Several years ago I was working for the credit union, and I had been moved to Rocky Mount, Virginia. I was working from our house, and the office was about a forty-five-minute drive in one direction. So I would leave in the mornings, drive forty-five minutes, work, and then at five o’clock get off and drive another forty-five minutes home. After you make the same drive for a while—Jared, you can probably attest to this—it starts to become monotonous. You know the road. You’ve got it figured out.
This was also around the time that we had just adopted the twins, or we were fostering them at the time, and they were very little babies. We were getting very little sleep. So I got off work one day having not slept well the night before, got in the car, and started a drive I had made so many times. I remember beginning the journey, and then about thirty minutes later I came to myself and realized I had almost finished my entire commute. I did not remember a single thing about the drive. I couldn’t tell you what I saw. I couldn’t tell you where I turned. My eyes were open, but I was not there.
That was a scary moment for me, because I realized I was probably not prepared. If a deer had run out in front of me or a car had swerved, I would not have been ready. I had checked out mentally. Hands on the wheel, foot on the gas, eyes on the road—but Justin was somewhere else.
Living Life on Autopilot
Maybe you’ve had an experience like that before, and you know how scary it can be. But as I thought about it, I realized that sometimes that’s the way we start to live life. We get tired, busy, and distracted, and we go through the motions. Our eyes are open. Our hands are on the wheel. We say good morning to people. We sit down and eat our meals. But we’re not there. It gets real easy to check out. As some would say, we start living life on autopilot.
Life gets full, life gets busy, life gets hard, and it’s easy to turn inward and stop paying attention. We are creatures of habit, and we can very effectively go through all the motions and routines. We can cook a meal and sit down and eat it. We can drive to work, do our work, and come home. We can have the same monotonous conversations with our spouses. We can lay down and go to bed, and we can miss an entire day.
Not only that, but we live in a world with a new distraction around every corner. We’re getting toward the end of the year, so Apple is getting ready to release its new line of iPhones. Now they’ve got a phone that folds, so instead of one screen you’ve got three, and everybody on TikTok is freaking out because they’re getting their new phones and they’re not working right. So not only do we have people freaking out about their two-thousand-dollar iPhones, we’ve got people—my wife and I included—who have spent more time than we should watching videos of people freaking out about their iPhones. And then there are people watching other people freak out about their iPhones, getting in the comments to see what everybody is saying about people freaking out about their iPhones. Next thing you know, four hours have gone by and all you’ve done is sit in a chair on your phone watching somebody else have issues with another dumb device.
We live in a world of constant distractions, and they follow us everywhere we go. Out in town there are billboards and posters trying to draw your attention and get you to buy the next best thing. You get on your phone, and there are advertisements trying to get you to buy something. You turn on the good old television to sit down and relax for a while, and somebody is trying to sell you something there. Somebody is trying to change your focus, your direction, to influence you. You sit down and watch the news, and now you’re hearing about what’s going on everywhere in the world. I’m just saying, there’s nothing wrong with these things. But we live in a world that is constantly distracted, and with all the distractions around us it gets real easy to lose sight of what we’re even supposed to be doing in the first place.
But may I pose to you that this is not a new problem? The writer of Ecclesiastes said:
There is nothing new under the sun.
That could not be more true. Maybe they didn’t have two-thousand-dollar iPhones back when that was written, but do you think they had any distractions in their world? Mankind hasn’t changed all that much through the centuries. We get new tools and new toys, but mankind is the same. In Paul’s day, the church could get distracted and run on autopilot just as easily as we can today.
I want you to be honest with me this morning. When you’re running on autopilot, do you make the same quality of decisions that you do when you are present and focused? Absolutely not. When we’re distracted, with other things on our minds, we’re not present, and we are liable to say and do all kinds of crazy things. It’s all right to say amen to that.
Turn Off the Autopilot
Paul is calling us to be of a different nature than what comes so naturally to us in the world. For the last several verses, he has been calling you and me not to be imitators of the world, but to be imitators of the God who made the world. And he’s been showing us the characteristics of the God we are to imitate. We are to walk in love, because he is a God who loves. We are to walk in purity, because he is a God who is pure. We are to live a life that is full of his character and full of his Spirit. Now, in this last portion, he calls us to live a life of wisdom. In verse 15 he says:
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise.
See then—since you are imitators of God, since you are to walk in love, since you are to walk in purity, since you are to live this way in this world, not as the world does but as God would—walk carefully. In other words, what Paul is saying is: turn off the autopilot and start living on purpose, for a purpose. Pay attention to the life you are living.
Those who live on autopilot are ultimately going to live foolishly. They’re going to make bad decisions, because at the end of the day, when you’re on autopilot, you’re not really the one making the decisions. You’re either letting your flesh make them or letting what’s going on around you make them. And oh, how easy it is to let somebody else make our decisions for us—to let the algorithm make them, to let our coworkers make them, to let our spouses make them. Paul says that is not the way of Christ. Walk carefully, not foolishly, but as wise.
So the call here is to walk in wisdom. How do we do that? What does it look like for you and me to turn off the autopilot, open our eyes, and live this life on purpose, in an age of distraction? I’m glad Paul answers that question for us. I want to show you the ways he gives us to stop living on autopilot today and live a life of intentionality that is better for us, better for our neighbors, and will ultimately glorify our Father, whom we are called to imitate.
Redeem the Time (Verse 16)
The first thing I want you to see is what Paul says in verse 16. How do we walk wisely? By redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Isn’t it interesting that two thousand years ago Paul was saying the days are evil? What does that mean? It means the same thing it means today: we live in a world that is giving itself to the sin curse. It is giving itself to the flesh, to the prince of the power of the air, to distraction and influence and sensuality and immorality. You don’t have to go very far to know you are living in a world that is in opposition to the Lord. Paul has made that clear in the previous verses. The world is not on God’s side, and if you are on God’s side, then the world is not on your side. The world is working against you in your pursuit of godliness. If you turn on autopilot, run the path everybody else is running, and live the way the world is living, you will not live as a wise man. You’re going to make the same foolish mistakes everybody else is making.
So if you are to live wisely, you must redeem the time. What does that mean? The word “redeem” means to buy something up with desperation. It gives you the idea of walking into an auction where they’ve got things on sale, and you are doing your best to win. You’re trying to buy up everything you can because you know its value and its worth, and you know you’re not going to get it for free. That’s the picture Paul is painting. Your time does not come for free, because there are a lot of things bidding for it. If you are not intentional about buying up that time, if you are not in the auction bidding on it, the influences of this world are going to get to it first. You will be a product of the algorithm. You will be a product of whatever is on TV next. You will be a product of whatever time-waster you want to fill in the blank with.
It takes us right back to Psalm 90:
Teach us to number our days.
Your time is precious. Your time is valuable. It is a gift from God, and it was purchased by God with the blood of Jesus Christ. Your time came at a cost, and Paul is saying, therefore, don’t waste it. Don’t blow it on things that do not matter. Do not take this precious gift God has so kindly given us and squander it on things that have no eternal and sometimes even earthly value.
And oh, how our culture loves to waste time. Our culture loves to bury itself in all kinds of garbage that does nothing for our souls, nothing for our lives, and nothing for our families. We tell ourselves, “But I need this.” Do we? When we’re done with that binge session, do we actually feel better than we did when we started? Are we more rested? Are we happier? I can tell you right now, there are plenty of things that will strip you of your happiness rather than bestow it upon you.
Now, I want to qualify this, because some people will take this verse and run away with it. They’ll say you don’t need to do anything but get out there and serve the Lord, and if you’ve got a free moment you need to be praying or knocking on doors. But God also called us to rest. It’s all right to say amen right there. The same God who said “redeem your time” created sleep—praise God, I love a good night’s sleep. The same God who said “redeem your time” made food taste good. The same God who said “redeem your time” created things that are fun and pleasant and leisurely, and that restore our sense of rest and strength. Sometimes the wisest thing you can do is engage in some genuine rest. So when I say don’t waste your time, I’m not telling you to milk every second of your day for productivity’s sake. What I am saying is that if you are going to rest, make your rest worth it. And when it’s time to work and labor, don’t waste it on all the worldly distractions that have crept into our society and sell themselves as a necessity for your soul, when in reality they are sucking the life from you.
Redeem the time, because our Savior redeemed the time when he lived here on this earth. Redeem the time, because the days are evil. If you do not redeem your time, this world will take it from you.
Understand What the Will of the Lord Is (Verse 17)
Verse 17 says, “Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” This is another key piece. Paul is saying don’t just guess at how you should spend your time, but understand how God would have you spend it. The legalist would take verse 16 and tell you all the things you should be doing with your time and all the things you shouldn’t—do this, don’t do that, wear this, don’t wear that, go here, don’t go there. The legalist would have a field day with verse 16. But the legalist needs to go down to the next verse, which says to understand, moment by moment and day by day, what the Lord’s will is for your time.
When I was being ordained, my father-in-law presented a question to me that, truthfully, stumped every preacher in that room. He said: you’re on a date with your wife. You haven’t had one in a while, and you’ve finally arranged a date night. You’ve given the kids to somebody, and you’re out spending time with your wife. While you’re there, you get a phone call from somebody who says, “Justin, the Lord’s been dealing with me, and I need to get saved right now. Would you come and tell me how to be saved?” And before you can finish that phone call, a church member calls and says, “Justin, I’ve just been in a bad accident. I’m in the hospital and I need you here right now.” He said, first of all, this situation is not unrealistic. And secondly, who do you spend your time with?
Of course, most of us would probably say you need to go to the one who needs to be saved, to win the soul. But who gets to make that decision in that moment? Who needs me the most? It may be that my wife has been drowning for months, and this date is what is keeping her from losing her mind. It may be that the church member has nobody, and in this moment they need somebody who can help them not only physically but spiritually. It may be that the person whose soul is on the line is getting ready to take their last breath the very next day and doesn’t even know it. So how do you make that decision? Who gets to make that call? The room went silent, because in a room full of preachers, nobody knew how to answer that question properly.
What’s the answer? Christian, what’s the answer? When you’ve got three essential options and you have to decide how to spend your time in that moment, how do you understand what the Lord’s will is? Verse 18 gives us the answer.
Be Filled with the Spirit (Verse 18)
Verse 18 says, “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.” These verses are not separated from each other; they work together. Paul is saying don’t waste your time, but make the most of it. You make the most of your time by doing whatever is pleasing to the Lord. But when you don’t know what is most pleasing to the Lord, how do you make that decision? The biggest answer to the question of how I make the most of my time is found here: be filled with the Spirit.
Why does Paul contrast drunkenness with the filling of the Spirit? He could have picked a lot of things to put in that place. Don’t misunderstand me when I say this: the reason is that being drunk with wine and being filled with the Spirit have a similar impact on your soul, in that both change the decisions you make. Both influence the way your mind works. When someone drinks too much and it starts to take over their mind, let me ask you, how many of those people start making better decisions? Be honest with me. Who gets wiser the more alcohol they drink? Nobody. The more drunk you get, the stupider you get. When you reach a certain point, you wake up the next day and you don’t even know what decisions you made, because your body just took over and started making the decisions for you. Talk about running on autopilot.
Paul contrasts the two because when you get filled up with the Spirit, it will have the same kind of impact on your mind as that alcohol does—except instead of getting dumber, you get wiser. Instead of getting foolish, you get smart toward life and toward the things of God. It’s a perfect contrast. You can get filled up with wine, filled up with this world, filled up with pleasure. You can have fun and feel good. But as you pursue that path, it is going to pull you into the foolishness of this world. Paul says, instead of that, how about we get full of something good? Be filled with the Spirit.
You’ve probably heard some preacher say that “be filled” is in the present tense, which means it’s an ongoing action. It’s not a one-time thing where I pray some prayer and the Spirit miraculously falls upon me and now my entire life is different. Every day you need to be getting filled with the Spirit. You need to be drinking of the Spirit. So how do you get filled with the Spirit? The same way you get filled with wine: you partake. What you take in determines what you are filled with.
This is where the rubber meets the road. For most Christians today, we spend most of our time getting filled with the wrong things, and then we wonder where the Spirit is when we need him. We may not be getting filled with wine, but we’re getting filled with TikTok. We’re getting filled with Fox. We’re getting filled with Facebook. We’re getting filled with our favorite TV shows, our favorite mobile games, our favorite this and our favorite that. Again, none of these things is sinful in itself. But I do want to ask you this morning: what’s the ratio of your Fox News to your Bible this week? If I were to ask you to take out your phone and go to your screen time and show me how much time you spent on your phone this week, and then I were to ask how much time you spent with God this week—what would the answer be?
We’re redeeming the time because the days are evil, understanding what the will of the Lord is, and we do that by taking in the right source of nutrients and wisdom and guidance. We go to the Lord and say, “God, I need you more today than I need TikTok. I need you more today than I need my television. I need you more today than I need anything else. Lord, if I get to do that later, that’s fine. If I get to enjoy some of that, that’s great. But if I don’t get to that, I know I need to get to you. I am asking you to give me a portion of your Spirit today. I am asking you to fill me with the things of God. I need something today, and if I don’t get it from you, I’m going to get it from this world. And what I get from this world will lead me into foolishness. Today I want to live in wisdom.”
If we’re going to be like our God, we have to be wise, and that starts with auditing the use of our time. Again, I am not a legalist. I have TV shows I like to watch. I have entertainment I like to enjoy. I have music I like to listen to. But there have been days when I spent two hours listening to my audiobook and somehow couldn’t find time to get to the Word of God. Somehow I couldn’t find time to just bow my head and talk to the Lord. I’m glad we can do both. But this morning I want to call you, as Paul is calling us here, to start making the best use of your time. Every day, fill yourself with the things of God. Fill yourself with his Word. Fill yourself with prayer. Fill yourself with his Spirit. Let him pour into you, and as you go about your day, you will not believe the joy and wisdom and direction and clarity you will have as his Spirit takes what was poured in and starts to pour it out into your life.
Are You Redeeming Your Time?
I am not calling you this morning to give up your phone, your TV, or your favorite pastime. I am calling you to make the Lord your priority and to start using your time in the best way possible. I promise you, it’s not a sacrifice; it’s an investment. It’s an investment in you, in those around you, and in your relationship with the Lord, and it is the only investment you can make in this life that will pay higher dividends than anything else.
So I close with this question: Are you redeeming your time? Are you understanding what the will of the Lord is? Are you being filled daily with the Spirit? Or have you been driving on autopilot? I invite you, as we bow our heads, to turn off the autopilot and let God start driving. Let his Word start leading, and let the hours, days, and minutes of your life start counting for something much, much higher than what you may be living for today.
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