DESTINY FUFILLING MESSAGE: THE CAGE OF TIME WASTERS

 

MFM MANNA WATER SERVICE

Wednesday 29th September, 2021.

THE CAGE OF TIME WASTERS

Anchored Scriptures: Psalm 90:12, 31:14-15, Ephesians 5:14-16

Ministering: Dr. D. K. Olukoya (G.O MFM Worldwide)

Today, you would do well to pay close attention to this kind of message. The message of today shall be used by the Lord to drive out every tree of darkness in somebody's life.

In modern day English, Psalm 90:12 says “teach us to be able to observe the times of our lives and cautiously guard our times, so we will not waste that time and apply our lives unto wisdom”.

Here is the Psalmist who has handed over his time to the Lord. Please keep this at the back of your mind.
Listen carefully beloved,

Time:

- is the coin of life and if you are not careful, other people will spend it for you.
- is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
- is free but priceless. Once you have lost it, you can never get it back
- is more valuable than money. You can get more money but you cannot get more time. Lost time is never found again. No wonder they taught us in school:
Tick says the clock, tick tick:
What you have to do, do quick!
- is not a friend of anybody.
- does not cooperate with anybody, it is you who will have to cooperate with it.

The bottom line is this beloved, we do not really waste time; it is ourselves we are wasting. And there is no way you can kill time without injuring eternity. The bad news is that time flies like an Aeroplane, but the good news is that you are the pilot.

And when time is killed beloved, there is no resurrection. In the olden days, they say a fool at forty is a fool forever. No, if you are a fool at twenty now, you are possibly a fool forever.

At the age of 9, the Lord pushed Samuel out and he became a national prophet. I do not know how old you are now. At the age of 30, Jesus started His ministry: I do not know how old you are now. At the age of 80, Moses started his ministry; at a very old age.

I do not know how old you are now, but I do know that there will not be many people over eighty years old. There are people who think they have plenty of time; whereas they have very little time.

I want you to understand that the time you are wasting away doing useless things; that time you could not sit down to analyze how you spent, is a waste of life. So let it be very clear to you. The only place you should not hurry to get away from is the presence of the Lord.

So, to become a man of the hour, you must make every minute of your life count. That is why it is not how long you live that matters, it is how well you live. The wheels and chariots of time do not wait for anybody; they are always moving forward.

God's time is moving hour by hour, minute by minute; second by second. Some foolish people think that they can live by any schedule that they choose and that in their own time they fancy it, they will then be serious. Oh, you are making a mistake, a very great mistake.

===> I pray that the Lord will help us!

What do we mean by time thieves? What are time thieves? What are time wasters? Who and who are in this cage?

A time waster is:
- anything you allow to occupy your time that is not necessary.
- anything that prevents you from doing things that are necessary to be done.

What are these time wasters?

Let me now begin to look at them one by one.

1. Idleness or sloth: Somebody is just sitting down there doing nothing, contributing nothing, adding to nothing, just there. You ask "what are you doing there?" He says "I am relaxing".

You say "but this thing ought to be taken more seriously oh". He replies "relax, God is in control." Relax, do nothing. Idleness is a very serious matter. A lot of people who are idle are praying for God to bless them; it is not possible.

That is why the Bible says "whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might". That time you are wasting, you can spend it working for the Lord. That time you have on your hands, that you are free, you could invest it into heaven.

2. Excess of sleep: Some will sleep, sleep, sleep at home, then come to church and continue; thereby keeping the ushers busy waking them up. You are in the house of your Father and you are sleeping.Someone is busy waking you up. Something is really wrong. You want to sleep 10 hours a day. You want to wake up at 1pm in the afternoon when you slept at 8pm at night.
Around midday, you are still dragging towel around your waist while others are working. You claim you are waiting for a breakthrough, whereas you are just busy lazing away the time and sleeping.

3. Inordinate adorning of the body: Some women spend one hour before a mirror, colour the lips, colour the face, put starch in the eye, thereby just wasting time. Nobody says anybody should be dirty. But a lot of people waste a lot of their lives just dressing up.
Many would walk up and down in front of the mirror looking at their new dresses for 30 minutes. Some would walk and walk and even catwalk before the mirror, wasting a lot of time. And those who cannot do the catwalk do the elephant walk, wasting time.

4. Unnecessary ceremonies: something that could be done in 5 minutes, somebody is there doing the same thing for 2 hours. For example, this is what we are here for, this is what we want to do here and we will start now.

But somebody will take the microphone and begin to speak parables, proverbs, useless stories and just waste people's time.

5. Unnecessary curiosity: Please what is your business with the clothes the other woman at the door is wearing? So you want to peep out of your window to see what she is wearing, why?
The time you use to stand at the window peeping to see what she is wearing is a waste of time. These are little things that steal away our time.

6. Needless celebration: You always want to celebrate this or that and so you celebrate every kind of thing that God has done for you but you are trying to feed human beings who did not do anything for you.

7. Gluttony: That time you spend eating and eating and overeating is time wasting.

8. Drinking alcohol: Every time you are drinking alcohol, you are wasting your time and your life away. All drunkards are time wasters.

9. Idle talk: Conversations that carry no fire and add no bearing to your life. Gossiping that is very useless. All these are time wasting powers.

10. Vain and sinful company: Friends that are not contributing to your life. Very vain friends who will never discuss anything that will help anybody's destiny. These are time wasters.

There are people here today, if they can pray themselves out of these time wasting procedures and key into what God has for their lives, they would be surprised what progress they would make.

11. Needless inordinate sports and games: A New Testament christian would not sit down and be playing cards, joker, whot and ludo. If you are still in that category, you can sit down with the traditional games they play like ludo, snakes and ladder, whot, then you do not know where you are going yet.

12. Excessive worldly cares and business: The Bible says "be careful for nothing.." but you just sit down and think and think about the cares of life that would fizzle away.

13. Ungoverned and sinful thoughts: Thoughts that are ungoverned and sinful. So you sit down and think and think and that thinking is sinful. The thinking is completely vain and worldly. The thinking sometimes is exercising in self pity.

14. Reading vain and useless books: Books that cannot help your destiny and move your life forward. These are time wasters.

15. Unprofitable studies undertaken for vain glory: You are just seeking the glory of man. "I just want to study it". All these are time wasters.

16. The unsanctified and ungodly heart: Wicked heart, heart that plans wickedness and deceit. They are all time wasters.

17. Procrastination: "I will do that tomorrow." "I will do it next week". "I will do, I will do". And you keep pushing until you find out that you have wasted time.

18. In our days now, the computer: A lot of people spend majority of their days looking at the computer. Looking at this, that, they just waste a majority of their lives in front of the computer.

19. The television: This is the greatest witchcraft around always positioned at the centre of the house and a lot of lives have been wasted because the useful time they have for heaven, they have wasted in front of the box.
I am telling you this because you may say "they say we should not waste our time but how do they mean?" This is why I am telling you this, coming down to this level to explain to you very well.

20. Telephone: The only reason some people are controlled on the phone is because they do not have airtime. And some who do not have the airtime but want to waste your own keep flashing. So when they call, they talk very quickly. But when you flash and they call back, they now slow down. Wasting time.

21. Disorganization: it is a time waster.

22. Vain interruptions: Nobody called you into the matter, you are just interrupting. Some people are discussing in the bus and it does not concern you but you say "sorry o, do not say I am interrupting you, I just want to contribute". But who asked you to contribute?

23. Saying "yes" to everything: Everything is "yes". You cannot say "no, I'm sorry but I do not want this". They are all time wasting.

24. Useless entertainment: you are entertaining yourself, you are entertaining others and you gain nothing. This is a very serious matter.

25. Spreading yourself too thin by trying to do many things at once: You want to be jack of all trades and master of none.

26. Being afraid to delegate: You do not want people to do things for you, you want to do everything by yourself. You waste time.

27. There is something wrong with this generation, they call it Facebook: Facebook is just wasting destinies away now. Some are even addicted to that Facebook on the computer. They enjoy just reading about lives of others and viewing pictures of others and spend majority of their days doing that.

28. The drop-by visitors: you are not expecting these visitors. He says " I was just passing by and I said I should say hello" and the hello starts at 10 o'clock and by 11 o'clock and even 12 midnight, he is still there chatting.

29. Unscheduled meetings: They waste time.

30. Lack of objectives and priorities: You have no objectives or priorities, you waste time away.

===> I pray that today, all those who are in the cage of time wasters, the power of God will deliver them in the name of Jesus.

Try and understand this beloved:
- the person who discovered photography was not someone who was interested in things of science, he was actually an army officer just playing around with things in his spare time.

Instead of remaining lazy, he was using that spare time to do something. He discovered photography.

- the electrical motor was discovered by a book binder. He was just a book binder but in his spare time, instead of sitting around and just loafing away, he went to do something else.

- You may be interested to know that the fellow who discovered the typewriter was a farmer. Anytime he went to the farm and came back, instead of him just sitting around and saying 'I am tired from all the farm work, I want to rest, I do not want to do anything again', he spent his spare time doing something else. He discovered the typewriter.

They were able to utilise their time for something worthwhile.

- The fellow who discovered the telephone was a school teacher.

- the tyre we have on our vehicles today was discovered by a medical doctor. They used their spare time well.

The value of time arises from that fact that the time is short. It is short and uncertain. That is why the Bible says "boast not thyself of tomorrow".

So you say, What do I do now, to get myself out of the cage of time wasters?

1. The first thing to do is to make God your friend. So God becomes the director of your life. He determines for you how you spend your time.
2. You must surrender every aspect of your life to the Lord, nothing left behind.
3. Identify your priorities in life and identify your destiny so you will not waste time doing things that are not relevant to your life.
4. Keep away from things or human beings who waste time.
5. Submit your time into the hands of the Lord.
6. Pray time wastage out of your life.
7. Pray in divine orderliness into your life.

Today, we have prayers to pray, we have actions to take. This kind of message is coming forth because heaven is complaining about the way many are wasting their destinies away, on a daily basis.

PRAYER POINTS
1. Ask the Lord to forgive you for wasting time all this while.
2. My Father, my times are in your hands, deliver me from my enemies in the name of Jesus.
3. Power of time wasters in my life, die in the name of Jesus.
4. (Pray this 3 times) By fire, by force, I recover my wasted years in the name of Jesus.
5. Demons of spare time, get out of my destiny in the name of Jesus.
6. My lost virtues, arise by fire, locate me now in the name of Jesus.
7. My pending miracles, my pending breakthroughs, manifest by fire in the name of Jesus.
8. Blood drinkers of the night, my life is not your candidate, die in the name of Jesus.
9. Goliath that stopped my parents, hear the word of the Lord, you cannot stop me; therefore die in the name of Jesus!
10. Where is the Lord God of Elijah? Arise, scatter the bones of my enemies in the name of Jesus.

11. Every dark power contending for my portion, your time is up, die in the name of Jesus.