Don't Waste Your Time

Don't Waste Your Time

Here’s a question to consider: would you say you are living a well-ordered and purposeful life? Do you have goals for the future? As you connect the dots in your life, are you confident they are leading you closer to Christ and His desire for you? Or are you just living rather pointlessly one day at a time without seeing the big picture? How did yesterday go? At the end of the day, was it just a hodgepodge of this and that from sunrise until you hit the sack at night? Can you reflect on yesterday or the last little while and be satisfied that your choices have been deliberately good and your activities positive and purposeful? Or are you drifting somewhat aimlessly?

Paul wrote the Christians in Ephesus about how richly they had been blessed in Christ. Salvation wasn’t merely a fire-escape from Hell. It was a total package of spiritual and eternal blessings. Picked up out of the gutter of sin; snatched out of the dark, evil current of this godless age; dead to God – absolutely barren and unfruitful in sin BUT now made alive in Christ; raised up and positioned with Christ in the heavenlies. Who can measure the distance between what we once were in our sins and what we now are in Christ? Who can calculate the riches that are ours – our eternal inheritance? Who can even imagine what our eternity will be like? Paul told them that as far as they could peer into the eternal ages, there was nothing but God’s ongoing display of “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Dear Child of God, by grace He has picked you up. He has placed you in His family. Your identity has changed. You are a member of Heaven’s royal family now. Don’t live a low life. Don’t live casually as if God has nothing for you to do. Don’t breeze through life ‘footloose and fancy free.’  Here is how Paul put it back then but it is still extremely relevant to us this very day:

Look carefully then how you walk!

Live purposefully and worthily and accurately,

not as the unwise and witless,

but as wise (sensible, intelligent people),

Making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity],

because the days are evil.

Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish,

but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.

(Ephesians 5:15-17 Amplified)

Live purposefully. Live accurately – not sloppily, carelessly constantly getting yourself into messes and having to backtrack, having to confess constantly, having to apologize, having to hide your face, having to feel shame, having to feel unfulfilled. No! Live accurately, wisely, purposefully making the very most of the time God gives you today. Don’t live vaguely – be focused. Understand what His will is for you; latch on to it and follow the path of His will each day.

Don’t waste your time. This day God has given you. Most of us are awake each day for at least 1000 minutes. How much will the Lord get out of the next 1000 minute chunk of your life? Can you identify one change you could make in your day’s routines to ensure greater communion with the Lord?