I have a timer that runs for two minutes, what I'm wondering is, how, if possible, can I have a message displayed showing the amount of time left every 30 seconds starting with when the timer was set.

$timer(N).secs returns the amount of seconds left until the timer triggers...to actually show that you would need to set a separate timer.

Regards,

cheap and nasty method

.timer 1 120 blah blah blah (this is the timer)
.timer 1 90 echo -a 30 seconds to go
.timer 1 60 echo -a 60 seconds to go
.timer 1 30 echo -a 90 seconds to go