INTRODUCTION: What is this all about?

Transcript

Speaker 0:01

Dear friends, I warmly greet you all. Tomislav, Dr. Tomislav Furlanis here. In this introductory message, I want to share with you the purpose of and meaning of this project. So, what is the purpose of I can't wait for Monday? To understand its purpose, we need to look briefly at its background, at how this project came into being. And it's to be stated that I'm recording this introductory message on June 1st, 2026, in the year of our Lord. So for the past two years, I've been serving and still do as the national chaplain of the Gideons of Croatia. Gideons Croatia belonged to the wider family of Gideons International, a Christian association of business and professional people, called to win others for Jesus, spread the gospel, and share God's word, most often in printed form. And over the past two years, I have shared with the Gideons of Croatia and with those from surrounding countries a message or many messages about the kingdom of God as I personally live it and experience it in my own life. And all of this, of course, grounded uh since I also have a little bit of academic training in that regard, uh, in sound um biblical science, uh, and also, of course, in the lives and experience of many other uh believers, much wiser and greater than me, in God's kingdom. Glory be for that to God. So I have shared in these past two years concrete motivations, directions, explanations, teachings, and testimonies about how God desires each one of us, every person on earth, to come under his authority and fulfill his plan while we are alive in this life. Jesus said famously at one place, uh, Father, I do not ask of you that you remove them from the world, but that you safeguard them, keep them from the evil one. So that is God's purpose for us while we live here, is that we try to create through by his power, of course, we try. We are trying to do that constantly. We fight to do that in our prayers and in our life of sanctification and through our good works to accomplish a part of heaven on earth. This is this is God's plan for humanity ever since Adam and Eve accomplished through our Lord Jesus Christ and made available to all of us who believe that we may instantiate, that we may embody, and that we may truly work out and and produce good works that uh make real heaven on earth. But unfortunately, unfortunately, as we know, people reject and still do the message of love and of hope and of glory given to us in Christ Jesus. But for us who believe we have the power of salvation, uh, each and every one of us who accepts Jesus receives the power of God and the authority of God to accomplish his plan in our lives, and that's the beauty of Monday. Because the beauty of Monday is precisely in that that when I know I have the strength and the power to accomplish the good works that the Father entrusted to me, then there's no more fighting, there's no more desperate striving, there's no more struggle, no more shooting into emptiness, missing the mark, because that's what sin actually is. That's what the word of sin, hamartia in Greek means. It means to miss the mark. I simply am not missing the mark in my life, I'm hitting the mark because I'm fulfilling God's idea, God's plan for me, which is perfect and is absolutely there for the benefit of everybody that surrounds me, the entire humanity. So when I come under God's authority, I can accomplish tremendous and beautiful works through faith in Christ Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in me. And that is the promise of God for each and every one of us. And of course, business and professional persons naturally recognize the value of the kingdom because uh these messages are specifically focused on people who have devoted themselves to work, not to laziness, right? So people who want to work, who want to create value with their life, and especially eternal value, value that lives well beyond your day of passing uh from this world, that lives not just for your generation, but for generations to come. Jesus has said that your fruit remains, and that is the kind of uh good works we are focused on here. So those works that show the beauty of our God, the beauty and the magnificence, the the gorgeous wonderfulness of his creation, he can do all of that through us. So, in short, these messages are for all people, all believers, Christians, but they are carefully shaped for those who love to build, who love to grow, who love to work, who want to work in God's kingdom, who want to work in God's vineyard, and who want to reach the fullness that God the Father has prepared for each and every one of us. They are for everyone who has still not yet brought out and fulfilled that wonderful gift, that inner glory that God placed within us at creation. When God created each and every one of us, he put his glory into us, and he wants us to show that glory, to enable that glory to come alive in this world and to do good to others. That is the reason of these messages, that each and every one of us in our work comes under God's authority, comes under God's rulership, under God's dominion, under God's kingdom, and for us to accomplish the plan God has for us, and to do so smiling, and to do so laughing, because God laughs in the heavens, and we also laugh with Him because we are seated with Christ, as Paul says it wonderfully. Blessings to you all. Welcome to I Can't Wait for Monday.