No Rollover Minutes by Keylon Levine
This "musing" is written by my friend Keylon Levine. Keylon is a man who does whatever he does with abandon. When he was in the world, he played hard and lived hard. Now that he has come into the Kingdom of God, he serves God uncompromisingly. Letting no one despise his youth, Key is clear about his desire to live the life of a disciple. He seeks to always dig deeper into the truths in the Word, and is truly carefree about how he is perceived by men. I love the passion with which Keylon lives his life, and he shares it well in his writings which you can find on his shared blogsite, http://wordabovewater.com/.
No Rollover Minutes
In this cell phone obsessed world that we live in, we should all be familiar with the concept of rollover minutes. If not, let me explain: In signing up for a cell phone plan, one gets allotted a certain amount of minutes that can be used every month. If for whatever reason one doesn’t use up all of their minutes in a particular month, then the unused minutes get carried over into the following month. Cingular actually now has a series of hilarious commercials in which a family is bickering about the fact that the sons’ are using their new rollover minutes while wasting their old ones. Even though the minutes are old they’re still perfectly usable, but the sons continue throw them in the garbage simply because their old. Meanwhile, the mother is constantly fishing the old minutes out of the garbage and rebuking her sons for not appreciating them.
Sadly enough, we as Christians, live our lives like our cell phone plans. We live our lives like we have rollover minutes. We have such a propensity to just go through the motions; wake up, go to work, come home and go to sleep without anything really being accomplished. An outsider looking in would think that we were saving up our minutes to be truly productive for the following month. It seems like we walk through this life not understanding that every minute of every day is a minute that needs to be used productively.
Now to be clear, there is certainly a difference between being productive and being busy. Those who are simply going through the motions could most definitely make the case that they are busy. But the question is not, "Are you busy?" The question is, "Are you being productive?"
One of the greatest lies that the devil would get us to believe is that busyness equals productivity. Let me give you Webster’s definition of the word busy: "foolishly or intrusively active." So let me just set the record straight: if we’re not being responsibly active about the Master’s work, then we’re not being productive.
Unfortunately, we’ve lost our sense of urgency in the body of Christ, and it’s evident in our lack of productivity. We are living in the last days, and Christ is waiting for us to have Him truly manifested amongst us, but manifestation won’t come unless we’re living lives that are indicative of us expecting the return of our Master. Jesus put it like this, “So you too must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this: if a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.”(Matthew 24: 42-44). So it is clear that we need to stop watching life pass us by and start a life that is watching for Him.
I just had a conversation with a friend of mine, and he said something that nearly broke my heart. He said, “I could just kill two weeks, no problem.” In others words, he could waste his minutes without even thinking about it. Comments like this leave me with such anger at the devil; righteous anger, of course. He’s getting God’s people to continually remain paralyzed by their sense of comfort and familiarity. The potential that my friend has to live a powerful life for God is tremendous, and the only thing that is stopping him is the fact that he would have to get out of his comfort zone. And, the worst part about it is that he has acknowledged the fact that he’s not happy in this comfort zone, but the paralysis that has overcome him has left him too numb to make any real steps; he’s paralyzed from the spirit down.
This life plan that God has given us comes with no rollover minutes. The minutes that God has given us need to be used with purpose and productivity; not with frivol and waste; we don’t get any of them back. When we gave our lives to Christ our life plans with rollover minutes expired. The expired rollover minutes, however, were replaced with the non-expiring Kingdom minutes. And if we read the fine print, there is a promise that is attached to these Kingdom minutes: “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit upon His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in His presence, and He will separate the people as the Shepard separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.'"(Matthew 25: 31-33). Let us be sure to revive our sense of urgency so that we are not to be separated with the goats.
No Rollover Minutes
In this cell phone obsessed world that we live in, we should all be familiar with the concept of rollover minutes. If not, let me explain: In signing up for a cell phone plan, one gets allotted a certain amount of minutes that can be used every month. If for whatever reason one doesn’t use up all of their minutes in a particular month, then the unused minutes get carried over into the following month. Cingular actually now has a series of hilarious commercials in which a family is bickering about the fact that the sons’ are using their new rollover minutes while wasting their old ones. Even though the minutes are old they’re still perfectly usable, but the sons continue throw them in the garbage simply because their old. Meanwhile, the mother is constantly fishing the old minutes out of the garbage and rebuking her sons for not appreciating them.
Sadly enough, we as Christians, live our lives like our cell phone plans. We live our lives like we have rollover minutes. We have such a propensity to just go through the motions; wake up, go to work, come home and go to sleep without anything really being accomplished. An outsider looking in would think that we were saving up our minutes to be truly productive for the following month. It seems like we walk through this life not understanding that every minute of every day is a minute that needs to be used productively.
Now to be clear, there is certainly a difference between being productive and being busy. Those who are simply going through the motions could most definitely make the case that they are busy. But the question is not, "Are you busy?" The question is, "Are you being productive?"
One of the greatest lies that the devil would get us to believe is that busyness equals productivity. Let me give you Webster’s definition of the word busy: "foolishly or intrusively active." So let me just set the record straight: if we’re not being responsibly active about the Master’s work, then we’re not being productive.
Unfortunately, we’ve lost our sense of urgency in the body of Christ, and it’s evident in our lack of productivity. We are living in the last days, and Christ is waiting for us to have Him truly manifested amongst us, but manifestation won’t come unless we’re living lives that are indicative of us expecting the return of our Master. Jesus put it like this, “So you too must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this: if a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.”(Matthew 24: 42-44). So it is clear that we need to stop watching life pass us by and start a life that is watching for Him.
I just had a conversation with a friend of mine, and he said something that nearly broke my heart. He said, “I could just kill two weeks, no problem.” In others words, he could waste his minutes without even thinking about it. Comments like this leave me with such anger at the devil; righteous anger, of course. He’s getting God’s people to continually remain paralyzed by their sense of comfort and familiarity. The potential that my friend has to live a powerful life for God is tremendous, and the only thing that is stopping him is the fact that he would have to get out of his comfort zone. And, the worst part about it is that he has acknowledged the fact that he’s not happy in this comfort zone, but the paralysis that has overcome him has left him too numb to make any real steps; he’s paralyzed from the spirit down.
This life plan that God has given us comes with no rollover minutes. The minutes that God has given us need to be used with purpose and productivity; not with frivol and waste; we don’t get any of them back. When we gave our lives to Christ our life plans with rollover minutes expired. The expired rollover minutes, however, were replaced with the non-expiring Kingdom minutes. And if we read the fine print, there is a promise that is attached to these Kingdom minutes: “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit upon His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in His presence, and He will separate the people as the Shepard separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.'"(Matthew 25: 31-33). Let us be sure to revive our sense of urgency so that we are not to be separated with the goats.
Took this message to heart Kathy--thanx
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