Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Eph 5:15,16
These verses urge us to live our lives and make use of our time wisely – because the days we’re living in are evil. There are times in our lives, or seasons, for doing certain things but then they pass. It’s easy when we’re in a certain time frame to think that it’s always going to be that way but that’s not what the Bible says.
‘There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven’. Eccl 3:1-8. Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time and a season for everything here on earth. We are under the constraints of time in this sphere. It then gives 14 couplets of things which are time bound; from ‘a time to be born and a time to die’; beginning to end and everything in between.
‘… men of the Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do’. 1 Chr 12:32 David had been promised the kingship of Israel for a long time, but now the time had come for him to be king of all Israel, in Jerusalem. He was king in Hebron but he had to move location and step up into a higher role of leadership. Some of us may have been waiting on a promise of God for a long time, but perhaps the wait is over and God is calling us to step out and up into our new season.
‘The king…spoke with the wise men who understood the times’. Esther 1:13
‘Do not think that because you are in the King’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows what that you have come to royal position for such a time as this’? Esther 4:13,14,15
These Scriptures in Esther also show the importance of rightly discerning the ‘times’ in which we’re living. The situation has changed across the world in these last few months and perhaps will never return to what it was again! We need to be aware of this and aware of our own lives, God has been and is preparing a people who will both be ready and rightly positioned for these days. What’s the Lord saying to us about our lives in this season?
Worldly wisdom has a saying that, ‘it’s more important to be doing the RIGHT THING, THAN DOING THINGS RIGHT’.
What is the Lord saying for our lives today?
God bless and keep you in these changing times.