Serve and Guard: The Gift of Time

A Little Secret

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear.

Thats how you measure a year. It’s also the lyrics to a song called Seasons of Love from the musical Rent. Now I’m not a super big fan of musicals, but I do appreciate the craft. Particularly how catchy the lyrics of good musicals can be.

What Seasons of Love has instilled in me, other than a catchy melody, is the finite economy of time. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. Thats how long one year is. That seems like a big number, until I take an honest look at how many of those five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes that I am asleep. Roughly a third of them --- if I get what I want.

That leaves 352,152 minutes. That’s a considerable decrease. Subtract the number of minutes that Apple reports that I average staring at screens and we’re at 242,952.

Subtract the number of minutes I spend trying to convince my little cave man to eat and we’re under 200,000 minutes.

Thats a lot less than 525,600. I’m sure I could continue this charade until I’ve accounted for every single minute, but we’ve got places to go so I’ll just leave it at that. But what I’m getting at here is that I’ve got a secret that I need to tell you.

Pastors pretty much always preach sermons that they need to hear. And well, this one is no different.

Time, although seemingly infinite, is actually quite finite for humans on this side of eternity. We’ve only got so many years, and each year has… well you know… 525,600 minutes. Time is a limited resource. Time can’t be manufactured or bought. Time can seem like it’s our enemy.

But here’s the thing. Time is actually a gift. Time is how we experience relationships. Watching my little guy shovel mac and cheese into his mouth, watching him splash in the tub, changing his stinky diapers, watching him stomp around the house with his favorite spatula raised above his head like William Wallace in Braveheart are all gifts of time spent well.

Time I argue is not the enemy. Time is the gift. Time is not a thief, time wasted is the thief.

What’s the Why

Last week I introduced us to a new Sermon Series called Serve and Guard, in which we are seeking to understand stewardship as the natural outpouring of the human vocation. God put humans on this earth to serve it and to guard it on his behalf. This divine mandate extends into every single area of our lives, particularly into our communal life as the church. First Church Fort Pierce is a gift given to us and to this city from God. God has called us here to serve this church and to guard it through the act of stewardship. And here’s the why. This why statement needs to be engrained in our brains from now until eternity:

We are called to serve and guard our church and our community so that God’s will can be done in Fort Pierce as it is in heaven.

In order to do this, we need to commit ourselves to the work of stewardship. Stewardship is using the gifts that God has given to us in a way that glorifies God and points people to him. And one of the greatest gifts that God has given to us is our time.

The question then becomes, how do we — as individuals — make use of our time in a way that glorifies God and points people to him? Well, I think that it begins with us understanding the way that God used time.

God used time in the beginning to order the world. Actually God created time: here’s Genesis 1:1-5

Genesis 1:1–5 NRSV

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

The separation of light and dark created the confines of time as we experience it as humans: night and day. God then used the following 5 days to create the world and everything in it, until creating humans on the 6th day. Then, on the 7th day God rested, and he made that day holy and blessed it. This was the creation of the idea of Sabbath. Sabbath is a time of sacred rest. God rested from his creative work, but he didn’t rest because he was tired. God rested for the purpose of spending time with his creation. Particularly, with human beings.

God is said to have sat with the first humans. He instructed them on what was good and what was wrong. He collaborated with them, allowing them to name all of the animals he created. He walked with them in the evening. God’s intention for resting was to commune with humans.

Resting with God

Now, I’m going to tell you something. We have adapted this idea and brought it into our church culture. Somewhere along the way we began to believe that Sunday is a day of sabbath just because we go to church on Sundays. And here’s the thing, this is kind of true, we do hopefully commune with and meet with God when we walk into this space. But Sunday is not the 7th day. Sunday is the first day. The seventh day is Friday night to Saturday night. In Jewish tradition the sabbath or seventh day is a time set apart from work in order to reset and focus on both the vertical relationship between God and humans, as well as the horizontal relationship between humans and one another. It was a time to practice loving God and loving our neighbors.

This is not something that we practice typically in the Christian tradition, at least not in this way. But that’s not because it doesn’t apply to us. We don’t practice one rigid day of sabbath because we believe that we are called embody the spirit of the sabbath in our daily lives. We are called to create space in which we can nurture our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with our community on a daily basis through the practice of spiritual disciplines.

Of course, you should be taking a full day off from vocational work. I know a lot of you are retired so that’s not a hard ask. But remember — I’m preaching sermons I need to hear too. So here’s my commitment to you. I take time off… usually Friday. But life happens so sometimes that changes.

Here’s the really important thing. Everything that we do in our lives as Christians needs to spring out of a Sabbath mentality. Remember, Sabbath is a time of communion with God and with others. So what a Sabbath mentality means is that everything that we do needs to be for the purpose of deepening our relationship with God and with our neighbors.

We deepen our relationship with God and with our neighbors through the practice of spiritual disciplines. These disciplines require our time, particularly a commitment of our time which is dedicated to God and to building up the community of believers through service to the church and the world.

The Apostle Paul was an avid proponent of practicing spiritual disciplines. In his letter to the Colossian church he says this

Colossians 4:2–6 NRSV

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should. Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

Paul’s focus is on personal prayer, for the purpose of blessing the world outwardly. And this is the mentality that we need to have when it comes to spiritual disciplines. They are things that you do — not for the purpose of making yourself feel better — but for the purpose of allowing the world around you to experience the Mystery of Christ. Which in turn will in fact make you feel better because you will be fulfilling your purpose to serve and guard God’s world in God’s way.

So let’s talk about some of these disciplines, particularly the ones that you are invited to commit yourself to on this year’s pledge card.

Let’s Get Personal

Prayer is the most obvious source of communication with God. If you don’t already pray daily, I can’t stress to you enough the importance of it. Prayer is powerful. It is seriously the lifeblood of our connection to God. You need to start praying, keep praying, and keep growing in your prayer life. This is how you cultivate, nurture, and harness the power of your relationship with God.

What I challenge you to commit yourself to is a year of prayer for your church… and inherent in praying for your church is praying for me. Paul says “pray for us” meaning, pray for me and those who are travelling with me and spreading the Gospel.

We all have hopes and dreams that this church will experience a new season of revival and purpose. We can talk about it all day until we are blue in the face. But we need to take those conversations to God. Every day we need to be praying that God will use this church for his glory, that God’s will for us would be done, and that we will become the most authentic representation of the Kingdom of God to our world that we can possibly be.

So I encourage you, remember this church, me, the staff and leadership of this church in your prayers and pray for us every day.

But prayer is typically how we speak to God, typically it’s us doing all of the talking. So we need to also devote ourselves to hearing from God. That’s where your Bibles come into play.

I’m challenging you to start a daily Bible reading plan. As a community, I am going to put out a Bible reading plan that begins on January 1st. And I promise you won’t forget, because there’s church on January 1st next year so I’ll remind you. But I want to challenge you to read the Bible with me over the course of 2023 so that we can practice listening to God’s word… All of God’s word, and better understand God’s will for us.

Prayer and Scripture intake are how we foster the relationship between God and ourselves. They are the two main means (not the only means) of connecting with and communing with God, so that we can be in the best spiritual condition to foster the relationships that God wants us to have with the world around us.

Communal Disciplines

We foster the relationships that God wants us to have with the world around us through the practice of communal spiritual disciplines. Here’s the secret to communal spiritual disciplines: Are you ready? This is a little known piece of privileged information:

YOU CAN’T DO THEM ALONE

So here’s the deal. Some of these might seem less… spiritual than others. Like attending Quarterly Administrative council meetings… which are going to be open for all to attend beginning this November. But attending to the business of the community is a spiritual discipline. You are taking responsibility for your church. Showing up and investing your time in the mundane is important. It’s a means of growing in grace and learning to butt heads with love in your heart. It builds community.

But looking to the future also means that we’ve got new work ahead of us. It’s time to have community meals together again. Wednesday night is going to be a time of communal spiritual growth here in downtown Fort Pierce. And someone’s going to have to coordinate meals. Again, not super spiritual seeming. But I’ve had just as many spiritual experiences eating as I have had doing anything else. So consider planning and coordinating meals a means of bringing your pastor closer to God.

The central idea here is hospitality. We need to create a space that invites and disarms people, a space that shows people the love of Jesus. Paul says conduct yourself wisely and let your speech be gracious when dealing with outsiders. What he is driving at is that hospitality is the way to a person’s heart. We must open ourselves in order to allow others to be open to the gospel message that we have to give to them.

That message comes in a lot of different ways, but one one of the most effective ways is through Bible Study and small groups. These are not the same thing. And next year we are going to have both. Bible studies will are going to be classes that are offered on Wednesday nights here on campus. Small groups are going to be groups of you that meet in homes, coffee shops, parks, bars, I don’t care where. You should be in both. Bible studies help you grow your brain, small groups help you grow your heart. God cares about both. I care about both. You should care about both.

But these are not simply for you. These are opportunities for others to come and see what Jesus is up to. I have a colleague who is also my executive coach, and who used to be my pastor, Pastor Matthew Hartsfield over in Tampa. And I was talking to Matthew this week and we were talking about small groups and the goals that I have. And basically Matthew’s role in my life is to help me set goals and then push me to go farther than I think is possible. I like to set realistic and comfortable goals because I want to win and I want it to be easy.

And I know this about him, so I try to play the game and go big just so that I can impress him. So he said what’s your goal for small group participation. And I was like oh, I’m gonna nail this one. So I said… real proud like, “Matthew my goal is to have 100% of the people who attend this church on Sunday participating in a small group.” And there was this pause on the other end of the phone and he said, “ok 100 is good” and I knew. I knew it wasn’t enough right then. He said, “what would it look like if 125 or 150 percent of the people who come to church on Sunday were in a small group?”

At first I thought, how? Then it hit me. What if… well that would mean that small groups had people in them that didn’t go to church… yet. It would mean that the group was acting as a means of evangelism, a means of hospitality, a means of declaring the mystery of Christ to outsiders. It would mean that the small group is the means of making outsiders into insiders. It would mean that the group was doing the work of the church by making the most of the time that it was given.

Committing time

I feel like this might be the biggest ask of this entire series. Time is precious. I totally understand that. But I guarantee that if you invest your time in your relationship with God and to others that it will pay dividends in your life that you’ve never even known possible. So give your time to God, devote yourself to growing personally and communally and you will be well on your way to embracing a life of serving and guarding the good gifts that God has given you.

525,600 minutes, that’s how you measure the time in a year. But you can also measure the time in a year based on the number of encounters that you’ve had with the risen Jesus, the number of persons whose lives have been categorically and fundamentally altered by the time you invested in them. You can measure it by the number of new ways that God has spoken into your life through scripture and the number of messy human experiences you sat with, walked through, and loved each other well during.

This new season is an invitation to something big. It’s a season of recognizing that time spent walking in the garden with God is time well spent. So let’s walk into it together, serving our world and guarding the good gift that God has given to us.