The Best Use of the Time
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here, excited to be here with y'all this morning. I recently read an article on the Gospel Coalition written by a man named Joe Carter, and he was just reviewing some research that had been done by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, and that's where George Barna works. He's over top of that research center. And they recently did a study, and basically one of the major findings was that of self-reporting Christians, and we're going to get to that in a second, but people who would, if you gave them a little fill-in-the-blank or checkbox and they had to put whether they were Christian or Muslim or nothing, they would check Christian.
Again, 60% of them don't believe that the Holy Spirit is a real being. So the Holy Spirit is not a real person, does not have personhood, is more of a force or some kind of an idea. So that's startling. The Holy Spirit is a real being, but that means 60% of the people who would say they're Christians aren't Trinitarian, so they don't believe some basic doctrine. But the beginning of this article, it kind of goes into understanding what it means to be kind of a self-reporting Christian.
I want to read some of this. It says, determining how many Christians are in America depends on how we limit the term. For example, the vast majority of Americans, right at 70%, still self-identify as Christians. So if you just ask somebody in the U.S., are you a Christian? 70% of them will say yes. And at first, that sounds great.
Sweet. Sweet. 70% of Americans are Christians. But then, if you break this down further, it says, if we consider only those who consider themselves to be born-again Christians, the number drops to about 35%. So being born again means I wasn't a Christian when I was born.
I didn't just get born into this and grow up Christian. I actually had to, at some point, repent of sin, place faith in Jesus. I had to have him change me. That's what a born-again Christian is, that I was at one point dead in my sin, and now I've placed my faith in Jesus. Just so you all know, that's what we believe. That's what we are, is that we've had to be redeemed by Christ, and we had to place our faith in him.
So it's not just, I celebrated Christmas growing up. My favorite movie is Christmas Vacation, so I'm a Christian. That's not what this is. It's, I actually have placed my faith in Jesus. Well, that drops the number to 35%. It keeps going.
It says, it breaks it down further, and they have a category called Integrated Disciples. They hold beliefs like the Bible is accurate and the reliable word of God. They believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and just, meaning he's a good creator of the universe, and that he still rules the universe today, and that our choices are moral choices that honor or dishonor God. So, the percentage of Americans that believe the Bible is God's word, that God is good, and he rules over the world, and that our choices are moral choices, is 6% of the population in the United States. That's also what we are.
We believe that the Bible is true. That's why we spend all this time every Sunday opening it. That's why we study it together. That's why we do the things in it that we don't want to do. Y'all know that? That's obedience.
We read parts of the Bible where we go, I wish that wasn't a rule, but okay. I trust that you're good, and you're all-knowing, and you're powerful, and you rule over the universe. That's 6% of the population. The reason I share that is that we're in the third week of our series where we're saying, I am a missionary, and I don't want us to miss the fact that if you are a Christian who believes the Bible and actually seeks to apply it to your life, you are the vast minority in the country that you live in, and that you already live on a mission field. The idea that we're Americans, so we should send missionaries abroad because that's where the pagans are, is incorrect.
That you are surrounded by people who do not know Jesus. Many of whom do not want to know Jesus, or in some ways, worse, already think they're Christians when they aren't. Some of the work we have to do in the South is deconvert people from fake Christianity so that we can convert them to real Christianity. It's 6%. Let's say it's better in the South.
Let's say it's 25%. Let's say it's 30%. That means that on the road you live on, probably 7 out of the 10 houses are filled with people who don't know Jesus. That the job you work, probably 7 out of 10 people who don't know Christ. Of the friends you have, 2 out of the 3. That's just a joke about how well you can make friends.
But there's this reality to, we're surrounded by people. When you're stuck in traffic, 8 out of 10, 7 out of the 10 of the people in traffic with you, when you're in line at the grocery store, we're surrounded by people who don't know Jesus and it matters that they don't know Jesus. We want them to know Christ. And so it matters that we take seriously the call to be missionaries. That's what we've been studying. We're in Colossians chapter 4.
If you want to grab a Bible, go to Colossians chapter 4. We will have this on the screen as well. But we are Christians and we want people to know Christ. And in Colossians 4, Paul's writing. He's in prison. He's writing to them.
The past two weeks we looked at verses 2 through 4. We're going to look at 5 and 6 today, but we're going to pick up in 2 just to kind of walk through and remind us what we've been looking at. He says this, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us. And this is what we looked at the first week was that for us to be effective missionaries, we need the effective work of God. And therefore, we ought to be praying, being watchful in it and steadfast in it.
Spencer pointed out that without prayer, it ain't got no gas in it. That prayer is the fuel for mission. And therefore, if we're not praying, we're not going to see the effective work of God. And so we have to be, if we're going to be a missionary people, we have to be a praying people. Then he says this, he says, at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
So second week, we looked at the fact that Paul's in prison and he's not praying that he'd get out. He's not praying that he'd get favor with them, that he'd be released, that they'd know that he was innocent. He's not praying any of that. He's praying, hey, while I'm in prison, pray that the Lord will open some doors for me to share the gospel. And he says, it's a word that I have to declare and pray that I'll make it clear. And so we looked at the fact that as we are people praying for opportunities, that we have to be ready to articulate the gospel.
We have to be ready to tell people the good news about Christ. And then here's what we're going to look at. Paul turns in five and six and begins to give them instruction. He says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. That's what we're going to study kind of bit by bit as we go through today.
So let's pray and let's study that together. God, we ask for your grace. We ask for your help. We ask for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to understand this, to apply this, and to be effective missionaries to the people around us who don't know you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
So let's read that again. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. The first thing I want us to look at is that term outsider. There's one word here that he uses to describe those who don't know Jesus. He says outsiders.
Now we probably don't use that language a lot. Maybe you thought it was a pretty good book that you read in middle school. But Paul says that we ought to understand that those who are inside and those who are outside. This idea that there are those who are in Christ. That's who he wrote this book to. He says to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.
This idea of being an outsider is a negative term. But Paul's not against outsiders. Christians aren't against outsiders. We actually don't believe that we are better than outsiders. Do you know that about Christians? That we don't believe we're better.
We just believe we're better off. That if I'm in Christ it's not from something I've done. It's from something Christ has done. And therefore I'm better off to have Christ than to not have Christ. That there are those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ. And to be outside of Christ is to be outside of the love of God.
To be outside of the grace of Christ that redeems. To be outside of the family of Christ that he's made. And this is extremely helpful that Paul uses this word. Because what he does is he says hey there's two types of people in the world. Those who belong to Jesus and those who don't. And that is the primary way that we ought to as Christians look at the world.
Now. My prayer is that there are some people in this room this morning. Who would be considered outsiders. Who have not yet placed their faith in Jesus. Let me tell you something. You're welcome here.
And we want you to know Jesus. Because we believe he's good. That he saves sinners. We have that little blue screen thing that says we believe that Jesus is better than everything else. We actually believe that. I recently learned how to deep fry Oreos.
Yeah. It's actually a lot easier than you think. I don't mind sharing it with you at some point. If you'd like to gain some weight. I went on vacation with my family. And one of the things I did was I deep fried Oreos for them.
Because deep fried Oreos are delicious. And I love my family. And I want to share good things with them. And the truth is that's how we feel about Christ. But so infinitely more.
That he's good. That he's wonderful. That he redeems. And so we want to share Christ with other people. Not because we think we're better. But because we think he's better.
And that we're better because of him. We're better off because of him. And so this idea that we would look at the world and we would see it as there are those who are outside of Christ. And there are those who are in Christ. And we want everybody to be in Christ. Because he's good.
But this is helpful for us. Because it's quite possible that you use a different gauge. And you probably don't use the language of inside, outside. But you probably have a different gauge of who you think is your club. Maybe it's Americans. Maybe it depends on what the competition is.
But we're for America. Maybe it's who you vote for. So you're an elephant or a donkey. Some of you are like, I'm Green Party. Well, good for you, man. Like, maybe that's your club.
And if people believe these things, then that's who's inside. Maybe it's people who like a certain thing. Ride motorcycles or play board games or whatever. This soccer team, that soccer team. We pick random things to say that this is the main thing that I'm about. This is who I know.
These people are my people. And the reality is, Paul says, no. You have people who are in Christ. And then you have everybody else. And we ought to be mindful of when we're walking in life with people who don't know Christ. That's how we ought to think about the world.
That there are people on the other side of the globe who belong to Christ. And therefore, they belong to you. In a much more real way than people who live across the street. That vote like you. Drive the same kind of vehicle as you. Enjoy the same type of fried chicken as you.
But don't know Christ. And that you ought to consider. When you're interacting with people, whether or not they belong to Jesus. For their good. Not in some sort of elitist way. And we're going to get there.
Not in some sort of, I'm better than you. That's not the reality. That's not what we believe. We believe that we're better off because of Jesus. But that we want everybody to know Jesus.
And so he says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders. That you ought to think, am I going to be interacting with people who don't know Jesus? And you ought to think about how you ought to interact with them. So that's the next thing he says. He says, making the best use of the time. So let's talk about time for a second.
Let's talk about this idea of making the best use of the time. But we're going to talk about time before we talk about using it well. Everybody has a limited amount of time. That's why we talk about spending time or wasting time. It's running out. We don't know how much time we have.
But we know that we're, in any given week, we're all given the same amount of time. But we don't know in our lives how long that's going to be. And one of the things about time is that it speeds up the older you get. It runs by faster. This is why, parents with small children, you can win anything with your children. Because you've got all the time in the world.
Just so you know, when you're facing off with a toddler, if they're sitting in a high chair, 30 minutes in a high chair is like a week to them. 30 minutes is nothing to you. You can win a battle of wills with any toddler you'd like. Because time is slow. At the beginning of my son, it was his second day of kindergarten. We're in the line to go drop him off for his second day of kindergarten.
And he's in the back and he goes, Daddy, I can't wait until I'm six and all of this is over. I thought, ooh, buddy. It's going to take a little longer than that. But guess what? The first day of kindergarten was apparently a really long day. And the second day was daunting.
But if you think about it, elementary school is a really long time because it's twice the length of your life. You enter when you're five. You exit when you're ten. It's half your life was spent in elementary school. It took forever. Middle school was a little faster.
Some people stayed in a little longer than others, but it was a little faster. High school was a little faster than when you went and got your first Job or you went to college. That zipped by pretty quickly. Suddenly you turn around. You've lived in a neighborhood for five, ten years. You've been married for 20 years.
You've got 30-year-old children. You look and you realize you've been in a job for 35 years, 40 years. You start clipping off decades. It feels like 1980 was 10 years ago. And it was 40 years ago. There's a reality to this.
Here's the other thing we believe about time. I didn't invent this illustration, but I think it's helpful. Let's say this is a timeline. This yellow part of the string is your life. You're born here. During your life, you work some jobs, have some friends, have some hobbies.
Maybe you get married. Maybe you have some children. Maybe you work different jobs. Maybe you work one Job for years and years and years. Pretty soon, 60, 70, 80, 90. But at some point, your life ends.
You say, well, that looks pretty short. There's a saying. Life is short. But we're Christians. And we believe there's an eternity. And that when you die, you step into eternity.
Whether you know Christ or don't. So here is your life, and you meet Jesus. Everybody meets Jesus at some point, face to face. For those who know Christ, that's what we've been waiting for. And for those who don't know Christ, that's terrifying. And then we go into eternity.
And pretty quickly, we've been in eternity three, four, five, ten, twenty times longer than we were ever on earth. We sing Amazing Grace, and it says, we've been there for 10,000 years. And we have all the time left. We haven't clipped off any amount of time because it's eternity. If you belong to Jesus, this is joyous. There's peace.
There's family. There's good food. There's delight. There's worship. You're finally at home. And it never ends.
And if you don't belong to Jesus, and you stood in your own righteousness, which the Bible would say is unrighteousness, and you said, I'll bear the penalty for my sin, rather than trusting Christ and His grace, that He would bear the penalty for your sin. And Jesus says, this is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is a place where the worm doesn't die and the fire isn't quenched, meaning internal and external torment. Now, if we're Christians, at some point, we've got to realize we believe this part is more important than this part. At some point, if we really believe what we say we believe, then we've got to acknowledge that this part ought to be lived in light of this part.
We understand this in small ways. You know when you take your kids to like a little fair, or if you go to a fair and you see little kids and they're all running around with like Elsa on their face, or like a tiger face or whatever? There's a reason why that washes off. There's no actual tattoo artists set up at the county fair. Because children shouldn't make decisions like that. Because when you're eight, looking like a tiger is amazing.
Not when you're 38. Makes it harder to get a job. And the reality is, some of us run around making decisions that only make sense here. And if we belong to Jesus and we believe in eternity, we ought to make decisions that make sense here. And we ought to care. We ought to care deeply about our co-workers and our neighbors.
And what this is going to look like for them. That's why Paul says, make the best use. Because you only got a little bit here. The rest of it's here. So he wants us to make the best use of the time.
That we would consider, as we interact with people, do they know Christ? And how do I use that time well? Some of you, you're in school right now. You're in high school. You're about to spend four years. Or you're about to be done spending four years with people.
Four years. That you've known them. That you've connected with them. That you've been their friend. Have you told them about Jesus? Have you prayed for them?
Some of you, you're finishing up your major. You've been in the same classes with the same people. You studied together. Laughed together. High-fived. Cried in the same math classroom together.
Have you prayed for them? Have you cared about their eternity? We'll turn around. And you'll realize, I've lived in the same neighborhood for ten years. Did you spend the time well? Did you pray for your neighbors?
Did you get to know them? Did you go out of your way to be a little weird here? Because you care about something that's way, way more important? Or we'll work a job for twenty years. Twenty years. You'll have had twenty years.
Did we care about our coworkers? Did we plead with God for the sake of their souls? That's what he means by make the best use of the time. Do we actually live as if we believe eternity is real? Brandon Clements, one of the pastors at Midtown in Lexington, is part of the Grassroots Network with us. He helped co-author a book called The Simplest Way to Change the World.
And in it, they're talking about how to use your home. How to use hospitality as a way to try to help share the gospel with people. And they list four things that they think are current in our culture that help fight against us. actually using our homes well. And I would say it's the same for using our time well. But the four they list are, first one is isolation.
That we just isolate ourselves? That it's easy to live by ourselves? That our culture allows us to be isolated from one another? Cambria, if you'll go to the isolation's level. That we would be, we can just work at home. We can work and go home.
We can pick up food. We can cook food for one. We don't live in a village. You don't have to. The truth is, a lot of us don't really like people. And I'm with you.
We're Christians. We believe people are the worst. It's just easier to be. We have this new thing that's consistently growing. But we have social anxiety where it's just hard to be around people.
You talk yourself out of it. It takes energy to do it. It's scary. And so there's this idea that most of my life, I just kind of want to be by myself. It's easier that way. The second one is relaxation.
That a primary goal in our lives as Americans is just to have downtime. That work hard just so that you can rest. That the purpose of your home is for you to get away from everything. The purpose of your home is to just be protected from the world. That it's your oasis. That we somehow deserve the idea that we would work, but then we would just go relax.
And that we just need all this extra relaxation time. And it keeps us from being good missionaries. And it wastes our time. Not to say relaxation is bad, but that we have overdone it. Third one is entertainment. Entertainment.
Once a week, my phone dings and tells me how much time I spent staring at it. Very rudely, I might add. But how much time we spend on social media, how much time we spend watching television, how much time we spend watching TV shows. If you could get a doctorate from watching The Office, I would be Dr. Phillips. We waste our time just being entertained.
Like that's the purpose of life. The fourth one is busyness. We just fill our schedules with things that don't really matter. But our schedules are full. Got too much going on. Got too much on my plate.
Can't participate in that. We live our lives as if this is all that really matters. And honestly, I think the four of those come together to just give us an overall apathetic numbness to the reality of the world. That there are those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ and that it matters eternally. I think we have to consider what really matters and are we living our lives as if we actually believe the gospel and are we living our lives in a way that makes the best use of the time. And the way that phrase works to make the best use of the time, it actually means redeeming the time.
Meaning buy it back. Buy up the time. So you're going to have to spend the time. Well, redeem it. Use it for something good. So that we would be wise in our walking with outsiders.
So that we would redeem the time. Now think about this. Some of you are in school. Well, redeem that time. Get to know your classmates. Pray for them.
Share the gospel with them. Go out of your way to be around them. You say, I don't really like being around people. Okay? Love people enough to put up with it. You don't have to be an extrovert to be a good missionary.
You can do this one-on-one. You can do this slowly, but we have to do this. And we have to do this intentionally. Some of you work 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week with the same people. Guess what? God in His grace has infiltrated your workplace with a Christian and held four or five other office mates hostage.
They can't go anywhere. They have to clock in. They have to stay there. Pray for them. Talk to them. Don't just stare at your phone on your lunch break.
Get to know people. I've had people say before, I just don't, it's so hard to work where I work because I'm the only Christian. Thank Jesus that He sent a Christian. Don't retreat from that. Charge into that. Thank God in His mercy.
It's so hard to be in my neighborhood. All my neighbors are pagans. They're up partying at night. Why don't you be up praying? Why don't you go to some of the parties? Why don't you interact with them?
Why don't you love them? Why don't we take seriously the idea that we were missionaries? The reality is that if you were like, okay, I'm going to move to this other country to be a missionary, you would consider how am I going to join and infiltrate the culture and how am I going to be able to get along with the norms of life with them and how am I going to use that for the gospel? And the reality is if you belong to Jesus, you have already done that part of it. You're already in the culture. You already have people around you.
Now begin to be a missionary. Use the time wisely. There are kind of rhythms of life that people go through and we get to join the normal rhythms of life with gospel intentionality. So if you work at a gym, start praying for the people at the gym. Have you ever been at a park? Have you been at the gym and some weirdo comes over and just starts talking to you?
I'm not talking about hitting on you. I'm just like some person who just wants to be your friend for some odd reason. You have this thought, at least I do, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I came to the park because I wanted to be away from humans and this one showed up and wants to be my friend. But what if I thought less about this and more about that and I said, thank you, Jesus.
This person wants to talk and now it's my chance to talk. This person wants a friend. They must be lonely or they have a bunch of friends and this is how they make them. But now they've run into a Christian and so I get to start redeeming this time. If you go to a gym, if you do recreation, if your children play little league sports or you go sign up for an adult kickball league. My children play, my son signed up for t-ball.
And I don't want y'all to feel sorry for me, but it did almost kill me. I don't know much about baseball, but I know about sports and watching them practice was torture. But I realized I'm going to be here, all these other parents are going to be here and I need to just start getting to know these people. So I just started being the person who just went around and started talking to other parents. And guess what? Just let me tell you some things.
They know they're going to have to stay part of the club and be there with their kids. They're not going to be rude to me. They're going to let me, they don't want me to talk to them, but they're going to let me come talk to them. And so I just started going and meeting all the dads and talking to them, trying to get to know them. Thankfully, COVID ended, t-ball, and I didn't have to keep going, but I was going to redeem the time. You eat 21 meals a week.
So do most of the people around you. Some of you are like, no, I do intermittent fasting. Okay. Well, good for you. You're already fasting. Start praying.
So the amount of time you would have been eating in the morning, pray. Pray. And then use your other 14 meals to try to build relationships with people. There's something about inviting people around the same table that signifies we belong to each other. Use your home to invite people to eat a meal. If that's too daunting, start by inviting them to a restaurant you like.
Start going to lunch with coworkers. But you're going to eat, start eating with people to build relationships with them. Start using the normal rhythms of life. There are neighborhoods where you can join Facebook groups, where you can have a bonfire, where you can have a cookout, where you and a group of people can watch the same TV shows. Some of you are moms with little children and you spend all your time at your house with little children. Guess what?
They need to know Jesus and you have hours upon hours to disciple them. Redeem that time. You're teaching them that school's important and that brushing their teeth is important. Have you taught them that Christ is important? It matters. Also, there are other moms potentially in your neighborhood that are also watching their children.
Redeem that time. Start inviting them to watch kids together. Start using your children as a mission opportunity. I use my children all the time as mission opportunities because it makes me less scary to have kids with me. I use them to go talk to other parents. I use them when I go knock on doors in my neighborhood to just tell them a thing or get to know them.
I have my kids with me because they just would assume I'm less likely to attack them. I'm not going to attack them anyway, but they at least get to see, okay, he's got a kid. He probably won't. But we want to redeem the time. We want to find things that our culture's normally doing. The trunk or treat that we're doing for Halloween.
Halloween is not a primary Christian holiday. It's not our favorite, you guys. But guess what? All your neighbors are going to come knock on your door or they're going to let you go knock on their door. Get to know your neighbors. Redeem the time.
They're going to knock on your door. You don't have to get super into Halloween, but to be thankful that all of your pagan neighbors are going to come hang out with you for a minute and you get to be kind and you get to be welcoming and you get to say, hey, we haven't met yet. Where do you live? It's nice to meet you. You get to talk to them. You get to know your neighbors one night of the year where they might all show up.
We're doing trunk or treat because the same thing, this neighborhood's going to show up. We get an opportunity to care about their souls for eternity. We get an opportunity. Christians should join PTA. Christians should join neighborhood watch associations. Christians should join every annoying little club that's offered just so you can redeem the time and be around some people who don't know Jesus.
Could you imagine? You go to meetings as a missionary. You help coach as a missionary. Let's not waste it. But let's buy it back.
So if we're in the right frame of mind, we're intentional, we're praying, and we're redeeming the time, this is what he says next. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. So he says, be intentional about being around non-believers. Then he says, here's how you interact with them. Here's how you talk. Here's how you talk.