Make your time count – Part 3

Text: Rom. 13:11-12; Psa. 90:12
To make your time count, you must be a strategic thinker and learn to associate wisely. Prov. 22:24-25 tells us that association helps to shape one’s life and determines his/her destiny. 1 Corinth.15:33, says, evil communication corrupts good manners. If you associate with those who talk carelessly you will very soon begin to talk carelessly. On the other hand, if you associate with those who are prosperous, you will begin to prosper in ideas and other areas of life.

Relationships are currencies of life. God will not bless you outside of relationship. If God wants to bless you spiritually, He will raise a Pastor to do so and if He wants to bless you materially, He will use any man. If you check the scriptures, you will see that Eli gave Samuel a platform to operate. Elijah gave Elisha a platform, Moses gave to Joshua, Paul gave to Timothy and even Naomi to Ruth. The platform here refers to a good base or an opportunity from which one can spring up to limelight.

When you come in contact with some persons in life, your promotion to greatness will be accelerated. Instead of spending time struggling to create platforms, you just leverage on the platform they have already created. You must identify such group of persons to build strategic relationships to fulfill your purpose in life. Such persons can be classified in four different groups.

The first group is those who create platforms and allow you to spring forth from these platforms. You should value and appropriate them. A lot of people are ungrateful and tend to ignore those that God has used to lift them up; thinking they could have still arrived where they are now. Never speak against your helpers or try to destroy the platform that lifted you up. It is likened to biting the finger that fed you.

The second group is those who help you to build your own platform, always appreciate them. Again, there are those who follow you purposely because of the platform you have built. They may not like or believe in you and so can betray you. They just come around you to share from your shinning, you must be careful of them. Their loyalty is questionable. They have nothing to offer to you, but are only there for what they can get.

The third group is those who come to use your platform and end up destroying it. God sometimes may allow you to go through rough times and delay just to expose such persons.

At such times, they could say despicable things about you to rubbish your personality. This is why at the beginning of every of such journeys in life, ask God to reveal the true character of everyone that comes around you. When God does, don’t be too emotional to carry along those that will pose problems to you. That is not strategic thinking. Understand that your teaching and talking cannot change them, only an encounter will. Gehazi would never have changed and he was about to destroy the relationship between Elisha and Naaman.

Finally, we have those who use your platform and still dishonour you, never carry them along.

• Reverend John Okene, Divine Touch Int’l Ministries, Warri, Delta State. dtimchurch@gmail.com. Prayer line: +2348135952623