Time…

Read this blurb this morning, and got to thinking…

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions… No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness — the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends — depends on that.

If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

Arnold Bennett, Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, p. 18-20

Seems I am not alone in my meditations as I read the words written by king Solomon, the wisest man of his day:

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

3 For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.
² A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest.
³ A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.
⁴ A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.
⁵ A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
⁶ A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.
⁷ A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
⁸ A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace.

⁹ What do people really get for all their hard work? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. ¹¹ Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart,

My former pastor Billy Joe Daugherty used to say that each day we began with a train load of God’s blessings, 24 little box cars each day named hours, and how we spent those 24 hours affected how our life will go, both here, and eternally.

Acts 4:25

you spoke long ago by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant, saying, ‘Why were the nations so angry? Why did they waste their time with futile plans?

The obvious question each of us must ask God and ourselves, is ‘What do we do, that make eternal impact?’ and conversely, ‘What do we do, that is wood, hay and stubble, that has no eternal worth?’

Psalm 39:4

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.

The wisdom of the ages is this: Discover what God is doing in our generation, and do only that.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin

Today I am burdened with eternity, questioning how best to grow, obey, and move into 2018 bearing the most and best fruit for the kingdom of God I am able.

“More time is wasted not in hours but in minutes. A bucket with a small hole in the bottom gets just as empty as a bucket that is deliberately kicked over.”

Source Unknown

Somehow, since the Israel trip, my vision and passion have been dulled, and it is time to come back into the presence of Heaven, and His life, to be renewed, strengthened, and reenergized.

Isaiah 28:10

He tells us everything over and over— one line at a time, one line at a time, a little here, and a little there!”

There is much to learn, grow in, DO for the kingdom!

I would always find myself in step with Holy Spirit, moving in prophetic visionary directives in obedience fully to the Lord, so that I can be a voice for Him, never merely an echo.

1 Chronicles 12:32

And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do;

I will have the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, without compromise!

Jesus teaches us to live ready for His return, whenever the day or hour:

Matthew 24:44

You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.

And He expects us to walk in sync with Him, to understand the times in which we live:

Luke 12:56

You fools! You know how to interpret the weather signs of the earth and sky, but you don’t know how to interpret the present times

Colossians 4:5

Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.

There is eternity! Heaven and Hell are real places. People must be born-again to even see the kingdom. There are eternal harvests and consequences to our lives.

This gospel must go to the ends of the earth, for the end to come: https://chrisaomministries.com/2017/02/27/do-you-want-to-go-to-heaven/

Let’s pray:

‘Father, give me the grace to seek You. Open Your Word again to my understanding. Rekindle the fire of passion in my first love for You Lord Jesus! Amen!”

Set Yearly Goals and work them!

Set Yearly Goals and work them!

I am a disciple of Jesus Christ! The word disciple, means: ‘disciplined one’. My aim, my passion, my destiny, my calling, is to fully obey Him, and make a radical, eternal impact upon this world, through my obedience and love….

I read this quote, and it encourages me today:

“Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions… No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness — the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends — depends on that.

If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.”

Arnold Bennett, Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, p. 18-20

We are now beginning 2017! New years resolutions, or many of us actually put together a battle plan to get where we need to be. Thought today might be a great day to reflect on where we are at, and to perhaps rethink if we are spending time doing the critical, or have we allowed ourselves to become so busy, that we have drifted off course from our dreams and God given vision?

I see this here in Pauls letter to the Corinthian church:

1 Cor 16: 6 And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with you, that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go.
7 For I will not see you now by the way; but I trust to tarry a while with you, if the Lord permit.
8 But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost..

Notice here Paul was planning out his year, scheduling what he would do, and what he would not…

Proverbs 16:9

A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.

Jer 10:23 O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg.

In Jan, I pray, fast, and set yearly goals for the next 12 months. So far, so good, the Lord has honored my faith, and I am on track pretty much for what I set out to accomplish in 2016. Truthfully, I missed a couple fitness goals, because I did not rest enough…and so we learn, adjust, implement, and move forward.

Jesus is welcome to change any of my plans or schedule at any point, but for now, I am walking out, and working towards my goals, trusting Him to do the impossible, daily. It has been said, that it is better to shoot for the stars, and only hit the moon, than to aim at nothing, and hit nothing.

Or, you can shoot for the moon, overshoot, and land among the stars…

Set measurable concrete goals, now. Plan your work, and work your plan, daily reviewing your plan, to keep yourself on track.

https://chrisaomministries.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/thoughts-words-and-deliberate-deeds/

Then, each time I complete a project, or portion, I can go back to the blueprint for the year, and begin focusing on the next level of excellence I need to achieve.

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

 Henry David Thoreau

How well I have learned the truth of these verses:

James 4:

¹³ Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:

¹⁴ Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

¹⁵ For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

When we began our company, we produced a 400 page business plan, on what we thought we would do with our business. For grins and giggles, 2-3 years into it, we would read it for humor. What we actually HAD to do, to feed our families daily, was a far cry from our fantasy dream. Then, we produced a 60 page business plan birthed in prayer and real life experience. It worked, and our company grew from doing 150K a year, to 550K in a couple years.

Then we studied, my business partner took his business degree, and we had a team of MBA students do a competitive business analysis on our company, and they produced a 300 page booklet for us, that was awesome, setting a realistic path to grow us to 5 million/year over the next 5 years. We grew it to 1.1 million over the next two years, (that took us almost 8 years to accomplish)  then at my office one night, I had an ‘open-heaven’ experience, where Jesus clearly called me to walk away from the company to do this full-time, and I have obeyed. Yet, I am convinced, that had we continued on the business plan we set out, we would have made it to the 5 million/year mark, as long as we, the leaders, were willing to continue to grow and learn how to survive and effectively manage the growth.

Yet the principal remains: In order for our organizations to grow, we must grow! We must always be bigger on the inside than whatever challenges life throws at us, and this takes faith!

I would love to say this was my idea, but I heard it taught both at Victory, and again in Tom Leding’s meetings.

Faith, without works, is dead.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

Let’s Pray:
‘Father, you have a perfect plan for each of us this year. Please show us clearly what that is, and help us to align ourselves with what you desire for us, then stay the course, and faithfully work at what you have shown us to do, in your name I pray Lord Jesus, Amen’

https://chrisaomministries.com/2016/02/09/timing/

If you do not yet know Jesus, then here is how to begin your journey with Him:https://chrisaomministries.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/the-gospel-the-power-of-god/