Power of a Focused Life: Directionless

I want to talk today about making the most of your time, and I got to tell you, I'm gonna preach a lot better for those of you who are comfortable with it if you give me some shouts or some amens. By the way, I think the room is designed in such a way that most of the sound travels that way, so you've got to shout a little bit louder if you want me to hear it. I'm just telling you; thank you, thank you!

It's alright if you're not there, but if you're there, baby, give me all you got! Okay, hey, my friend Dawn, I was watching— I was on Instagram yesterday, and I saw a post of hers. She took an image, a screenshot of a text conversation that she was having with a client.

She's a fitness coach, and she's kind of on the hardcore end of that spectrum of fitness coaches. Okay? She took a little snapshot of a text conversation she was having.

This guy was— you could see like the timestamp was about 7:45 in the morning, and this guy was clearly late to get to his workout with her. So he texts, "Hey, I had a horrible night, you know, didn't get much sleep. Not gonna be there today.

Sorry. " And she texts back— it was a little more colorful than this— but it says, "Get yo butt out of bed and get here! " She said it a little bit differently, but I was kind of like, "Hey, well, like that!

" People are gonna be gracious— like, "Oh, it's okay, oh, tough night, huh? Go ahead and sleep in," but she was like, "Oh, you get here! " He whined a little bit; his response was whiny, and it was like, "Oh, I had five hours of sleep.

" And she texted back, "You can do it. " And it got me thinking: you know, there's a difference sometimes between a friend and a coach. A friend is there to have your back, and they're gonna coddle you when you're having your more wimpy moments, and a coach might be your friend, but a coach has a unique role of challenging you.

Coaches, if they’re any good, they're not gonna coddle us; they're going to tell us what we need to hear, not necessarily what we want to hear. So, I gotta let you know that this series, The Power of a Focused Life, is gonna be a little more "coaching" than it is going to be "friendly. " Now, the good news is it's coaching from God's Word; we can trust that God Himself is going to be coaching us, but it might create a little bit of dissonance in your mind when you hear messages like this.

I just want to give you a fair warning, especially if you're from a family of origin that wasn't particularly positive— like, maybe you're from a family background where you didn't really talk about having an optimistic view of life and being able to do things, and like take ground and really have a positive impact. If that wasn't your flow, this is gonna feel a little bit weird to you. I also want to tell you that dissonance, often spiritually speaking, can be a good thing.

See, too often we think if I have any dissonance with any kind of concept, or with any kind of trial, or with any people, I just dismiss it. We think, "Wow, I don't like that. " Can I just encourage you to lean into that stuff spiritually?

Because that's usually where God is; that's where He's trying to expand us. He's trying to expand our thinking; He's trying to expand our hearts. He's saying, "No, quit being so anemic!

I want you to expand; I want you to grow as a human! " How many know that if you already understood everything perfectly, you wouldn't need God? So, you've got to assume then that God's gonna challenge us from time to time: "Hey, your thinking is a little small here, and I want you to expand how you're approaching life.

" With regard to the teaching, we're going to start with Proverbs 29:18. It says this: "Where there’s no vision—" and I like the way the Amplified includes this, "no redemptive revelation of God— the people perish. " This word "perish," it's the word "parah," means to lose control, to run wild, to dissolve into chaos.

This happens to nations, happens to organizations, and it happens to individuals. Without— what is it saying? It's saying without a God-sent, preferred vision of the future, we will perish, or we will dissolve into chaos.

We will run reckless; we will run loose; we'll go all over the place unless there's some God-inspired vision or direction that is guiding us. And it's not just that it's a vision— like organizations have visions all the time; people say, "Oh, I got a vision, I'm gonna go do this thing. " What they mean is, "I have a crystal clear version of what I want.

" But I said it's different than a God-sent one. When God is influencing it, there's direction in it. I want to read you this quote.

This was said by an American president: "We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, and in search not merely of its road but of its direction. There are many voices of counsel but few voices of vision. There’s much excitement and feverish activity but little concert of thoughtful purpose.

We are distressed by our uncovered, undirected energies: we do many things but nothing long. And it is our duty to find ourselves. " Now, you'd think that that was about like sometime in the last ten.

. . Years, maybe, but that was actually said by future president, at that time, Woodrow Wilson, in 1907 at a commencement address.

And what I, you know, deduced from that is, man, if it was—if people needed direction then when it was that near as chaotic and busy as it is right now, in terms of the amount of information that we're receiving every day, then we really need to get this thing about vision down. And that's going to be one of the things that pushes against you a little bit in this series: we have this inner peace of our sinful nature that pushes against taking responsibility for vision. It's not that we don't like the idea of vision, but we'll neglect it, we'll ignore it, we'll just say, "I don't have time for that right now; somebody else will do it.

" And that's not what God wants, because what does it lead to? It leads to perishing, or dissolving into chaos, or just running wild and missing where it is we should be focused on, where we're supposed to be going. Without vision, here's what we do: we squander the moments at hand.

To squander something means we're misusing it; we're using it the wrong way; we're wasting it. And here's what we do: we squander time, we squander our affections, we squander our talents, we squander our resources, our money. Spiritually speaking, when people are asleep spiritually, it's usually because, in some form or fashion, they're misusing their time.

And so we've got to understand before we even get into this that squandering comes with a price tag. When we squander our opportunities, when we don't stay focused on the vision that we should be focused on, it comes with a heavy toll. It leads to all kinds of depression; people run wild, they get all loose, they're not going the right way, they lose their joy, they fail to focus on holiness, they fail to focus on impact—they don't have direction.

One day, Jesus talked about these three different servants that were given talents, and that was a sum of money. All three of them were given direction by their master; this was a parable. He said, "I want you to go invest this.

I'm going on a trip, and one day I'm going to return, and I want to see what you do with what I've given you. I want to see, you know, the return on investment that I get. " Well, two of them did really well; they doubled what the master had given them.

But a third servant was afraid, and he squandered what he was given; he buried it in the ground. When the master got back and held him accountable, he said, "You wicked, lazy servant! What you did was wicked and lazy.

I expected you to do something with this, and because you didn't, there are going to be consequences for what you didn't do. " And my friends, I don't want to spook you, but you should know, because this is who God really is. You don’t need to understand everything about who God is, and you don't need to have it all figured out; you can have doubts, and you don’t need to understand this perfectly.

But you've got to understand that the true God is a God that's going to ask what you did with the stuff He gave you. There’s a real date that you have on the calendar when you're going to have to answer for your life. I don't know if you know that or not.

And Jesus Christ, if you've made Him your Savior and your Lord, He's going to provide all of His grace and all of His mercy for your sin. But there is still the question: yeah, but what did you do with the stuff? Because there's reward He wants to give you in heaven, and if you didn't do what you were supposed to with the stuff you had, that reward is going to be more limited.

This was driven home to my wife, Mackenzie, and me just yesterday. We were at the memorial service of a friend of ours—her name is Diana. I've mentioned her weeks ago in another message.

She was on the brink of death, and she did pass away right before Christmas. After Christmas, the memorial service took place, and she had grown dear to our hearts. You know, there's something about—I think pastors and a few other people who get to be nearby and see this—there's something very intimate about being someone's shepherd toward death.

You know what I'm saying? Like, in Diane's case, she was very aware that she was dying. Okay?

She knew; she was very cognizant. She wasn't losing her mind or anything, so she had everything all set up, and she did everything the way she wanted. But she wrote me this little card that she knew I would read after she passed, and it has this little line to Kenzie and me.

You know, she wishes us well and tells us she loves us, and all that kind of stuff, and tells us, "Hey, trust Jesus and keep on keepin' on. " But then she signs off with this line: "See you there, Diana. " I guess that got me right here.

I keep those kinds of cards because it somehow reminds me of the realities that bother someone who's already there. Now, who in some way has an appointment with me who is saying, "Hey, I'm expecting you, bud. I'm expecting you to show up, and we're going to talk about all the good things that happened while you were on planet Earth.

" That not only blesses my heart; it raises the stakes. It reminds me that this is not all there is; you are going somewhere, and you're gonna give an account for what you did while you were here. And that's a very real date, because your friend was just here, and now she is there, and you two are going to have that appointment.

Sometimes, my friends, even so, because we're not thinking about that, because of all the distractions around us, we begin to embrace squandering our opportunities and resources. Our time has a lifestyle, and this isn't how Jesus wants us to stroll. How does he want us to respond to this squandering?

Here it is: God's answer to aimlessness, his vision. His answer is vision; where there's no vision, no redemptive revelation of God, the people perish. This word "vision" means “chazon.

” It means to behold; it just means seeing something. It's the sense of enlightened direction; it's a picture of where you're supposed to go. If you're thinking about like a cake box, it's the picture of the cake on the box.

You haven't made it yet, but it's a very specific, concrete idea of what it's supposed to look like when you make this cake. That's the vision. Somehow the vision is greater than what we have right now; it's this desired result in the future that you want to be true.

And when we aren't focused on moving toward that vision, we just turn every which way, and we get our minds off stuff, and then we begin to get in trouble. We begin to get our mouths in trouble; our actions begin to get out of sync with where we should be focused on going, how we should be focused on advancing. All of our priorities get out of whack, and we begin to run wild.

We begin to dissolve into chaos, and it doesn't necessarily look like chaos; it just looks like we're just managing all the stuff of life, but it's coming at us so quickly that we're losing sight of, "Wait a minute! Whoa! Where am I supposed to be going now?

What am I supposed to be giving myself to? " And here's what we've got to know: aimlessness can't be cured without the direction and teaching of Jesus. That's what the series is all about.

Aimlessness can't be cured without the direction and teaching of Jesus. Mark 6, verse 34 says this: when Jesus got out of the boat, now listen to how he's gonna relate to the people. When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw this large crowd, and his heart was filled with pity for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

So he began to teach them many things. He has pity—so Jesus has pity for them. How many know that Jesus has pity for you?

Do you know that's true? Do you know that Jesus' heart is always tender for you? Even though he wants us to obey his laws, the law is there to bless us; it's there to teach us his ways and show us how he rolls.

But you've got to know, even though sometimes the law seems very matter-of-fact, like, "This is what you need to do, like this is what it is," the heart of Jesus is always tender. We get into legalism anytime we forget God's heart. The heart of Jesus is always tender; he looks at you and me, and he has pity—not like, "Oh, I feel sorry for you; you're worthless.

" It's the pity of, "I see that you're stuck, and I want to help you. It hurts me that you're stuck. " And what does he do?

He begins to teach them. Now think about these folks: most of them had jobs. I mean, their lives were going normally, right?

It's like they had priorities; they had things to do during the day. But he looks at them and says, "You don't know what you're doing. " And so he says, "I'm gonna bring my word into your situation.

" Why? Because that's going to align everything. "My word is my vision for your internal and spiritual life and what you do on this planet.

" So this is level one of vision. Level one is God wants to conform us to his image by his word. His word is the vision test; his word is saying, "You're all out of sorts; you're all out of sync with the way I made humans to be.

" And so my word is going to resynchronize you. "You're running wild; you're dissolving into chaos. " My word comes to undergird you and says, "This is the vision; this is who you're supposed to be on the inside.

This is how we are supposed to be manifesting on the outside. Now get in sync with the vision and keep walking in that direction. " That's level one.

Level two, as we do that and as we mature—how many know that we mature over time? If you keep walking with Jesus, you thicken up a little bit, right? Some of your previous understandings are like laughable a little bit; you thicken up as you go.

Level two is, as we've been walking with him, the Holy Spirit of God—the third person of the Trinity—is the Jesus here right now inside of you, sanctifying you, the one who's dealing with you all the time, the one who's actively applying grace to your heart and reminding you that you're forgiven. That's the one who begins to breathe holy spirit-empowered imagination into you and saying, "Now what if you did this? Now what if you did this good in the world?

What if you did this good in your spiritual walk? What if you did this good in your family? What if you did this?

" Good in your life? What if you did this good in the lives around you? The Spirit of God, as one who speaks spirit-empowered imagination into our hearts, says, "Here's what could be if you keep walking in this direction.

" Let me give you some examples of places we need vision. We need spiritual vision. This is for our prayer time.

Some of us will say, "I hate prayer time. I don't want to pray. " I get it.

Some of us look at the Bible or, uh, just keep walking. Okay, just don’t let go because God will start giving you vision. But what if I could get you to like it?

What if I could get you to love it? What if it were like the best thing that ever happened to you? That spirit-empowered vision that's coming upon you—we need vision for our spiritual walk; we need vision for our relational walk with family and friends.

Yo, God has vision for that! We need vision for our vocation, for most of us who work in the marketplace. Do you know there’s vision for your marketplace ministry?

Like, the good that you do at your job? What about your ministry? That means, whether you know it or not, you've been given gifts, and God wants to grow and expand the kingdom of Jesus Christ both in the church and outside of the church through your ministry.

He begins to speak vision into us, and it's just this little, "Here's what could be. Here's what could be if you keep walking, if you keep following me, if you keep being conformed to my image on the inside and keep taking the risks I lead you to on the outside. " What about economic vision?

Do you have a vision for your savings and your investing? What happens after you're gone? Have a vision just for your physical body—your vision for where that's supposed to go or where you're supposed to at least try to hold it back from going as much as you can.

Even, I don't really understand this when I was younger; God has a vision for your recreation life. God has a vision for your rest. God has a vision for how you restore yourself.

God has a vision for all these things, and He gives little hints. It’s not like I don’t want you to think He just downloads the whole thing at once; it’s a walk, and we walk it out. I also don’t want to remove the mystery of how this works because it’s not like we can just command God: “Okay, God, I can imagine it, so You must do it.

” That’s not what we’re talking about. This is really two things going on at once. Oh, you ready?

This is a little deeper cut. You ready? On one level, vision is all about here’s a crystal-clear picture of where I’m gonna go, and like I’m gonna walk by faith and I’m gonna get there; but discipleship is often, “I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m just following Jesus by faith.

” Okay, those are happening at the same time. So you can never get away from, like, "Yes, I have an idea of where we're supposed to go," and "I have no idea what I'm doing or if this is even close to right. " Okay, that is discipleship and vision at the same time.

That’s where you are if you are a Christ follower, and so you don’t have to sweat that you don’t know what’s going on. But that’s what makes it by faith: “Is it God? I believe maybe possibly this is You, and so I’m gonna keep going while You confirm and while You strengthen and while You show me what is and isn’t You.

” That’s how it’s supposed to work. Now here’s the problem: vision only works if we work. Vision only works if we work.

We can’t really talk much about the vision of where we’re supposed to go in all these different areas if we’re not willing to work. The linchpin between the vision and the reality is our decision to work. And our problem is sometimes that we’re actually too full of the world to pay attention to the work that God wants us to do to bring about His will.

We're too full already. You've already got too much stuff—there are too many things that your heart loves, there are too many agenda items, there are too many things that you could watch, there’s too much scrolling down your social media feed, there are too many appointments you said you’d be at. All that fills us up, and we don’t have any room for that godly, still process of being imaginative and understanding this is the work I need to do to bring that about.

So first and foremost, we need to understand that we’re supposed to work. Jesus was stirred up about work. I don’t know if you know this.

John 4:34, the disciples were a little worried about Him and said, “Oh Master, you’ve been fasting a long time now. We’re little worried—you should eat something. ” And He says, in like a really cool, Jesus-like, cryptic way, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.

” He says, “Hey, you know what satisfies me? It’s getting done the agenda items that the Father has assigned me. That’s what feels good for me.

” And see, we’ve got to understand we’re part of a time and a season in history where work is considered bad—like where work is like work—and we don’t understand we’ll never be happy unless we’re achieving things. We want the shortcuts. Now, now we.

. . Want the results of work without having to actually do the work?

We want the done-for-you version. So, I was watching T. D.

Jakes not too long ago, and he has this illustration where he talks about how the problem is that people ask God for furniture, but He only makes trees. Okay, let me break that down for you. People say, "God, I want furniture.

Give me the end result now," and God says, "I'm sorry, I don't make furniture; I just make trees. If you want furniture, you go up into the hills, chop down those trees, and make some furniture. God says, 'My gift is the trees.

Now you do with my gift what the vision is in your mind, i. e. , make furniture.

'" To say it a different way, we're not saying God can't make furniture; obviously, He could do whatever He wants. We're just saying He doesn't. You won't just go out into the garden and find, boom, like furniture popped up.

No, that's something humans make with what God gave them. You won't find just cake laying around that spawned there, right? No, God says, "I'll tell you what I make: eggs, sugar, and milk.

I don't make cake. If you want cake, you make the cake. I made all the stuff; now you take what I made and go make what you want.

" And see, this is what we do. We say, "God, I want the end result, but I don't want to take the time to make it. " So you say, "I want to be tight with God.

Just make me tight with God. " Okay, but you have to do the things that people who are tight with God do in order to have that thing. Use me?

You got to make the cake. You say, "Hey man, I want just a really intimate, tight marriage. " Okay, well, you've got to do the things that married couples who are really tight and happy do, and then you'll have it.

You say, "I want to have awesome relationships. " Okay, then you’ve got to do the things that those kinds of folks who have tight relationships do, and then you'll have those kinds of relationships. Yeah, I want to have awesome health.

Okay, but God isn't going to make you wake up one day and say, "Man, I'm so sick! Holy cow, I'm healthy! " God doesn't typically work that way.

The normal way is to do healthy things: eat healthy things, go to healthy places, and do healthy things that are a little painful at first for your body, and then you will find yourself healthy. So, in my 20s—I’m 41 right now—I made probably a thousand really stupid decisions, but I made four that I think worked out okay. Can I share what the four are?

Here are four that seem to have worked so far. One, I decided when I was 20 that when I was in my 40s, I wanted to be really tight with God. I wanted to not just be tight with God then; I wanted to be real tight with God by the time I’m in my 40s.

And so, what that meant was, if you're going to build it, every day you’ve got to have time with God. By His grace, there has been a legacy of yes for over 20 years; it's just been daily time with God. When I was 20, I said by the time I'm 40, I want to be tight with my family.

I want to be tight with my wife and talk with my kids. Well, over the next 20 years, we just invested a lot of time. It would have been easy not to invest that time; there was plenty of work to do.

But we always made it a priority: hey, we have to have family dinner together; we're going to date each one of the kids and take them out with frequency because we want to be tight. I want my kids, by the time they’re 18—my oldest is 18 right now—I want them to want to be around Mom and Dad, not want to get away from Mom and Dad. That was decision number two.

Decision number three was, "I don't need to look great, but I want to feel like I'm as healthy as I can be. I want to work out in such a way that I feel like I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. " There were different seasons—you guys know how this goes; you’ve got kids, and then you’ve got little ones, and you have different things going on.

But ultimately, is there something you did in order to get that result? And that one so far has worked reasonably well. I also wanted golden long locks.

I don't know; it doesn't seem like that's going to happen for me. But I wanted to work with rock stars. I want to work with a team that was like a team I couldn’t have imagined.

I work with them today; the team I work on is the most amazing staff I’ve ever encountered, and they rock my face off! But I gotta tell you, man, they didn’t always know what to do. There were times in my late 20s and early 30s when they didn’t know what they were doing.

In other words, a lot of the team I’m on now, I had to like develop half of them just to give them the opportunity to become the people they are. I’m not saying that to brag, my friends; I’m saying there had to be a process to get to the end result you want. Right?

What do you want? What's the vision? Okay, just know then.

. . You're gonna chop down the wood.

Know that you're gonna have to go get the eggs; you're gonna have to go get the sugar in order to bring these things about. Sometimes, people mistake discipline for the anointing, and they do it all the time. What I mean is, people look at something like, "Man, that's so anointed!

" and "I can't believe what they're doing over there. That's man, that's so filled with God. " Here’s just what I found, man: God seems to anoint discipline.

The more that we just do something, like one thing keeps going up, and I'm not saying discipline isn't important; I'm just saying, often, they just worked really hard. That's all it was. They just kept going, kept pushing when everybody else wanted to give up, and that’s how it’s supposed to look.

For some of us, especially those who are on the younger side and are thinking about years from now, I don't want you to get to the place later on where you say, "Man, I thought I'd be tight with God right now. " Probably, in that moment, it's not that you planned to not be tight with God; it's just that you didn't plan to be tight with God. You didn't plan what you were gonna do, and so, because of that, it didn't turn out that way.

Here's number two: Because vision is time-bound, we need to grow in the skill of self-governance. Vision is time-bound, meaning there's a deadline. This is going to end at some point.

We've got to grow in the skill of self-governance. Ephesians 5:15 says this: Paul's talking to the Ephesians and he's saying, "Hey, your connection with Jesus Christ should produce some things; it should show up in your real life. It shouldn't just be stuff you believe.

Your belief should change who you are. " He says, "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. " This "days are evil" thing—what does he mean?

He means, in this era right now, in this epoch, before Christ comes back—between the cross and when Christ returns—there's still much darkness in the land. Yep, the devil is defeated, but he’s still occupying this territory. He’s still causing confusion; he’s still trying to dissolve things into chaos.

So he says, "The times are dark still. You don't have the freedom you'll have in heaven. " I want you to be very careful.

I want you to walk wisely and think about how to make the most of your time, because those who use their time wisely are going to be able to access the redemptive purposes of God. This has to do with goals, okay? If the picture on the cake box is the vision, the ingredients are our goals.

Are you with me here? The things you need to bring about the vision are the ingredients, and this is how we're understanding goals. When we peripherally decide which are the best aims for this time, then we’re talking about goals.

Goals are a dream with a deadline, but if that goal is not attached to an actual schedule, it’s just a dream—nothing happens if it just stays a wish. God's heart is not for us to just have wishes; it’s for us to fulfill visions—that’s what he wants us to do. And I gotta tell you, my friend, just let this challenge you: if you can’t write it out, it’s not really a goal.

If you can’t articulate it with a pen or with a keyboard, I would question it; it sounds more like a wish. Man, you're just vaguely hoping something similar happens or something happens. What is it you’re trying to see happen?

What is it, precisely? What happens in it? Who’s there?

How does it take place? What does it feel like? What is happening in that instance when you're like this?

What is that thing? That’s a crystal-clear goal. That’s what we need to get clarity about.

I know there are different seasons depending on what season of life we're in, and we have different levels of maturity, and so that's gonna shape what our goals are. But we've got to get crystal clear: What do you want? What are you trying to do?

What is the thing that you feel like God has birthed into your imagination? Get concrete about it. At least if we’re concrete about it, even if we’re wrong, he can shape it a little bit; he can sand that thing down.

But it’s hard to sand jello; when it's so vague, it slips right through your fingers. How's that gonna work? If you want him to shape it and direct it and guide it, get clear about it!

What is this thing? So maybe for you, if it’s a spiritual goal, you’re saying, "I’m going to give the full tithe by the end of the first quarter. That’s what I’m gonna do.

" That’s an awesome, mature spiritual goal. I want to do that. Maybe if it’s relational, you say, "I am going to disciple three people by being intentional, stepping out of my comfort zone, asking them out to coffee.

That’s my specific goal for this year. I’m gonna disciple three people. " Maybe for you, you've got some vocational goals: you say, "I am going to have an MBA by 2022.

" That is the goal; that’s not, "Someday I’ll do that. " It is, "I’m gonna do it by then. " Maybe for you, it's a ministry goal.

Maybe you're saying, "Hey, this year is gonna be the first year I’m gonna serve, even if nobody else does. I’m gonna serve whether my family wants to. .

. " My ride wants to. I'm not gonna serve when it's convenient; I'm just gonna be a person who shapes their heart by serving.

I'm just deciding that's a goal, and I'm starting in February. That's what I'm doing. My friends, you see the power of those—that those are specific.

Man, those aren't hopes; that's actually what you're saying is going to happen. And now God can guide it. We need this important characteristic of self-governance if we're ever going to do this.

We need it to be a marker of us, and if we're gonna walk wisely, that means we're going to manage our time, which leads us to schedule. It's the last one we got! We've got our vision, we've got our goals.

Remember what the vision was? The vision was the picture of the cake on the box. The goals are saying these are the ingredients that it takes to make a cake.

But then we've got the schedule. This is where I'm going to write it in my calendar or type it into my calendar. I'm purchasing eggs on Wednesday—this is when I'm gonna do it.

It's not just, "I will do it. " It's, "I'm gonna do it then. " Here are the steps; here's when I'm going to do it.

It's on my calendar. That's how we're supposed to understand scheduling. Your schedule is a specific plan to carry out the tasks that lead to your goals.

I see we can't be effective in achieving the vision if we don't get serious about managing our time. And I just gotta tell you, sweet church, that the world does not do this very well, especially Christians. Everybody just wants to be led by the Lord for everything.

Can I warn you? When you squander time, you are squandering the vision. When you squander hours, you are squandering what God wants to do.

Like, you're holding back what could have been and replacing it with who knows what—this, that, or the other thing, whatever it is that you are doing. Why does God need to teach us this? Why does it have to be a skill that we learn?

Why does it have to be that God helps us with this? Psalm 90:12 says it this way: this is Moses. Now, Moses has seen a lot of action in his life; okay?

He’s an old man now, writing to his God, and he says the curious thing for a guy who's seen a lot: "So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. " He says, "God, even though I've seen you do stuff like part the Red Sea, take down an entire nation of Egypt, and lead us right up to the brink of the promised land, I still feel, even though I've been given so many years, I still feel like I've got a lot to learn about numbering my days, and I need you to teach me. " I don't just need to know skills.

I don't need to go to the best Egyptian schools. Moses did that, but that's not all he needed. He says, "God, I need you to teach me this internal wisdom, this character idea.

" And here's why, my friends: because we can learn skills of time management, and we should. That's part of it, and that's something we get better at. If you'll just start, for those of you who are a little bit afraid of that, if you'll just start—it's just like learning an instrument; it's just like learning anything new.

The more you do it, the better you're gonna get at it. But there's more to it than that, because there's a character issue. There’s something in our heart that resists accountability, that resists responsibility, that just wants to do whatever la-la-la we want to do.

And so we say, "Jesus, I need you to teach me what it means to be self-governed so that there's an internal discipline. " I don't need anybody to tell me what to do. Now, that I'm close to feedback, I'm wide open; but what you're saying in that moment is, "I don't need anyone to tell me what to do because I'm already convinced of what it's smart to do, and that is to be self-governed.

" If we're gonna do that, we've got to tie our goals to a schedule. We've got to get crystal clear about what that schedule or about what that goal is. And then we've got to get crystal clear about what the schedule is.

And here's the final thing that you need to watch out for, and that is just the tyranny of the urgent. Because especially those of us who have a little bit more "people pleaser" in us— or maybe you just haven't; maybe we all have the same amount—you just need to put yours to death a little bit more. That people-pleaser thing in you is if someone's gonna come along with a whim, and you're gonna want to play Savior for a minute.

Someone’s gonna come along and say, "Will you be my genie from Aladdin and just do this for me? " And you need to be— and it's not that emergencies don't come along; it's not that spirit-led moments don't come along. God brings us those, and we're supposed to help people.

But if you are busy doing everybody else's whims and priorities, you don't have time to do the schedule you pre-decided you were going to do to get the goals that God gave you as part of the vision to begin with. So we've just got to make a decision. Hey, all leaders need to get this down in your spirit.

And if you're not a leader, maybe this will make you one. You are! Going to need to disappoint people.

Yep, I must say it again because you should more, but more people should have said, "Well, like Carla did, you are going to need to disappoint people. " The win of your life is not to keep everybody happy; the win of your life is to access the God-given vision that He gave, because they're not going to be at your audit, precious. I'm sorry, they ain't gonna be there.

And so, that's what we need: a listening ear to the Holy Spirit. But we need to watch out for those little thieves of productivity. Here's what I'll say about it: You can't talk with passion about your destiny and talk with looseness about your time.

You can't talk with passion about your destiny and talk with looseness about your time. So let's get real specific. Let's start here in the first month of the year.

Let's spend this month—we're gonna get into some prayer this coming month. So next week, here's what's gonna happen: You're gonna be given a little book. Lee, how many like free stuff?

You don't even know what it is yet, but you like free stuff. How many like that? We're gonna give everybody who comes next week one of these books.

This is a 21-day prayer guide. So especially if you're like, "I kinda know how to pray, but not really," come and get this free thing. Bring people that like free stuff.

We're gonna go on a 21-day journey of prayer and fasting. Does that mean we're gonna fast the whole time? No, but it means as a church, we're gonna consecrate the first month of the year to Jesus, and we're gonna ask for vision.

We're gonna pray: Would you connect our priorities to our calendar, not just to whatever we whimsically feel like? Hey Carter, I don't know, man, I'm afraid if I get a schedule, well, then I'll miss it one day and be all jacked up. Let me spare you some suspense: You're gonna miss it, and it's okay, because you'll still get like 80 percent more done with something written down than you will if you just try to keep it right up here.

How many know that's true? So in other words, you're gonna say, "When am I gonna do the things that lead to the spiritual goal? When am I gonna do the things that lead to this vocational goal?

When am I gonna do the things that lead to this recreational goal? When are you going to do it? " So here's our challenge this week.

First, we're gonna pray. We're going to start to pray for us and for others for God-led vision. It's not all gonna be God, but we gotta have some place to start: "God, give us vision.

" Number two, we're gonna be looking for places to connect the goals of that vision to the calendar, so that we can get an actual schedule that will be the steps that lead to that. So let me just ask you this question: What would happen for you over the next five years or the next ten years if you got really fiery about vision? Even if Carter, I don't even know what the vision is.

Okay, take anything you do know, anything at all that maybe is possibly, probably God, and just start walking that direction. What would happen in your life, in your family, in our community, in our church if we just all got insane about this and started to move forward with deliberateness? Quit perishing, quit coming apart into chaos, and just believe that God was gonna do incredible things.

What would happen, do you think? I think it might be pretty awesome. But here's the key: I hear this like a coach—if this is for you, if any of this is for you, here's what we need to decide together right now: Get up off your blessed assurance and get after it.

Now, to do that, we're gonna need some help. So let's bow our heads. Hey Jesus, wow, amazing stuff, mysterious stuff—stuff that part of us gets and is excited about, part of us dreads, part of us doesn't feel like we get it.

And we know that's okay because You're there guiding us through the stuff we don't understand. But we do ask this month in particular, this year going forward, for this people, for those watching online, for those listening. We're praying a special anointing that You would come in power, that You would give us God-sent imaginative vision through all kinds of things: through suggestions, through reading the Word, through just ideas that seem to pop into our mind out of nowhere.

Being sober about it, knowing not all of it is You, but God, would You give us a heart that beats faster to see God's plans come in each one of those areas of our lives? And then God, help us to grow—even if we only grow a little—help us to grow with regard to managing our time so that we can present You with a great return on Your investment. In Christ's name, Amen.