Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It's such a great privilege just to have this opportunity to share the message with everyone this morning.
[00:00:07] And yeah, just like Trevor was praying, I want to trust that the Lord is going to speak through me, through the empowering of his Holy Spirit.
[00:00:16] And I also want to trust that the Lord is going to open our hearts this morning so that we can see Jesus in a more intimate way that we can learn about the character of Jesus.
[00:00:31] And so in preparation for today, I spent quite a bit of time praying, asking the Lord, what do you want me to talk about? Which direction? Also conversations with Uncle Stan.
[00:00:45] And yeah, this morning I felt led to talk a bit about our relationship with time.
[00:00:52] And so the title of my message this morning is called Love in Time.
[00:01:00] And I want to just start off by reading a scripture from Psalm 39, verses 4 to 5.
[00:01:11] And this is what it says.
[00:01:13] Show me, Lord, my life's end and the number of my days let me know how fleeting my life is.
[00:01:23] You have made my days a mere handbreadth. The span of my years is nothing before you.
[00:01:31] Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.
[00:01:37] And this is a lovely passage where the psalmist is coming before the Lord and he's saying, lord, would you show me how many days I have left?
[00:01:50] Would you show me how fleeting my life is?
[00:01:54] Would you help me understand that my life is just a breath, a hand, breath in relation to you?
[00:02:01] And what he's actually asking the Lord to do is asking him, would you give me a healthy perception of time?
[00:02:10] Help me know that I am on a ticking timer, that my days are numbered.
[00:02:19] Help me know that time is important.
[00:02:24] And if, for those of you that might not know sitting here today, each and every one of us are on a ticking timer.
[00:02:35] Each and every one of us sitting here has our days numbered.
[00:02:40] Each and every one of us has a day that will leave this earth.
[00:02:47] For some of us, it might be 70 years from now, maybe Uncle Stan.
[00:02:53] For others, it might be a couple of days.
[00:02:56] We don't know.
[00:02:58] That's the reality of it is we don't know how much time we have.
[00:03:04] And my heart this morning is that we will be able to appreciate how valuable time is.
[00:03:12] And I want to pray that the Lord will lead us to have a healthy relationship with time.
[00:03:19] We live in a world that has taught us how to define time.
[00:03:25] One of the slogans that we hear across, no matter what culture you come from, if you're in a Western culture or you're in a third world country, or you're in the Riches of rich or you're in the poverty of poor.
[00:03:42] There's a slogan that is universal and it's this time is money.
[00:03:51] How many of us have heard that before?
[00:03:53] Time is money? Most of us, yeah. It's everywhere. If you go to cbu, time is money.
[00:04:00] If you're in the slums where people are struggling, time is money. And basically this idea has put a monetary value to time because the reality is money is how we put food on our tables.
[00:04:18] Money is where we put clothes on our back.
[00:04:23] Money is at this day and age, how we afford survival.
[00:04:30] And to earn that money, the cost is time.
[00:04:35] And so for whatever, it doesn't matter what you do, you need to invest time to earn money. And that's why the world slogan is time is money.
[00:04:46] My wife and I, we grew up in the city of Lusaka.
[00:04:50] Now Lusaka has grown exceptionally over the last two years.
[00:04:56] I mean 20 years. When I was a child, when we were talking about traffic, the traffic looked like here in Kitweb, right? Not really much, but we still complained about it.
[00:05:09] But the traffic that you find in Osaka now is closer to that that you'll see in Nigeria.
[00:05:15] Traffic jams everywhere.
[00:05:18] You have to leave an hour before. I remember my mother, she was quite strict in terms of timekeeping, so she never wanted to be caught in traffic. So she would make us go early to school. Now back then, early to school meant we would leave maybe the house around 6:30, maybe even 7:00 clock, and we'll be the first ones at school.
[00:05:42] If you leave at 6:30 or 7:00 clock in Nusaka now, you're in deadlock traffic.
[00:05:49] Everyone is waking up early to catch the worms.
[00:05:53] You know that saying, the early bird catches the worm? There's many early birds. And if you walk around on the streets of Lusaka right now, you won't think it's very hospitable.
[00:06:06] People will only want to talk to you if they think that they're going to get something out of the conversation, otherwise they have no time for you.
[00:06:15] Because time is money.
[00:06:18] There's another slogan that we hear, I'm gonna throw a lot of worldly slogans out is make it make sense.
[00:06:25] How many of us have heard that? This is more of a younger generational thing, make it make sense.
[00:06:32] And what it means is that if I'm going to give you my time, you have to make it make sense for me.
[00:06:40] Because time is money. I don't have a lot of time to give.
[00:06:45] I could be pushing business, I could be hustling I could be doing whatever. So make it make sense to me.
[00:06:53] And if we're being completely honest, a lot of us carry this worldly perception of time, even here in the church. And I want to say I am definitely one of those guys that carry this ideology around time.
[00:07:09] And I'll explain just now. So before I got saved, that was my slogan. Make it make sense.
[00:07:17] You have to make it make. You have to make it make sense to me if I'm going to give my time to you.
[00:07:23] I saw my time as valuable when I was trying to do my own career, trying to do my own business.
[00:07:33] I. Everything worked around time.
[00:07:35] How much time did I invest? How much money will it get me?
[00:07:39] That's how I thought about life.
[00:07:42] And so even now, I'm quite strict with my time, right? I have.
[00:07:48] Emmanuel has seen. He's been to my house before. He's seen. I've got a timetable.
[00:07:53] And in each timetable, there's what I would hope to complete. And I planned my whole week out in advance.
[00:08:01] The thing is, the Lord's been really humbling me in this experience. So I'm not planning months ahead anymore, because I just can't. But I'll plan the whole week ahead of me.
[00:08:12] But I tell you what, when something goes wrong in my day, let me give an example. If I am busy worshiping in the house, I'm praying in tongues, the Holy Spirit is upon me, and I'm. You know, it's a beautiful moment. And then I leave that time, I come outside and I see that my car's tire is flat.
[00:08:35] Whatever holiness I had is now gone.
[00:08:39] My whole day has been thrown off. My plans have been thrown off.
[00:08:44] And I wish I could say it's on those days that I really love God's people or people in general. But those are the days that I.
[00:08:52] I don't want to see people.
[00:08:54] That's the honest truth for me.
[00:08:56] I'm so frustrated. I know that this tire, I'm going to have to take it off. I'm going to have to take it to somebody to be repaired. I'll have to bring it back. It's just a long process that will mess my whole week up. Because this one thing I had to do in that space will now get pushed back, and everything will get pushed back.
[00:09:19] And then I'm just stressed.
[00:09:22] More simply, what it looks like when I have a busy day, when that calendar is full and there's a lot to do, the Lord will send people just to come and chat.
[00:09:33] And I wish I could Say, I'm one of those guys that says, yes, Lord, thank you for this opportunity to chat with your people.
[00:09:41] That's not what goes through my mind. What honestly goes through my mind is like, why did he have to come now?
[00:09:50] That's what goes through my mind.
[00:09:54] And what this really reveals about my heart, if we're being honest, is that, number one, I want to control things.
[00:10:04] I want to maintain control over my life, right?
[00:10:10] And what that leads to is having a lack of humility.
[00:10:15] Oftentimes when we've heard the word humility, we think of one who is low, one who's low in posture. That's meekness.
[00:10:24] Humility is having an accurate view of yourself.
[00:10:30] And when I think that I have control over my situation, I have a lack of humility in the sense that I don't have an accurate view of myself.
[00:10:39] I think I'm like God, I want to control things.
[00:10:45] I think I can do what only God can do. The reality is it's ludicrous. I can't do what God does because I don't know when I'm going to have a flat tire.
[00:10:54] I don't know when my kids are going to get sick.
[00:10:57] I don't know when a family member is going to die unexpectedly. Those things, I don't know.
[00:11:04] But I would love to control them.
[00:11:08] And what it really shows about my heart is that I don't trust God.
[00:11:14] It shows that I don't trust God to do what only he can do.
[00:11:20] I don't trust that God's control or that God has control of the situation.
[00:11:27] I believe that I can control my situation, that I have to do things because God isn't going to come and do it for me. A slogan again. I'm going to use so many slogans today. A slogan I used to tell myself before I got saved was, no one's coming to get you.
[00:11:46] I know a lot of young men here are sitting because they've told that to themselves as a man, no one's coming to save you.
[00:11:57] There's God.
[00:11:59] Jesus Christ is the Savior.
[00:12:02] But I don't trust that.
[00:12:04] And so I want to control.
[00:12:06] I want to do better. I want to make sure that if, even if something happens, let's say I have a flat tire, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy the best tire that, you know, the marketing guys, Trevor will know. They'll sell it to you. Like, this thing never gets punctures, right? So that I never have to face this thing again, right? I want to Control the situation.
[00:12:30] The Bible says that without faith, we cannot please God.
[00:12:37] Faith and trust are what we call. And I don't know, like, I'm not very good at English, so if I wish Nicole was here and Auntie Rachel, because they would have corrected me.
[00:12:49] It's a synonym, meaning it's two different words that have the same meaning, right? That's correct, yeah. All right, so faith and trust are synonyms.
[00:13:03] If I say I have faith in something, it means I trust that this thing is going to work out or it's going to go well.
[00:13:10] Faith and trust go together like this.
[00:13:13] And so if I don't have trust, I don't have faith. If I can't trust that God is in control, it means I don't have faith that he's in control.
[00:13:22] And the Bible says without faith, I can't please God.
[00:13:27] Now, I know for many of us this morning, some of us, as I've been talking about myself, can relate, right?
[00:13:36] They're thinking of situations where they've seen in their own life where maybe they've been controlling or failed to trust the Lord.
[00:13:44] But then there might be some of us that just think, like, no, this is a muzungu thing, right? This is for Westerners only, isn't it?
[00:13:53] But the reality is we either go one way or the other and we struggle to find the balance. And I also want to talk a bit about the other side of the camp. So there's guys that hold too tightly to time, and I'm definitely one of those guys. But then we also have people who are too relaxed when it comes to timekeeping. Those would be the people that show up late to church after the. And I'm sure I'm not going to tell you, look now, who will come after the preach. But generally they're the guys that will come after the preaching, right?
[00:14:29] The guys that when you schedule a meeting, you even know these guys are going to be an hour late, right?
[00:14:37] And basically what it is is we. We have this perception of, you know, time is fluid, Tomorrow is another day.
[00:14:50] That's the. The slogan people like to use. Tomorrow is another day.
[00:14:54] Do what we can do now. And if we don't manage, you know, we don't.
[00:15:01] And basically we forget that, number one, we are on a timer.
[00:15:09] Each and every one of us is on a timer. We have a set amount of days, we have a set amount of seconds, we have a set amount of hours.
[00:15:20] And the Lord is going to call us one day to account how did we steward the time that he gave us?
[00:15:31] How did we steward the time of his beloved people?
[00:15:37] Oftentimes, when we show up to meetings late or things like that, what we're actually doing is we're not honoring other people's time because we forget that they're also on timers.
[00:15:51] Right?
[00:15:55] And what this reveals about our heart is, number one, is a lack of regard, number one, for our own time as a gift.
[00:16:02] We struggle to see time as a gift.
[00:16:06] And it also reveals that we don't love our brothers and sisters because we don't value and respect their time.
[00:16:19] And what this can lead to is a delayed obedience. And I even want to go further. I remember somebody once told me these words, and they still stick with me. It's not in the Bible, so don't. This is me speaking. This is not in the Bible, but I'm going to show you what I mean. Delayed obedience is disobedience.
[00:16:39] And I want to read two portions of scripture. One is in John, chapter 14, verse 15.
[00:16:50] And this is what Jesus is telling his disciples. He says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
[00:16:58] If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I want us to go to Matthew, chapter 22, from verse 34 to 40. This is the commandments that Jesus is talking about.
[00:17:14] Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.
[00:17:20] One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
[00:17:30] And Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
[00:17:39] This is the first and greatest commandment.
[00:17:43] And the second is, like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:17:49] All of the laws and prophets hang on these two commandments. When you look at the 10 commandments, the first five are commandments about loving God.
[00:18:00] The other five are about loving our neighbors.
[00:18:04] And so Jesus is saying, these are the greatest commandments.
[00:18:09] And the reality is, if we don't do the second one, we're actually showing God that we can't do the first one either.
[00:18:17] Because if I don't love my brother or sister, I'm breaking the commandment. And Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.
[00:18:30] And so we can't love the Lord our God if we don't keep his commandments. Does that make sense?
[00:18:36] It's a loop.
[00:18:39] I want to read what John has to say further about this. You know, so we're now in a position that if we don't honor our brothers and sisters time, we're saying to God that actually I don't love you. And John in First John, chapter 2, verses 9 and 11, reaffirms this. And I want to read this.
[00:19:00] Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister lives in the darkness.
[00:19:11] Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them that makes them stumble.
[00:19:20] But anyone who hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going because the darkness has blinded them.
[00:19:33] This is serious if you don't know. In the Bible, in the original language, they didn't have exclamation marks, so they didn't know how to make things sound important. So how they did, when something's important, they will repeat it.
[00:19:49] And in this passage we are seeing that thing of if you hate your brother or sister, you are in darkness. It's said twice, it's repeated twice in the Scripture.
[00:20:00] And what the writer is trying to get us to see is that this is important.
[00:20:06] And it is.
[00:20:08] If we don't love our brothers or sisters, we are at risk of being in darkness.
[00:20:15] If the fruit of our lives is one of not being able to love one another, we are at risk of being in darkness.
[00:20:29] If we can't trust God. The Bible says, without faith you can't please God.
[00:20:40] You are at risk being in darkness. So this is some serious, serious stuff.
[00:20:49] And I want to read a portion of Scripture to us and I want to encourage us with the same words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter two.
[00:21:04] We'll be reading from verse 5 up to 11.
[00:21:09] And Paul tells the Philippian Church this. He says, in your relationship with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
[00:21:30] Rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant. Being made in human likeness and and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
[00:21:48] Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name. How beautiful is that song that we sang today.
[00:21:57] Jesus, you are the highest.
[00:22:02] That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Christ Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
[00:22:20] I want to encourage us with those same words this morning that we will have in our relationships with one another the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very Nature God dwelt in the heavenly realms, came to the earth where they suffering and sin and took on the form of a servant.
[00:22:44] So much so that he became obedient to death, even death on the cross. What that means is he became a curse for us.
[00:22:55] He became a curse for us. This is the God in the flesh, living in the heavenly mansions that are so often talked about coming down here and enduring death, being made a curse so that we could have relationship with God because He paid the price that we deserve for our sin.
[00:23:21] There was a curse placed on us, we deserve the punishment of death.
[00:23:28] He became a curse for us so that sitting here right now, through faith in him we are free from that curse.
[00:23:41] And God can have relationship as he so initially intended. And that relationship comes through the path power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:23:52] Jesus didn't look at us and say, man, these guys are so sinful, I can't, can't go and die for them on the cross.
[00:24:00] In fact, when nails were being driven through his hands, he was the one saying, father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.
[00:24:10] And I want to encourage us to have the same relationships with one another. Oftentimes I've heard people say, you know what, we're on Zambian timing. I know that person is going to be late, so I'll also be late so that we can be late together, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.
[00:24:28] Don't repay evil with evil, but evil with love.
[00:24:32] Honor that person even if they don't honour your time.
[00:24:36] Love as Christ loves.
[00:24:42] You see, when Jesus was on that cross, he gave up his life, but God exalted him.
[00:24:53] He raised him from the dead on the third day and ascended him to the right hand of God where he rules and reigns. Even now when we say we serve a living God, Jesus Christ is not dead, he is alive and he's seated at the right hand of the Father where He has all authority of things in heaven, things on earth and things under the earth. Colossians says that everything is held together by Christ Jesus. In him all things hold together.
[00:25:35] He is reigning at the highest authority.
[00:25:42] He is in control of every situation, even those that we feel are bad situation.
[00:25:48] Christ is working everything out for the good of those that love him.
[00:25:55] And the reality is this, there will be a day that he will come back to earth and he will judge everyone.
[00:26:05] The Bible says here that on that day every knee will bow before Jesus and every tongue will confess that he is Lord.
[00:26:15] Whether you're here and right now and you're thinking like, yeah, no, I'm not sure if faith is for me, if Jesus is really real, on that day, there will be no more dispute.
[00:26:27] Christ will come and every knee will bow before him.
[00:26:35] And what I want to encourage us, the Bible says on that day there will be a great day of mourning, because when he comes that time, it'll be too late for us.
[00:26:47] He's going to come in judgment, bringing the final wrath of God.
[00:26:55] But it also says on that day there will be a great joy for the remnant that held fast to the faith because they will be completely set free from the bondage of the flesh, and they will rule and reign with Christ forever in his house.
[00:27:17] And so I want to encourage us today, while it is today that we would bend our knee today before God, that we won't wait for him to come on that last day and pronounce judgment on all of us, but that we'll be bend our knee today.
[00:27:38] If you've been like me, who has held so much to your time and tried to control every aspect of your life, if you've struggled to trust the Lord, I want to ask that you will bend your knee today.
[00:27:54] He's ruling and reigning. All things hold together in him and through Him.
[00:28:01] Would you bend your knee and surrender to him today?
[00:28:05] If maybe you're here this morning and you've been on the other side, where maybe you've not valued your brothers and sisters as you ought to, maybe you've fallen short in terms of keeping your time and stewarding the things that God has given you well, including your time, can I ask that you will bend your knee today, that you will come and surrender to God and ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill your heart and lead you with his power, that he will put in you a love for his people, that he will remind you of his love for you.
[00:28:49] Christ died for you.
[00:28:52] He purchased you from your sin.
[00:28:58] I pray that the Holy Spirit will come and make that so clear to us that it will stir in us a love for our brothers and sisters who Christ loves as much as he loves us.
[00:29:12] And if you're here today and you're not sure about the whole Jesus thing, you're not sure whether Christ is real, I want to plead with you.
[00:29:24] I want to plead with you.
[00:29:28] Surrender yourself. Bend your knee today.
[00:29:31] Save yourself the wailing on that last day.
[00:29:36] I want to trust that the Holy Spirit will come and reveal his evidence to you that he will reveal that he is alive and seated at the right hand of God.
[00:29:50] So I want us to actually just respond to this word today, if that's all right.
[00:29:57] I want to ask that we will all be upstanding.
[00:30:04] What we're going to do is we.
[00:30:07] We're just going to take a moment of silence and what I want us to do is to reflect on our hearts.
[00:30:14] I want us to. To reflect on, do I trust the Lord?
[00:30:24] I want us to reflect, do I love my brothers and sisters? Well, I want us to. To wrestle with. Is Jesus Christ the Lord of my life?
[00:30:38] Bring your hearts before him and if you feel that the Holy Spirit is so leading you to surrender today, and I ask that you will bow your knee in surrender. I'm a big believer that what we do in the physical breaks open what happens in the spiritual.
[00:30:57] So I want to ask that you will bow your knee if you so choose.
[00:31:01] Don't do it for your friend next to you. Don't do it because I'm asking you to spend that time with the Lord and bend your knee for him and him alone.
[00:31:13] On that day, I will be standing next to you facing the same judgment that we all will.
[00:31:20] So don't do it for me, do it for the Lord.
[00:33:29] It's.
[00:33:56] Yes, Lord, I just want to thank you for your son.
[00:34:02] I want to thank you, Jesus, that you came and you laid down your life for me.
[00:34:12] That, Lord, you lay down your life for every person here this morning.
[00:34:19] Lord, we want to thank you that you are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
[00:34:31] We want to thank you, Lord, that we can have relationship with you.
[00:34:38] We want to thank you for your holy spirit, Lord. I want to ask that you will just come and meet every person here today, Lord, for those that have taken the active step to surrender themselves to you, Lord, I want to ask, Lord, that you will reveal yourself to them so intimately. Lord, I want to ask, Lord, for those that might be wrestling who are submitting to you.
[00:35:11] I want to pray the same thing, Lord, that your Holy Spirit will come and reveal Jesus, Lord, why he is trustworthy, why we sing, that he is worthy.
[00:35:25] Lord Jesus, come and do a work in our hearts.
[00:35:30] Amen.
[00:35:40] Thank you, jt for that word.
[00:35:45] Just give God.
