"Les Stewart of Australia holds the world record for the longest typewriting marathon. In 1982 he began typing the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000. 16 years later he finished the job having used almost 20,000 sheets of paper.
Like a lot of people, Les Stewart is a man preoccupied with something. In his case, typing. That’s what he devoted a big chunk of his time to. A.W Tozer said of Christians:
“We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God. The Triune God with all His mystery and majesty is ours and we are His, and eternity will not be long enough to experience all that He is of goodness, holiness and truth. In heaven they rest not day or night in their ecstatic worship of the godhead. We profess to be headed for that place; shall we not begin now to worship on earth as we shall do in heaven?”
As you plan your day, just get preoccupied with God and you’ll redeem the time."
"A friend of mine tried to buy a used car out of the classified ads. He asked the seller if it was a good car. She replied, “Why yes, it’s been 50,000 miles and I haven’t even had to change the oil yet.”
Many of us procrastinate on oil changes. For those who change their own oil, it might be because you can never find the time. And, if you’re like I once was, you believe only people who have had a mechanical bypass pay to get oil changed.
My thinking about this changed when a discount store opened in our town offering oil changes while you shop for about $5 more than the cost of the material if I did it myself. I also determined an oil change took one hour from when I began changing clothes until clean-up and disposal of the oil was completed.
Remember, God holds us accountable for money and time. Buying time by hiring out certain jobs redeems the time.
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"A volunteer agency once had a slogan, “If you aren’t doing something with your life, it doesn’t matter how long it is.” Corrie Ten Boom, a woman who showed extraordinary faith in Christ during a Nazi concentration camp, put it this way, “The measure of a life after all is not it’s duration but it’s donation.”
The point is, our primary goal in life is not seeing how long we can live, but how meaningfully we can live by investing our time each day in a way that will make a difference in eternity. As you consider your schedule today, are there adjustments you could make that would take you down a path where you would be more likely to be used of God in someone’s life? Instead of eating lunch alone, could you invite an unsaved friend, coworker or family member along?
Seeing ourselves on a mission from God to a lost and dying world, gives the vision needed to redeem the time.
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"Four inches of yellow paint. That is all that separates you from death at any moment when riding down the highway. Every year thousands of people die in head on collisions because someone came across those four inches of yellow paint.
Do I point that fact out to frighten you and make you nervous on the highway? It depends. If you are not a Christian, you should be fearful of death as you think about the possibility of meeting God unprepared at any moment. If you are a Christian that thought should motivate you to examine how you are spending your time today in light of life’s uncertainty.
None of us know when or how we will die. We do know however that we are one day closer to the end of our lives than we were at this time yesterday. So, whether you are saved or lost, considering the brevity and uncertainty of life should motivate you do whatever God wants of you. It should make you redeem the time.
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