Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Step Out of Your Boat

Episode Date: July 5, 2020

REOPENINGTo ensure safety at all of our Life.Church locations, our weekend services have been redesigned to create a sanitary, touchless environment that allows for physical distancing. Learn more about everything we're doing to keep you safe and how you can help by using hand sanitizer, washing your hands often, and more:: https://www.life.church/updatesNEXT STEPSHave you made a decision to follow Jesus? You may be wondering what’s next on your journey. We want to help! Let us guide you to your next steps in your walk with Christ: https://www.life.church/nextWELCOME PASTOR JOAKIM LUNDQVISTPastor Joakim Lundqvist is Senior Pastor of Word of Life Church in Uppsala, Sweden, with 3,200 members and an international network including over 700 churches. Before stepping into the ministry of Senior Pastor at Word of Life, Pastor Joakim founded the Christian cross-denominational student organization New Generation in Sweden. His 30 years of experience in youth ministry shines through in his creative sermons, aiming to relate to every generation. He is married to Maria, who serves as Music Director at Word of Life, and they have two daughters, Evelina and Julia, who are also both involved in the church and ministry. CONNECT WITH PASTOR JOAKIMInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/joakiml  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joakim.lundqvist  Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/joakimlundqvist  ABOUT LIFE.CHURCHWherever you are in life, you have a purpose. Life.Church wants to help you find your next step. Our hope is that your journey will include joining us at a Life.Church location throughout the United States or globally online at https://www.live.life.church. Find locations, videos, and more info about us at https://www.life.church or download the Life.Church app at https://www.life.church/app. FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/life.churchInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/life.churchTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/lifechurchCONNECT WITH PASTOR CRAIGYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIIdiIO-Y20hRW9niR0CA8AFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/craiggroeschelInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/craiggroeschelTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/craiggroeschel Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Praise God. I am so honored and I'm so pumped to be with you today, Life Church. This church is amazing. If you didn't know it already, it's affecting and impacting and empowering people from all over the world, really, even across the pond where I live. And I'm so happy to be here. And thank you, Pastor Craig and Amy, for being world-class leaders, for giving your best to empower and raise up a new generation of leaders. We are so happy for you. We are so thankful for you. I appreciate our friendship so much. And thank you also for allowing me to share the word here this morning.

So, my name is Joachim, and here we have the first problem, because I know that's a hard name to pronounce if you speak English. So let me just give you kind of a... You really have one of two things to do here. Either you can call me, Pastor, you're welcome. And you can't get away with that. Or if you want to take it a little closer to the original version, imagine a rapper greeting the North Korean dictator.

Yo, Kim. That will take you in the vicinity. I'm married to Maria, my best friend, life companion. We have been married for 33 years. And God has blessed us with two amazing daughters. Evelyn is 30. Julia is 27. Julia got married five years ago and now she has two sons of her own.

Everybody goes, ah. It's a bit ironic from a biblical perspective, guys, because the one with a hair, that's Zion, and the one with no hair whatsoever, that's Samson. Crazy as it is. So apart from being a husband and a father and a grandfather, I am also so thankful to God that he allows me to be a pastor of Word of Life Church in

Sweden. Now, Sweden is, if you didn't know it, it's a cold but beautiful nation in the north of Europe. It's governed by two princesses called Elsa and Anna. And they all reside in the castle of IKEA. Maybe you heard about it. I was seriously, you know, Sweden is one of the most secularized and one of the most socialistic anti-Christian nations in the world. But you know what? My Bible says that we're sin abound, grace would abound even more. Grace would have abound. even more. And by that grace, my friends, we have now been able to start over 700 churches in former Russia, in Central Asia, in India, in the Middle East, and all over Europe. Thank you, Lord. It's still amazing. Of course, you need, you guys need to come and visit. Please come. It would be

great to have you. Just don't come in the winter because you would die. And we really can't have that happening. So today I want to share a message with you that I call Spirit comes, church goes. Spirit comes, church goes. And we're going to start out in the book of Acts, the second chapter, read the story of the day of Pentecost. It says from the first verse, when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now, they were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken. Now I read this passage of scripture so many times, and every time I assume that there's one thing going on here. It's the Holy Spirit coming upon the early church to empower them to fulfill the great commission given by Christ in the previous chapter. You shall be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. But then the other here, I read these same verses again, and it was like my eyes popped up a little wider than before. and I realize there's not only one but two things going on here. The spirit of God is not doing one but two things.

See, he's doing one thing in the church. He's stirring boldness and inspiration to go out and preach the gospel of Jesus. But at the same time out on the street, that spirit is also doing something. He's stirring questions and curiosity in the people that are about to hear. So you can say that one group, the church, is prepared. to speak, but at the same time, another group is prepared to listen. One group is prepared to share the love of God and the gospel of Jesus, and at the same time, another group is prepared to receive that message. Praise God. And we started teaching this in our church and praying for this

to happen and started to realize more and more that every time we, as a church, come together. And we come in to the presence of God. And we come into the, praise and worship atmosphere and the spirit starts moving in our hearts. At the same time, we're starting to dare to believe that out there somewhere there will be a neighbor, a relative, a colleague, a classmate. Someone in your world is at that moment being prepared to receive the message that you are being prepared to share. And as we started kind of going in that direction and expecting that to happen, we've seen so many miracles. I need to tell you. I need to tell you. you about just one out of many. There was this guy in Sweden. He came from the Middle East as a

Muslim refugee. He was 25 years old and he ended up in a city about one hour north of where we are. So trying to settle into this cold nation now, this guy was trying to do the best of it. But then last summer, he had a very, very special experience. Every night as he lay sleeping, he had the same dream over and over again. And in the dream, he saw a big auditorium with thousands of people who were standing like this. And this guy was a Muslim. He's never been to a church. He didn't know what to do with this dream.

He couldn't relate to what was going on. So we started to head to the streets of his city asking random people, excuse me, do you know of a big auditorium where thousands of people are standing like this? Now, brothers and sisters from America, you need to know something about Swedish people, okay? Because you guys are like world champions of social interaction. Swedes, not so much. You actually talk to each other over here. A Swedish has got very big problems with that.

If a sweet comes over here and a sweet will go into an elevator and there will be a guy in there, an American, that American probably say, what's up or something. And Sweden will be shocked. Why is this man referring to an app on my phone? What am I supposed to do with this information? How do I respond to it? Because in Sweden, normally strangers don't talk to one another. So this young Muslim man absolutely no success.

Everybody thought he was an idiot simply for addressing people that he didn't know. So he thought to himself, it's a big auditorium that I see in my dream. So maybe it's in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. So this guy goes on a train to Stockholm to try to find this mysterious auditorium that keeps popping up in his dream every night. And when you go from his city to Stockholm, the last station you pass by is our city of Uppsala. So he passed us by, he came to Stockholm. And then he exited the train and got out on the platform.

On the platform, there is a man standing there. This young Muslim has never seen this guy before, but it comes straight up to him. And he says, ma'am you went one station too far you need to go back one station and this muslim says uh thank you and then he goes back on the train and he goes back one station to our city and then he hits the street and he asks the first person that he sees excuse me do you know of a big auditorium where thousands of people are standing like this and this guy says that's word of life church everybody knows that So he gets directions to our church.

He arrives at Saturday night. He comes into our church auditorium. The first time he's ever been to a church. It's Saturday night thousands of people standing like this, worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. And the first thing this young Muslim hears is the altar called, maybe you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus. He hears the gospel, he opens his heart,

and he accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord. And it was only after that we realized the whole process that has gone on before. The amount of heavenly coordination that went into this project. God gives this guy a dream and puts it on repeat. And then he places an angel on the Stockholm train station to guide him to our place. When he enters our auditorium, he exactly identifies it from his dreams. He remembers, he recognized the balconies, the color schemes, the back, drop everything. And we realize that's how much God loves one single individual.

Praise God. Truly, he's preparing us to speak, but it's also more than we realize, preparing our world to listen. So if God prepares us, and if God prepares the world, then what is our part of play in the whole equation? What are we supposed to do? Two things, my friend. And number one, simply this, dare to believe that the Holy Spirit is with you. Dare to believe that the Holy Spirit is with you. Jesus says in Luke, sorry, John chapter 14, this is the very first time that he goes in depth speaking to his disciples about the Holy Spirit that will replace him on earth. And he says, verse 16, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.

I find it so interesting that when Jesus now introduces the person of the Holy Spirit, the first thing he wants you to know is not that this spirit is big and powerful, although he is, and it's not that this spirit will give you goosebumps and emotional experience sometimes, although he might. The first thing Jesus wants you to know about the Holy Spirit, is that he will never, ever leave you. He will always be there. He will always be there.

And this means that there will be days when you feel his presence and how we love those days. But that also means that the days where you don't feel anything at all, he is just as much with you. Because hear me out, church, the Holy Spirit is not with you because you feel him. He is with you because Jesus promised. would be and Jesus never lies. Sometimes you just need to add extra faith to the promise of Christ

that the spirit will always be with you. And I was on a plane the other year and I was going to the Pharaoh Islands. I'm introducing a whole lot of European geography here. The Pharaoh Islands is a small group of islands in the middle of the Atlantic. I don't know how they ended up there. I don't know how people ended up there. But I was going there to preach at an Easter conference. And And I was sitting there minding my own business, reading my Bible, getting my heart prepared for the messages. Next to me was a huge man. Let's just call him extra, extra, extra large in every direction. And apart from being huge, he was also drunk.

Derrunk. He was so drunk, I was almost intoxicated by the fumes that came out of his body. And again, a little lesson in Scandinavian behavior. Because he was very drunk, he was very loud, and because all this plane was filled with Swedish people, when somebody is very loud in Sweden, everyone else quiets down. So now this guy has got a solo performance on the plane.

He's sharing with everybody, whatever pops into his mind and heart, and we have to listen regardless of whether we want to hear him or not. And on top of that, he's making gestures as he shares his life story. and he keeps punching me as I'm sitting here reading my Bible. He's seriously messing with my holiness here. And maybe you sit there and you think, oh, Pastor Joachim, holy man of God, I'm sure you were praying for the salvation of his soul at that very moment.

No. I had to be honest with you, Life, Church. I honestly didn't. I pray for God to upgrade him or downgrade him or whatever grade him. Just move him to another seat. This guy is a serious problem to me. So I'm sitting there and being quite annoyed, to be honest, all of a sudden the captain comes on the speaker. And the captain says this, ladies and gentlemen, we've just been told that there's a storm on the Faroe Islands and we will not be able to land tonight.

We'll have to turn the plane back and make a new attempt tomorrow morning. We're sorry for any inconvenience. And the whole plane went, oh, that's Swedish people expressing intense anger right there. And if you ever hear a swede go, oh, run for your life, man. You're in serious danger. Everybody did, oh, apart from my big drunk neighbor who started to scream and shout, no, get this plane down. I want to see my family tonight.

And then he looks at me, and he looks at my Bible, and he looks back at me, and he says, man, you better pray right now. And honestly, I was taken a bit off guard. I was not in prayer mode at the time. I was more like an irritation and annoyment mode. The plane now goes dead silence. Everybody's listening to this conversation. I'm thinking to myself, what am I supposed to say?

So I turned to him and I say, no. I'm only going to pray if you pray with me. The plane went, oh. And he thought for a while, and then he said this. no I don't believe in God isn't it amazing that he wants me to pray to a God that he does not believe in so I said well if you don't pray with me I don't pray either I play what oh then he thought for a while and then he said this if I pray with you will we be able to land tonight oh the plane is now dead quiet. Everybody wants to know what will the Bible guys say now. And here is when I start searching

on the inside for any kind of word to pop up in my spirit, for any kind of inner light bulb, prophetic voice, inner loudspeaker, anything really, for an angel to appear, Michael, Gabriel, anyone, or for a divine finger to write on the wall, yes, Joachim, you will be able to land tonight. You just want the confirmation. There was nothing. There was not even a trace of goosebumps. No emotional experience, no confirmation. The one thing I had to lean on was the fact that Jesus said,

He will never leave me. The spirit was always going to be there. So I took probably the deepest breath I've ever taken in my life. And I said to him, yes, if we pray we will be able to land. So help me. God. Playing went, oh. So he said, well, let's pray then.

He folded his hands, bowed his head. And I prayed for him. I prayed for a long time. Extended version. Directors cut prayer. I prayed for a long time, wanting to allow God maximum time to perform this miracle. I prayed for the salvation of his soul, for his work, for his family, whatever. And then finally I said, and dear Lord, I pray that we will be able to land tonight in Jesus' name.

And I said, amen. And he said, amen. And the whole play and said, amen. No, they didn't do that. I kid you not, five seconds later, the pilot is back on the speaker saying, ladies and gentlemen, we just heard news from the Pharaoh Islands, the storm has cleared, and we will be able to land tonight. And Life Church, I'm not saying, I'm not sharing this story to make me look like some kind of spiritual superhero, rather the opposite. it. I want to emphasize and underline that sometimes you don't feel anything at all. But when you dare to believe that even in your darkest moments, even in your quiet times, even without any kind of emotional experience, he will be there just as much. He will never leave you. He will never forsake you. He will always be there. When you dare to do that, that's where the church,

prepared to share, will connect with the world, prepare to listen. That's when you, prepared to speak will connect to the world prepared to receive. Amen. It's one other thing that we need to do. One other thing that enters into our job description as God prepares us to speak and prepares the world to listen. And it's simply this step out of your boat. Step out of your boat. You know there's a story in Matthew chapter 14, an amazing story about how the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ are in this boat on the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus comes walking on the water. And there's a conversation there between Peter and Christ,

ending with Jesus saying, come. And Peter is challenged with the fact that he now have to step out of the boat that he's so familiar with. Now, we need to place ourselves in Peter's shoes here for a second or two. Peter was a fisherman. Matthew 4 says he's a son of a fisherman, which means that if he knew one thing in life, he knew that in order to move across the Sea of Galilee, you need a boat.

But you know, this story speaks to you and me, even though there might not be a Sea of Galilee around or even if you don't have a boat. Because the boat represents our safety zone. The boat represents our area of security. Our boat represents, the boat represents the place in which we have full control, just like Peter had in his boat. And it's beautiful to me that when Jesus first comes in contact with Peter and when the relationship starts to build between the two, Jesus actually comes into the boat of Peter.

How beautiful. Jesus comes to Peter on Peter's own terms. He's not demanding that Peter will take great steps of faith. Jesus comes to Peter inside his zone of security, inside his zone of safety, inside his zone of control. But then, as the relationship grew and emerged, there came a day when Jesus came walking on the water and he calls to Peter and he says, come, there's nothing wrong with your experience, nothing wrong with the boat, nothing wrong with the area in which you have full control, but there is more.

There is more And in order for you to see more You need to take a step of face You need to do something you never done before So you can see something you never seen before You need to say something you never said before So that you can see something you never seen before And I don't know what your boat is right now

And I don't know about where you are with the Lord But I know one thing that will come a day in your life as well When Jesus will say come And everything inside you wants to to stay inside your comfort zone. Everything inside of you was to stay in that place that you know and are familiar with and in which you have full control. But if you dare to step out of the boat, take a new step of faith,

there's a miracle on the other side of that step. I just want to close here by sharing a testimony of how we as a church were challenged by the Lord three years ago to take a step outside our boat and what happened as a result of that. I'm sure you will remember that three years ago, my continent Europe faced the humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of refugees came out of the Middle East. They headed out for inflatable boats into the Mediterranean Sea, and they were aiming to try to arrive in Greece on the southern tip of Europe.

And as we heard these news, how these hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing war and the terror of the ISIS, we realized Sweden panicked because we were not at all ready for what was about to happen. But we knew what was about to happen. Everyone who reaches Greece will start walking by foot across the entire continent of Europe heading for Sweden. Because at the time we had very liberal immigration laws. So God really challenged us here to how we should position ourselves in the first.

face of this humanitarian disaster. Because panic spread all over Sweden and we as pastors in our church brought together my pastors and we prayed about how we should relate to this situation now. And I just want to make something very clear. This is not a political statement that I'm making at all because I don't agree with my own nation's liberal immigration laws and I don't believe in open borders and I do realize that accepting all these hundreds of thousands of refugees like we did also meant that we imported truckloads of social problems. There's no question about that. But you see, these were our laws. And these people were coming anyway, which meant that we had really two options. Either we would distance ourselves from the situation and complain about it,

or we can step into this situation and we can believe that somewhere inside this humanitarian and disaster, there might be a seed of revival. Because my friend, to me, that's what faith is all about. Faith does not deny the problem, but faith chooses to see the potential inside the problem. Faith does not deny the obstacle, but he chooses to see the opportunity inside the obstacle. So we flew people down to Athens, Greece, to set up a welcome to Europe station. And then we coordinated all of our World of Life churches on the route from Greece in the south to Sweden in the north. So the refugees could go from one World of Life church to the other as they were heading north.

And when they came to Sweden and came into our city, we put a big banner on our church saying, refugees, welcome. Do you know what happened? I'm going to tell you, hundreds and hundreds of Muslims started flooding into our church. And we gave them food, we gave them clothing, we gave them medical care, but more than anything, we told them that God's soul loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And they were amazed because the one group that they had thought would reject them in Sweden, the Christians turned out to be the one group who embraced them.

And they said time and time again, why are you doing this? Why are you welcoming us with open arms? And we said time and time again, because the symbol of our faith is not this. It's this. And as we started sharing the gospel with them, something amazing happened. Jesus started showing up to them in visions. He started showing up to them in dreams. There was an outpouring of the supernatural.

And hundreds of Muslims started to open their hearts and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord. and Savior. Even today, three years later, 70% of all those who become saved and baptized in our church are former Muslims accepting Christ in their hearts. We even have to start a special Bible college for former Muslims now, and in two years only, we have graduated 400 students from that Bible college. You know, these guys speak Arabic and Farsi. They don't know how to pronounce my name either. So the other month, they gave me this t-shirt.

Pastor Abdullah Kim, little did I know today. Or just little did I know three years ago that I would be Pastor Abdullah Kim for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of the sons and daughters of Ishmael that we could not reach when they were in Iran and Afghanistan. But all of a sudden we could reach them with a love of Jesus and we can reach them with the gospel of salvation. Come on, church. Praise God.

And this has also opened up the entire Middle East for us. Now we have churches in the Middle East, Bible schools in the Middle East. Here's a picture of me preaching in Egypt for 10,000 Arab young people. This message was broadcasted live on YouTube. Two and a half million people all over the Middle East heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a new day, I tell you. It's a new day. But you know what? The other Sunday, as I was worshipping with my church back home, I just looked around and I looked at my church. And I saw all these people, all the hundreds and hundreds of former Muslims, realizing that a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, they bow down to another God. But here they are lifting their hands to the lamb that will slay. And I thought to myself, because I trembled inside and I realized we were this close to missing this whole thing.

And we could have missed it so easily simply by remaining in our boats. By not doing something that we haven't done before, by being afraid that we might come into uncertain territory, by acting more out of fear than out of faith. I don't know where you're going to go where Jesus calls you to leave your boat, but I know there's a miracle on the other side. And it's not just going to be about you, it's going to be about other people. We will never be able to break through as churches if we don't accept Jesus' challenge to step out of our boat on his command and believe that as we do, the church, prepare to speak,

will connect with the world, prepare to listen. We'll say amen in church. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord. So let me just pray for you, but the spirit of God will move your heart and whatever you're heading into this coming week, this coming month, the rest of this year, that you will be led by the Holy Spirit. And as Jesus calls your name, that you will be ready any time to step out of your boat and see His kingdom advance. Father, we're so thankful to you. We praise

your holy name and we thank you for the reality that you are preparing us to share a message that you also are preparing the world to receive. Father, right now, we yield to your voice. We will dare to believe that you are with us, even when we don't feel it. And we will step out of our boat as you call us to. And as we do, Father, we pray that we will see the greatest revival this world has ever seen, and we will be right in the middle of it, not for the glory of our name, but for the glory of the precious, wonderful, beautiful name, above all name, the name of Jesus. This we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Thank you so much.