Latest / Time with God with John North / Give Your Time To God Pt. 1

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Give Your Time To God Pt. 1 · Time with God with John North

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Good morning. Isn't it great how God keeps reaching out
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: to us in our lives day after day, week after week,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: year after year? God is always there, reaching out to us.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: He loves us so much, and that constant loving care
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: that takes the initiative in our lives just makes us
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: want to love Him too, doesn't it?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Well, uh, this week, I want to talk to you about.
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  Speaker 1: The three most precious things in our lives. So often
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: for us, our time is so precious, our money is
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: so precious, and our relationships are so precious. And what
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: we need to learn to do in life is to
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: give all of those things to God. And this week
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I want to focus on the first one of those,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: giving your time to God.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Let me read you a few verses out of the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: book of James in the Bible, starting in chapter 4,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: verse 13.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: He says, come now, you who say today or tomorrow
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: we will go to such and such a town and
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: spend a year there and trade and make a profit.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
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  Speaker 1: What is your life, for you are a mist that
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  Speaker 1: appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and do this or that.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I wanted to spend a few days looking at
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: this passage with you, but uh I remember at one
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: time reading of an interview that someone had with the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: famous evangelist who recently died, Billy Graham.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And they were asking him in all the amazing experiences
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  Speaker 1: he had had all over the world, meeting with many
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of the world's rulers, close relationships with many of the
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  Speaker 1: presidents of the United States.
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  Speaker 1: What was the most amazing thing that he had experienced
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  Speaker 1: in life?
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  Speaker 1: With hardly a pause, he answered the brevity of life.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Well, brevity isn't a word we use all the time,
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  Speaker 1: but it just means the briefness, how short life is.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: That was the thing that had most amazed him in life.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It's true, isn't it? When you're young, you don't really
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  Speaker 1: think about that very much. You, it's like when you
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: go to a, a day-night cricket match, and when you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: start off, your team comes in 2nd, and they, they've
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: got a run rate that's in front of them. They
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: have to get so many runs per inning.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: In order to win the match, and at the beginning
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: it seemed so easy, of course, anyone could get that
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: run rate.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: But as the match goes on and the innings start
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: to run down, you realise, uh, that run rate is
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: getting higher and higher, and you think, no, we need
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: more time for our team to win. Well, that's how
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: life is, isn't it?
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Uh, when you sit down to take an exam at uni, uh,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: you've got 2 hours for your exam, it seems like
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: heaps of time. But as the time starts ticking by,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: you realise actually 2 hours is not very long to
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: finish this exam. You start writing more fast, thinking more frantically.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Well, the Bible says this.
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  Speaker 1: It says, all flesh.
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  Speaker 1: Is like grass.
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  Speaker 1: And its beauty is like the flower of the field.
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  Speaker 1: The grass withers. The flower fades.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: But the word of the Lord abides forever.
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  Speaker 1: And what I want you to recognise today as you
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: think about time in your life, is that time is fleeting.
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  Speaker 1: It's going by so fast, before you know it, it's
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: going to be almost gone.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be negative or pessimistic. It's real.
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  Speaker 1: It's how life is. And whether you're young or middle
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: aged or old, you need to live your days with
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  Speaker 1: this awareness. Time is running out. I have a limited
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  Speaker 1: amount of time to do what pleases God, what honours
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  Speaker 1: God in this life before I go to be with Him.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Live your life for the things that count, because time
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: is short.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I'm John North.