**Pastor Brent McQuay: Vision Sunday Transcript**
All right, welcome to Vision Sunday, everybody. How many of you are excited for today? Are you more excited about next week when we get to watch the movies? I got a feeling you're more excited about next week, but today's going to be great. Today's going to be awesome.
I do have to make a little bit of a warning. I'm going to try my best to slow down a little bit today, but it's probably not going to work at all because I'm excited. And when I get excited, I talk fast, and I've got a really big announcement to make right in the middle of this message. So I'm going to be like talking really fast. Plus, I have a lot of ground to cover today. So I'm going to talk fast. I need you to listen fast. Can you do that for me? I got one person that's going to do that for me. Awesome. Thank you very much. The rest of y'all, I guess you just have to watch this one again later to catch what you missed.
But today is Vision Sunday. And the whole goal of today is to present to you the vision and values of our church. The vision that God has given CLC, but also the vision that God has given for you, for your life. Because vision is really, it's all about direction. And we want to make sure that we're going in the right direction because vision tells you where you're going. And so I'm excited about the direction that CLC is going in. And I'm excited about the vision that God has for your life, the direction he has for you.
And so we're going to start with the vision for the church. Then I personally sound good? All right, we're going to start in the Bible with what has been like the bane of my existence. I cannot pronounce Habakkuk. Yeah, that one. And so this is chapter two, verse two. It says, "Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it." The idea here is that the vision from God should be actionable. It should be something that we can actually do. And so we're going to start in the Bible with what has been the bane of something.
It's not enough to just know it. You got to do it, right? And so we try and follow this wisdom here at CLC, that we make the vision plain so that you can run with it. And before we get into our specific vision, I want to tell you about what the purpose or the mission of every single church on planet earth should be. And that is to go and make disciples, right? I mean, that's pretty straightforward. That's what Jesus told us in Matthew 28. He said, "When heaven and earth has been given to me, go therefore and do what? Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
Don't you love that the triune God shows up even when we finish the series? Come on, somebody. And so how do we make disciples? Hint, it's in yellow. By teaching them to do what? To do the stuff Jesus told us to do. To observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. You know why Jesus adds that last little bit? Because the mission is scary. Like the mission, it's big, right? And he wants you to know that I'm not just giving you this impossible task and then dipping out of here. No, he's saying, I'm going to do this with you. I'm going to be right there by your side. I'm going to hold your hand as you go about this thing. He doesn't leave you all alone.
And so every church really should have a mission to make disciples. And it's the church's mission, but it's also your mission. And it makes sense that it would be your mission and the church's mission because you know the church is just a collection of people, right? So if it's the people's job, then it's the church's job. And so we believe that our mission here, our purpose as a church is to make disciples and then train those disciples and equip those disciples to do what? To go and make more disciples, right? Like it kind of completes the circle, right? So disciples make disciples. And that's what it's all about. And so every single church should have that as its mission.
That's the what we do, but the why or the how, the how we do it really is unique to every congregation, every church. God equips us each with different skills and abilities and talents so that we can accomplish the big mission in a unique way. And so the how we accomplish this is articulated in our mission statement that is, "CLC exists to change the way you think about church." And I know that for some, that may sound weird. For others, you're like, "That's exactly what happened to me when I came to CLC." And that's awesome.
But here, let me tell you why this is so important to us, why this is our mission. And that's because it's been said that the church is the hope of the world. And I believe that. The problem is there's a lot of people around us today that don't believe that anymore. In fact, the way people think about church has been increasingly negative. And we've entered into a season, a place where there's so many unchurched now that view the church with a lot of assumptions. That the world looks at the church now as hypocritical and judgmental and just straight up weird and all of that stuff. And we've got to do something about that because the problem is that what someone thinks about church determines how they will, and more often than not, will not approach the church.
Okay, does that make sense? So if somebody thinks that the church is judgmental, why are they ever going to come to us when they're hurting? If somebody thinks that the church is irrelevant to their life, why would they ever go to church when they need help? If they think that the church is just another religious building, why would they ever go to church to encounter the living God and find the peace of God? Why would they ever go to church when they need help? Why would they ever go to church when they need help? Why would they ever go to church when they need help? Why would they ever go to the love and the joy and the freedom that's found in a relationship with him? It's not going to happen.
And so we have a task. We have to change the way people think about church because that's going to affect how they approach God. And ultimately, it's not really about the church. It's really about God and the relationship with him. But a lot of people, they're introduced to that relationship through the church. So that's our mission. We've taken that in mind. And now, CLC, we believe this is a God-ordained mission. We believe that we can do it. We believe that we can accomplish this mission for us, an assignment from God for us to change the way people think about church. It's the driving force behind everything that we do.
But we've got a challenge to overcome in this. And that is Jesus said to go and make disciples. And I'm convinced that disciples are actually best made through relationship. This is not making disciples. You listening to a guy on a stage with a microphone talk at you doesn't make you a disciple. Discipleship happens in relationship. And so the challenge we have to overcome is how do we reach new people with the gospel, make new disciples, all while staying small enough that you can actually have relationship.
Right? Because there's a challenge, there's a struggle, there's a danger in large church gatherings, especially when we've got multiple services. I mean, most of y'all don't know anybody that was here an hour ago. I mean, most of y'all don't know anybody that was here an hour before you. And it's so easy in a place like this, in a setting like this, for you to become a camouflaged Christian, for you to just kind of blend in with the crowd. And you can attend church and never actually become a disciple. Right? The same problem of going to church doesn't make you a disciple any more than you hanging out in your garage is going to make you a car.
Okay? You need relationship in order for this discipleship process to happen. You need relationship in order for this discipleship process to happen. You need relationship in order for this discipleship process to happen. And then we've got an increasingly bigger problem, I guess, in that CLC wasn't called to Tinley Park. This is where our building is. But the mission, the vision that God has given our founding pastors that carries on now to Seoul and I is to reach Chicagoland. And that's a big area. And so how do you reach a place as big as Chicagoland, as diverse as Chicagoland? How do you do that while staying small enough to actually make disciples?
And so about 20 years ago, our founding pastors started working towards a solution to that problem of reaching Chicagoland. And the solution is called Multisite. And some of you are like, I see where he's going with this one already. So Multisite is one church that meets in multiple locations. And so with each new campus, there's a new community that you can reach. There's disciples that can be made. There's a new difference that can be made in that city. And we can reach the lost and we can make disciples all while staying small enough that people can be in genuine relationship, that they can't just hide in the crowd.
And so in those 20 years, we've launched six different locations. There have been some incredible successes and some hard failures in that time. We've seen great things happen though. In fact, we've seen hundreds of people become disciples of Jesus Christ over these 20 years in those six different locations. And we're excited about that. In fact, three of those locations today are thriving churches that are still creating new disciples even today. And it's awesome. One of those locations has become the Hope Center, our outreach into the community. Great things are happening through that.
But when COVID hit, we had to shut down some things. We had to restructure. We had to revamp, rethink. We had to work on our systems and our procedures and our policies and all of that to figure out who it is CLC is, our mission, our vision, our values, so that we could re-engage with a community so that we could know what it is that God has placed us here to do. And over the last four years, we've been pushing towards that purpose, that endeavor of getting better and better at what we feel God has called us to do and reworking some of how we make disciples and how we help people become all that God has created them to be.
And then we're running into an issue, and today is maybe a rare exception, although our ushers still did need some help getting you seated today. But how many Sundays in the last year have we struggled with space in this room? How many Sundays have we struggled in the parking lot where the parking lot actually fills up before the sanctuary can? And we're starting to get into this place where it's like, how do we keep reaching people? We got to do something.
And so, are you ready for my announcement? You probably fill in the blanks already, couldn't you? But CLC is launching a new community. We're going to be a campus fall of 2025. Hey! Hey, so I'm excited about that because for me, you know what that means? That means more people in heaven. That means we get to reach another community. That means we get to find people that are far from God and introduce them to the Jesus that loves them so much he died for them, that has a purpose and a plan for their lives, that the vision that God has for us, we could share that with the world. And I am so excited for this new campus.
And I know that fall of 2025 may sound super far away from now, but that gives us a year to build a launch team, to prepare them, to go into that area, begin to do outreach and evangelism, and be able to launch the campus with at least 150 CLCers on opening day. That's not even counting the number of just community members. We want to send 150 from this church, and it's going to take us about a year to build that team.
You may be wondering where we're going. Well, I'm wondering where we're going too. I feel like God has given us a location, but we're still praying about it. We're still talking with some of our leaders about it, but we feel fairly confident at this point that we will be launching in the Homewood-Flossmoor area in 2025, just down the street. That way. I don't know what, yeah, that way. And so how many of you in the room right now actually live in the Homewood-Flossmoor area? Yeah, a bunch of you.
And so here's the thing. I'm not kicking you out. I'm not forcing you to go, but you may want to consider being a part of this. We know we already have a large collection of CLCers in that area that would love to see God do a work in your city. And so we're excited about that. And so while we're still kind of praying about that part, the part we are completely 100% settled on is our future campus pastors for this launch. Do you want to know who they are? Would you like to meet them? Yes.
Give your best CLC welcome to Marcus and Crystal Ivey as they come on up to the stage. Hey, hey. Love you guys. So I, there's a lot of love in this room for you. It helps that you brought like your whole crew. But I love, I love this couple. I love that God has clearly been working in them and through them. They have been so faithful here at CLC for so many years. For anybody that's gone through Growth Track in the last year, you've gotten to know them really, really well. And their love for ministry, their love for people, they're just passionate about this. And so I'm so excited for the work that they're going to be able to do in that area and what God's going to do through them.
And so I just want to give them a moment to say hi to everybody. Hi. We just, we're grateful to God. Come on, man. It's good. It's good. Let's go. Love it. You excited? I'm excited. I know they're excited. I know their family's excited. Uh, I don't know what that means for Harry and Crystal. Uh, cause I can't be in two places at the same time. We're going to have to worry about that one. But, uh, if you do want to be a part of that 150 person launch team, go ahead and text the word "campus" right now to the number on the screen.
Uh, this, you're not making any kind of commitment. You're not signing a contract or anything. Just letting them know, "Hey, you know, I want to be a part of the conversation. I want to hear a little bit more. Uh, I want to see what it is that God's going to be doing and maybe I can be a part of that team." Uh, and so I encourage you to do that now. If there's anything in you that's saying, you know what? I think God wants me to be a part of this launch team.
Uh, cause there's a lot of people that are going to be needed to make this happen. Now, for some of you in the room, you're like, man, I want to support them and what they're doing, but I ain't going nowhere. It's like, this is, Tinley is my spot and this is my seat. You're probably sitting in the same seat you sit in every week and you ain't giving it up for nobody. Uh, and so look, you can still be a part of this thing. You can still support this launch in three very important ways.
First of all, you can give towards it. Our estimates is about $200,000 for the startup of a new campus to get equipment, staffing, facility, all of that stuff. So it's a big price tag to do something like this. And so you can give towards it in the giving app. There's a little dropdown that says, uh, "campus launch." Uh, and you can give towards that over this next year.
Uh, second thing that you can do is pray. But when I say pray, I don't mean like, "Dear Jesus, bless this food and bless that campus. Amen." Like I need like some prayer warriors, like really praying for this thing, praying for favor, praying for Marcus and Crystal, praying that they have a revelation from God for what it is that they're going to be doing. The people that they need to be a part of that team that you just be praying over the location that we'd find favor with city officials and we find locations. And so just cover this thing in prayer.
And then the third way that you can actually help us in this launch is how many of you know that if you take 150 people from this place and send them to some other place that leaves 150 openings in this place, right? And that means when we send out leaders and dream team members, it creates openings here where kids life is going to need help. And the worship team is going to need extra help and our media team and our first impressions and all of the dream teams that make CLC what it is are going to need help, uh, right here in Tinley.
And so this may be the perfect opportunity for you to stop dating the church and really just get committed a little bit. Come on somebody to actually say, you know what? I'm not going to spectate. I'm not going to hide in the crowd anymore, but I'm going to step into a role. And maybe you're already serving in a capacity, but it's time for you to step into more of a leadership position.
And so, uh, really when we send people out, uh, we know that it creates openings here. And so we need you to step into those spots, but that's the plan. That's what we're doing. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited about it.
Uh, we are launching campuses because for us, that's the solution to staying small while still reaching as many people with the gospel as possible. We want to see more people in heaven, uh, but we know we got limited space in this building. So what are we going to do? Well, we're going to go where the people are. And so, uh, expect us to make these kinds of announcements on a fairly regular basis moving forward. That's our plan. That's our goal that we'd be able to launch more campuses because ultimately more campuses mean more people in heaven.
That's good. More disciples on earth. That's good. Right? And so through campuses, we're able to do both. So I'm excited. I know they're excited. I know you're excited. Uh, but we've got a little bit more to talk about today because I promised that Vision Sunday wasn't just going to be about us. God has a vision for your life too.
And if you don't know the vision, if you aren't on board with the vision, you're in real trouble because the truth of life is that everybody ends up somewhere. The goal is to end up somewhere on purpose. And that only happens when you have vision, when you have direction that your life is going in. Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law."
And I want to break this down for a moment. This cast off restraint, it's translated in different Bibles in different ways, but it could talk about being discouraged. The people are discouraged. Uh, one translation says the people run wild. Another one says the people let loose. Uh, I think the King James says people perish when they don't have God's vision for their life. And we don't want that to happen.
And so this vision, it really is keeping you on the right path. The right vision keeps you on the right path. The question we have to ask is where should the vision come from? Because this isn't about your vision board. This isn't about that thing that you're like, "Oh, it'd be so cool if." No, no, the vision for your life. It's about the vision for your life. It's about the vision for your life needs to be. I love how the, the, what is this? The ESV says the prophetic vision, right? Because the vision shouldn't come from in here or even in here. It should come from God. It should be revelation from God.
In fact, I love, and this is just a freebie for you. Anytime you're reading in the Old Testament or the New Testament, when a verse combines law and prophets together, what they've done here, prophetic law, that's how God speaks all throughout scripture. God would speak through the law and through the prophets. And so what this is saying is you need a vision from God for your life or else, as DL Moody so eloquently put it, our greatest fear should not be a failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.
And I think a lot of us, we run this risk of succeeding while failing. And as a pastor, I don't want our church to be successful at something that doesn't matter. As a father, I don't want our church to be successful at something that doesn't matter. As a follower of Jesus, I don't want to be successful at something that doesn't really matter. I don't know about you, but I want to be following his plan, not my plan, right? And I want to get to the end of my life and be able to hear those beautiful words from Jesus, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."
I don't want to get to the end of my life and Jesus looks at me and says, "Well, you're done." I told a story a while back about Matt Emmons. And if you've ever heard of Matt Emmons, if you don't remember Matthew Emmons, he was an Olympic sharpshooter, a marksman. And in the 2004 Olympic games, he won a gold medal in his first shooting event. And then he went into his second event and he was, I mean, this guy was top dog. He was so far ahead in points that going into his final shot, all Matt had to do was hit the target, anywhere on the target, and he gets a gold medal.
I mean, he was a great guy. This man could do it blindfolded. It was that easy. And so Matt lines up his shot. He slows his pulse. He slows his breathing, holds his breath for that last second, gently squeezes the trigger, and bam, just a beautiful shot right on target. And then this is the face he made when he looked at the scoreboard and it showed zero points. Your system's broken, man. I hit the target. It's a beautiful shot. Why zero points? And then this is the face he made a second later when the judge announced crossfire.
See, what happened is Matt shot a beautiful shot right on target, the wrong target. A cross shot is when you shoot the target in the lane next to you. So he had something he was supposed to hit. He hit something else. That's the face of a guy that was aiming at the wrong thing. And even though it looked successful, it really wasn't. And as your pastor, what I don't want to happen is for you to get to the end of your life and make that face. That is the face of someone. I don't want you making Matt's face when you get to the end of your life. I want you to be successful in the thing that God has actually created you for.
Eugene Peterson actually took that Proverbs passage and he paraphrased it. He said, "If people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over the place. But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed." And so I love that God didn't leave us to stumble around in the dark trying to figure out what it is he wants for our life. No, no. He has revealed to us his will, his vision for our lives. And we are most blessed when we actually do the thing that he called us to do.
And so the apostle Paul, there's these four things that show up all throughout the Bible in the Old Testament and the New Testament. These four things that God wants for your life. And the apostle Paul puts those four things together in one verse. And I love it. It's found in Ephesians chapter one, where Paul says, "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation." So Paul is praying that you would have this revelation from God. And I'm praying that prayer for you today as well. That you would today have an aha moment. Eureka moment. A light bulb goes off and you go, "Wow, Brent, I see it now. I see what it is that God wants to do in me and through me. I see the vision." I want that for you.
And then Paul lays out these four things and he says, "So that you may know him better." And this idea that the Greek word for know there is actually the most intimate form of knowledge there is. It's not about information. It's about a personal connection, a personal revelation that you would know deeply and personally and have this vibrant, real life-changing relationship with God. And some of you listening to this message right now, you haven't started this journey yet of knowing. Maybe you know some things about God, but you don't have that personal relationship with him yet. I'm praying that today would be the day that that changes in your life.
But for everybody in the room, did you catch what the invitation is? It's an invitation to know him better, right? There's a knowledge that we have of God today. It should pale in comparison to the knowledge of God we have tomorrow. That every single day we are getting to know God better than we did before. And then he continues. The second thing he says, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened." And some of you are thinking that Paul has an anatomy problem, right? Because your eyes are up here, not in here. And I think Paul would argue with you that they really are in your heart because every single one of us, through the filter of everything that's ever happened to us.
It's why all of us can see the same thing, but experience it differently. It can affect us differently because we're putting everything through the filter of everything that's ever happened to us. And what Paul is saying here is, I need you to have your eyes opened to fix the filter in your heart. That you would find freedom from the things that are in your life. That if we remove those things, your life would be better than it is right now. And so he wants us to be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which he's called us.
And so there's a hope that every single one of us should have in the calling that God has in our lives. You have a purpose. You were not a mistake. You were not an accident. You are not arbitrary. You are part of God's great plan on this earth. And so you need to know what it is because if you don't take this third step, you're never going to make it to the fourth step where he says that this is the hope to which he's called you. And so you need the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.
Now I'm going to burst some bubbles today. The riches he's talking about in this passage is not money. Jesus said to store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. How many of you have ever seen a hearse carrying a U-Haul, like pulling a U-Haul beyond? No, you don't get to bring your stuff with you. The glorious inheritance, you know what it is? The only thing you bring to heaven with you? People. It's the impact you make on this earth in the lives of other people. That's your glorious inheritance, that your life would make a difference in the life of somebody else.
And you'll get to heaven one day and there's going to be people that are going to say, "Man, because of you, I'm here today." That is a beautiful thing. And so Pastor Chris Hodges at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama gave the global church the most incredible gift. He put language behind this passage, and all the others, of these four things that God wants for your life. He made the vision plain so that we could run with it.
And so several years ago, we adopted the language he came up with, and we've made one small tweak to it that I'll show you in a second. But what I want to do is I want to walk you through this language that he's given to this passage, these four things, so that it can be something you can run with, that you can actually do something with. And so it is that you would know God, find freedom, grow in purpose, and make a difference. This is God's plan for your life. This is the vision that you should be running with. This is the target you should be shooting at, okay?
And there's this Japanese proverb that says, "Vision without action is a daydream." And so if you'll just give me a couple more moments, I want to give you some action to put behind this. Because it's not about knowing that God has a vision for your life, it's about doing the thing that God has a vision for your life. And so if you'll just give me a couple more things that he's called you to do, right? It's about putting action behind this. So I don't want anybody in here just daydreaming about a vision God has for you. I want you to be living it out.
And so we're going to start with knowing God. Remember, this is about an intimacy. This isn't about information. This is about a heart knowledge, that we would have a life that is fully devoted to another. That's what God wants for us, that our lives would be fully devoted to him, that we would know him personally, that we'd have a relationship with him that goes beyond just information, right? He wants more than just to practice religion. He wants you to actually be in relationship with him.
And so at CLC, the action for this is by attending services, right? You come to church, whether that's on a Sunday morning or one of our first Wednesday encounter nights or a special event that we do throughout the year that is designed to help you know God better than you did before. And so maybe that happens in the lobby, just talking with somebody about God. Maybe it happens during worship as you encounter the presence of God. Maybe it happens during the teaching as the preacher lays out a passage of scripture for you, and it's revealed to you in a new way, and now you've got this deeper knowledge and understanding of who God is.
Whatever, however it happens, but you leave this building or you log off the live stream, and you know God better than you did before. That's the goal and purpose of these services. But then you got to continue that process at home, right? Because if the only time you ever get to know God is once a week, that's a really loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud relationship, okay?
So at home, you open up your Bible, and you begin to learn more about him, and you put on some worship music in your home, and maybe you turn on the Between Sermons podcast, and you know, whatever it is that you need to do so that you can get to know. You like that shameless plug? That was for you, Jaden. But maybe you get into a group where you're discussing the Bible, you're discussing God, and you're learning, and you're growing, and you're making this journey all throughout the week in your life to know God better than you did before.
Then we need to find freedom. This is because we all have a past, right? There are things in our lives that we need freedom from. Wouldn't it be great if the moment you made Jesus Lord of your life, all of a sudden, all the problems disappeared? It'd be awesome, but that's not how it works. You can actually know God and still have junk in your life, right? And so we need to find freedom. We call it our hurts, habits, and hang-ups. That's the sin issues, the wounds of the past, the roadblocks that are in our lives that are keeping us free.
We need to find freedom. We need to find freedom from being all that God has created us and called us to be. And so we need help finding freedom from those things. And one of the ways that God designed us to live in freedom is actually to have people in our lives that can look into our lives and pour into us and help us on the journey. We all need a place where we can actually take off the mask and just be real and be vulnerable with somebody and allow them to help us with our struggles and to get through this.
And so I believe that true freedom, it doesn't happen when a preacher is standing on a stage preaching at you. True freedom happens in circles during the week, when you're in a community with somebody, when they can know your story and they can speak into you. And so the method for that, the action for you is to join a life group. These are community groups all over Chicagoland where you get into that kind of relationship, where they can encourage you and challenge you. They can point out your blind spots. They can lift you up when you fall. They can pray for you when you're discouraged. They can be there to help disciple you and make you more like Christ.
And here's the, I guess the disclaimer I got to give, and I hate having to give a disclaimer, but I think some people get the wrong idea and they think that they're just going to show up to a life group and it's going to solve all their problems in week one. Well, guess what? It took you a while to get into the mess that you're in. It's probably going to take a while to get out of it, right? It's just the reality. And if you show up on day one to your brand new life group, you don't know anybody in the group and you just walk in and you say, "Hi, I'm Brent. Let me tell you all about my childhood trauma."
It's a really awkward first introduction. Okay? And so like, take your time with this, get to know people, build relationship, build trust. And maybe you're not going to open up totally to everyone in the group, but there's somebody in that group that God has connected you with for a reason. So take your time, but we all need people in our lives that are pouring into us and helping us get rid of those issues of our past. So that's life groups.
The third one is to grow in purpose. Mark Twain said the two most important days of your life are the day you're born and the day you find out why. That might be my favorite quote in the world. It's so awesome. God has a purpose and a plan for your life. You are an important part of the work that God is doing and your life is never going to make sense until you figure out what that purpose is.
And the truth is that God didn't just save you from something. He saved you for something. There was a work for you to do. In fact, Ephesians 2:10, the paraphrase says he creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does. That means God is doing a work on this earth and he has invited you to join him in it. It's the good work he's gotten ready for us to do work. We had better be doing right. You got to be doing the thing that God created you for. He created you with a good work. So it's up to us to actually do it.
And becoming a disciple means you're actively pursuing this work, this God-given purpose in your life. And so Pastor Chris Hodges, as I mentioned before, articulated this originally as discover purpose. And so we ran with that language for a while, but it didn't really sit right with me because there's a finality to that statement that you discover it and then you're done. And I don't think that's how God's purpose works in our lives. In fact, I know it's not how it's worked in my life. There's not a one-time I discovered it. And then I was good. Like I, he adds to it. He changes it.
There's times when my purpose today doesn't look anything like my purpose 20 years ago and it's evolving and it's changing and he's adding to it. He's taking some things away in different seasons. And so we need to be in this process of always discovering, but then there's also this issue that just because you know what you're supposed to be doing, doesn't mean you're going to be good at it, right? You got to work on these things.
Like if you could hear the first sermon I ever preached, you wouldn't be coming to this church because it wasn't good. It was bad. And I don't know that I'm all that much better now, but I'm better than I was. And I hope that five years from now I'm preaching better sermons than I am right now because I want to be growing in my purpose. I want to be getting better at it. And so we changed the language this past year to grow in purpose because that's what we want for your life.
Yeah, you need to discover it, but then we want you to be able to grow in it. And so how does that journey begin here at CLC? Well, it still begins with the growth track. It's a four-week class where you get to discover your purpose and then get the tools to be able to live it out, to walk it out in your life. And so growth track is designed in four consecutive weeks and you can take it online at go.clc.tv forward slash growth track or at the nine o'clock service every week.
And I'll just say that the online option is there for convenience, but the best way to take the class is actually in person. Because when you're in person, you're actually interacting with other people. You get to hear their stories, their testimonies, you get to meet people and you actually walk away. There's people that have gone to growth track together and ended up in life groups together, have ended up serving on a dream team together because of the relationships that were formed over those four weeks. And you miss out on that when you just do it online.
So online is there for convenience if you can't make a class or whatever, but I really do encourage you go in person and begin to kind of grow in the thing that God created you for. And then we'll wrap up with this. And number four is that you would make a difference. That's God's ultimate plan for you. And I want you to do that. And I want you to do that for your life. That your life would make a difference in the lives of other people.
And so I've said it before, but it's not enough just to know what God's called you to. Like true, true, I don't know, revelation from God is found when you're actually doing the thing that he created you for. When you're actually putting action behind the thing that he's called you for. And so that begins to happen, I believe, here at CLC within the dream team. It's a place where you can serve and grow and use your gift to help others.
And so I want you to do that. And I want you to grow in your calling and develop in those things, grow in those things so that you can take them out into the community. Because what we really want to see you doing is using your giftings where you live and where you work and where you play. That in those spaces out there, you're doing the thing that God created you for. In here is where you get to practice. Out there is where you play the game. Okay?
And so we work on it, we grow here, and then we make a difference in our communities. And actually, there's a great opportunity to do just that coming up in the next couple of weeks. And so I want you to do that. And I want you to do that. On July 13th, it's Serve Day. It's a national day where churches all over the country are going out in their communities to serve, to make a difference in the world around them.
And so you can save the calendar date, or you can also go to the website to sign up for one of the plethora of groups that we're going to be participating with, that we're going to be serving. We got a team working with Habitat for Humanity, another with Together We Cope, working with Pregnancy Aid South Suburbs, Love Inc., I think, the Hope Center. What is it? South Suburban Recreation Association. There's a lot of different organizations that we're partnering with on this.
And so I would encourage you to go to the website, sign up to serve. And so that was fast. That was a lot. We're a little bit over time, but here's the four things for you again, okay? This is God's vision for your life, okay? That you would know God personally and deeply, that you would find freedom from your hurts, your habits, your hang-ups, that you would grow in purpose by discovering and then developing in the thing that God created you for, and that you would make a difference in the world by serving and reaching the lost.
This is what God wants for your life. This is what we want to see in your life. So now you know the vision. Now you know the target you're supposed to be aiming at. But guess what? It's still on you to pull the trigger. I can't pull the trigger for you. You know the target. You know what to aim at. I already warned you not to make that face that Matt made at the end of his life, but it's still on you.
It's still on you to pull the trigger, to actually put it into action, or else this is just a daydream. And that's not what I want for your life. That's not what God wants for your life. And so here's what I want you to do. I want you to prayerfully consider and ask the Holy Spirit right now, "God, what have I been failing to do? What have I put aside? What have I kind of said, you know, now's not the right time, but maybe one day, or maybe you've just been ignoring something, but maybe there's something on this list that God's saying, you know what? This is the season. This is the time where I want you to know me better. I want you to know me better. I want you to focus on your relationship with me.
Maybe the Holy Spirit is saying, hey, it's time for you to work on that stuff. You've been a little bit too okay with some sin in your life. You've been a little bit too okay with some wounds of the past, and it's been affecting how you treat people and interact with people, and you've just been, it's just part of my personality now. No, no, it's some junk that you need freedom from. So maybe it's time for you to get into a group. Maybe it's time for you to go to the growth track and discover your purpose so you can begin to grow in the thing that God created you for.
Maybe it's time for you to join a dream team and begin to serve God. Maybe it's time for you to sign up for Serve Day, that you would make a difference in your community. Maybe it's time to connect with Marcus and Crystal about that campus launch and say, you know what, God? I want to be fully committed to what it is that you have for my life. I gave you the target to aim at, but it's on you to pull the trigger.
So ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you as we pray. So Father, we just thank you for the revelation that you've given us, for the wisdom. Father, we thank you that we're not stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what to do. We're not stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what it is you want for our lives. But we have clear vision that we can run with, that we know that what you want most for us is that we would know you personally and deeply, that we would find freedom from our hurts, our habits, our hang-ups, that we'd fix that filter in our hearts.
Father, that we would grow in the purpose and the things that you created us to do, the work that you've set aside for us. We don't want that work to just be sitting there. We want to know what it is so that we can actually do it, so that we can make a difference in the lives of people around us. God, we want a great, glorious inheritance of people in heaven that would be there because of the prayers we prayed, that would be there because of the words we said, that would be there because of the cup of cold water that we gave someone in your name.
Father, that you would use us to make a difference in the world. So Father, right now, I just pray that your Holy Spirit would bring conviction and direction, bring clarity to us that we could take this vision and run with it. In Jesus' name, amen.
on May 28, 2024
