Time. Time is the raw material of life, and life is about time. When God gives life to something, in a way what He gives is time. A creature that has time is a creature that’s alive. Something that has no time may exist but it’s not alive. The promise of eternal life is that we will have time forever.

Everyone alive has at least the here and now. Though we don’t all have the same amount of wealth or even of tolerance or abilities, all of us presently here on this planet do have time. We may not all have the same amount of qualitative time, you know what I mean. Some may live longer than others, yet at this moment we all have time. You might be thinking, “What is this? New Age talk or something?” No, of course not. I would like for us to think for a little while about the significance of time in the Christian life.

To give our lives to Jesus is to give Him time. To talk about living the Christian life and all that goes with it is ultimately to talk about time. We can’t all give God the same quantity of money; neither can we dedicate the same talents. But we do have the same amount of time.

We have, at any particular moment, two choices--to dedicate our time to God or to dedicate our time to ourselves. Jesus told a story about a man who went out to plant a field. In those days they didn’t drill the region to the ground with machinery in order to plant the seed; rather they broadcasted it--simply threw it out by hand. Those who had practice could do it in a fairly even manner.

Of course, no matter how good a person was at broadcasting the seed evenly in the prepared areas, as the farmer would scatter the seeds along the edges of the field some of the seed would fly, as we would say, out of bounds.

Jesus said that some of the seed fell in the roadway and the birds ate it. Other seed fell in the stones by the edge of the field and dried up, because there was no soil for the roots. Other seed fell in the area where there were weeds. The weeds overshadowed the plants and choked them out. The seed in Jesus’ story represents the spiritual life God wants us to have through His word. The various environments where the seed fell are the environments of our lives. Let’s think for a minute about the seed that fell among the thorns, or as we would say today, among the weeds. By weeds Jesus meant the cares of this world that choke out the spiritual life.

Here in Florida most people landscape their lawns with a variety of grass called St. Augustine. It’s very thick and hearty and spreads by sending out runners across the top of the ground. If a person has lots of money but is short on patience, he will buy enough flats of St. Augustine grass to completely cover his property instantly. But if you have more time than money, you will plant plugs of this grass here and there. Sooner than seems possible it will spread until it covers the whole area. Case in point: when we moved into our present home, our lawn consisted of a common native grass call Bahia. Bahia is thin, fragile, and not very pretty. My neighbor, though, had the St. Augustine variety in his lawn. Having more time than money, we weren’t able to address the situation. However, in a few years Mother Nature solved the problem for me. My neighbor’s nice St. Augustine grass simply spread across my front lawn and choked out the Bahia. Of course, I hurried things up a bit by putting in some St. Augustine plugs.

Now we have a lovely, green lawn of St. Augustine grass, with no loss to the neighbor and little cost to me. But what goes around comes around. Now we have to watch out because there are other grasses that try to choke out the St. Augustine. One of them is called India crabgrass. This grass is really tricky. It gets a little start in a lawn and then climbs across the top of the Augustine. It becomes thicker and thicker until pretty soon the sun isn’t able to reach the St. Augustine and it dies out.

I tell this story because it illustrates what Jesus said about weeds. If our spiritual life isn’t going anywhere, it’s simply being choked out by the cares of this life.

If we want to have a spiritual life that’s going somewhere, we will have to spend time at it. A good golf score requires patience and practice, and what we’re talking about is time. Progress in any area of our lives requires time. The truth is, our lives are about what we spend time on. It may sound too easy, but the person who seems to have a growing, meaningful Christian life is the person who is spending some time at it.

I’m sure you will agree that the cares of this life in the 21st century are all but choking out the spiritual lives of the majority of people. This hits the family very hard. Often both parents work, and the children put enormous demands on the parents, inasmuch as their social lives tend to be outside the home. And this is just one illustration.

We start the day early and go to bed late. We seem to have a high standard of living regarding material things but a very poor standard of living in the things that really matter.

Forgive me if I digress for a moment. Our family lived outside this country for a number of years. One of the things that impressed me is that, while in other places of the world the people may lack some of the material benefits enjoyed in this country, in many respects they have a quality of life that we seem to have lost.

Take Latin America, for example. Some may have the idea that over there it’s siesta time all day. It may be the case in some places, but I didn’t it. Were I have been, the people work all day, sometimes even more hours than some of us do. Yet when work is over, their lives tend to revolve around the family, the community, and the church. Come to think of it, that it was the way it used to be in this country when I was a young person. But that was a long time ago, and we can’t go back to the way things used to be. We have to live in the present with the timeframe we have.

In spite of the fact that we may think we don’t have time, the truth is we all have the same amount of time. The question is: How have we chosen to spend it? To be able to pray effectively we must allocate time. Time is the raw material of life. To put it bluntly, if we’re going to have a spiritual life that means anything, if we’re going to learn what it means--not only learn but experience what it means--to be a victorious, growing Christian, we’re going to have to set aside time to make it happen. Everything takes time, and the Christian life is no exception.

Some people think that they can pray while they do everything else, that prayer is like breathing. It’s true; we don’t have to stop doing anything to breathe. But, whereas we can do other things and be praying at the same time, we can’t be thinking about other things and be praying at the same time.

People who are growing spiritually and enjoying what it means to be over-comers, people who know the meaning and power of prayer, are people who set aside a special time every day for prayer alone with God. These people have learned that the Christian life goes best when they begin the day with God. Therefore, if I want to pray effectively I’ve got to make time for it. Even though it’s possible to pray and be doing other things at the same time, prayer will not, as we say, take off in our lives and be effective until we have set aside time to pray. And that means carving out time when we are not doing anything else.

Place. In order to experience the true joy of effective prayer, we need to have a special place for prayer. When people want to spend quality time together, they do it alone. They go off someplace together where other people and things that usually distract are not present. A man and woman who are in love will always find time to be alone together. Even after they are married, they will jealously guard their special time. It’s no secret that marriages go best when the husband and wife have special quality time at special places. And it’s the same in our relationship with Jesus.

Jesus had special places where He would go to be alone and spend time in prayer. His disciples must have known where those places were, because Judas knew where to find Him when he led the crowd out to arrest Jesus.

Matthew 6:6 says, “But when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” I don’t believe that Jesus is talking about a literal closet; He’s talking about having a special place and about being alone without distractions.

To be alone with God is not easy. Prayer and time spent alone with God is a discipline. We have to work at it to make it happen. You know, a person can be alone with someone physically and really not be there at all. It’s easy to begin thinking of things you need to do. In the quietness our minds tend to wander and lose focus, and soon we are thinking of other things. We must learn to concentrate, to train our minds to stay on what we’re doing.

It’s very hard to concentrate in this day and age. We’re so used to being distracted that many don’t know how to be alone. Some of us even feel uncomfortable when we’re alone. We’re used to having the radio playing, or the TV on, or the kids interrupting. We’re not accustomed to being in the silence of our own contemplation. The Scriptures recommend that we “Be still and know that I am God.” It’s not in noise and hoopla that we get to know God best; rather, it’s in the stillness; deep in our hearts, where we find Him. And we find Him best when we spend time with Him alone in a special place.

When we talk about being alone with God, we speak of being in His presence. Let’s think about what it means to be in the presence of God. How do we go about being in the presence of someone we don’t see or who, as far as our five senses are concerned, isn’t in the room with us? Prayer is a heart-to-heart talk with God. But we don’t begin a conversation with someone until we’re in their presence. A heart-to-heart talk is impossible unless we perceive that the person we’re talking to is also there and can hear us. How can we be in the presence of God? We can’t see God with our eyes, nor under regular circumstances hear Him with our ears. He can’t be touched with our hands. In other words, our physical senses don’t reveal God to us, because God is not physical, He is spiritual.

When we’re away from a loved one, how do we keep in touch? We can enjoy someone’s presence even when they’re not with us physically. We do this by letters, by e-mails, and by telephone. Before my wife and I were married, Betty lived in Florida and I lived in Ohio. We tried to write to each other nearly every day. When I came home from work, the first thing I asked my mother was, “Is there a letter from Betty?” You can say that I was able to enjoy her presence by the letters she wrote to me. So then, we don’t actually need to have a person physically with us to feel their presence. We can think of a person as being present even when they’re not so near.

I’ve had several meaningful experiences in which you could say I was present without being there in person. One day, when we were living in South America, a man came to my house. He was an American on a work assignment in our city for several months. He had promised his wife that on their 20th wedding anniversary they would renew their vows in a church. The 20th anniversary was coming up, and here he was in South America, feeling almost desperate. Someone had told him that I had a short-wave radio. So he had come to ask me if I would officiate by radio in a ceremony to renew his vows. He had made arrangements for her to be at the right place at the right time. And so, when the day came, there we were in Santiago, Chile, and she was in the states somewhere on a telephone. They happily renewed their vows by short-wave radio, although they were physically more than 5000 miles apart.

Another time I was in Puerto Rico holding some meetings when I received a phone call that a dear friend of mine had been diagnosed with bone cancer. They wanted to anoint him immediately, so you can guess what happened--I participated in the anointing by telephone. It was a special experience that I’ll remember for a long time.

In the final analysis, experiencing someone’s presence is essentially an inner experience. Even when we’re in a friend’s presence physically, isn’t the realization and the enjoyment, and even the significance, of their presence something that takes place within our hearts? Our friend may be on the other side of the room, but the real experience of their presence is within our own consciousness.

God is a spirit. Jesus Himself told us that. He said to the woman at the well, “God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” This gives meaning to the words in Luke 17:21 that the kingdom of God is within us. The Scriptures also speak of Christ as being in us, and of the indwelling Christ.

Jesus said, “I will love him and will manifest Myself to him; My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” We can’t fully understand this, but we can fully appreciate it. The promise is that we may experience the presence of God deep down in our consciousness even though our five senses don’t perceive Him. As the Bible says, “. . . whom having not seen, we love.” Friends, this mysterious but real experience is possible through the Holy Spirit.

We may think that if Jesus were only here physically, it would be easier. The truth is that it probably wouldn’t be. Remember, Jesus was once here physically and that didn’t seem to make much difference to the people. They either loved Him or hated Him. To some He was just an ordinary person, but to others He was the Son of God. That’s just the way that it is today. Jesus told Thomas that those who believed on Him without seeing Him would have an even greater blessing than those who had seen Him in person.

When the Bible teaches us that God is present everywhere it means that wherever we are in the universe God knows all about us. It teaches us that He is accessible to us and that He hears us and loves us and helps us no matter what our need may be.

Though distance doesn’t separate us from God, one thing that will separate us is sin. Sin doesn’t make it impossible for God to see us but rather it makes it impossible for us to discern His presence. For this reason, the most important condition to be able to be in the presence of God is that we be in an attitude of repentance, with their sins confessed. Then we will know that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God is accessible to us, wherever we may chance to be. He is as near in one place as He is in any other. If we seek Him with all our hearts, Scripture assures us that we will find him. When we go to a place where we’re alone with God, we’ll have the reality in our spirit of being in His presence.

Communication. We’ve talked about the time, the special place, and the meaning of His presence. Now let’s talk about what it means to communicate with God. Since prayer is communicating with God, it must be understood that the communication must be a two-way street. We communicate with God, and we allow Him to communicate with us. We’re not talking here about a mystic or transcendental experience. The basis for all of God’s communication with us is the Bible. This is very important to bear in mind.

There are many millions of clocks and watches in the world that are measuring time. But the fact is, there is only one real way to measure time, and that is to calculate the movement of the stars. You and I may have a clock or a watch that tells us what time it is, but actually it may not be that time at all. Although clocks were made to tell time, they don’t control what is really the essence of time. God is in charge of that. It is God, not my watch, who is in control of the passage of time.

Although God may communicate with me in my heart or in my conscience, this should not be considered reliable unless it is measured by the Bible. Just like our watches may stop working or lose time and so not be correct at all, so we must not depend on an inner voice to guide us as to what is right and what is wrong.

It’s not uncommon to hear a person say, “God told me this” or “God told me that.” Don’t misunderstand me; I believe that the Holy Spirit communicates with our hearts. The problem is that Scripture clearly tells us that we cannot trust our own hearts. It says that there is a way that seems right to us, but it’s wrong. The Bible must be the ongoing yardstick by which all our thoughts and ideas are measured. I’ve heard people say that if God wants them to keep the Sabbath He would tell them. That would be like a person who is given to telling lies saying that if God wants them to tell the truth He’ll tell them to.

We tend to impose our own personal morality on the Bible. We will generally look to the Bible to justify the way we personally think and live. This is why almost always the kooks have some text to prove their point. The only safety we have is to be in a continuous attitude of repentance. A person who is doing something that they know is wrong and yet refuse to give up should not trust themselves when they read the Bible, nor can they be trusted to teach others. These people will inevitably craft a theology to match their personal morality.

The foundation of our communion with God is His word. When we go to prayer, we must have His word as the basis for all we do or say during that time alone with Him. Of course, I’m so thankful that He’s given us the Spirit of Prophecy. I don’t know why so many people these days are angry with the Spirit of Prophecy. They say they believe in the Bible and the Bible only.

The truth is, we all have private interpreters or interpretations of the Bible. The person who won’t sit still having Mrs. White explain the Bible often doesn’t have any trouble with Chuck Swindoll, or Billy Graham, or even some of their friends explain it to them.

Allow me to put in a commercial. One of the greatest devotional books ever written is Steps to Christ. If we would read that little book through about a dozen times, we would find that about 70% of our spiritual confusion would evaporate.

So then God communes with us in His words through His prophets. And if we come to His word with a repentant spirit, He will communicate to the depths of our hearts. When we are alone with God, we can pour out all that is in our heart to him, knowing that He hears and understands our deepest needs.

Please be patient with me for what I’m about to say next. I don’t mean to depreciate certain professions, but I want to express a concern, and I hope you’ll understand where I’m coming from and appreciate the principle I’m trying to enunciate. In the last few generations, counseling has become an in thing. The Scriptures say that there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors, but I’m more and more convinced that counseling can very well be taken too far. Instead of being a tool for good, it can add to our problems and even create problems we never had before.

There are some things that a person should confess only to God. We must be very careful that counseling does not become a thinly veiled confessional like is practiced in the Catholic Church. We are very much into the word vulnerable these days. I believe we need to be vulnerable with each other, but only to a certain point. Scripture teaches that we grow spiritually as we share with one another. It says, “Confess your faults one to another that you may be healed.” There is a healing of emotions and of spirit that comes from sharing with one another. The Bible also says and the saints “. . . overcame the Dragon by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” To share a testimony is to be vulnerable. However, there is within the human soul a type of Most Holy Place, if you please. It is our innermost self, and I believe this is a place where only Jesus our High Priest should lead us.

I believe in Christian counseling. I believe that there are times when it’s therapeutic and even necessary. But we must not lay bare our souls before mortal men and women in such a way that our innermost beings can be scrutinized by them and even taken part and put back together again at their whim. No matter how skillful a person may be, God is the only One who can read the heart. He is the only One who knows our every need. He is holy, and He will never take advantage of us or exploit us. And so the secret things belong only to God.

For a time I attended Al-Anon. It filled an important need in my life at the time. It was a place where I could go and know that I was with others who were passing through what I was passing through, and we understood each other. I learned a lot there about how to be vulnerable in a healthy way. The things that were shared around the table at Al-Anon were not demeaning or humiliating. You could actually meet those people again and look them in the eye without feeling ashamed and hoping they didn't remember who you were.

In broad terms, I believe we ought to be vulnerable as we share and as we listened to those who share with us. But we must be as caring and as careful as a neurosurgeon as he does his delicate surgeries in the human nervous system. Our innermost self is the most delicate of all components that make us human and needs to be approached only with the greatest of care. Let's be careful how, to whom, and when we open ourselves to anybody. And if someone comes along to share with us, please be praying all the time that God will give us His grace, His tenderness, and His respect for the human soul that’s before us.

How thankful we can be that God is our Father and we can feel confident in telling Him everything that’s in our hearts. Don't hold anything back from Him. We’ll never have regrets when we pour out our hearts to Him. The Bible, in fact, tells us to cast all our cares on Him; and in the same breath it assures us that we can do this because He cares for us.

When. If there is one time to pray that is more important than any other during the day, it's in the morning, at the beginning of the day. The prayer to God in the morning is the one in which we put ourselves on His side. We declare our intentions, so to speak. When we began the day with God, it keeps many problems from ever starting. This is not to say that we should talk to God only in the morning. But those who have the most success in their spiritual lives are those who began the day with God.

When you’re working together with someone, the more time you spend communicating with that person the better you’ll be able to work together. And this is also true in our relationship with our heavenly Father.

The excuse we usually offer for not giving more time to God is that we don't have time. It’s interesting that we seem to have time for everything but what really matters. But when it comes to spending time with God and our families, we seem to run out of time. Most of us have time for everything we want to do but not much time for anything else. The truth is that we really don't have time for everything. Every activity consumes time, and time is finite. Just as it’s possible to overload a truck so that it breaks down, so it’s possible to overload our lives.

The llama is a pack animal of South America. I have heard that it will sit down and accept a load. However, if the load exceeds a certain amount, the animal simply will not get up. If we know our lives are overloaded so that there’s no time for God, it seems to me we had better not go on until we have lightened the load. We must realize our own limitations. There are only 24 hours in the day. Nothing can really be added to our lives, unless we’re willing to take out something to make room for it. That means we can’t put something new into our lives until we have taken something else out to make room for it.

This is why the devotional life so often collapses. We try to fit God in along with everything else and then wonder why it doesn't seem to work. When we put God in, even if we say He is on top of everything else, He will soon slide off. Anything we do in our lives requires time, and so we must provide a time slot. If God is going to have a place in our lives, we must give Him time. This means that, if we want to spend time with God, we’re going to have to give Him the time that we usually spend doing something less important. This means that we’re going to have to make prayer and time to God a priority. Inasmuch as we have time for the important things, we will have time for God when God is seen as important to us.

Our heavenly Father wishes we would give Him back some of the time that He's given us. The practical fact is that, if we spend only a little time with Him, He can give only a little help. But if we spend a lot of time with Him, He will give us a lot of help. I don't need to ask you if you need help in your life or if I need help in mine.

We are very much creatures of habit. We are used to doing things without thinking very much. Often we decide what we're going to do in a particular instance and then we put ourselves on auto pilot, so to speak. Scripture says that there is a way that seems right to men but the ways thereof are the ways of death. In other words, when it comes to faith and morals, our instincts are usually wrong. We may have a good sense of direction or of business, we may have many other natural abilities, but we don’t have a natural instinct to do what is right. It has been said that when we mortals have a problem, we should decide what we should do and then do the opposite, and we’ll come closer to doing the right thing! You’ve heard the expression that we ought to think before we speak. This is surely true. But the fact of the matter is that very few of us do! Here is where prayer, not just in crisis but in the routine affairs of life, really takes on meaning.

Imagine how much better things would go if we said a little prayer before we made a phone call. What grief would be avoided if we said a little prayer when someone were about to come into our office to talk with us. How much sweeter the atmosphere would be if we said a little prayer when the kids were about to come home from school or our spouse is about to come home from work?

Salvation in Jesus Christ is a process by which we pass from death unto life. This doesn’t mean just physical death. The fact that we are not sensitive to how we treat each other or the way we react to how others treat us as causing us untold and unnecessary grief. The average person doesn't realize that they are doing something wrong until it has already happened. Imagine what it would be like if we were aware, before we said or did something, that we were about to make a mistake. Then we would pray to the Lord to deliver us from evil. Believe me, He would hear that prayer.

Most of the suffering in our day-to-day lives is because we don’t pray the way we should. We know not to stick our finger in the blades of a fan or on a hot iron. But we don't seem to understand that the way we talk to our spouses could very well be destroying our marriages, little by little.

Maybe in other generations we got by on mama’s or grandma's prayers. But not in the 21st century! I’m convinced and convicted that if we are not spending quality time every day alone with God, the problems and complexities of life are going to do us in. Some people think they can stay ahead in the rat race. But in the long run, unless we are in ongoing communication with God, unless we learn the meaning of effective prayer, the rats will win!