What Are You Reading? Focused on Eternity

Well, hi, good morning. I hope that your Monday is starting off well. I'm going to take a moment this morning and first off, thank so many of you who have reached out and told Jacqueline and I that you enjoy these videos. That's such an encouragement because sometimes we're just talking to a phone and to know that you're behind the screen and enjoying these videos. It's a real encouragement. And so I'm glad that this has been something that really seems to help a lot of you stay, get focused on the right thing. And that's a lot of what I'm talking about today is the focus and having an eternity focus. So eternity focus mindset. So I want you to picture a Google map and you know, I don't know if you're like me. I'm one of those people that if somebody tells me where something is and they say oh it's on this road like my husband knows all the roads because he's on them all the time for his job he has to go all these different places and I'm terrible with road names I need you to give me landmarks right and so I'm that person on the google map that has to keep pinching the screen until I see a landmark that I know and then I can zoom back in and so today what we're going to do essentially if we take the bible we're going to zoom out to this eternity focus, so then we can zoom back in. Okay, so I want you to join me. We're going to be in John 14, and I'm just going to read verses 1 through 4, and then we'll go a little bit further, but it says, this is Jesus speaking to his disciples, and he says, do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms. If that were not so would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am you know the way to the place where I am going and so I just love that and then there's this back and forth okay that happens there's this back and forth um Thomas you gotta love Thomas he's just a little doubter and i feel like there's pieces of me that are so similar to him i love that he's recorded as doubting even though he walked with jesus because sometimes it can be so difficult to truly truly um not just have faith but in the i'm learning in the bible study that i'm doing that faith um in for the hebrew people was not faith as in the way we think belief faith was actually action it was doing something so when you look at hebrews 11 i'm getting on a tangent when you look at hebrews 11 and the hall of faith it is everything that they did you know if you go and read hebrews 11 it's noah did this moses did this sarah did this on and on and it's what they did out of faith so that's an aside but i love what happens here there's a back and forth that happens sort of like the disciples are trying to find that landmark on the map that they can figure out the way to go right so thomas then says so jesus has just said in verse 4 you know the way to the place where i am going thomas said to him lord we don't know where you are going so how can we know the way jesus so simple his answer i am the way and the truth and the life no one comes to the father except through me if you really know me you will know my father as well from now on you do know him and have seen him then philip said lord show us the father and that will be enough for us jesus answered don't you know me philip even after i've been among you so it's such a long time don't you know jesus after you've been with him for such a long time i love that question anyone who has seen me has seen the father how can you say show us the father don't you believe that i am in the father and that the father is in me the words i say to you i do not speak on my own authority rather it is the father living in me who is doing his work believe me when i say that i am in the father and the father is in me or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves so there have been times in your life where you have seen works of god miracles that have happened that you've seen or even through prayer you're seeing jesus you're seeing the father you're seeing this work in and out and along with the holy spirit verse 12 john 14 verse 12 very truly i tell you whoever believes in me will do the works i have been doing and they will do even greater things than these because i am going to the father and so i just love this whole passage this whole back and forth of jesus saying you know me you know me you i've been here you know me and i think sometimes we can get so caught up in the big scheme or the big pictures or the big questions. Or on the other side, like me, I don't know wrote names all that well, even though I've lived in the same place for who knows how long, right? And I need a landmark. I need something. A lot of times I use the imagery with Jacqueline. I say, I feel like I've got a cork board and I have a pen in my hand, but I don't have anything to pin to the board. Like I just have all these thoughts, but I can't figure out even where to pin it. And sometimes when we think about eternity or when we think about the mysteries of the Trinity of God, Son, Holy Spirit working together, we get so lost in it. And instead we have that cork board and we have a pin and there's one simple thing. It's Jesus. If you know Jesus, then you know the Father. You know the Father, you know Jesus, you know the holy spirit and those three things and there's such a beautiful mystery there and um so i just want you to zoom out a little bit today and just think about eternity for a bit and really grasp it's kind of hard to think about at times what eternity is going to be like and how wonderful it's going to be and that god himself is preparing a place for you for me but at the same time we get to be there and we believe in that because we know Jesus and through him we know the father and through his word we get to know them both and through the holy spirit we get to know them both and we get to know all three right and so it's such a wonderful mystery that has so many different layers and yet it comes down to the simplicity of Jesus we know Jesus and therefore we can fully believe right and so in this study as i've been mentioning um i i just love the way that it's christy mclelland and um the gospel on the ground i'll be teaching that starting tuesday which will be tomorrow and um she talked about eternity and then she i'm gonna probably butcher his name but kasuke huyama he's a japanese um a japanese i think priest or pastor i want to say he was a pastor and um he he contributed contributed a lot of theological writings and things like that but he said to keep your mind focused on the goal on the end goal and um he had this quote of have have you ever thought about what it's like, what it's going to be like when Jesus, when you see Jesus for the first time, like, what's he going to say? You know, I mean, I know we have scriptures of, well done, my good and faithful servant, and that very well may be it. But he had this phrase, and of course, this is a person imagining, and we can't know the mysteries of eternity. But he said, imagine Jesus meeting you there and saying, you've had a difficult journey. you must be tired and dirty. Let me wash your feet. The banquet is ready. Isn't that just incredible? I've been marinating on that for the last, you know, few days and just so overwhelmed by that and just that we get to be part of the banquet. We get to be part of the feast with the lamb, right? And, you know, it's ready. And so I don't know what you're going through right now. And it's not an easy thing to just say, oh, you know, it's fine. It'll all work. You know, it'll all work out, which it will, but it's not an easy. It's easier to just say those things. But I want you to back up your focus today and remember eternity and just think about the big picture, right? Take a step back and think about the big picture. And so I'm just going to end here with verse 13. And this is, I think I already read this, but at the very end of this passage, Jesus says, and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the father may be glorified in the son. And so there are so many things in trials that we have. And a lot of times it's for the father to be glorified all the more because we can only give credit to him in his glory for what he has done when we are in trials. And so I just want to encourage you today on a Monday when it's very easy to get, um, disorganized and thought and feeling and all of the things. Um, I want to encourage you to focus only on the father, just focus on eternity and focus on the beauty and the joy of, you know, joining the banquet of the lamb one day, you know, we get to go to eternity. And so I hope you just marinate on that. And, um, whatever you face today on a busy Monday that you would remember what eternity is going to be like. And so I can't wait to go there. So I hope you have a great Monday and I'll see you next week.

Originally published at warren.church.