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He is-The Character of God: He is Creator · The Father's Business Podcast

0:02
Elizabeth: The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God.
0:08
Elizabeth: I'm Elizabeth Gunter Powell.
0:10
Kimberly: And I am Kimberly Roddy.
0:12
Kimberly: Welcome to the Father's Business Podcast.
0:14
Kimberly: We are so glad that you've joined us.
0:16
Kimberly: Welcome back to our podcast.
0:19
Kimberly: We are in our series, He Is The Characteristics of God, and today we are going to be exploring a pretty powerful groundbreaking truth because that's where God starts off in Genesis.
0:31
Kimberly: The characteristic of He is the creator.
0:33
Kimberly: He is the God of wonder.
0:35
Kimberly: Before there was light, before the sound of creation's first song, before even the concept of time existed, there was God.
0:41
Kimberly: He did not begin when the world began.
0:45
Kimberly: The world began because God spoke.
0:47
Kimberly: From everlasting to everlasting, he is God.
0:50
Kimberly: He's eternally sovereign.
0:51
Kimberly: He's outside of time.
0:52
Kimberly: He's intimately involved in every detail.
0:54
Kimberly: He is the creator.
0:56
Kimberly: And I think that is a wonderful concept, a powerful concept that starts in Genesis, like we've said in everything, and goes all the way through Revelation.
1:06
Kimberly: In Isaiah 46, 9 through 10, this is what we see.
1:10
Kimberly: Remember the former things, those of long ago.
1:13
Kimberly: I am God and there is no other.
1:16
Kimberly: I am God and there is none like me.
1:18
Kimberly: I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come.
1:23
Kimberly: I say, My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.
1:28
Elizabeth: You know, Kimberly, as you're as you're reading that verse in Isaiah 46, uh, the phrase that really gets to me is I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come.
1:41
Elizabeth: There is this awe that he was before anything else existed, and yet he still is in control.
1:48
Elizabeth: And I think that's the settlingness that we can feel as we really dig into this idea of God is creator.
1:56
Elizabeth: Another verse, Psalm 90, verse 2, says, Before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the whole world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
2:08
Elizabeth: That is hard to get the human mind wrapped around because we can get in an argument over how old the earth is, and people have different opinions about that.
2:16
Elizabeth: But however old you think the earth is, however old you think the mountains are, God is before that.
2:24
Elizabeth: And He is the one who brought forth everything.
2:28
Elizabeth: So there's never been a time when God wasn't.
2:32
Elizabeth: And this is where we're gonna have to kind of ask our spirits to help our human understanding stretch to receive more of who he is, because creation didn't start God, it just revealed him.
2:45
Elizabeth: He didn't create out of lack, as the as the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were completely whole.
2:52
Elizabeth: They didn't need creation, they wanted to create creation.
2:58
Elizabeth: So before there was ever any let there be light or separation of the darkness from the light or any of the things that we see happening in Genesis, God was abundant.
3:10
Elizabeth: And his creation came out of the overflow of his love and his joy.
3:16
Elizabeth: So every sound, every color, every living thing exists because he delighted to create it.
3:23
Elizabeth: And the same voice that says, Let there be light is still speaking today.
3:27
Elizabeth: Because as you read in that verse in Isaiah, it's not that he just knows the ancient times, he also knows what's still to come.
3:34
Elizabeth: So creation continues to testify that he is good and he is wise and he is powerful and he is overflowing with purpose in everything that he does.
3:44
Kimberly: And that existed from the beginning.
3:47
Kimberly: Like he like the fact that God existed from the beginning and then created the beginning, right?
3:53
Kimberly: Yeah.
3:54
Kimberly: Um, I I think about when he created all of creation, and then he created man and woman, and then they, as humans, we who where where we come from, they got to have the joy of discovering all that he had created.
4:12
Elizabeth: Yeah.
4:13
Kimberly: Like I think about how wonderful and frightening it must have been to walk through the garden and to see things for the first time and to wonder about this creator God.
4:27
Kimberly: And I think that's something that we don't have the ability to do as well as Adam and Eve probably did.
4:34
Kimberly: We've lost the art of wonder.
4:37
Kimberly: The word wonder means to think of or speculate curiously, to be filled with admiration or awe, to marvel.
4:49
Kimberly: And Elizabeth, do you remember?
4:51
Kimberly: Like, can you file back in your memory log there and remember what it actually felt like to truly wait for something, to have to wait for something?
5:01
Kimberly: And I don't mean like waiting in a doctor's office.
5:03
Kimberly: We still have to wait there.
5:05
Kimberly: Right.
5:06
Kimberly: But to have to wait to figure something out.
5:09
Kimberly: Like we we don't have to wonder anymore about things because we we have devices in our hands at our disposal with our computers and our technology in this age of technology.
5:22
Kimberly: And we kind of talked about this a few weeks ago, where we have the ability to just find out whatever we need to find out.
5:30
Kimberly: Uh, do you see that true in in the people that you interact with, Elizabeth, and in your world?
5:35
Elizabeth: Oh, absolutely.
5:36
Elizabeth: We used to be curious and you would see something and you would be like, I wonder why that's that way, or I wonder what kind of bird that is.
5:44
Elizabeth: I wonder, I mean, we used to have those conversations more often.
5:48
Elizabeth: And even, you know, my mom, God bless her, at 84, um, not the most tech savvy, but she's learned this phrase.
5:54
Elizabeth: Well, someone has a smartphone, and so anything that we're talking about, we we don't slow down to take the time to wonder and be curious about it.
6:04
Elizabeth: We just immediately want to get to the answer.
6:06
Elizabeth: And there is a dopamine hit, Kimberly, that happens when you Google something and you find the answer.
6:12
Elizabeth: It it's good to know what, you know, to find the answer to what you're wondering about, but there is something we're losing in that.
6:19
Kimberly: Yeah, I think we've I think we've lost the ability to not know something.
6:22
Kimberly: Like I remember in the 80s and 90s growing up, like it was it was even encouraged to just say, I it's okay to say I don't know.
6:32
Elizabeth: Yeah.
6:32
Kimberly: Because let's take the time to go find that out.
6:34
Kimberly: And I was on a Zoom call earlier today and I was uh I heard someone say, I'll go to I'm gonna go do some research and find out the answers before I answer that question and come back to you.
6:44
Kimberly: And I thought they didn't even say I don't know.
6:46
Kimberly: They just said I'll go do the research, which again, that's what we do.
6:49
Kimberly: But I just think it's a simple thing.
6:51
Kimberly: I think we've lost the ability to just use the phrase, I don't know.
6:56
Kimberly: Um, because we don't, truth is we don't know, but the world we live in right now is the age of I'll find out quickly and let you know.
7:04
Elizabeth: Yeah, I think Kimberly, it's also even think about it, when you come up against a problem that you need to solve, I'm real tempted these days to yeah, there's probably YouTube on that, or there's you know, I can ask Chat GPT or Google or one of these AI devices can help me figure out how to fix the problem rather than Kimberly.
7:25
Elizabeth: We used to have to sit with it, you know, and just we had to problem solve and get creative.
7:30
Elizabeth: And there there was this wondering and creativity that also went into just the everyday things of life where something is broken.
7:39
Elizabeth: How are we going to fix it?
7:41
Elizabeth: Sometimes you had a manual, but a lot of times we just had to kind of sit there and process our way through it.
7:46
Kimberly: The other thing we had to do is talk to people.
7:49
Kimberly: Like the humans that God created that are pretty wonderful.
7:53
Kimberly: Yeah.
7:54
Kimberly: Uh I mean, we there's a lot of memes out there, and Elizabeth, you and I are not the first to like them about how much we don't want to like other people or need other people, right?
8:04
Kimberly: The world is too people-y.
8:06
Kimberly: And yet we have lost the art of wondering about people and the knowledge they have and the gifts they have sometimes.
8:15
Kimberly: We're kind of quick to find the answers through AI or technology rather than actually having conversations sometimes with others.
8:25
Kimberly: And and that takes us to that whole body of Christ conversation and the gifts of the spirit.
8:29
Kimberly: Like there's so much beauty in the creator that we see in the God of creation when we even look at humanity and the gifts that he's created in the body of people.
8:41
Kimberly: Yeah.
8:41
Kimberly: And and I think that, you know, we truly have lost the art of connecting with people and seeing the beauty of things.
8:49
Kimberly: But we've also lost, like you just said, we've also we've lost the art of being creative.
8:54
Kimberly: We've lost the art of coming up with new solutions to old problems.
8:59
Kimberly: I think by not being able to be creative, we have actually lost the ability to see the wonderfulness of life because we we kind of ruin the wonder because we always just go find the answer.
9:13
Elizabeth: Yeah.
9:14
Kimberly: And and we stop learning because we let something else short circuit us.
9:19
Kimberly: Like if you truly think about, we won't go on a rant for this for too long, but if you think about in education today, there's so many ways of getting knowledge and accessing knowledge that it doesn't take a kid or a student long.
9:34
Kimberly: Like their their ability to wonder and be creative, I think gets short-circuited by that.
9:41
Kimberly: And so it's not that we've lost knowledge.
9:45
Kimberly: We've got all the knowledge in the world at our disposal at our fingertips.
9:50
Kimberly: It's also not that we've lost the knowledge of God.
9:54
Kimberly: It's actually that we've lost the ability to wonder of him.
10:00
Kimberly: And it's actually that we've lost this idea of having a holy curiosity, the ability to slow down and to look up.
10:08
Kimberly: We talked about beholding recently, to remember and behold the mystery of who he is, the wonder of God, the one the wonderfulness of God, which I don't know, the the first place that takes me is to, like we were saying, he is the God of creation.
10:28
Kimberly: And as a God of creation, I think the world that he has created is pretty astonishing.
10:36
Kimberly: And if we pause for a few minutes to think about it, I think we would be in awe, in wonder and in curiosity.
10:46
Elizabeth: Yeah, I think there's it is so easy to get so um dialed into my small part of the world or even my life's circumstances.
10:57
Elizabeth: And as you said, Kimberly, we're we're losing the ability, or we're just forgetting to.
11:03
Elizabeth: I don't think we've lost the ability to behold and wonder.
11:05
Elizabeth: We're forgetting to slow down, look up, and remember the mystery because true worship of God begins when we get to the end of our understanding.
11:16
Elizabeth: And as you just talked about, there is so much knowledge out there.
11:20
Elizabeth: I think even as Christians, we have more knowledge about God and who God is than we've ever had before.
11:27
Elizabeth: We have access to more books, more sermons, more podcasts, more worship psalms, more stuff about Him.
11:33
Elizabeth: But is it truly leading our heart to a place of that awe and wonder?
11:39
Elizabeth: And I think if we uh take a minute and go back over some very familiar verses, go back to creation, go back to the story of where it started.
11:48
Elizabeth: We, I mean, we could spill several podcasts talking about each day of creation.
11:53
Elizabeth: But the one that has just been mind-boggling to me is in Genesis 1, 20 and 21, where it says, God said, Let the waters team with living creatures and let the birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.
12:07
Elizabeth: So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the waters team and that moves about in it according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind, and God saw that it was good.
12:20
Elizabeth: And so often in my mind, I'm like, okay, so yeah, on this day, God created the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.
12:27
Elizabeth: But as Kimberly, you and I were talking and getting prepped this podcast, I was just kind of I started to wonder, like, how many species of fish have been identified in the world?
12:37
Elizabeth: And I had no idea.
12:39
Elizabeth: So I did not, I'll, I'll confess, I did what we're talking about not doing.
12:44
Elizabeth: I went and Googled it.
12:46
Elizabeth: Um, and I found just fish alone, they know of over 34,000 species, and researchers keep discovering new ones every year, and that makes fish the most diverse group of vertebrates on earth.
13:03
Elizabeth: So every one of them swims in waters designed and sustained by God.
13:07
Elizabeth: And can we just slow down and think about that?
13:10
Elizabeth: When God said let there be fish, he didn't have to create over 34,000 species of fish, but he did because he's a god of abundance and everything he does is creative and big and beautiful and far beyond our minds to comprehend.
13:28
Elizabeth: And he also has ecosystems that every one of them swims in and thrives in.
13:34
Elizabeth: So he had to think about that as well.
13:36
Elizabeth: And it it can blow the mind.
13:40
Kimberly: Elizabeth, I remember being at your house one time.
13:43
Kimberly: Um, I don't know if we had had a meeting or a conference or what, but we came in and we were just wanting to chill out.
13:49
Kimberly: And I laid down on your couch and I turned on a documentary about whales.
13:54
Kimberly: Yeah.
13:55
Kimberly: And and that was how I wanted to relax.
13:59
Kimberly: And I remember you, you and your husband coming in and like, what are you doing?
14:02
Kimberly: I was like, I just want to watch something bigger than me, like bigger than anything in my world right now.
14:07
Kimberly: And I and I I truly just did.
14:09
Kimberly: I I did, and I fell asleep to it because it was quite soothing with Sigourney Weaver's voice.
14:13
Kimberly: But um, I was amazed, and I and I enjoy watching some of those nature documentaries at times because I am amazed at the creation and the beauty of the creation and how intricate God's creation is.
14:27
Elizabeth: Yeah.
14:28
Kimberly: Um, a couple of years ago, I was doing a talk about creation, and I discovered you're talking about fish alone.
14:35
Kimberly: Let's look at the whole number of known marine species.
14:39
Kimberly: We are at 245,000 known marine species.
14:46
Kimberly: And there are still unknown marine species.
14:49
Kimberly: So they're estimating it could be over 2 million, over even 2.2 million.
14:54
Kimberly: But I remember looking at this, these bizarre creatures uh one time, and I was looking pictures up of them, and maybe we'll post some of these up on our social media.
15:02
Kimberly: But there was a 600-year-old tube worm.
15:06
unknown: Wow.
15:07
Kimberly: There was a herring that would swim in a formation as large as the city of Manhattan.
15:12
Kimberly: A herring.
15:13
Kimberly: Like those are small.
15:14
Elizabeth: Yeah.
15:15
Kimberly: There was a Yeti crab that had these long, downy claws, and there was a jellyfish that had this helmet that looked like Darth Vader.
15:21
Kimberly: It's pretty fascinating.
15:22
Kimberly: And then there was a jellyfish that didn't scream for help audibly, but he uses he used light to scream for help.
15:29
Kimberly: So if you go down to the depths, if you research this and you go like to down to the depths of the ocean, it is dark still.
15:37
Kimberly: Like humans cannot get down there to discover all that we have.
15:42
Kimberly: There's things that glow in the dark down there.
15:45
Kimberly: Like it's crazy.
15:46
Kimberly: Salt water covers roughly 70% of the world's surface.
15:50
Kimberly: And it's an average depth of 2.4 miles.
15:54
Elizabeth: Yeah.
15:55
Kimberly: So by volume, the oceans and the seas contain probably more than 323 million cubic miles of liquid living space.
16:04
Kimberly: So, like even that ecosystem you were talking about, right?
16:07
Kimberly: So despite relentless exploitation by humans, it is still the planet's richest and least understood realm of biodiversity.
16:16
Kimberly: It's fascinating alone.
16:18
Kimberly: Just that aspect.
16:19
Elizabeth: Yeah.
16:20
Elizabeth: And that's just one part of creation.
16:22
Elizabeth: And then, you know, that verse in Genesis 120 that we just read also talks about how he let the birds fly above the earth.
16:29
Elizabeth: And I I love this time of year as it gets cooler.
16:32
Elizabeth: We put out our bird feeders and just the just the variety of birds I get in my backyard cause me to want to worship God more because each one is so unique and beautiful.
16:43
Elizabeth: But I also was like, all right, if we freaking out fish, let's figure out birds.
16:47
Elizabeth: There's over 11,000 species of birds, each with unique colors and shapes and songs.
16:54
Elizabeth: They each have their own individual song.
16:57
Elizabeth: God didn't make birds just to function, he made them musical.
17:02
Elizabeth: So the sky is literally filled with the song of his glory.
17:07
Elizabeth: The point is for both the things of the sea and the things in the air, God didn't need to create all this.
17:13
Elizabeth: I'm pretty sure we could have survived without it, but he did it because he wants to raise our gaze to him.
17:20
Elizabeth: He wants us to wonder, he wants us to worship.
17:24
Elizabeth: The one that totally blows my mind, let's get past birds and fish, is when you get to stars.
17:29
Elizabeth: Because one of my favorite verses in the Bible to think about, and I was like, one day I wish I can just watch God do this.
17:35
Elizabeth: Psalm 147, 4 says, He determined the number of the stars and he calls them each by name.
17:44
Elizabeth: Now I'm overwhelmed when I just go outside and look at the sky.
17:48
Elizabeth: I can see at my house, right?
17:49
Elizabeth: There's a lot of stars.
17:50
Elizabeth: But the Milky Way, just our little corner of the universe, holds over 400 billion stars.
17:57
Elizabeth: And there's billions of galaxies beyond that that we don't even know.
18:01
Elizabeth: We can't even get to the edge to even see that far.
18:04
Elizabeth: We haven't created the telescope that can see that far.
18:07
Elizabeth: We can't count them, but God knows them by name and calls them forth by name.
18:14
Elizabeth: And it's just this beautiful connection between the infinite, like mind boggling idea that he knows and created and breathes forth four over 400 billion stars.
18:29
Elizabeth: And but it meets with the intimate, where he knows each one of them by name.
18:34
Elizabeth: And if he's that intentional, that big and powerful and also intentional with stars, how much more so is he with us?
18:44
Elizabeth: So therefore, my response should be to wonder and worship him.
18:48
Kimberly: Yeah, even as you were saying that, I was thinking of Psalm 19:1, where it says, the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
18:56
Kimberly: And and I think of that, and I'm my mind is so small-minded.
19:01
Kimberly: My mind is so, you know, like it's just to think about what you were just saying about 400 billion stars, and we're talking about the fish and the birds.
19:08
Kimberly: We have these herons that fly over our water in the back, and they're gorgeous.
19:11
Kimberly: And I love watching them catch the other little fish and everything.
19:14
Kimberly: It's just like the skies proclaim, the heavens declare the glory of God.
19:20
Kimberly: Like that's big.
19:21
Kimberly: Yeah, that's big.
19:23
Kimberly: And Psalm 104, 24, how many are your works, Lord?
19:27
Kimberly: In wisdom you made them all.
19:29
Kimberly: The earth is full of your creatures.
19:31
Kimberly: That leads us also to think about Job 12, verses 7 through 9.
19:34
Kimberly: It says, Ask the animals and they will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.
19:38
Kimberly: Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?
19:42
Kimberly: So, Elizabeth, you love bugs.
19:45
Kimberly: You love insects and bugs.
19:49
Elizabeth: Yeah, no.
19:50
Kimberly: Yeah, and and you told me that there was over a million species of insects that have been identified.
19:55
Elizabeth: Yeah, I don't, there's no need for that.
19:58
Kimberly: There's yeah, I know.
19:59
Kimberly: But probably millions more likely exist, right?
20:02
Kimberly: It's in those small details that God's imagination overflows.
20:06
Kimberly: Nothing escapes his attention.
20:08
Kimberly: Not one wing beat or not one whisper of life.
20:11
Kimberly: When we look at creation, we don't see a God who copies and pastes.
20:15
Kimberly: Like I love the fact when I look at my dog just in my house every day, he's got certain markings on him.
20:21
Kimberly: We have two dogs, and they both have certain markings on them that make them distinct from the other ones, right?
20:26
Kimberly: And I can see it every day, and I could wonder at it and awe at it and in amazement that God created that.
20:34
Kimberly: Same true of humans.
20:36
Kimberly: Even in the animals, he doesn't copy and paste.
20:40
Kimberly: He's a God who overflows, he's magnificent, he's not minimalist.
20:44
Kimberly: Every creature, every color, every pattern is an expression of his endless, creative, wonderful imagination.
20:54
Kimberly: So you think about giraffes.
20:56
Kimberly: No two have the same patterns of spots.
21:00
Kimberly: He could have made them identical.
21:01
Kimberly: That would seem to be really easy.
21:03
Kimberly: Like, let's just get a pattern for the giraffes, throw it on all of them, right?
21:06
Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely.
21:07
Elizabeth: Makes sense to me.
21:08
Kimberly: Yeah, but he created that variety on purpose.
21:10
Kimberly: It's a living canvas of his creativity.
21:13
Kimberly: Zebras, same thing.
21:15
Kimberly: Let's get a pattern, slap it on them.
21:16
Kimberly: Like we make a pair of zebra pants or whatever, right?
21:19
Kimberly: Like every every stripe pattern is unique, though.
21:23
Kimberly: As if God paints each one with a new brush stroke.
21:28
Kimberly: He doesn't repeat it, he multiplies his beauty.
21:31
Kimberly: And tigers are the same way.
21:34
Kimberly: Their stripes run deep.
21:36
Kimberly: Even their skin carries those same patterns.
21:38
Kimberly: God doesn't make things good enough, he makes them glorious.
21:42
Kimberly: The leopards, the jaguars, the whale sharks, the koalas, the penguins, they all have individual markings as distinct as fingerprints.
21:52
Kimberly: Was it you telling me that koala bears have a fingerprint?
21:55
Kimberly: Yes, they do.
21:56
Elizabeth: And I and I was why?
21:57
Elizabeth: Why why do they carry around ID?
22:00
Elizabeth: Do we need to check in case they, you know, if in case a crime is committed, we need to fingerprint the koala?
22:06
Elizabeth: I I don't know why.
22:07
Elizabeth: There's like, the more you study creation, the more it's like, I need to have a sit-down with God.
22:12
Elizabeth: And he just needs to try to explain a few things to me.
22:15
Elizabeth: Why do koala bears need fingerprints?
22:17
Elizabeth: This is this is one of my questions.
22:19
Elizabeth: It's not on the top of the list, but it's definitely on the list of questions I would love for God to answer.
22:24
Elizabeth: But from the oceans to the stars to the koalas with fingerprints, the message is the same.
22:31
Elizabeth: Our creator is not limited.
22:34
Elizabeth: He is abundant, he is lavish, he is overflowing in power and wisdom and goodness and creativity, and from the stripes to the spots to the prints, everything in creation is singing of his abundance.
22:50
Elizabeth: He does not create from scarcity, he creates from overflow.
22:54
Elizabeth: And what that should cause in me is for my spirit to expand to that level of wonder and to live from that place and that assurance of knowing if God can put fingerprints on a koala and different spots on a giraffe, surely whatever I am going to face, He is more than enough for me as well.
23:18
Kimberly: Yeah.
23:19
Kimberly: When you look at the word wonder in the scriptures, it means marvelous, extraordinary, beyond human ability.
23:28
Kimberly: It's that all at God's uniqueness.
23:31
Kimberly: Another place that God is so unique is the fact that he is outside of time.
23:37
Kimberly: And I and the fact that he existed before creation and will exist beyond creation is is amazing.
23:45
Kimberly: And I think of Revelation 1, 8, I am the Alpha and the Omega.
23:51
Kimberly: That's the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet.
23:54
Kimberly: I'm the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
23:59
Kimberly: So He is showing us there that He is total and He is sovereign.
24:05
Kimberly: He is all-encompassing.
24:07
Kimberly: And I think it is amazing.
24:09
Kimberly: Like I want to encourage us all to just pause more and wonder at the God of creation, the God who is outside time, the God who is the creator of all things from beginning to end, who is sovereign and total over all, everlasting, beyond the horizon, timeless, eternal, not bound by time, that he is wonderful.
24:37
Kimberly: There was a song I grew up with in Kimperay Christian with the world called He is More Than Wonderful.
24:43
Kimberly: And when we talk about these things and we break it down, I'm like, yeah, he is more than wonderful.
24:51
Kimberly: How many grains of sand is he placed on the shores of the world?
24:55
Kimberly: I mean, I'm close to Virginia Beach and I just think, how many sand grains are there?
24:59
Kimberly: Much less the world.
25:01
Kimberly: How far does light travel through the universe before it reaches the edge of what we can see and what exists beyond that edge?
25:08
Kimberly: It's still only known fully to him.
25:11
Elizabeth: And as winter approaches, for those of you that will experience some snowflakes, maybe this winter, as the snow falls, it will allow you to stop for a moment and just wonder how many snowflakes fall across the earth in a single winter.
25:26
Elizabeth: And each one of those is designed unique by his creativity.
25:32
Elizabeth: And right now we're watching birds throughout the south are starting to migrate through and go to warmer climates.
25:39
Elizabeth: As y'all know, I've talked about my hummingbirds before.
25:42
Elizabeth: At the peak, we would have 20 to 25 hummingbirds at a time eating at feeders.
25:46
Elizabeth: They're all gone.
25:47
Elizabeth: They've gone somewhere, Mexico, Central America, I don't know.
25:51
Elizabeth: They don't tell me where they're going, which is really frustrating.
25:54
Elizabeth: I wish they would.
25:55
Elizabeth: But how do they know?
25:57
Elizabeth: How do everything from the smallest little hummingbird to even whales that migrate across the oceans?
26:04
Elizabeth: How do they know generation after generation how to migrate to these places and come back every time?
26:11
Elizabeth: There's so much of God that is beyond what we can Google.
26:16
Elizabeth: If our brain could even understand everything that we've talked about today, Kimberly, that would be mind-blowing to understand the fish, the birds, the stars, all the things that we've talked about.
26:25
Elizabeth: And then the questions that you were asking about how many grains of sand and how far light travels and how many snowflakes fall on the earth.
26:32
Elizabeth: These are questions that we can't begin to understand.
26:35
Elizabeth: And all of it points to our place is to enjoy the creator, to lift our gaze to the bigness of who he is.
26:44
Elizabeth: And I love how you were talking about Alpha and Omega.
26:47
Elizabeth: That for some of us today, it feels like what we're in is going to be the end of us.
26:53
Elizabeth: And here's the beauty of wonder as we lift our gaze up to who he is and the magnitude of how he is outside of time and how he is the creator of all things.
27:03
Elizabeth: Whatever we're in right now is not the end.
27:06
Elizabeth: He is the end.
27:07
Elizabeth: And it's not over till he says it's over.
27:09
Elizabeth: And so we can rest in the extravagance of our creator God, who is able to do abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.
27:18
Elizabeth: Just if you doubt the abundance of God, just take a moment to look at the creation around you.
27:24
Elizabeth: He is abundant, he is creative, he is powerful, and he is able.
27:28
Elizabeth: And whatever situation you find yourself in that it doesn't feel like there's really a solution to it, look to the creativity of God.
27:37
Elizabeth: He can come up with a thought that we could, we haven't even had yet about this situation.
27:41
Elizabeth: So, God, give us your thoughts about how we're going to get through this.
27:45
Elizabeth: And it's his power that's going to get us through it.
27:47
Elizabeth: And it's his abundance that's going to get us through it.
27:50
Elizabeth: And so he is so worthy of our wonder.
27:53
Elizabeth: And I start speaking to myself first before anyone on this podcast.
27:58
Elizabeth: My heart needs to wonder more because it's not a lack of abundance.
28:03
Elizabeth: It's a lack of me choosing to wonder about him.
28:07
Kimberly: Elizabeth, as you're talking about him being the alpha and the omega, and some of us feeling like we are at the end and we have to remember he is the end.
28:16
Kimberly: I think the other question to ask is how can God's eternal nature, his alpha and omegan-ness, how does that bring comfort in uncertain times?
28:27
Kimberly: And one encouragement that I've thought about is that even though he stands outside of time, he entered into time.
28:37
Kimberly: He entered into time to create, and he entered into time with his gospel, with his life, with his death, with his burial, and with his resurrection.
28:48
Kimberly: He entered into history in order to redeem us.
28:52
Kimberly: And that's a powerful concept that he would choose to enter time to declare himself to us and to redeem us and to make all things new.
29:06
Kimberly: And so as as you are feeling, as you may be feeling the weight of uncertainty or the weight of confusion and frustration and and not knowing what's coming, and going, how can I even begin to wonder?
29:20
Kimberly: Because I'm already wondering where he is and what's going on.
29:25
Kimberly: Yeah.
29:25
Kimberly: I I think we have to again encourage ourselves to to look at him and to see the character of God and not just our circumstances.
29:34
Kimberly: Because we all wake up every day and see our circumstances.
29:37
Kimberly: Yeah.
29:38
Kimberly: But how can I choose to see God in spite of and in the midst of my circumstances?
29:45
Elizabeth: And that's what we hold on to, Kimberly is the God who spoke light into darkness, who filled the skies and filled the ocean and filled the earth with all of his creativity, is the same God who is near to us right now.
29:59
Elizabeth: He he didn't create the earth and then change.
30:04
Elizabeth: The same power that created the earth is available to us right now.
30:08
Elizabeth: And some of us who are in some very desperate places maybe just need to look up and find the wonder of the one who is still the same alpha, the still the same omega that he was when those words were spoken to him so many years ago.
30:26
Kimberly: So, like you just said, Elizabeth, the God who spoke light into darkness, who filled oceans and skies, who shaped every living thing, he's the same God who is near to you right now.
30:36
Kimberly: So let's receive this blessing from everlasting to everlasting.
30:41
Kimberly: He is God, he is creator, and he is worthy of your wonder.
30:46
Elizabeth: Be blessed to wake up to wonder.
30:48
Elizabeth: Be blessed to open your eyes to the glory woven into every part of your day, the color of the morning sky, the rhythm of your breath, the whisper of the wind through the trees.
31:02
Kimberly: Be blessed to see the fingerprints of the creator in the familiar and the forgotten, in the vastness of the heavens and in the smallest details beneath your feet.
31:16
Elizabeth: Be blessed to be stirred by the abundance of his imagination, the God who never copies and pastes, but who creates with lavish love and endless creativity.
31:27
Elizabeth: When the world feels ordinary, be blessed to pause long enough to notice the extraordinary, the beauty that quietly declares that he is here.
31:40
Kimberly: Be blessed with eyes that marvel, with prayers that overflow in gratitude, and with a soul anchored in the wonder of the God who spoke galaxies into being and still whispers your name with affection.
31:55
Elizabeth: Be blessed to walk through his world awake, to see his artistry in every day and his majesty in the mundane.
32:04
Kimberly: Be blessed to never lose the childlike joy of knowing that every sunrise is a fresh invitation to behold his glory.
32:12
Elizabeth: Be blessed to live fully awake in the wonder of the Creator.
32:17
Elizabeth: I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business Podcast.
32:22
Elizabeth: This podcast is made possible through donations by people like you.
32:31
Elizabeth: To donate, go to www.thefathersbusiness.com.
32:36
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