Be Present

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. You are not alone. That could sound like a Star Wars movie. That could sound like a Keats poem. But the presence of God is with you. And that's the way the universe is designed so that the presence of God could be with you. And that the presence of God, which is with you, which is paid a high price to be a part of your life. The presence of God is very, very costly. And you are very, very worth it. In God's eyes. If you will walk away with that understanding, if you will begin to incorporate that into your living, it will change your life if it hasn't already. No small promise. But it's not my promise. It's not Carl said so. And if you would just send 1495, my address. Because that's what the central foundational message is in the Bible. That's what the central fundamental reflection is of the universe. Whoa, big stuff. Good morning. So my name is Carl Gaelic. And if I haven't met you yet. I'm going. There goes my sermon. Now I'm going to have to make the whole thing up. I am the substitute preacher for John. It is my privilege. And I love this series. I love this. You guys got the coolest series going on. Vulnerability and stuff. So when my turn came up, I said, I'll preach, I'll preach, I'll preach. Because which one you want to go? I want presence. I want presence. I want presence. And John gave me the present. I'm preaching on presence. I love the plain words. So that's the whole focus and understanding today. And we need to kind of warm up and kind of figure this thing out together because it's huge promises. It's huge understanding. One more sort of introductory comment before I get into the introduction. This is the introduction to the introduction. Yeah. So if you're looking forward to leaving early, let that hope evaporate. So the introduction to the introduction. God is present within you. The universe itself exclaims that it's woven in. When I set out to do a doctoral thesis, I said the thesis I wanted to answer, the question I want to address is if God is indeed the creator of the universe, his fingerprints should be over everything, be everywhere on everyone. So I set out asking sort of a large, big goal, which, by the way, got repeatedly rejected by my major professor. But that's a whole other story. I'm over it. That is what I discovered to be absolutely true beyond any doubt. I'm going to try to give you a hint and a sense of how that kind of came about without giving you a doctoral thesis, because if I start using doctoral thesis language, my wife will walk out. One of the key phrases that I had in there in my doctoral dissertation was presence is systemically determinative. And I was pretty proud of that. Because when you have a doctoral thesis and you're working on a doctoral program, you're supposed to sound very esoteric. And presence is systemically determinative. Sounded like that. And I gave her a chance to edit my documentation and my paper. And all she did was circle that and said, speak English in her own loving way. This is the English version of presence is systemically determinative. I love this stuff. Whoa, what do we got going in there? There we go. Be present. The power of being face to face with God. That's where we're headed. So let's start with something mundane. This is what happened to the guy reading a newspaper. So this is a picture got kind of shift a little bit. Ever seen that picture of the 1950s guy with the square room glasses reading a newspaper? And the wife is in there jabbering and talking. It's sort of the classic. The husband is present, but not present. You've seen that before. That's sort of the classic 50s, 60s sort of. What's that? You've lived it. OK, you've been there. This could be a picture of you. I'm so glad that our generation and generations after me, like you young man right there, are over that. Because this is what you've given. So this is what we've exchanged for the newspaper picture. And we've now got the. Have you ever been in a restaurant? You see that? You see that we're two people sitting across from each other and both are in my. Can I. Can I. Can I talk? Is it OK if I just invent a little bit right now? What are you going to do? Stop me from venting. Anyway, so is now how the the phones have been home attached and connected to the watches. And when I'm talking to somebody. So we're getting into deep discussion to do this. I think, am I boring you? You know, how do you do that? They're actually getting messages. The same phenomenon is true. Whether it's the newspaper at breakfast table, 1950s or the phone today, there is a fight and a battle to go on with presence. How hard is it to not check your phone when it buzzes in your pocket, when you're in conversation with someone and. I won't beat that to death, but you can see that the fight for our presence and our focus and our time together is sti...