MANIFESTED VISION, PART 4: "VISION & TIME, PART A" | APOSTLE MIKE WOODS SR. | RADAH CHURCH

Well, grace and peace everyone, be multiplied to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is Apostle Mike Woods, and I'm so elated tonight to come into your home, to your car, wherever you may be, and share the word of the Lord with you. So listen, do not scroll, there's something very profound and powerful that's about to be disseminated that I promise you, you want to hear. Today I get the opportunity to share with you the message we shared last week at Rhoda Church. We preached the fourth installment of the series Manifested Vision entitled Vision and Time. You know, in the book of Habakkuk, the Bible says that the vision is for an appointed time. So we dealt with the power of mastering your time so that you could actually finish vision. Now, this message has so much meat. We didn't get to finish, but we're gonna definitely finish it this weekend. But I want you to divulge into this because some of you are wasting your time doing all of the wrong things, and you really need to be focused on the vision that God has placed in your heart. And bringing it forth in the year to come. So let's go into this teaching already in progress, and then I don't want you to leave. I'm going to come back after the message and I'm going to pray with you that the vision in your life will be stirred up and that you'll be launched and deployed into that vision with faith and power and all the provision you need to finish your course with joy. Listen, I love you guys. Stay right with us. Please share this. I promise you, you'll be glad you did, and the person you share it with will thank you because this message is a necessity for your destiny. Let's go into this message, Vision and Time. One of the most tragic things in the world is to have sight but no vision. As a matter of fact, it's quite pathetic because you see, the greatest gift God ever gave to mankind It's not the gift of sight, but the gift of vision. Sight is a function of the eyes. Vision is a function of the heart. And because so many people look at life through their eyes and not real vision that comes from the Spirit of God, they're frustrated in their marriage, they're frustrated in their businesses, they're frustrated in their life. They have no hope. They're depressed. They can't see their way out. But the reality is those that have good success are those who live from the realm of vision, prophetic perception. And I just want you to be clear this month and next month even, that as we move into this new year, vision will begin to be manifested in our lives. And we gotta get ready now. I promise you. Vision is God's optimal reality for your future, and he wants to see it manifested. I just want the devil to be clear that the Word of God is everything. Glory to Jesus.

Say this with me.

Say, this is my Bible. Say, I am what it says I am. So I can have what it says I can have. Say, I can do what it says I can do.

Say, through the word of God, my life has changed. My life is free. Said, through the word of God, I can live in abundance. I can live above what the world standard is. Say, I trust the word. I live by the word. It is alive and lives in me, in Jesus' name. Amen.

And thank God. Hallelujah. Amen.

Glory to God.

The word, praise God. Hallelujah.

That's why we ought to study it and read it every single day. So let's jump in this today. Amen.

I'm gonna continue teaching, and I want you guys to take notes. I'm gonna give you some good soul food today. I mean, I'm really gonna teach this because It was blessing me as God gave it to me, and I know any person that really is going to fulfill vision— now we done laid a good foundation to this series, so now we're going to get into some very practical things that are necessary to really bring vision to pass.

Touch yourself and say, God has a vision for my life.

Amen.

So today, this is part 4.

We're going to talk about vision and time. Say that with me. Say vision and time. Amen.

So just to review part 1 again, just a few things I want to pull out of there because—

and really all I want to pull out is the working definition we got because I really want us to be clear what vision is and how it comes about.

So we found out in, in the first teaching that vision came from the Hebrew word harzon, or chazon, however you want to pronounce it, but it's harzon in Hebrew, and it is a prophetic revelation.

Say that with me.

Say, vision is prophetic revelation.

I didn't say pathetic, I said prophetic.

Say, "The vision is prophetic revelation." So again, vision is something that is prophetically uttered that is on God's mind. And the first person that prophesies concerning vision in our life is God.

I want y'all to hear this.

The first person that prophesies about vision in our life is God. He's the first person that discusses who we are and where we're going. We talked about that in Jeremiah 1:5. The Bible said— glory to God— God said in Jeremiah 1:5, before he formed us, he knew us. So that word 'know' is yada in Hebrew, which means he had intimacy or relationship with us. There were real conversations that you and I had with God in the before, before we ever got here. I mean, and that's, that's what the scripture says, before we were born, before we were life in the body, we were life with God. So God began to speak vision and package us with real vision before we were even born. So when we get into earth, it is important that our relationship with God is strong enough that he can utter what he already uttered to us again, so that we don't find ourselves running after a pathetic vision versus a prophetic vision. See, it's really—

it's a pathetic vision when you run after something that came out of your flesh.

So today I want to talk about vision and time because we cannot afford to waste time on things that God did not say do. I don't know about nobody else, but I can't.

I just really can't because I ain't getting no younger. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm 53 years old and I ain't doing nothing God don't want me to do, period.

Because it's— every ounce of my time needs to be poured into finishing what God put me on this planet to finish, whether it be in business, in ministry, in my marriage, as a parent to my children. Everything has to be aligned with what God says. So I want to challenge you today to really listen very closely because this, this teaching is really important because your time is everything when it comes to fulfilling vision. Let me start by saying this: the human being that masters his time is the human being that masters his life. If you master your time, you're gonna master your life. If your time is out of control, your life will be out of control. So we have to learn to discipline ourselves to be masters of our time. To be a master of time means that you understand how valuable time is, and we're going to talk about that today. Because it takes time to fulfill a vision. So time— and I'm gonna start with this, you might want to write this down, I'm telling you— time is one of those commodities that once you lose it, it's gone forever. I'll say it again, that's why you got to master it. You got to master who you spend time with, and you can't waste time with the wrong people in the wrong places, because once time is gone.

My God, it's gone for good. That's why every second is important.

It's one of those commodities that once you lose it, it's gone for good.

You can never get it back.

That's one thing you cannot get back if you lose it. You can lose a car and get another car. You can lose a house and get another house. Glory to God. You, you can, you can lose friends and get some more friends, but you can't lose time and get more time. When time is complete, it's over. With that said, the second really important thing— we're going to build this whole message on these two things. I may say these two things 100 different ways today, but this all I'm gonna really be saying You lose time, you can't get it back. Number 2, avoid time wasters.

I'm gonna say that again, avoid time wasters.

You got to become a master of avoiding people that you know is gonna waste your time. There's some folk I refuse to call. I'm telling you, I thank God for text when it comes to these people, because I already know if I get on the phone with them, they're going to keep me on the phone way beyond the time I want to be on the phone. So I ain't calling them, I'm texting them, because guess what? I'm mastering my time. I can text back when I want to. Glory to God. I can, I can easily end the conversation better via text because I'm not gonna waste time on the phone discussing things that are not relevant to the purpose for which I'm talking to you. So you gotta learn how to be a master at avoiding time wasters. You know spending time with that person gonna be a huge waste of your time, so you need to learn how to avoid them.

You know the folk ain't talking about nothing when they come to your desk, come in your space, call your phone.

You can look at the phone and say, you know what, they ain't been do nothing waste of time. They ain't got nothing to talk about. I mean, because again, we— there's too much to do to waste time fooling with the wrong people.

Okay, yeah, so you got—

so one, time, when it's gone, it's gone. It's one of those commodities, when you lose it, it's gone forever. Secondly, we're building this message around avoiding time wasters, and we're going to talk about why you got to do that. Like I said, I may say this 100 different ways in this message today, but that's all I'm gonna say.

That's really—

if you get them two points, you got the whole message. So let's start here. Let's go to Habakkuk 2 and 3.

Habakkuk, minor prophet Habakkuk. And the only reason he's called a minor prophet in modern theology If you ever went to Bible school, they'll teach you about the major prophets and the minor prophets. The major prophets was Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel. The rest of the prophets in the Old Testament are minor prophets is because their book is smaller than Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and— well, who else? Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah. So, so their books are smaller than those three prophets, so they call them minor prophets. Prophets, but they're really just as major—

glory to God—

as the other ones because they are prophets.

So the prophet says here in Habakkuk 2:3, he says, for the vision is yet for an appointed time. Wait a minute, so this, this gives us scriptural premise whereby we, we need to discuss Glory to God. Vision in time, because he says, for the vision, the harzon, the prophetic revelation, what God spoke, what God said is going to happen. Now, how many of you know if God says something, glory to God, if he says something's going to happen, it's going to happen? Glory to the name of God. Just, just touch yourself. Say, if God said it, It's gonna happen. No, if anybody— I have lived long enough and walked with God long enough to see things that God said to me he was gonna do happen. I've seen him do it. Glory to God. Yeah, just touch yourself and say, I've seen him do it.

I've seen him do it.

I've seen him do it. I've seen him keep his word to me. I've seen things he promised me and things that were prophesied over my life. I've seen them happen. So God spoke and said it's for an appointed time. Now wait a minute, let's deal with that word appointed. The, the word appointed time is moed or moled. It is—

it will be spelled in English M-O-L-E-D, but that ain't how you pronounce it. It's actually moed, moed.

And this word literally means a sacred season. So God sets up a sacred season of manifestation. Sacred means it's special, it's holy. That means— it means it's set apart from carnality. It's sacred. So God has set up a sacred season for his vision and his promises to be manifested in your life. That's powerful. Now watch this, he calls an appointed time. If you had to go to the doctor, unless your doctor takes walk-ins, most of the time you have to have an appointment. Are y'all hearing that? You got— you ain't gonna just walk in there if your doctor work on appointments. Place. And if he busy and you try to walk in, he gonna send you somewhere else because you got to have an appointment. Now, what is an appointment, Michael? An appointment is a pre-arranged meeting, which means you arrange the appointment by phone, on the internet, however you set up your appointments. You arrange the appointment in advance. You pick up the phone, call your dentist and say, I need to come in Thursday at 9, do you have any availability? They said no, Thursday night is not available. I can get you Monday at 10. Over the phone, you've arranged a meeting for Monday at 10. You agree to it. Now guess what happens when you do that? You got to hang up the phone and you got to wait till Monday at 10. You can't just decide, okay, my tooth hurting now, I ain't waiting till Monday at 10. I'm going in there now. He's— you still ain't gonna get seen unless you go somewhere else. Again, that they take walk-ins. Watch this. The Bible says, but at the end it shall speak. So the vision over your life, it was spoken in the before, and in the end, the time, the sacred season when it comes forth, it's also going to speak.

I'm telling you today, even in this place The vision that God has given me for our church and for this particular location—

I was praying here when I got here earlier, and I began to pray that God would fill this room beyond capacity. And while I was praying, he showed me the room filled beyond capacity, every chair out, every seat full, people getting saved, people getting healed. People receiving the word, people worshiping God. I saw it, and— but it wasn't something that he just decided. I want you to know God appointed that before I was born. He knew I would be here today at 53 years old as such, even though I didn't know, because I was living in Mississippi thinking I was going to be in Mississippi pastoring the Mississippi church all of my life. I thought that was all.

God had another plan.

And God knew I would be here right now today, and he has a plan. Watch this, and I'm prophesying to you today that the vision will speak, that we will see it with our own eyes. We will see God do something so miraculous in this place in terms of growth, it's going to blow our mind. Because just like you got to wait on that Monday appointment with the dentist You gotta wait for the vision to come to pass. It's gonna happen. We just have to—

oh, oh, wait a minute.

He says it shall speak and not lie. So what's going to prove that what God said is true is when it speaks, when it shows up and manifests. And I told y'all, 2023, God showed me it's going to be the year of manifested vision. And I believe one of the visions we're going to see manifested in this ministry is a full church. Glory to God! God's going to fill this ministry up. We've been plowing, we've been planting seed, we've been preaching, we've been teaching, we've been obeying, planting where he tell us to plant, going where he tell us to go. And I believe in this location, God's gonna fill this building to capacity. Somebody ought to believe God with me. He's gonna fill it to capacity.

And it's going to blow our mind.

Glory to God.

Hallelujah.

He said, though it tarry, though it linger, which means that it's going to be times when you just— well, where, when it's coming, where they at, what's going to happen, when the vision of my life going to come to pass, when the vision of our church going to come to pass. He said, though it tarry— watch this—

he said, wait for it.

Just like you got to wait for Monday to get to that appointment. You go on about your life, start doing other stuff, waiting. You ain't worrying about it because guess what? You know you got an appointment. You ain't worried about when you get there whether you're going to be seen. Why? Because you got an appointment. And you walk in the office with a certain kind of arrogance.

I have an appointment today. I mean, it's really—

it's just a doctor's appointment, but we— because we, we have a special reserved time to be seen, we walk in and say, I have an appointment. And, and they go look for your appointment. That's all you sure do. And guess what they do? They see you. I'm telling you, we got an appointment with God. We got a prearranged meeting with his vision, and he's going to manifest it in our life. It's going to come forward with power. It's going to come forward with authority. It's going to come forward. It's going to speak, and it ain't going to lie. But when it's— oh my God— tempting to be discouraged tempting to give up, tempting to grow weary and get tired. And for— if y'all been following me online, or those that follow me in person, listen, y'all follow me, y'all understand I'll never quit. No matter what comes up, I'm gonna keep going. No matter what the circumstance is, I'm gonna keep going. And the secret to my success in everything I've ever done in life has been the ability to keep going, to keep— and that's what— watch this— that's what waiting in the text really implies.

It don't imply sitting around and just twiddling your fingers and sitting on your hands.

That ain't what he talking about, because the vision ain't gonna fall out the sky.

Let me tell you what he's talking about.

The word wait there is shakar in Hebrew, and it means It means to wait in ambush. You know, if somebody was going to ambush you, they done planned out how to ambush you. They done watched how you leave your house and get in your car in the morning. They done watched how you come home and get out your car. And so they know just when to get in the bushes. They know just what they need—

a brick or a bat.

They know what they need to take you down, to ambush you. An ambush is planned. So God said, while we're waiting, we gotta, we gotta keep working, we gotta keep worshiping, we gotta keep glorifying God, we gotta keep going after the principles and the, the processes that we have to go through in order to see the vision come to pass. We can't sit around and do nothing. So waiting— watch this— when you go to a restaurant, you have a waiter which is a male server, or a waitress, which is a female server. And what that female server does, they come to your table and say, how may I help you today? What would you like? What are you gonna have to drink? They're waiting on you. So while we're waiting on the vision, we gotta serve the vision. We can't sit down and do nothing. We gotta find out if it's just 2 of us, 3 of us, 5 of us, 10 of us. When we get to 150, when we get to 300, no matter how many people it is in this location, we got to keep serving the vision until we see the full manifestation of it come to pass in our life. Touch yourself and say, I got a vision.

Say, I'm gonna wait on it. Come on, say it again.

Say, I'm gonna wait on it. See, vision requires work.

And work takes time. I'm about to get out of introduction. When I get into the meat of it, I'm gonna be rolling.

Say, 'Vision takes time.' Say, 'Work takes time.' Come on, say it again.

Say, 'Vision takes time.' Say, 'Work takes time.' Oh boy.

Go to John 9:4.

John 9:4. St. John's Gospel 9:4. This is Jesus. This is, this is, this is, this is powerful here. Jesus is saying this.

He says, I must work the works of him that sent me. So Jesus says, first of all, I ain't just waiting on the Father to come back before I start doing something. He said, I gotta work this vision because God sent me here to do something. That statement implies that Jesus says, I got work to be done. What I'm here to do, my vision to save the world, is not just gonna happen. My vision to show kingdom citizens that they can live in relationship to the Father for real on earth, it ain't gonna just happen. I gotta do some work. He said, I gotta raise the dead, I gotta cast out some devils, I gotta walk on water, I gotta make fish pay my taxes. I gotta show them that the kingdom is real, and if they live in me and work it, it'll work for them.

Oh boy.

He said, I must work the works of him that sent me. Wow. While it is day, for the night comes when no man can work.

That's a statement of time. It takes time for the sun to come up and go back down, for day to become night.

And Jesus says, I've been given time to do this work, but there's a day coming when time's gonna run out and I'm not gonna be able to do this work. So I gotta do it while I can. Somebody say that. Say, touch yourself and say, I must work while it's yet day, for the night comes when no man can work. Now let me drop this. This has nothing to do where I'm going, but I want to drop this real quick, that— because I want to differentiate the difference in work and labor. There is a difference. Labor is any effort that you exert physically. That's a means to an end. That's it. Any work that you physically do, any effort you put forth, any energy you give out physically, that's a means to the end. So if it's only requiring physical attention, well, mostly you're physically engaged in getting it done. But work is any effort that is exerted mentally Spiritually and physically, that's a means to an end. We work on vision and we exert our spiritual self. We spend time exerting our spirit to get vision to come close to us. We spend time— oh my God— thinking about it mentally, going through the planning and the processes to do what we got to do. And then we physically engage. So many times we work, we labor physically, and it satisfies temporary needs, and that's what we do, we have to do, but at the end of the day, God ultimately wants us to be working while it's day on the Kingdom vision that He gave us for our life. Amen. All right, so here, let me just give you some PowerPoints about time. So I need you guys to really get these notes. Matter of fact, if you don't write them, I'll just give you mine.

I got it, I got them right here. I'll give them to you because I want you to have this. Glory to God, because it blessed me so when God was giving this to me.

So first of all, I want to talk about the passing of time. So again, when you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, time is doing what?

It's passing.

But what are you really doing to fulfill vision while time is passing? First of all, the passing of time is an opportunity to redefine your priorities. So during the time God gives you every day, you should take opportunity to redefine your priorities. What's important to you? What's important about where you want to end up, where you're trying to go. Secondly, it's an opportunity to redefine your purpose. Most people don't understand and not clear about their purpose because they never spend time trying to figure out what it is, trying to talk to the Father about why we are here. But time is— as time passes, It's an opportunity to define our purpose. Oh God, it's an opportunity to redefine your life's vision.

Yeah, so the time you're given, you got opportunity to redefine your life's vision because most of the time our vision is based in something someone else told us, is based in what society has taught us.

It's based—

so, and when I look around this place, I'm looking like I'm talking to folk, man. Listen, I'm just like, it's crazy.

The reality is what God is doing is, as we grow in him, he's cultivating a process so that what he originally put in us in the before can come alive and be seen by the world and not lie. And so every day we get an opportunity to redefine that vision based on what God's vision for us is and not what our personal vision is for ourselves. Because where God's vision is— and we've taught this already— there's pre-vision. So we might ought to spend some time defining what God sees. Yeah, the process of time also is an opportunity to redefine your goals.

Most time we set goals, you know, maybe we want to do something extra like take a vacation or do something at our house, or we set goals, you know, and that's fine, but we are also have some goals that are bigger than our immediate circumstance, and every day we need to be trying to redefine what those goals are.

What are we going to do with the rest of our life? Where are we going to be in a year? Where are we going to be in 5 years? Where are we going to be, glory to God, in 10 years, in 20 years, in 17 years?

Time gives us opportunity to redefine it every day, but you know, Because we don't avoid time wasters, we let people get in our space and they waste our time. And then watch this— can't blame people for all the time we waste. Some of the time we waste is us. We waste time doing stuff where we could be being productive.

You know, it's okay.

Me and my wife, we, we, we, we have literally sat and binge-watched watch shows, like a whole season of stuff, 22 episodes, just sit there and watch.

You know how long that takes? But we enjoyed doing it in and out of sleep, watching it, and it was done.

It was just that good.

We watched. But, and it's good to be able to do that because that builds— relate—

that was time well spent because I was doing it with her.

No way I'm gonna do that by myself. That's a waste, huge waste of time for me to be sitting there all day watching 20 episodes of Blacklist. That's a waste of time because I, I got too much other stuff I need to be doing. I don't see how grown men can sit all day, 8 hours, 10 hours, and play PlayStation. I love to play my game, play golf on my game, on my PlayStation 5, but I ain't gonna play it no more. No hour or hour and a half, I'm getting up. And I'm gonna be through with everything else I'm doing before I turn the game on, because at the end of the day, I got too much other stuff I could be doing.

We have to define our time correctly.

Watch this.

Passing the time is also an opportunity—

say an opportunity—

to bury the past and move on to new things. Most people never leave their past behind because they still let the past into their present space.

That's called being a spiritual or emotional necrophiliac.

A necrophiliac is a perverted individual that sleeps with dead bodies. What kind of pleasure can you get out of that? That's ridiculous.

Eugh!

That's just terrible. But at the end of the day, a necrophiliac is pleasing themself in a way that is perverted, out of order.

Same in the spirit. When you waste your time letting dead stuff into your life, That's spiritual necrophilia. That is over. Some people can't love the person they got because they still reminiscing about the person they used to be with. That's a problem. Paul said, forgetting those things which are behind, so reaching towards ahead. I press So you got to let the dead stuff die, and time gives you opportunity to let it go. You got to bury the past before it buries you, because if you don't bury it, it will bury you. And you can't afford to be a spiritual necrophiliac operating in perversion in the realm of the spirit, and you spending so much time with dead assignments dead vision, dead purposes, that you never fulfill God's purpose for your life. Wow.

So that's the passage of time. Second, we're going, we're moving, let's talk about a little bit the principle of time. First of all, I told you in the beginning that he that masters his time masters his life. Can I submit to you that time is life?

Time is life. When you are born, your time clock begins. Your birth certificate is your time clock that checks you into life. Pling! You clock in. Your death certificate is your time ticket that clocks you out of life. If you die before the allotted time— because God has given every human in their life an allotted time to fulfill their purpose— if you die before you complete your purpose, that's called murder. We got to stop saying God took everybody. God didn't take everybody. Some people were murdered at the hand of a murderer and they died. You know, people pray, well, God— and they be mad at God and be like, God, I don't understand why you did this, why you took them. And a lot of times God didn't take them. They died before their time because they were murdered. Some people are murdered by food. They eat the wrong things and kill their body, and their body dies. But when you got vision and you understand time is life, you— what you— you spend time making sure that your life is preserved in time by taking care of yourself. You can't tell me God took somebody that committed suicide.

He didn't.

That's murder. So just like that person murdered themselves, guess what? If somebody pulls a gun on you and shoots you and you die, that's murder. Could God have stopped it? Yes, but at the end of the day, he didn't, and the person was crazy and they killed you. If you die before you finish, that's murder. We got too many people who have died, who have lost their life who never finished the vision, who never made it to the appointment. Say that with me, say, "Time is life." So if time is life, life is defined by time. Who I am, what I become is defined in the principle of time. Life is measured in time. I just told you that.

He declares the end from the beginning.

God has given every person— glory to the name of God—

on a space called time to fulfill destiny, to bring forth vision.

He plants the seed of purpose inside of time, and purpose should grow and matriculate and come alive and manifest as vision over time. So many times it doesn't because we don't value our time properly.

We, again, we get outside of the realm of how God does things, and God does all things well, perfect. Whenever we start doing stuff without Him, it's bound to have flaw. So that's why we have to choose to walk with him in everything we do.

So life is lived out in time. Life is qualified by time.

The passing of time— God, this blew me away—

is the passing of life. That's called death. So again, when I get to the end and I've completed my time, finished my purpose, manifested the vision, now it's okay to die. Paul said, I go to Jerusalem bound by the Holy Ghost. I know they're going to kill me when I get down there, but he said, I have finished my course. Hallelujah! I've run the race. Glory to God! He said, I know I'm gonna die when I get there, but I'm finished. See, when you're finished, you're okay with death. There's a peace that comes with you when you have finished the assignment, the vision that God gives you. Death is— if you realize and you accept the fact, really, there is no death. There never was. Death is separation from God. Long as you in God, there is no death for you. There's people walking around dead right now because they're not in God.

I gotta go, I gotta go. So life stops when time stops. Death again is life leaving time.

Wow.

Time is temporary, it's fleeting, but life life, hear this, is eternal. Even when you graduate from the earth realm, you move from Kronos time, which is the clock chronology, to Kairos time, which is eternity, God's time. God operates from eternity and he drops us inside of Kronos, but he controls our movement with Kairos.

Us. So even though I'm in time, I'm controlled out of time.

Yeah, that, that, that, that's, that's crazy, right?

So I'm in time, got 24 hours in a day, but God has the ability to move me through time, and it seemed like— glory to the name of God— something that is taking 20 years, He can move me through it in eternity and it's in his eyes, it's like a millisecond.

It's only a day.

And then we don't feel the effects of the wait because we're living in eternity. Time can affect us.

I want to say this, okay? This is a good example. Thank you, Holy Spirit. All right, so y'all know the story of the three Hebrew men. In church they call them boys, but They were grown men, right? These were not 3 Hebrew boys, they were men.

As a matter of fact, and if they—

if you want to debate it, you know, in Jewish custom you were declared a man at 13. These boys were inside of Jewish custom, they were beyond 13, so they're not boys, they are grown men. So Shadrach, Meshach, and a bad negro, Abednego.

All right, the Bible says that King— they said to the king, when we hear your music, we will not bow. King brought them before him. That was their vision. We gonna hear this music, we're gonna stay true to God. That was their vision. The vision is we don't worship other gods. The vision is we're gonna stay true to our God. They brought them for the king. King said, when you hear this music, if you don't bow down and worship me, I'm gonna throw you in this burning fiery furnace. Music played, they didn't bow down. Hallelujah. The Bible declares the king got angry, he was hot. He said, turn the fire up 10 times hotter than it is, take them down to the fire and throw them in. Bible said the man that took them to throw them in, the fire was so hot he was consumed. Threw them in the fire. These dudes walking around in the fire like ain't nothing going on. Glory to God! They walking around in the fire, chilling in the fire. The king looks in the furnace and says I thought we put in 3, but I see a 4th man that looks like the Son of Man. He walking in the fire with him. King's baffled, he don't understand. He pulls the boys out the fire. The Bible said there's not a stench of burning on them at all.

Let me tell you how this happened. Fire is an element of time.

It takes time for something to burn up. If I set this chair on fire and I'm— and watched it burn, it's gonna take time for that chair to burn all the way up. But because the fourth man got in the fire, he is eternity. He took time out the fire. He suspended the rules of natural time so they couldn't burn up because eternity was in the—

oh my God—

was in the fire with them, so they could not burn up. So when Jesus superimposes himself on an earthly situation, eternity steps in, and the time it would have took to destroy you, it can't destroy you because Jesus showed up. Ah, glory to God, because he's the eternal one. Hallelujah. Oh Lord, have mercy.

That's the principle of time. So time then is given to us, man. This chronos is given to us to maximize our days on earth, to get the very best out of our days so that we could please God.

How do you do that, Michael? Go to Psalm 39:4.

Psalm 39:4. I'm almost through, I just sound long.

Psalm 39:4 says, I sought the Lord— hear that— and he heard me.

I ain't gonna get to finish all this.

And delivered me from all my fears. So watch this, when I'm living in time, the first thing I really have to become a master of is seeking the Lord until I am clear that he heard me. The psalmist could not say he heard me if he didn't know he heard him. How do you know? Because that which he was seeking him about happened. He removed— hallelujah— all his fears.

Huh. So God says, you're gonna maximize your days, you can't live in fear, you got to walk in peace, you got to seek my face so that you know I'm with you in everything you're doing.

I'm—

I want to submit to you today, you are not alone. God is with you. I'll say it again, you are not alone. God is with you. Touch yourself, say, God's with me.

Secondly, go to Psalm 90:12.

I'm going to close here because I'm not through. I ain't nowhere near through. I'll just finish this another time.

Hallelujah.

I'll give you one more point after this one. He said, "So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." So he's saying, teach us to maximize our time, teach us, teach us to be very aware of the days that we have on earth, to be cognizant of the time frame we have to do what we got to do. What if This is for grown folk right here. But what if your relationship with God was so tight that he could tell you the day you were going to die, and you were able to number your days from the time you're born to the time you die? Some people say, oh, I don't want to know that.

But when you're in him and you're maximizing your days, and you— and I promise you, if we knew that, we'd probably live a whole lot differently. We'd eat differently. We, we pursue our goals differently because we know January 20th, 2048 I'm out of here.

We know that, so we're going to live different till we get there. I ain't saying God telling you to do that, but I'm saying if you number your days, you got to know when the end is.

You can't number your days, you can't say, Lord, teach me to number my days, you don't know how many days you got. That just make sense. David said, teach me to number. I want to know when I'm getting out of here, and I want to know the days that are in front of me and what I got to do. Hallelujah.

How about we just number the days to the manifestation of the visions? So Lord, show me when this is coming. Show me when this is going to happen.

You— what are you going to do? What are you going to manifest in 2023?

Hallelujah. Ecclesiastes 8:6, he said, but there is a proper time and procedure for every matter. So everything has a time frame that's connected to its completion and how it needs to get done. We got to maximize our days on earth. We got to take every day.

We got to watch this.

I believe not only do we need to maximize every 24-hour period, but I think we need to learn the power of maximizing every 60 seconds. Everything counts. What we say, what we do, where we go. We got to learn how to do that. I'm just— my last point real quick. I want to talk about— so we've talked about the passing of time, the principle of time. We've talked about time maximizing our days, and I'm not through. I'm just going to stop after this. Watch this. Time is the only commodity on earth that's distributed to every human equally. I have the same amount of time every day as Bill Gates. I have the same opportunity to do with my time what Bill Gates does. May not be the same thing, but whatever his process to create success, I got the same amount of time to create the process of success inside of my vision. Everybody has an equal amount of time. The question become What are you doing with the time God gave you?

Who has a monopoly on your time?

Who's taking all your time? What are you putting into the vision for your life? Something to think about.

Every human equally shares time, and it's the only commodity— hear this—

that every human has.

Every human has time. Everybody got it.

What you gonna do with it? When you get up in the morning, you have the same amount of time as I do. I got the same amount of time as you. Again, it's equality. What are we gonna do with it? And here, here's the final thing on that: what you become in life is determined—

watch this—

by how you use your time. Well, praise God, I'm sure that that message blessed you as it blessed us. And listen, you ought to make up in your mind right now that you're gonna master your time.

Time.

You know, we talked about in the teaching, he who masters his time masters his life. And you ought to just really take advantage of what you've heard and just go ahead and start applying those principles now so that you'll have time management down to a science. Glory to God! I heard somebody say you can't manage time. I don't agree with that. I really agree that God God gives us time, and we have to actually put it in the right perspective, in the right priority, so that we could do the things that we need to do. And one of the keys to doing it—

listen—

is managing your distractions effectively. And so what I want to pray for you for tonight is that you will be able to manage your distractions effectively. And distractions are going to come at All of us who have a unique assignment from God— well, everybody has a unique assignment from God. The problem is every person that they don't know that assignment. But once you come into a knowledge of what that assignment is, the enemy sends distractions that oftentimes can be fatal distractions to the vision. And we have to be careful that we eliminate our distractions properly. Properly and stay focused on what God has told us to do. Let's pray. I want to pray that God will give you the power, the insight, the wisdom, and the discernment to identify distractions that come from the enemy, and the boldness to eliminate them and remove them from your life. Let's pray. Father, in Jesus' name, I thank you for who you are. I give you praise for what you're doing. And I decree and declare tonight that what's to come in our lives is better than what has been. I believe, God, that 2023 will be a year of manifested vision for those of us that live from the realm of the spirit, that live from heaven to earth. We will see a manifestation of your promise in our life. We'll see an accelerated move of God that come upon us, God, and push us into places we've never gone before. So I pray tonight, I pray today for every person watching this live or by replay. I decree and declare, dear God, that they will have the boldness and the power and authority to defeat every distraction that comes up in their life, because I believe the enemy will distract us, and those distractions will create delays, and those delays will cause us to make detours, and those detours will turn into— glory to God— destruction. So I decree and declare that every distraction be broken and removed so that we can focus on what you've told us to do. And we give you praise and glory for it now, in the name of Jesus. Amen and thanks be to God. Listen, I am so glad you watched this message. And if I— if we just prayed together, that means you watched the whole message, and that means there's something really special about you. You really are not interested in scrolling and trying to find the thing that just appeases your interest, but you really make the sacrifice to take the position of a learner to get what you need. So thank you so much. I appreciate all of you for watching. Listen, if you desire to be a blessing to ministry, the ways to give are on the screen. You could go ahead and do that right now. And if you cannot give, I pray that God will prosper you and bless you, that you could be a blessing to the ministry in the very near future. Listen, I love you guys. I want to challenge every person to, to remember to meet us in person at Rhoda Church on Sundays at 3:00 6:21 King Arnold Street in the city of Hapeville, Georgia. Listen, I appreciate God for all of our partners and friends around the world that help us do what we're called to do, and even those that support us locally. Thank you so much, we appreciate you. May God bless you, heaven smile upon you, is my prayer. Thank y'all for watching, God bless you.