Building a Legacy of Faith and Hope

1) "Because when I'm preparing sermon series for our church family, normally what I do is I prepare them three, six months in advance. And so as I was praying through all last year about where God had us going as a church family, God brought me personally to the book of Joshua. And so I was just reading that for my own time with the Lord. And then as I was reading it, I was like, man, there's a lot in here that I would love to share with our church family. And so I put it in motion to start our series in Joshua. And that's where God has us right now. And I don't think that there's any other book of the Bible that is so applicable to where you are. You and I find ourselves today, in this moment right now." [32:44] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "And so in the previous weeks, we see that God has brought us on this place where we see that life is a journey. Life is a journey that we are taking. And we don't always understand what God is doing or why God does what he does. And even though your story and my story and the person next to you's story, they all might look different, so our journeys may look different, we still have a journey. And if you have the same purpose, if you call Jesus your Lord and Savior, if you have a personal, intimate, interactive relationship with the God of the universe, then we are children of God and we have the same purpose. And that purpose is to glorify God by loving God, loving others, and making disciples." [34:40] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "But whether we are rebuilding what was lost or recovering from who we've lost, maybe, maybe not. Maybe you're sitting here today and you're just experiencing survivor guilt. And that's a real thing, where you're sitting here and you've prepared for this massive storm and then all of a sudden it wasn't as bad as anticipated. And now you're looking at the news and you're looking at articles and you're looking at neighbors that have been affected and you're like, oh man, I feel almost like wrong, the fact that I was spared. And so, wherever you come in here today, whether you're looking at the pending elections freaking out, I mean, these things causing us anxiety and fear, often depression. I mean, look at the financial crisis that we're experiencing. So all of these things can look impossible, but I want to declare hope for every child of God that is in this room today." [37:05] (58 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "This world is not your forever home. And I know for some of you, you may be like, that doesn't sound hopeful. Listen, if what is around us, all of the temporary, all the crazy, if that's all that we have to look forward to, we're in a pretty bad spot. Why is the world around us helpless and hopeless? Why is the world around us giving themselves to addiction and giving themselves to all sorts of different things that are escapism, trying to get out of the reality of life? Because they look at what is around them and that is their hope. Their hope and their faith in what is found on earth. So we try to build a kingdom here. We try to get a bigger house, better cars, nicer stuff. We build our 401ks. We try to leave this financial legacy to our kids and we want to set them up so that they can see it as they move forward in life. And so we're just building stuff that's just temporary and all of that will one day be gone." [38:03] (62 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "So would we be the type of people that keep our eyes fixed and focused on Jesus? Because God promises that he is with us wherever we go. And I know that there are some here today who have not fully come to understand how much God loves them. I know that there are some here today that are sitting here and this God stuff, this church stuff, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You see people singing, maybe raising their hands, maybe praying, and you don't understand it because you've never met Jesus for yourself. And I want you to know, one, I appreciate you being here. I so appreciate you walking into a place that may be uncomfortable for you, but I also want you to know that the God of the universe loves you and he wants a personal, intimate relationship with you. He wants you to know him." [39:31] (60 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "And so often we're so consumed with just trying to get to the other side that we forgot along the way to look at what the Lord is doing. And there's a call. Christians, believers, followers of Jesus, children of God to go back and to pick up stones so that we will remember what the Lord has done. Now, that's not comfortable. That's not something we want to do. Sometimes going back into those moments are really hard. It's really painful. But I can promise you that any time that I've been led and ushered back to something in my past to gather a stone and see what the Lord has done and see how he has redeemed me in those moments, it's always actually led to long-term health. And so he's calling us to gather these stones, these things that will help us remember the faithfulness of God." [46:01] (57 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "Remembering God's historic faithfulness is the first step in enjoying his present faithfulness to you, even if you don't feel it. He's reminding us that God's historic faithfulness, remembering God's historic faithfulness is our first step to enjoying his present faithfulness. I think we're really bad at remembering. I don't know about you. Maybe it's just me, but we're bad at remembering the things that happen in our lives. I mean, if I were to go around the room and pull some of you married guys and ask you when your wedding date was, would you remember? It's supposed to be the happiest day in our lives, but we barely even remember the details." [47:12] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "Why do we set up these stones? Well, here's the purpose. To proclaim how the Lord moved, how he worked, how he protected, how he guided, and got us through. Whatever the storm was, whatever the circumstance was, whatever the situation is, that the Lord was with us. Now, just some clarity because often when we talk about our grace story or our testimony of how God has saved us, I have seen videos and I have seen like heard like in different settings people's testimony. Often, the testimony is way more about the person and what the person did than about God. The guitar that sat in my room is not there to serve as a reminder that I can play guitar. It's not there to serve as a reminder that I'm a musician. It's there to show the faithfulness of the Lord, to show what he has done." [56:04] (62 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)