AND GOD SAID

A 52-Week Journey Through Creation, Prophecy, and God's Eternal Plan

Week One: God Before Creation - The Eternal "I AM"

Opening Prayer

Holy and Eternal God,

Before the world was formed, before a single star burned or any law of physics reigned, You alone existed—perfect, infinite, undivided. No space framed You, no time encircled You. As we dare to meditate on Your mystery, strip us of our small ideas and open our hearts to awe. Let us glimpse You not as we wish, but as You truly are—Light before light, Love before all loves, the singular divine Being who would reveal Yourself as Father, speak creation into being through Your Word, and breathe life through Your Spirit. Draw us into wonder, anchor us in humility, and lead our faith beyond what eyes can see. In the name of Christ, who reveals Your eternal heart, we pray.

Amen.

Introduction: Before All—The Solitude and Fullness of God

Memory Verses:

Mind: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." — Deuteronomy 6:4 (ESV)

Body: "I am the Alpha and the Omega... who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." — Revelation 1:8 (ESV)

Soul: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." — Psalm 90:2 (ESV)

Imagine the edges of everything you know—then erase them. Remove the galaxies and atoms, the past and future, even the sense of "here" or "there." Strip away every material thing, every mental construct, every whisper of energy or emptiness. At this unimaginable precipice—beyond human comprehension—God simply is.

Not confined to a throne or place. Not needing arms or eyes. Not emerging from anything. Not becoming or developing. Just pure being—absolute, eternal, without rival, without need, without beginning.

This is where And God Said: The Hidden Prophecies of Atlantis begins—not in the middle of the cosmos, not at creation's first light, but at the absolute silence before all sound. Before time existed. Before darkness had meaning. Here, in this "place" that is no place, God alone exists.

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4, ESV).

This is the bedrock confession of biblical faith—not three gods, not a divine committee, but one God, utterly singular, absolutely unified. Before God reveals Himself as Father to creation, before His Word speaks light into darkness, before His Spirit hovers over the formless deep—He simply is, one undivided divine Being, complete in Himself.

Philosophers have wrestled with this mystery for millennia. Can you conceive of a being who never began, who needs nothing, who cannot be moved or changed? Augustine called God the "unchangeable Light," declaring: "You are the eternity of all times and the life of all living." Islam calls God Al-Ahad—the Indivisible One, emphasizing His absolute oneness. Science asks what came before the Big Bang and finds only equations breaking down.

But Scripture answers what science cannot: "I am the Alpha and the Omega... who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8, ESV).

This is not theological abstraction. This is the ground of all reality, the foundation upon which every truth rests. As theologian Herman Bavinck writes, "God's aseity—his self-existence—is the presupposition of all his other perfections and of all his works." Without this understanding, creation becomes accident, redemption becomes arbitrary, and hope dissolves into wishful thinking.

The ancient world grappled with origins through myth and legend. Stories of primordial beings and cosmic chaos populated Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. Yet none matched the biblical vision: one God, complete in Himself, needing no consort, fearing no rival, emerging from no prior reality. Where myths began with warfare among deities, Scripture opens with sovereign calm—God alone, eternally sufficient, perfectly content.

Pre-Creation Emotion—Love, Not Lack

What mood hangs in this eternal solitude before the first star ignites? Not anger—there is nothing to oppose. Not longing—there is nothing lost. Not rivalry—there is nothing else. Strip away all negative emotion, and you arrive at what Scripture alone dares to name: "God is love" (1 John 4:8, ESV).

Not needy love desperately waiting for completion. Not lonely love searching for meaning. But perfect love—complete, overflowing, radiant, existing in God's very nature, asking nothing, lacking nothing.

Before the first "Let there be," God existed in perfect fullness. The one God who would later reveal Himself as Father, who would speak creation into being through His Word, who would move over creation through His Spirit—this same God already possessed infinite love, boundless joy, and eternal life within His own being. God's love was not waiting for an object to complete it, but overflowing from His perfect nature.

This love is the atmosphere of eternity, the womb of every hope and joy creation will taste. As Jesus—the Word made flesh—prayed, He revealed something profound about God's eternal nature: "You loved me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24, ESV). Before the world existed, love existed. Before time began, God's love was already complete, already perfect, already sufficient.

To say "God is love" before creation is to speak of reality deeper than emotion or sentiment. This is not love as response or reaction, but love as essence—the very substance of God's being. As theologian Karl Barth emphasized: "God does not simply have love; God is love. This is not a quality that might be separated from his essence."

In this pre-creation state, love is not waiting to be expressed externally because God lacks nothing and needs nothing from outside Himself. God's love is not reactive, not shaped by history or pain or the existence of creatures. Rather, it is perfect fullness, overflowing from His eternal nature before any creature existed to receive it.

This is why God's pre-creation solitude is never lonely, never lacking, never incomplete. Where there is nothing to oppose, nothing to threaten, nothing missing, there is still infinite delight—a radiant, self-sufficient life pulsing with creativity and purpose. Such love is not postponed for creation, waiting for creatures to activate it. It is the atmosphere of eternity itself, the very definition of God's character from everlasting to everlasting.

The implications are staggering. If God's essence is love before creation—if love is not a response to creatures but the eternal reality of God Himself—then creation itself is not born of necessity but of generosity. The universe is not an accident filling some void in God's being, not an experiment to solve divine loneliness. Creation is pure gift, generous invitation, the overflow of divine joy.

Every star burning in distant galaxies, every creature crawling on earth, every breath you take is rooted in the overflow of God's self-sufficient joy. You are not a cosmic orphan searching desperately for meaning in an indifferent universe. You are a beloved expression of eternal love, called into existence by the one God who delights to share His life, invited into the joy that has always defined His being.

You were wanted before you existed. You were loved before you were born. You were purposed before time began. Not because God needed you to complete some lack in His being, but because love—by its very nature—gives. And the God who is Love chose to give you life, breath, existence, and the invitation to know Him forever.

The Substance and Independence of God

Before creation, even "being" is too limited to capture God's reality. God does not merely exist among other things, occupying space in a cosmic catalog of entities. God simply is—not just existing, but the ground and fullness of existence itself, the source from which all being flows.

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Psalm 90:2, ESV).

God is self-sufficient, self-existent, self-sustaining—bound by nothing, dependent on nothing, needing nothing. Science reaches backward toward first causes, tracing effects to their origins. Philosophy dreams of necessary beings, constructing arguments for ultimate foundations. Yet both approach what Moses heard at the burning bush: "I AM WHO I AM... Say this to the people of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14, ESV).

God's "is-ness" is always now, always complete, always self-dependent. He does not derive His existence from anything or anyone. He does not borrow being from a prior source. He does not participate in existence as creatures do—He is existence, the fountain from which all other reality springs.

Do you feel the difference? God is not just the oldest thing in the universe, the first domino in an infinite chain of causes. He is outside—and author of—the very categories of old and new, ancient and modern, first and last, beginning and end. There is no moment when God "started," no process leading to His emergence, no possibility of Him ending or fading. He is uncaused, unchanging, everlasting, eternal.

As Thomas Aquinas articulated with philosophical precision, "God is pure act"—actus purus—with no potentiality, no unrealized possibilities, no development from what He was to what He might become. Everything God is, He has always been. Everything He will be, He already is. There is no gap between God's potential and God's reality. He is fully, completely, perfectly actualized—now and always.

Science sometimes wonders what existed before the Big Bang, before the cosmic singularity exploded into space, time, matter, and energy. Many theories point to quantum vacuums, multiverses, cycles of expansion and collapse. Others admit honest mystery, acknowledging that mathematics breaks down and physics fails at that boundary.

Scripture boldly proclaims: before any physical property or dimension, before any law of nature or mathematical constant, before space expanded and time began its march forward, there is God—unchanging, self-sufficient, almighty. No scarcity. No external cause. No shadow or variation, only the fullness of being itself. "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17, ESV).

In God, you find only fullness and absolute independence—a Being whose goodness, wisdom, power, and life flow from nowhere but Himself. He does not grow bored, for in His infinite depth there is no lack, no emptiness waiting to be filled. He does not change, because perfection can neither diminish nor improve. He does not evolve, because He has always been everything He could possibly be.

If you or I never existed, God would remain perfect, blessed, fully Himself—lacking nothing, missing nothing, needing nothing. There is deep comfort here: creation does not complete God or fill a desperate gap in His being. It is the overflow of His boundless fullness, the generous sharing of His infinite life.

Every faith tradition searching for first principles recognizes this divine independence in some form. Judaism speaks of God's aseity—absolute self-existence, owing His being to no one. Islam names God Al-Samad, "the Self-Sufficient," the One who needs nothing but upon whom everything depends. Even secular philosophers marvel at the fundamental question: Why is there something rather than nothing?

Scripture's answer rings clear: because the one God who is fullness and love freely chose to create, not from need, but from joy. Not to fill a void in Himself, but to share the abundance that has always overflowed from His eternal nature.

This divine self-sufficiency also guards against every form of idolatry and manipulation. If God needed anything from us—our worship to validate His worth, our obedience to secure His authority, our acknowledgment to confirm His existence—then we could bargain with Him, manipulate Him, hold something over Him. But the God who lacks nothing is free to love without condition, to give without calculation, to act with perfect sovereignty.

As Paul declared to the philosophers in Athens: "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:24-25, ESV).

The Divine "Why?"—Overflowing Love at Creation's Threshold

Let's pause at the breathtaking precipice—the moment before anything stirred, before any galaxies spun or angels sang. Why, if God is already perfect, full, and satisfied, would He choose to create at all?

Many religious traditions throughout history have imagined gods as needy or lonely, creating the world for companionship or power. Ancient myths often portray creation as byproduct of divine conflict or cosmic necessity. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the world is formed from the corpse of a slain goddess. In Greek mythology, the universe emerges from primordial chaos and violence among competing deities.

But the God revealed in the Bible is utterly, radically different. He creates from fullness, not from lack. From joy, not from loneliness. From sovereign freedom, not from cosmic necessity. "For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created" (Revelation 4:11, ESV).

The motive is not emptiness demanding to be filled, but abundance overflowing its banks. Not scarcity searching for completion, but excess love—the kind that must be shared, the kind that delights in giving, the kind that finds joy in creating beauty for others to enjoy.

As the great American theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote, "It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow." A fountain doesn't overflow because it lacks water, but because it has so much that it cannot help but spill over, cascading outward in generous abundance.

God, brimming with infinite life and boundless delight, overflowing with joy that has eternally existed in His perfect nature, wants to share that joy. Creation is not an accident, not an afterthought, not a backup plan. Creation is a gift—deliberate, generous, purposeful, joyful.

"Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17, ESV).

Science traces the universe back to a beginning—t=0, the moment when space, time, matter, and energy burst into existence. But science can only describe the what and the how, not the why. Faith reveals what science cannot measure: at the origin of all things, there was intent, there was meaning, there was the pulse of grace behind every particle and the heartbeat of love beneath every law of physics.

"Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" Paul asks rhetorically in Romans 11:35 (ESV). The answer rings clear: no one. No one has ever given God anything first. No creature has ever placed God in their debt.

That God delighted to create—the first angel blazing with holy fire, the first human breathing garden air, the humblest bacterium or the grandest supernova—testifies to a love that needs nothing, receives nothing it requires, but delights in giving everything. In every sunrise painting the sky, in every story told since humanity's beginning, in every moment of beauty that stops your breath, you encounter not duty or necessity, but divine joy spilling over.

This understanding transforms everything. We are not cosmic accidents struggling to manufacture meaning in an indifferent universe. We are intentional expressions of divine love, created to know the Creator and reflect His glory. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism states: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

Consider the intimacy of this truth: the God who requires nothing, lacks nothing, needs nothing chose to create you. Not because He was incomplete without you, but because His love is so rich, so abundant, so generous that it seeks expression. You exist because God wanted you to exist—not as a slave to serve His needs (He has none), but as a child to share His joy, as an image-bearer to reflect His glory, as a beloved creature invited into eternal fellowship with the living God.

The Moment Before All Things—When Love Spoke Creation

Let's linger at the threshold just a moment longer. Picture the difference between silence and the first note—worldless eternity, and then the utterance, the Word, the divine speech that shatters the quiet and calls forth galaxies: "Let there be..."

At this crossroads between non-being and being, God's perfection bursts forth not with thunder or violence, but with a single, sovereign Word. The Apostle John, writing from Patmos and reaching back beyond time itself, lingers here with reverent wonder:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:1, 3, ESV).

Here, at this cosmic threshold, Scripture reveals something profound: creation springs not from conflict or necessity, but from harmony—God's wisdom, intention, and love speaking everything into reality through His eternal Word. The Logos—the Word—is not an abstract principle or impersonal force, but God Himself speaking, God's self-expression, God's creative power made manifest.

The Word is not a separate deity or second god alongside the Father. The Word is God—God speaking, God revealing Himself, God creating. Just as your word expresses your thoughts and carries your intention, so God's Word expresses His nature and accomplishes His purpose. This Word that existed before creation, that spoke light into darkness, would later take on human flesh and dwell among us as Jesus Christ (John 1:14).

From divine fullness, the first "Let there be" was not shouted in desperation or anxiety, but spoken with authority, delight, and sovereign calm. The universe did not erupt from divine need, but flowed from the quiet confidence of a God who knows exactly what He is doing and delights in doing it.

Physicist John Polkinghorne observes: "The universe looks like a world shot through with signs of mind, and maybe it's the capital 'M' Mind that is the ground of its intelligibility." The mathematical precision of physical laws, the fine-tuning of cosmic constants, the elegant beauty of natural patterns—all point beyond themselves to divine intelligence and purpose.

Physicists attempt to pinpoint the cosmic moment when time, space, matter, and energy burst into being. They trace expansion, formation of galaxies, birth of stars with astonishing precision. Yet Scripture urges us past mechanism into meaning: all things began not in accident or randomness, but in love. Not in chaos gradually ordered, but in the Word deliberately spoken. Not in blind forces, but in intelligent purpose.

The Word isn't just a force or formula—He is the One through whom everything streams forth. "For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him" (Colossians 1:16, ESV).

Before light struck the darkness, God's intention and artistry were already at work—giving form where none existed, calling order from chaos, speaking reality into being through the power of His creative Word. Creation is the song of joy that only a God overflowing with infinite life could sing—the same song echoing in galaxies, sunrises, and the breath in your lungs.

Even legendary accounts of Atlantis—described by Plato as an advanced civilization judged for pride and rebellion—may preserve fragmented memories, distorted through time, of God's creative and judicial acts throughout history. These ancient stories, though corrupted, may echo truths older than recorded history: that God creates with purpose, that human pride leads to fall, that divine judgment is real, that patterns repeat across the ages.

The Word of God is not merely informative—it is performative, accomplishing what it declares, bringing into existence what it names. "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host" (Psalm 33:6, ESV). This creative power is not magic or manipulation, but the natural expression of divine authority over all reality.

When God speaks, reality responds. Matter obeys. Energy organizes. Life emerges. Nothing can resist His command. As Isaiah proclaims: "So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11, ESV).

The Birth of Time—God's Timelessness and Our Longing

If the moment before creation was pure fullness—God complete in Himself, lacking nothing—what happened when God whispered the world into being? Something utterly new entered existence, something foreign to God's eternal nature: time itself.

For countless cultures throughout human history, time is the river we sail, the current carrying us from birth to death. We are bound to its movement, trapped in its one-way trajectory. Science points to a cosmic clock that started ticking with the Big Bang—space expanding, matter condensing, energy cooling, the arrow of time beginning its flight.

But Scripture says the "beginning" is not merely scientific or mechanical—it is deeply relational, profoundly personal: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, ESV). Time doesn't rule over God, constrain Him, or bind Him. Time is His invention, His creation, His tool for unfolding the story He planned before the foundation of the world.

Before that first dawn split the darkness, before the sun marked its first day and the moon measured its first month, God existed in the eternal present—outside time, above time, unbounded by time. "A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night" (Psalm 90:4, ESV).

God does not age, hurry, or wait. He does not move through time sequentially, experiencing moments one after another. He does not remember a distant past or anticipate an uncertain future. God is the eternal "I AM"—"who is and who was and who is to come" (Revelation 1:8, ESV)—holding all history as a single, unified reality before His eyes.

Science confirms what Scripture has always declared: time began with the universe itself. Einstein's relativity revealed time is not absolute but relative—bending near massive objects, slowing at high velocities, woven into the very fabric of space. But faith draws back the veil further: even before time's first tick, God was. "I the LORD do not change" (Malachi 3:6, ESV).

He is eternally present, infinitely attentive, unchangeably faithful, holding all of history—every past moment, every present second, every future event—in a single, unbroken gaze of love.

For us, trapped in time's flow, existence is divided: memory and regret (the unchangeable past), experience and decision (the fleeting present), expectation and anxiety (the uncontrollable future). We live in a narrow slice of "now" that immediately becomes "then," forever moving forward on a one-way street.

But for God, every moment exists with equal immediacy. The prophets paint God as One who "declares the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done" (Isaiah 46:10, ESV). He does not merely foreknow the future as we might predict weather patterns. He forever dwells in the eternal present where the fall of every sparrow and the consummation of all things are equally visible, equally present, equally attended to with perfect love.

C.S. Lewis captured this brilliantly: "If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn." We are confined to the line, experiencing one point at a time. But God sees the entire page—past, present, and future spread before Him simultaneously.

God's timelessness isn't cold distance—it is perfect attentiveness, complete presence. Every prayer you've ever prayed is heard in God's eternal now. Not filed as past memory or anticipated as future possibility, but present to Him always, attended to fully, loved completely.

For the seeker, this addresses one of the deepest human longings: the ache for permanence amid changing seasons, the desire for someone who holds history's pattern while we see only fragments. In God's eternal "now," your fleeting days are precious, never lost or overlooked. No prayer is missed, no tear ignored, no hope unseen.

Other faith traditions echo this. Islam's Al-Qayyum—the Self-Subsisting, never sleeping, never weary. Hebrew El Olam, "the Everlasting God." Augustine prayed: "You are ever active, yet always at rest."

God's timelessness doesn't trap us in fate, but promises love that redeems our whole story. He is always attentive, always present, always working out a future that stretches beyond clocks and calendars. In that, we find hope in every season—past, present, and unknown tomorrows.

Eternal Love and the Promise of Forever

In every culture throughout human history, the quest for meaning and lasting love echoes our awareness of time's passing and our hope for something more. The Christian promise—flowing from this vision of God before time—is that we are not lost in an indifferent universe. We are drawn into the heart of the God who invented time, who inhabits eternity, and whose desire is to share His love with us forever.

Scripture paints eternity not as static stillness but as vibrant, endless present of God's embrace: "Now the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4, ESV).

As God was before creation—whole, holy, radiant with love—so He will be when we are united with Him, beyond the reach of death and decay. The final vision of Scripture is not disembodied spirits in a void, but restored people—bodies and souls reunited and perfected, alive in the unmediated presence of God—whole, joyous, fully human, eternally secure.

Every longing you've ever had for home finds its answer here. Every ache for safety, belonging, acceptance, for a place where you can finally rest—satisfied here. Every desire for fulfillment, for purpose completed, for potential fully realized—met here. Every hope for love that never fails, never ends, never disappoints, never dies—fulfilled here.

Eternity with God is not endless repetition growing stale, but unending discovery—layer upon layer of God's infinite beauty, depth upon depth of His unfathomable wisdom, wonder upon wonder of His inexhaustible creativity. "We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2, ESV).

All the wounds of time—every loss mourned, every regret carried, every separation endured—will be swallowed up in the freedom of seeing God face to face. Not erased as though they never mattered, but healed, redeemed, woven into a larger tapestry where even our darkest threads contribute to the beauty of the whole.

This is the heartbeat of Christian hope. But this hope resonates beyond Christianity: in Judaism's dream of shalom, in Islam's vision of Paradise, in every philosophy refusing to believe love ends with the grave. The God who was before all things invites us not just to observe eternity from a distance, but to join Him within it—beloved, known, finally home.

C.S. Lewis wrote: "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." Every longing for perfection, every ache for permanence, every hope for love that never fails—these are signposts pointing toward home, echoes of eternity planted in our hearts by the God who made us for Himself.

The same love that existed before creation's first morning, the same joy that characterized God's eternal being before time began—this love, this joy, this peace will surround us forever. And the ache for permanence will be satisfied completely, perfectly, eternally.

This hope isn't escapism—it magnifies life's importance. If eternity awaits, our choices echo forever. How we love, serve, pursue justice and mercy—all builds treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:20). Early Christians faced persecution with courage because they knew death wasn't the final word. Their hope empowered radical present living.

Practical Implications: Living in Light of Eternity

To know that God existed before all things is to anchor your worth in something unshakeable. Before you took breath, before the universe existed, you were already known and wanted. "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes" (Ephesians 1:4, NLT). You are not an afterthought—your existence is the overflow of divine love and intentional purpose.

Contemplating God's eternal nature—His "I AM"-ness, His existence outside time, His self-sufficiency—offers radiance for the darkness of our fears. We live obsessed with beginnings and endings, terrified of time slipping away. But God meets you right now with love as ancient as creation and as fresh as this moment.

This vision reframes creation itself. The world is not random accident but divine invitation to relationship, creativity, and response. When you touch beauty, create kindness, build peace, you echo God's first creative Word and align your life with creation's original purpose.

Eternity is not just hope for after death but calling to live differently now. Practices of prayer become acts of joining the eternal conversation with God. Compassion, justice, mercy, grace—all align with God's eternal character and build lasting treasure.

You can forgive when it seems impossible—not because you forget, but because God's story includes a horizon beyond wounds. You can face grief, injustice, uncertainty without despair because a love stronger than chaos called you by name before the world's dawn and will welcome you home when all other lights have faded.

Living in light of eternity means daily choices with eternal perspective—investing in relationships that outlast this life, pursuing character over achievement, stewarding resources as temporary trust. It means speaking life, choosing forgiveness, extending grace because we've received grace.

Tertullian wrote: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Why such courage? They had anchored their identity in the eternal God. No earthly power could strip what God gave them before creation's foundation.

Closing Prayer

Eternal God,

You are the same before time, within time, and beyond its final heartbeat. In awe, we contemplate the mystery of Your infinite existence—love without beginning, joy without limit, wisdom without shadow. As we have reflected on who You were before creation and who You will be when You welcome us into eternity, help us trust in Your unchanging nature, find rest in Your promises, and rejoice in the hope of forever in Your presence.

Draw us closer to Your perfect love, anchoring our lives in Your everlasting now, securing our anxious hearts in Your unshakeable reality. When circumstances shake what we thought was secure, anchor us to the Rock who never changes.

Keep us faithful in this present moment, knowing it echoes into eternity. Keep us generous with temporary resources, knowing we're building treasure in heaven. Keep us loving with sacrificial hearts, knowing we're loved with eternal love we can never exhaust.

Until we see You face to face and share in Your eternal joy—keep us, guide us, sustain us by Your grace. Through Christ our Lord, who reveals Your eternal heart and secures our place in Your presence forever—we pray.

Amen.

Ten Discussion Questions for Reflection

1. How does contemplating God's existence before creation shape your understanding of your own story and purpose in ways you hadn't considered before?

2. If God is love in His very essence—needing nothing outside Himself to be complete—what does this reveal about why He chose to create you, and how does this affect your relationship with Him?

3. Why is it important that God is independent and self-sufficient for Christian faith and hope, especially in difficult times when we feel abandoned or alone?

4. How does knowing God is timeless—seeing all of your life at once—challenge or comfort you as you face days of uncertainty, grief, or unanswered prayer?

5. In what practical ways can you anchor your identity in God's unchanging love rather than in the shifting circumstances of life, success, or failure?

6. How does the idea of spending eternity with God give hope and meaning to the challenges, losses, and sufferings of this life?

7. What aspect of this chapter most expands your sense of awe, wonder, or worship toward God, and how might that change your daily walk with Him?

8. If God created out of overflowing love—not need or loneliness—how does that affect the way you view Him and His intentions for your life and calling?

9. How might living with an awareness of God's eternal story change your relationships, your daily decisions, or your attitude toward time and mortality?

10. When you contemplate eternity with God, what do you most long for—and how does knowing God's everlasting love and presence answer that longing today?