Brown's Daily Word 10-24-11

Good morning,
Praise be to Jesus our Lord. He is the Lord of time and eternity. He blessed us with a full weekend of work and worship. It was a great thrill to be in the House of the Lord yesterday joining the redeemed of the Lord all over the world in worship and praise. One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Psalm 90. It focuses on God our Father who is Eternal, Holy, Faithful, and Merciful. It also sheds on light on the nature of man, who is frail, and bound by time. The Psalm, which was composed by Moses, is the oldest of the Psalms that are recorded in the Word of God. It invites us to number our days on earth.
Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. If that were the case you would certainly draw out every cent, every day! Each of us has such a bank; its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off as lost everything we have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account. Each
night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is ours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow". We must live in the present on today’s deposits, and invest it in such a way as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success! The clock is running. Make the most of today.
Many frustrated people seem to fight the clock habitually, as a way of life. They stay up late, then they sleep as late as they can and then rush frantically to school or work, gulping down an unhealthy breakfast in the car, talking on their cell phone at the same time. By contrast, Jesus never seemed to be in a hurry. Although He was doing the most important job in history (redeeming the world), and although He knew He only had a few years in which to do it, He never ran. He made time to consider the flowers and the birds of the air. He had time to put his hands on the little children and bless them.
The Bible gives us some great insight into how time can become our friend rather than our enemy. Basically, God exists in a realm that is not bound by time or space. He is the Creator of time, and He is greater than time. So, the first step in making time your friend is to totally immerse your life in God. In Psalm 90, we read:
Psalm 90:1-4, 10, 12, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:10 continues to observe the nature of time, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."
Psalm 90:12 "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
God says we should treat time as a valuable commodity. We number our years, but God says every day is so precious, we should treasure each one and number it, as well. To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a grade.
To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby. How valuable is an hour? Ask the businessman whose flight was delayed an hour and he missed an important business deal. How valuable is one minute? Ask the man who had the heart attack in the restaurant and an EMT happened to be sitting at the next table and CPR saved his life. How valuable is a second? Ask the person who barely missed a head-on collisions with an oncoming car. How valuable is a millisecond? Ask the Olympic swimmer who missed qualifying by six-tenths. Time really is valuable.
Time is much more valuable than money. It may be hard to make more money, but it can be done. However, it is totally impossible to create more time. Indeed, TIME is more valuable than money. A.W. Tozer wrote: “Time is a resource that is nonrenewable and nontransferable. You cannot store it, slow it up, hold it up, divide it up or give it up. You can’t hoard it up or save it for a rainy day–when it’s lost it’s unrecoverable. When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.”
There is an entire field of study called “time management.” In almost every business in America, consultants are hired to teach busy executives how to better manage their time. Time management is a hot topic. In his book, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey wrote, “Time management is a misleading concept. You can’t really manage time. You can’t delay it, speed it up, save it or lose it. No matter what you do time keeps moving forward at the same rate. The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.”
The Bible uses another description. Instead of managing our time, it speaks of “redeeming” the time, which is an even better idea. Paul wrote, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:14- 15) The phrase “walk circumspectly,” means to be constantly looking around to make the most of every opportunity.

In Christ , who is Eternal King.
Brown
http://youtu.be/asrwlIxLeko

An Evening of Music Festival, sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church :

Saturday OCT. 29,2011 6:30 PM at First United Methodist Church, Endicott, Special evening of musical praise and worship. Various Christian musicians will be participating in this special evening as they offer their gifts and talents to the Lord. A love offering will be received that will benefit needy families in
the community. Some of the musicians are Aric Phinney, Grant DeGaramo, Vin Rosenbarker, Dianne Glann, Laureen Naik, Yancey Moore, others.