Redeeming time

Ephesians 5:15 ‘See then that you walk diligently, wisely and not irresponsibly, redeeming the time, because we live in times of much corruption. Therefore do not be thoughtless, but seek to understand what the will of the Lord is. (NKJ)

The word used for ‘time’ here is kairos – God’s appointed time, not chronos – Clock time.
The word used for ‘will of The Lord’ – thelema - God’s heart to bless you by bringing it into line with his design for your life. Whenever we choose to be still and know that, we are receiving his will for us.

We see time as a currency that we have to spend on ourselves and we are fearful of losing it, wasting it, or being pressured by it.

Redemption means that God buys back and restores all that is lost. That includes time you think has been wasted, effort that has come to nothing, and hopes that have been dashed. He won’t necessarily bring the same things back, or the same people and the same events, but he brings you back as new, and ready to go, in the right place at the right time to think the right thing and do the right thing. That is the ongoing ‘Behold I make all things new’, which constantly reoccurs for us and this means a new here and now understanding of his desire for us to be living the best life we could be living.

With this kind of faith we see through the present disorder of this world system ordered by the tyranny of clock time, and we enter the parallel universe of eternal time, and our isolated independence and anxiety fall away. God has to get us across the bridge from the world of fear-and-stress time to stillness-and-trust time. That is the redemption of life and of time.

We see our past as being a journey of a whole lot of experiences that have brought us to who we are supposed to be because of who God originally created us to be.
We see our present as being our faith that God is at work in bringing our real self into being and giving new meaning to everything we do, no matter how ordinary it seems, because in any ordinary thing we are able to know that we are being loved by God and allowing his love to flow through us.
We see our future as being the hope and expectation that he will reveal to us his goodness in action for us to see.

Redeeming time is vitally linked to knowing that we can occupy the same eternal time frame as Jesus
John 12:26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.
You can be there where he is at any time. God is always in kairos time and we are fixated with chronos time, which focuses on what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow. These are two different worlds of time that exist side by side. But God is always inviting us into his time and drawing us out of our preoccupation with clock time and the pressure that it brings, like wasted time, lost time, not enough time, too late time. All of these clock times can be redeemed in one moment of God’s time. He gets us across the bridge.

An example is;
No matter who you choose to pray for at that time you will be where Jesus is because he is there with them in their need. God is blessed by this because at that moment, creatively arranged by God for you, your heart beats with his. The person you’re praying for is also blessed (however God may choose to bestow that blessing) and you are blessed because there is no greater meaning for that moment than in what you are doing. That moment releases to you God’s love and peace and joy.