Time- FBA Chapel 10.18.22

Hey FBA. I am thankful to be here and share with you an encouragement from Scripture. Have you every wished you could stop time? I know I have. I remember when I was young, I used to watch this show about a kid name Bernard that had a watch that could stop time. Here I have a small piece of the best show you will ever see-

Plenty of time- Bernard

Man if only that was true. He says “plenty of time” but the reality is that we don’t have plenty of time. We all have the same amount of time in a day- 1,440 minutes in a day to be exact.

The truth is that you will spend the rest of your life managing time. I often say this, you think you are busy today? Wait- wait until you get a job, wait until you get married, wait until you have kids. Life only gets more and more busy and gets what time stay the same.

But I am not just trying to depress you- I want to encourage you. Here is what the Bible says:

Proverbs 16:1-3 “1 To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue. 2 All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. 3 Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”

You have the same number of minutes in your day as a professional basketball player, a famous actor, or an overrated YouTube star. You and the richest person in the world have the same amount of time. And even way back when Jesus and His disciples were walking around, they had 1,440 minutes in their day just like you do today!

Main Point: You have plenty of Time to bring Glory to God.

1. You have plenty of time to do everything God wants you to do.

Proverbs

2. Saying “NO” gives you plenty of time to say “YES.”

Challenge: What is one activity that you need to say “no” to in order to say “yes” to God?

There is a time for everything, but not all of your time is meant for everything. You will always have more opportunities than you have time. So don’t feel the pressure of all these opportunities. Understand that you’re going to have to learn how to say “no” to some things and you have to figure out which ones those are.

This Scripture gives us two qualifiers for what we should reserve our yeses for: Be Happy and Do Good. We need to say “yes” to the things that pass this test - and “no” to the things that don’t! And if it only accomplishes one of the two, then you should think really hard about it before deciding to do it! If it makes you happy but it’s not doing any good, you might be wasting your time. And if it is doing something good but you don’t like doing it, then you don’t have to say “yes” to it! It’s ok to say “no” to good things!

Let’s take a step back for a second. There are some things that you don’t like that you have to say “yes” to. No one likes paying taxes, but we have to do it. Some of your classes you like and some you don’t, but you have to attend all your classes and apply yourself to try to do well. But there are also many areas in our lives that are electives; we get to choose how we spend our time or if we spend our time there.

A few weeks ago, a high school student asked me out to coffee to talk about something that was troubling him. As we sat down, he explained to me that he had to decide between being on the track team in the spring or being in the school drama. I asked him a little about both opportunities and he explained that he’s good at both and enjoys both, but there’s no way he has time for both. He also mentioned that the drama teacher picked the particular drama with him in mind as the lead.

I asked him if his college plan included track, and it didn’t. I asked him if he had a chance at a state championship and he said he didn’t. He said a lot of people expected him to run and a lot of people were counting on him.

So, this is where I pressed him. I told him to fast forward to the end of the semester and think about how he felt. I asked him which one he would be most sad that he had missed, and he said without a doubt he would have missed the drama! It would have been just another track season and he didn’t enjoy the sport, he just felt pressured into it. But he had more fun acting. He chose the thing that made him happy and didn’t look back.