The Prodigal Son

• The Father never went looking for the son: "I will arise!" - Initiate a change.
• Ring represents:
• Authority
• Name
• Access
• Death to God is when you leave Access and go to employment.
• If you want to be free of the "pig-system", you need to first come to your senses. It does not begin with going to anyone else. It begins with you. The first step to end of poverty is self-visitation.

Redeeming Time-1

Time: The Common Gift to Man

• All humans on earth have this in common: TIME.
• What I am, and what I become depends on how I use my TIME!
• The billionaire and the beggar both have 24 hours in a day.
• TIME cannot be stopped but humans can control its use.
• Have I used my past years, months, days, hours effectively?

The Advantage of a New Year/Season

• An opportunity to redefine priorities.
• An opportunity to clarify purpose.
• An opportunity to refine my life's vision.
• An opportunity to re-establish worthwhile goals.
• An opportunity to bury the past and move into a new future.

Time is a blessing or a curse depending on how I use it.

Your Life Time

• Time is life. 
• Life is defined as Time.
• Life is measured in Time.
• Life is determined by Time.
• Life is lived out in Time.
• Life is qualified by Time.
• The passing of Time is the passing of Life.
• Life stops when Time stops.
• Death is life leaving Time.
• Time is temporary, life is eternal.

What is Time

• Time is an interruption in eternity.
• Time is a small measure of eternity.
• Time is a piece of eternity.
• Time is a slice of forever.
• Time is the limited period during which an action or process exists and takes place.
• Time is the measurement of space.

From Eternity into Time

Ecc.3:10-12

I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

• God matures everything in its time. There is time for maturity.
• God created time but He does not live in it. Therefore, when God speaks to us, we have to be careful as He is in eternity.
• If you make a mistake in eternity, it is an eternal mistake!

The Limitations of Time

Job 14:5-7

Man's days are determined; You have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed. So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired man.

• Time is determined.

Maximizing Your Days

Psalm 39:4-5 (NIV)

Show me, LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before You. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.

Psalm 39:4-6 (NKJV)

LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Surely every man walks about like a shadow; surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them.

And now Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You! Deliver me from all my transgressions; do not make me the reproach of the foolish.

Psalm 90:12 (NIV)
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Ecclesiastes 8:5-6 (NIV)
Whoever obeys command will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure. For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a person may be weighed down with misery.

The Measure of Time

• Time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, etc;
• Time measures life in yesterday, today and tomorrow.
• Whatever I went through is now in the past.
• Time separates the past from the future. 
• Time measures life in terms of seasons.
• Time protects us from living in a permanent condition.

The Equality Commodity of Time

• Time is the only commodity on earth given equally to each human being.
• Every human every day is given the same amount of time.
• What you become in life is determined by how you use your 24 hours.

Spending Time

• Time is the currency of life.
• Every human is given the same amount each day.
• Time like all currency must be spent.
• Time is used to buy life.
• You become whatever you spend your time buying.
• What you invest your time in, you become.

Abusing-Wasting Time

Just like money...

• Time can be stolen.
• Time can be abused.
• Time can be lost.
• Time can be squandered.
• Time can be appreciated.
• Time can depreciate.
• Time can be devalued.
• Time can be revalued.

Time is more important than money.

Where do I spend my time?

Who do I spend my time with?

What do I spend my time doing?

Do I use my time to give value?

Victims of Time

• You can never stop time.
• You can never control time.
• You can never resist time.
• You can never compromise with time.
• You can never repossess time.
• You can never buy time.
• You can never slow down time.
• You can never speed time up.
• Until death you are stuck in time.

Measuring Life in Time

Psalm 90:10

The length of our days is seventy years -- or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass away, and we fly away.

 

What To Do With Time

• You can manage time.
• You can use time.
• You can invest time.
• You can convert time.
• Time should be used to initiate, create, develop, build and add value to the Life that exists in it.
• Use time to fulfill your Divine Purpose.

Psychiatrist and the Corpse

"When we think of ourselves as fixed, unchanging entities, we then seek to act in alignment with that self-concept and are troubled when we don't."
Michael Neill

A man goes to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist asks him what's wrong.

The man says, "Isn't it obvious? I'm dead -- I'm a corpse."

The psychiatrist says, "But you walked in here -- can corpses walk?"

The man says, "Haven't you ever seen a zombie movie? Of course corpses can walk."

So the psychiatrist says, "But we're talking -- do corpses talk?"

The man says, "What kind of a question is that? Of course corpses can talk!"

Finally, the psychiatrist gets an idea. With a crafty look in his eye, he asks the man, "Do corpses bleed?"

The man thinks for a moment, and then says "No, no, corpses don't bleed. After all, we're dead, so we can't bleed."

Before the man can react, the psychiatrist reaches over and pricks him on the hand with a needle and a small drop of blood emerges from under his skin. The man stares at the blood in amazement.

"Well I'll be damned," the man says. "Corpses do bleed!"

When we see that our  character... is made up of the true constants of Mind, Consciousness and Thought, we are free to think anything, feel anything, and do anything in any situation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-neill/the-fourth-principle_b_8219216.html

Waiting and Dating-Part 1

• Habits and attitudes established during the dating years generally carry over into marriage.

Principles of Dating Readiness

1. You are not ready to date until you are fully aware of both the benefits and the dangers of dating. Human beings interact with each other in the spiritual, soulical and physical dimensions. Healthy relationships should always begin at the spiritual and intellectual levels - the levels of purpose, motivation, interests, dreams and personality. The physical dimension is the least important.
2. A good understanding of God's standards for relationships. This requires a certain degree of spiritual maturity.
• There are only 2 choices: either you will follow God's standards by deliberate choice, or you will follow the world's standards by default. Unless you plan ahead to keep yourself pure on a date, you probably won't.
• Dating is no place for trial and error.
3. Resolve in your spirit that you will not lower or compromise God's standards for any reason, even if it means losing dates. Standing firm on what you believe is a sign of both spiritual and emotional maturity. There are no second-class areas of life to God. He is after your best. He wants you to obey Him, follow His Word, and stand firmly on His standards. Anything less and you cannot expect to receive His best.
4. YOU ARE READY TO DATE WHEN YOU DON'T NEED TO
• If you feel that you need a date in order to be complete or fulfilled personally, you are not ready for dating. Need involves demand and implies that there is something lacking in life. As long as you perceive lack or incompleteness within yourself, every relationship you enter will be, to one degree or another, an effort to supply that lack or bring a sense of completeness.
• You are ready to date only to the extent that you feel whole and complete within yourself, apart from any other person (except God). When you regard dating as a matter of choice rather than necessity, you are ready.
• Before Eve came along, Adam was alone, but he was not lonely. Loneliness is a spiritual disease. Adam was alone because he was the only one of his kind, but he was completely fulfilled as a person. In tending the garden he had meaningful work to do. In his authority over the living creatures, he was exercising his God-given dominion over the created order. He enjoyed full and open fellowship with his Creator.
• The time you are most prepared for dating is when you don't need anyone to complete you, fulfill you or instill in you a sense of worth or purpose. You are ready to date when you have first learned how to be single.

Temptations

@CSLewisDaily: 1/2 "A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later." #CSLewis

@CSLewisDaily: 2/2  ".That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in." #CSLewis