Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: One of the questions that I always get whenever I speak and have a question-and-answer time is, "How do you do all that you do?" I always answer immediately. Look, I'm probably no busier than anyone else. It's just what you fill your time with. I'm visibly busy because I'm up front all the time and I'm rushing here and rushing there. People watch me doing all these things or are aware that I do, whereas you just do all the things you do and nobody writes about what you're doing, or takes pictures of you, or puts you on tape.

You're just as busy as I am. I'm just as busy as you are. We're just doing different things. Really, that's what I want to talk about. What are the things we're so busy doing? We're going to focus in on what the Bible talks about our time, managing our time, and what we do with our time. We can manage our time incredibly efficiently, manage what we do in it, and fill it up with things that are not going to matter two hoots when we face God. We can be terribly efficient with the use of time and terribly empty-handed at the end of the day, and that would be really sad.

Guest (Male): Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.

Jill Briscoe: Boasting about tomorrow. James addresses the subject of time. Time might be ticking by on the clock, but it can go awfully slow or go awfully fast. Have you noticed that? It's ridiculous. I was thinking about that today. I'm working extremely hard for two very important meetings I have coming up, and I'm totally panicked even though I've been working for three months on the material that I'm to share there.

I started off really early this morning at 6:00 and finished at 5:00 before I came out here to grab some supper with Stuart and then come in to you. You know, the time flew because I didn't want it to fly. I had too much to do in those seven or eight hours. It just felt like two. I kept looking at the clock thinking, "How can it be racing around like that?" Have you ever had one of those experiences? Or have you ever had the experience where it drags? It just absolutely drags. Have you ever sat in a dentist's chair? Doesn't it go slow? Sometimes they have a clock facing you, and you're looking at it thinking, "Oh, hurry up, hurry up. Let this be over."

Time can drag, or time can go fast, just depending on what's happening in that space where time happens. Loneliness can make it drag. Years ago, I wrote a little book called *Prime Rib and Apple*, and I tell the story of the little widow. She'd just become a little widow and she was losing everything she owned. She was selling her furniture and she was trying to pay her debts. The creditors were going to come and take away her boys as slaves, so she was very frightened and she'd been very busy. Well, I told this story in a creative fashion, personalizing loneliness, making loneliness into a person.

Loneliness was lonely. He decided he had to get busy at once and find someone with whom to share his awful state. He'd been looking in the death column in the local newspaper and decided to visit the young widow down the street. Coming to the little house on a small hill, he knocked at the door. A young woman answered his summons, her tear-streaked, frantic face telling him he'd arrived at the right place. "How would you like to live with me?" he inquired with a lonely smile. "I don't want to live with loneliness!" she cried, slamming the door in his face. "Go away, go away! Oh, please go away," she whispered pitifully, leaning against the door.

Loneliness pouted. Then he settled down on the doorstep. He knew it would just be a matter of time before she would have no alternative but to let him in. He liked to present himself immediately to a new widow, adding to her stricken feelings and cashing in on the shock. "Why did these prime ribs believe they were immortal?" he wondered. "Why did they never allow themselves to think of widowhood?" Their refusal to face the reality of the possibility helped the snake greatly in the hours immediately after the event. As long as they continued to say, "Not me," instead of "Not yet," all was in his favor.

If he'd been able to feel sorry for her, he would. But loneliness only feels sorry for himself. So he contented himself with watching the proceedings through the keyhole. Then I go on with the story and she leaves the house and goes to Elisha to get some help, if you remember the story in 1 Kings. Elisha talks to her. Meanwhile, back at the widow's house, loneliness was glad to see the moving van had arrived with his furniture. He didn't have much, but he wanted to get it all in place before the little lady returned from her visit with Elisha.

The children objected to him intruding into their mother's life, but he rudely reminded them they'd better be kind to him, as he would have them both to himself in a short time. No slave master would be able to afford two little boys, he told them, so they might as well get used to his company. He began to move his belongings into place, preparing for a long stay. He struggled through the door with his huge magnifying glass. It weighed so much, but the snake had helped him mount it on wheels so it could be quickly placed in front of his victims. Each time a new situation would arise, the problem would be magnified out of all proportion.

Loneliness does that. Next, he opened a tin of loud silence. That always helped to amplify his presence. Moving swiftly from room to room, he scattered it in every direction. The only place he couldn't get it to stick was the area around the little boys. Next, he set his big clock on the mantelpiece. Adjusting it carefully, he smiled with approval as it began to tick away. Every minute was twice as long as a real one. The hands were specially weighted, so they appeared never to move at all. Loneliness always makes time drag. So, having distributed the magnifying glass, the clock, and the contents of the tin of silence, loneliness decided it was time to call in a member of his family, a son of his named, appropriately, supersensitivity. And so the story goes on.

Loneliness makes time drag. I remember when Stuart used away for long periods of time: two months, three months, four months, once five months. You tell me about time dragging. My time each day was filled. I never seemed to have time enough for the things I had to do with three small children. But oh, did those evenings ever drag. Did those four and five months seem to never end. And yet, when Stuart was home for three or four or five months, they just went like that. It's a funny thing. It all depends what's happening in the time.

Now, the minute trap can be set with presumption cheese. Presumption cheese says, "I have all the time in the world. Therefore, take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry." We looked at Luke chapter 12 once before, where Jesus tells a little parable and tells about this rich man producing the good crop. We looked at this in the money trap, if you remember. The man said, "This is what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. There I'll store all my grain and my goods. I'll say to myself, 'You've plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry.'"

Guest (Male): But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your soul will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich towards God.

Jill Briscoe: If we are planning a long life for ourselves and a funeral is not on our agenda, God calls us a fool. We have absolutely no idea. The Bible says God has numbered our days. If they're numbered one to a hundred, who knows which one you're on? Possibly 99, possibly two. I don't know, you don't know. Only God knows. But we have to keep that in mind. What did James say? We don't say, "Tomorrow I'll do this and that, go to this city, and do that." We say, "If God wills."

My husband was brought up in a very small group of Christians and they had some really literal readings of things in the Bible. This was one of them. They took that passage of scripture very carefully indeed. What they did with it was they just shortened the Latin for "God wills," *Deo volente*, D.V. Every time anything would come up, they'd say, "Well, I'm hoping to go shopping in the mall, D.V." Or, "I'm hoping that Mother is coming to stay, D.V." No sentence would be left untouched with D.V.

I remember going to visit once with Stuart, the first time I ever went to that small group of Christians, and I said, "What's this D.V.? What's with the D.V.?" My future mother-in-law said to me, "That's 'If God wills.' We don't know. If God wills, we will go here or there. If God wills, we'll move to this city or to that city. If God wills, we'll take another job. If God wills, we'll have our vacation." It was a constant reminder to those holy and very, very disciplined group of Christians that they were living in borrowed time and that God had numbered their days. They had not fallen into the minute trap and never did.

The difference between wisdom and folly or foolishness is to understand God's perspective on time. This is Moses's song in Psalm 90. It has a lot in this Psalm. I could just spend the whole time on it. I'm not going to. It's talking about time. It's a prayer of Moses, who'd lived a very long life, longer than you or I, I know, are going to live. He died at about 120 and it said his eye wasn't dim and he was in the best of health, and God just took him like he took Elijah up to heaven. So, he'd lived a very long life and he was yet conscious of his mortality. He was conscious that God was eternal and lived in eternity, while we live in time and time was temporal.

Guest (Male): A thousand years are like a day to God and a day is like a thousand years. The length of our days is seventy years or eighty if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.

Jill Briscoe: He exceeded the normal lifespan. Before the flood, the antediluvians lived an awful long time. They lived hundreds and hundreds of years. When the flood came, God said the span of man's life shall be threescore years and ten. Man began to live a normal lifespan, which we know today is 70 years. Now, it's taken all these years of scientific help to get us to live a little bit longer. In fact, I was reading an article the other day about if you walk every day 45 minutes, you can add so many minutes onto your life. I sort of figured it all out and it meant about a week and a half. I thought, "Gosh, is that worth it?" Just a week and a half? That's probably going to be in a nursing home. You'd probably be glad to go a week and a half early, I would think.

It's an incredible thing we have in our society at the moment. We're all trying to do this, that, and the other to make sure we live a week and a half longer. Well, in the end, give or take a week and a half, it's 70 years. Moses, of course, outlived that, but he was sensitive to the fact that God numbers our days. Psalm 139 says this: "All the days ordained for you are written in His book." Only God knows how many days. On the top of every single day of your life and my life, which is a clean page, there is a number written: "Day number whatever." Whatever we do with our life, our life is like a pencil and we write all over that clean page whatever it is we're doing with the precious time that God is giving us day by day.

James says in 1:10 that we will pass away like a wild flower. Psalm 90 says, "You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they're like the new grass of the morning. In the morning, it springs up new; by evening, it is dry and withered. The length of our days is seventy years, eighty if we have the strength. Yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away. Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim You, who walk in the light of the Lord's presence. They rejoice in Your name all day long. They exult in Your righteousness, for You are their glory and Your strength. They rejoice in Your name all day long. The whole secret of using time aright is to be super conscious of the preciousness of it: a D.V. attitude of mind. Get up with one. "I will do this and thus today, D.V." It'll sort of alter what you do, your choices, and your decisions.

The devil traps us with this presumption cheese. "You've got all the time in the world and it's all for your own personal satisfaction. Don't waste your precious time on God." Well, Moses was conscious he was not the master of his own destiny or of his time on Earth. This focus or realization led to sober reflection on the manner of life and his pursuits. There's a wonderful passage in Ecclesiastes right at the end of the book. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived in some ways, said this: "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." That's the time to remember our Creator. Some of us didn't have that opportunity. We've come to Christ beyond our youth. Well, remember Him as youthful as you can now, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them."

Then there is a description of old age, which I wish my husband was here to read to you because one of the funniest things I have ever seen Stuart do is to talk to a bunch of teenagers on this passage. He just goes through the most incredible description of what this describes. He's talking about the keepers of the house trembling and the strong men stooping and the grinders ceasing because they are few and those looking through the windows grow dim. I understand that bit. I got new glasses and I put them on. The eye doctor was amazed because I suddenly started shouting, "I can see! I can see! People, men, women, cars!" He was horrified, as was everybody else.

But I tell you, it's tough when the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men stoop and the grinders cease because they're few and those looking through the windows grow dim. He goes on describing when men rise up at the sound of the bird. What a description! You can never sleep when you're old. All their songs grow faint, you can't hear. When men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets. Old people don't like to go out. When the almond tree blossoms. This is the almond tree. I'm a living illustration of this passage of scripture.

The grasshopper drags himself along and desire is no longer stirred. That's obvious what that is. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. So remember Him before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken, before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and dust returns to the ground it came from and the spirit returns to God who gave it. "Meaningless! Meaningless!" said the teacher. "Everything is meaningless." It is certainly going to be meaningless if we have filled our time with presumption cheese or pleasure cheese.

Having failed to convince you of the dozens of years in your lifespan, as if you're the one who sustains life and decides how many days you will have, the devil will next tempt you to make the most of it his way. So we will say, "Let us go to this or that city, let's spend a year here or carry on business and make money there." We boast and we brag, and all such boasting is evil. James's answer to this is, "You are a mist." In the corner of my Bible, next to that, I put "not a must." Do you know that? You're a mist, not a must. Maybe you don't feel like a mist.

Coming here today, I drove through mist and I could see. It was wonderful, a new experience. But you know, it was amazing because out in Oconomowoc where I live, there's a lot of little lakes. Whenever we get this change in temperature, suddenly what happens? We get the mists around the water. It's amazing because you can start off by my house and it can be really misty, but by the time I get beyond the lakes, just in a minute, the mist just goes. It reminds me that our lives are like a mist. Just like a mist. James uses the brevity of life not only to give the sense of awe of God, but also as an incentive to use the few moments wisely that we have. It's God's will, not ours, that matters.

The Bible has wonderful pictures describing the brevity of our life. The mist. What about the shadow? It says your life is like a shadow. Now, think of it. A shadow is the inescapable companion of the substance. It's the substance that's real. The shadow is just a shadow of the substance. The shadow's worth is in the substance. It cannot exist on its own. The Bible describes life as a shadow. The substance is eternal life, eternal things, God Himself, and our life is simply the shadow of the reality that will be.

I often think that our life is like a dream. Did you ever wake up from a dream and suddenly you look around and you say, "This is reality"? Now, that happens to us every morning. And yet the dream seems so real. If you have a vivid dream, it seems too real. Aren't you glad sometimes to wake up? But when you wake up from a nightmare or something like that, it's neat because everything's just normal, real. Now then, I think that life is like the dream. In fact, the Bible says that. When we die, we'll wake up to the reality and we'll say, "Oh, yes. Yes! That was the dream, the shadow. This is the substance, the reality." And yet, of course, our culture and even some Christians have fallen into the trap of thinking that this is the substance and heaven is the shadow. Not so. That's a trap. Life is a shadow.

The Bible says life is a shuttle. It says that your life is like a weaver's shuttle. Have you ever watched somebody weaving, somebody that really can? When we travel sometimes and especially in the Far East, we go and see these people. Sometimes they do it alongside the road and it is incredible how people that have done nothing all their life but learn that skill, how their hand, you can hardly see their hand move. Life is like a shuttle. It is so fast you can hardly see it move. Then when the weaver finishes, you are cast off the loom. Make sure the picture is worth hanging on heaven's walls. Your life is like a shuttle. What a lovely picture. To rest, to give, to say, "Lord, weave me, weave me during the time that You have given me into the pattern You have planned."

Not only a shadow and a shuttle, but a sprinter. Your life is like a sprinter. That's what the Bible says. Now, those of us that have been watching the Olympics, I was watching one of the interviews and they said, "I trained four years for this sprint." It took two and a half minutes, didn't it? The slalom down from the top to the bottom. Something like that. Life isn't like the four years that you trained. Life is like the two and a half minutes straight down the hill. Over.

And life is like a sigh. Psalm 39:5 says your life is but a sigh. Not even a long breath. Just a sigh. How long does it take you to sigh? It's over. In fact, it says a hand's breadth. Not even a long sigh, a hand's breadth is a short sigh. And it's gone. Then if that's what life is like, we ought to say something with our one sigh and don't be remembered by the one gasp that was all that we could manage.

Life is like a shuttle, swift to weave the strands of trivial moments spent in fiddling all the world's demands. My life is like a sprinter, too soon the line is reached, and God asks me for my response to all that I've heard preached. So brief and fleeting are my days, they pass just like a sigh, yet God says they're important and I'm not to question why. He doesn't give me more than these few days to worship Him. Perhaps He knows I'd use them for my selfishness and sin. And so my minutes, counted by the angels up above, I've chosen to be filled with songs of joy for Him I love. He's the substance to my shadow, the hand that weaves my story, and the one who gives me breath to reach the finish line in glory. The minutes of the Master are precious worldly time that shall be filled with Jesus, who's my reason and my rhyme, my rhythm of sweet music and the hope of all that's real. So help me watch the moments that the devil loves to steal. Lord, protect me from the mousetrap and from presumption cheese, and teach me how to live for You and not the way I please.

The right use of time is what we're after. It starts with making time for a relationship with Him. The Bible says today is the day of salvation. Today, not tomorrow. Now is the accepted time. This is because God knows we should know we only have today. So I want to ask you, before we talk about using the time in some practical things: Have you started by accepting Christ, by making the time here on Earth absolutely valuable? Have you all accepted Him, or are you saying tomorrow?

There's a lovely little poem here I found. Tomorrow he promised his conscience; tomorrow I mean to believe. Tomorrow I'll think as I ought to; tomorrow my Savior receive. Tomorrow I'll conquer the habits that hold me from heaven away. And ever his conscience repeated one word and one only: today. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, thus day after day it went on. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, till youth with its vision was gone. Till age and his passions had written the message of fate on his brow, and forth from the shadows came death with the pitiless syllable: now.

The right use of time. Have you made sure that today has been a day of salvation for you? Have you got right with God? I remember years ago hearing Major Thomas speak to a whole room of teenagers on this. It was a wonderful sermon. It was really on coming to Christ and using the time that God had given us to make sure that you knew Him personally. He used the story of Herod. Do you remember when Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and Jesus was being tried by Pilate? Pilate was trying to figure out how to get Jesus off the hook, how to rescue Him because he was pretty sure that He wasn't guilty and that the Pharisees had delivered Him for envy, the Bible says.

So he tried to do this and do that and talk the people that had brought Him to him out of it. And then somebody gave him a clue. They said, "Well, this man's from Galilee." He thought, "Great! That'll get me off the hook. Herod, King Herod, he's the tetrarch of Galilee. I'll send Him to Herod and then I won't have to deal with this." So Jesus, after having spent the night very uncomfortably in a cell in the soldiers' quarters, was bundled up and taken and pushed and shoved around until He came and stood in front of Herod.

Herod said, "I am so glad to see You. I have heard of You for ages." What Herod had first feared when he heard about Jesus was that John the Baptist, whom he had beheaded, had been raised from the dead. Well, he discovered that it wasn't John the Baptist reincarnated, that this was a Galilean preacher and healer, and that a lot of trouble was happening. He didn't want a lot of trouble because he was a puppet of the Romans and was meant to keep everything calm. This Jesus was from Galilee, from his area. So he had been anxiously waiting to see what they would do with Jesus.

However, he remembered the ministry of John the Baptist and he said to Jesus, "John the Baptist told me about You. And I have waited a long time to see You." Then he said, "Show me a miracle." Remember? "Show me a miracle." It says Jesus stood in front of him and answered him not a word. He was beaten up and all sorts of things, but it didn't make Jesus open His mouth and say anything to him. You see, God had spoken to Herod through John the Baptist. When Herod had him shut up in prison, he used to bring him out of prison and say, "Preach to me, preacher man," because it said he loved to hear him.

He loved to hear him because he could hardly stand to hear him, but he couldn't stop hearing him because he could hear God's voice. John the Baptist preached faithfully to Herod the tetrarch day after day after day after day. It was just like the clock ticking: Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. And then one day he beheaded him. God never said anything to him again, even when He was standing right in front of him.

Major Thomas applied that by saying to that bunch of teenagers, "Have you ever heard a clock tick?" That's a funny question. Think about it. Have you ever heard a clock tick? It can have a loud tick. We have a grandfather clock, a beautiful, beautiful 200-year-old grandfather clock from England, from Liverpool, from my hometown. It's got a very loud tick. It's got a very light bell, actually, because very old clocks don't have a big dong. They have a little tiny ting. But the tick is very loud. When my kids come home, they always say, "Mother, the first night we cannot sleep because everybody in the whole house hears tick, tick, tick. Can't you stop the grandfather clock?"

But by the second day, you've sort of got used to it. By the third day, I say, "Does the clock keep you awake?" "No, we don't even notice him now." Did you ever hear a clock tick when you hear it all the time? John the Baptist had preached: tick, tick, tick, tick. Herod sort of got so used to it that he never noticed when it stopped. If we do not respond to the voice of God, then when we are standing right in front of God, He'll have nothing to say to us. Nothing at all. It is a very, very sober thing to me that I've had this Bible all my life, and God has been speaking to me every day. Sometimes I haven't even noticed the clock ticking. Many times.

So have you heard Him say today is the day of salvation? Have you accepted Christ? And then have you heard Him since? Or have you just got so used to the clock ticking that you've tuned it out, and you sleep, and you play, and you go on your way, and you just never bother? Be careful. Billy Graham said this: "One reason we should number our days and apply our hearts unto wisdom is that the day is lost which does not add to our knowledge of God and His word. In eternity's scales of values, that day is lost which has no word of praise, no prayer of thanks, and no contact with God. Prayer and praise are not occasional notes played on the organ of life. They are pipes in the organ, and their absence means serious loss to the music of life. It means discord instead of harmony."

That's quite a thought. The day is lost when we have had no word of praise, no prayer of thanks, no contact with God, and we've just let the clock tick on. The model, of course, is Jesus. Before His weaving was cut off the loom, before His race was run, before He went back to the God who had sent Him, His time went according to God's clock, not men's clocks. Remember, He went back and submitted Himself to His parents because His time had not yet come. He made the water into wine, but not before He'd reminded His mother, "My time has not yet come. I'm running according to My schedule, Mother, not yours now. My ministry has begun."

He used to be able to say to me, "Come in for supper," and Jesus the boy would come in for supper. But now He had started His three years towards the cross and our redemption, and His hour had not yet come. He switched over from man-time to God-time, even though His man-time had also been in accordance with God-time. But now He was on a different schedule. If you count up all the times that Jesus said, "My hour is not yet come," you'll find an awful lot of numbers.

God has a heavenly calendar for each of us, just as He did for Jesus. There's a marvelous passage in Ecclesiastes 3. There's a time to be born and a time to die, and a time to plant and a time to uproot, and a time to kill and a time to heal. I'm not saying that filling your time for God means nothing but God stuff. What I'm saying is: What is the God stuff you should be filling your time with? The God stuff can be very ordinary stuff like being born and dying, planting and uprooting, killing and healing, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, scattering stones and gathering them.

When I looked into that whole passage, I thought about Jesus. He had a time to be born and a time to die. He had a time to plant and a time to uproot. He watched the farmers sow and harvest. He experienced those sort of things. That was part of God's time for him. There was a time to kill and a time to heal in His life. He was nearly part of an infant massacre, and certainly a time to heal in His ministry. There was a time to tear down and a time to build. He was a carpenter. The word carpenter that's used of Jesus is a maker of houses, not a maker of furniture. There's different kinds of carpentry, but He would be the big builder; He would go and do the big structures.

So there was a time to tear down, a time to build in His life, and that was all part of God-time for Him. There was a time to mourn His father's death and a time to dance at the festivals, the Feast of Tabernacles specifically. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. He lived in the rough terrain where part of the year they would have to gather the stones in order to plow the fields. Time to embrace and a time to refrain. "Who is my mother and my brothers? Yes, you have come to put your arms around me and take me home, but I have to restrain you and I have to refrain."

Time to search and a time to give up. Time to engage in ministry, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. And a time to give up: shake off the dust off your feet. There was a time to keep and a time to throw away, time when He cleared out the carpenter's shop and set out in His ministry, cleared up His desk and was onto another thing. He said, "This year I go to another city, to Jerusalem, and do this and that," not because it was presumption, but because that was part of what God had ordained for His days.

Time to be silent and a time to speak. Time to be silent in front of Herod, I've just told you about that. And a time to speak to Pilate: "It's not your fault. I could escape. There's thousands of angels. This is what I came for." And a time for war on the cross and a time for peace when it was finished. Jesus ran according to God's timetable, but that timetable incorporated a whole lot of ordinary things, Nazareth things, fun things, sad things.

The whole secret is saying, "What things are mine for me to do today?" Remember, He said, "I must be about my Father's business," my Father's things. That's the secret. That's the decision that you and I have to make every day of my life. I try to be about my Father's business. That might mean caring for little babies or grandchildren or children, or cooking or cleaning. It might mean running errands. It might mean helping, it might mean serving, it might mean writing, it might mean studying.

Every day is different for each one of us. But my great heart desire and focus is trying to figure out which things are the things that are written for me before I came to this clean white page. Every day I say, "God, at the end of the day, when You read the page, I want to hear You say, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.'" You ask Him in prayer. You take time to evaluate your life and your activities. You check it out against the Word and in your conscience and in your mind.

You don't give God your time. He gave you your time. You start and ask God what to do with it. You know, this can absolutely transform the whole of your life. Does away with boredom, gives you value, gives you purpose, and it helps with worry. It really does. Yes, there are worries that belong in today and there are worries that belong in tomorrow, but seeing you only have today, you only need to worry about the worries that belong in today.

What worry is to me is like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum, waving its arms, saying, "Look at me! Take notice of me! Worry, worry, worry, worry!" What I've had to do is to learn to treat the worries that demand me to worry. I have to let them throw their tantrum and wait till they behave and then ask them a question: "Do you belong in today, or do you belong in tomorrow?" If that worry, throwing a tantrum, demanding that I listen to them, if they answer, "Tomorrow. I'm a worry that belongs in tomorrow," I say to it, "Then wait in line. It's not your turn."

Now, that's one way I've been able to handle worry because I've learned to live a day at a time. That's the secret. I don't say tomorrow I'll do this, that, and the other. That doesn't mean that I'm irresponsible. It doesn't mean I don't have goals. Stuart and I just sat down and planned our life away and signed it away for five years, giving ourselves into the hands of other people, serving other people. No spaces on our calendar; it's all signed away. Funny to live like that.

So you plan and you do the best you can and you make decisions to do this or to go there or to do whatever people are asking you to do. But you live as if you only have today. Remember D.V.? D.V. That's the secret. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank You for the very sober thoughts from Your Word concerning time and eternity. Lord, some of us are awfully good at managing our time. The problem is we're filling it with all sorts of things that we've decided to fill it with instead of asking You what these precious moments of the only today that we have are for. Forgive us, Lord. Perhaps You've been trying to tell us, and the clock's been ticking for years. We just haven't learned to tune in. We haven't given You the time of day. We haven't given You time enough to learn to discern the voice of God through Your Word and in prayer.

And so, Lord, we pray that we will not be guilty of boasting and bragging about tomorrow, and that our time that is in Your hands would be time well spent. Help us to redeem the time for the days are evil. We ask it for Christ's sake, Amen.