Invite Jesus Into Your Timeline

We all know a house built on sand won’t last.

Right on! Foundations matter. If the foundation is off, anything built on top of it will be faulty. Using Jesus Christ as our Chief Cornerstone, you and I can dive into the foundational teaching on time, redemption, and the transformational practice I like to call Redeeming Your Timeline.

To do that, we’ll use five basic premises. A premise is a big deal in the Bible. You can find them easily if you know to look for the “if/then” or “therefore” statements in scripture.

Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed (John 8:36).

He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God (John 8:47).

A premise follows a line of logic: if this is true, then/therefore, so is that. As I noted in my book Redeeming Your Timeline, it’s like when Jesus says, “Now that you understand this idea, from there we move forward.” The Bible is loaded with a titanic 1,220 “therefores”—76 in the Book of John alone. Here in America, 76 is a number synonymous with freedom—and you all know what a “freedom fanatic” I am! This revelation of redeeming time will set you free from the guilt and shame of your past.

Setting the Stage of Time

I do not know when time began, but I think I know when time began for Adam. Adam may have lived for billions of years or 24 hours before he disobeyed God and got kicked off the glorious reservation called Eden. We don’t know because, outside of the seven days of creation, there is no clear reference to time. That is, until sin shows up.

You may say, “But Pastor Troy, the Bible clearly says the evening and the morning in each day of creation marked a day so we are talking about a true 24-hour period.”

Know this: I have no trouble calling the seven days of creation seven “days” because that’s what the Bible calls it. I am not smarter than the Bible, so there is no need for me to fix it. I also do not mind pointing out that the sun was not created until the fourth day. That means the first three days had nothing to do with the consecutive period of time during which the sun is above the horizon—what you and I call a day.

There is also this argument about time:

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8).

For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night (Psalm 90:4).

Again, I don’t know when time began, but I believe the “day” Adam sinned turned into a very real 24-hour day as we know it now. He fell from what Sir Isaac Newton understood as “absolute time” (I call this “redeemed” time) into what Einstein describes as “relative” time (what I call “unredeemed” time). You are a gifted learner, so you can get this.

The Trapdoor of Time

The clock began ticking for Adam when he ate the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Having lost access to the Tree of Life for his own protection, the laws of entropy—a.k.a. the Second Law of Thermodynamics—began to apply to him. He began to age and deteriorate. He was now dealing with the reality of unredeemed time where sin and death reign.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

Sin and death are in perfect continuum. If you get rid of one, you get rid of the other. The moment Adam was contaminated with sin, he was owned by death. Death reigns in time, space, and matter.

Can you imagine? Adam walked with God uninhibited by the space between two distances. He wasn’t ruled by the laws of gravity or physical limitations. He was more super than natural. He had dominion over time, space, and matter just like Jesus after the resurrection. He could walk through a closed door or cover large distances in the blink of an eye. Then, in one horrible moment, Adam’s experience changed into something different.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings (Genesis 3:7).

His worldview changed and immediately he and his beautiful wife are trying to stitch their broken lives back together. They are now about the business of covering up shameful things.

This brutal new environment meant things that shouldn’t happen, happen often. Adam was introduced to anxiety, fear, and shame. Now subject to the elements (matter), his body would have to fight off cancer and disease. He would have to find shelter. He saw his first thorn and felt his first bead of sweat. It was a different kind of bad. Nothing about dreaming here; everything about surviving for as long as you can before death finally catches you on another bad day. This was worse than being Davey Crockett at the Alamo!

Death. The fear of it paralyzes folks and keeps them from really living. Do you feel like death is stalking you? I’ll let you in on a little secret that will halt the horror: Death is not stalking you. It already has you. Adam was fallen in every way a person could be fallen and he took each and every person born into this human experience with him. We are born already dying.

This, my friend, is why it’s important to understand the reality of redeeming time. God hates death. It’s one of the reasons Jesus wept for Lazarus despite knowing he would be resurrected. Death was not God’s plan for us, but that didn’t stop Him from finding a way to fix the problem. God has always deeply loved you, so He had a plan to trump the serpent’s plan.

So the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:14-15).

At the very beginning of time, on the day Adam sinned, God gives His very first promise concerning redemption by hinting at the birth of a Messiah Redeemer. That Redeemer—Jesus—would walk the earth 4,000 years after Adam and He would turn back the clock for all who believe in Him through the gift of redemption.

Redemption is a really big deal. It means that something dead can be alive again, and redemption is absolutely tied to time. Time was the ace up God’s holy sleeve to ensure an environment where a redemptive work could take place. That’s why I call time “a gift from God,” and you should consider it a gift as well. Just remember that God is good, all the time. Everything He has for you is good.

In the scriptures, devotions, and declarations you are about to read, you’ll unwrap that gift and learn how to use it in your life and the lives of those around you. If you need a breakthrough, a fresh start, or a new perspective, you will find it in my book, 40 Breakthrough Declarations: Powerful Prayers to Heal Past Hurts, Make Future Provision, and Invite Jesus into Your Timeline. I promise you that.