What's This All About?

1. Read John 17:1-5. How does Jesus define eternal life in verse 3, and why is that definition significant?
2. What changes in your perspective and daily practice when you stop thinking of eternal life only as some point in the future, and start to see it as a quality of life in relationship to God that you enter into now?
3. In what ways have you not been living with an eternal perspective? What do you feel God impressing upon you to change in light of this sermon?
4. What stood out to you in the sermon about the perfect, loving relationship within the Trinity and how that life has been opened up to us through Jesus' sacrifice?
5. How can we practice this sort of sacrificial love in our relationships?
6. "Apeirophobia" was discussed as an existential dread or phobia towards the notion of eternal life. What are some misconceptions you have held about heaven that you are rethinking in light of Scripture?

Prayer + Practice:

Jesus' vision of Eternal Living Now found in John 17:3 is one where we are in loving relationship with God. This happens because of his sacrifice on the cross, so our mission is to help people discover who Jesus really is and live with, like, and for him, now and forever. The three rhythms of Worship Together, Life Together, and Serve Together connect you to that heartbeat to start experiencing that kind of life. This is the best way to get connected and start growing at Hillside.

How can you reassess your priorities with an eternal perspective and reorder them so that you're engaging in Life Together with other believers this semester? We were challenged today to either (1) get into a Life Group, or (2) invite someone into your group, opening up the relational dynamic like Jesus did for us.

Well, it's great to see you, and it's great to be with you. I'm looking forward to kicking off this semester. Before we jump in back into the book of James and cover the last two chapters there, we're going to do a mini series called eternal living now, which really captures the heart and the hope of hillside. Our mission and our vision. Our vision is very simply, eternal living now from explained in the series.

And then our mission is we exist to help people discover who Jesus really is and live with like and for him now and forever. It's just testing you. That's all it's doing.

Eternal living now is really about living for something beyond this world. That's what Jesus calls us to think about. This phrase, which I've reflected on this summer. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

That is the question of the age.

And the point is that Jesus is making is there's so much more to reality that Jesus is calling us to, and it's easy to lose sight of that in this world, this materialistic, naturalistic culture. And it can be devastating. Schizarro, in one of his books says, there's no greater disaster. Think about this now we're starting this whole series. There's no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality.

I've had to reflect on that. Is that the greatest disaster? I think it is. I think the greatest disaster is that you live like you have no soul and that your soul isn't the most important.

And he says, in fact, the true spiritual life is not an escape from reality, but an absolute commitment to it.

I got to spend some time with some friends. One of them, just two weeks ago asked me, do you even know your great grandfather's name?

And I said, no, I don't. I don't know how far back you can go. That's only a hundred. A little over a hundred years and you're forgotten. That's a pretty short life, thinking about eternity, the car you love by then, and another one will either be destroyed or somebody else's classic, the weighty election coming up will be a puff of smoke, and so will the people involved.

Everything so weighty in light of eternity just doesn't mean that much.

One of the reasons that I read, you know, physics. It's not because I'm smart. You all know that.

The reason that I do it and trudge through some of this stuff is because I'm reminded all the time as I read it. It just shatters my illusion of reality. That's the reason I read it. So I have to trudge through things.

Trevelyan's book eternity, which is God's soul and new physics, first book I read on break is really talking about what happens to time in the quantum world, which is much different than the kind of world we live in. The world you and I operate in in time is not the same world in time and space and matter, energy, all of it is different at the quantum level. And just to read about that and how science right now is able to actually get a window into eternity because of quantum tunneling, something like that. And what he does in the book is he tries to say that what quantum physics is to material world, your soul, is to physical reality. And it's a beautiful comparison, but he's just shattering all your views of the material world.

And all you have to look do is look right into the world that we live in now, and you can see there's a reality beyond this one. That's the point of the book. So eternal living now gets right at this issue. And to me, it's the most beautiful and intimate way of describing God's intention for us as a community, but also as individuals, as people, to live every day and the great lengths as we're going to see that he went to to make it possible for us to have it, to be able to live in that reality, to live beyond just this world. So it gets right at the core of everything.

And I spent most of the summer reflecting on this, wrestling with it, and it was invigorating, and I didn't even realize how much I needed it. I'm hoping you connect to it the same way. And it's very possible because I get this way. It's very easy for this culture to beat you down, and you feel defeated, and you lose sight of the point. It's just easy to happen.

And you ask questions like, well, what is it all for? Things happening? You know, what is God up to? And is it working, and how do I fit into it? Like, how does my life intersect with this eternal reality?

And maybe you need to get your bearings. That's what the series will do. And the place to begin is John, chapter 17. This very, very intense and intimate conversation that Jesus has with his father opens up the meaning of eternity for us in a way that nothing else really does. I mean, it builds on it, but nothing really gives you a look into it.

It's the one place you get eternal life defined at its core.

And we see how the infinite bears upon the finite, the here and now. This interaction between eternal beings brings all reality into perspective, and I think, answers the question, what's it all about? Which we have to come back to now and then. So in John chapter 17, you have this very, very critical moment has arrived for Jesus. His time with the disciples is about over.

He's got a week left on the planet. And the thing that had been planned from eternity past is about to happen. And John calls that the hour. The hour which represents the whole last week of Jesus life and especially his death on the cross. That's the hour.

And so this critical moment has arrived, and Jesus wants a private conversation with his father about it. And what you have is now Jesus is here on earth. And so you have this meeting. You have this kind of meeting of heaven and earth, which in order to get a grip on eternity, you have to be able to somehow be here and yet connect to that reality. And Jesus does it for us.

It's like we just watch him do it. And so in John 17, one Jesus lifts up his eyes to heaven and he says, father, the hour has come. Now glorify, glorify your son so that your son may glorify you. Now we get a little bit of very, very intimate kind of relational dynamic that the father and the son share together, that they glorify one another.

And you can't understand the cross really, unless you understand that dynamic, what's going on with them.

Unless you have some eternal framework, the cross doesn't stand out like it should. And so we get this picture of ultimate reality. What existed before anything existed, what was, what was there before anything existed, before this hour ever came, what was there? So spiritually speaking, it's kind of like you're going into the quantum world. You're going to go into a reality, and you're going to see what's going on long before what's about to happen physically in the world.

You're going to see what was happening spiritually in eternity.

That's exactly what's happening here. And what was happening is this whole idea of glorifying. There's a whole glorifying idea in John 16, just the chapter before where we're talking about the Holy Spirit. Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit. He says, the Holy Spirit is glorifying me.

Spirit glorifies me. So you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spirit glorifies me. I'm glorifying the father, the father's glorifying me. And you've got this sort of glorifying dynamic.

And it's a relational picture of just how they treat each other. It's called glorifying. That's what's happening in the quantum world of God. They just glorify each other. That's the verbal idea of what they're doing.

It's just a picture of their relational dynamic, which we got to explore what is going on there. Because it's a picture of ultimate reality. You dig deep enough into any spiritual issue, and you'll encounter the Trinity.

It's kind of like the material world. You don't even know what's going on. In the quantum world. You have no concept. We have no concept of what's going on.

Even people who study it don't know what's going on in there. And that's what we get in this picture of eternity, this beautiful image. And it's a delighting in one another, serving one another. Father, I've come to this hardest hour of our eternal plan. And I'm doing it for you, and you're glorifying me in it.

So you have this serving and ministering and delighting in making over one another. You have this perfect harmony relationally.

They pour themselves out for one another in infinite amounts and infinite degrees. This is infinite reality.

True. And what you end up with when you are glorifying. And we'll see this here in just a minute. When you are glorifying each other, in other words, relational, relating to one another without any selfless demands or without any selfish demands. Without any kind of selfishness or self seeking.

Just perfect harmony.

That's what you're doing when you're glorifying. What you end up with is glory. That's the weight. The weighty reality of what's happening here ends up being reality, by the way, before anything existed in the world, this was going on.

Before anything existed, this is what was happening. So when you say, what is ultimate reality? You have to go to quantum physics to answer that question. In the material world, you have to. Einstein said it's the spookiest thing in the world.

And that's why he rejected quantum physics for a while. Too spooky for him. Well, when you think about the spiritual world, you have to go here and realize ultimate reality is God relating to God loving each other perfectly. Ultimate reality is God in a loving relationship. Perfectly.

You know, at my best.

At my best, I'm the happiest. When my wife is happy because I've served her. When I'm at my best, I'm not there enough. But at 61, with no kids in the house, oh, yeah. I'm taking you into the quantum world of the Chia follows.

Right now.

There's nothing that gives me great honor, or there's my most. One of my favorite moments in the world is when Gail's happy because I've served her or loved her or cared for her in some way. It's the best. And at 61, I do it more often than I did when I was 30.

Still not enough, but that's at my best. Can you imagine that? For eternity? That's how they've treated each other. With never a slip, there's perfect sacrificial love for one another.

That's ultimate reality, unbroken until now. A slight shift in the wonder of that relationship, and we're like, why? What could break that up?

Hmm. Well, it turns out that the cosmic environment that you and I were created in, the world that came to be because of it came out of that relational, loving reality. And the cross becomes the picture now. This hour becomes the picture.

He says I a little later. We'll see it in a minute. I just want to read it to you now. He says, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me because you loved me the way you love me. Father, I desire that the ones you've given me will be where I am, so that they can see this glory, that can understand the weight and the reality of this.

I want them to know it, feel it, and experience it. What I had with you before, the foundations of the world and what you learn about the cross this moment, the father loves.

Jesus says, I want you, Lord. I want you, Father, to love them like you love me. Now. This is a request from within the Trinity. This is a request from within the Trinity to share it, to share that love.

This coming from the one who would pay the ultimate price to achieve it. Father, I want them to know it. Which means the father's love for the son. From the father's love for the son comes the son's love for us. So loved was the son that it spilled over to loving us.

That's what happened. That's how timelessness became time.

That's why God created the world. Why did he create the world? To share this love, to open up this eternal reality to us, just love generating existence. And that's why I love verses four and five. Now, look at this.

Here's what he says. I glorified you on earth. In other words, I'm doing that now on earth. You know, what we had in eternity. I want to keep doing it here.

You don't have to be in heaven to do this. Now watch. How do I do that? Just by doing the work you asked me to do down here in real time and in real space, in real matter and energy.

And I love this word. And now eternal living. Now here's where heaven and earth are meeting. Even though Jesus has some incredible, impossible to understand way left that trinity reality and came here still, the dynamic of glorifying each other never ceased, even though he was still here and on earth. And now he says, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory.

There it is, the verb and the noun. We still have the weightiness of this relationship, but something shifted. Something was shifted. A great price was paid to break up the wonder of that. And what you have is.

Cs Lewis talked about this. The eternal word. It says in self giving, if anywhere we touch, a rhythm of all creation and of all being, for the eternal word that jesus gives himself in mortal sacrifice, and that not only on Calvary. For when he was crucified on Calvary, he did. He did that in the wild weather of his outlying provinces, what he had done in glory and in heaven with gladness.

When Jesus goes to the cross, when jesus goes to the cross, he loves and sacrifices, just like he had been doing it here. Just like they had been doing it here. That's why they're still glorifying each other, because they're still loving each other, serving each other's purposes and sacrificing for one another. You say, oh, my goodness. Why would he do that?

Why would he in some way step out of this reality? And verse two gives us the answer. You now have given me authority over all flesh to give eternal life to everybody that you've given to me. That's the reason Jesus basically said it. I'll tell you why we broke up.

The good thing we had. It's not like the Beatles, which is a sad day. Eagles got back together, all wonderful things. I'll tell you why. We broke up a little bit so that we could provide eternal life for everybody else, so we could let people in on God's life.

That's all eternal life is. It's God's life, what God does, and you get to get in on it. That's what happened here. I did. That's why.

So that you could give me the authorities or I could give eternal life to these folks. Remember, this is important, the reason God is a trinity, not the reason he is a trinity. But because he is the trinity, he's a tri personal God, which means he already exists in relationship. So he doesn't create the world because he needs relationship. Do you see that?

He already has it.

That's why we worship. That's why the scriptures have a God who is three and one. If you have a uni God, if you have a uni personal God, then you have a God who doesn't experience love, can't experience love alone. You can't experience relationship alone. So if you have a uni personal God, then he has to create so that he can have love.

This God's already perfectly loving. He doesn't need it. He shares it and he offers it. Do you see that?

So infinite, perfect love, and he shares it. Now, what is eternal life? This is the one place. It's the only place that Jesus gives us a definition.

It's almost as if when you read it, you're like, is Jesus saying this to God? Because God doesn't know it.

He says to God, you gave me authority to give eternal life. And here's what eternal life is like. So it's almost as if these words are attached to Jesus. It's almost as if Jesus wants to make sure whoever reads this knows. So he says it out loud to his own father, who already knows.

What is eternal life relationship. What else could it be? I mean, I'm opening up our eternal relational life, loving life, and I'm offering it to you. It couldn't be anything else but to know you, God, the only true God, and myself whom you've sent and he could have written to make it available, to make it happen. It becomes available in me because of the sacrifices we're about to make on behalf.

So eternal life is not heaven.

It's knowing and relating and interacting and being intimate with and personal with God himself.

That's the dynamic you're getting into when you gain eternal life.

That's what it is.

So if you're brought into that, then it starts to explain, well, then what is eternal life and what are we supposed to be doing? Which will expound over the three weeks? But you get into this glorifying dynamic. You get into this relational dynamic where you. You are sacrificing yourself, where you are loving and serving and making over others.

That's at your best. When you're at your best, that's what you're doing.

You're glorifying him by decentering yourself and loving others. So it's not a destination. Jesus doesn't portray eternal life as a place here. He doesn't even describe it as a duration. It's almost as if time and space have been sucked out of it.

So that what you really have, when you're talking about eternal life is just a relationship with Goddesse. And you clearly don't have to wait for heaven for that. That's the point of eternal living. Now. You come into that relationship, you start living an eternal quality of life now.

You don't wait till heaven for it. Yesterday we were at a birthday party for. Belle is my granddaughter, youngest one year old. And so all the grandkids are there and everybody's there. And our niece, my nephew was there and his children.

And so she's tenny, about to be five, four years old. We asked her to pray for the meal. So we all bow our heads. It gets real quiet. And she prays and she prayed a prayer that, I'm telling you, stopped all of us dead in our tracks.

It was like, I mean, I actually asked her if she'd share next week with you guys. It was so good.

And this is what, one of the things, one of the lines she said, thank you, Father. Thank you, Lord, for sending your son Jesus to die on a cross for our sins so that we could. Now I'm listening. I got ears perked and I'm thinking, fill in the blank. What would you expect that little girl to say?

So that we could what? What would you say she's going to say? So that we could what? Go to heaven, she said, so that we could live for you. And I went, I've just met.

I hope you write a book someday, little girl, so that you could live now, not so that one day you can go to heaven, so that you can enjoy that relationship now and live it out now. That's what it is. So eternity begins the moment you come into relationship with him. I think verse 21, where I have that at, that they may all be one. Just as you, father, are in me and I in you.

So, you know, whatever this in means. Hey, you want to have some fun this week? Meditate on that word right there. Just the word in. Whatever it is to be in you, whatever it means to be in that dynamic, whatever we had with each other, I want them to have it is the whole picture.

I want you in on this now, not later. In relationship. CS Lewis calls once you get in there a dance. It's a drama pattern of this three personal life that's played out in each one of us. He describes, he says each one of us has got to enter the pattern.

Take his place in the dance. In that dance, he says, and if you want joy and power and peace and eternal life, you must get close to even into the thing that has them. It's exactly what Jesus is saying in here.

They are not. This is a great line from him, by the way, just to decide if you haven't read the problem of pain lately by CS Lewis, do yourself a favor, get in there.

He writes, if you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to even into the thing that has them. He says they are not a sort of prize which God could give. Eternal life is not a prize that God gives or just hand out to someone. You don't hand this out to anybody. You invite people into this relationship.

And he says it's a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting out from the very center of reality. When you're in it, of course you're going to live forever if you're in there. But it's not about that. In fact, look at this incredible verses, o righteous father. It's toward the end of the prayer, even though the world does not know, you will come back to that.

I know you. There's Jesus saying, I already have it. He's just building off of the word know and relationship and personal and these know these know that you have sent me. So Jesus is assuming that whatever knowledge he has, we have been given that knowledge, we have been brought into that relationship. So he assumes the relationship's already started.

And watch this, because I made it known to them. I've already made it known. Look at this word. And look at this. I will continue to make it known.

How long do you think it's going to take to know everything there is to know about an infinite God? This is a really important question, and I'll tell you why in a minute.

That the love, whatever this knowledge and love is, whatever this relational dynamic of love is, the way you've loved me will be in them and I in them. And Jesus is just talking about, I don't know, whatever this is, somehow we are in there, and we are in there deep, caught up in all the movements of God's selfless, sacrificial love.

We're caught up in it. And Jesus says, they'll know it, and they'll. And then in verse, I think it's 24 here, Father, I desire that they also, whom you've given me, may be with me. That's never going to change. That's what eternal life is.

So that they'll be with me. They'll see that glory. They'll feel the weight of reality. And what is that weight of reality? Well, it's the loving relationship we have of glorifying one another.

What's that look like? Well, it looks like love. It just looks like love that before the world ever created existed, and everything came out of that. And so that's where it's going back to.

It's all going right back there. So that's what eternal life is. And I want to draw a picture of it for you because this is at the heart of it. So most of us, we think of our lives, you know, we come to Christ at some point, then we come wherever the cross ends up in your life, and you come to Christ, and then one day you're going to die, and then you think that, that this is eternal life and that somehow you gotta cross over, so you gotta die to have eternal life. Jesus trying to say, no, it doesn't look like linear that way.

Don't make this a destination so much or a duration. It's more of a, you come into it now, you come into this life now, and you're just always in it. Jesus said, I have made you known to them, and I will continue to make it known to them all. Eternal reality is. Is just an extension and a continuation of what you already have in Christ, which means the moment you meet him, you can start living eternally.

An eternal quality of life that starts the moment you come into that eternal dynamic. And you don't have to wait for heaven for it to happen.

Some people want heaven even though they don't want God.

They don't want anything to do with God, but they do want heaven. Do you see why? Who goes to heaven and who goes to hell is not arbitrary. It's, are you in the circle or are you not in the circle? Heaven's not just a place you stand around in.

You're in relationship with him. If you don't want him, you will not want heaven. Don't assume everybody wants heaven. This is important.

You know, Dallas Willis said, the fires of heaven burn hotter than the fires of hell. Heaven is more real with God's presence.

And if you don't want to be in that, if you don't want to be in that loving dynamic, if you don't want to let him have his way in your life, heaven will be a very, very confusing and uncomfortable place for you.

So you don't wait to heaven to get this. You don't say, I don't want anything to do with them until then.

John Henry Newman wrote, heaven is not for everyone. It's an acquired taste. You start acquiring that taste now. So it's not something you have to die to get into. People who don't want God now won't want him then.

And so what's happening now is you come into that eternal quality of living. God is shaping you into the kind of person who can actually get to heaven and enjoy it, because you've already been experiencing the dynamic of letting him have his way and will in your life. You already have the quality of eternity by letting him rule your life now, so that when you get there, you're not uncomfortable, you're not looking around like, I don't know anybody. Who is that? That's not how heaven is.

You don't get into heaven by the skin of your teeth.

You enter into a relational dynamic that starts now, that just continues then. So God's turning you into the kind of people that can handle, I think Willard said, the visceral nature of eternal life in heaven there, you know, the show, the good place that was on not too long ago. Ted Danson plays an angel, and it's a depiction of some utopian afterlife. And the central character is allowed in. And Ted Danson is sort of the angel that lets people in, and he accidentally lets this person in who's not supposed to be there.

And she is not a good person, but she has to act like a good person, and it's very uncomfortable when she gets there. Many of us think heaven's like that. I think I can get in. I think I can get in, and then I'll just put on an act when I get there. That is not how it works.

You wouldn't survive it. There is something real, though. I don't know if you've noticed this. And last year I encountered two people who have something called see if it's in here. I don't know if it got in here, but I'll spell it for you anyway.

A paraphobia. It's a phobia of eternity. This is a real thing. And the first time in my life I met with two people last year who have an eternal phobia. And it's getting really close to where it's going to be in the DSM psychology of mental disorders, because it's a true phobia, and it's getting written about a little bit more now, but it's basically a fear of eternity.

There's an existential terror in the idea that you're going to live or exist forever. So some people are already experiencing that they're not even in heaven, that they can't even comprehend yet, and they're already worried about it. Little children go through the four year old, eight year old, the guy that wrote the article that I read, which is called. Which is scarier, death or eternal life? Interesting.

He goes on to try to explain he doesn't take naps anymore because that's when he's the most afraid of eternity.

He wakes up horrified. And I've met with two people who literally have dysphobia. And then there's listened to a podcast called mind shift. A guy named Brandon. I don't know.

I don't know his last name, but he goes on a rant about why he hates the idea of heaven and why anybody who thinks there is a God who would want a heaven or create a heaven, if you have a God like that, you should deconvert. That's what he says.

He says there's no good vision of heaven. Now, he goes on to describe, and you can listen to it, you can go to YouTube and find it. But all the reasons they picture heaven as are not reality.

They're all very, very self centered. Well, I don't want to live forever and get up and do the same thing every day.

Okay, so that's your picture of heaven, then? Well, nobody would want to do that. And they just go through a list of things, and you can see you lose control, you lose your identity. If you're an introvert, God help you. Is you gonna be around a bunch of people?

That's my worst nightmare. That's what these people are saying. Oh, my gosh. You know how self centered their focus of heaven is. Listen, when you enter into this relationship with Christ, you enter a selfless reality.

It's not about you. Never was. And the best thing that could happen to you is that it's not about you. Only Christ offers that. Otherwise, you live with anxiety and phobia and phobia about the best thing that could possibly happen, you can't even picture.

And when you think about this and you think of Jesus line toward the end here, which is just so amazing. See where it is? Here it is right here.

The world doesn't know you.

That popped so hard for me this summer. I got to be with some people, and I'll tell you more about it next week. And I got to be in close proximity with some folks who really don't know him, but who I care about greatly.

And I was just overwhelmed with the reality of how they think and how they live and what matters to them and how devastating it is to not know this reality that you and I are talking about. That's what hell is, by the way. Hell is. You don't know him. You can't, you don't wait to get to heaven to know him.

You can know him right now, and you have to know him right now. But you don't wait till heaven to know him. That's too late.

You can know him now.

Lewis writes, in the problem of pain, from the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated, and by that abdication becomes the more truly self to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a law which we can escape. What is outside the system of self giving is simply and solely hell. Hell is not being inside there. Hell is not knowing God, this life or the next.

That's what hell is. Hell is you figuring out how to do life on your own. You know it's hell. We all know it's hell to do that.

Self giving is absolute reality.

That means your destiny is determined by your identity and your relationship with God. Nothing else does that. We have to talk about that because what you're seeing is, and Jesus says it three times at the end of this text, I hope that the world, and this is the beautiful heaven and earth, meet Lord. You know, that thing that we had when we were together? This is what I'm praying.

I'm praying that you'll give these cats down here on earth the same thing. In a way. In a way? What kind of way?

Let's see.

They'll know that you sent me. He says that three times at the end of this text, you say, wait a minute, that means I'm going to give them something now that will be observable to the world. In other words, they're not going to wait for heaven to get an eternal quality of life. They're going to have it now, and the world will be able to see it. Whatever the eternal living now is, it's observable.

There's an eternal quality to it that transforms your life in such a way that it can be seen. Now, you don't wait to heaven to get there, that your ordinary life is infused with and integrated into this incredible, undying kind of quality of life.

And the question is, and we'll address this in the next how do people who know they're going to live forever, like, versus the guy who says he doesn't even want eternity, how do people who know they're going to live forever. Live.

What does that life look like if you know you're going to live forever? Would it change what you're going to do tonight? Would it change what you're going to do tomorrow, since you realize you're going to be living forever?

Well, I'll just throw these out because we're going to spend some time, I'll just throw them out real fast and then I'll be done. This is the end right here because we'll look at it specifically. But here's the things that really struck me immediately. Number one, it will decenter yourself to be inside that. All of a sudden, life's not about you.

Living for yourself is a dead end.

And the best thing that happens to you in a day is a light goes on to say, I've been living selfishly in that regard.

Tomorrow you wake up and go, I've been living selfishly in regard to that's a dead end. Being in that triangle, being in that eternal framework, opens your eyes to that, and it's the only hope you have, because it's the only way to have hope in giving yourself up. Most of us don't give ourselves up because it costs too much and it's going to hurt too bad. And we're not sure sure we're going to get what we really want. But when you do it God's way, the hope of that's fine, because you know what you have in there and you know what you're going to have.

You're not afraid of the loss of a decentered self.

So your life is more open.

It's just more open.

It also means that right now matters. What you do today, what you say, what you're a part of, what you're experiencing, what you have to deal with in your life, it all matters. It's all shaping you to become the kind of person who flourishes in eternity. It's all shaping you. All the hard decisions, dilemmas you're dealing with, it transforms those.

Everything matters because of that.

Because you're caught up in his movements. You're not doing anything without him.

And you have a better grip on reality. You know, you know the material thing you so desperately long for isn't going to be the answer, because you know it's not ultimate reality.

And you know that your suffering is not for nothing.

You know that.

Now I'm just going to ask you. I'm going to ask two questions and close.

How many of you would say, right now, eyes open, we're all looking, you would say, I haven't. I really have not been living with a full eternal perspective. Like I should. Let me see any hands. Any hands like that.

I'm not thinking, working, relating, risking my life like it has eternal significance.

That's what we were called to.

And then we're going to tease that out. I know it's right now you just bear the weight and realize the possibility.

We'll tease it out over the next couple of.

But for those of you who don't know him personally, I don't know. You're somewhere out here and you have this vague idea that God loves you, but it's not personal.

Sure, God loves me. You'd say that, but you don't really know that love. You haven't gotten inside. You are not in there yet.

That's what salvation is.

The idea that God loves you is not enough. You got to get in there. The kind of love that really is the force behind the entire universe, the essence of all reality is right there.

And Jesus went to the cross to make it available to you. Would you bow your heads? Father, I just ask right now for all of us, because we all want, we all slip away into this material world. I know we do. We all do it, Lord.

And right now we're just flat out saying to you, that's enough time. Time to look past this world. And for those of us, Lord, there's somebody in this room who knows you love them, but they don't. They haven't experienced that love. They've never been inside.

I pray today, recognizing what you have done, the great lengths, the great risk, the great sacrifice that you have made to open up God's world today. They'll take it today.

In Jesus name, amen.