Good morning, friends. I'm really glad to see each one of you and I'm really excited about this opportunity.

Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter one, verse one. While you're struggling to find that, I'll start in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night.

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the expanse and said separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse sky.

And there was evening and there was morning the second day. And God said, let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And it was so. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. And let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights.

The greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth to govern the day and the night and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day.

And God said, let the water team with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky. So God created the great creature of the sea, the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teams according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the Sea, fill the water in the seas and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning the fifth day.

God said, let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, livestock creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals each according to his kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female. He created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it.

Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Then God said, I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, and all the creatures that move on the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food. And it was so.

God saw all that he had made and it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. I love that chapter of the Bible. I love it every time I read that first verse.

God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. God created the heavens, earth I get so blessed over. And I hope that you get blessed at least half as much as I do because that, that verse just brings me such great joy.

Now look at verse, chapter, verse one. Do you see that magnificent, beautiful, weighty, important introductory prepositional phrase in the beginning? It's not necessary for our discussion today. So we're just going to set that apart and we're going to look at God created the heavens and the earth.

Now here in, in the Hebrew, God is Elohim. This refers to his strength and his might. And it's in its plural that indicates to us that all the members of the Godhead were active in the creation. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all active in the creation.

And see, the word created, the original language for this means that the Heavens and the earth were not created from any pre existing material, but were made out of nothing. That might be important for some people who think that God took something and created the heavens and the earth. But according to what I have read, the original language means this. No pre existing materials. Now consider the heavens and the earth.

This includes everything. The earth, the atmosphere, the universe, everything. It. He made it all. Can you worship a God like that?

A God that made. He made you. He made each one of you. You're important to him. He made you.

When I was a girl, if you thought I was going to get up here and not mention my childhood, you don't know me very well. I'm going to tell you about something that happened in my childhood.

And no, it wasn't in the beginning. It was only about 65 years ago. I was about 8 to 10 years old. One of my sisters and I went outside after supper. We went out to play and we took our play blanket with us.

It was sky blue, lightweight, and it was a bedspread with chenille flowers and vines on it. It must have been very fashionable when mom first got it. And we took it outside and spread it on the grass in the middle of the backyard. And she always. Mom always served supper quite early.

So there was a lot of daylight left between dessert and bedtime baths. And so that evening was no different. And I'm thinking from the way the sky looked, there were no clouds in the sky. There were no jet trails either. And there was no sign of the sunset.

I'm thinking as blue as the sky was that it must have been in June sometime when the days are longer.

And I lay on my back with my hands behind my head and looked at the sky. And my sister was and is about three years younger and she was off to my left and she was moving around. She was an active girl and she was moving around. I don't know what she was doing. I mean, I knew at that time, but I don't remember that part anymore.

She was probably making the blanket very neat and she was talking and I. I wasn't rude to her anything. I talked to her, but my focus was on the sky. It was an incredible blue sky. Blue.

It was incredible. I cannot describe to you the beauty. Now, I was not a Christian. I wasn't thinking about God, but I was enjoying his creation. He was beautiful.

And these many years later, even though I wasn't worshiping God at that time, every time I think of it now, every time I think of it now, I worship God. I think of him. And what an amazing God he is. He made this. He made this world.

He made everything in it. He made. He made everything. What a God.

Can you worship a God like that? You don't have to have the same kind of experiences that I have. You don't have to think the way I do. You have to think in your way about God. What an amazing God.

He put you here on this earth. He put you here for a reason, too.

Do you enjoy the night sky with the bright stars? I do. I don't go out anymore to look at the sky. But as a girl we went. When I was a kid, our family would go out and sit on the front porch.

Usually it was after we were done playing and it wasn't time to go and get our baths yet. But the sky was dark with stars that were so bright. And we sat there and dad would tell us stories from his childhood or his military experience. And then at some point, he taught us constellations. Now, I don't know if he taught us more than the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper.

And he showed us where the North Star was. I don't know if he taught us more than that. He may have. I just couldn't see them or don't remember them. And I still don't see them when people point them out to me.

That's what you see. I see some pretty stars, but I don't see a form.

God made those stars. And the ancient mariners used them to tell where they were going. They navigated with them and they use. They use the sun and the moon and the stars for navigation. Can you worship a God like that?

One who provides a way to find the way? Wow, what a God. What a God he is. Do you enjoy growing things? I do.

I don't do very well here in Florida. I still don't have the knack of growing things in the south in the hot, hot state. But I'm learning a little bit at a time. God created vegetation. Can you worship God as you garden, as you grow flowers and vegetables?

Can you worship God? Think of God, the Creator. What a mighty, wonderful God. He made these things that are beneficial to us for beauty and for. For nutrition, for shade.

He's a good God. He made this world and he put us here. Do you like to swim or ski? God created the water. Can you worship a God like that?

Can you worship him as you're doing these things? Do you like to ride horses? Do you enjoy eating beef? Do you like to see wild animals? God made the animals.

He Created the animals. Last year, Kendall and I went to California for a vacation and we stayed in my sister and brother in law's mountain home. And I saw a mountain lion. I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw that mountain lion. It was beautiful.

It was fast and powerful. Oh, I loved it, by the way. I was on the inside and it was on the outside. That's the way I like it.

But I was so excited to see it.

The animals are. Their relationships are intertwined. Some of them prey on one another, on the others, and some of them have symbiotic relationships. My favorite symbiosis is the cattle egrets that sit on the back of cattle and eat the ticks off their backs. How beneficial is that for both of them?

It benefits both of them.

God created this amazing world, and he is an amazing God. I don't know if originally there were cattle egress sitting on cattle, or if one species changed a little bit along the way, but there were cattle and there were birds. I just don't know if that's how they interacted. They do now. And I kind of think.

I kind of think God designed them that way.

We look at this amazing world, we should be able to see the amazing God, the amazing Creator. We should be able to see him.

I. When I gardened in Michigan, I had read about companion gardening. That's where two plants benefit one another or one benefits the other. So I planted carrots and sage because the sage would deter the carrot pests. You don't want to plant it too close or it might shade the carrots, but you plant them in the vicinity of the carrots.

Then I read that plants that were companion plants in the garden might also be companions on the table. So I tried it. And yes, indeed, carrots and sage do taste very good together. Isn't that amazing? I think that's from God.

I. I really think that's God's design that he made plants that do well together. What a God. Can you look at this world? Can you look at your life and see God in it? Can you see him?

Keep looking every day. You know what? We can do this moment by moment. If you're sewing a button on, you can say, oh, that sure is a pretty color. Thank you, God, for color.

Whatever you're doing, think of the Creator, this mighty God. Mighty. He's a mighty God. Think of this mighty God who was concerned with little details in life.

Look at them everywhere you go, everything that you do. You can worship God. Worship the Creator. Look at verse 26. God.

God created people. I love this part. Well, okay, I love the whole chapter, but I love this part. He created a man and a woman. Then he assigned them meaningful work, the care of his earth.

He made this earth. He made it, and then he put people in charge of it. That's a pretty trusting God, too, I would think, because, you know, we could mess things up a little bit.

Can you worship a God like this that would give meaningful work to his creation?

Yes, you can worship him. Do you worship this God? He is worthy of our praise. He is worthy of our worship. I don't just mean worship as in singing.

That's important. I enjoy singing. I enjoy it so much that I have had children ask me to stop singing. I've had people tell me that I was singing off tune. I've had people tell me I wasn't singing the right words to the tune.

I've had people say a lot of things. I've had people turn around and look at me while I was singing in church. That might have been because I just gotten over pneumonia and I didn't have my voice back. But I've had a lot of negativity regarding my singing. It doesn't matter.

I sing to God's glory. He knows. He knows that I'm singing from my heart. I'm worshiping him. He's a good God.

And when we worship him, as I said, I wasn't talking about just worshiping in song. I'm talking about worship. Worshiping him with our lives, worshiping him with all that we are, every moment of every day. That's kind of hard, maybe, because sometimes life gets in the way. But think about God.

Turn your heart back to God. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Here are the words to a very short but meaningful song. It's in God we trust. It's in God we trust.

Not in goods or lands, but in God we trust.

And wouldn't you know, I left out a couple of the words. Not in. In goods or lands or the works of our hands, but in God we trust. So often people put their trust in things or people or places.

If that is the case in your life, you know what that is. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at pretty dresses online. I looked at other clothes, too, but I majored in dress viewing. Lots of dresses. As a matter of fact, one time I was chatting with my mom and I told her that I had found $3,000 worth of clothes that I liked online.

And she said to me, gail, in all your life, have you spent $3,000 on clothes? Well, at that time and all times prior to that, everything was much cheaper than it is now. And no, I had not spent $3,000 on clothes ever in my life.

It was a total waste of my time looking at them. Wasted many hours of time looking at pretty dresses. I was obsessing over them, and that caused me to want more and more. And by the way, that's greed. And the Bible has a few things to say about greed.

Even if I never bought any of them, I wanted them. Basically, I was putting my hope, my trust in things rather than in God. Let's look at another passage. Turn to John, Chapter one, verse one. I'll wait for you while you'll find it.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father full of grace and truth.

Skip to verse 16. From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the Law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God but God, the One and Only, who was at the Father's side, has made him known.

I love that passage. In case you couldn't tell, I love that passage. The Word is Jesus. He was there at the creation. We saw that all three persons of the Godhead were at the creation.

And this tells us too, that Jesus was there at the creation. Without him, nothing was made that has been made or created that has been created. He came to earth to live as a human being and to be our Savior. If you receive him and believe in his name, you may become a child of God.

Does anyone else find that exciting? All you have to do Believe and receive, believe and receive him and you can be a child of God. How beautiful is that? If you already are a Christian, you understand what I'm saying? It's a beautiful time.

It's a beautiful place to be walking with the Savior, child of God.

Worship him wholeheartedly. Trust in Him. Rather than places or people or things or ideas, worship this Savior, this Lord, this God, this mighty God who made the earth and put us here. He put us here.

He wants our hearts. He wants us not just to be born again. That's wonderful. But he wants us to live holy wholeheartedly for Him. Do you find yourself worrying about something?

It's in God we trust. Do you find yourself spending an excessive amount of time on any one thing that does not benefit anyone, including yourself or bring glory to God? I'm going to repeat that. I don't want anyone to leave and think I said something else. I did not say you can't enjoy this world.

I think we can enjoy this world. What I said was, do you find yourself spending an excessive amount of time on any one thing that does not benefit anyone, including yourself or bring glory to God?

Do you spend too much money on things that really do not matter? Do you expend your precious energy on useless activity? Or do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Do you live wholeheartedly for the mighty God, creator of the heavens and the earth, the One who made you? Do you see him in this world?

Do you see him in your life? Every day, look for him in this world and in this life.

Seek Jesus. Live for Jesus. Trust him with your life, all of your life. He offers salvation with its freedom, its joy and its peace. Now I have a testimony.

And maybe you thought that's what I was doing, but here's a testimony. A testimony. Excuse me. It happened not too long ago in March. Some of us went to a Christian conference in Orlando.

And in the car, Emma, my granddaughter, was talking about the fact that the church hosting the conference had three slides inside. And she talked about going down these slides. When she got there, she was going to go down those slides. Gran, are you going to go down the slides?

Uh, oh, I've tried. All I've tried. I haven't always been successful, but I've tried to keep my fears from children. I don't want to put my fears on children.

So I told her that I probably would just watch her.

And apparently at some point, my fears must have shown because I realized that Emma had changed from asking me if I was going down the slides to telling me that I can do it. She Said, you can do it, Gran. You can do it. I decided to go down the slide. Did I mention that these slides were curvy and enclosed?

It wasn't the height that bothered me, it was the enclosure. I handed my purse and bag to Kindle, didn't want anything to encumber me. And Emma went down first and then I went down.

I was wearing rubber soled shoes, by the way. There were no. No signs warning you of anything. There were no signs saying that there was a height limit or a weight limit or a width limit. There were no signs saying you'd better take off your shoes or bend your knees or anything, hold in your elbows.

Nothing. There was nothing. I got in that slide. I couldn't see the bottom because it wasn't straight, it was curving. It would have been nice to be able to see where I was going.

Nope, I got in and I went down. And of course, I did not bend my knees. My rubber soled shoes caught on every curve going down. By the time I got to the bottom, one shoe was nearly off the right one because it was curving left and my elbows had burns on them and my right knee had burns. And besides that, I yelped all the way down.

And by the time I got to the bottom, Emma was laughing and she said, gran, you were funny. And I must have been. And I got out and I was proud of myself that I had done it. And I said, I did it, I did it. And I thought to myself, check, I'm done with that.

And I'd love to tell you how much fun it was, but it wasn't. It wasn't. That night I had a claustrophobic nightmare and had trouble getting back to sleep. That was on Tuesday morning that I had that experience. And Thursday was the last day of the conference.

And in the afternoon we had a service, a really long service, and Emma had brought things to entertain herself. She had a backpack with things. And we were sitting up in the balcony away from people, and she entertained herself for just so long. And Amy finally, finally didn't bother me, I'm saying finally, for Emmy's sake. Took her out, probably to slide.

And out of the sanctuary, not outside. And Kendall's knees were hurting, so he got up and went to find a better place to sit. And the service went on and on. And it was good stuff. Oh, everything in there was wonderful.

And I was singing and worshiping along with everyone else.

And suddenly I had a new thought, one I'd never thought before, and I knew it didn't come from Me, I wasn't thinking about slides or any such thing. The thought was, I'm free. I'm free.

I knew exactly what it meant. It didn't mean that I was free enough of claustrophobia that I could go down the slide again. I knew that it meant that I was free of lifelong claustrophobia. Since I was 14, I'd been claustrophobic, and I knew that I was set free. I was so happy.

But I didn't say anything aloud. I didn't do anything that anyone around me would have known. I think I just kept on singing. But as if on cue, Nick turned to me and said, are you ready to go now? Not in that tone of voice.

Are you ready to go now? And I said, yes. And then I told him, I have to go down the slide. And he said, okay. I said, I have to go down the slide.

He said, okay. So we went to the slide, and he went. He went to a half wall and called over the half wall. He knew Emma would be down there. And he told her, go stand by the.

The bottom of the slide. And so she did. And then he went down. He went down the slide before I did. And just a tiny, tiny little bit of fear struck me.

What if he's still in that slide? What if he's just sitting there? And so I said, are you out? He said, come on down. And I said, are you out?

And he said, come on down. And I thought, well, that wasn't the answer. It's just telling me to come down. It doesn't tell me he's out. He didn't answer my question.

That's okay. He wouldn't have done that to me. But that's what fear will do. But that was the only fear that I had. That was the last time I had any fear of cluster, of being in a tight space.

No more claustrophobia. I went down the slide, and there was such joy and peace. There was total peace. No more fear. And then a little bit later, a few minutes later, I went down another one, because there were three, you know, and I'd already gone down this one twice.

So I went down another one, and no, no fear, just peace. And I can do it again, maybe on a longer one, on a taller building. I don't know. A few weeks ago, Kendall and I went to Nashville to see our daughter. It's her 40th birthday.

And we flew. We flew. And I've always had to sit on the aisle or on the front row. And this time, Kendall said to me, where do you Want to sit? He was asking me my preference.

It doesn't matter. Whatever you choose, find something you want. And I never. I had never been able to say that before. As a matter of fact, he always paid extra so that I could be one of the first ones to board.

If you call right away, you can get.

You can have your preference and seat if you're in the. If you're in the row of people to go. I don't know how to explain that any better. But anyway, you have a chance to get a good seat. So he'd always had to pay.

No, I didn't care anymore. And so on the way there to Nashville, he sat next to the window, and I sat in the middle. And there was an empty seat. And a young. A teenage girl came and sat next to us.

And she was so sweet. It turns out that she attends a Nazarene church in Tennessee. So we had a good visit. And then no fear, no problem whatsoever. On the way back, I sat next to the window.

Kendall sat in the middle. And a young woman on a mission trip came and sat next to him. And they had a good conversation.

I wasn't scared. I wasn't scared at all. There was complete peace. I was indeed free.

Why did I tell you this story now after talking to you about the creation, the God of the universe, The God that you can see in our world, in your world, if you're looking for him, the God who made the heavens and the earth is big enough to set you free from your sin. He is big enough to set you free from your addiction. He is big enough to take care of you. He is a big God, but He cares for you. Each one in this room, he cares for everyone.

Give the Creator God your life. Most of you in this room have already done that. Live for Him. Worship him with your life. Worship him with your life.

See the Creator in His creation. See his awesomeness, his concern for details, his beauty, his wonderfulness. See the freedom and the salvation that he offers. Thank you, Sa.