REFORMCON2016 | Live Stream | N. D. Wilson

The Favorite Christian Author and the Opening Introduction

All right, how are the breakout sessions? Good? Right on. So this is a real treat. Before we have lunch today, we're gonna have on the main stage my favorite Christian author. I've said that before, and I mean it.

N .D. Wilson. How many of you guys have read one of N .D. Wilson's books? Anyone in this room? Okay, they're all in the back. There you go, okay. And N .D.'s like, me? Yeah, okay. If you haven't done so yet, I encourage you guys to do so.

Again, he is my favorite Christian author. I think just author in general. Fascinating books. He is really, really skilled and gifted. His series, 100 Cupboards, is a series that I've read to my kids, and they demand that I read it in one of my character voices, Mortimer.

So I can tell you how well I know that series now. I had to be in character for it. His newest work, Outlaws of Time, The Legend of Sam Miracle, is a must read. And he actually wrote a book, a children's book called Hello Ninja.

It was a book about me, so no. Hello Ninja. And another great book, Death by Living. And I think probably my favorite is Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, which actually also had a film based upon the book itself, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl.

And Apologia Church, when we first began out of a drug and alcohol rehab facility, and we finally got out of that hospital building and moved into our first church we were renting from, one of the first Bible studies series we did in small groups was Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl.

It's just fantastic. It will make you love God and the world a lot more. It's one of those books that you'll read a page or two and have to stop and just think and meditate for a couple of hours. It is really, really, really good.

So Andy Wilson is gonna take the stage now. Let's welcome him.

Gratitude, Book Sales, and Opening Prayer

Thank you, thank you. He's a little too kind. And I really like, I say this honestly, I really enjoy seeing not very many hands as far as people who've read my books. Not very many. That's great. It means I can sell some books today.

It's when everybody's got their hand up and they're like, yes, yes, we've already, yes. I can still make them seem exciting to you because you haven't read them yet. Let's open in prayer. Father, thank you for this day.

Thank you for this warmth, for this room, for the opportunity to be here together talking about you and your world and our roles in it. Please bless this time. I pray that we would leave this room changed and improved from the time when we entered it.

We ask this all in your son's name, amen. Okay, so I'm gonna talk to you about what does it mean to mean what you say? What does that mean? Mean it, mean what you say, but what does that mean? I find that an overwhelming number of Christians do not even kind of mean what they say.

Ex Nihilo Creation, God's Sovereignty, and the Meaning of Christian Belief

They do not even kind of mean what they say they believe, and they even think they believe it. If you believe in ex nihilo creation, if you believe that God made this world from nothing, then you are already a Calvinist.

Done, sold, it's over. The whole conversation's finished. There was nothing, and then God made everything. If that's what you believe, then you're already there as far as God's sovereignty goes, as far as his lordship goes, as far as how supreme he is and his infinite relationship to this finite world.

You're done now. As soon as you say ex nihilo, it's over. Now, why is this? Well, if we try to actually locate our roles in this world, our roles in this story, you have to start with some perspective.

So let's go to the wide shot, like the nice wide shot. Where are you right now? Well, I'm in a big picture, I think really big picture. Do you even know where you are right now? Well, I mean, you're in a plastic chair.

You're in the state of Arizona. You know which continent you're on. You know which oceans surround you. You might know which planets are adjacent to yours. Maybe, some of you. But right now, you are being sucked down by a ball of mostly lava that's going Mach 86 around a star.

And there's other balls also traveling around this star at high rates of speed. And luckily, God included this design feature of this ball of lava that it pulls you down. You're not holding yourself down through any choice of yours.

There's no free will involved as the planet sucks you towards its surface and pins you down. Now, we design nice little things to catch ourselves as the planet is pulling us down so we can kind of like pose nicely while it pulls us down as we go Mach 86 around a star.

And other things go just as fast or faster along with us around the same star. Here you are sitting in a desert, being sucked down by a ball of lava onto a plastic chair going Mach 86 around a star. Now, if you have any kind of perspective at all on where you exist right now in outer space, if you know generally which quadrant you're in while traveling around the star or where the star is in relationship to the galaxy or where the galaxy is in relationship to the other galaxies, if you're the kind of person who's really into that, then you probably aren't a Christian.

For some reason, those people who don't believe in God are far more fascinated with what's out there than those people who do. Now, that's a big, broad brush. You know, I know it's inaccurate for some people, but overwhelmingly, Christians who believe that this entire place is the created artistry of their infinite father tend to yawn and check out.

Christians who believe that this entire place is their inheritance and belongs to them check out. And people who don't, people who think that they're shrapnel flying through an accident are far more interested.

They're looking closely. What is going on? They're building bigger lenses for the telescopes to see more clearly out into space, to see the glory that exists out there. And we look at it and like, yeah, that's ours.

Anyway, and we get into Star Trek or Star Wars. That's as close as we come. So they're their own mythologizing falsely of this universe that belongs to us, because after all, we are the children of the father who made it.

So, X and E, hello creation. This right here, this is wood, mostly. So that means that the wood is made of cells and the cells are made of molecules and the molecules are made of atoms and the atoms, which are mostly nothingness, moving at a high rate of speed.

Those atoms are made of other things, which we like to call quarks, up quarks, down quarks, leptons, elementary particles. We name the tiny things. But ultimately, don't you already know what this is made of?

I mean, at the beginning, we talked about X and E, hello. So if I asked you, what is this really fundamentally on a basic level made out of? What are you on a fundamental level made out of? Now, I happen to know what made this in the short-term level, the starlight.

That star we're hurtling around, with its starlight, the starlight is what's creating the forests. Its energy is creating the grass and the trees. We cut this down, we make a little podium and we don't ever think about it again.

Starlight grabbing air, CO2, my breath, starlight grabbing that, carving off the carbon, makes it into wood. You live in a place where all of your food is ultimately made by starlight. All of your lumber made by starlight.

That's the power that exists here. That's the engine of our little solar system. And who made the starlight? Who spoke it? Someone spoke it and they spoke it from nothing. This is made from nothing. Now, we can laugh at the ancient world and some farcical Egyptian, not a real Egyptian because they would never be this dumb, said the world is on the back of a turtle and that turtle's on the back of a turtle and that turtle's on the back of a turtle.

And what's that turtle standing on? Another turtle. And how about a turtle? Yes, okay, turtle. We do the same thing but we do it getting smaller. So what is this made of? What is it made of? What is it made of?

We just name things smaller. We know that the atom is mostly emptiness. It's an electron moving very quickly and we can count how many sometimes and we put it, you know, different categories. How quickly is electron moving?

You're sitting on a chair that's mostly emptiness moving at a high rate of speed. Just like if I had a propeller up here sideways, you know, a plane engine, a turboprop engine and I started to accelerate that propeller really, really, really quickly and it would take my arm off but it's like, oh, let's make it a little faster and faster and faster and pretty soon I could set my drink on it.

I could sit on it and that's what you're sitting on now. You're sitting on incredible speed, incredible velocity and it's set in motion by the speech of your father. Your father spoke and his words are power and all of his words are made flesh.

The incarnation was not some great big shocking moment where he did something different. The incarnation was a great big shocking moment when he did something profoundly more fundamentally different with the word of God.

The second person of the Trinity became flesh. All of his spoken words had already become flesh. He said light and there is light. He is saying you and here you are and your plastic chair and your ball of lava and the star powering all of our forests, making our lawns green in other parts of the country, not here.

They can, they can be green here. There are golf courses. So who are we? We are minuscule. We are absolutely tiny pieces of artwork on this ball hurtling through outer space. And then we say things and we say things that we believe.

Yeah, we believe in God. Yeah, we believe he's sovereign. We believe that he made everything from nothing. We believe that. Do we? Do we really act like it? We believe that we are his artwork and yet we go through our lives thinking that he really doesn't care that much about every one of our decisions.

I decide to do this. I decide to do that. And I make all these decisions based on not what I think honors and glorifies him, not based on what I think reflects him more honestly in this image that I am.

He's entrusted me with the image of God. Here I am in his image. And I go make decisions based on how I feel, what's cool at the moment. What other people will think of me. I mean, I am an ant hurtling through this massive galaxy at high rates of speed, held into existence by his spoken word.

And I can make decisions based on what my neighbor will think or what the news said, some flashing lights on a screen that we made. And I don't actually factor in the thought of what will honor him more.

If I make this choice, will I be honoring my father more or less? If I make this choice, if I choose this job or that job, if I decide to be all in on whatever lefty movement is very hip of the day. And I want to say, you know what?

It's a great opportunity for Christians to join hands with people who hate God on a fundamental level and really care deeply about how our coffee beans are grown. It's a great opportunity. Now, should we care how our coffee is grown?

Of course, absolutely. We should be stewards, but that's not why I'm making the decision. Like I can be swayed all sorts of places when I'm an actual heir to the universe. My older brother sits at the right hand of God, the father, and man will judge angels.

And I can be worried about like, so what hashtag will give me the most views, retweets? The art of the hashtag is kind of important to me right now to grow my platform and my ministry. Do we really mean what we say?

When you say you believe in ex nihilo creation, do you mean it? Do you think that God is speaking around you at all times? Always. When you step outside your front door, do you look at the world that he is speaking and the art he's creating right then at that moment?

And do you say like, oh, what a shit day? Okay. Like, I mean, that's just a form of blasphemy. Like you step out into his art and you're unappreciative. You step out into another scene, which he's crafted.

He gives you another character. You're sitting there and that character from church, that one guy where you're like, oh gosh, I don't know. I don't know about this. Or that one neighbor is coming down your sidewalk or you just see that person that just causes you to sin immediately and you lose all perspective.

It's like, well, of course, he's gonna keep sending that person and sending him and sending him and sending him until you get this right. When you step outside and you watch him talking the heat and the rock, when you see him setting the stage for another scene, for another day, for another moment in your life, what kind of gratitude do you have?

What kind of awareness do you have? Do you ever even thank him or do you just do that at meals and bedtime? Now, we're not infinite. And so we can't do it constantly. God is infinite, which means he's not bored by your most boring day.

You're finite. And so you have a very short attention span, very short. And you go through one day and one day and then a week and then a month. And you're like, man, this has really been dragging. I'm not famous yet.

Where's all my money? Why am I not wealthy? He's not bored. He's infinite. He's not bored telling stories with the termites who are chewing on the wood in your house. He's not bored telling stories with mold in your bathroom.

He's not bored spinning electrons, countless electrons, because he's infinite. And he's doing at the same time, the same thing with stars. You're finite and so you become bored. You're finite and so your receptors, your senses are not big enough or wide open enough to receive everything he's giving you at every moment.

What's the most important thing that God gave to you right now? Well, that heartbeat and that heartbeat and that heartbeat and another one and another one and another one. And that's essential, it's life and death.

If God decides not to give you another one, you fall out of your chair and you're done. And you're sitting here receiving life and receiving life and receiving life. And he could give you death at any second.

And he gives you life again and boom, boom. Life again, boom, boom. And you don't even thank him. Like you don't even bother. Now part of this, admittedly, he doesn't expect you to. Because if he did, you'd be paralyzed.

If you started trying to thank God for everything he's given you, you would be totally paralyzed and you'd be out of time. If I sat here saying like, okay, thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. Thank you for, and the breathing too, thank you, Father.

Thank you, and for the gravity, I haven't flown off yet. Thank you, thank you, like just, I would never get anything done. He expects us to be ungrateful. He doesn't need to be thanked. Now we need to thank him and we need to do it on a regular basis.

And we need to thank him for our heartbeats and for everything else, but we have to move on. We have to stand up and go live lives. And we can't do that without him spinning and crafting and shaping and molding everything around us at every second, like we can't.

But then the bizarre thing is, the bizarre thing is not that we don't thank him for every heartbeat. The bizarre thing is how long we can go with an ungrateful attitude. How long we can go feeling entitled.

And also how we can come to all sorts of crossroads in our lives, all sorts of crossroads in our lives, and all sorts of small decisions and big decisions. And we can make them as if he's an uninterested party.

We think that there's little holy things we do and God cares about that. And then there's, you know, the rest. Does God care? Does he care about you? Does he care about the stupid decisions? He feeds the ants.

He's feeding the termites your house right now. Yes, he cares. He provides for the termites. He provides for the bacteria. He provides for all the plankton in the sea and he provides the plankton to the whales.

He's providing all the time. And he's making you functional. He's crafting you as a functional character made in his image and he sends you out into the world and he says, image me accurately. Here, go.

Are you an accurate image of God? Can anybody say of you, having seen you, man, I've seen a little glimpse of the father. Just a little, through a rock. Christ obviously said that and said it plainly.

If you'd seen Christ, you'd seen the father. Can anybody say that about you? There it is. That's what holiness looks like. That's what love looks like. That's what sacrifice looks like. That's what total selflessness looks like.

Can anybody say that? Now, the hope is yes. There's all sorts of times when you've imaged God. There's all sorts of times when you've given somebody who's thirsty that drink of water, when you've given somebody that shirt, when you've clothed the naked, when you've fed the hungry.

That's what we're told. That's what we're meant to do. That's part of our fruit. Hopefully, there's all sorts of times when yes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, good job, gold star. How many times are you not imaging God?

That's the real question. So yes, great job, but how many times are you not at all a picture of the cross? You're not at all a picture of holiness. You're not at all a picture of the father. How many times, if you have kids, how many times do you snap on your children?

We all know those lovely big verses, judge not lest you be judged. How many times are you imposing a standard of judgment on people around your feet that you would never, ever, ever want God the father to apply to you?

You're looking at that three-year-old and you're saying, the blood of Christ is not for you, not for this. Like, no, not for the milk on the floor. That's a bridge too far. That just covers my porn habit, not this.

I'll receive your grace and I won't pass it on. I'll receive your eternal patience, like your phenomenal patience with my pettiness and my sin, but I won't show any patience at all towards that person I work with, or towards that customer, towards my spouse, towards my children, or I'll just hop from this church and go to a different one, because this one annoys me now.

I'm going to go be served elsewhere. We should exit our doors, we should exit our beds in the morning, and we should lay down in our beds at night, praying that we will be accurate pictures, that we will be beautiful and glorious pictures of the one who made us.

And we should be okay with the fact that he's obviously working in cartoon. I mean, really, it's like sweat glands. We get overweight quite easily. We've got these fingers that are strange. Nails keep growing out the end.

The hair just doesn't stop. It's like, he's obviously working in cartoon. God is so humble, the Father is so humble, that he made us his image, attached to a placenta in a woman's belly, fighting out into the world, fighting, you know, fighting's an exaggeration, being sort of compressed and squeezed out into the world.

Here we are, bleeding, pink, wrinkled, and God says, my image, this is me. When God paints a self-portrait, what does it look like? It's like us, and that should tell you how humble he is. That's what infinite looks like.

He doesn't find us insulting, until he does, and that's where judgment is. In Christ, we're not, there's no stench. In Christ, we're not insulting, and we should be, quite frankly. We really, really should be.

So how humble is he? We are his image. How humble is he? Well, his son, the creative word, the word made flesh, the second person of the Trinity, was born in a barn and placed in a food bowl for animals.

There you go. The heir to the universe in a food bowl for livestock. Now, in little children's picture books, those livestock all immediately, like, kneel, get super pious. They don't look like they smell at all.

In the real world, being placed in an animal food bowl with livestock around, you know what, they're gonna just continue on their regular rate of flatulence, just chewing, tails up, filthing the stable.

It's like, that's the real world. That's the world that God entered. So how humble is he? Well, when he was born, he sent the most fantastic choral performance in the history of man. Okay, that makes sense, right?

It's great. Christ was born. The king entered the world, the heir to the father, the true image, not like us, the true image of God enters the world, is made flesh, is born in a barn. Barn? This is one of those reasons why, you know, we didn't make this up.

This is not a story made up by man. Because when man makes up stories about gods, man, the gods kind of rock. They don't enter the world born of a virgin, placed in a food bowl in a barn. That's not how it goes when we tell our lies.

It's like, that's too humble. The creative word is born in the barn, he's placed, there he is. Okay, fantastic. Great. Then he sends the angelic choir. Okay, now we get it. Now we're getting some pomp and circumstance, right?

Now we're getting that big score from that summer blockbuster. That's what we're expecting. Got Hans Zimmer on it now. It's gonna sound like Batman. It's like, because the king has been born. Where does he send the angelic choir?

Rome? No. Does he send it to the kings, to the emperors? No. No. The greatest musical performance in the history of this planet was performed for whom? Everybody says shepherds, right? Well, actually, mostly just sheep.

A couple of shepherds. Hundreds of dumb animals. Sheep, that filthy wool. Sheep, stupid sheep, standing out there in the hills looking up saying, sheep. God sends the angels and says, go sing, my son is born, go sing to some sheep.

Why? Well, because he's always loved sheep. Look at us. We are his sheep. We are the recipients of his humility. We are his heirs, and he's not ashamed of us. How astonishing is that? That is absolutely astonishing.

I mean, I know what a pain I am. I can only assume what pains you are. And yet in the cross, because his son was born in a barn and went to the cross for us, we are here clean, without blemish. We are sheep.

And we're joining that choir. Do you mean what you say? Do you mean what you say you mean? Do you have the truth? Yes. You know, we use the word reform, reformed. Yeah, we're all about Calvinism, yay, God's sovereignty.

We've got our theology right. We've got it. Do you live the most beautiful life of anyone that you know? Yeah. Yeah, hmm, okay. But do you have the most beautiful truth? Yes, because that's what the truth is.

But do you then go live it out beautifully? Are you a picture of what you say you believe? Are you an accurate picture of what you say you believe? Think about this, if I tell someone that I have the foundation, I have the fundamental essential piece that enables any beauty at all, I have access to true beauty.

I have access to true goodness. I have access to ultimate joy. And I say, you dumb Mormon, I've got all the joy. Okay, like, right, fantastic. So you have ultimate beauty, yes. Where is it? Where? You're not living beautifully.

You have the root of all joy. Where? Where? Your God talks to you all the time, literally creating your body, your feet, your senses, and creating all the sensations to be received by them in every single moment of your life, and you're not happy.

The infinite creator is giving you another heartbeat and another heartbeat. He just gave you another Honeycrisp apple, which he invented, and he didn't have to. He invented that flavor, and he gave you all the little bumps on that weird wet muscle and the hole in your face to taste it.

He invented taste, and then he invented things to be tasted. You're standing up, balancing on this planet, moving around the star, and the star is making fruit, and he gives you the hole in your face, and he lines it with bones, useful for crushing things with, and he gives you taste buds, and then he gives you the apple, and you shove it in your face.

It's a little mushy. It's a little mushy. Anyway, I prefer oranges. You peel the orange, and you're like, oh, I hate that when it happens to my cuticles. I hate it when they peel. You know the peel? I hate that.

It's like a ball of orange goodness dangling on a tree made by fricking starlight, and you have the available hole to put it in. You put it in, and you're still ungrateful, and then when it goes down into your center, it makes more hair, more fingernails.

Gives you energy to go live your beautiful, joyful, amazing life, imaging God the Father, right? He gives you the power. He fills the tank, and you go out, and you are an accurate image of God. As you make choices, you have to ask yourself, what honors my Father?

When I do this, or I do that, when I get really, really into CrossFit, all the way, is this making me more like God the Father? Am I becoming more like God the Father? When you get really, really, really not into CrossFit, the opposite, when you start to be shaped more and more like a love seat, are you making yourself a better image of God?

When you bark at people, when you're impatient with somebody else, when you're sitting in your little machine riding on little explosions that have been just, you know, you have this fluid that's been distilled from the goop that got pinned under the crust of our planet by the flood.

When God just swept up forests and pressed them down under lava and turned them into black goop, and then we suck it up and mix it with chemicals till it's explosive, and we put it in a box, and we turn a key and light it all on fire.

But we hate the noise, so we muffle it. We ride around silently. And you get all angry at somebody else, and they're a little magic box riding their explosion. Come on. It's like, clearly I was gonna park my magic box there.

Idiot. It's like, are you an accurate image of God? Are you the kind of laughter that God manifests? Do you have the kind of humor that your father has? Do you have the kind of forgiveness that your father has?

The kind of joy that your father has? Do you take pleasure in spiders and slugs the way your father does? I'm sorry, but there's nothing that he made that you get to say, like, eh, it's not for me. Really?

Like, somebody says, have you ever seen this weird animal in Borneo? And they pull up a picture, you should say, no, yes, please, show me immediately, tell me more. Like, if you found another piece of art crafted by the greatest artist in the history of history, and you're like, eh, not interested.

Don't really care at all about what my father made. I don't really care. Let's think about those words. I don't really care about what my father made, and I don't care about it, even though I'm going to inherit it.

Even though I am one of his heirs, even though I'm being given stewardship in Christ, and my brothers and sisters over all of it, I don't really care about that. Why not? Well, because I can't afford that coffee table I want.

Or because I really need a PlayStation 4. If only I had a PlayStation 4, things would be better. What things make you happy? How often do you step outside and listen and look at creation, knowing that where you're standing and what you're looking at is the spoken art of your father?

God speaks now. Wait, but aren't we, are we secessionists? Some of us are, some of us aren't. I don't care. God's talking right now, because I'm still here. And you're still here, and the sun is still here, and it's still making us fruit.

Like, all these things exist now, because they don't exist of themselves. They exist because God made them. He made them, and they don't then run off and exist by themselves. He made them, and he is making them.

In him we live and move and have our being. That's who we are. So, I don't care what your occupation is. I don't care how quote-unquote boring it is. I don't care how rich it might make you. I don't care if, I was gonna say you shovel snow for a living, but that's a different state.

I don't care. It doesn't matter. You could count gravel. You could count gravel for a living. Somebody could say, you know what, I'll pay you 20 bucks an hour. Okay, fine, 35, just to count gravel. Go sit in that driveway and just count every rock, please, and if you'd label them, it'd be fantastic.

I don't care. That's not a boring job. You're just a boring person. You're just finite. You're stuck, like we all are. We're stuck in our finitude. Now, if God gave you that job, counting rocks in a driveway, you should thank him for it.

Thank him for it, and you should be able to sit there imaging him in your work. That's what you wanna be able to do. If you're trying to find a job, but you can't, if you have a boring job, if you have a job you don't like, you want a better job.

If you have a job you think has nothing to do with God whatsoever, because all you're doing is working as a bank teller, a claims adjuster, just a mom, that's my least favorite phrase in the English language, just a mom.

Oh, I'm just a mom. I'm just raising immortal souls, that's all. I don't know, it's like, I've got these images of God here. They have to put things in their face and keep expanding. It's like, I'm just a mom.

They're gonna go to hell forever, or heaven, one of those, we'll see. It's just up to me, how I project the gospel to them, how I teach it, I'm just a mom. Gosh, man, I can go off about just a mom, that's a whole different talk.

Like, we are, like, guys, incidentally, like, we are like the blade on the, I keep using snow imagery for you people, I'm sorry. We are the blade on the snowplow. Like, we're the blade of the axe. We're meant to get used up.

We're meant to just beat and beat and beat and go and grind and grind and get dull and eventually just break down and die. And do you know why we're meant to do this? So that people can be just a mom behind us, because the real job is raising the Imago Dei.

The real job is raising up faithful worshipers and followers of the son. That's the real job. We are the outer bulwarks protecting that operation. That's our job. The just a mom job, that's the thing we live and die for.

That's the thing we protect. And we have this whole culture that tries to insult women when they're actually doing phenomenal work. Can you imagine Mary being like, oh, you know, somebody asks her, so what are you doing with your degree?

Oh, I'm just a mom, that's all. Just a mom. The mother of David, just a mom. That's all. That's all I'm doing. I'm just raising up heroes that will live forever in the presence of God. I'm just raising people that will be the salt and light.

I'm actually just raising the thing that will destroy darkness forever. Like, okay, great. Well, I am using my business management degree. Thank you very much. I work at US Bank. In fact, I'm taking pills to stop myself from being just a mom.

Because I'm doing much more important work. I have a retirement plan as opposed to raising immortal souls. That's the sidebar. I'm saying, I don't care what you do. You could be just a mom or you could be the guy counting driveway rocks.

If that's what God gave you, that's what God gave you. And you can successfully image him, his joy, his humility, his love, his humor, no matter what you're doing. Think about every one of those driveway rocks you pick it up and you're like, it's another one spoken from nothing.

Do you know how many electrons are just motoring around in here? This thing's like the entire Milky Way. Put it over your shoulder. It's another one. There's another rock. Like, there it is. Now, you know that's what God's doing, right?

Like, because he's infinite, he's not getting bored. He's making another electron and another driveway rock because you're tiny, it's so overwhelming. Like, I can't do this. Do you realize that every one of these rocks has an entire complete history that goes back to the foundation of the earth?

And even before the foundation of the earth, God had a plan for this little driveway rock, a plan. He knows where it's gonna end up. He knows where this driveway rock's gonna be on the last day. And he knew that before time.

And he spent his time and his energy and his power and his creative work speaking it. Here it is, driveway rock. Pull it out of my shoe and toss it in the bushes. Pick up another one. I think about this all the time with snowflakes.

There they are. Fantastic. Another piece of intricate artistry. Salt it, shovel it, dog pee on it. And God doesn't care. He makes more and he makes more. If you're just a mom, then you are just a picture of the gospel.

Then you are just a picture of God's creative grace. Then you are just a picture of the cross. Then you are just a picture of forgiveness and salvation. If you're just a driveway rock counter, you're the same.

But yeah, it's not as important to the future of mankind as it is when a woman is raising a child. But you can still be a faithful imager of God. You can still please him with what you're given. On the last day, you can still stand before the throne and have him say, well done, good and faithful servant.

Well done. What did you do with the breaths I gave you? What did you do with the days I gave you? What did you do with all those heartbeats? Because I knew before the foundation of the world how many there would be.

I gave you this many. How did you spend them? What was the return? Well, mostly sleeping. And what else? Like what other fruit was there? By your fruit, by their fruit, you shall know them. You all have been given wealth beyond measure with every one of those heartbeats, with every one of your days, your two eyes, your mouth, the English language, the Spanish language, language at all, taste, the ability to hear.

Unbelievable wealth that God has given you. Here's all the seed. Here's all the opportunity to successfully, faithfully image God the Father. Now, going forward, start investing. Make your moves. What are you doing with those heartbeats?

What are you doing with that food budget? Is anybody sitting at your table? Are you feeding people? Like what are you doing? Where's the return? Where's the return in souls? Where's the return in dominion?