Ephesians 5:15-17 - Be Careful How You Live.
Ephesians 5:15-17 (NKJV) See then that you
walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16
redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 17
Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the
will of the Lord is.
Ephesians 5:15-17 (NLT) So be careful how
you live. Dont live like fools, but like
those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every
opportunity in these evil days. 17 Dont act
thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to
do.
Ephesians 5:15-17 (AMP) Look carefully then
how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and
accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise
(sensible, intelligent people), 16 Making the very most
of the time [buying up each opportunity],
because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be
vague and thoughtless and foolish, but
understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the
Lord is.
Ephesians 5:15-17 (MSG) So watch your step.
Use your head. 16 Make the most of every chance
you get. These are desperate times! 17 Don't
live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you
understand what the Master wants.
COMMENTARY PEARL
Our time belongs to God. Every moment is
His, and we are under the most solemn obligation
to improve it to His glory. Of no talent He has
given will He require a more strict account than
of our time.
The value of time is beyond computation.
Christ regarded every moment as precious, and it is
thus that we should regard it. Life is too short
to be trifled away. We have but a few days of
probation in which to prepare for eternity. We have no
time to waste, no time to devote to selfish
pleasure, no time for the indulgence of sin. It is now
that we are to form characters for the future,
immortal life. It is now that we are to prepare for
the searching judgment.
The human family have scarcely begun to
live when they begin to die. The man who
appreciates time as his working day will fit himself for
a mansion and for a life that is immortal. It
is well that he was born. We are admonished to
redeem the time. But time squandered can never be
recovered. We cannot call back even one moment. The
only way in which we can redeem our time is by
making the most of that which remains, by being
co-workers with God in His great plan of
redemption.
Every moment is freighted with eternal
consequences. We are to stand as minute men, ready for
service at a moments notice. The opportunity that
is now ours to speak to some needy soul the
word of life may never offer again. God may say
to that one, This night thy soul shall be
required of thee, and through our neglect he may
not be ready. (Luke 12:20.) In the great
judgment day, how shall we render our account to God?
FLB158, COL342-343
COMMENTARY
Your Life Is Your Time
Our lives are governed by time. That's
why we're surrounded by clocks and calendars
that dictate our activities. As the minutes tick
by, we wonder where the day went. When
responsibilities and pressures mount, we complain, "I just
don't have time to get it all done!" But the
reality is that God has given us enough time to do
exactly what He's planned for our lives. Perhaps the
bigger issue is whether we are using our time to do
our will or the Lord's.
Time is a gift from God, and He has
allotted each of us a measure in which to live and
accomplish His purposes. We have only two options - to
spend it temporally on our own interests or invest
it eternally. Since time can never be retrieved
or reversed, it's critical that we make the
most of every opportunity the Lord provides.
The key to investing in eternity is
following God's plan for your life, not just filling
your days with activities. Jesus was allocated
just thirty-three years of life on earth, but
only the last three were spent in fulfilling His
Messianic ministry. To us that seems like a waste of
time. Yet Christ accomplished everything His
Father gave Him to do. That's why on the cross He
could say, "It is finished" (John 19:30).
Scripture compares earthly life to "a
vapor that appears for a little while and then
vanishes" (James 4:14), but eternal life never ends.
It's foolish to spend your life on a vapor when
you can reap everlasting benefits by following
God's will for your time here. Each day is an
opportunity to choose. [In Touch Daily Devotional by
Charles Stanley at www.intouch.org]
Invest Your Time - Dont Just Spend It
Time is a most valuable commodity. Since
its irreversible and irreplaceable, we ought to
give careful consideration to how we spend our
days - and even our minutes. Time is a gift from
God. That means we are not owners but stewards
and will one day be held accountable for how we
used what was entrusted to us. According to verse
15, there are only two possible ways to live:
wisely or foolishly.
Lets first consider what is involved
in using our time wisely. Those who realize
that their days belong to God are careful how
they live. Their goal is to understand the
Lords will and align their schedules and
activities with His purposes. As they seek guidance
each day through intimate fellowship with Him in
the Word and prayer, their spiritual eyes are
opened to discern which opportunities are from the
Father and which are not a part of His plans for
them.
But those who are foolish do not give
adequate thought to the way they live. Some become
unproductive and lazy, living for their own pleasures
while missing out on Gods purpose for their
lives. However, others may be very busy and
extremely successful by worldly standards, but if
their days are occupied with activities that
arent Gods will for them, theyre wasting
their time.
To make the most of your opportunities,
begin each day with the Lord, submitting to His
will and asking that He direct your activities.
After all, none of us want to get to heaven and
discover that even though weve been busy spending
our time, we have failed to invest it for
eternity. [Life Principles SB By Charles Stanley]
Is What Youre Doing the Best Use of Your
Life?
If you want to make an impact with your
life, youve got to do one thing: Get control of
your time. Your time is your life. If you dont
learn to manage your time, youll limit the
legacy of your life.
Ephesians 5:15-17 says, Be very
careful how you live. Do not live like those who are
not wise. Live wisely. I mean that you should
use every chance you have for doing good,
because these are evil times. So do not be foolish
with your lives. But learn what the Lord wants
you to do (ICB).
We all have the same amount of time every
week: 168 hours. Its what you do with it that
counts! Youve only been allotted a certain number
of days in this world, and if you waste them,
youve blown it! If you waste time, youre
wasting your life. Your time is your life. You have
to stop and ask, Is this the best use of my
time? Is this the best use of my life?
You dont have time for everything. The
good news is that God doesnt expect you to do
everything. So dont feel guilty about it! There are
only a few things worth doing in the first
place.
Effective people figure out whats
essential in life and whats trivial, and they spend
more time doing the essential things and less
time doing the trivial things. You cant
eliminate all the trivia in your life, but you can
reduce it.
This sounds easy, but frankly its
often difficult to choose between whats best
for your life and whats easiest for your life
- especially when youre tired. When
youre tired you dont want to do the best thing.
You want to do whats easy. Thats why if
youre really going to make something of your life,
you have to learn to get some rest. If youre
not rested, you wont have the mental,
emotional, and physical strength to say, Im going
to do the right thing instead of the easiest
thing.
Dont waste your life. Dont settle
for second best. Dont go through life just
existing. You were not created to just coast. God made
you for a mission and a purpose. That starts by
asking, Is what Im doing the best use of my
life? [Daily Devotional by Rick Warren:
https://pastorrick.com/devotional/]
Be Careful with Your Time
Time is your most precious commodity. You
only have a limited amount of it!
Its estimated that people will live an
average of 72 years, or 26,000 days. You may think
youve got plenty of days left, but, if you're over
27, you've already passed 10,000 days. Youre
not getting any of those days back, and thats
what makes time your most precious resource.
You can always get more money. You can
always get more energy. But you cannot create more
time.
You have a certain number of days in your
life, and that's it. When you spend them,
theyre gone. So life management is really time
management. If you learn to manage your time, then you
learn to manage your life.
"Be careful how you live. Don't live like
fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most
of every opportunity in these evil days"
(Ephesians 5:15-16 NLT).
The opposite of careful is careless. The
Bible tells you not to be careless with your life.
Be careful. That means you should be
intentional and deliberate with your time. I like to
call it being purpose driven!
Do you know what it looks like to be
careless with your time? On average, people spend
three hours and 15 minutes on their phone a day.
Americans spend more than five hours a day on their
phones and check their phones an average of 58
times a day. Thats 35 hours a week that weve
devoted to staring at a tiny screen - and that
doesnt include time spent on the computer or
watching TV. Of course, not all of that time is
fruitless. But being careful with your time means being
aware of how you spend it and of whether you are
spending it on things that really matter.
"Someone may say, 'I'm allowed to do
anything,' but not everything is helpful. Im allowed
to do anything, but not everything encourages
growth" (1 Corinthians 10:23 GW).
It's not a sin for you to spend five
hours watching cute cate videos on YouTube. But it
might not be the best use of your time. Some
things arent necessarily wrong. They're just not
necessary. It may not be wrong, but is it worth giving
your life for?
Be careful with your days. You only have
so many. [Daily Devotional by Rick Warren:
https://pastorrick.com/devotional/]
Its about Time
I Am A Sucker For Time-Management Books.
Some people cant say no to a salesman
at the door. Others have the hardest time
passing up a litter of free puppies. Some people
struggle with driving by a garage sale without
stopping. Still others find it almost impossible to
withstand the urge to gamble. Not me. My weakness is
books that teach me about the investment of my
time - all of those volumes that promise to tell
me how to replace simply being busy with being
effective. I have a special place in my heart for books
that get me to think through things before
plunging into them.
I could save money (and the time spent
reading) if I remembered what the Bible says about
how to live effectively. The biblical antidote
to the problem is described best by the apostle
Paul:
Be careful how you live. Dont live
like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the
most of every opportunity in these evil days.
Dont act thoughtlessly, but understand what the
Lord wants you to do. Ephesians 5:15"17
Such truths grab my attention. Walking
wisely is the secret to living above our
circumstances rather than under them.
If you kept reading Ephesians 5, youd
discover that the Holy Spirit is the One who helps
you manage life effectively:
Be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among
yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts.
And give thanks for everything to God the Father
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians
5:18"19
Put yourself under His control by
spending time in His Word and committing to a life of
obedience and trust. Thats what will guarantee
youre using your time wisely. [Chuck Swindoll
www.insight.org.]
Living on Purpose
God desires that we bear much good fruit
(see John 15:1-5). That can only occur if we are
people who live life "on purpose." Each day, we
should prayerfully think through what we would like
to accomplish that day and then purpose to do
it. If we are vague and thoughtless, it is more
likely that we won't accomplish much at all. Vague
people wait to see how they feel before taking
action, but purposeful people take the proper action
no matter how they feel about it.
We live in a world of distractions, and
even purposeful people need to be wise and not
get off track. Many things scream for our
attention, and yet it is up to each of us to decide
what God would have us give our attention to. If
I need to clean my house today, should I do
that or go shopping with a friend who called at
the last minute with an invitation? If I need to
pay my bills and balance my bank account, should
I do that or get distracted by television and
sit on the couch most of the day? Many people
live frustrated lives simply because they do not
live on purpose.
When my day is over, I need to feel that
I have accomplished something worthwhile. I
want to have made progress in some areas of my
life, and I believe that is a desire that God has
placed in each of us. We feel fulfilled when we
have confidence that we have done what we needed
to do, but we feel frustrated if we feel we
have just wasted the day. Even if we decide to
rest all day, which is something that can also be
fruitful for our overall health, we need to do it on
purpose! In short, my advice is: Pray, plan, and stay
focused on purpose!
Father, I want to bear good fruit in my
life, and need Your help in planning and in
following through. Help me not to get distracted by
time-wasters that get me off track and frustrate me. [My
Time with God by Joyce Meyer]
The Most of Every Opportunity
To make the most of every opportunity,
it's good to make a plan. A plan clarifies what's
important in your life. When you have a plan with
goals, you then calculate how much time it's going
to take to reach those goals - how much time
weekly for how many weeks. But until it gets on
your calendar, it's just a dream. You will find
it much clearer in your mind and much more
likely to happen if you write it all down.
One more step that will make an enormous
difference in whether you follow through with your plan
is telling somebody about your goal. Did you
know that when you share your goal with somebody
else, and commit to reporting back to that person,
you have a 95 percent chance of achieving it?
What is your goal? What time on what days
of the week are you going to give to it?
Take advantage of the opportunities
before you. [The Daniel Plan 365-Day Devotional]
Redeeming the Time
These days we are bombarded with
opportunities that entice us to invest our time and
energy. Each day the voices of urgency cry out for
every available moment. So many causes promise
that time spent on them will reap great rewards;
how can we recognize Gods voice among so many
competing voices?
A fool makes unwise choices with his
time. With every new opportunity that comes along,
the fool chases off in a different direction,
not questioning whether that is the best choice.
The loudest voice gains his attention. At some
point the fool discovers to his dismay that he has
squandered the investment of his time.
The days in which you live are evil.
Marriages are under tremendous pressure, families are
disintegrating. Multitudes are dying each year without
hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Investing your
life wisely is critical to you and to those
around you. Foolishly spending your time in sinful
or wasteful pursuits can cost you and others
dearly.
Often, it is not evil pursuits that rob
your time. Rather, the temptation is to sacrifice
what is best for what is good. The enemy knows
that blatantly tempting you with evil will be
obvious, so he will lure you with distractions,
leaving you no time to carry out Gods will. He
will tempt you to so fill your schedule with good
things that you have no time for Gods best. You
may inadvertently substitute religious activity
for Gods will, pursuing your own goals for
Gods kingdom instead of waiting for His
assignment. Time is a precious commodity. Be sure to
invest it wisely. [Experiencing God Day by Day by
Henry and Richard Blackaby]
CLOSING THOUGHTS
No one can doubt that the days we are living
in are evil: murder, rape, theft, fraud,
suicide, slander, abuse, and arrogance abound. The
Bible states plainly that we, as Christians, need
to live very carefully and very wisely, making
the most of every opportunity. Paul, in this
5th chapter of the letter to the Christians at
Ephesus, exhorts them to be imitators of God. Jesus
obeyed God in order to bring glory and honor to
God. We should have no other yardstick by which
we measure our life. Jesus was careful and
wise and made the most of every opportunity for
the glory of God! Are you careful and wise,
according to the Scriptures? Do you take every
opportunity to say or do something that will bring honor
to God? Think about it. [In His Time; Walk
With Wisdom]
Set These Four Goals to Grow More Like Jesus
Do you want to be healthier? More rested
and less stressed? Do you want to be closer to
God? To other people?
You dont just drift into good things.
You must be intentional. You have to set some
goals and then commit to working toward them every
day.
We were created to become like Jesus
Christ, so lets use him as a model for growth.
The Bible tells us that Jesus grew in four ways:
Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor
with God and man (Luke 2:52 NIV).
If you want to be like Jesus, then you
have to grow intellectually, physically,
relationally, and spiritually. As you read through these
points, be thinking of one goal you can set for
yourself in each of these four areas.
1. Set a goal for intellectual growth.
Proverbs 19:8 says, Do yourself a
favor and learn all you can; then remember what
you learn and you will prosper (GNT). You
must never stop learning. A mind is a terrible
thing to waste! What is one thing youd like to
learn? It doesnt have to be a spiritual thing.
Maybe theres a book youd like to read for
the first time. Maybe theres a class youd
like to take. Maybe youve always wanted to
learn another language. Now is the time to do it!
2. Set a goal for physical growth.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20,
Dont you realize that your body is the temple of
the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given
to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,
for God bought you with a high price. So you
must honor God with your body (NLT). God wants
you to honor him with your body, because its
where he lives. What could you do to set a goal in
this area? How can you improve your health?
Dont make an unrealistic goal, because you will
just get discouraged. You might need to get a
physical, go to bed earlier, change an eating habit,
or start walking during your lunch break.
3. Set a goal for relational growth.
Philippians 1:9 says, This is my
prayer for you: that your love will grow more and
more; that you will have knowledge and
understanding with your love (NCV). The greatest lesson
you can learn in life is how to love God and
other people. Because thats what life is all
about! What do you need to do to develop stronger
relationships? Do you need to join a small group? Restore a
relationship? Offer forgiveness or ask for forgiveness?
Invite a new friend over for a meal? Remember to
make your goal specific.
4. Set a goal for spiritual growth.
The Bible says in 2 Peter 3:18, Grow
in spiritual strength and become better
acquainted with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
(TLB). Ive found in my life that the smallest
goal I set in this area reaps the most incredible
benefits. As you think through this one, ask, What
can I do that will make the biggest
difference? Even a small thing can make a huge
difference. Or what have you been putting off when it
comes to spiritual growth? Do that one first when
it comes to this goal.
Make it a point to write down your goals
and put them on your refrigerator or your
mirror. Look at them every day. Pray about them.
Review them. Share them with a spiritual partner.
Use these goals to help you know Jesus better
and grow more into his image.
Walk carefully, not as the unwise, but
as wise, making the very most of your time
Do not be foolish and thoughtless, but
understand and firmly grasp what the will of the Lord
is (Ephesians 5:15-17 AMP). [Daily Devotional
by Rick Warren:
https://pastorrick.com/devotional/]
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Relax in My healing, holy Presence. Allow
Me to transform you through this time alone
with Me. As your thoughts center more and more on
Me, trust displaces fear and worry. Your mind is
somewhat like a seesaw. As your trust in Me goes up,
fear and worry automatically go down. Time spent
with Me not only increases your trust; it also
helps you discern what is important and what is
not.
Energy and time are precious, limited
entities. Therefore, you need to use them wisely,
focusing on what is truly important. As you walk
close to Me, saturating your mind with Scripture.
I will show you how to spend your time and
energy. My Word is a lamp to your feet; My Presence
is a Light for your path. (Eph. 5:15, 16; Psa.
119:105) [Jesus Calling by Sarah Young]
LINK FOR FURTHER STUDY ON THIS TOPIC
Psalm 90:12 - Time a Precious Talent.
http://www.abible.com/devotions/2021/20210225-0902.html
YOUR COMMENTS
If anyone has a paraphrase, commentary or
testimony on this passage of Scripture, either
personal or otherwise, I would be interested in
hearing from you. Thanks in advance and let's keep
uplifting Jesus that all might be drawn to Him. Fred
Gibbs
LINKS WORTH CHECKING OUT
Most Important Decision in Life:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/WGnEuGwvXqU?rel=0
A Man without Equal by Bill Bright:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiVa7UoruIo
Seeking God Made Real:
http://vimeo.com/31489782
Prayer Made Real:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc8VdMV26VE
Importance of Choice:
http://creationhealth.com/CREATION-Health/Choice [click on video]
Medical Seminar on Healthful Living by David
DeRose, MD, MPH:
https://www.smartlifestyletv.com/lifestart
LINKS FOR BIBLE STUDIES
Lifting Up Jesus Bible Studies:
http://www.liftingupjesus.net/
Amazing Facts Bible Studies:
http://www.amazingfacts.org/bible-study/bible-study-guides.aspx
Hope Awakens Bible Study Guides:
https://www.hopeawakens.study/lesson-header;id=2
Glow Tract Video Bible Studies:
http://www.bibleresearch.info/
LINKS FOR BIBLE PROPHECY SEMINARS
Revelation Now by Pastor Doug Batchelor:
https://www.revelationnow.com/
Unlocking Bible Prophecies by Cami Oetman of
Adventist World Radio:
https://bible.awr.org/en/the-signs/
Hope Awakens by John Bradshaw of IIW:
https://itiswritten.tv/programs/hope-awakens
Prophecies Decoded by Pastor Ron Clouzet:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1A435C5373550657
