Can you redeem time lost? Not always – all opportunities to share God’s love are limited opportunities and available only as long as the Lord allows. Time marches on, people change, move on, grow old and pass away. But sometimes God allows us a second chance to share – don’t miss it if you get one; resolve now to be a person who will care enough to help another person come to faith in Christ.
You can redeem the time you have left or that someone else in your life has left remembering what Jesus said in [John 9:24]: “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.” We have the strange notion that God has given us life for our own pleasure and purposes and while the time IS coming when we will be at rest (in heaven, with Jesus ) for now we must work while it is still day – while we still have breath we must redeem the time for the sake of the spiritual need of others.
Redeem the time you have because it is most likely that you will never have the given opportunity or set of circumstances to impact the lives of those you meet for Jesus again. Each experience in time is unique with so many variables that duplicating the experience is next to impossible.
As in my visit with the young man on the plane trip to Buffalo; outside that one moment in time, I will never have the same opportunity to reach out to him again. Redeeming the time is making the most, in Christ’s name, out of every opportunity to share the love of God with others.
Redeem the time because you may never see the person you are visiting with again. We’ve already said that life is a fragile thing. It is important that we stop taking for granted that we’ll have another chance to tell someone about Jesus. Will the bed ridden, sick and indigent be around tomorrow? Will the fittest man, a picture of health, in the prime of his youth be around tomorrow? Will we, the bearers of the message be around tomorrow? Life is a vapor (James 4:14). No one knows their own length of days let alone someone else’s .We must come to understand that when the Lord puts someone into our lives, even temporarily, it is our only opportunity to reach them in Jesus name. We must make the most out of every moment in which we live as followers of Christ to reach people. We must come to see those we meet in life as people for whom Christ died but who don’t know it or believe it yet.
Finally, we must remember as one commentator said, not only to redeem time lost, and time left but time loaned; we must remember that we do not manufacture time, if we did, none of us would ever run out of it. The fact is that like everything else pertaining to life, God has given us time; let us make the most of it in light of His purpose and the worlds need. Buying up opportunities, which is another way of saying redeem the time will cost you something in terms of your own wants and desires – lay your life down for the gospel, for the cause of Christ and the purpose of God – the price you pay to tell is not as high as the price Christ paid to provide but it may lead to the priceless redemption of another soul – that IS what redeeming time is all about.
You must be logged in to post a comment.