The Committed Life

Redeeming the time

Ephesians 5:16 States, “We need to be redeeming the time for the days are evil.”” The word redeeming in the Greek is (ex-agorazo). Meaning, to buy back or rescue from a condition of loss. The prefix- ex- represents the meaning of where the point or origin of all motion and action begins. Putting it all together. (We need to go to the origin of where motion began, to buy back or be rescued from a condition of loss.)?

The word time (hairos) means, a place that we need to be connected too, that represents something or someone of strength and value. This place has the capacity of giving us a continuos flow with unlimited power and strength. This strength is always easy and convenient and is in season at all times.

The word days (hemera) means, from dawn to dusk or 24 hours. It also represents an attitude we must have of sitting in a confident position and being settled, steadfast and immovable in our endeavors of fulfilling the commands of the Lord.

The word evil (poneros) has so many meanings in the Greek that I doubt we truly understand the depth and carnage and take in to our total awareness the extent of this word. To start with I guess we can say that the characteristics of the devil represents all that evil is. Let me list some of the definitions listed in the Greek. There are degrees of evil that can become so terrible that I believe it can completely cripple a person, let alone if you don’t know Jesus you are vulnerable to become totally possessed with demons. Here are some of the manifestations that evil causes when it’s at work in a person.

1.Anguish:

Severe mental or physical distress causing agony, torment, and suffering.

2.Worthlessness:

A feeling of no confidence and not feeling you have a purpose for your life. Having no value in your own eyes and not understanding your talents and fine qualities as God sees them.

3.Immorality:

Lustful indecency, obscene wanton sexual desires, and things pertaining to bodily appetites and not being spiritual.

4.Depraved or perverted:

Being hard to control and unreasonable. Being just plain wicked and having no regard for anything good.

Peter the Apostle in 2Peter chapter 3 says that, “ on the return of the Lord to this planet. Jesus wants to find us with out spot and wrinkle and at peace in complete confidence free from fears, agitating passions and moral conflicts”. All the evil conditions that we can encounter fall into these three categories.

Paul the Apostles in his second letter to Timothy, in chapter 3:1-7 he writes “In the last days there will be great stress and troubles that will be hard to deal with. People will be self-centered and have an overwhelming desire to be greedy for wealth. They will be proud, arrogant, boasters and have a willful disregard for all authority. They will be abusive, scoffers, blasphemous and disobedient to parents. Ungrateful, unholy and devalue human dignity. They will be with out human affection. Making no truces with anyone, liars, and troublemakers, having loose morals, uncontrollable and fierce haters of good. They will be lovers of sensual pleasure and vain amusements, rather then be lovers of God. They will have a form of Godliness, but reject the power of God. There will be those who seduce spiritually immature woman loaded down by all kinds of seductive impulses and evil desires. These women will listen to any body that tells them they love them. But they will continue to have illicit sexual relationships and believe the lies they are living.”

Now this was what Paul told Timothy back nearly two thousand years ago. Lets try to give this prophetic word some real meaning for the actions that are taking place right before our eyes. Lets enumerate just a few evils.

1. Sexual perversion and violence on TV. Programming. On a regular every night and early morning basis.

2. Teenagers killing other teenagers in schools with hand guns.

3. We need metal detectors and guards in the hallways to keep drugs and guns out of the schools.

4. We see every thing possibly being done to get prayer and God out of public learning and society.

5. Partial birth abortions are being considered and done as a way of aborting a life in the guise of protecting a mother’s life. This is nothing but flat out brutal murder of a living infant. (I have no words to describe this atrocity.) The act is a horror and is disgusting in the sight of God.)

6.Corporate embezzlement and fraud. Greedy for wealth and power.

7.Kids going to court to divorce their parents.

8.Random acts of violence, such as the sniper incident. No sanctity and value for life.

9.Child abuse by parents. Locking kids in closets, starving them to death, beating infants, finding babes in dumpsites.

10. Internet porno, child molestation.

11.Wars and rumors of wars all over the planet.

12.Terrorist attacks. Twin towers etc.

13.Palm readers, psychics and programs on TV of communicating with the dead. That is nothing more then having séances with demonic spirits.

14.Violent video games being sold for entertainment to our kids.

15. TV talk show programs that promote an appetite of showing mankind’s depraved behavior that humiliates and degrades human life.

16 Homosexuality and lesbianism wanting to be acknowledged in society as an acceptable behavior even to the point of receiving benefits of marriage and child rearing.

17. Woman being degraded as sex symbols on TV. Programming and being paraded as love slaves of bachelor males.

I am sure that there are things I did not cover, do we really see what condition the world is in and how contrary this is to God’s desire for peoples wholeness. If your not concerned and this does not or has not had you on your face before God for His mercy and deliverance. I’d say its time to get serious and for us to find out how we have to start redeeming the time for the days! (Are evil.) !

Now lets see what it’s going to take for us to do this. In the 49th chapter of Isaiah the Lord declares among other places in the bible that He is our Savior and Redeemer. We know if we are born again believers that redeemer not only means to buy back property lost, but it also means that when we accepted Jesus as our Savior, He brought and bought us back by dying on the cross, into a relationship that Adam and Eve had lost for us by disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. Being redeemed means we have come into kinship and Jesus has now become our brother and God is now our Father as God is His Father. So now we know where all origin and action of motion begins and that is Christ living in us, which is the beginning of spiritual life and the hope of our glory or well being.

We said that the word time means a place where there is strength and unlimited power that is convenient and accessible at all times to accomplish this task. If we’re serious about fulfilling this task the only way we will be able to function is by being obedient to what the Lord tells us in 11Cronicles 7:14 “ If my people who are called by My name shall humble themselves, pray and seek and require of necessity My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.”

There is so much to say about this verse, there is an article called "our influence with God" that describes this verse in detail. It's on the web site read it for yourselves. For now let me leave you with a few comments on the meaning of this verse. This verse tells us that, the first thing that will happen is that there will come a healing and an awareness of things in our own hearts and life, that have to be changed. This the Holy Spirit will bring to our attention as we pray. We have to become broken and humble before God by bowing our hearts and bending our knee daily and realizing without Him we can do nothing and are nothing. There has to be a growing passion of necessity rising in our spirit that we begin to realize what the reverential fear of the Lord is all about. About this there is much to say. Prayer is not something we only do at church or before meals or at special occasion or repeat the Our Father on occasions. It becomes a natural every day conversation with the Holy Spirit day and night. We have to get to know the Holy Spirit as a friend. If it wasn’t for the mercy of God and His great patience and love I think He would of got rid of human beings and started over again as He did before.

The next issue that the Lord has to deal with is the apathy and total disregard and ignorance that his children have in really knowing Him. So before He heals our land we need to have our own hearts healed of our lack of total commitment to Him. Isaiah the Prophet realized this condition in his own heart when He saw the love that God had for him and because he saw this his statement in Isaiah chapter 6:5 was “Woe is me. For I am undone and I have stumbled and wavered in my commitment to you, because I am a man of unclean lips and live in a land of people of unclean lips, But now my eyes have seen you the King and Lord of Hosts.” A heavenly being then flew to him from heaven with a live coal taken from the alter of God, and with it he touched his lips. And the voice from heaven said, “your deviation from doing right and your guilt are taken away and now your broken relationship with me has been restored and I have forgiven you.” He then heard a voice from heaven say. “Who will I send to these people in this land that you live with,” and Isaiah said, “Here I am Lord I will go.” Isaiah had allowed the world system to invade his life, rather then rebuking the world and standing up for right.

Let me be as honest as I can. If you see the terrible condition that we are confronted with in this world today. It’s going to cost you your whole life and a dying to self if, your going to stand in the gap for the lost and hurting masses. It seems to me at times an insurmountable task, but I take hope in the scripture that says the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man means much in the ears of the Lord. Do you who are reading this really know your Savior and Lord? Without Him, He tells us that we can do nothing. God help us to totally surrender to Him and really come to know what a wonder He really is.