Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard,
that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator
of the ends of the earth, fainteth not,
neither is weary, there's no searching of his
understanding, he giveth power to the faint, and
to them that have no might, he increases
strength.
Even the youth shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall, but
they that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength.
They shall mount up with wings as eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, and
they shall walk and not faint.
I'm Don Corville, we welcome you today to
On Eagle's Wings, and we trust that today's
program will be an encouragement to you.
Have you ever thought about the area of
what your obedience to God costs other people,
and what your obedience means to you personally
in your walk with Jesus?
How about your disobedience, what it costs other
people?
Chambers said if we obey God, it's going
to cost other people more than it costs
us.
And if we're in love with our Lord,
obedience does not cost us anything, it's a
delight.
But it will cost those who do not
love him a good deal.
If we obey God, it means that other
people's plans are upset.
But if we disobey God, we're going to
upset God's plans.
Can we afford to be disobedient?
The psalmist said, Behold, thou hast made my
days as an handbreath, and mine ages as
nothing before thee.
Verily every man at his best state is
altogether vanity.
Selah.
Someone said, Life at its best is short,
time flies so very fast.
Lord help me not to waste this day,
lest it should be my last.
A friend of mine says, I'm ready to
go, but willing to wait.
You know the tracks of time are all
around us.
That gray hair sneaks up on you.
One day your house is old, there's a
funeral, or there's out-of-style clothes.
We say, I don't have time.
Is that true?
I don't have time to do all that
I want to do.
I seriously doubt that.
We find time to do that which is
important.
We live in the times of the tyranny
of the urgent, and the things that are
priority many times are pushed aside by the
urgent.
We say, My, how time has flown, or
where has the time gone?
The psalmist said in Psalms 90 and verse
12, So teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Well there's no doubt that we live in
some very different times, very different.
I was listening to a message today on
prophecy, and I'm seriously thinking about playing this
message for you in the weeks ahead, by
Jack VanIppy, one of his newest messages.
Just a powerful message that should prime the
church to seek the Lord, to seek him
in revival and cleansing, because of the soon
return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians 7
29, The time is short.
Let me ask you something about time.
Is it mastering you, or are you mastering
it?
Can you save it?
Well we know the Bible says that we
can redeem time.
Ephesians 5.15, Colossians 4.5 talk about
redeeming the time.
Definition of that means to rescue from the
loss, or from loss.
Maybe your time has got away from you,
the things that you're doing.
Someone said that time is either a bondage,
or a freedom to you.
If you're in jail, then time is a
bondage.
I heard the story that a preacher shared
once of a man that had got out
of jail, and another friend of his asked
him how it felt.
And he said, I don't know yet, I'll
tell you.
And he came back a few weeks later,
and he had during that time picked up
wire and stuffed it into a bottle.
And then he showed this bottle stuffed with
this wire to his friend.
He took and he threw the bottle down,
and he busted it.
And the wires, a few of the wires
popped out here and there, but basically the
form of the bottle was still there.
And he said, that's how I feel.
I'm free, yet the impression of the prison
has left its mold on me.
How about you?
Have you received Christ as your Savior, yet
you feel like the mold of the world
is still on you?
In the area, excuse me, I have sort
of a raspy throat, but in the era
of revival, we're talking about having that mold
from the world completely broke.
You know, we live in some unusual times,
and we have some unusual things happening.
I wanted to get on the radio today,
a pastor up in the state that's been
calling me about once or twice a week,
keeping me informed on a revival that's going
on in his town.
And I wanted to get him on the
air.
The last I heard, there were about 20
a night getting saved, and they're going into
the third week.
Starting today, April the 8th, they'll be going
into their third week in this revival meeting.
And the evangelist is just awed.
He's afraid.
He doesn't want to touch anything.
He realizes this is God doing him.
And the pastor is a friend of mine,
and actually the evangelist had to learn some
things new.
The pastor asked him to do some things
he's never done before.
Well, revival is hitting that town.
One man was driving through the town.
I guess he was a long-haired man
and headed for Las Vegas, and I'd like
to get him to share this with you
himself.
But somehow or another, he ended up at
the meetings a few blocks from the main
highway.
He got saved, and the next night he
was back at the meetings with a haircut,
clean shaved, and a new suit.
Had decided to stay in in that town,
and another pastor there went up to introduce
himself and was floored that it was the
same man.
Unusual things happening up in that area.
A small town of about 10,000, but
not great numbers anywhere from probably a hundred
to two hundred a night coming out.
But they're seeing God cleanse their town, cleansing
their churches, and last report I heard there'd
been about 23 churches represented in these meetings.
Unusual things happening.
We should be prepared for the unusual.
The times are changing.
We should let the delays in our life
turn us to delight in God's ways.
You know, Egypt was a mirage to Moses,
and this old world to us, to many
of us, we've let time trick us, and
we've set our sights on things that are
temporal and not the eternal things.
And we're not ready for the unusual.
As I've shared with you, God has allowed
me just to take some time off from
the busy pastoring schedule, and let me tell
you, I'm for the pastor that's preaching the
Word of God.
This ministry, we're not really here to promote
our ministry.
We don't promote for funds.
We just let God take care of that.
We want to promote the local church, the
preaching of the Word of God.
We are behind the man of God and
the local church that's preaching the Word, and
we're for you.
We know you're not perfect.
We're not perfect, but we want to be
an encouragement to you.
We want to encourage you to let God
cleanse your church if you need it.
If you're out there riding down the highway
or sitting there listening in your kitchen, your
living room, take a look at your life.
What has time done to your life?
Has it made some difference in your life?
Or has time become a bondage to you?
Where are you in relation to time?
You know, there's some things maybe we should
understand in relation to being free in time.
One thing we need to consider is that
our time needs to be yielded to God.
If you yield your time to God, and
I did this back in 1974, I was
out in Denver, and I've never forgot it
because God reminds me from time to time,
then let God do with you what he
wants.
It will stop frustrations.
It will stop fruitless activity.
You let him determine what the starts and
the stops of your day, your priorities, what
you do, your vocation, and where you go,
your vacations, where you shop.
You let him be the Lord of every
moment of your day.
You know, a couple weeks ago I had
an unusual thing happen to me.
We had a little girl, our little five
-year-old.
I got home one evening and she was
just crying and crying, and she was sick,
and the wife said, we've got to get
her to a doctor, and boy, that meant
the next day to go in and sit
for maybe an hour or two in a
doctor's office, and then I remembered I'd ran
into a doctor up in this area, up
in the Joplin area here, that does something
that's unusual.
Now, I don't remember this in my time,
but maybe you do.
Do you remember the days when doctors made
house calls?
Well, if you do, you're probably way up
there in years, but I don't remember those
days, and I'm 43 years old, before my
time.
But there's a doctor in this area, a
Christian doctor that makes house calls.
That's his ministry.
He will come to your house.
You don't have to go sit in a
clinic.
You call him.
So if you're been to us, it was
a great blessing.
We came up here to Joplin and just
met him right in front of a drug
store so we could get what we needed.
Time was running out for getting the prescription
filled, and he just met us right there.
He'll come to your home.
This doctor, isn't that unusual?
But he ministers that way, and God's just
led him to do this.
I'm not pushing his business or anything, but
if you'd like to get a hold of
this doctor, I'm sure he wouldn't mind just
me passing this information on to you.
His name is Dr. Dennis Greer, and his
phone number is 625-0143.
So if you'd like to have something unusual,
that's it.
You give him a call.
That's 625-0143, Dr. Greer.
He's an MD.
Well, God just prompted him to carry on
his medical practice by this means.
It's unusual.
His time has been yielded to God, and
he ministered to our family.
We met him in our van, and he
ministered to our family, both on the physical
and by way of spiritual, too, and it
was also educational.
He let some of the other kids look
inside of some ears, and we're homeschooling, so
that was interesting.
But we live in unusual times.
Let God do with you what he wants.
At the cross, our time ceases, and God
starts.
When you meet Jesus Christ at the cross,
your time stops, and his starts.
Isn't that good?
If you read in Oswald Chambers, my utmost
for his highest, and his little devotional on
April 6th, he said, there's nothing more certain
in time or eternity than what Jesus Christ
did on the cross.
He switched the whole of the human race
back into a right relationship with God.
He made redemption the basis of human life.
That is, he made a way for every
son of man to get into communion with
God.
Let me just ask you a question.
Look at your life.
Have you come to know God in your
time?
If not, I believe you've missed out on
life.
You've missed out on it.
The cross is the center of time and
of eternity.
The cross did not just happen to Jesus.
He came on purpose for it.
It wasn't just a mistake, a tragedy, a
great accident.
No, the cross was God's plan.
And if the cross is not in your
plan, you missed out on the whole purpose
of your existence on this earth.
Your time will have been wasted.
And from the day you're born to the
day you die, God gives you opportunities to
come to him and receive him as your
Savior.
The whole meaning of the incarnation, we're going
into the Easter season, the whole meaning of
Christ coming in the flesh and dying on
the cross, the whole meaning of it is
for you to be saved and so that
he can be glorified.
The incarnation was for the purpose of redemption,
Chambers shared.
God became incarnate for the purpose of putting
away sin, not for the purpose of self
-realization.
The New Age movement has taken us into
the self-realization.
But the cross is the center of time
and of eternity.
It's the answer.
The cross is not the cross of a
man, but the cross of God.
The cross of God can never be realized
in human experience.
The cross is the exhibition of the nature
of God, the gateway whereby any individual of
the human race can enter into union with
God.
When we get to the cross, we do
not go through it.
We abide in the life to which the
cross is the gateway.
So the center of salvation is the cross
of Jesus.
And the reason it is so easy to
obtain salvation is because it costs God so
much.
The cross is the point where God and
sinful man merge with a crash and the
way to life is open.
But the crash is on the heart of
God.
God took our sin.
He bore our sin on himself at Calvary.
My friend, he died for you.
The purpose of your time on this earth
is for God to be glorified in your
life.
And until you come to the point where
you repent of your sins and trust Christ
and Christ alone for your salvation, not Christ
plus your good works, not Christ plus your
baptism, not Christ plus your giving to the
church or your being a membership of this
or that.
It's Christ in the blood alone that saves.
Time.
How you doing on time?
Someone shared, the years slipped by and time
was spent and all the good things that
I meant to do were left undone because
I had no time to stop and pause.
I rushed about, went here and there, did
this and that, was everywhere.
I had no time to meditate.
On things worthwhile, no time to wait upon
the Lord and hear him say, well done
my child, you've shown the way.
And so I wonder after all, when life
is over and I am called to meet
my Savior in the sky, where saints live
on and never die, if I can find
one soul like one, to Christ by some
small deed I've done, or will I hang
my head and whine?
Forgive me God, I had no time.
You see, God gives you time to repent
and trust him as your Savior and then
when you do that, he gives you time
to pass on the good news.
Many believers in our churches, even our leaders
and even some pastors, have no time to
win souls to Jesus.
Backsliding is one of the most detrimental, damaging
things to a believer's life, to a church.
One of the evidences of a backslidden believer
in a backslidden church, and one of the
evidence of its deep need of a brokenness
and of a repentant heart and of a
revival of God's Spirit, is the evidence of
no time for the things of God, no
time to reach out to the lost.
Who does your time belong to anyway?
When you came to the cross and you
received Christ as your Savior, your time ceased.
Your working time is God's time.
When you go to work, you're working for
God.
Housewife, you're there with those little ones, wiping
those little snotty noses, taking care of those
dirty diapers and all of that, and you
get discouraged and you wonder what's going on.
You're there for God's glory.
Look at yourself from the perspective of eternity
time, not earthly time, your family time.
You know, God does unusual things in the
men and women's lives who give their time
to him.
Look at Joseph.
Look at Joseph, 13 years of his life,
from the pit to being in jail, and
13 years seemingly snuffed out.
But when he emerged on the top, second
in command, God took that time.
When he was buried, Moses, 40 years it
seemed like, 40 years out in that wilderness.
What a waste, they say, of time.
Daniel, 70 years.
Think about it.
He was an old man before God gave
him the revelation that we now really need
to know a lot about.
70 years in the Babylonian captivity, an old
man.
But he saw that time was about complete.
What about Paul?
After he was saved, 14 years of his
time, seemingly lost.
No, my friend, those were the years where
God took Paul deep into the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Time.
You know, Jonah had a time experience, and
we're coming into the Easter season.
Jonah, three days in the belly of that
fish, whale, whatever it was.
Time.
All of a sudden, Jonah had a new
perspective on time, and he decided, after he
had this encounter with God, that he didn't
want to take time to go off for
a vacation and run away from the will
of God.
I believe God killed him.
I believe that he died.
You read the book of Jonah, and he
went down to Sheol.
Jesus said that as Jonah was three days
in the whale's belly, in the fish's belly,
so he would be in the heart of
the earth.
Well, how was Jesus?
Jesus died.
Jonah was a type of Christ.
The liberals don't like the book of Jonah,
because he was a type of Christ.
The resurrection.
Power there.
But his time.
God had a hold of his time when
he came back and he hit the earth.
That fish vomited him up.
He hit the earth on the run.
He was making tracks for Nineveh.
He had a new encounter with God.
And maybe you need a new encounter with
God.
If my time belongs to God, then God
can do whatever he wants to do.
He is my Lord when he is the
Lord of my time.
The psalmist said in Psalms 31 15, my
times are in thy hand.
Do you try to manipulate circumstances?
Do you try to always get your way?
One of the greatest evidences of freedom in
a man is the ability to wait on
God and to let God work things out.
He doesn't have to manipulate.
He moves by prayer.
He watches God move circumstances.
Sometimes we miss out on the basics of
time.
Have you given God the first hour of
each day?
Have you given God the first day of
each week?
Have you given God the first dime of
each dollar?
Those are basic things.
If God doesn't have the basics, he won't
get into the details of our life.
We all have the same amount of time.
And where you use it, and where I
use it, reveals our priorities in relation to
God.
Don't always be trying to manipulate things and
have your own way.
You remember Peter?
He rebuked the Lord Jesus, and the Lord
turned around and rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee
behind me, Satan, for thou savest not the
things that be of God, but the things
that be of men.
Why was it that Peter didn't want Jesus
to say that?
Jesus said he's going to go and be
killed and after three days rise again.
You see, this was in God's plan, but
it wasn't in Peter's plan.
Many of us are wrestling right now with
God because he has done something in relation
with our time.
Maybe he slowed you down.
Maybe he set you up in a bed.
Maybe he's caused you to to lose your
job, and you are kicking and scrapping and
arguing and fighting, and you're bitter against God
because he's done something with your time.
Jesus said, Whosoever will save his life shall
lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life
for my sake in the Gospels, the same
shall save it.
Has God called you into the ministry, but
you're putting your time somewhere else?
You know, there are not many people that
would throw their life away at one time,
but many will throw it away a minute
at a time.
You know, it's been said that it would
take 80 hours to read through the Bible.
80 hours, but yet many of you out
there listening today have never read through the
Bible.
You say you don't have time, but yet
you'll watch 80 hours of TV in a
couple months time.
Some men die in battle, and some men
die in flames, but most men die inch
by inch as they play silly little games.
A fool will waste your time, and you'll
be a fool to let a fool waste
your time.
What is time?
Someone said it is opportunity.
It is opportunity to serve the Lord.
Well, don't manipulate the circumstances.
Don't let others manipulate you.
Jesus said my time is not yet.
When they tried to force him to go
to Jerusalem, he said my time is not
yet.
Do you know what the goal of Jesus
was with time?
Do you?
He said, for I do always those things
that please him.
His goal was to please the Father in
everything he did.
How are you investing your time?
Are you pleasing the Father, or are you
glorifying the Father with your time?
You remember the story when the mother of
Zebedee's children came to Jesus, and she wanted
her two sons to sit on his right
hand and one on the left, and Jesus
entered and said, you know not what you
ask.
Are you able to drink of the cup
that I shall drink of, and to be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized
with?
I believe we should be very careful in
our prayer request, because God knows what we
need.
We should be very careful to always want
his will above our will.
Chambers said there are times in spiritual life
when there is confusion, and it is no
way out to say that there ought not
to be confusion.
It is not a question of right and
wrong, but a question of God taking you
by a way which in the meantime you
do not understand, and it is only by
going through the confusion that you will get
at what God wants.
Well sometimes God's ways are confusing, and I'm
sure many of the great men and women
of God of the past, many of them
were confused.
They didn't know what God was doing, but
yet they had faith, and they hung in
there.
Well, it's been good to be with you
today.
I've enjoyed it.
If you'd like to write to me, you
can write to O'Neill's Wings, Box 1100,
Webb City, Missouri, 64870.
And that doctor again, Dr. Greer, if you'd
like his number one more time, it was
625-0143, and he doesn't know I'm doing
this.
Just the way he used his time was
a real ministry to us.
Well, until next week, I trust that God
will minister to you, that you learn the
ways of God in relation to time.
So until next week, may God richly bless
you, my friend.