Page 56 - Principles for Discipling Others-Student textbook

Study Section 11: Busyness – Redeeming Your Time

11.1 Connect.

They say the older you get, the faster the time goes by. As I get older, I would agree with this
statement. The Bible says in James 4:14, “…yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Doesn’t
that verse sound rather bleak? You have to remember that God’s Word is written in light of
eternity, not in light of our lifetime. We will live for a short time, then pass on to eternity.
We are all destined to die. And the important aspect of this short life is that only what’s
done for Christ will last into eternity. What we do in our lives now will result in rewards or loss of them,
who will be in heaven with us, and how we will be able to bring glory to God in the future world. So
what we do with the little time God grants us in our lives is extremely important. That’s why we want to
consider this topic today.

11.2 Objectives:

1. Because of our limited time, we will learn that the best use of time is to serve the Lord
faithfully.

2. We will learn four major aspects of time management.

3. We will discover the consequences for wasting the time God has given us.

11.3 Busyness

Above we have mentioned…and discussed…six basic “Spokes” of the Christian life
“wheel.” At the same time we mentioned that a typical wheel can have more spokes
than these. We are going to briefly discuss one, that being “Busyness.” This suggests
ways that a growing Christian can best use his or her time for the
service of the Lord. But this is just one of a number of other spokes
that a growing Christian might want to develop either on their own or
in association with their mentor or some other more mature Christian brother or sister
in Christ. About 20 or more of these are suggested below as “Topics” in the Follow-up
table. For now, we will look at how a mature Christian does spiritual business for the
Lord…

Redeeming the Time

From the KJV (King James Version) of the Bible, two verses jump off the page: “Redeeming the time for
the days are evil.” Eph. 5:16 and Col. “Walking in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the
time.” Both of these verses are teaching us that our time is valuable. In the context of Bible teaching we
understand that in the economy of God events are taking place that are leading on to the end of God’s
long-suffering with mankind. The book of Revelation’s “last days” speak of catastrophe and judgment,
neither of which is going to be in any way pleasant for the lost person. So whatever we, as Christians,
are going to do for the kingdom and for sharing the Gospel with the lost needs to be done as soon as we
can.

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