Welcome to the Illuminate Church podcast.
We hope today's message is encouraging to you.
Welcome to Illuminate Church. My name is Tim.
We help people find abundant life in Jesus.
If you went to life Step 1 during the 9:00 AM service,
welcome to the 11:00. We're glad you're here.
If you're watching online wherever you are, I don't know
which camera to look all of them.
We're so glad you're joining us. If you live locally, get here.
It's better in person in Jesus name Amen.
So case in point that we help people find abundant life in
Jesus is this series for I have seen I am witness to countless
of people applying the teaching of today and it absolutely
empowering their life in an abundant way.
If you will take hold of it. I am myself, our family.
A testimony of its effectiveness.
The Bible says wisdom is proved right by all its children.
Meaning if you do it, you will see the evidence.
The proof is not in the pudding. The proof is in the eating of
the pudding. You got to do it to see it.
Amen. We're talking about unrest.
Everyone say unrest in America. We need to unlearn the way that
we've learned to rest because, news flash, our rest ain't
working. Yes, Sir, the way that we as
Americans rest, and even if you're from another country,
you're here in America today, the way that we rest in America
is not working because we're anxious, we're depressed, we're
stressed out, we're burnt out. Even though we think that we
rest, we need to unlearn the way that we rest and learn God's
way. It's what we introduced last
week by introducing or maybe reintroducing the Sabbath.
Everyone say Sabbath. Last week we said that Sabbath
is the last thing that God created, but the first thing
that he made holy. Last week we said that the
Sabbath is not about recuperation, it's about
appreciation, Completely different things.
Last week we said that the Sabbath kills aloneness and the
Sabbath will make you still rested.
I used the word Sabbath so much last week, I don't think I ever
defined what a Sabbath actually is.
So for a working definition and for unity here in the mezzanine
everywhere around the world, here's what a Sabbath means.
A Sabbath is 124 hour period you set aside each week to rest from
your catch this normal work, your job, work, work that takes
life out of you and you focus on the person of God, the goodness
of God in your life, the goodness of who he is and the
goodness of what he's done for you.
It's a day set aside to the Lord.
He'd called it holy. Holy means set apart to him.
So I don't want you to think of monasticism, being a monk,
getting in your house. I mean, you can meditate, but
you don't got to do the my Father can be your father at
Domino's. You know what I'm talking about.
Not that to Sabbath means to invest in your family.
The Sabbath means to invest in yourself.
When's the last time you did a little self-care?
God cares about you. I think you'd be all right if
you did a little self-care. It could be going to the beach
on your Sabbath. It could be taking a nap that's
regenerative. It could be working in your
garden. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
He said you can't do worry. He's like, no, it's normal work,
not work that gives life. Jesus said that the Sabbath
wasn't made for man Excuse me? Jesus said the Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Meaning the Sabbath is supposed to be that which gives man life.
We don't add anything to the Sabbath.
It gives to us when we practice it.
So on the Sabbath you do things that give you life, not take
them away. Some of you, gardening takes
away life, and in fact, you take away life when you garden.
And for some of you, it gives life.
For some of you, playing golf gives life.
And for most of us, myself included, sometimes you want to
take a life while you're it's a stupid game, right?
I play it. Maybe you want to crank up the
worship. Whatever brings you life.
That is the purpose of this 24 hours dedicated to the Lord that
is born out of a gift of love God gives to us, and we return
that love to Him by honoring Him and keeping the Sabbath holy to
commune with God, to celebrate and appreciate life.
Last week we started in Exodus 20.
You don't need to turn there. If you want to start flipping,
you could go to Deuteronomy chapter 30, which is the 5th
book in the Bible. If you need a Bible, raise your
hand, Deuteronomy chapter 30 about.
But while you're going there, I just want to read the fourth
commandment again, found in Exodus chapter 20 of the 10
commandments. Yeah, just raise your hand.
We'll bring you a Bible. Even up in the mezzanine.
We have Bibles in the mezzanine, Exodus chapter 20, God's command
to rest, found in the 10 commandments, the 4th
commandment. Remember the Sabbath day by
keeping it holy. Set apart six days.
You shall labor and do all your work, your normal work.
But the 7th day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God, on which
you must not do any work, neither you nor your son or
daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, livestock, chickens
and cows. No working, nor the foreigner
within your gates. For in six days the Lord made
the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
But on the 7th day He rested. Therefore, the Lord bless the
Sabbath day and set it apart as holy One of the 10 commandments.
We talked about this a lot last week.
If you missed it, please go back and watch.
But the purpose of me reciting it again today is to tell you
that this is a command, not a suggestion.
You know the difference, right? Well, you might want to try
this, or you absolutely have to do this.
A big difference. It's not a suggestion, it is a
command. We talked about it a little bit
last. I want to reinforce it.
But when God speaks, it's for our benefit.
His words, his commands are for our benefit.
Our family had the opportunity to go to Costa Rica a few years
ago. And there we went, rappelling
and zip lining through the rainforest to Costa Rica.
And you go and you, they put you in this little Hut and they put
the harness on you. And there's like a pole there.
And the guys like hanging off the pole like this is what we're
going to do. And you're just getting there
and you're kind of fidgeting with your harness.
It feels weird. Your kids are like fidgeting
around. You're, you're looking at
everything. There's lots of things to look
at. He's talking and they're like,
all right, let's start. And you go walking down the path
and you get to the end of the path and you stand on the edge
of a Cliff that is 110 stories, 100 feet, 10 store, 100 feet
down. I'm reliving into my spirit.
It looks terrifying when you're at the top ten stories straight
down. There's a giant waterfall here.
You, you repel right next to it. You get all wet from the
waterfall, right? The first person to go is Eli.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I don't remember how old
you were. You lay back then like 10, he
says. Well, he was.
They deemed him too small to repel.
So they literally like you're first hooked him up to the rope
and they went like this. Shoop just held him over the
edge and he's sitting there like a little cannonball.
And then he just, he just went down.
He didn't touch the wall. They just dropped him.
And so all he sees his little body go bye, bye.
And then you get up to the edge and you feel like this little
baby feels right now and your legs are shaking like this.
And you're looking over the edge and they're like, lean back,
hold the rope, right? And it's at this moment that you
realize I should have paid more attention to the instructions
because these were not suggestions.
These were commands. Follow them and you will have a
nice bouncy time down the wall, a little bit wet.
You get to the end. Christine and I were like, we're
laughing and crying. I'm not sure if I'm happy to be
done or happy that it happened, right?
That's how you feel. Or if you don't follow the
instructions, you kind of just like body scrape the entire way
down, heads banging, right? Or worse.
They're not suggestions. They're commands meant to give
us life. The Sabbath is a command meant
to give us life. Amen.
Deuteronomy 30. I told you to turn there.
In the book of Deuteronomy, Joshua is taking over the
leadership of God's people from Moses.
Moses sinned while the people were heading from Egypt to the
Promised land. And therefore God said, hey,
Moses, you're going to go up on a mountain and see the promised
land, but you're not actually going to go in.
Joshua is going to take them in. And in Deuteronomy, especially
here near the end, God is reminding Joshua and all the
people, this is what I'm giving you, the commands of God, so
that as you enter the promised land, you will live and honor
me. And therefore all the other
nations will see you are blessed and they will stream to me and
they themselves will be blessed and nation after nation will
follow Israel into the glory of God.
That's the idea. Humanity, we messed it up a
little bit, a lot bit. But Deuteronomy 30, listen to
how the Lord characterizes this. This is God speaking to his
people. Now verse 11, sorry.
Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 11.
Now what I, the Lord God and commanding you, the people today
is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.
It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask who will ascend
into heaven to get and proclaim it to us, so that we may obey
it. Nor is it beyond the sea, so
that you have to ask who will cross the sea to get it and
proclaim it to us so that we may obey it.
No, the word of God is very near you.
It's in your mouth, it's in your heart, so you may obey it.
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, or death and
destruction, verse 16. For I command you today to love
the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep
His commands, decrees, and laws. Then you will live and increase,
and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you were
entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and
you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to
other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you
will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the
land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess this day.
I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you.
Here he goes again. He's making the offer I have set
before you. Life and death, blessings and
curses. Underline these words in your
Bible. Now choose life so that you and
your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God.
Listen to His voice and hold fast to Him, for the Lord is
your life, and He will give you many years.
And the land He swore to give to your father's Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. God is saying to His people,
this concept is easy to understand.
You do not need to be a Pope, a priest, a seminary graduate,
APHDA pastor. Did all those begin with Pi?
Hope so, because pastors just love that.
I mean, that's awesome. You don't have to be any of that
to understand what God is laying out here.
And here's what he's laying out. You have a choice.
Here's a choice, obey or not, and here's what's at stake.
Life and death. You choose which path, which
route you want to go. Here's another way to think of
it. Today.
I don't know how many of you still wear watches, but if I
were to tell you to look at your watch, most of us would look at
an empty wrist because our watch now lives in our pocket.
But go ahead, it's 1148. Look at your watch.
What do you see? Don't answer aloud.
Just what do you see? Do you see numbers and digits in
the hands of the clock moving? Do you see the the time?
I think the better question of what I'm trying to drill down
here is like, what do you perceive when you look at
something that keeps time? A clock, a watch, a calendar
even? Do you feel like this is the day
the Lord has made our rejoice in it?
What do you feel like? Oh my gosh, time is slipping
away quickly. I got to get to the next thing
the To Do List is screaming at Lee I this day is going to be
over before I know it. I want to introduce to you 2
watches. The first watch is the life
watch and the second is the death watch.
And just as the Lord has told us in Deuteronomy 30, you get to
decide which one you wear. But I will tell you, you're
already wearing one sitting here today, but you still get to
decide today which one you'll wear.
You can make a different choice if you'd like.
The death watch is called chronos.
Everyone say chronos. Chronos, this is a Greek word,
it's in the Bible. I'll read it to you in a second,
but it's where we get the word chronological or chronology.
It's dates on a calendar. It's a period of time.
It's hours, minutes, days, seconds, all those things.
John chapter 5, verse six, one man there had been an invalid
for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there
and realized that he had spent a long Chronos period of time
measured time in this condition, he asked him, do you want to get
well? 38 years of Chronos Cronos's
time passing by, a span of time. I said it's just a second ago.
It's time measured, time marching on, time running out.
It's the feeling that parents get when they look at their kids
and say you're growing up too fast and they want to just keep
their kid as an 8 year old forever.
Don't ever grow up. Please don't grow up.
It's the feeling of, I don't know if you ever had this
feeling. I get it a lot lately.
You look in the mirror and you say I feel a lot younger than
the guy staring back at me. Can I get a witness from all my
friends of around my age? I don't look that old, do I?
Because my beard really white, is it?
No, it's not liars. Eventually it's Kronos that
catches up to us and gives us this dread of the day that we
will cease to live. Kronos, this threat, always that
time is running out. This season's running out.
I got to hurry on to the next thing.
It's going too fast. Kronos.
Kronos can be terrifying. It's certainly not restful.
It's stressful. That's the death watch.
The life watch is another Greek word found in the Bible.
It's Kairos. Everyone say Kairos.
Kairos is a moment or a series of moment.
It's an experience or a series of experience.
If you look in Mark chapter 1, it says the Kairos has come, the
Kingdom of God has come near repent and believe the good
news. He's not saying it's eight O 4
that time has arrived 8 O 4:00 PM He's saying this moment that
we have been waiting for has finally arrived.
The intersection of what God was doing in the history of the
earth has collided in this Kairos, this moment.
Mark chapter 13. But about that day or hour, no
one knows, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only
the Father. Be on guard, be alert.
You do not know when that Kairos will come.
That moment Kairos literally translated biblically, means
time as opportunity. When you look at your watch, do
you think of that? Like, look at all the
opportunity? It's valuing what's happening
right here and right now. It's appreciating each scene and
season of life, the good ones and the hard ones, the young
ones and the old ones, the strong ones and the feeble ones.
The, excuse me, the Kronos person would say, Oh my
goodness, I only have X amount of days, years left to live, 45
years. Would the Kairos person say
then, wow, I still have 45 years left to live?
No, because the Kairos person would say, I'm just living for
what's happening right now. Now be careful here because you
can think about poor planning and poor stewardship and I'm
just living for the moment. That's not what I mean.
God is a planner. You should be a planner.
God is a steward. You should be a steward.
You should think about what's ahead, but you shouldn't fret
about what's ahead because I am receiving this moment as the
divine appointed opportunity that God has given me and I'm
going to live it right here, right now and that tomorrow
worry about itself, right? But it only comes from a rested
person, not a chrono stressed death watch person, a life watch
person. Mark Buchanan wrote a book
called The Rest of God and he teaches this concept in there
The life watch, the death watch, Kronos and Kairos.
And he says Kronos is time we waste and Kairos is time we
cease. Which watch do you have on
today? Whereas Kronos dreads that time
is moving along, stresses us out, makes us seize up in
seasons, Kairos is appreciating each moment as a divine gift
from God. Sovereignly, God is growing us
and moving us from one season to the next, and we should
appreciate each season as He moves us through life.
I have two dear friends and they've been married almost 40
years. And in their discussions that
you, you, I don't know if you all have this discussions, you
that have been married long, but you look in the mirror and like,
wow, we ain't what we used to be.
Things are wobbling that didn't used to wobble.
You know, things that didn't used to hurt, hurt.
And what are these caverns on my face wrinkles.
Look, we're getting old. And then they continue the
conversation and this is what came out of it.
One of the most beautiful things I've ever heard personally, they
said to each other. But when we got married, wasn't
that the goal? Let it sink in for a minute.
When we were just young pups holding hands in front of God,
in front of our our friends, and we said till death do us part.
Wasn't that the goal that we would grow up, that we would
age, that we would get Gray hair or no hair or whatever, Right.
And this is to some it's sad, but to me it's beautiful.
And I often say it to people who are I'm about to marry.
I'm like, listen, the goal is that one day one of you ushers
the other into the arms of the father.
You will die married to one another.
It's not somber. If you're living Kairos.
Time is opportunity. It's horrifying and sad if
you're in Kronos. We're running out of time.
This is all we got. We listen.
He's sovereign. We're trusting him.
We're resting him. The goal is to grow old and one
of us will die married to the other.
That's the goal. That's Kairos.
And you can apply this to many areas of your life.
Neo in the movie The Matrix, which is also Luke Skywalker in
Star Wars and Harry Potter and Harry Potter.
It's the same story, just different scenes.
Fight me. OK?
It's the same story, is it not? Saviour.
You're the saviour. It's Neo.
No, it's Luke Skywalker. No, it's Harry Potter.
OK. And they all have a OK actually,
does Neo have Neo does? Anyway, who gets.
I digress as often I do. Neo hears.
His mentor Morpheus say all I'm offering you is the truth.
What's the truth? Well, The Matrix, if you're not
familiar with the movie, is about two realities.
One's actually not a reality. It's a fake reality that's
propped up by AI and computers and people behind the scene
making a fake reality so that all the people live peacefully
without knowing the real truth, that there's a massive war
brewing between good and evil behind the scenes and so they
live in this ignorance. Ignorance is bliss.
Just go to work, make the money, come home, there's family,
whatever, but there's this real war waging that is unseen.
The reality is this unseen world that Neo now has an opportunity
to live in this truth or go back to being ignorance.
If you remember the movie, he offers him 2 pills, a blue pill
and a red pill. The blue pill is stay in
ignorance. It's the death watch.
Stay right here in this false reality.
For Americans, I can speak, it means basically live the rat
race. That's our reality.
You're born, you go to school, then a few things might happen,
college, career, marriage, children, all of these
opportunities. Then basically taxes and death.
That's the schedule. Live according to the schedule
and then rinse and repeat for generations.
That's Kronos. It's a false reality.
It's the blue pill. It's the death watch.
Kairos is the red pill where revelation comes and we see time
as opportunity, meaning that every moment is a redeemed gift
from God. It can be if you take the red
pill, put on the life watch, and every moment, every season is a
divine interaction of what God has intended.
If we put on the life watch, the question is how do we put it on?
I wonder the same thing. I'll tell you this before I move
on. Just another example.
When Owen, our oldest son, who will turn 23 on May 14th, so in
what, 10 days? Yeah, exactly.
I'll tell them. I remember he he went to high
school 720 days, four, 180 days of school year.
I really only remember the first day.
All the rest of them are a blur. Right.
But the first day he gets up, he's so tiny back then had to
hit his growth spurt yet, and he's going into this school of
2500 demons. I'm kidding, but as a parent,
you're like clenching. I make him breakfast.
It's early in the morning. It's dark outside.
They go. They send high schoolers to
school way too early in Osceola County.
Amen. And he's sitting at the table
eating, and I'm behind him. He's at the table.
He doesn't know that I'm behind. And I'm just considering the
moment. And I'm living in Kronos in this
moment. I had the death watch on.
I'm thinking it's happened too quickly that we're here.
Before we know it, he'll be out the door.
I'll be dropping them off in a dorm at some place under be
unknown to us at this point. And he's about to enter into the
school with all of these people, with all of the pressure of the
academics. He's doing IB, he's a student
athlete, and those are the easy things compared to the social
pressure to perform and be somebody.
And I'm standing behind him thinking, let's just go back to
elementary school. Let's not let these things
happen. I'm dreading them. 13 days from
today, Owen will graduate from college.
Yeah, Hallelujah. He's mad at this incredible
woman. He's got this incredible career
that's laid out in front of him, and everything is going great.
And the life watch is on my wrist now.
And instead of thinking, wow, he's going to get married,
potentially. I don't know and move out of the
house and be on his own and all this kind of things.
Now there's this idea of just embracing everything that God is
doing in his life as ordained from his hand and saying God,
you are good. I'm glad for the season.
I'm I'm not ruining the fact that he's going to move out
again and and have his own family and all all these
thoughts have been released from being death to now.
God, these are gifts from you. I'm appreciating each season of
life, even though it's still hard.
The hardest thing ever is to drop your kid off at college.
That's just what I believe. Maybe you have a different thing
and you're going to tell me later, because you always do so
anyway. But how do we pick the watch,
the life watch on the regular? Here's what I'll tell you.
Sabbath is the break that fixes you.
The first time my younger brother broke his arm, it wasn't
my fault, it was my older brother's fault.
We were in El Paso, TX at my grandparents house.
They lived in El Paso for 30 years.
My dad was born and raised there.
My mom went to college there and he was launching us off of his
feet. He was on his back and launching
us off his feet. It's fun game.
We were doing it for a little bit and then one time he
launched Fred super high. Fred comes down like this.
And then when he rolled off his body, we saw an S Yeah, I went
running. Couldn't handle it like that.
Looks nasty. He's screaming.
I ran. It's Matt's fault.
The second time my younger brother broke his arm.
Oh, wow. It was my fault.
The same arm. Same arm.
It was not even much more than a year later, we had moved from
Texas to Germany and our house had a clothesline in the back
with these two TS, metal TS. Can you see them and the
clotheslines between them? Well, the the TN down here far
from the house had a little tree that you could climb and grab on
to the clothesline and swing if you're a big boy like me.
Not my younger brother, who was probably 5 or 6 at the time.
So he climbs the tree and he's hanging on to that.
He's swinging. And I don't remember if he said
help or I just thought I got to help him.
But I went up and like grabbed his legs.
So I'm in the tree holding his legs and his arms are holding
the bar like this, right? It's not a good position to be.
And he's like, let me go. I go, let you go.
You get a fall. Well, he fell anyway because he
couldn't hold on anymore. And then he went down into the
tree roots and I looked down and there was the S again.
He didn't laugh. So what did I do?
I ran. I ran into the house.
I walked in like Dad. Fred broke his arm.
It might have been my fault. Same arm.
So later, Fred and I had a bro moment, like, man, I'm sorry,
sorry. Just trying to help.
He's like, it's all right. I wasn't mad at you.
The reason I was screaming is because I knew when I went in,
they were going to have to set my arm again and pull on it
until they had it right. And then they cast it because
what's broken needs to be reset. The Sabbath is the break that
fixes you. Like, I'm not questioning or
putting up debate that in general, the American population
is broken. We don't know how to rest.
We live stressed. As I said last week, we're tired
all day and then we don't sleep at night, frenetic from one
thing to the next, never enough hours in the day.
You name it all chronos things, death, watch things, but the
Sabbath is the break that can fix us.
Let me give you some science and I'm going to tell you this.
Science always proves what God has already revealed.
Eventually they get there like oh, and they don't make connect
the dots, but I do like see God's been saying that this
whole time. Let me give you some examples.
In 2018, Americans took 17.4 vacation days on average, up all
the way up from 17.2 in 2017. They consider this a large
increase in unused vacation days, because 300 million * .2
is a lot, I guess. However, this is a significant
drop from the 20.3 average vacation days used between 1978
and 2000. We've gone from 20.3 to 17.4 in
a span of 18 years. In general, Americans don't use
29% of their vacation days. In 2018, 768 million vacation
days went unused. What am I trying to tell you?
Americans don't know how to take a break because the rat race
says you can't take a break. You got to keep performing.
Can't take time off. In the early 1900s, an article
was written and the writer of the article coined the phrase or
the term workaholic workaholism. Somebody addicted to their work,
They work without stopping. They're just working and working
and working. And here's the sad thing.
He used a certain profession to base this whole conversation in.
It wasn't doctors, firefighters, teachers, lawyers, stockbrokers.
It was pastors, ministers. The first time the word
workaholism was ever used was in reference to those in ministry.
Think about this. If the ministers who should know
the rest of God don't rest correctly, how will the people
they lead know how to rest? So I'm trying to learn.
I'm trying to teach so that we will be a household to rest.
Here's the science. And I don't.
I can't remember exactly how they did this test to know
exactly what they said, but in essence, a four day vacation
will last you 4 weeks. It'll keep your cortisol clean,
your body regenerated. Whatever.
They've done, the studies, they did, all these statistics and
polls and whatever, and they came up with this idea that four
days of vacation will last you 4 weeks.
This is the science, right? The research which means in a
year you will need 13 four day vacations to last you through
the year. 13-4 day vacations if you work here to illuminate
church. I do by declare, no, no I'm not
13-4 day vacations. 4 * 13 is 52.
Essentially, the research is showing us that we need every
year 52 vacation days in order to be rested.
And we're using 17, which means that we're 35 days to the
negative and how much our body, our minds and our spirit needs
to rest. And we wonder why we're stressed
out, burnt out, depressed and anxious.
And you probably picked it up by now, this number that scientists
found out that we need 52 days of rest.
Tell me, how many Sabbaths are there each year?
52. Wow, 52 days of rest God is
asking us to have, which is exactly what science says keeps
you rested. Sabbath rests and resets the
soul every week. Sabbath helps what's broken be
put back in place. Can you imagine going on
vacation already rested? How much different that would
be? You know, when you go on
vacation, it takes like two or three days to get into it.
You're like detoxifying and letting things go.
And then you're on the third day and you're like, I have to go
back tomorrow and you, there's no resting.
Yeah, people. Exactly.
Silas just said you need a vacation from your vacation.
We shouldn't feel like that when you finish your Sabbath.
Our family Sabbaths from 5:00 PM Friday to 5:00 PM Saturday.
When you finish your Sabbath, you get to the end and be like,
that's OK, I'll be right back here next week.
And really, that 24 hour Sabbath is the training wheels of faith.
Meaning as we practice the Sabbath, we'll begin to learn to
live from Sabbath. All the other six days from the
Tetelestai. It is finished, the finished
work of Jesus. We practice the Sabbath and then
we live from the Sabbath the rest of the week.
Let me tell you how much God loves you.
He has commanded you to rest. He loves you so much that he
says, I want you to set aside a day each week to remember to
live that every moment is a gift from Him.
You can respond like a toddler. Toddlers will run themselves
around, resist sleeping until they just crash out.
They're running around 1 moment, make a ton of noise, they're
crying out, then all of a sudden they're just gone.
Can I get a witness? We do that as as people, We run
around, we run ourselves ragged until we collapse.
Or you can respond to the Sabbath like an adult.
This is what adults do. They wake up, they hit the alarm
clock, they look at the clock and like, how long until I'm
back in this bed? Can I just go right back to
sleep? Which means that most adults
rest by escapism. I don't want to face what I got
to face. So let me just lay here in the
bed. Toddler, run around till you
collapse. Adult, escape, escape, escape.
Or how about we respond to the Sabbath like an infant?
A baby most of the time, but not all the time.
I know there's exceptions. You can find a baby resting
sweetly, taking a nap in the arms of a loved 1.
So here's an image for Sabbath for you, your heavenly Father.
Like this. Come here, climb on in.
And he doesn't sing Rock a Bye Baby because that song is
terrifying. Let me close with this.
Our family met the Walker family in 2007, Denny and Beverly
Walker. There's going to be a picture up
here with their daughter, Andrea.
I can promise you, this is a whale picture.
Denny looks way better than that.
Now. Beverly's always been as vibrant
and beautiful as she is there. That is their daughter, Andrea.
They have another daughter, Hannah, who'll be in the next
picture that got a little older. Hannah in the back.
When she grew up is when we met her.
She used to babysit Owen and Audrey back in the day.
OK, when we met Denny he was a an elder at the Crossing Church.
That was in 2007. But on February 11th 1999 Andrea
was in a car. She wasn't driving and another
car came this way at a high rate of speed, struck the vehicle and
she died instantly. Parents worst nightmare.
Denny, when I met him, was an elder at the crossing, as I
said, and he was one of those elders that when he spoke,
everyone else kind of got quiet. He didn't say much and he kind
of had a high voice. So when he talked, it wasn't
loud and everyone just kind of quieted.
He always had this deep wisdom to share and he counseled people
and he led people and I saw them all over the church.
And so I sat with him. Denny, I'm like, dude, your
daughter died and here you are serving the Lord in such an
incredible way. I would have been angry, been
cursing God, I'm done with this all.
I'm out and here you are like, it's just as amazing.
And I'm like encouraging him, like I want to be like you when
I grow up. And he said, Tim, you're only
seeing the end of the journey. Said for two years, every day I
contemplated suicide, hated God. He said, the only reason I'm
alive is because I didn't have the courage to kill myself.
The grief's so heavy, the brokenness that he felt.
Denny's house. I've been there.
He's got this chair. And it's like where he reads the
Scriptures and it's this amazing looking chair.
And you're like, yeah, that's a that's the kind of chair where
you read the Bible in like it's just one of those chairs.
And he says, one day I was in this chair and I read this verse
two years after the accident. See if this sounds familiar.
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against
you that I have set before you, Denny, life and death, blessings
and curses. And then he said, this is the
loudest the voice of God has ever been to me.
It was like it boomed from heaven.
It hasn't been that loud since or before.
It was never like this. These 3 words now choose life.
Denny is sitting in his chair recognizing that God had made
him an offer and it was now up to him to choose what he would
do, continue in this Kronos of death or to embrace what his
life was now and live in this Kairos of life and choose life.
Then he said for me, life was facing God, death was putting my
back towards God. God hadn't turned.
Denny had turned, and understandably so, right?
And that day as he sat in his chair, he said I had to
willfully choose to take the backside of me and turn it away
from God and turn myself to God. And he found life again.
Praise God. I'm wondering which way you're
facing today. And I'll say this to you.
This is how it connects to our series.
Every time you Sabbath, you make a wilful decision that day to
turn towards God. So no matter where you've been
on Monday through Saturday or whatever, your Sabbath falls.
You get this opportunity each week to reset and face the Lord
and say here I am and he's like here I am.
Good to see you have some things I want to share with you, some
deposits I want to make in your life.
And hopefully as you practice this one day a week, you begin
to practice it every day of the week, turning towards him.
I want to close by just reversing the words a little
bit. The Bible says now choose life.
And I just want to tell you today, choose life now.
I want to say now, I don't mean later now, I mean now.
Now God put an offer on the table.
That's why he brought you here today to illuminate church or
wherever you're watching from to say, will you make your decision
now? And yes, there's hard things
that happen, devastating things that happen, but you may be
sitting with your back facing God and he's just saying, will
you? Will you turn to me today, now,
and at least once a week on the Sabbath, turn and face me and
you'll find that I am facing you.
Choose life now. Thanks for joining us today.
We hope God is speaking to your heart through this message.
If you'd like to connect with us, you can text connect to
407-588-0115 or visit Illuminate dot church.
Have a great week.