Well, I wasn’t going to share another—what do you call it?—overhead PowerPoint. But I took a poll. I took a poll in a couple of classes today. I said, “Well, did you like the PowerPoint? Did you get something out of it, or was it too obscure and distracting?” They all said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we want it. Yeah, yeah.”
Then the teacher afterward got into a discussion and took question number one that I asked and asked the question. The kid said, “I don’t know. I am so confused. I don’t know what the answer is.” So I don’t know if these things help or not. Do they? Well, anyway, we’ll see.
So today we’re talking about seizing the opportunity, making every opportunity. There’s that Greek word, kairos, that means time or opportunity: redeeming the time, making opportunity. This is what we wanted to look at tonight.
First, let us start where we were last night, where we ended. It is necessary in the evil day to seize the opportunity. What have you already missed because we lurk in the under-the-sun mode?
I had a purpose in bringing all these things in because, you know, there are really so many things that we can do in serving the Lord—many opportunities. We talked about the Russian young people. The Lord is really moving over there in a wonderful way. The Lord has sent out whoever is saved, but these young people especially, and they are really the force of the church there in Russia where I go.
The precious saint has gone home. Some more Sabbaths have passed by; some more ten-minute sessions of studying the Bible. We kind of think change is some kind of large move from this direction to that direction, but actually, change in our lives comes as opportunities open up. It all depends on what you are doing with the ten minutes of today.
These big changes in our lives are the result of a lot of little obediences. My point, as I showed these things, was that we might understand that.
There is that famous line:
Only one life, ’twill soon be past;
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
Yesterday’s opportunities are gone. Will we redeem tomorrow? Tonight we have nothing to do. We have a free period of time right now.
Now, the important question that we need to ask—and I gave you those seven “last opportunity” things at the end last time just to make you think, maybe to make you feel like, “I’m not doing enough”—is this: Were those seven opportunities your opportunities, and did you miss them?
There is so much to do. But which opportunities are my opportunities? What does the Lord want me to do? That is really the question, you see, with so many things before us.
Going to college, I don’t know—those who have been in college know—it is so frustrating because there are so many different fields to choose from. Even when you have chosen your field, you still want to take Mandarin 101 and 102, and you want to dabble in a little painting or something. There are all these course curriculums—chemistry, engineering, and all of this kind of stuff. It drives you crazy trying to make choices.
Even here in Toronto, there is this curriculum. Unbelievable what they have there. I mean, it is a tough school to go through and get a degree. Not many people are able, but there it is. Dry-slope skiing was my major at Toronto University.
Anyway, you get into college with so many choices. Better to go to a small school where they only have five professors. This is no problem.
Where I live in New York City, we have a wonderful bunch of young people who come on Monday nights through a Bible study we do in Manhattan. But for every young Christian person in that Bible study, there are probably a hundred born-again Christians totally lost in New York City.
The options there, the life there, the speed there, the world there, the pressure there—so many Christians are distracted. Every once in a while, a parent will call me. I have no idea who this person is, and they say, “My son Roger is in New York City. Have you seen anything of him?” As if we all meet on a mountaintop every Saturday, all the Christians in New York City.
But her son Roger got to New York City and left. Actually, Roger, as an example, went to different churches on Sunday where he remained anonymous, but his life was totally in the world. One time a week, just going and sitting in the back, does not a disciple make.
It is easy to get lost in New York City, so I don’t recommend you come unless you want to be found. There are a lot of distractions in life.
Then all the worldly gurus, including relatives, tell you: “Seize the day. Work hard. Excel in school. Get ahead. Make a lot of money. Create. Believe in yourself. Don’t put it off. Get in the game.” Carpe diem—seize the day in Latin, of course. “Dance. Show what you’ve got. Start a movement. Just do it. Start a fire.”
You think you just do things out of yourself. You know, see this, do that. Can you imagine somebody trying to do everything like that? What is the result of somebody who follows this advice? There we go. Is this what we want? Is this the kind of godly person that stands as a man of God in this evil day? I’m not sure. You tell me.
Brothers and sisters, I know you have to obey your parents, but some of your parents are not giving you godly advice. I am just being honest with you.
I am amazed how Christians who sacrifice their lives for the sake of Christ and raise up their children want to put them in some kind of buffer zone of riches, so that they do not have to worry about anything anymore. That is just not the way it happens. It is a shame that people are advised like that and pushed into things.
No, we have to find God’s will for our life. But our life is like a civil war. On the one side, somebody says, “Seek God.” On the other side, “Make money. Read your Bible. Have a lot of kids. Be happy.” Advice pulls back and forth.
If you listen to everybody, what are you going to do? There are people pulling you this way, people pulling you that way: be spiritual, be worldly. But what are we supposed to do? There are so many choices, so many things to do. How can we seize the opportunity to do many of them? Which ones do we lay hold of?
The trick is made even more complicated because you have to live. You have to get a job. You have to work. If you have a brain, you need to have a job where you use your brain. I mean, this is the complication of it all. It would be easier if we were all monks. That is not the way God wants it. He wants us living in life and yet not of the world.
What a high road. I mean, it is enough. What are we supposed to know? How do we redeem the time? You can pull your hair out trying to figure out what is going on.
Well, we go back to our Scriptures again:
Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
And Christ shall shine upon thee.
I tell you, if there is ever a sense of desperation in your life about your options and opportunities, the place you need to go is right to Jesus. Say, “Jesus, shine Your light on my path, because otherwise I don’t know what to do.” It is a desperate thing. There are so many voices telling you what to do.
You have got to learn to live in the light. Make the most of your time. The days are evil.
It is actually very simple, but redeeming the time has two meanings, as it were, in the larger scheme of things. There is the negative side: some things that have been lost have to be regained. Then there is the positive side: seizing godly opportunity. We are going to look at those two matters.
First, negatively, it means that there is always a need for recovery of the things that were stolen. I am so thankful. I know that some of you wish that you could get saved later on in life so you had some kind of exciting testimony to give. But let me tell you: you are much better off being saved young.
The damage of every year in your life when you are not a Christian takes a long time for God to redeem—to buy back. Even though I was a pretty good kid growing up and got saved at the age of twenty, my life has had to be redeemed in major ways. Still, for the rest of my life, there has to be work done on me.
Even though you were a godly child raised in a godly home and got saved at an early age, we still have to have things brought back that were stolen, because the fall has taken a deep toll on all of our lives.
Our minds were in darkness before we were saved. Some of you, before you got saved, became full of fear, lies, pride, envy, or anger. Every kid has a personality, and it may be fear, anger, pride, or wanting to please everybody. There are many different kinds of things, and it is all from the fallen world. The Lord is going to redeem that stuff in order that you can live for Him.
Our souls were hostile toward God; our bodies were slaves of sin; our friends were proud and self-absorbed; and our life was a mess of sins and compromise. Now, that is my testimony, and yours may be a younger testimony, but it is still the same.
When the Lord redeems us, He means it, and He starts the process of redemption of things that were stolen from us, which He wants to restore. What has to happen to us in this process of redeeming? It is not just getting saved and then living out of our own strength, mind, and will. No, there is a lot that has to happen.
Just for starters, for those who get saved in college or after, you have got to buy back the years the locust has eaten. You remember that promise in Joel 2:25. God says that He will come and restore the years the locust has eaten.
Even for us as Christians, there are Christians who got saved at twelve and then pretty much lived by themselves in a sleep state until they were twenty, and then were awakened. There is some recovery needed. Things have been stolen since that time. You lost ten good years of Bible study, ten good years of service, and growing in the Lord. There are years and things that need to be recovered.
This may not be interesting to you, but people whose lives have been wrecked understand it. When I go to Russia and see these people get saved, you know, when a guy gets saved, eight chances out of ten he is either an alcoholic, a vodka addict, or a heroin addict. There is a lot of recovery work that needs to be done. They understand God’s grace and mercy. A major change has to take place in their lives.
Even though we live in a little Christian cocoon, life around us is getting tougher and tougher, and people are being traumatized more and more. When they get saved, they really need a major revamping work. Thank God, God wants to redeem us.
We need to repent of participation in the works of darkness and put on light. Notice that Romans 13:12 says both of these things:
The night is far spent, and the day is at hand:
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness,
And let us put on the armor of light.
Now, dear brother in Christ, if you are a Christian and you are carrying on deeds of darkness, cast them off. They are destroying you. Do not think your soul can get away with it, that you are in some kind of neutral zone or an exception to the rules. You are traumatizing your soul life every time you partake of darkness.
Cast it off and put on the light. Get in the light. It is your protection in this evil day. This is part of the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus.
Third, place the effects of our former way of life under the power of His blood for redemption. Some people have been badly affected. In my generation, when people got saved, they got saved out of lives marked by the sexual revolution, all kinds of problems, and all kinds of psychological trauma.
So we need to say, “Lord, just cover me by Your precious blood. Lord, reverse whatever You can—the effects of my life—so that I can live for You.” Thank God, there is precious blood.
We know that we were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from our former futile way of life—our empty, vain way of life—but have been redeemed with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless: the blood of Christ. Praise God. I thank God every day that He has redeemed you by His precious life.
We need to repent specifically when we remember a time God spoke to us, but we were not listening. You could work yourself around this forever and say, “Well, every day God’s speaking to me. I’m not listening to Him.” No, I am talking about when God was speaking to you and you knew it, but you turned a deaf ear to Him.
You need to go back to Him and say, “Lord, forgive me, because I know I gave the enemy an opportunity to come and take that seed out of my heart before it could grow.” The Lord may speak to you as you read the Bible, and boom, something pops out at you. But you do not grab hold of it, and you lose it. You forget it. The enemy comes and tries to snatch it away, as we know from the parable of the sower.
The enemy hates the Word of God and the truth, and he especially hates it when you put it into your heart. But isn’t it interesting? The Lord gives you His Word, but there has to be some action on your part. We have to take that Word and put it in there so that it will stay.
We need to repent when we are convicted of a missed opportunity to let our light shine. Again, do not get condemned because you did not talk to your friends in high school or something like that. But if you remember an opportunity when you knew God told you to tell somebody, and you did not, then you need to ask forgiveness about that.
The Word is clear:
We must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day:
The night cometh, when no man can work.
There is an opportunity that has been missed. Something has been stolen from you. Do you know what happens when you witness to somebody and they get saved? Not just to them—and forget the angels in heaven rejoicing—what happens to the person who shared, made their life vulnerable, and witnessed to somebody?
I tell you what: you are brought up two levels of faith as you see God working. It is a wonderful thing to be a servant of God and be witnessing. When we miss those opportunities, some of them are opportunities we never get again.
As David said in the wonderful Psalm, ask Him to search into your life with His searchlight. All of this is standing in the light. We stand in the light, and the Lord says, “Write a letter and ask forgiveness of that person.”
You stand in the light and say, “Oh Lord, search me, and try me, and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me.” Sure enough, something pops up. The reason He brings it up is that He wants you to confess it, and He wants to remove it from your life and remove the effect it has on your life.
You need to come to the famous, wonderful, loving Surgeon and Searchlight of our lives and ask Him to recover these things in your life. When we are talking about redeeming the time because the days are evil, we have to mention this: there is recovery work that needs to be done in our lives.
After all, we belong to God. He bought us back. That is what redeem means: He bought us back. We were in the slave marketplace, and the enemy had us, and Jesus said, “I buy you back.” He shed His own blood to redeem us and buy us back.
We are bought back, so we belong to Him. We are now His. As we see in a number of Scriptures—here is just one, in 1 Corinthians 6:
Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you,
Which ye have from God, and ye are not your own?
For ye were bought with a price:
Glorify God therefore in your body.
There is only one redemption center. Where do we go to get all this done? You guys are too young to remember S&H Green Stamps. In stores and supermarkets, this is the way they used to do it. You bought food, they gave you green stamps, and you put them in a little book. You licked them and pasted them in the book.
You came with ten or fifteen or twenty books to the grocery store one day, bought your groceries, gave them twenty books, and they gave you a flashlight. Oh, man. But you had to go to the redemption center.
Some big S&H stores had big redemption centers where you could go and get all kinds of things—furniture and everything—for these books that you got when you paid. That is called a redemption center because you are buying something back. Even as this lady here with these coupons is doing. How people love coupons. My wife is coupon crazy. She is saving a lot of money in theory.
What is the redemption center? There is only one. Of course, it is the cross of our Lord Jesus. The cross is the place of redemption for the Christian.
Now listen again: not only for salvation, but for the continual buying-back process. There are parts of me that the world is still robbing. I am taking it; I am going to buy that back. I am buying that back, and I am buying that back. Where is this transaction made? Christ crucified.
That wonderful Scripture in 1 Corinthians 1:30 says:
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus,
Who was made unto us wisdom from God,
And righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.
That does not just mean initial salvation. It means that Jesus is that life who is continually buying us back and possessing us for Himself.
One day, the Scriptures say, we will be completely redeemed—body, soul, and spirit. Paul talks about that groaning of anticipation:
And not only so, but ourselves also,
Who have the first-fruits of the Spirit,
Even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
Waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
The redemption of our body.
That is the final stage in the buying-back process. Even our bodies will put on immortality, be resurrected, and be purified. Then we will be totally redeemed: body, soul, and spirit. What a wonderful day that is going to be.
This recovery process is going on in our life. Having said that, let us look for a moment at the positive side of redeeming the time. To do that, we have to understand that there are two words used for time in the New Testament.
Here is the word chronos, from which we get chronology and chronograph. It just means time—time as in hours and minutes. It is that sequence, that one-dimensional linear timeline.
There is the timeline: I was born here, I was married here, I retired here. So many years, so many years, so many years. That is chronos.
Here are two examples. It says, “Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son.” See, it was a time. Boink—that is the date right there. Then in Luke 4:5, Jesus was shown all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time—chronos. Boom, a moment of time.
Everybody has to live in time. You have to work, get a job, go to school, and do various things. Everybody has to do them. You have to sleep; you have to eat. This is life. This is part of time.
This is the time Solomon talked about last night. There is a time and a season for everything. Everything has its time—a time for this and a time for that.
Then the second word is kairos. This is talking about time, but it does not mean moments, years, and weeks. It is talking about a time. “You remember the time.” Now we are talking about some moment where something significant happened.
It is used even in a secular way like that. It is talking about a moment of action, a moment of activity, a moment where something was fulfilled or happened. But regarding God and the Word of God, this word kairos is used for a moment that God fills, where He is moving and filling time.
Here is chronos: just the timeline. Then suddenly God comes down on that timeline. Somebody says, “At that time, there was a lot of activity here.” In the unseen places, you cannot see it, but suddenly chronos has been transformed into kairos because it is a happening. It is a moving of God.
They use this phrase today, “the move of God.” What they mean is a time when you can see God outwardly moving. Of course, we know He is always moving. But at least ninety percent of God’s activity is in the unseen place, where He is preparing for those moments when things come above the surface and He moves and we see it.
To be part of that move is to be part of the opportunity.
For example, in Mark 1, when Jesus came on the scene, He said:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand:
Repent ye, and believe in the gospel.
In other words, it is not just time today—it is not just your watch—it is kingdom time. God is here. The King is here. Healing is here. Life is here. Truth is here. God is here. It is a different time. It is kairos. It is an opportunity.
That is why I said last night: wherever Jesus went, there was an opportunity. There was a kairos. There were God-filled moments wherever He went.
In Mark 13, there is another use of the word kairos:
Take ye heed, watch and pray:
For ye know not when the time is.
What time is He talking about? He is talking about the second coming of Christ. That is going to be a time. It is not just going to be a chronos; it is going to be a kairos. It is going to be a God-filled moment. Can you imagine? This whole earth is going to be shaken when the Son comes again.
That kairos time is the word translated in the Bible as “redeem the time” or “seize the opportunity.” I want to use kairos for opportunities and chronos for time.
Let us make a distinction between time and opportunity. Time and opportunity are not the same.
The situations we encounter daily in time—in chronos—are not necessarily opportunities. We go through days, and not everything is an opportunity. You could make an argument about that, but the point is that we have things we do in time. When there are God-filled moments, that is opportunity.
Time is constant. There it is today, tomorrow. Opportunities come and go. As time goes along, they come and go. It is not constant. There is an opportunity; then you miss the opportunity; then you have to wait. Maybe you wait a couple of years, and then an opportunity comes again. Then that opportunity goes.
God’s times are not static. Do not say God’s times are static, that they are always here. For a person who can see into the unseen, there is always something going on. But we are talking at the simple level of our understanding.
Therefore, it is crucial that we grasp opportunities when they pass by. The problem with time is that chronos—the tick and the tock of time—hypnotizes us until we fall into a routine.
“I’m going to church. I’m worshiping. Oh God, we love You. I am a worship robot. I know this song. Oh yeah, I know that guy. I know what he is going to pray. There it is. I knew that. Must be about time. Let’s check. Oh yeah, the guy is going to break bread in a couple of minutes.”
We get into this under-the-sun time zone, and we miss the opportunities when they suddenly come upon us. The main thing, of course, is for us to gain a sensitivity to opportunity in order to make the most of it.
The issue of sensing opportunity is therefore most important. The Lord considers opportunities—kairos—very important, and He works to arrange them for us.
Think about the Lord in His faithfulness. Here we are, dense as a board, and the Lord all the time is arranging opportunities. These are opportunities for us to meet Him, get to know Him more, learn more about Him, learn what a jerk we are sometimes, and then learn how faithful He is. Opportunities, opportunities, being arranged.
Opportunities are very vital in the plan of God. Ephesians 2:10 says:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
Which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
Those good works are not just being somebody’s pencil. We are talking about things that God has ordained and planned for you. But it takes sensitivity on our part. If we are living under the sun, we do not sense these things. If we are walking in the light, we can sense these things.
Usually, where most of us are in terms of our flesh, if we are preoccupied with ourselves or the cares of this life, we miss the opportunities when they come. Either that, or we are so tied up that we cannot take the opportunity.
The real quest of life is to live your life as you need to, with all of its responsibilities, and yet be aware of the opportunities when they come. Otherwise, you find yourself closing in on forty years old, or whatever, and still you have not gone anywhere. Nothing has happened yet. You are missing opportunities. You do it to yourself.
If God has saved you, chosen you, filled you, and taught you things, do you think He is doing all that in vain? Don’t you think it is an opportunity that He wants you to catch hold of?
I always kind of look at it like this. I know you feel as if you are treading water sometimes, but every once in a while, you had better be looking because that tow rope comes by. If you can just grab hold of the tow rope—His opportunity—He will pull you right up on your skis.
The next thing you know, you are in some kind of place where God is moving. It is a wonderful thing to be part of serving God and sensing that God has some purpose there. But you have to be able to sense these things.
What if Philip had not gone into the desert? Suppose he got busy preaching in Samaria, and the Holy Spirit said, “Philip, go to the desert.” Philip said, “You know what? I didn’t sleep well. It must have been the guacamole,” and he stayed in Samaria and kept on preaching. What would have happened? He never would have met that eunuch, and Africa never would have become Christian.
What if Barnabas did not go up to Tarsus to get Paul? What if Barnabas was just in it for himself and felt a little jealous because he knew Paul was a pretty good preacher? So he said, “You know what? I’m not going to get Paul down here. The guy’s going to outshine me.” What would have happened?
What would happen if Paul had not gone down to the river in Philippi on the Sabbath to see if he could find some worshipers? There he found Lydia. There he found some others, and they were saved. The church of Philippi began because he went down to the river one Sabbath to seek out some Jews to preach the gospel to.
What if Peter had not gone to Cornelius’s house because he insisted, “I don’t know what that sheet thing means, but I’m not going to any Gentile’s house”? What an opportunity.
What if the Syrophoenician woman, whose child was so sick, had not persisted in asking for crumbs from the Master’s table? What if she walked away when Jesus said, “I only speak to Israel”? These were all opportunities. They were opportunities taken, and they opened up a whole new ministry and a door into kingdom time in these various places.
Opportunities often come to us at unusual times. If you are going through a difficult time, you should put your periscope up and start looking around, because there may be an opportunity sitting right in your path.
When the future looks dark and the way is very difficult, God often opens the door of opportunity for you to serve. Isn’t that interesting?
You remember Hebrews 4:1-2, talking about the children of Israel. They were in the wilderness and came to Kadesh-barnea. There was their opportunity, and they should have gone in. You would think that, after living in the wilderness, they would have said, “Let’s follow God into the promise, because we hate living in the wilderness.” But no, they decided, “You know what? I think I’d rather live in the wilderness.”
They missed the opportunity and came short of the promise. We have promises, the writer says, but you can miss the opportunity because you are not using faith. Sure, times are difficult. The way is difficult. So what? You are just going to back off?
We have every kind of way imaginable of rationalizing that what we are doing is the will of God. Usually, we are picking an easier way. But we need to see times of opportunity when they come.
At very busy moments, opportunities come. You know the old Martha and Mary story:
Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things:
But one thing is needful:
For Mary hath chosen the good part,
Which shall not be taken away from her.
This is a moment. This is an opportunity. Don’t you get it, Martha? You are so busy, you miss any chance. This is your chance.
Everybody wants to know about God’s will. God’s will is found half the time in seizing His opportunity. “What is God’s will for my life?”—as if God is going to answer you with a three-page letter.
I will tell you how you find God’s will for your life. You seize an opportunity, and like that tow rope, it lifts you up on the water and you begin to go somewhere. That is where you meet your wife, find that job, or where the whole thing opens up that was once just a closed door. You take the opportunity that was there. You do it. The next thing you know, the will of God opens up for you.
So where do we start? Where do we start to redeem the time? Where do we start taking the opportunity? I think you know it.
It is interesting that the Scriptures in the New Testament use this word kairos three times, saying, “Take the opportunity, take the opportunity, take the opportunity,” and it is in three different contexts. Let us look at those three places.
First, opportunities come up in assembly life. What does that mean? Church life.
Look at the first context: Ephesians 5, which is our text for the week. “Redeeming the time” comes from the same context that says in Ephesians 5:18-21:
And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit;
Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
Giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;
Subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.
What is that talking about? Opportunities in the church: the worship opportunity, the praying opportunity, the fellowshipping opportunity.
Our lives can look at those things as just another point in time: “Oh, Sunday, I have to go to church. This is a chronological thing.” Or you can see it as an opportunity.
Now, you guys seem to flex in and out of worship quite a bit. This morning, you were praying and responding to the worship songs very well. Tonight, you were dead. What is going on? Did we miss the opportunity tonight? Were you out of it tonight? “Sorry, I was just out of it.”
Well, thank God for those of you who decided to chirp in anyway. But that is what we are here to do. It is opportunity. Now it has passed.
Spirit-filled assembly life provides the ground for us to seize opportunities: serving in the body, expressing our worship, sharing a living word, and praying in a kingdom time zone. Oh, how we love it when somebody comes into the prayer meeting who is praying in another dimension and lifts our prayer right out of chronos.
Sharing our lives, sharing His life through fellowship together—great opportunities. But usually we look at church meetings and think, “I don’t know how many meetings you go through in a week. I am sure you think it is one too many, however many it is.” But if you saw them as opportunities, you would really be refreshed by them and get a lot out of them.
Assembly life is a great thing. Now, there is a problem. If our assembly life, if our opportunities, just become meetings, then our chronos time passes, but there is little sense of kairos fullness.
Here is the problem: when we first get together, we do not know what is going to happen. We are all on our toes, looking for the opportunity. But when our opportunity times become just meetings, we fall into that chronological time-zone thing. Then there is very little life.
Little boys can tell: “This is dead. This is dead. Please end it soon or shoot me, God.” I know you have been in that place where guys like me are talking, “Ah, ah,” and you say, “Oh please, God, just let me die right here in the seat.”
God’s opportunities require things from us if we are going to see them. If we do not, boy, it is tough. It is a tough grind.
You are not responsible for the assembly among the adults, but among the young people, you should do all you can to make sure that every gathering of the young people—whether Bible study or whatever it is—is an opportunity, God’s kairos, His presence. It is a God-moment. It lifts it into that realm of life that we all look forward to.
The second area is found in Galatians 6:10:
So then, as we have opportunity, let us work that which is good toward all men,
And especially toward them that are of the household of the faith.
We need to help our brothers and sisters. This is not just assembly life; this is real life. I always love it when somebody comes up to me and says, “Hey, Dana, how are you doing?” I say, “Well, I’m doing okay.” But what they mean is, “I’ve been praying for you, and I felt a need to pray for you.” That means an awful lot to me.
We need one another’s prayer, help, and counsel. This is what we do in serving one another. Listen: while we have kairos, let us do good to all people, especially those of the household of faith.
Start by loving one another. This is the command He has given us. Take opportunity. I hope you are taking opportunity this week.
We have some people here alone. They are not with a fellowship group or a bunch of friends. They are here by themselves. I hope you are not just leaving them out and fooling around with your own friends. You know better than that.
Certainly include people who are here seeking God. They are your brothers and sisters. We are all supposed to minister to one another even while we are here in this place.
Romans 12 says:
And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, let us use them:
If prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
Or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry;
Or he that teacheth, to his teaching.
Everybody here has the grace of God. The Bible is saying that simply being willing to help one another by the grace of God can eventually lead to your finding your gift and place in the body of Christ.
Some people want to know their gifts and place in the body of Christ, but they do not serve where they are. They do not help in some small way. They are not helping their brothers and sisters, but they want to know where they fit into the body of Christ and what their gift is.
It happens in a simple way first. Take those opportunities to help your brothers and sisters.
The third one is very important, and I feel most strongly in my heart about impressing you with this. Notice Colossians 4:5. It is very clear what he is talking about in seizing opportunities:
Walk in wisdom toward them that are without,
Redeeming the time.
Do you do that? What a difference it makes in a Christian’s life when they finally come out from the closet and openly witness to their faith and love for Christ. Do not do it in a defensive way, but do it in a way that shows that you really believe and have deep convictions about this whole thing. It is very important.
It is great to be a Jesus freak like this guy here. He is not afraid to tell anybody about Jesus.
For young people, this is the most important area of ministry. Now listen. One day you will be older. One day maybe you will teach from the lectern. One day maybe you will open the breaking-of-bread time. You will get older and do other things. You will teach Sunday school and things like that. Right now, you are a witness.
You have more opportunities now than you will ever have the rest of your life, because those in school and college are the most open to the gospel. You will meet and spend time with more outsiders than at any other time in your life.
Once you get out of school, you get into a job where your associations are usually limited. Then you are married or have a home. Between that, running meetings, and various things, you will not meet that many non-Christians.
Right now, you are meeting more non-Christians than you have time to hang out with, associate with, eat with in the cafeteria, walk with back to the dorm, and do all of this kind of stuff. It is a tremendous time, even in high school. You have time to spend with unbelievers. Will you redeem that time?
I want to lay out the challenge this way. I know you can overdo any of this kind of thing, but in one sense, we question the validity of a Christian who is unwilling to witness in the power of the Spirit to their faith.
There are some Christians who are great Christians among Christians. But the real test of what you believe comes when you touch and speak openly with people who do not agree with you at all. Your witness before men is a very important matter.
It is something I think we need to take very seriously. I am praying right now and hoping back home in Flushing that the young people will get involved in reaching out, sharing the gospel, and doing these things. What a difference it makes in our lives.
Everybody is such a chicken about it, and yet for young people, it is the most vital ministry. It is as important as being part of the body of Christ: sharing your faith.
I will also be so bold as to say this: almost everybody I know who has gone on in serving the Lord in an effective way began by witnessing and sharing their faith, being willing to lay down their lives that way.
When you see people in their later life, you sometimes do not know what they used to be like. I was talking to somebody one time, and they said, “Oh yeah, Stephen Tong, I remember him from years ago.” I said, “Oh yeah?” They said, “You know what? He was an evangelist.”
“Stephen Tong?” “Oh yeah, he was an evangelist back in China. You should have heard his voice. He used to sing gospel songs. I forget which one was his favorite, but he would sing a gospel song without any instruments or anything, just sing: ‘I’d Rather Have Jesus Than Anything.’ His voice was so beautiful, people would cry.”
That is Brother Stephen Tong. Now you know him as a teacher who has so much wisdom and everything, but he began by faithfully preaching the gospel.
Oh, brothers and sisters, this is such an important thing. Opportunities abound, but where are those who are willing to be the light of the world, to get out from under the bushel and share Jesus?
These three things are the beginning of opportunities: daily opportunities in fellowship life, daily witnessing, and helping our brothers—especially helping a friend of yours in Christ through an email, a phone call, a talk, or a conversation of prayer. These things are so important.
We know these things are important. Why have we not seized the opportunities? Because we need the right currency. That is the problem.
We know we should be doing things, right? That is what we are going to do next time: talk about the currency necessary in order to transact and redeem the time. You have to have the power to buy back. We know we are supposed to do these things. Why are we not doing them?
Well, we need the kind of wealth that Jim Bogdanovich has. We will talk about that next time.
Dear brothers and sisters, last year I shared on this matter of being a Joshua generation, coming through and moving with God in a new generation. The church, its vitality, and its testimony are up to you: to stand and rise up.
Yet, dear brothers and sisters, in the most practical ways, if you do not have the spiritual currency to stand up in these ways and seize opportunities, how can you expect to do something of purpose in this generation?
There has to be something that lays hold of you and gives you courage. Some of you have been Christians, and I know you love the Lord. You get in a small group and are able to pray, but you get to the assembly and have never said boo.
You do not get the opportunity every week, but every once in a while the Holy Spirit nudges your heart and says, “It’s time,” and you do not do it. God bless you.
Now listen, my only point is this: God does not want you to be a Jesus freak and spend all your time just hitting people on the streets with the gospel. But when God gives you an opportunity, you need to be faithful.
When you are there on Sunday morning and it is the time of worship, and you hear that prompting, share. Share.
We are not talking about all the time, anytime. We are talking about when God is knocking on your heart and saying, “This is the opportunity,” and you know it.
If you let shyness, pride, condemnation, or anything lesser ruin the opportunity, then you have just been robbed. What we want to talk about next time is buy-back power.
May the Lord help you. This generation has to rise up in power in order to be faithful and meet the opportunity of the days ahead. Take the opportunity, for the days are evil.
There is no neutral ground. Take the opportunity, or you will be robbed and retreat, and robbed and retreat, and robbed and retreat. May the Lord help us. Let’s pray.
Lord, I thank You for the precious brothers and sisters as we gather together year by year. How precious it is that even though they have been through now I do not know how many messages, meetings, groups, and seminars, still they are willing to listen.
Oh Lord, we know that in the midst of this week, this time, this chronos, You are trying to create kairos: a God-filled moment that can transform lives.
Despite tiredness, despite a full stomach, despite a full mind, despite distracting friends, despite problems, Lord, we pray that You would shine Your light and bring kairos to us.
Bring a God-filled moment where You make a transaction and the deed is done, where something happens in a person’s life, and we can begin to lay hold of the opportunities that are just straight ahead.
We want to bring these things to You, Lord. We know that You have given us wonderful brothers and sisters, and You have given us opportunity to share with outsiders. Lord, teach us how to take hold of that for Your glory, for Your will to be done.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.