Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] We've been in a series over the last three weeks and one more week that is tongue and cheekily called mine Everything is God's. Now, I hope you get what's going on there. When we, as the campus pastors began to think about what that might look like, what we were trying to say is, is mine. And then with a line between it. So as if really that's not true. Because we know from everything we've been talking about over the last few weeks that everything, our resources, our life, everything about it has been given to us by God and all of it was his in the first place. Right?
[00:00:33] And so the problem we find ourselves in, at least let me speak for myself. I'll let you guys determine whether you have this same problem. I have a tendency to live like I don't really believe that, even though I proclaim it in many places in my life. I mean, we have this issue. We know the truth that everything is the Lord's. We know that without who he is, we'd be nowhere. And yet we still live as if we are the ones who are in charge of everything in our life, but everything is His.
[00:01:05] So every Monday, our preaching team, which includes all of our campus pastors. So if you're, if you're a first time person at grace this morning, we have five campuses. And each, each Sunday morning there are services at each one of those campuses where a preaching pastor preaches. And while we don't preach the same sermon, we are on the same topic every week. The same topic. By that I mean the same scripture. And so we get together and we talk about things we've been learning. And one of the things that we do in that preaching team, at least that we started to do, is kind of write a statement on what at least we're trying to accomplish as a church in preaching this. And so this week's preaching team summary reads like this. Everybody's time is limited. And because of this, every moment is a gift.
[00:01:56] God's word then calls us to live with intentionality, numbering our days in order to make the most of the time God gives us. And when we see time as a gift from God, it reshapes our priorities.
[00:02:13] If we see our time for what it really is, a gift from God, it ought to reshape our priorities. That's really our hope for this message and Mac's reading from Psalm 90, specifically verse 12. One of the things that we learn as we listen to that and what we'll learn even more about today is that God calls us to do something called numbering our days.
[00:02:40] He's okay.
[00:02:43] We're good.
[00:02:45] I know some of you are feeling like that in your heads as I preach.
[00:02:49] It's all right.
[00:02:51] We'll get over it. Maybe we'll even get through it.
[00:02:55] Sometimes I feel like that when I'm listening to you preach.
[00:03:00] This happens to me almost every Sunday at 11 o'. Clock. I start saying things that I don't know why I'm saying them, but here we go. We're going to keep on going.
[00:03:09] What Max was saying, though, you know, is that we're supposed to number our days. What does that mean? You know, we have this idea of what Scripture says, but what does it mean? Well, let me just have you think about this with me. I heard somebody say this week that we all have the same 24 hours. We all have the same 24 hours. And that boils down to 1460 minutes, to 86,400 seconds.
[00:03:35] And there is no possible way, no matter who you are, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, any of the Waltons, and I don't mean from the old TV show, I'm talking about Walmart.
[00:03:47] None of those people, not even Elon Musk, has enough resources to actually purchase even one more second because there are no more seconds to purchase.
[00:04:01] The seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the years, they are finite.
[00:04:08] I want us to think like that this morning.
[00:04:11] And so what are we supposed to do with those when it says number our days? Maybe we could determine it this way, to use them judiciously, to not waste them, to not squander them, to not lose them, to not ignore them.
[00:04:27] But to count them, to work on them, to steward them towards something.
[00:04:33] And that maybe be the question, what are we stewarding our time towards?
[00:04:39] You know, last week, 200 or more people from Grace chose to sign up to find out more about volunteering, about serving in our church. And, man, our team did such a good job trying to call you within 48 hours because that's what Brandon promised.
[00:04:59] And that put a lot of pressure on those people, but most of them did it, except for John, because I filled out a form to do a ride along and sing and he never even called me.
[00:05:15] Where is the complaint department?
[00:05:19] We'll talk about that later. He's not even in here now. He wanted to do a ride along with me preaching, and I said, no way. Just kidding anyway. But man, that's what. You know, here's the thing. We're in this situation, we're here having this opportunity to steward our Giftedness. We're going to have an opportunity to steward our resources. And today we're having an opportunity to find out about what it means to steward our time.
[00:05:44] And. And what are we supposed to be stewarding our time towards?
[00:05:49] Who gets to determine that for our lives?
[00:05:52] You know, I know who gets to determine that for my life. Way too often.
[00:05:56] It's me, right?
[00:05:59] I was listening to a podcast or a devotional program that Shane and Shane puts on called Intentional Worship. Vicki sent it to me yesterday morning while I was in my office. And. And as I was listening to it, it starts off with some scripture, Psalm 145. And then there's usually a devotional, and then there's a song that's connected to devotional that they ask you to sing with him. And in the middle of that, where the devotional is being shared, there's a guy, a theologian and pastor called Paul Tripp, who was talking about how Psalm 145 is all about dying to yourself and making God your king.
[00:06:37] And he said, you know, the problem is that we have created this, our own theology, our own religious system, and I'm going to coin it as meism, because everything about what we do too often is about what we desire, what we find pleasurable, what we see in the world and think that should be important to us, and we make life about us.
[00:07:02] But the reality is, and what we'll learn today is that life isn't really about us.
[00:07:07] It's about God and about how we relate to him and about what he's trying to accomplish in the world. And if we can figure that out, we can move our way towards stewarding our time in the appropriate manner.
[00:07:21] But even if we know that it's about God, what is it specifically that God would call us to that we ought to be stewarding our time towards?
[00:07:31] And I think it can be boiled down in two things.
[00:07:36] First of all, throughout all of Scripture, God is kind of making this a thematic thing. In Deuteronomy, he tells us that what's the most important thing is to love God and to love people. Jesus goes on to say that, too. In Matthew, chapter 22, when the lawyer says, God, what's the most important commandment? And he says, love God and love people.
[00:07:58] And so when you think about your life stewarding your time, it's absolutely essential that the priority of our life as followers of Jesus is that we love God and love people. We pursue him and we pursue people, and we ought to steward our time, move in a way in such a Fashion that we are pursuing God as a priority and pursuing people as a priority.
[00:08:23] Wait, wait, stop pursuing God as the priority and pursuing people as the priority. It's not about one of many priorities. If you have a priority, it is a priority, right? It's the first thing. And God combines that priority in love to pursue him and to pursue people. And we're going to get to that. That's what scripture teaches us.
[00:08:49] We too often pursue our own personal welfare, our own pleasure, the things we see around us. And we don't pursue God or people in priority.
[00:09:00] But what this passage teaches us is that first we have to embrace some realities that will then produce this fruit of having God and the pursuit of people as our priority. And Psalm 90 talks about four, four realities that we have to embrace. And that's where I want to start. So let's go back to verse one of Psalm 90:90 to see that first reality. And it's pretty simple. And if, if you go to church at a Sunday and you don't hear this, then you ought to probably say something to somebody. And that is every Sunday we ought to hear the same words. One of those, one of those phrases that we ought to hear is God is God.
[00:09:38] I know that, you know that. But too often we don't live like that, right? God is God. I mean that's exactly how Moses, who is the writer of this psalm, says it in verse one. It says, lord, you've been our dwelling place in all generations. That word, dwelling place has the sense of dependence and dependability and eternal consistency. It's this place that everybody needs in life. We all need a place where we can go home to.
[00:10:08] We all need a place where we feel secure and safe and things are consistent there. When I was in my 20s and I would come back to my parents house and I would spend the weekend with them or spend the week with them. There was something about being there, even though I was an adult, that felt consistent. I knew it was dependable. When Vicki and I, after we moved to Tyler with our kids, when we would go back to Ohio and spend time in Ohio, we would stay with her mom and dad and I slept the best in their guest room they than I've ever slept in my life. Why?
[00:10:41] Because everything was cared for. I wasn't worried. I could depend on it. It was consistent.
[00:10:47] And God is not just consistent for a few years to allow me to sleep in the guest room. God is consistent to invite me into his dwelling for all of eternity. Because God is eternal. God is eternal. He is The God of gods.
[00:11:04] He's the God of this world and the God of my life. Look at verse 2. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You know, when Moses was talking to God back in Exodus, and God was telling him, I'm going to use you to go to Pharaoh in Egypt to ask him or tell him that the people of Israel are going to be delivered.
[00:11:40] I want you to go and do that, and I want you to do that and also to tell the people of Israel that that's what's going to happen. And I mean, if you had been in that situation in that day with Moses, you would have probably thought the same way. Are you crazy? God.
[00:11:55] And so he began to ask God a series of questions. One of the questions that he asked him was, what happens, God? Okay, I get this. But what if they asked me the question, who is it that sent me? What should I say?
[00:12:08] And that's where the famous response that God makes to Moses and to all of us is quoted. He says, I want you to tell him that I am sent you.
[00:12:20] Now, if you're an English teacher or if you're just learning English, you're thinking to yourself, this doesn't really make sense.
[00:12:27] I am sent me. Because, see, the verb to be has a sense of like, was, is, and will be, right?
[00:12:40] And what God was saying in that moment is that I was, I is, and I will be. In other words, I am.
[00:12:49] I've always been. There is no time, there is no place. There is. There is no sphere where I wasn't before. And there isn't any time or place or sphere that will come in the future where I won't be. I'm eternal. I'm God.
[00:13:08] If you've been reading through the Bible, recap the year through the Bible, you are slogging it through with me in a lot of different places. Right now we're in Ezekiel, and I mean, if one more person gets killed, right? I mean, I get it because, you know, there's all this stuff, but there's so much sin, there's so much evil, and God just keeps judging those people and bringing them down.
[00:13:34] And what is the constant theme? In fact, it's not just in Ezekiel, it's been the constant theme since God brought these people into the promised land. It's this idea of these false religions, these people who've built idols to gods that don't exist, that created from. That are created from a stone or a piece of wood, and we bow down to them. In fact, some of the kings of Israel were literally sacrificing their children to them.
[00:14:02] And what is the point of that statement?
[00:14:06] It's because before anything was there to fabricate into a God and anyone was there to do the fabricating.
[00:14:15] God was God.
[00:14:19] That means that every other God. I'm doing Brandon's air quotes now.
[00:14:26] Every other God that people worship is not really a God.
[00:14:33] There's no power because God is God.
[00:14:37] That's our first reality.
[00:14:40] The second one is pretty striking, and that is that sin is sin and it will be judged.
[00:14:48] I mean, sin is sin and it will be judged. Look at verse eight.
[00:14:54] It says, you've set our iniquities before you, our secret sins, in the light of your presence. Man, when I read that passage, I just think, oh, really? I thought I was getting away with something.
[00:15:05] I mean, you know, God says, or Moses says about God that he sees everything we do and that our sin, that our sin is not escaping his offense.
[00:15:21] A friend of mine was talking to me the other day and he said that, you know, when it comes to my sin, I realize that my sin isn't really about my actions.
[00:15:31] I mean, my sins actions or the perpetual series of actions that are sinful are really just a manifestation of what's inside of me. My sinful nature, my selfish propensity to go after the things that I want in my life. Right? That's what sin really is.
[00:15:52] And that's where we are with this. When our sin is ever before us.
[00:15:56] It's this concept that we are sinners and everybody sins. That's what Romans 3:23 says, you know, that every single person, all people, there isn't one person ever created that didn't have this sin nature that manifests in sin.
[00:16:12] I mean, that's what it says. And the problem with sin is Romans 6:23 says that it brings death, it brings separation from God and awful brokenness of the world.
[00:16:25] Broken relationships, broken bodies, broken promises, broken commitments, broken lives.
[00:16:36] Sin is sin and God has to deal with it.
[00:16:41] Can't not deal with it.
[00:16:46] A few years ago, well, maybe 10 or 15 years ago now, I was driving west on the Loop heading towards Broadway, and I was going to turn left onto Broadway.
[00:16:58] And so as I was turning left onto Broadway, I made my way to Broadway, started going straight, and in my rear view mirror behind me were these two red lights. They might be blue these days, but back then they were red. And. And I knew I had to do the drive of shame.
[00:17:17] And you've seen this happen. You've done this yourselves. You know, the police officer pulls you or flashes the lights, the siren goes off. And you know that at the soonest place you can park, you're supposed to stop. And have you ever watched people do that? It's like they park anywhere.
[00:17:36] And I realize now, because you don't know where to park, you don't know what to do. You're just trying to think of your excuse, right?
[00:17:44] And the officer walks up to. I mean, so I pull in there and I park at the very. I mean, I think I stop right on the driveway. And of course, the officer just stops right behind me, you know, in an awkward situation, gets out, comes to the window. And he never even asked me the question, which I thought he was gonna ask me. That's why it threw me. He said, you know, most of the time they ask you, do you know why I stopped you?
[00:18:05] And then you can.
[00:18:08] I have no idea, right?
[00:18:11] But all he said to me was this. And I honestly remember it well, sir, in Texas, you're not allowed to enter into an intersection after the light has turned red.
[00:18:31] Thank you.
[00:18:34] Thank you, he said.
[00:18:36] I said, I'm. I think I said, I'm sorry.
[00:18:41] And anyway, after a bit of time, you know, he talked to me a little bit, and he finally came back and he said, listen, I'm going to give you a warning. And I, you know, you don't. I don't know, you don't get warnings for red light running usually, do you, Robert? I mean, you know, that's just not part of it.
[00:18:57] And anyway, but he gave me a warning, and I thought, this is one of the greatest days of my life.
[00:19:04] Anyway, here's the thing. I was thinking about that.
[00:19:07] That officer swore to uphold the law, right? He swore to protect and to serve, right? And all the things that we know police officers do well for us, but one of the things that they have is they have a little leeway in how they. Obviously they do. They don't have to give every single person a ticket.
[00:19:26] And in the moment, this guy, I don't know if he was just being nice or if he was thinking it was best or whatever. Maybe he was on his way to lunch, I'm not sure. But he thought it best at that moment to give me a warning. Because here's the thing. He was upholding a law that somebody else wrote.
[00:19:44] Now, when you think about God and law and sin and righteousness, see, God's not just. God's just not protecting and Serving God's not just upholding a law. What God? When I sin against God, when I run that red light again against God, it's not just me breaking a law that he's trying to enforce.
[00:20:10] I'm breaking who he is, his righteousness, his holiness, and everything about him. And so my offense of that cannot be left undone.
[00:20:21] It can't. And yours can't either.
[00:20:24] There's judgment coming, and that's a significant part of making the most of our days. So hold onto that for a second.
[00:20:33] Now, here's what's really cool, because in verses 13 through 17, what we see is our third reality, and that is that God has an eternal plan that's real, and then it's redemptive and. And that's restorative. In verse 13, the Psalmist Moses calls out, return, O Lord. How long have pity on us, your servants satisfy us. That means to make us full and complete with your steadfast love. Let me just give you a little glimpse into this. The steadfast love that we're talking about is Jesus Christ manifesting that steadfast love. If you've been reading like we were talking about a minute ago, from the read the Bible through in a year or the Bible reading that we've been doing, you have read the word steadfast love over 200 times, and that is a picture of a manifestation of Jesus Christ, God's son, the ultimate in steadfast love.
[00:21:33] I mean, that's what this redemptive and restorative plan is about.
[00:21:41] You guys know who Mike Tyson is? Most of us, right?
[00:21:45] You know, Mike is getting a little older now, and, I mean, I still wouldn't want to cross him in like a line waiting for a hamburger. But I don't think he's quite as tough as he used to be. And Mike Tyson's famous for a lot of things that aren't so great. But one of the things that he's famous for that I absolutely love is probably the quote that many of you know, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth, right? Every single person has a plan until all things go wrong, right? And in terms of boxing, everybody has a plan until you get that first punch in the mouth. You know what's amazing about God's plan?
[00:22:25] His plan includes his son getting punched in the mouth.
[00:22:30] Not only just punched in the mouth, but beaten with rods. Not only punched in the mouth and beaten with rods, but a crown of thorns put on his head with shame, humiliation, not only those things, but being put on a Cross nailed to it till he dies, then put in a grave.
[00:22:48] I mean, God's plan is to kill his son.
[00:22:53] And not just to kill his son, because that somehow, I don't know, makes everybody feel better, but because his son's death would satisfy the wrath of God, of sin, and his resurrection would provide the righteousness and the victory over sin and transform those who believe in him. God has a plan.
[00:23:17] You got to cling to that if you're going to be able to number your days. God is God, sin is sin. And God has a plan to redeem people, deliver them from sin, redeem those who are in bondage of debt, and to restore people who are broken.
[00:23:36] So God desires to see us reconnected to him through the forgiveness of our sin. And God desires the world to see pictures of how brokenness can be well healed. And it all won't be healed until he comes again for the second time. But he's giving us pictures and glimpses of brokenness and the ability to walk out of that brokenness with a. With healing of the soul for sure, and sometimes even the body.
[00:24:07] So God has a plan.
[00:24:11] But here's the last reality that we have to live in. Time's short.
[00:24:17] The physical world is fading away.
[00:24:20] You know, when you think about eternity, think about it as a line that never ends, that starts here or starts from you and goes as far as possible. Not just possible, goes forever. You could never come to the end of it. And somewhere on that line is your physical life as just a dot, insignificant. Nothing about, doesn't even relate. Now, physically, you begin your life spiritually. You begin your life at birth. And you are a spiritual being for eternity. But I'm talking about a physical being for eternity. You're a physical being only for. In this state, only for a short period of time.
[00:25:03] Doesn't last.
[00:25:05] You know, we have people. I've done it, you've done it. We've gone to places to see the ruins.
[00:25:10] Go to Rome and you see the Colosseum. Go to Turkey. You see all the things that were back in Paul's day. You know, there's all these ruins that you see. And we learn so much about the cultures from those ruins. But you know what the most important thing we ought to learn from ruins?
[00:25:27] It is that cultures and people are not eternal.
[00:25:33] Ruins are evidence that things don't last.
[00:25:38] They don't, even though we try to make them.
[00:25:42] David Gibson wrote a book called Living Backwards, and this is how he starts it. I love this. He says in his first sentence, he Says, I am going to die.
[00:25:55] Man, that draws me right in, right? I am going to die. And by the time you read these words, I may even be dead.
[00:26:05] Now that's exciting, right? It's a little cryptic, it seems a little weird. But what he's saying is, time is short.
[00:26:12] I mean, verse 10 says, the years of your life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80.
[00:26:20] Okay, some of us in here are, you're at 70 and you're starting to think, oh my gosh.
[00:26:26] And some of you are 80. How are you doing that?
[00:26:30] Some of you are 90. It's like you have so far surpassed the curve that you could die on your way home.
[00:26:39] You got that right.
[00:26:43] I did some research this week.
[00:26:47] You know, it's crazy that we can open our computers and we can ask it, who is the oldest living person in the world right now?
[00:26:57] And it will give you a really good guess.
[00:27:00] The oldest living person as of yesterday at 11 o'. Clock. She could be dead right now for all I know. But Esther Caram from someplace in England was alive yesterday at about 11 o'. Clock.
[00:27:15] She's 117.
[00:27:18] She was born in 1909.
[00:27:22] She's the only person on record that is still alive that was born between 1900 and 1909.
[00:27:32] Wow, that is ancient.
[00:27:36] And then I started thinking, my grandparents were born in oh, five.
[00:27:43] Who.
[00:27:45] That's something.
[00:27:47] You ever hold a baby, like in the first couple weeks of his life, Maybe in the first few hours of his life? When our kids came home, one of my favorite things to do was to put them in my arm and head here, feet here, and just kind of do. You've done that. Kind of do the rock. Right. Man, I just, I love that so much. It lasted for 22 days because what happens? They grow, right? And they grow up.
[00:28:17] And then when your kids grow up and they start having kids, then you feel like, what is going on here? Time is so short. And then for some of you, you've got grandkids who are having kids and you're their great grandparent. And let me tell you something really cool about that. Most of us in this room couldn't tell you all four of our great grandparents names.
[00:28:41] Hold it.
[00:28:43] I'm a lot more significant than that.
[00:28:47] Are you telling me that Ella's kids, if she has them, will not know my name?
[00:28:51] Good chance.
[00:28:53] Wow.
[00:28:55] That puts things in perspective.
[00:28:58] Time goes fast.
[00:29:00] Like this sermon time. Maybe not for you, but it's. I got a lot to go.
[00:29:07] Okay, so God is God, sin is sin.
[00:29:11] God has A plan and man, time is short. Now, let me just give you four fruits that ought to be produced in our lives because of those realities really quickly. The first is this. The first fruit ought to be that we worship God.
[00:29:25] See, if we're supposed to pursue God and pursue others, one of the things we ought to prioritize in our life is the pursuit of God in worship. Moses starts off verse one saying, lord, it's not just a cry to him, it's a declaration of his lordship. In Moses life, which is worship. It's to say, God, everything I am and everything I have is yours. I worship you. With that I declare to you that I give you my life, I give you my service, I give you everything about who I am. I give you my flesh to obey you instead of obey myself. I. I worship you.
[00:30:03] The second reality is compassion. When you read Psalm 90, you see this whole thing happening, unfolding in front of you, the state of the lost and the broken in the world. Verse 9. For all of our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. Oh, this is awful. This is terrible. The brokenness of the world, relationships and commitments and promises.
[00:30:32] My body is broken, My life is broken. We see it in people all the time.
[00:30:37] And that ought to lead us to a place of compassion that they need to know the rescue that comes from Jesus and the brokenness can be restored and will be restored one day.
[00:30:50] And we ought to be giving the pursuit of our lives to the pursuit of those people.
[00:30:58] We ought to be driven because of the realities of God being God, sin being what it is, and the plan that God has and man. We ought to be engaged with compassion, not just feeling sorry or pity, but moving towards them with the hope of the gospel and the restoration of their brokenness.
[00:31:20] And that ought to be because we're expectant. That's the third thing. What fruit should we have? We ought to expect that God is going to do something, that he's moving.
[00:31:32] I mean, did you. Let me ask you a question. Did you come in here this morning, or did you wake up this morning thinking in your head that someone in our church at one of our campuses was going to hear a message about Jesus and actually want to seek forgiveness from him and that God, if they did, that would forgive them?
[00:31:55] Did anybody expect that to happen today?
[00:32:00] Did you expect when you walked in these doors that something would happen in your life that would change the way you think about how you should engage with people?
[00:32:11] Did you expect that any of your friends who were Sitting near you or any of the people that you were going to come in contact with today, did you have any expectation that they would actually might have some sort of life change?
[00:32:26] I have to tell you, I think one of the biggest problems in the American church is that we don't expect God to really do anything.
[00:32:36] In Acts, chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, the early church has gathered together in Jerusalem and they are living it up as the church. They. They're teaching the Word, they're praying together, they're sharing meals, they're sharing the things that they have. They're being friends and being connected to one another.
[00:32:56] They're speaking to people in the local community.
[00:33:01] And you know what the last verse of that section says that as they were doing those things, God was adding to their numbers different daily, those who are being saved.
[00:33:17] Do you believe that God is still doing that?
[00:33:22] Do you believe that God is actually moving into the hearts and lives of people and saving them?
[00:33:28] Do you believe that God is actually moving into the hearts and lives of people and changing them?
[00:33:35] I mean, we ought to be expecting God to do miraculous things every day, because he is.
[00:33:46] We ought to be coming into this room. We ought to be walking into a Bible study. We ought to be going in to have lunch. We ought to be walking across the street to our neighbor, expecting that I'm going to be changed in this and that that person is going to be changed because God is God, sin is sin, and he has a redemptive plan that changes everything.
[00:34:08] And because time is short, the last fruit that should be produced is we ought to feel like we ought to do it right now.
[00:34:21] I mean, I don't know how many days I got left.
[00:34:25] Not just because of my body breaking down, not just because of accidents that happen, not just because of the way the world is broken, but. But because God says I'm coming again soon.
[00:34:35] And soon doesn't seem to have a time except for expect me.
[00:34:43] We ought to be changed and we ought to be urgently pursuing others because of it.
[00:34:49] I mean, I know people in this room who care for widows.
[00:34:52] They've prioritized their life around that. I know an attorney who does work pro bono because he's prioritized life around.
[00:34:59] I know many of you are walking across the street to meet your neighbors because you've prioritized your life around that. I know there's some of you who are going to places like the mall or Rose Redmond and stopping people and talking about the gospel.
[00:35:12] You're doing that like a guy named Frank Jenner, who I've talked to you about before, who this pastor found out about a guy who pastored a church in London from 1940 to about 1979.
[00:35:23] And he kept. As he was preaching at different revival services throughout London and throughout Australia, he kept hearing this same story from people who were sharing a testimony. And he said, and these people, all hundreds of these people, had the same testimony. I was walking down George street in Sydney, Australia, at lunchtime one day, and a little man came out of a shop and he accosted me.
[00:35:43] He handed me a pamphlet, and he said, if you died tonight, how sure you'd be to go to heaven?
[00:35:51] And I couldn't get that out of my mind. And so when I got home, then the story went, when I got home, I talked to a pastor or my mom or a friend who's a Christian or somebody I knew who knew something about Jesus.
[00:36:02] And I trusted Christ as my savior. And so this pastor ends up in Sydney, Australia, and he's looking for a guy named Frank Jenner.
[00:36:10] And he says to this person, do you know Frank Jenner who used to hang out on George Street? I certainly do. This person said. He said, he's in the hospital right now. He's about to die. And so this pastor went to him and said, you know, Frank, he said, I'm just hearing this over and over again. And the guy started to get tears in his eyes. And he said, you know, when I first became a Christian, I told the Lord that I would prioritize my life, that he was a janitor. And he said, I would prioritize my life, that every day at my lunch, I would make it my goal to share my faith with 10 people. And for, like, 35 years, every day at lunchtime, he walked down to George street and he shared his faith with 10 people. And he said, I have never heard of anybody make a decision to trust Christ because of what I told them. He said, I didn't know my work had any fruit whatsoever, and now it has hundreds.
[00:37:00] Because he gave his life, prioritized his time, numbered his days, didn't waste them, didn't squander them, used them judiciously.
[00:37:11] Will we, let's pray.
[00:37:19] Everything is yours, God. Not mine, not ours.
[00:37:24] You've given it to us. You've given it to us for a purpose. Which is your purpose. To pursue you and to pursue others.
[00:37:32] God, would you help us do that?
[00:37:34] I thank you for the opportunity. We have to talk frankly about this in our lives at this time.
[00:37:41] I pray it would change how we think and change what we pursue. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Let's stand together.
