Ephesians 5:15–16: “Therefore, consider carefully how you live, not as unwise but as wise, taking advantage of every opportunity because the days are evil.”

I want to talk about the need to prioritize what you do. Paul here is saying some things mark you out as wisely using your time, and some things mark you out as being unwise when it comes to the use of your time.

So think of it carefully. Moses wrote, “Teach us to number our days carefully, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). I define wisdom as taking the right action to get the right result. The problem comes when we want to follow our instinct and not be as careful—we are not considering carefully.

Look at the word Paul used here. We are not thinking carefully. We are not considering carefully how we live. And it is not necessarily only about morality (though it includes that); it is also about being strategic in how we live. We are not careful.

So he says, “Therefore, consider carefully how you live. Consider carefully how you live”—meaning: take living beyond instinct. Think carefully. Do not just be driven by instinct when it comes to action. You want to be driven by instinct in what you do, and at the same time you want to have the right result. You want to do whatever feels good to you, then you want at the same time to have the right result. He is saying, “No—that is not wise. That is not a wise way to do it.”

In another place, Paul wrote that God is not mocked: whatever a man sows, he will also reap (Galatians 6:7). So he is talking about that carefulness in action, carefulness in what you do, how you live your life, because there are consequences. He does not want you to be surprised at the consequences, because we can see the pattern of your life—the pattern of engagement with people, the way you use your mind, the pattern of what you occupy yourself with—and then we want to have a good result from our life. It is not going to happen.

Again, Paul said, “Whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap.” He says, therefore, “Consider carefully how you live.”

Am I considering carefully how I live? Am I strategic? What that means is that I am completely aware of where this particular action is going to lead me, and so I am deliberately choosing that course of action because of the result I want. That is what I am doing.

Look at Adam and Eve. God said, “If you eat this fruit, you are going to die” (Genesis 2:17). But they were convinced otherwise by the serpent. Specifically, Eve said she was deceived; Adam, we are told, was not deceived but deliberately chose the wrong action (1 Timothy 2:14). But once they did that, everything changed. They saw that they were naked, they tried to put leaves on themselves to cover themselves, and they were driven from the garden (Genesis 3:7, 23–24). Things went south for them.

You can see that they did not consider carefully. They allowed urgency and pressure in. You know what scammers do: scammers want to give you that feeling of urgency, that if you do not take this step now something alarming is going to happen. The devil has been a scammer from the beginning. He scammed them.

Because of the result of that action, we know what they did was not wise. We can conclusively say, “What you did was not wise. The step you took to do this was not wise.”

So why not consider carefully how you live?

He says, “Taking advantage of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Look at the evil that happened in the garden. We are not aware that there are evil influences seeking to cast their influence on our thought processes, on our minds, so that we will take the wrong action and therefore get the wrong result. John wrote that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). And in another place in Ephesians, Paul said, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12).

The whole point is to tell you there are invisible forces that know you—but you do not know them—and they want you to be unwise, to take the wrong decision, so that the wrong thing can happen.

Look at what Jesus told Peter. When Jesus began to talk about going to the cross, Peter said, “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” Jesus said, “Get behind Me, Satan” (Matthew 16:21–23). We have influences animating people around us, animating the world as a whole, so that we will be unwise, so that we will not consider carefully what we want to do—and then we will have the wrong result.

Consider carefully what you do.

God bless you. See you later.