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Transcript
00:00Now, more than ever, our world offers the illusion that we can be fully present in more
00:05than one place at a time.
00:08But it's just that, an illusion.
00:11You know how I know.
00:13Because we're not God and even when God himself came to earth in human form, he traded in
00:17his godly omnipresence for the human unipresence you and I experience today.
00:23Like us today, Jesus had to deal with frequent distractions that competed for his attention.
00:29A man threw himself at Jesus' feet as he was walking.
00:33A woman touched his cloak, distracting Jesus with the knowledge that he had healed her.
00:39One time, a man literally dropped through the roof over Jesus' head as he was preaching.
00:45There were times when Jesus welcomed these distractions.
00:49But there were also times when Jesus ignored them in order to focus on the task at hand.
00:54My favorite example of this comes from Matthew 12.
00:58Given that the main point of this passage is Jesus' words about who is and who is not
01:03his family, it can be easy to miss the fascinating, B-story, Jesus' talking to the crowd, doing
01:11the work the Father sent him to do, namely preaching the gospel.
01:16All of a sudden, his family shows up.
01:19And Jesus ignores them.
01:21When Jesus was told his family was waiting outside, he didn't say,
01:25That's all folks.
01:28My family's here.
01:29You know the rule, God first, family second, work third.
01:34He continued teaching.
01:36At that moment, he was called to work, and he remained fully focused on the task at hand.
01:42Conversely, when he was with his family and friends, he was fully focused on them.
01:48In these and many other encounters in the gospels, Jesus is reminding us that God is
01:52omnipresent and we humans are not.
01:56When omnipresent God became flesh, Jesus embraced the human limitations of being unipresent.
02:03If Jesus couldn't be in two places at the same time, either can we.
02:08That brings us to the fifth principle in this series.
02:12Principle 5.
02:13Accept Your Unipresence.
02:16To redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we must accept our unipresence and focus on
02:21one important thing at a time.
02:23How do we live out this principle in the 21st century?