Everyone seems to be busy these days. But the God who is never surprised by the unfolding of history gave an end-time message reminding of His plan for rest – and it’s still valid today! Learn how to multiply the effectiveness and use of your time – and enrich your life for now and for eternity.

<p>Everyone seems to be busy these days. But the God who is never surprised by the unfolding of history gave an end-time message reminding of His plan for rest – and it’s still valid today! Learn how to multiply the effectiveness and use of your time – and enrich your life for now and for eternity.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

Rest in a Restless World

I don't know about you, but it seems like the longer we live, the busier our lives become.

And we have to be very intentional, in fact, about not over committing, about having boundaries and such things.

1 of my favorite stories is a story of a professor on a train.

And this professor was sort of nonchalantly riding along, speeding to his destination in the train when the conductor came along and asked him for his ticket.

The professor began searching in his pockets for his ticket.

And he searched at first 1 pocket and then another and then another and he could not find his ticket.

He became more and more frantic and more and more desperate as he looked for his ticket.

The conductor was trying to calm him down.

And the professor said, look, you don't understand.

If I don't find my ticket, I'm not going to know where to get off of this train.

And the reality is that many of us are like that professor, right?

We are so busy, we're doing so many things, we don't even know exactly what we're doing, but we're busy.

We're just in a hurry, always in a hurry, always going somewhere, but not always knowing where we're going.

I remember, this is sort of an embarrassing story, but I was, a number of years ago, before I was pastor here, I was traveling a fair bit, and I lived about 100 miles from the airport that I usually flew out of.

And I flew out of, I flew out at least once a week, average.

And so I made that trip back and forth to the airport till I could do it in my sleep.

The problem is I was always getting a little delayed before leaving for the airport.

And when you do things a lot, it becomes ordinary and mundane.

It's just sort of part of your job, part of your work, you know?

And so my bags were always packed and I was always ready to go.

But, you know, you plan just enough time to make it to the airport.

And it was a small airport so I could, you know, plan 40 minutes or so would be enough to get to my gate and through security.

And those days they had a service called clear where you actually, I actually had like my biometrics, like they scan your iris when you go through the security and you don't have to wait in line and you go on through.

I knew how long security was going to be.

But the problem is, I would wait until the last minute to leave.

I would plan on leaving or usually I knew I had to leave by 2 hours before my flight.

I would be there just about a half hour to 40 minutes before my flight.

You'd get in a conversation, some crisis, and you get delayed 10 minutes.

And so, I formed a habit of driving faster to the airport than I probably should have been driving.

Now, the first Little Ways was on a two-lane highway where there was almost no traffic and there was never any speed traps.

And I just got in the habit of driving too fast down this road.

Well, 1 day, I actually was going to go shopping a little bit before my flight, and I left about 4 hours before my flight, plenty of time.

And I came over a hill, came over a hill, and there I saw him, and he saw me, And I knew there was no disguising the fact that I was going over the speed limit.

And sure enough, before I even reached him, he was turning around, his lights were on.

And when he came to my window, he said, what's the hurry?

And I said, you know, I was, there's no hurry, I just wasn't watching my speed, which is honestly the truth.

I was just mindlessly doing what I did over and over.

That's why it's important to form good habits.

And he told me, he said, he said, you know, I don't, I'm going somewhere, so you're lucky.

And I'm thinking, yeah, right, you must not have a ticket pad in your car or I'd be having a ticket but he said but I'm out here every day and you're local so I'm gonna catch you so you better slow down and I appreciated that warning I never saw him before never saw him since but nevertheless I was thankful that I didn't get a ticket.

The point is we're in a habit of being busy, right?

We don't even know how to act when we have extra time.

We're in such a hurry that we become frenetic, we become anxious, we just, we have to be driven.

It's an anxious, driven, fast-paced world, and it seems as though that it's just a part of our very being, of who we are.

And yet, I have to believe that God, who knows the future, looked forward down to the year 2013 and he saw the world in 2013 and he had to have known that it would be a busy time, don't you think?

He had to have known that we would have hectic lives and frantic paces.

And because of this, He has a message for this world, a message for the world in the last days, an end time message, And we're going to look at a part of that end time message here today.

We find it in Revelation chapter 14 and verse 7.

Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come.

And worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.

Now this is a message, if you've studied Revelation chapter 14, this is a message especially calculated for the end time population of the world.

Especially calculated, especially directed to a people who are busy, a people who have complicated lives.

You know, the more they say they're going to simplify things, the more they say technology is going to help us, it seems the more it just makes us busy, right?

And this is a message especially directed for us living today.

Worship the 1 who created us, who made us.

And so that reminds us back of the story in the beginning.

And so let's just review very quickly what we find in Genesis chapter 1.

We're not going to read all these verses, but we remember that on the first day God made what?

On the second day God divided the firmament.

He divided the water which is above, the Bible says, from the water which is beneath.

The fourth day, the Bible records that He made the sun, the moon, and the stars, the celestial bodies that we see in the heavens above us.

On the sixth day, of course, God, or on the fifth day, God made the fish and the birds, right?

The things that, the creatures that inhabit the water, the creatures that inhabit the air, and the sixth day, the special day, God made what?

God made everything that dwells on land, including, of course, mankind.

Aren't you glad that we serve a loving Creator God who cares about our needs, who made everything just as was needed?

It says, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing.

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Rest in a Restless World

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