God is: The Alpha and The Omega - Pastor Susie Gamez | Midtown Church Sacramento

We're in a series right now called God Is.

And in this series, we are taking on the great endeavor of trying to describe to you the nature of who God is.

Now, I'm gonna borrow a thought from John, the disciple that wrote about the life and ministry of Jesus in the book of John.

And what John writes in the conclusion of his gospel account is this He says, Jesus did many other things as well.

And if every one of them were to be written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

And so similarly, God is so many things that if we spent every hour of every day for the rest of our lives attempting to describe the enormity of who God is, there would not be enough time nor enough words in our vocabulary to adequately describe who God is.

As we've been thinking about these milestones that are happening, our kids are gonna be off to college soon.

We've got other milestones coming up in our own personal lives.

Marcos and I are about to celebrate 16 years of marriage.

A couple days before that, my mom celebrates a birthday, and later on this year, my dad is about to turn 80 years old.

Right?

My daughter's about to turn 15 at the end of the year, too.

And so I'm, you know, how does that math add up?

Because I'm like, how is my daughter almost 15?

My dad almost 80, and I'm I'm only 25.

Matthing, nothing, right?

But but really as I think about how quickly the kids are growing up, and and my dad's almost 80, you know, I'm I'm just really thinking about time a lot.

Time is like a vapor, and this one over here is telling, yeah, I got a birthday coming up too.

She's turning how old?

11?

She's gonna be 11 years old.

Okay, she wanted her flowers, okay.

But, anyways, going back to time.

Time is that thing that that it just feels like it feels like there's just never enough of it, right?

And the older you get, the more you realize time is a precious commodity.

Time is really a gift.

But you know, when we think about who God is, God is God over time.

God is is is the God of eternity.

The Bible says that a thousand years is like a day to God.

He's the God over time, over space.

There's no limit, no boundaries to who God is.

And and even though we're attempting to describe to you who God is, it's impossible because we just don't have the time or the vocabulary to be able to do it adequately.

But this is what makes God God.

The great I am, as Pastor Afron taught on last week.

Though we are attempting to describe to you who God is, the reality is God is beyond description and comprehension, beyond space and time.

And while admittedly God is indescribable, God has made himself accessible to us and has allowed our finite, limited minds to get just a foretaste of glory, a glimpse of how great he is.

So that's why today we're trying to tackle the subject of God eternal.

God is the Alpha and the Omega.

This is just a poetic way of saying God is eternal.

God is the beginning and the end.

There is no beginning.

There is no end to who God is.

He is the first and the last.

God is beyond space and time.

God is infinite.

God is eternal.

We are talking today about God eternal, and it's a big endeavor.

But today, as we continue to ask God to give us a deeper sense of God's eternal nature, it's also hard to find a place to begin.

But maybe that's where we can attempt to begin.

The beginning as we know it.

The very first words of the Bible are in the beginning.

If you've raised kids or if you've been around kids much, uh, you may have gotten the question, uh, well, if God created the world, if God created the universe and everything in it, well, who created God?

And and it seems like a simple, straightforward question, but it's really not.

Because how do you start well?

Well, God created God.

And you think that that's a the right answer, but did God really create God?

Because God is not a created being.

So God didn't really create God.

God just always was and is and always will be.

So who did create God?

How do you answer that question?

It's it's it's confusing, it's it's it's deep, it's got a lot of layers.

But again, that's what makes God God.

You don't even know where to begin because it's it's beyond our comprehension.

You don't know where to begin because to God there was no beginning.

He just always was and is and always will be.

And it's like what theologian Evelyn Underhill has said.

She said, is it if God is small enough for you to understand, if God is small enough for you to understand, God is not big enough for you to worship.

If God is not small enough, or if God, I keep messing it up.

If God is small enough for you to understand, God is not big enough for you to worship.

And one way to describe worship is actually just having a sense of awe and wonder.

And I know we've got a beautiful worship team that leads us into song, and and you can get lost in, you know, it song can help lead you into those places.

But when's the last time you really had a sense of awe and wonder about who God is?

When's the last time you you felt like you were in God's presence and you were just struck by the greatness, the glory, the eternal nature, the limitlessness of God?

That's actually a true experience of worship.

And you know, that's what we have to look forward to in eternity.

We'll we'll go there in a minute, but but I I wanted to share with you, I'll teach from experience.

And and and this isn't something that I can adequately put in words, but I'll try to describe to you an experience that I had with God.

This was like 25 years ago now.

So I I know I'm 25 years old.

How was that?

So, like 25 years ago, I was like in my early 20s, okay?

Um, but I remember I was in this season where I was just so hungry for the presence of God.

Like if there was a worship service or a conference or a retreat, I was there because I just I was so hungry for the things of God.

And and I remember there was a moment where I was at the altar and I was I was actually laid out at this, and so I was, I was, I think I was in a place of prayer, but I was just in the presence of God.

And I remember there was a moment where it felt like the heavens, like for a split second, a millisecond, it felt like God was allowing me to get a glimpse of his glory.

And it literally felt like the heavens cracked open for just a second, and then it felt like all of the breath got sucked out of my lungs.

It was a moment that felt so overwhelming that if it lasted any longer than it did, I probably would have died.

And then it gave me an understanding of what it says in the scriptures.

We we God is so holy that we can't be face to face with God in our imperfection, right?

Like we would die because He is so holy.

It talks about moments where the holy people of the scriptures would have to, they would they wouldn't be able to, they'd have to turn away, even the angels, like they'd have to cover their faces because of the holiness, the the magnitude of who God is.

And I think that we have such a small understanding of what it means to really worship God, because we really don't know how awesome and glorious He is.

But these worship experiences allow us to get just a glimpse of God's glory.

If God is small enough for you to understand, God is not big enough for you to worship.

Worship signals that you revere or honor God above yourself.

You can also describe worship as having a holy fear of God because you're in awe of God.

You recognize God's greatness, God's enormity, God's eternal nature.

God lives outside the constructs of time.

There are no boundaries to who God is, no limits to what God can do, and there is no one else like God.

So, in a sense, you should be grateful that you you don't understand or can't fully comprehend who God is.

Because if you could, God would not be worthy of your worship.

If you could fully grasp who God is, God would no longer be God.

But just because on this side of eternity, you won't ever really fully know who God is like that, it doesn't mean that you don't make an effort to know God.

It doesn't mean that you don't pursue knowing God more deeply.

The Bible tells us that to know God is to love God.

And then Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

So shouldn't it be our chief aim in life to know God and love God more deeply?

It's actually what we were created for.

But we've been distracted and we've been deceived.

The chief aim in our life is to know God and to love God.

And the reality is, God designed us with an innate desire to know him.

From the time that we were knit together in our mother's wombs, God created us with a deep longing for him.

There's a deep longing in our hearts for God.

Some would call it a God-sized hole that can only be filled with God.

Ecclesiastes 3, which we're gonna read in just a minute, says that God has put eternity in our hearts.

In other words, he designed us with a longing for eternity, a longing for God Himself in our hearts.

St.

Augustine famously said, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.

You have made us, you've designed us, you've created us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.

Our hearts are not satisfied until it is satisfied in Christ.

But you know what many of us have found ourselves feeling instead of feeling satisfied in Christ, we feel exhausted.

We feel overworked, burnt out, distracted, and spiritually empty.

Although we say we worship the God of eternity, the Alpha and the Omega, the one to whom a thousand years is like a day, and the one who is all-knowing and all-powerful and ever-present, we often end up feeling exhausted and overworked, burnt out, distracted and spiritually empty because we don't know how to take time to rest in God's presence.

We've lost the art, the beauty, the gift of marinating in God's presence.

We've actually been deceived into thinking that that's wasting time.

And so instead, what we do is we let the enemy steal from us one of the greatest gifts we get while we're here on earth.

Time.

One of the most well-known passages in the Bible concerning time is Ecclesiastes 3.

Ecclesiastes is a poetic book, and I'm gonna read it, and as I read it, it's gonna feel kind of poetic because of the way that it's written.

But if you have subheadings in your Bible like mine does, Ecclesiastes 3 is titled A Time for Everything.

A Time for Everything.

And it says this it says, There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend.

A time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

And what do workers gain from their toil?

I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart.

Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

God has appointed a time for all things.

And in the reality of life here on earth, there is a time to live and a time to die.

We all have an expiration date.

We have a time to laugh and a time to cry.

There are seasons in life.

Some are tougher than others, some are better.

Some seasons are long, some feel short.

But each time and each season can be regarded as a gift.

And God has given us the gift of time.

You know, my girls and I, when we were driving to church this morning, I just told them, hey, let's pray.

Let's take this time while we're in the car to pray together.

And one thing that, especially because I knew what I was going to be preaching on this morning, one thing that I really appreciated was the fact that they have been discipled into recognizing the gift of time.

And one thing that they often say in their prayers is, God, thank you for today because we know tomorrow is not promised.

And at an early age, they recognize that this life is but a vapor.

I know that a lot of young folks have a hard time recognizing that you are not invincible.

And I'm not saying that as a as a you know as a as a as a dig at you, but I'm saying, especially when we're young, sometimes we always like, oh, I can do that later on.

I got tomorrow.

And um, you know, they they tease my husband about being older now, but uh, but they also recognize three years ago when he had to have his open heart surgery, they recognize tomorrow is not promised.

Each day is a gift.

We know people who have not been promised the years that they thought that they would have.

And we can't always understand why God's timeline differs so much from ours, but God is God.

And God has given us the gift of time.

Time is a gift, and this is why we call now.

Hold on, I said this in the wrong.

Okay.

Time is a gift, that's why we call now the present.

Time is a gift, that's why we call now the present.

But like other gifts that God has given us, time is given to us to steward.

Because of the way that culture has formed us, however, time is something that most of us feel like we don't have enough of.

But let's be honest, many of us have time.

Many of us just need to learn how to steward it better.

Time often goes wasted.

You know, we're always shocked when we look, if we're brave enough to look at the analytics that our phone will give us, right?

If we if we bother to go look at how much time did I spend on social media today?

How much time did I spend scrolling?

We it's like we get mad at the phone, but really we should be mad, you know.

We look at our phone and and we're shocked at how much time we spend scrolling or how much money we spend scrolling.

And either way, time has a tendency to slip away from us, and when we do an audit of how we spend our time, it can end up feeling like we're wasting time rather than investing our time.

We can waste time or we can invest time.

But be reminded though that keeping busy and living in a state of hustle and hurry does not mean we're stewarding our time well.

Just because you're busy doesn't mean that you're investing your time well.

It can actually often mean that you're doing too much.

That you're living disordered and distracted, and being distracted often indicates that you're prioritizing the wrong thing.

I know.

So some people are really resonating with this because we recognize ooh, time is that thing that we always feel like we're in a battle with, right?

John Mark Comer was the pastor of a megachurch that seemed to be thriving on the outside.

He looked like he was thriving on the outside, but on the inside, he felt constantly stressed and hurried.

He diagnosed himself with having what he calls the hurry disease.

In his book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, he said that we live in a culture of excessive haste or pathological busyness, where the only way to keep up the pace of having too much to do, i.e.

having an endless to-do list, is by hurrying.

Dallas Willard, who is a fame who's famous for his teachings on spiritual disciplines, he said that hurry is the great enemy of our spiritual life today.

Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life in our day.

If you find yourself constantly feeling like you have to hurry, that you have to rush, that you don't have enough time, the enemy may be declaring war on you and you may not even know it.

There may be an intense spiritual battle going on, and you don't even know that it's a battle.

If we're constantly falling victim to the hurry disease, we cut ourselves off from the presence of God.

And it hinders us from experiencing God deeply.

It hinders us from loving God deeply, and it hinders us from experiencing joy and peace and patience.

These are the fruit of the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit gets sabotaged by hurry.

Love, joy, peace, patience.

This is the fruit that God invites us to savor in life.

Now think about that word savor.

Can you savor a moment while you're in a hurry?

If you don't know what savor means, savor means to fully enjoy or appreciate something.

It could be food or drink or an experience, but it's to appreciate it slowly.

So by giving you the definition, I think I answered my own question.

Can you savor a moment while in a hurry?

No.

Because by definition, savor means to enjoy slowly.

It's really hard to enjoy something if you're stressed out by hurry.

It's also really hard to enjoy or appreciate something while distracted.

And hurry and distraction, they often go hand in hand.

Rapid advances in technology and media have actually made life more hurried and more distracted than ever.

You know, it used to be that if I wanted to hang out with my friend on the weekend, you know, say I'm I'm in high school and it's a it's a Tuesday evening, and I'm like, I want to f I want to hang out with my friend Krista this afternoon, this weekend.

You know, I I would I would pick up the phone, and I actually lived in a time where, you know, our first home phone was a rotary phone.

Okay, so it takes extra long to shh shh.

Some of these kids, okay, there's a picture of it.

Like if you never had the experience, it takes a long time to even dial a number on that thing.

Right, right.

Then you have to start all over if you get it wrong, right?

But I would have to, I would have to attempt to make a phone call.

I would have to be at home to make a phone call.

I would have to make sure that my friend is also at home to get in touch with my friend.

And don't let my friend have a boyfriend because then she'd always be on the phone, and then I try to call, and the line is always busy, so I can't get through, right?

And so so I might be calling on a Tuesday, but I can't get a hold of Krista because she's hanging out with Albert all the time.

We're talking to Albert, Albert is Gus's real name.

Um, so so it might be hard for me to make plans to hang out with, she wasn't Pastor Krista back then, but to hang out with my friend Krista.

I'm trying to hang out with her on the weekend, but I can't get a hold of her until Thursday.

Because things just took time.

But now I could just shoot her a text.

And she she even has that feature where I can see if she read the message.

So I see it got delivered out.

She read it.

Why is she taking so long to respond to me?

You know, you know, I might get mad because she takes too long to respond to me when I saw that she's anyways.

But it it used to be that I could make plans with a friend, but it took time.

And now we can do it quickly.

But it doesn't actually make it easier.

Because if at my age, okay, and maybe I'm I'll just talk about me.

It is hard to get something on the schedule.

Let's go for coffee.

Oh, yeah, let's do it.

Okay, maybe like six weeks from now.

Because we already got so much on our calendar that it's hard to find a time to sit down and have coffee with a friend.

We've added too much to our to do lists.

We've Put more pressure on ourselves to do more in less time.

And we want to stay booked and busy.

But here's what Comer says: are some of the effects of living in a digitally distracted world of speed and in a world that has a relentless pursuit of more and more speed and more things.

This hurried pace of life has actually destroyed our ability to do many things.

And here's some of them.

My apologies that I don't have slides for these because ironically I was in a hurry to get my notes for this message in to our comms team, and I hadn't added in these notes yet.

But you could do it the old school way and just write the notes down.

I mean, in your phone too.

But point one, a hurried pace of life has damaged our ability to concentrate.

How many of you feel like it it's harder and harder to concentrate on one thing for long periods of time?

I mean, how can you focus when there are so many things to get done?

And multitasking and distraction is now the norm.

We are constantly bombarded with texts and emails and notifications from our devices.

So sometimes you actually end up feeling less efficient or maybe even less important or popular if you're not a busybody, too.

I I had an Apple Watch at one point and I actually hated it.

I thought that it would keep me more effective.

I could, oh, I could see the texts that come in, I could see the calls, I could see.

I hated that.

Now there's some good things about it.

It was supposed to help track your heart rate and help you manage stress, but like the constant notifications actually had me feeling more stressed out.

So when that thing broke, I said hallelujah and just left it broken.

But culture has conditioned us in this way.

You know, some of us can't even get through a church service that goes about an hour and some change without checking our phones, scrolling through some scores.

I know it's World Cup right now, but checking social media, and I'm not judging, I'm just saying.

If you feel convicted, that's God, not me.

So don't send me an angry email.

You take that up with God.

But you know, moving on, uh a hurried pace of life has also destroyed our ability to contemplate.

You know, we say that we know that prayer is important, but when it really comes down to it, some of us have this kind of attitude with prayer.

Like, oh, nanny, okay, yeah.

You know, no, I pray I pray all day, like I talk to God all day, but like slow down and like take time to pray.

I'm too busy to pray.

I got so much to do.

I'll I'll I'll pray later.

I I don't have time to sit and and pray for extended periods of time.

And and like I said, I've been I'm talking to God all day.

But what's the last time you sat and took time to listen to God?

Because you know that's a part of prayer too.

Contemplation is a part of our prayer life.

Contemplation, meditation, practice stillness, silence, deep reflection.

What am I, a monk?

No, I live in California in 2026.

Got things to do.

And I won't lie, it is really hard to live a deep, slowed-down spiritual life in today's culture.

Spiritual depth actually requires us to slow down.

Contemplation is necessary, but it's often an overlooked part of our spiritual lives.

It's an overlooked part of prayer.

Again, some of us know how to talk to God, but do we know how to listen?

Do we know how to be still?

Who do we know how to be silent?

Last month, as a Mother's Day gift to myself, um, I booked a salt float.

So if you don't know what a salt float is, it's like imagine like a small pool, um, and it's kind of in this like closed-off room.

And it's only like two feet deep of water, but they put like a thousand pounds of salt in that water.

So it's like the Dead Sea.

It's got so much salt that when you lay in the water, you float really easily.

So I wanted to do this because it's supposed to have a lot of health benefits, and if you know, it's it's kind of like you know, people go get massages to ease the tension.

But this is supposed to make you feel weightless, and it's supposed to help like relax you.

So I wanted to do it for a few reasons.

I was like, okay, I got some stress, you know, I want to I want to go and I want to relax.

But I also knew so so part of the salt float, the the point of it is to deprive your senses, right?

So you want to feel weightless, and they have these other options.

Now you can have soft music playing, you can have the lights dimmed, but you can also turn the lights to be pitch black.

You can turn off the sound so you don't have to hear anything.

So you're weightless.

You don't see anything, you can't hear anything.

And you're in there by yourself, so you're not talking, you could talk to yourself, but but but it's sensory deprivation.

And the point of it is to be still.

And it was surprising to me.

I booked an hour-long one, it felt like an eternity.

And I was surprised at how hard it was just to be still.

Like the salt was doing its job, I was floating.

But I realized my body is still, it's like conditioned to tense.

And so I had to tell myself, I had to train myself to completely relax.

And in that time, I really wanted to practice stillness.

I wanted to practice silence.

I wanted to listen to God.

Now I'm not saying that I heard the audible voice of God and I had a burning bush moment during this float session, but I did come to a deeper realization that listening and stillness does not come easy.

I learned that surrender takes intentionality.

Trust requires intentionality.

And trust and surrender don't come natural to us, not us adults, because we've been trained otherwise.

And I wonder if we fill our senses with so much busyness and so much noise because we're afraid of what happens when we're alone with our thoughts.

We're better yet, alone with God.

Instead of dealing with the things that deep down need to get dealt with, healed, or ministered to, we'd rather stay busy, noisy, fed, entertained, distracted, and even deceived.

The Alpha and the Omega, God eternal, who is not bound by space or time, wants some space and time with us.

But we're often too busy filling our time with other things, and we're too busy to be still and listen to God.

Many of us know C.S.

Lewis, but lesser known was C.

S.

Lewis's spiritual director, Walter Adams.

He said, Hurry is the death of prayer.

Hurry is the death of prayer, and it only impedes and spoils our work.

It never advances it.

Hurry is the death of prayer.

Without a prayer life, it's the death of our spiritual life.

According to Comer, a hurried pace of life destroys our ability to concentrate and to contemplate.

And the next one he lists is not another C word, but I'm gonna add it in here.

I'm gonna add my own C here.

A hurried pace of life destroys our ability to create.

Do we have any creatives in the room?

People who lean into the arts and yeah, you know.

Um Marcos and I, we have a friend out in New York who has a ministry that does outreach through the arts.

He is a creative and he loves to minister through the creative arts.

And specifically, he he does this through murals that the ministry paints throughout the city.

Uh now, if I didn't have to hurry to get this message done, I could have looked for some pictures to throw up, but actually the the comms team did that for me.

Look at you.

So these are some of the uh murals that they have done throughout the city of New York.

Um but and their handle is at NYC Thrive, if you want to look it up later.

Um I know I'm over here telling you, don't be on social media so much, and I'm pointing you to another social media handle.

But, anyways, um, they do good work, and our friend Jeremy, who leads this, Jeremy Del Rio, he he loves the arts and he often talks about how God is a creative.

God is an artist, the master creator.

Because what is the first order of business that God gets to at the beginning of time?

Creation.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And in order to create good things, you need time.

I heard somewhere else that creatives need time to do nothing, they need time to be contemplative, they need time to daydream.

Creatives need to learn how to cultivate imagination, right?

And imagination doesn't come when you're being busy.

Imagination requires you to be still and to daydream.

You have to give yourself permission to do nothing, to daydream, to imagine.

And it's hard to do that when you're in a hurry to be off to the next thing.

A hurried life also destroys our ability to rest.

How can you take a day off when you're behind on so many things?

The Sabbath day has been practically eliminated by our culture.

It's much more rare now to find places like Chick-fil-A, which closes on Sunday than it used to be.

A lot of places used to be closed on Sunday, but that's not where our culture is headed.

Workaholism, busyness, this is the new social virtue.

Saying that you're booked and busy is like a flex for some people.

Like you're showing off, like, oh, I'm booked and busy, I must be important.

But is it really something to show off about if you're just constantly busy?

If I'm too busy and not being intentional about resting, well, I'm gonna end up being busy, unintentionally resting at some point.

At home, in bed, from a hospital bed, or even a funeral bed.

So going back to the beginning again, remember that even God rested after the sixth day.

When he was done creating and saw that all that he made was good, he paused, he rested, he savored in creation.

And finally, a hurried pace of life has destroyed our ability to be healthy.

A.J.

Swaboda, he wrote a book called The Subversive Sabbath.

And he says that we have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically and physiologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history.

We are spiritually malnourished, and many of us don't even know it.

And instead of finding healthy ways to rest, we engage in escapist behaviors.

We self-medicate, we self-soothe, we binge on things like food and drugs and alcohol, on Netflix, pornography, shopping, social media.

Should I keep going?

You get the point, right?

So, what do we do about this?

And what does this have to do with the fact that God is eternal?

Well, Psalm 46, 10 tells us and commands us, actually invites us to be still and know that God is God.

You know, Psalm 46 is interesting because it's it's a psalm that talks about war and chaos and all the things that are going on, but then you get to verse 10 in Psalm 46, and all of a sudden God shows up and speaks in first person and says, Be still and know that I am God.

And and it's interesting, it's because it seems like God is speaking to our enemies.

Because it's it's there's all this language of war and all these things that are happening around us, and it's like God enters into the picture and God says, No, no, no, he's talking to our enemies for us on our behalf, and God's saying, Be still and know that I am God.

And so we feel protected and covered in the presence of God, but it's also an invitation and a challenge to us.

All of God's enemies, be still and know that God is God, but he also turns to us as children and says, Be still, my child, and know that I am God.

I am a good God, and I want you to be still and know that I am God.

This invitation and this command brings us back to a place of worship.

It puts God back in the place of God.

It reorders our priorities.

And you know, it's so easy for us to make idols out of the things that we spend time on.

We give our hearts and our minds and our treasures to the things that we spend time on.

So be still and know that I am God is both a loving and comforting invitation, but it's also a challenge, a command, a discipline that we have to be intentional about.

Jesus lived an unhurried life.

He didn't live bound to a to-do list, and he didn't garner influence and impact based on how busy he was.

He was intentional about drawing away from the crowds, to be with the Father.

He enjoyed, savored in solitude with God.

He got up early to pray.

I'm gonna draw from the wisdom of Walter Adams again, who simply but profoundly said that to walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace.

And in order for us to live a life of joy and peace and patience that Jesus desires so deeply to experience and enjoy, we must eliminate hurry from our lives.

We need to be still and know that God is God.

And as you develop a habit of doing this, you'll start to integrate God into everything you do.

It starts out as a discipline.

And then maybe it's not so much seen as like a bad thing, like a discipline, but more a practice.

And then it just becomes a part of the way you navigate life.

I'm gonna invite God into my everything.

I'm gonna, I used to have to set alarms to remind me to pause and recognize that God is present, that God is God.

Um, and maybe that's still a good practice, but the more I do that, the more I'm just conditioned to invite God into my everything.

See, God has set eternity in the human heart.

Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

There is a sense of mystery that we need to keep about who God is, and a sense of awe and wonder, but a sense of longing that we have to pay attention to as well because we long for God, we long for eternity, and yet we don't even have the capacity to understand who God is.

We've only gotten a glimpse of his glory.

So you know what happens?

The enemy enters into spaces where we lack understanding.

The enemy enters in and distorts our view of time.

We get anxious, we get worried.

We try to take control, and instead of stewarding our time, investing our time, spending time with Jesus, going to the Lord with our worries and our anxieties and our burdens and all the things that are making us feel stressed and hurried, we waste time prioritizing the wrong things.

See, there's another thing that can be regarded as a gift when it comes to time.

Time helps us understand our limits.

Time helps us understand how limited we are.

We can only go about three days without water.

Depending on several factors, we can go anywhere from like a week to two months without food.

And and you know, I don't know how long you have ever kind of gone without sleeping, but if you've ever gone like a whole day, like you didn't sleep the night before, you try to go 24 hours without sleeping, by hour 24, you feel like you feel drunk.

Like I can't function, right?

But by by hour 36, hour 48, you're gonna start experiencing hallucinations.

And then at some point, your body's just gonna shut off for you.

You'll pass out.

And so we're limited.

There are limits to what we can do, and and time reminds us that we are limited and our days are numbered.

We are given the gift of life here on earth, but our days are limited.

So the God of eternity, who created us with a longing for eternity in our hearts, invites us to slow down and be with him.

He created us with a longing for eternity in our hearts.

He created us with a longing to be with him eternally.

And yes, in this life, there will be great moments.

There will be some really hard moments too.

But there will be moments that cause us elation.

Where's Andre?

He's a big Knicks fan, okay?

Yeah, yeah, and he's showing it, right?

So yesterday at the end of game five, he was feeling elation, right?

That was a great moment for Jalen Brunson and whoever else is a New York Knicks fan, right?

So there's great moments like that where we feel, oh, celebration, all that good stuff.

Maybe falling in love for the first time might be a great season in your life.

Um, the birth of your child, uh, a bite of the best food you've ever tasted.

These are moments that we can enjoy and savor.

But these great moments in life, they pale in comparison to the goodness of being in God's presence, to really knowing God.

But the problem is we fail to understand how good God is.

We fail to understand how good an eternity with God is.

1 Corinthians 2 9 says, No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human mind has ever even conceived the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.

Being with the God of all eternity is better than we could ever imagine.

But many of us are far too easily satisfied with the things of the world.

Some of us have settled for idols and haven't cultivated a life of savoring moments with Jesus.

Being still and setting our eyes on Jesus.

You know what that does?

It trains us to lean into the deepest desire of our heart.

That longing for eternity, the longing to be with God.

If you look forward to the idea of heaven because of the things of heaven, oh, the streets made of gold, the mansions of glory, the feast that we're gonna have at the banqueting table.

I mean, that stuff is cool and all, but but I fear that you missed the point.

Because heaven is good, eternity is glorious, but it's goodness glorious because God is there.

If God is not the primary desire of your heart, we're getting distracted and even deceived.

The Garden of Eden was glorious because Adam and Eve enjoyed unbroken fellowship with God.

And then sin entered into the picture and caused distance, division, distraction, and heartache.

And you know what?

Satan's been busy ever since trying to keep us busy and distracted from the deepest desire of our hearts.

So as we end, I contemplated how should we end?

Should we end with a practical application?

Or should we end with a response, an invitation to the altar?

I think we can do both.

Here's the practical application for you.

So we all can confess there are places in our mind our lives where we're busy or we're we're distracted.

So there are some simple things that you can do.

How many of us can resonate with the fact that we spend too much time on our phones?

If that's you, like me, you know what you can do?

I dare you to do this, because it's hard.

You know there's a setting on your phone that you can turn on and it turns your phone into grayscale.

So everything in your phone is black and white, it's gray.

Our phones are designed to draw us in.

The vivid picture quality, those things draw us in.

And so if you turn your phone to be something that's just functional, you'll spend less time being enticed by the screen.

And so, with that time, instead of wasting time there, you can invest your time.

And what can I do to practice the presence of God?

What can I do to be still and know that God is God?

It doesn't mean that you literally have to be still and silent, but you can do things to engage with God.

And if we're spending less time on the things that are distracting and wasting our time, we can be intentional about spending more time with God.

So the practical application for this week is take inventory of your time.

Be brave enough to look at your phone analytics, see where you need to take a hold of your schedule and be intentional about spending time with God.

Recognizing that God is God, putting God on the throne of your life.

And as you do that, you will start to be transformed.

We'll start to become healthier versions of who we were meant to be.

And our heart will start to bend towards a desire to be with God for eternity.