Your Future Starts Now | Crossroads Church

Hey, my name is Kyle, so glad you're with us today, joining us on a great weekend, in part because you got a little extra elbow room because couples camp is happening right now. Got a thousand couples who are at our base camp property and their marriage is built into, so glad for them. In here today and online today though, you're joining us for a series we're in called Future You. And the premise of this series is very, very simple. It's basically do today what tomorrow you, the future you, will be thankful for. Very simple to understand, very easy to say, but very difficult to actually do, why? Because in addition to future you, there's a right now you, there's a right now me, and they are not friends most of the time. Just twice in the last month, I thought it was a good idea, right now me, thought it was a great idea to have late night wings and beer. And future me at 2 a.m. was not thankful for that decision when I woke up and had to make a run to the bathroom, right? That's what we do. Easy to say, but difficult to do, difficult to do. Now, today though, in this series, we're talking about the thing that I think has the potential to make future you more thankful than anything else in your life. And that is how you handle the most precious resource that you have.

Not money, but time, time. You know, God's view on time and his instructions on how to handle it are entirely counter-cultural, especially in the day and age that we live in. But if you and I can understand how to view time the way that God views time, how to handle it the way that he wants us to handle it, perhaps nothing has the potential to give us a more peaceful and impactful life than understanding time. On the other hand, if we fail to understand God's view of time, we fail to handle it in the way that he wants us to handle it, nothing has the potential to rack up this compounding interest almost, this debt of anxiety and worry that one day future you will have to deal with, will. And I've been thinking a lot about time lately in my life. It seems like every time I look in the mirror, I notice more gray hairs in my beard. Every time I turn a little too fast to the side screen and I catch a glimpse of myself, I see more wrinkles at the corners of my eyes. It's this thing where time is just going faster and faster and faster. It feels like yesterday when I met Sarah for the first time and we went on our first date. It feels like yesterday when we took a trip on the first ever go trip to South Africa together

and built into the community there. Feels like yesterday that we got married, that we walked down the aisle, that we said I do in front of our friends and our family. It feels like yesterday when my first child was born and three babies and three and a half years in diapers and bedtime and cutting every bite of food. That feels like yesterday. It feels like yesterday when I was baptizing both of my boys at Crossroads Florence, six and eight years old, giving their lives to Jesus. It feels like yesterday, but all of that was years and years and years ago. They're growing up fast. You know, you only get so many summers with your kids. Well, I've only got three more left with my oldest until he moves out of the house. When I was younger, older, wiser people told me that this would happen, that there'd be a time in my life when time started to speed up, when it became like water, impossible to hold in my hands, no matter how tightly I gripped it, it would just slip through my fingers and be gone. Be gone. I don't know how much time I have left. I just know that it won't last forever, which has me asking these questions. How am I spending my time? Am I making the most of my time? At the end of my days, will I be thankful for whatever I do

with the rest of the time that I have left? Am I wasting time? Am I rushing through time? And more than anything, is there any way to slow time down? Because I know that by tonight, another day will be gone. We'll be gone. ♪ And time is never time at all ♪ ♪ And you can never ever leave ♪ ♪ Without leaving a piece of you ♪ ♪ And our lives, they are forever changed ♪ be the same, but you change the less you feel. Believe, believe in me, believe. And life can change, but you're not stuck in vain. We're not the same, but different tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, so bright. And you, you know you're never sure, but you're sure you could be right, if you held yourself up to the light. And the embers never fade, your city by the lake, the place where you were born. But believe, believe in me, believe. In the resolute urgency of now, and if you believe there's not a chance, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight. We'll crucify the insincere tonight, and the impossible that's possible tonight. Believe in me as I believe in you. God, that's our prayer. We know that we have today, and we know that by tonight, another day will be gone. God, you've given us this time, and our ask is that you'd help us see the time you've given us with your eyes, and you direct us to spend it according to your ways, God. For the blessing of your kingdom and the blessing that we know returns on us when we follow you. Give us the courage to see and to follow. Amen. Amen. How about that? Smashing pumpkins in church. Wow. Every 90s kid is like, that was a time capsule gift to me. I'm amazing. So glad for that. So glad. Talking about time today, like we've been saying, time, it is the most precious and the most fickle resource that we have. The only time that any of us know we're ever going to have again is the time we have right now in this moment. Tomorrow's not guaranteed. Nothing is.

And the question is, how are we going to spend our time? And we only get one shot, by the way. You get one shot at spending the time that you have today, and by tomorrow, that time is gone. There's no refunds. There's no exchanges. There's no cashback programs. It's just spent. None of us knows how much time we have. No one can buy more time. None of us feel like we have enough, and one day all of us will run out. How is that for depressing? Welcome to church. But we got to start there with this thing about time that we don't like to say out loud and we like to think about. One day it will run out and we will have none, no more left. What do we do with our time? We know it's not a coincidence that God actually has a lot to say about time. You might be surprised if you were to read through the Bible, just how much of Scripture is about the time that we have and how we spend it. In fact, the very first sentence of the very first recorded teaching that we have from Jesus is not, love your neighbor as yourself. The very first sentence of the very first recorded teaching of Jesus is not, here's how to pray. The very first sentence of the very first recorded teaching of Jesus says this, Mark 1 15. What kind of time is Jesus talking about? Like, hey guys, time has come, it is lunchtime, it is noon, let's go. No, that's not what he's talking about. In the Greek language, Koine Greek, that's common Greek that the New Testament was originally written in, there are two words for time. One is chronos. or chronology as in sequence time, and it's how you and I tend to think about time. It's the answer to the question, what time is it? We might think in the back in the day, they didn't have our watches and our phones and all of the clocks that we have around, so they didn't really have this time. That would be untrue.

The ancient people are very, very similar to us in ways I don't know that we always appreciate. They had time. Mark 15 tells us that Jesus died at 3 p.m., the ninth hour of the day. They were very aware of chronological time. When I was in Athens filming for our run journey that we just completed, I walked past this water clock in the middle of the town square, this crazy water clock. This thing was built in the fourth century B.C. to tell time in ancient Athens. It worked by controlling a flow of water into a tank. The water level would rise, a float would sit on top of that, and it would move an indicator on a dial. When it got to the top, the whole thing would drain. That's basically how your toilet works, by the way, today. Same technology. Now, that kind of time is not the time that God's most concerned about in the Bible. It's not punctuality. That's not what he's talking about. Instead, God is concerned about a different kind of time and worried about us flushing it down the toilet. It's a time called kairos, and it's the word used here when Jesus says the time has come. He says the kairos has come. And kairos means a significant moment, a turning point, or a changing of times. And so don't miss this.

The very first sentence of the very first recorded teaching of Jesus is an invitation for you and I to change our watches, to adjust our clocks from our time to his time. What would that mean, and what would that look like? And by default, all of us, we operate according to our own sense of time, which is a very big problem for me because my sense of time is terrible, absolutely, abysmally awful, awful. My parents are actually in town, and they're at this service. They could tell you all kinds of stories of me being late for things and I had no idea what time it is. Still to this day, I never know what time it is. When I take my kids to school in the morning, every morning, we're supposed to get in the car at 7 a.m., I am always the last one there, and I'm shocked. What time, oh my gosh, what time is it? Sarah will tell me, she'll be like, you know, Kyle, we need to leave in five minutes. And in my brain, I go, great, I probably have time for like a workout, maybe a shower, maybe do some yard work, build a table. I'm like, I have no concept of time. I have legitimate time blindness. And I know there's my time-blind friends in here. You're like, I feel you, Kyle, that's great. And all you punctual people are judging me

because you're like, we're awesome at time. It's too bad for you, you suck at it. We're great at time. Okay, listen, no, you're not. You're not as good at time as you think you are. None of us are, in fact. I'll prove it to you. Let's take a little group test on time. I want you to give the answers, say them out loud. Sites, say them out loud with me. Ready? What is a year? 365 days, awesome, great job. Okay, what is a day? 24 hours, you guys are doing so good. I'm so proud of you. Okay, what is an hour? 60 minutes, oh my gosh, maybe you're gonna ace this test. What's a minute? 60 seconds, perfect, we're almost there. What's a second? 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that corresponds to, it's all saying together, we know this, between the two electron spin energy levels of the ground state of the C-137 cesium atom, yes! We really fell off a cliff there, guys. We were doing great and then no one knew what a second is. Why do I bring this up? To make a point, we don't know as much about time as we think we do.

We think that we're experts on time. God, I know what should be happening right now in my life. I know what should be going on. I know what should happen next. I can see all the sequence. I can map it out in my brain. We think we're experts, but we don't know the first thing about time. By the way, that's actually what a second is. Some of you are still confused. You're like, what did we just read? Literal definition of a second. I know, it's crazy, it's crazy. See, we're not as good as we think. In fact, when it comes to time, you and I have two big issues that are holding us back from the peaceful and impactful life that God wants for us. Number one is that we're impatient about tomorrow. Whatever it is, we think it should be happening in our own timing, right now, today, and tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then the day after that. We have this picture. And the damaging effect of being impatient about tomorrow is that we live today with this constant state of anxiety and worry and fear and frustration about our lives and about what's not happening and about what might happen next. And it's hurting us greatly. Two, second big issue that's holding us back. We're not present today.

We're often thinking about the things that are not here and not now. The effect of all that anxiety, all that worry, all that fear about the future is that we miss the moments today, the moments that are the most significant, the kairos moments, the turning point moments, which aren't the ones people put signs on and mail invitations for. It's not the graduation parties. We're there for those, but it's the significant moments with the people who are most important to us, the moments when our kids want to talk to us. But we're too busy. We're checking texts, we're checking emails, we're thinking about that thing that's next. We're not present, and it's killing us. It's killing us. And Jesus gives this invitation. He says, the time has come. Change, change. That's the word repent. Repent and believe the good news about the timing that God has for your life. That's the invitation. Well, how would you do that? How would you adjust your clock to live on God's time? Three steps. Number one, believe that timing is the Father's business, not yours. I told you the first ever teaching about Jesus was about time. So was the last one. If you go to the book of Acts, which was written by Luke, four authorized biographies of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, same Luke, he wrote the book of Acts,

and he records the very last words of Jesus before he goes up to heaven. Here it is in the message translation. Acts 1.6. He asks, Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time? He told them, you don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business. What you'll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit's come on you, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world. These were his last words. As they watched, he was taken up and disappeared in a cloud. His last words. You don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business. What you'll get is the Holy Spirit. Now, I think that would have got a lot more claps and amens and applauses if he had said, you know what you'll get? Timing. You'll get to be in control. You won't get the Holy Spirit. We've all been like, we understand, that's fine, we'll take timing. That sounds way better. Way better. That's not what he said. Why? Why? Well, because we're not the ones who are qualified to plan time. He is.

He has a holistically unique and different relationship to time than you and I have. We're caught inside of time. We can remember our past, and oftentimes we're held back by our past. We have trouble being present in the moment, and we have no idea what's going to happen in the future, even if we think we know what should happen in the future. We have none. But God sits outside of time. Time is literally a dimension that he created and is not bound by. Here's how 2 Peter 3.8 describes his relationship with time. It says, It's a picture of God sitting outside of time. That means when God views all of history, all of cosmic history, all of your life history, he sits outside and he can see the beginning to the end and beyond. And so he decides that he is most qualified to be the planner of time. He's the planner. He says this over and over and over again in Scripture, but I think oftentimes you and I, we miss it, and because we miss it, we live with this anxiety we don't need to have. It says this in Ephesians 1.9, as a plan for the right time. You know that God has a plan? You know that God has a plan for the right time? And not just, by the way, the big universal scale stuff, not just a plan for the right time of like, you know, when should Jesus be born? He's got that plan. He nailed that timing. Not just that, but for your individual life. Some of us are in here, we're newer to faith, or maybe we've been in faith for a while,

and we have this constant question of like, how close of attention does God pay to me? You know, like, is God aware of what's going on in my life? Is he aware of the stress that I have? Is he aware of the anxiety that I have? Is he aware of what I've been waiting on that's not here yet? Is he aware? And the answer is loud and clear, yes, yes. In fact, the Scripture says that he's aware of every word that's on your tongue before you speak it. He's aware of every hair on your head. Psalm 139 says, Your eyes saw me when I was formless. All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began. Friends, when it comes to your life, God is not haphazardly going about the business of the plan for your life. God is not shooting from the hip and hoping it works out. God has never once a single time been caught off guard by something in your life. God has never once been late. God has never once been early. God has only and only ever will be exactly, precisely on time. It doesn't feel that way to us because what we're most concerned about is our own comfort. God's not most concerned about that. God's concerned about your character developing, and He's willing to let you and I be uncomfortable for a while longer if it takes that. Why? Because He's patient with us. He's patient. 2 Peter 3, 9 says, God is not slow in keeping His promises, as some have understand slowness. Instead, He's patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. God is patient with us. If He seems slow, friend, He's not slow. He's being patient with you. It's convicting to me when I think about timing and praying on timing.

I spend more time asking God to adjust His plan to my plan when it comes to timing. God, if you can make this happen now, it's taking too long, that'd be great. I spend way more time doing that than I do surrendering to His plan. Saying, God, I trust you. This isn't what I would have picked, but I just know that you're the better planner because you set outside time, and I don't know the first thing about it. If that's convicting to you, a simple prayer, a way you can apply that is you can just say, God, I believe that timing is your business, not mine, and I trust you. I trust your plan. Step number two, how to live on God's time, is patiently trust God for tomorrow. Patiently. This, again, is hard for me because I am bad at patience. Very bad at patience. I don't know what time it is, and I'm bad at patience. Every morning I make coffee, and I fill up my little coffee mug, and I go to the couch, and I have my quiet time. I pray, and I read scripture. And every morning before I finish the coffee, the coffee gets cold. There's a moment I sip it, I'm like, ugh, cold coffee, terrible. So I get up, I go to the microwave, I put it in the microwave, and I press the one glorious button. I don't know why a microwave has any other buttons. Add 30 seconds. Oh, whoever invented that button, you are a genius. Nobel Prize. Let's celebrate you. If that button didn't exist, I'd have to press three, zero, start. That's triple the buttons. So much more time. So I press my add 30 seconds, and then what do I do? Then I wait until you take down 17, 16, 15. In about four seconds, I press cancel, pull my coffee out. Why? Because I'm tired of waiting. That's why.

I'm impatient. I'm impatient. In a baseline, all of us have this natural impatience in us that we have to push through if we want to see and handle time the way that God wants us to and the way that will bless us the most. There's lots of different definitions for patience, but I think biblical patience, very simply, biblical patience is trusting God for tomorrow. Not just tomorrow, tomorrow, but every single tomorrow that I might have after that. It's the opposite of fear. It's faith, trusting Him with the future that He alone controls. This is a massive point in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament. If you go back into the Old Testament, one of the biggest stories there is the story of the exodus, when the nation of Israel leaves slavery in Egypt, and they go out into the desert, and they follow God to the promised land, and they get out there, and they're all hungry. They don't have any food. As they're complaining to God, we don't have any food, and God's like, great, I got it. I will give you this thing called manna. Manna is miracle bread. He's like, what I'm not going to do is give you, like, a semi-truck delivery for a month worth of manna. That might make sense to you, but I'm not going to do that. Instead, every day it will rain bread, and every day I want you to go out and pick up just enough for a day. Here's His instructions in Exodus 16, 4. The test here is, will you collect just enough for a day? Not more for tomorrow. Not thinking ahead.

Not just maybe, you know, I might be hungry, and I wake up in the morning, I'm going to put a little bit next to my bed and have that. He goes, don't do that. That's the test. Will you trust me that tomorrow there will be more bread? And the people hear this, and they're like, we will not. And they gather extra. Here's what it says, Exodus 16, 19. And it bread worms. and stank." God's like, it rots. You can't keep it. Why would he do that? Why would he do that? Wouldn't it be easier for God if he's like, you know, just once a month I got to remember to put bread on the ground. That's awesome for me. Once a month the people they just know they got a whole day gathering bread and they don't have to think about it. They just know that they have bread tomorrow and next week they would just know that. And what God's doing here, he's saying, you know, I don't want you to trust tomorrow because you have it in control, because you've got what you need in your storehouses. No, I want you to trust tomorrow because it's in my hands. It's in my hand. This is the same lesson that Jesus gives us in the New Testament when he teaches the Lord's Prayer, how to pray. This is Matthew 6, 9. This then is how you should pray, says Jesus. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Daily bread. You know, if you go through all the teachings of Jesus, everything he ever says, you will not find a single time where Jesus ever says, also pray for tomorrow's bread. Never says that. In fact, he never instructs us to pray about tomorrow, ever. But most of my prayer life is about tomorrow. What's gonna happen next, and what the kids need, and what I need. That's most of my time and energy, and it's not, not, not what God instructs us to pray about. What about you? When you pray, when you talk to God, are you focused on today and making the most of the time he gave you today, and redeeming the time today? Or are you giving him your plans, and hot tips, and what he should be doing in your life tomorrow?

Jesus doesn't say pray for tomorrow's bread. He says pray for today. Today give us the bread. See, God's goal is that we patiently wait on him for tomorrow, and not worry about it at all. Later on in that same chapter at Matthew 6, Jesus says, can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day is enough trouble of its own. He goes, don't worry about it. Don't, don't think about it. Don't think about it. Step three for how to live on God's time is to practice presence today. What does it mean to be present? Well, to be present is the lost art of being where I am with who's there with me. That's it. And this is a really hard thing to do in our world because we have all these devices and all these things that are constantly pulling our attention away. We have this thing in our pocket that's always buzzing. There's a work email, there's a text message from a friend, there's a notification from the news headline, and if I don't read the news, man, the world's gonna fall apart. I'm not gonna know what to do. No, no. God says be present today. Practice presence today. I think if Jesus were to show up in bodily form and spend a day with you walking around, I think the thing that would stick out to you the most actually wouldn't be all the sick people that he healed along the way, though he'd probably do that. It wouldn't be the time he walks on water when you get to the edge of the river and you're like, Jesus, can we just take a little stroll out? He's like, all right, fine. Let's go. Let's walk out. It wouldn't be that. I think the thing that would stick out the most about the Son of God is how incredibly present he would be with you. How the entire day it was like no one else existed but you. There was no other concern in his brain, as if the billions of other humans, of the cosmos, none of that existed. None of it needed his attention. All of it was on you. You know, one of the prophetic names for the Messiah that they were waiting on, Jesus they're waiting on, is the name Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God with us. God present. His attention on us. And he wants us to have that same thing, the perfect presence. I actually think that's why he came in a timing he did. Which he says is the right timing. Galatians 4.4, when the time set had fully come, God sent his Son. Scripture's very clear. This timing of

God. Not an accident. Not an accident. But kind of strange, if you think about it. You know, why come 2,000 years ago? Why not come in the year 2026? Think of all the advantages that speed gives right now. When he's walking on the water, Peter could have been in the boat just live streaming on his iPhone. Look at this everybody. Whoo! Here's Jesus. Let's do a little selfie moment. When he's doing miracles, that could have been going out on TikTok. Those things would have gone viral and gone crazy. Why? Why not do it now? I think the answer is because the speed of now is not the speed of God. The speed back then was the speed of God. There's a Japanese theologian who's done a lot of thinking and writing about this, Kosuke Koyama. And Koyama says that Jesus came when he came because that's when the speed of humanity matched God's speed. We have that term, you know, God's speed. God's speed to you, God's speed. And what we generally mean is like, go fast and don't die. That's what God's speed means. But Koyama says that's not God's speed. God's speed is the speed of humanity at the time when Jesus came and lived that speed. And that speed was three miles per hour because that's the speed of walking. In fact, if you look at the teachings of Jesus, a lot of them, most of them are when he's walking from place to place, talking to the people that he's with. That's how fast humanity went, three miles an hour. Koyama wrote a book called Three Mile an Hour God. And he said this, God walks slowly because he is love.

If he's not, love would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It's an inner speed. It's a spiritual speed. It's a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is slow, yet it is Lord over all other speeds since it's the speed of love. That's what it means to be present, to slow down to the speed of love, to stop thinking about tomorrow, stop worrying about what comes next, stop living in the future moment and then what's gonna happen after this thing is over and instead to be present where you are. See, being present performs a miracle. Being present slows down time if you do it. If you don't, the cost is high. The cost is high. Most of us, we don't slow down time. We have a trouble being present. Because of that, we miss these sacred and these fleeting moments with the people who matter most in our lives. As a parent, you get about 18 summers with your kid in your house. You get about 18 of them. For me, most of those summers are gone. I got three left with Ben, four with Eli, six with Gracie. That's it.

I read this depressing staff that I wanna share with you right now if you like it. I'm gonna say, by the time your kid turns 18, you'll have spent 90% of the total time you're gonna spend with them ever. 90% gone, only 10% remains. It's sobering. See, but the thing is, most of us are so distracted that we miss these really important, really sacred, really meaningful Kairos-type moments that we're meant to be present for. We miss things like the last time our kid asked us to read them a bedtime story. We miss things like the last time they asked us to play with them, the last time they wanna snuggle on the couch. Instead, we just notice one day that it stopped, and we go, when did that happen? And how on earth did I miss it? How did I miss it? You know, years ago, when my kids were small, an older, wiser person, they told me, you know, Kyle, one day, I know this is hard to believe, but one day, you'll give anything to relive one of these days when your kids are small. And I was like, you're crazy. You are nuts. Right now, all I'm doing is changing diapers and cutting every bite of food and putting their clothes on them,

and then the clothes come off. I'm like, where did you put your clothes, you know? I give anything to have one more of these days? And then Sarah went away for a weekend retreat. She got a hotel, and I had the kids all by myself on a weekend, and I was like, oh no, this is, this is going to be hard. And I woke up Saturday morning and I remembered this idea that one day, I'll wish, I'll give anything to come back and have one more day when they were small. And so in my prayer time, I said, God, I wanna live today as if it's that day. And so all day long, I just imagined that I was actually 80 years old, and that morning I woke up and I asked God to send me back in time and give me one more day with my kids, and that day was that day. And I lived the whole day with them, present with them. I wasn't thinking about what was gonna happen next. I wasn't worried about my work calendar. I wasn't thinking about the house projects I had to get done. I wasn't worried about, yeah, I was just with them. When they wanted to read another book, I was like, awesome, let's read another book. When they wanted to go on a walk outside, awesome, let's go on a walk outside. When they wanted to stay up past bedtime, awesome, let's stay up past bedtime. It was one of the best days I've ever had with them,

because it was one of the days where I was actually fully, totally present with the people who matter most in my life. I was with them. We want that to continue in our lives, and a few years ago, Sarah and I, we read this book, and when I say I read this book, what I mean is my friend read this book and told me about it. which is the best way to read books. Matt Welty read this book, it's called Die With Zero, and it's actually a financial planning book from an expert on finances. And what's fascinating about this book is this guy actually says, you know what you should do? Spend your money now. Not be irresponsible for the future, like take care of things, set yourself up. But he said the problem with most people is that they save all of this money that they're never gonna use. They die with a full bank account, that means nothing. They can't invest it in the people who matter most. He said you basically misalign the peak of the time you have, the people who matter most, with your peak financial time. And eventually there's a point in your life where you're physically unable, and no matter how much money you have, you couldn't buy time with these people because they have busy lives, they're doing all of their stuff. And so he said instead, spend money now before it's too late. Making memories, being present with the people who matter most. And so Sarah and I, this is going back three or four years, we made a spreadsheet of the year, our age, and our kids' age, and we just mapped out all the experiences that we ever talked about wanting to do with them.

Because you know, you have these conversations like, oh man, it'd be awesome to go hike the Grand Canyon. Now it'd be amazing. Well, we put it on the calendar and we decided to spend against it. Will it mean we have less later on? Yes, yes it will. But I promise you, I promise you later on, I will not trade that memory and that moment and that connection for all the gold in the entire world. Be present now. Be present now. This guy in the book, Bill Perkins, he said this, he said, we all have at least the potential to make more money in the future and can never go back and recapture time that is now gone. So it makes no sense to let opportunities pass us by for fear of squandering our money. Squandering our lives should be a much greater worry. Your biggest fear ought to be wasting your life and time, not am I going to have X number of dollars when I'm 80? Yeah, it doesn't mean be irresponsible. It just means capturing the moment. There's a sense, you know, if that feels irresponsible, well, you worship the God who says, don't worry about tomorrow. Trust me for tomorrow. Instead, spend today on the things that matter most. Listen, I'm telling you, it is possible. It is possible to do time God's way. It's possible to break the cycle of anxiety in your life. It's possibly present with the people who matter most to you. If, if, if we will redeem the time that we have. The apostle Paul, who we followed in the run journey, put it this way in Ephesians 5, he says,

see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Redeem the time. Friend, I don't know where you are in your life. Maybe some of the things I've been saying, you're just guilt and regrets are piling up in your heart. Maybe you're just like, man, I wish I had taken advantage of the time and now I'm just feeling horrible. Guess what? It's not too late. It's not too late. God says you have today and you can redeem today. You can redeem it. Jesus says the time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. Believe the good news. See God's view of time is not bad news. It's not meant to make us feel guilty and awful and all things. It's meant to be a promise that you don't have to live the way your neighbors live. You don't have to have the guilt and anxiety and all the things that sit on them. You don't have to have that. You can have the peace that passes understanding. You can have a life of total impact. Maybe you're in a place where you're newer to faith or you're just coming around church. I would just encourage you, if you haven't given your life to Jesus, your time to him, you can do that right now. You can just say, Jesus, I give you my entire life. I give you my past and ask you to cover it in forgiveness.

I give you today and ask you to redeem it. And I give you my future. If you pray that prayer or any like that, I highly encourage you to get baptized. We're actually doing baptisms next weekend. There's info sessions after every service at every site. You can go check out what that means and see if that might be right for you. Highly encourage you to do that. And I want to make one last point. I know there are people every weekend at Crossroads who come in here and some of us are in a spot where our life feels calm and it feels good and we can absorb teachings like this and we can apply them. And others of us are in the spot where our life is just in crisis. Our life is in a moment where we go, man, Kyle, that's nice, all those things about time, but I'm just dying here. Things are just terrible here. And if that's you, I just want to call your attention back to a verse that you might've heard read at the very beginning of today's service. It's actually one of my favorites in the entire Bible because it gives my favorite name for Jesus in the entire Bible. If you go through it, there are about 198 different names in the entire Bible. Idols for Jesus, awesome ones like Lamb of God and King of Kings and Prince of Peace.

And I love all those names, but they're not my favorite. My favorite is the name, The End. This is what it says in Revelation 21. Then the one seated on the throne said, look, I'm making everything new. He also said, write, because these words are faithful and true. Then he said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the omega. I am the beginning and I am the end. Friend, I don't know what's going on in your life, but if it doesn't look like Jesus standing up on his throne saying, I'm making everything new, all of the problems, all the pain, all the stuff going on, I'm making all of it brand new, squeaky clean and shiny. If it's not that, great news, you're not at the end. You're somewhere in the middle and God's not done. His time and His plan that He says, He promises, I know every day, I wrote them out in my book. I know every word on your tongue. I know every hair on your head. His plan is not done until you reach the end. Until you reach the end. Before you run out, close your eyes. I wanna give you a moment just to spend a bit of time reflecting in prayer with God, just about 30 seconds or so before you run out. If we don't do this with the things that we hear in here, it's worthless to hear.

We wanna change in our lives, we want change in our hearts. So would you just pause? If there was something in you today that maybe felt a poke or some level of conviction around being patient or trusting God with tomorrow, just have a quick conversation with God. You could say to Him, God, I trust you with tomorrow. I trust your plan. Maybe there was something in you that was convicted around the idea of being present with the people who matter most to you. Well, friend, you got today. You do have today, and it's not too late. Maybe there's someone God wants you to be fully present with today. Maybe they're sitting next to you. Maybe you're gonna go home and see them. Maybe later on today, you're gonna see them. Or maybe they're just a phone call away. Right now, you can just commit to God and say, God, I'm gonna be fully present with that person today, today. Father, thank you for the perspective that you have on time. Thank you for being the master of time. Thank you for planning out my life. I just say, you are the best one to do it. You can map out every one of my days, and I trust you that your plan is not only the right plan, it's the best plan, and it's the plan that one day,

future me will be thankful that you did in my life. Give us the courage to believe and the faith to follow you. Amen.