Time. If We Don’t Use it - We Lose it!

Time is an extraordinary thing - we all spend exactly the same amount of it every single day of our lives – 24 hours, or 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds. That’s our daily allowance. And we can’t save it up and spend it tomorrow either. If we don’t use it we lose it!

So, how we spend our time has to be the single most important consideration of every single human being. Much more important than how we spend our money. For one thing’s certain – the time we have left to live is getting shorter by the day! Every twenty four hours that passes adds another day to the time we have been on the earth, and lessens the amount of time we have left!

In seeking to help people who are struggling with the consequences of what they have done with their lives, one of the commonest expressions I hear them say is “if only . . .” And what follows is usually a description of something they spent their time doing which has only produced bad fruit in their lives. Sometimes people regret the years of pleasure seeking at a time when they could have sought the Lord – and having missed the opportunities to put their lives on a solid foundation when they were young, they didn’t have anything to fall back on, later in life, which would have given them the wisdom to know how to avoid those catastrophic mistakes.

No wonder Hosea wrote “it’s time to seek the Lord”. He knew that if we miss out on the most important search we can ever make, we will never be able to experience the “showers of righteousness” that God longs to bless us with (Hosea 10:12). But the promise is that He will bless us with His righteousness - at whatever stage of life we seek Him - but we cannot sweep the past under the carpet of experience as if it didn’t matter. Under that carpet are often many things that need to be brought before the Lord in repentance, asking for forgiveness. And as we receive His forgiveness we will experience the blessing of being made righteous in God’s sight because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Now is the time . . . to seek the Lord!

Prayer: I’m sorry, Lord, for occasions when I’ve spent my time unwisely. I ask you to forgive me and cleanse me from the consequences of sinful choices. I seek you afresh today and long to be fully restored in You, experiencing your forgiveness and the showers of righteousness that can be mine because of Jesus. In His Name, Amen.