WRITTEN some Sixty-five years ago, Brother Tillet S. Teddlie penned the words to one of over 100 hymns sung throughout the brotherhood. The first stanza of this hymn speaks to us of the swift passing of time on earth as we all hasten quickly toward eternity’s night:

Swiftly we’re turning life’s daily pages, Swiftly the hours are changing to years; How are we using God’s golden moments? Shall we reap glory? Shall we reap tears?

The haunting question posed within this hymn asks each of us to consider truthfully, “how are WE using GOD’S golden moments?” We are living in a society who has all but forgotten or more times than not refuse to accept their roots. It has not been that long since Charles Darwin’s THEORY of evolution was readily accepted as fact. A little over one hundred years ago science began to toy with the idea that it was the result of humanities genesis and not a Supreme Being. But I would much rather accept the Biblical account of being CREATED in one day in the image of God, than spending eons of time evolving out of some slime pit.

In Genesis chapter one & two, Moses records for all time the events that helped to shape our individual responsibility toward the One who made us in His image. God’s golden moments (time) began when the world was first created, and will continue until the day that Christ returns to judge every human being as to how he or she used the time given them by God (2 Cor. 5:10; Jn. 12:48; Ecc. 12:14).

The world believes that time and wealth belongs to each individual, to be used as they please. But God says just the opposite, “For none of us liveth to himself, or dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8). The Psalmist reminds us that all that we have is not ours, but that we are simply stewards of God’s possessions, “The earth is Jehovah’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1).

So how are we using GOD’S golden moments? Keeping in mind that life on earth is the only chance we get to establish our place in eternity, we must as Paul says, “redeem the time…..” (Eph. 5:16). Speaking of GOD’s golden moments, Peter exhorts that we should not live the rest of our time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God (1 Pet. 4:2). The lusts of men do not have be described as drunkenness, fornication, filthy language, etc., but can also include heeding denominational, new-age, and post-modern doctrines.