the narrow road that leads to life.
Here are some practical steps that I have found helpful in this challenge of redeeming my time.
First, choose one word that you will focus on all year, a word to help you remember what God wants to do in your life, a word to help you make some needed changes or grow in some area. For example, over the years I’ve chosen several, including thankfulness. That’s always a good one word for the year, because being thankful is truly a key element in spiritual maturity and growth. I’ve chosen gentleness and kindness, patience—all areas where I knew I needed to grow. This year my one word is acceptance as I want to be contented where I am and not indulge in regret or discouragement of any kind. I find a verse that reinforces my one word each year and put reminders around me so I don’t forget. For this year, my verse is 1 Timothy 6:6: “But godliness with contentment is great gain.”
Secondly, decide that you will be intentional about encouraging someone every day. I have learned to put that on my daily to-do list: Who will you encourage today? It’s usually something very small—a call, an email, sometimes a card or a small gift. Doesn’t take much time, I just have to remember to do it. And it’s interesting how God will bring people to my mind that I would not have thought even needed encouragement, but I try to encourage them anyway. I want to do that better this year.
Third, have a plan for how you read your Bible every day. There are any number of ways to do it, but if you don’t have a plan, my guess is your Bible reading is often hit and miss, and you keep reading the same things when you do read. Maybe you read a Psalm every day—that’s great, but it’s not enough. You need a balanced diet of the entire Word of God—I promise it makes a difference when you have a daily plan for reading your Bible. You can find several Bible reading plans online that will help guide you.
And the last suggestion I have is to find yourself a prayer partner if you don’t have one already. Make a plan to pray regularly with someone you trust, someone you know is not “drifting” but rather desires to be all God wants her or him to be. Someone who might hold you accountable. Maybe once a week or whatever—just get together and pray for each other. I think of a friend who years ago was facing a daunting new job, one that had daily challenges, so she asked another friend to pray with her. Each weekday morning at 6:00am they prayed together for 15 minutes, specifically addressing the needs of the day in front of them. That continued for years, and both of them testify today that their prayer partnership transformed their lives in many ways.
So, I’ve given you four suggestions—not resolutions but suggestions of what you might do to redeem your time, to take advantage of all the opportunities God brings your way. They are:
- Choose one word as your word of transformation this year and find a verse that goes with it. Then keep it in front of you one way or another all through the year. Pray it into your life.
- Decide that you will make a strong effort to encourage one person each day. Make it a part of your daily routine.
- If you don’t have one already, put a daily plan in place for reading your Bible. No more hit-and-miss Bible reading, but rather a specific plan for reading all parts of the Bible.
- Ask God to give you a prayer partner; look for someone that will agree to praying regularly with you, set a day and time, and stick to it.
These are my suggestions to help you and me redeem our time for God’s glory. Let me repeat the verse from Ephesians 5:15-16 that we began with:
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity—redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”vvvv