For more than 150 years, the people of Menlo Church have been investing in the future. People who have never met you and never knew your name made the investments that make Menlo Church possible today. Menlo's sacrificial and generous investments are the foundation of every Sunday service, every person baptized, and every moment where hope overcomes despair. This is Menlo's legacy. The story we're a part of.
It's our turn to make a significant strategic investment in the future of Menlo Church as we work together to bring hope to everyone by living out our identity in Christ every day. There are still millions of people who live every day with chronic hopelessness. They don't know that a different way of life is even possible. God has invited us to be an endearing gospel presence in the Bay Area. To live out and share His welcome to the hopeless. To express His love and message of lasting hope in practical ways.
If we want to extend Jesus' offer of hope for everyone, if we want to see 250,000 people in the Bay Area freed in Jesus in the next 10 years, we must make strategic investments now that will enable us to be effective in that mission. That's why we're launching an initiative called Hope for Everyone. A three-year, $80 million capital investment campaign as a down payment to begin writing the next 150-year chapter of the Menlo Church story.
We're at a critical moment in our church's history. We need to make these strategic investments now to avoid greater costs in the future. We believe God is calling us to a One Fund campaign with two primary goals and three investment targets between now and the end of 2027. Hope for Everyone is a One Fund campaign, which means that all our giving over the next three years will go to this initiative. Our primary goals are 100% participation and $80 million.
If you're a part of Menlo Church, you can participate in the Hope for Everyone campaign. You can pray for Menlo as a whole and your campus specifically. You can serve. There are many ways to serve as a part of our ongoing ministries and as a part of our ministry partnerships around the community. And you can commit to give to Hope for Everyone over the next three years.
The $80 million goal consists of three investment targets. The first target is for Menlo Church to support our ongoing ministry efforts, where we consistently invite people to trust and follow Jesus, to experience hope by finding their identity in Christ. Our Sunday service for all ages, support and recovery groups, visitation, premarital counseling, student special events and camps, kids special events and camps, and any other ministry activities you can think of will be resourced by this part of Hope for Everyone. This first investment target is $40 million to fund the next three years of ongoing ministry. God willing, we are already on a trajectory to meet this goal, considering current giving trends.
The second investment target is $10 million for the Bay and Beyond. We partner with over 75 organizations in the Bay Area and Beyond to meet a wide range of needs, from community development to humanitarian aid and spiritual outreach. Our partners in the Bay Area and around the world focus on fighting poverty and human trafficking, providing care for those struggling with mental health, church planting efforts, and crisis response. Through collaboration and partnership with these organizations, we are effectively extending our reach and bringing hope to those who need it most in the Bay and Beyond.
The third investment target is $30 million for the future. Our campuses throughout the Bay Area function as our base of operations for all our ministry efforts. A part of the needed down payment on the next 150 years of ministry is making sure these locations are ready for the future. We currently rent the facilities where our San Mateo and Mountain View campuses meet, but we're still responsible for much of the maintenance costs. We will either purchase the current facilities or find other suitable locations that can be purchased. All our campuses require significant improvements and upgrades to key ministry environments.
The Hope for Everyone investment will focus on enhancing our student and kids areas, upgrading large venue technology like audio, video, and lighting, and improving fellowship areas. These improvements represent maintenance that has been deferred over the past several years and needs to be addressed now or the cost will continue to increase.
If you've never been to our San Mateo or Mountain View campuses, you may not know or be aware of the fact that there are vibrant communities there, which are creating overcrowded lobbies and kids' ministry environments that are barely adequate. We need to ensure that these campuses can meet the growing needs of the people who are finding community and hope in Christ together there.
For the last 50 years, Menlo Church and the Church of the Pioneers Foundation have worked together to help make affordability of staff housing a top priority. As a part of solidifying our future, we are supporting a fund to provide more accessible housing to new and existing staff for years to come.
As you can see, the Hope for Everyone One Fund investment of $80 million is critical for launching us into the next chapter of Menlo's story, giving us the tools we need to continue the legacy of those who have gone before us and who, God willing, this initiative will enable us to reach more people in the Bay Area than ever before with the message of hope in Jesus. Ultimately, that's what Hope for Everyone is all about. The people in the Bay Area who are living every day under the weight of chronic hopelessness.
Far too many of our neighbors have tied their identity to their achievements and efforts that don't deliver the lasting, life-changing, destiny-altering hope that is only found in Jesus Christ. They're our family, our neighbors, our friends, and our coworkers, and we can reach them with the hope of Jesus if we work together, combining our efforts to exponentially increase our impact.
What will our place be in Menlo Church's story? The writer of Hebrews, after reminding us of the actions of previous heroes of the faith, challenges us this way: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." This is the race that has been set before us, the challenge we're facing together.
Will you pray about what God is asking you to do as a part of the Hope for Everyone campaign? Will you commit to give over the next three years to write the next chapter of the Menlo Church story? God is still welcoming the hope to this homeless home. Let's continue to work together to both demonstrate and announce that the hope of Jesus is for everyone in the Bay Area and around the world.
Well, good morning, everybody. So good to see you. Maybe you're thinking, "Phil, I don't think you should get to preach anymore. I think I just heard you preach a sermon." But I'm so glad that you're here, and I hope that this doesn't just represent a new series that we're starting today, but what we believe is a movement, a fresh movement of God, not just what He wants to do through us, but what He wants to do to us for our good, for the good of the communities that we serve, and ultimately for the glory of God together.
Welcome to our campuses across the Bay Area in Saratoga, Mountain View, Menlo Park, San Mateo, and those of you joining us online. We are so thankful for the work that God continues to do in the lives of people who call Menlo Church home, and this series is about spreading that hope even wider.
If you are new to Menlo, I'm so glad that you're here, and that video probably felt a little heavy to start your experience. Maybe you're like, "Do you do that every week?" No, that's a unique thing that you've stepped into, but I hope what you see and what you feel is a community that believes that you are worth that kind of investment.
See, in life, we know that something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. And whether you believe this or not, you are so valuable to God, created in His image with infinite dignity, value, and worth, that He didn't stay far away. As a matter of fact, He gave the life of His only Son so that you could be bought back from the consequences of sin in our world and our lives, the brokenness we can see and feel all around us.
Menlo has been a place that has been investing in the future for more than 150 years. Most churches that celebrate 150 years have more windows in the building that is celebrating 150 years than people in the building. And so we are so thankful, like we talked about last week, about the nearly year-long process that we pursued through prayer, through study, through collaboration across our entire staff, our session, and our church to determine the direction that God is calling us and the energy that God has put behind it.
Today, I'm going to talk to you about the next 10 years and the first phase of that plan called Hope for Everyone. On your way in, hopefully, you received a booklet that looks like this and a commitment card that looks like this. If you didn't, you can grab them from the Info Central at your campus. If you're watching online, you can learn more and get this information at menlo.church/hope. I'd love for you to be able to look through this and check it out. Even if I get kind of boring today, you can just start flipping through.
Anyway, before we dive in, I am going to pray for us. And if you've never been here before or never heard me speak, before I speak, I pray kneeling. And the reason that I do that on a weekend like this one is because of how I'm reminded how humbling it is to lead God's people here at Menlo to be a part of shepherding you. It's the honor of a lifetime.
So no matter where you are or how long you've been here, would you join me as we pray together?
God, thank you so much. Thank you for this incredible legacy of 150 years of your faithfulness at Menlo as a part of thousands of years of your work to bring about this greater hope in humanity. And God, we long to see you work in even greater ways. So as we stand on the shoulders of giants, men and women who have come before us, God, would you give us an appetite for more than just what we want, more of an appetite than just our preferences, but that we would see our family reached, our friends reached, our neighborhoods reached. Would you help us to desire to see our city reached, our region reached, and ultimately, God, the world changed by the hope of heaven invading the hurts of this world and writing new stories in people's lives that we can only wait to see.
God, would you work in us even right now that before you do that for anybody else, you might do that in our hearts today. It's in Jesus' name. Amen.
So if this whole experience feels a little new to you, I want to spend just a couple of minutes at the beginning breaking down how we got to where we are over the last couple of years. In the spring of 2023, we began a process of prayer and discernment for the future of Menlo with our staff, elders, and key stakeholders at every campus multiple times over the course of that year. After nearly a year, we began implementing some of what we had talked about actually last week. If you missed it, you can go back and watch and listen from last week and maybe it'll be helpful for you to catch up.
And we have seen God bless the direction that God has led us on. This series that we're jumping into today, Hope for Everyone, is a part of an initiative and it's the next step in that plan that we believe we have received from God, not just for Menlo Church, but for the whole Bay Area.
Over the next several months, we, or over the past several months rather, we have spent actually hundreds more hours in prayer and collaboration and conversations through one-on-one coffees. I have drank more coffee in the last several months than my entire life up to that moment. Through small group gatherings and dinners, through vision nights at all of our campuses to bring key leaders at Menlo into the conversation so that we are in the best position to respond to God together.
And so the next four weeks will be spent focusing on these key next steps and how we can respond as a church. And we will get out of it what we put into it. So with that in mind, can I ask you for just a couple of big favors today?
First, would you attend all four weeks? I know that's a big ask and there are always other options for things that you can do with your time. But I believe that these four weeks represent the most important messages that I've given at Menlo and I think it would be really important for us to, as much as we can, be here together for them. And also, great news, if you're listening to me live right now, you've already done one. So like, you're a quarter of the way there.
Second, would you spend time with your life group discussing this initiative together? We have discussion guides for every week and we want this to be a process that we experience in circles and rows. So even if it changes your life group plan, maybe that's not what you normally do, would you please change it over the next few weeks that you might be able to hear together and respond to what God is calling you to do?
And then third, would you take this commitment card and put it somewhere prominently in your life that you will see it every day? Maybe that's like the mirror by where you get ready in the morning, maybe it's on the fridge, maybe it's by your coffee maker, maybe it's somewhere at work. But would you put this in a place that as you see it, you might just be praying, "God, what does it look like for me to respond in faithfulness to what you're calling me to do? God, what is it that you're asking me or my family to do in response to where you're calling our church?"
And then on October 13th, Sunday, October 13th, we'll celebrate Commitment Sunday together, a Sunday that I think we will talk about years from now about the move that God began to deliver here at Menlo through the commitment of His people. And I would love for all of us to be praying every day as we prepare for what God's going to do on that day and the days to follow.
Here's another thing that I just want to call out really quick. If you've been in church for a while, how many of you have been a part of an initiative or a campaign like this before? Yes, there's some hands. And I bet some of you along the way have experienced pain or hurt because of an initiative or a campaign like this. And I just want to name that. I'm sorry that you've experienced that. And if I'm honest with you, I have too.
I remember for the first time I was a part of something like this in the church that I grew up in, and it was really difficult. We had promises that got made that weren't kept, there was transparency that was offered that wasn't delivered. It was heartbreaking. And I'm so sorry if that's your experience. And I hope that what you've already experienced here at Menlo, especially over the last couple of years, is that we are committed to transparency and openness, even when the news may be difficult.
We have financial controls, including an annual third-party audit. They are second to none. And we want to humbly and honestly steward God's resources, work, and trust God's people doing that very well at Menlo. But I understand that, for some of you, that process of building trust is going to take time. And I just want to say I'm sorry that that has been your experience, and I hope that this experience can be so much better for you.
Now, if you don't know me, it might be hard to trust me, which I totally get. So for those of you who are new or newer, let me just share a little bit about my story with you. I grew up as the youngest father who was raised by his strict Southern Baptist grandmother. I became a Christian at six as I looked around for hope at home, and it wasn't available. I just couldn't see it anywhere there.
And so God leveraged a local church to be able to reach the hope of heaven into my hurting little heart. My mom had been raised Jewish, but became a follower of Jesus as a young adult. And I felt called by God to do this, to be a pastor when I was eight years old. That's crazy, I know. And maybe you think, like, "That makes sense, Phil, you got the jacket and stuff, so I figure that's probably just always been you." But at the time, it was not quite as logical as you would think.
At the time, I had already had two lazy eyes surgically corrected, a debilitating stutter, a learning disability, a reading disability, and severe dyslexia. I didn't feel like a first-round draft pick, okay? But I believed in my bones then, and I still do now, that God loves people so much that He sent His one and only Son to pay the price that none of us could afford.
As a teenager, I began to step into ministry opportunities, and over the course of decades, I've seen God use the gifts that He's given me to help lead people and churches through difficult times to a hopeful future. And I believe, we believe, that God has called our family to Menlo for the same purpose.
Over the past few years, Menlo has been through a very challenging and difficult season, with COVID and chaos and crisis. And I think that one of the big shifts that God is asking us to make through the Hope for Everyone initiative is that we must move from survival mode to revival mode.
See, the thing that happens to a lot of us when we have been living in survival mode too long, personally or collectively, is that we give up all the energy around hope. We have to stop hoping because we're putting so much of that energy into just stop hurting. We just don't want the pain to continue.
And really, I think that there is something so much greater available. See, vision, it gives the hope that can help the hurting. In the book of Proverbs, there's a passage that I've meditated on for a long time in ministry that helps think about leadership. It says, "Without vision, the people perish." I think we can see that without vision, actually, churches perish too.
See, we are watching people experience hopelessness at unprecedented rates. And we are watching churches close at unprecedented rates. But we believe that this phenomenon is both connected and correctable. On the one end, as we take a step back, there's this spectrum, and there are churches that have lost relevance, not just to the community, but the church has really lost interest in them as a result, where the culture is both being ignored by the church and is ignoring the church as a result.
On the other end of the spectrum, churches have lost reverence by conforming to the culture. See, but we are called actually to live and to lead with both conviction and compassion in the culture and communities that we serve.
So with all this as a backdrop, and the momentum that God has given Menlo after 150 years of His faithfulness to men and women who have cared so deeply for God in this place, we believe that God wants us to be people who are bringing hope to everyone by living out our identity in Christ every day. That's something we all get to do all the time wherever God has placed us.
We can't wait for people to wander in or simply hope that they'll have this curiosity around donut tables and open patios. It's not going to be enough to woo them. It's going to take major steps for us to help others find the hope of heaven. And that's what we think God is calling us to do.
See, COVID is thankfully no longer the crisis that it once was, but there is still a crisis in our moment. A crisis of hopelessness. There is a category for it called deaths of despair. And while the most recent statistics aren't fully compiled yet, the early returns suggest that the Bay Area is among the leading regions in the nation for this devastating reality.
Beyond that, we know that the mental health crisis around depression and anxiety is increasing with no meaningful change in sight. And I'm not suggesting that becoming a Christian will immediately fix all of that. I'm pro-counseling, pro-mental health support, but with Jesus at the core.
I think there is a reason why we feel this in our region more than most. If you aren't a church history person, you haven't like nerded out on this in the past, totally fine, that's okay. You probably have more friends than me anyway. But over the course of American history, we have had multiple times that we have called awakenings, that God has used at different points, even in just secular history, to be able to say something different happened through this moment in the entire country, this special moment of it.
The first one of those we call the first great awakening, and it took place in the 1700s in one region that God used to echo throughout the entire country. The second great awakening took place in the early 1800s, and the third great awakening took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The final major move that we think about at a national level happened in the 60s and 70s called the Jesus Movement.
Now, these major movements that took place and were observable around the country were so important, but there have actually also been smaller pockets of revival throughout the nation with only a few left, a few places around the country where no revival has ever been documented. Can you maybe guess at one of where those might be? The Bay Area.
We are one of the very last places in America without a documented revival. See, some churches, they'll say that if you reach their town, you could change a city. If you change their city, you might be able to change the region, but in the Bay Area we are exporting culture and technology around the world at the speed of light. Can you imagine what might happen if God were to bring a revival to this place that didn't just change us, but change the world? That's what we believe God wants to do through us.
And not just us, but working with other existing churches around the Bay Area, helping to plant churches and partnerships all around the Bay Area. We believe that God is asking us to reach 3% of the Bay Area with the Gospel in the next 10 years. That represents 250,000 people.
I know that we're probably going to need some more seats to be able to hit that target. I get it, but just kidding. See, this isn't just about what we hope God does at Menlo Church. We think that this is something that God's called Menlo Church to help the capital C Church in our region. Growing and reaching hundreds of thousands of people with the good news of Jesus to make a difference that we could see and observe for the rest of our lives and be grateful for for all of eternity.
Now as that sinks in, let's take just a look at one of the most famous sections of Jesus' earthly ministry. He's talking to a group of religious leaders who have grown very comfortable in kind of the way that they think about life and faith and the people they spend time with and the way ministry looks for them. That doesn't happen anymore. It just happened to them, right?
But Jesus was regularly hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. A designation for people who did things that made them socially ostracized or had physical limitations that people used to exclude them from society as a result. Luke, the author of this biography of Jesus' life, writes the most detailed biography that we have and he records the moment this way.
It says, "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing nearer to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' So he told them this parable. 'What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lost one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost." Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.'"
Jesus' reputation with the religious leaders was only deteriorating over the course of his ministry. And in this moment, he slows down and he shares three parables, or kind of these stories with a hidden meaning, that we're going to take a look at over the course of the next several weeks together to highlight and show his heart for people.
The first example that Jesus highlights is about sheep. And the idea of what it looked like at that time to talk about sheep, it would have been universally understood to anyone listening. Even if that wasn't something that they did, it was just in the water culturally. Not everyone was a shepherd, but they understood what shepherds did and how a moment, like Jesus is describing, would have unfolded.
And Jesus skips some details, but essentially he highlights the care a shepherd would have for even one of his sheep. Likely, as he's telling the story, the shepherd has left the other 99 sheep in the care of others and he ventures out from the group. He didn't wait for the sheep to find its way back because he knew that a sheep's instincts, that a sheep's sense of direction, and a sheep's personal ability to avoid danger were almost comically bad. The sheep was never going to find its way back to church. I mean, the other sheep.
So the shepherd goes looking. And the shepherd doesn't just go looking for a perfunctory amount of time. The shepherd doesn't go looking just so that when people are like, "Well, did you go look for it?" Like, "Oh yeah, I went and looked for a long time." No, the shepherd goes looking for the sheep until he finds his sheep. And not only that, the idea, the picture, it becomes this idea of the shepherd leaning down, likely the shepherd cleaning off the outer parts of the sheep where it would have gotten painful thistles and weeds inside of its own coat, picking it up, putting it on his shoulders, probably then heading back and celebrating with the people that they cared about because of how happy he was at finding this sheep.
Now, it's moments like this for me as I read the life of Jesus that I just wish I had a video feed of where Jesus was looking when he was telling each part. Because I feel like he was probably looking at the group of people, the sinners and tax collectors as he's telling about the heart of the shepherd to go find the lost sheep, about the care to be able to celebrate that lost sheep who once was lost but now is found.
And I just wonder, I just wonder if after that part, he then makes eye contact with the religious leaders that one line, "Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."
Now, just to be clear, everyone needs repentance. As a matter of fact, it's been said through kind of church history, the way that theologians have talked about this, that as a follower of Jesus, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, basically you're signing up for a lifetime of repentance. That's what transformation is. Regularly seeing the path that I'm on and the incremental transformational reality that as God makes himself known to me, I'm changing the path that I'm on to more and more align to the path that Jesus is on.
But the religious leaders, they didn't feel like they had that need for repentance. For them, they thought, "I think we're good, certainly when I compare myself to them and what they're doing." And that subtle shift for the religious to be more interested in their agendas than God's priorities, it's an easy drift for any of us to fall into.
Sometimes we get wrapped up in the question of what is God's will? And sometimes it's hard to discern it in a specific situation. But there are some really big priorities like this one that God does not leave us guessing. He's not saying, "Oh, ask me about it." He's saying, "I'm just going to tell you about what my perspective around people really is."
And the provocative thing that we see in this parable from Jesus is that the shepherd did the pursuing. As a matter of fact, this parallel that that's how God works, it hasn't changed. That's an amazing idea. That if you are a follower of Jesus, you are a follower of Jesus not because you figured it out, not because you were smart enough or good enough or savvy enough. As a matter of fact, one of Jesus' closest followers, the Apostle John, puts it this way, he says, "We love because he first loved us."
If you're a follower of Jesus today, you didn't figure this out. God found you out. And we believe that God's still in the business of doing that today. That God loves the Bay Area and the people in it. He's pursuing them just like he pursued you. And he wants to use us, he wants to use you as an instrument of his love to fulfill that mission.
Statistics about how many people are followers of Jesus in the Bay Area are very difficult to get, but an undisputable reality is that we are among the least church regions in the entire country. But I believe that we're at a unique cultural tipping point in our moment. See, the promises of secularism are falling flat. The idols of accomplishment are leaving people empty. The worldview that says you can have success without purpose, and you can have purpose without God, isn't working.
See, the epidemic of hopelessness, it's an urgent need. And one that people are increasingly open to a different answer to address. Even as a growing church, we want to ensure that our current campuses represent permanent commitments to those communities that we serve. And that they can be improved to the level that helps us to endear ourselves to those around us, to reach the communities that we serve, to be a blessing all the time, not to just the people that call Menlo home, but to the people who have homes right around ours in all the communities and places that we serve.
You know this to be true. We aren't, in 2024, starting at even footing. We aren't starting at zero as the church in the Bay Area. As a matter of fact, we're starting at a deficit. Oftentimes what we're doing in the communities that we serve is that we're working our way back up to zero to believe that the church could even just be neutral, let alone good for God.
And reinvigorating our campuses for the season ahead is critical to clearly communicate to the people in the places that we serve that God sees them, that God loves them, and that we do too. We want to be the kind of place that we're making such a difference in the community that people would say, "You know what, I may not believe like they do, I may not think like they do, I may not live like they do, but I'm glad they're here. I can't imagine our neighborhood, I can't imagine our community, I can't imagine our city, I can't imagine our region without them."
This initiative, it represents phase one of a 10-year plan that will include church planting initiatives, a Bay Area church network so that we can determine real growth, not just transferring Christians, and strategies like a fully implemented residency program that brings the best and the brightest to the Bay Area. It will be developed and deployed in ministry at Menlo and beyond.
Throughout this initiative, I'm asking you to do three things. One, I'm asking you to pray. And for some of you, the first thing that you need to pray about is that God would expand your personal vision for a greater extent of hope of what He wants to do in your life and through your life.
For some of you, you go 3%, 250,000, that feels unbelievable. Why would, that feels way too big. Well, the scriptures tell us that God's not willing that any would perish, but that all would come to know Him. So I think the heart of God says 3%, that's a good start.
And so being able to say, "God, maybe I've settled, maybe my faith has become complacent. God, maybe I've gotten to the place where I've just decided that it's comfortable for me, and the we that I know, the people that are immediately around me, they know Jesus, or I've told them about it, but I just can't let my heart expand to the way you feel about the Bay Area, God, because it would break for the condition of the people that are right around me, the people I drive next to, the people that I work next to, the people that I sit next to in class."
And God is saying, "The closer you get to me, the closer I want you to get to my heart, and my heart breaks for the condition of the community you live in, because I died to provide a way back for the very people that sometimes we ignore."
So number one, pray. Number two, serve. Now, you know, as we think about what the Hope for Everyone initiative looks like, it's the everyday, real-life ministry that makes Menlo happen, and one of the things that's taken place over the course of the last several years is we have a lot more people who are coming to Menlo now than we did just a couple years ago. We're so thankful for that, and we believe that part of what this initiative represents is the opportunity for a lot of people to go from spectating to participating.
And then finally, third, is to commit financially, and that's why I'm asking you to take this commitment card, put it in a prominent place, and pray for God to speak to you through it over the coming weeks, so that on Sunday, October 13th, we can come together and respond to God as a community.
Now, these are not like streaming services, where you pick the one you want and then leave the others behind. If you're a part of Menlo Church, through this next three-year Hope for Everyone initiative, we aren't talking about, like, "Do I want Disney Plus or ESPN or Hulu? Like, which one makes sense?" No, no, no. Think about this like the Hope for Everyone bundle package. We're all in for all of what God is calling us to do.
I hope everyone who calls Menlo home will choose to participate in this. I think that one of the greatest steps that God is asking us to take is for everyone to just say, "I'm in."
And so for you, what is it that God is calling you to let hope into in your life that maybe you've forgotten about? Areas and caverns of your life that have lived separated and isolated. Maybe they're not even really that bad, but you've just decided, "This area of my life, God, this arena in my life, this relationship in my life, this pursuit in my life, God, I don't really let you into those areas."
And this hope for everyone, some of it needs to start with hope for you. Hope to believe that a good God who really loves you wants to be in every part of your life for your good and for His glory.
One of the prayers that I've prayed for a lot of years in ministry is, "God, would you do whatever you have to to me so that you can work through me?" And I'd encourage you, maybe that's part of your prayer over the next few weeks, to say, "God, I want to be able to look back years from now and see the way you worked in this season. Not for my credit, not for Menlo's credit, but God, that you would get all the credit. And that the world might look different because of what God does in the Bay Area. Because we got to say yes to God, not just working through us, but God changing us too."
Can I pray for you?
God, each and every one of us walk into this room with our own set of challenges, our own set of obstacles, our own set of problems, and for some of us, God, just believing that you could do something like this is a step, an act of hope to break us from spiritual complacency. And I pray that you would.
I pray that for those of us whose church experience and faith experience has largely centered around ourselves and our preferences and what we want to make ourselves more satisfied, that, God, you would shake the substructure of our faith, that we might once again be reminded of this greater call you have placed on our life. To see more people come to know you. That we are not just a place that people come, but we are people that go. We are your hope bringers to every place and every person that you've called us to be in relationship with.
Over the course of these next few weeks, God, would you speak to us and speak through us in a way that changes Menlo Church for the good of the communities we serve and your glory. God, I pray right now that you would do whatever you have to do to us, that you might be able to work through us. We give all of this to you.
on Sep 22, 2024
