God Interrupts Routines and Revives Dormant Dreams

Why did God make you wait for that prayer to be answered for so many years ago? Why did God make Zechariah wait? God waited so that when he answered, you would know that it was a miracle. God waited so his answer would be a blessing, not just to Zechariah, but to the entire world. And God waited until Zechariah wanted him more than the thing they had been praying for. What about you? Did you come here today expecting God to speak? Or have you just started going through the motions like I have? Our greatest blessings in life, folks, will be when God interrupts the puny plans I've made and replaces them with his own. [01:18:03] (61 seconds)  #WaitForMiracle

Let me ask you this. Do you know what it's like to go through the motions in worship? See, that's one of the problems I have when I being the age that I am. know how to do this that we do. I know how to come on Sunday morning. I know basically how to dress. And I know when I'm going through the lobby, hey. How are you this morning? You know, I greet everybody. I'm I know how it's going to go, most likely. that's a problem because I can go through this thing and go through the motions and come to church, sing all the songs, listen to the sermon, pray through the invitation, and nothing happens in here. And I'm usually okay with that. And I shouldn't be. [00:48:33] (68 seconds)  #WorshipNotRoutine

If it ain't broke, break it. Because we need change. We all need to change. We need to grow, and God is not gonna let us stay where we are. Many of us here today desperately need God to interrupt our boring version of Christianity. And I and I'm talking to myself, but if I compare my life today to the life of the first century Christian, they don't look a whole lot alike. They were never praying just to have a safe life. In fact, God purposely creates us with fragile bodies and erratic minds. He constantly sends us into unstable, jarring situations. [00:39:28] (54 seconds)  #BreakToGrow

There's so much you could be doing for God today. I don't care what age you are. God wants to interrupt what you're doing. God wants to interrupt your retirement and say, I am not through with you yet. There's still something you can do. There's still a child out there you can help. There's still a teenager you can mentor. There's still something you can do in this church. I am not through. But are you through? Because you have to say yes. You have to agree with God and say, yes. I will start hoping again, and I will start living for you again. [01:16:57] (47 seconds)  #NeverTooOldToServe

I come here and I don't really expect anything to happen other than what we've got planned because we Baptist, we're good at planning out a service. And we plan a service so well that God doesn't really have to show up. sometimes I wonder if he did show up, if he did do something in a service that we hadn't planned out, if something happened in this service that wasn't the sum total of all the parts we put together in our own strength, in our own flesh, something that couldn't be explained. I'm not talking something weird, but I'm talking lives changed. I'm talking families brought back together, husbands and wives, children coming back to the Lord. If God started doing something, would we be okay with it? [00:49:41] (54 seconds)  #LeaveRoomForGod

And that's the last thing I wanna ask you. If God showed up today and said he was going to answer that prayer of yours, do you have enough faith to pursue that dream? Or would you be like Zechariah and try to weasel your way out of the very thing you asked God to do? God's saying, wanna use you. I wanna use your child. I wanna use your family in a huge massive way. And you're like, you know, I'm old and I'm tired and I just don't know if I have that in me anymore. I hear that in church all the time. [01:03:14] (48 seconds)  #FaithToPursue

But God, your daddy, your father wants to take you still on an adventure with him. He says, take my hand. Come on. Let's go. Let's go up on the big roller coaster. No. No. No. Let's stay down here where it's safe. If your answer to prayer is to play it safe, if you think that's what God is telling you is safety and security, you are hearing the wrong God. I can't think of any time that god didn't lead his people tremendous challenge, into scary things. People have said, oh, the most the most safe place in the world is in the in the center of god's will. I'm like, are you kidding me? God never promised you wouldn't die. [01:10:15] (57 seconds)  #DaringWithGod

Sad part was Israel had been going through the motions with the ceremony now for over four hundred years. And in fact, the temple they were in, of course, is a different temple than they had known at first. And at the the book of Ezekiel, we hear about the spirit of God actually leaving the temple. So he was going into a room where he was going to offer up this incense. There was gonna be a huge curtain in the back, and behind that huge thick curtain was a holy of holies. But back there, there was no flame in the middle of the ark of the covenant between the angels' wings that were folded inward. The flame that used to have been there that showed the presence of the living God was long gone. [00:46:21] (56 seconds)  #WhereIsGod