Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - What’s Next?, Part 2: Dream Again

Episode Date: October 20, 2019

Have you ever felt like something's missing? Are you longing for a clearer sense of purpose in your life? You were created for significance, not just survival. Together, let's figure out What’s Next? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, welcome today to Life Church at all of our locations. I've got really good news for you. This week, we have back the pastor of Church of the Highlands. Pastor Chris Hodges is joining us again. Next week, we're starting a brand new message series that I promise has the potential to impact your life in a significant way I cannot wait to share God's word with you next week.

But this week, I've asked Pastor Chris to share from his amazing book, next. What I love about this book is that it really helps you to take next steps. And this is one of my favorite message that Pastor Chris ever teaches that will inspire you, I promise you, to take next steps that will really honor God and make a difference in the people in your lives. Pastor Chris is one of the greatest men of God, his wife Tammy, is even better. They have five children. We have six. They love each other almost as much as we do, five kids to six kids. One of my favorite things about Pastor Chris, and not everybody would know this, but he is, in many ways, the greatest pastor I know to pastors all over the world.

He is raising up and like a spiritual father to literally thousands of pastors who come to his conferences and to his roundtables. The church across the world is better because of his spiritual leadership. Could you please help me welcome, Pastor Chris Hodges. Appreciate you. Come on give Jesus a better hearing. And clap, everybody. Come on, if you really love them, give them your best. Oh, what a joy. It is to be at life church. You know, this is like a dream come true for most pastors and leaders because you get to preach at the largest church in the entire nation. And you know, you're talking to campuses all across

the nation and the moon and Mars and everywhere else. And it is a joy. You know, true story, when I met Pastor Craig about three years into our church journey, I was really literally thinking very small. I was thinking, wow, just to build one location, and he started talking to me about multi-sight, and I'm like, well, multi-what? I take a multivitamin, but I don't know about multi-side. And honestly, they're, truly, I'm not saying this just because I'm standing here, I would say this behind any pulpit. There is, there has been no other pastor leader who's impacted my life, my leadership, and our church more than your pastor. You ought to show some love.

Come on, everybody. Come on, is that the best you God? Come on, really show it. All of our churches. It's wonderful. Thank you, my friend. I love you, and I'm grateful for our friendship. And we get on the phone, you think we just kind of laugh and cut up.

The brother goes straight to work. He's like, okay, I've got an idea, and he's reaching more people. And that's what I love about you, Life Church. You'll do anything short of sin to reach as many people as you can. can. So listen to me. Just keep serving. Listen to me. Keep serving. Keep giving. Keep believing. Keep praying. Keep supporting your pastors. Keep staying on the team. And even as the year-end approaches, I would urge you that as God blesses you and Pastor Craig didn't ask me to say this, he might not even want to me to invest in your church. I don't know of another place that's making an eternal

difference like your church is that every dollar, every hour, every moment that you serve, every dollar you give is making a difference for heaven. And God's people said it good, amen? All right. So we're going to have some fun with this one. You're really going to like this message today because we are in a little mini-series that Pastor Craig is allowing me to do

based off of my book, What's Next? And just a quick review. I basically taught last week, if you didn't catch the message, that God has a spiritual journey for you and you're somewhere on the journey, and you have another step. If you're breathing air, you have another step to take.

and I'm just honking the horn saying, hey, the light's green. Let's go. It's time. It's time. Get moving. Let's all get moving. And if the book can help, praise God. But honestly, you're in a church that can help you take next steps. I want to encourage you to do it. Get involved. Don't attend your church. Participate in your church. Everybody, okay? So let's get moving. Let's all. Let's all go. Okay. And that spiritual journey, the way we say it at Highlands is, no, God, have a deep, intimate, personal relationship with a very real and living God. find freedom, deal with your hang-ups, your issues, your past, your pain, your problems once and for all. Wipe the glasses clear so that you can discover your purpose and you can make a difference. That is God's ultimate plan for your life. It is the touchdown line, and that is that you're making a difference. I want to talk a little bit about that today, just about making a difference. Because I get the question all the time, so how? How do I'm supposed to know what I'm supposed to do to make a difference?

Like, people are confused on how to take this step. And the easiest answer is, just get involved in your church. Start making a difference. Listen, Demi, this is so simple. Right where you are. Just do something, find something. Ask your campus pastor. Ask someone on the team, how can I help?

And you'll have that sense of fulfillment. But I want to also offer another thought for you today, and that is that you have a speaking God who is trying to speak to you. So people say, well, I don't hear God. Well, God doesn't have a speaking problem. We have a hearing problem, okay? He's trying to say some things to you, and I'm going to give you a little clue into how he speaks. And that God speaks, ready for it? God speaks in the language. His language is dreams and visions. Dreams and visions. He'll give you ideas, supernatural ideas. Ideas you could not have come up on your own. And watch this. This is very critical. That dreams and visions or the level of them in your life is key to your own personal. success. And I'll read you one verse in three different translations to prove it. So in

Proverbs 29, verse 18, it says, where there is no vision, that's the word causone. Your pastor has written a book called Calzone. I thought when he first said it, I thought he said Calzone and I gained five pounds. But anyway, it's not a, it's not a Calzone. It's Calzone. It means a dream, a revelation, a vision. Where there is the lack of that, people perish. And it's not talking about a physical death. It's talking about your marriage dies, your hopes die, your aspirations die, your emotions die. And for a lot of people, they are the living dead. They're walking around dead.

They're alive but dead. And maybe all that's missing is a God dream, something deep on the inside, something that God has shown you. And I'm going to show you how you can get that today. Here's another translation of the same verse out of the new international version. And it says that where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint. so they get a case of the who cares then it doesn't matter does it and unfortunately there are too many people that that's become your life's mantra it's whatever just kind of going through you're in you're in the worst mode to be in and that is survival mode and god i don't know if you can even believe this

i just hope that something i say can make you believe you were created for significance not just for survival you do not have to stay there i like the way the yeah if you want to clap go ahead that's that's good But I want to read it to you out of the message, which is a paraphrase, and it says, if people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves. But when they attend to what he reveals, they are the most blessed. And the word blessed in the Hebrew is the word happy in your soul. There's a soul contentment found when you're doing the things in life that actually matter. So I have a simple goal today, and that is I want to get you dreaming again.

In fact, as I look back over my life, I can actually don't have time to tell you all the stories, but I can tell you the points where I'm at the best and at the worst, they have a direct correlation to how much dreaming or vision I have on the inside of me. So when I have no dreams and no vision, I'm depressed, not happy, life's not going well. But every time, regardless of circumstance, when I'm dreaming again, have vision again, I feel better. I feel healthier. And I don't know if you know this or not, but the word dream and the word health

are so close together in the Hebrew that some of the translators, didn't even know which word to put there. Like dreams and health are synonymous. I want you just think about that for a moment. That you can get healthy again in your soul. Your marriage could get healthy if your marriage had a vision. Like your life could get healthy if your life had a vision. No, no, my life would be better if my next door neighbor's dog would stop barking. No, no, no, no, no, that's not, that circumstance is not determining your happiness. Your dreams and your visions and your revelation are. Are you listening to me, everybody? This is really important. Because remember from last week, we're trying to get you flourishing.

Psalm 126 says it this way. When the Lord, watch this, restored the fortunes of Zion. That's the church. That's the type of the church. We were like those who dreamed. So when I was in the process of being restored, it's because I was dreaming. It's what the Bible is saying. Now, watch the result.

And our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with songs of joy. I want to get you back to that place. Now, Pastor Craig, I actually preached this message at a conference we were both speaking at recently, and he actually applied what I'm getting ready to tell you, which is a great goal for my life. That Pastor Craig, all right, so anyway. But several years ago, I started a bucket list. I don't know if y'all know what a bucket list is, but a bucket list are things you want to do before you kick the bucket. Here's the story.

I am not trying to name drop, but I'm personal, close friends with the great leadership. guru, Dr. John Maxwell. He's kind of like a father to me, and I spent a lot of time with him. And in 2008, on his 61st birthday, he called me and me and about six other guys, and he said, hey, come down to Florida where I live. Let's celebrate my birthday, just the eight of us. Let's play some golf. Two foursums are like, I'm in. You know, so I flew down. We played golf. But in the evening, John likes to watch movies. Now, I'm not a movie person. Like, I might not even see one a year. I just, I'm just not, I can't even tell you why. I'm not a movie person. But John likes to go to movies. It's his party. Let's go to the movie. So I thought,

they got popcorn. Come on, somebody, right? So I'm going to make up for the, I'm going to redeem the time in a great way. And so anyway, so he decided to go to the movie called The Bucket List. That's the one he chose. Now, I cannot, by the way, recommend this movie. There were some parts in it that I know grieved the Lord, but I remember, but I remember this movie actually had a great moral to the story. Because if you know anything about the movie, it's a, it's a rich guy and a poor guy both dying of cancer. And the poorer guy was making a list, a bucket list. And the rich guy says, man, I got the money to pull that off. Let's go. And said, look, we only have a few months. Let's do everything on that list. Moral of the story, they went and did all the, what they thought

were going to be the real things of life, the thrills, jumping out of airplanes and racing cars, et cetera, and they found out that life was about a whole lot more than that, and it was a beautiful moral to the story. So after the movie, John says, how many of you guys, speaking to the two foursums that he put together, how many of you guys have a bucket list when no one did? And being the great leadership mentor that John is, he says, all right, you have an assignment. Go back to your hotel rooms. Before we play golf tomorrow, we're going to meet for breakfast, and I want at least five items that you're going to start it, start it. So I went back to my hotel room. room and I started. I actually came up with eight in my first draft. Today, I have more than a hundred

items on my bucket list. It's become so much fun to do. And a bunch of them are fun, just kind of silly things. Like, I want to, and I still haven't done this one. I want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and kiss that woman right over there. My wife. Come on somebody, right? I hadn't done it yet. But also have some ministry things like I do want to build a ministry leadership academy that is placing 100% of the graduates, and we are well into that. I do want to plant 2,000 churches with Arc, and we're doing that. Yeah, it's fun things. And I have dreams like, I want to lead our church to give $20 million a year. We're not close to that yet. We're getting there, but have some dreams. And so they're thrills, family, ministry, et cetera. You need to start one.

But one of the items on my list is something that I know can't physically happen. And I'll just tell you ahead of time when you start your list, you're going to have this tension of, do you put things on the list that you know cannot happen? And let me just tell you the answer. Yes. Because we serve a God who's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think. And that's not just a cool verse. It's true. So on my list was to fly in a supersonic military jet. And I had that dream because I spent seven years in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and I actually taught a religion class at the Air Force Academy. So all things Air Force just kind of jumped on me. And I just, I deeply love our Air Force. And so I put it on the list, and I'd already researched it. So there used to be

what was called a civilian ride program where they were, but you had to be of stature, like a senator or something like that. And every once in a while, they'd let a civilian ride along. And I said, so I worked everything I could. Well, they shut the program down. They don't even allow that anymore. So I'm teaching dreams to our church just like I am to you. And I said, hey, look, you're going to put things on your list that can't physically happen, keep them on the list. And I didn't know why. I said, for instance, I want to fly in an F-16. Well, in the middle of our auditorium on that Sunday, we're two colonels sitting next to each other in the Air Force.

And they looked over each other and said, hey, let's see if we can make this happen for PC. Yeah, let's see what we know. That's what they call me, PC. Pastor Chris. It's like, all right, I didn't know this was going on. For the next five months, they vetted me through the Pentagon. It went all the way up to the Secretary of Defense. It went through their program.

And at Christmas of 2010, they walked up with a letter from, and they said, on behalf of the department. Come on, somebody, defense. You have been invited. And I was like, are you serious? And they said, yes, if you can pass the physical exam. And you can look at me and tell that that happened. Come on, somebody, right?

Next. You know, so, right? And if you'll go through the train. So I did. And in February of that next year, I got to fly in an F-16. Y'all, we, you know, listen to this. We took off, and right until you got to the end of the runway, he turned that plane straight toward heaven. We went to 17,000 feet in three seconds. He lit the afterburner, and I pulled seven Gs at seven times your body weight. We were up there for over an hour. I flew it for 15 minutes. I barrel. He said, hit it.

Like, what? You're yours? I spun that bad boy. Come on. I have about 40 seconds of video. You want to see it? Yes or no? Yes? Come on. Show it to them, guys. Show it. Somebody. Come on, somebody. Hey. Keep dreaming. Keep dreaming. And I learned two things that day. Number one, don't eat lunch before you get in a plane. I didn't throw up, though. He said, man, you must have a steel stomach because he tried to make me throw up. But I also learned something that day, seriously, that I would. never say never, ever again. And I would allow my heart to dream. And God has so much more for us than just plain rides. I promise you that. But I learned a beautiful spiritual truth. And I want to

stir it up inside of you. Please look at my eyes and hear this, because if you do, you're going to feel health. Trust me, when I say it, you won't know it till you do it. When you start allowing your heart to dream, connecting with your living God, who is speaking to you and has wonderful things to tell you, and he has a place in his grand design, custom made for you. You got to get yourself dreaming again. So you have an assignment? I want you to go home and at least start a bucket list, everybody. Just get it started, have some fun things on there, have some meaningful things that will change the world as well. There are five different types of people in our auditorium today at all of our churches. The first type of person is someone who has no dream. You have none. So you have no

dream. You have no vision for your life. And I'm not trying to be ugly. I'm not really of a confrontational type of a preacher. But chances are if there's no dream, there may be no God inside of you. There may be no, you've not connected with the living God. Let me say it this way. You may not have faith in God. Because Hebrews 11 is very clear. It says that faith, when you have faith, it is the substance of things hoped for. As soon as you have faith in your heart and you get close to God, God is going to drop dreams inside of you. In the early church, when God established his church, the first thing that happened in the outpoint of the church in Acts chapter 2, it was the fulfillment of a prophecy that you're going to dream and prophesy and have visions.

This is what the church does. Can I hear a better? Amen, everybody. This is what we do. When we connect with our living God, we dream again. And for some of you, you need to take that step. You need to say, you know what, I need to get close to the Lord. I need to maybe I'm not even hearing God because I have so many competing voices going on in the inside. And sometimes in order to hear God's voice, you have to turn down the world's volume and allow God to speak to you. And I'm urging you to get close to the Lord again. Jeremiah chapter 33 says, call to me. This is God speaking. Call to me. And I will answer you. And watch what he does when I answer you. And I will show you great and mighty things, which you do not know. God's begging us to get close to him in prayer.

and don't let just the conversation go in one direction. Well, I'm just going to dump all my problems on God. No, no, no, no, pray and listen. I pray and keep a pad near where I pray in my home office because God speaks to me and gives me ideas and God desires the same thing for your life as well. For some of you in this room today at one of our churches, you're this type of person.

You have a wrong dream. And when I say a wrong dream, I'm not talking about a bad dream or even a sinful dream. It may be good. It's just not God. You've allowed yourself to dream about something that has only earthly pursuits in it, and there's nothing connected to God. Now, God does not mind you pursuing things.

But you have to hear this, that God has so much more for you. I want you to experience the joy of knowing that you're a part of something that God is doing on the earth, everyone. Paul said in Acts chapter 20, verse 24, however, I consider my life worth nothing to me. if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me. Paul literally said, I have found the greatest joy of my life doing that which God asks me to do. How do I get to that place? How do I get to a place where I have a God dream? I don't know how to stay it any other way other than to surrender your life to Jesus.

And what I mean by that, I say, God, you can have my life and you can have my things and you can have my possessions. And really, God, I only acquired all of these because you gave me the ability. to in the first place. Amen, everybody. I mean, we only have what we have because of a generous, loving God, and that we just turn right back around and say, God, use this. Use my car, use my ideas, use my house, use my pool, use whatever I have. God, I want to leverage those for eternal purposes and just daily surrender to God and to his purposes is one of the healthiest ways to live. I really, honestly, I kind of grew up. I never thought that much of myself. In fact, I still

battle with feelings of inferiority. That might surprise you, but actually failed my speech class at LSU. Not at Harvard. LSU, everybody, okay? Okay? They don't know. All he speak English down there. And I, you know, okay, so, because I was so afraid to get in front of people, and I was not living the best version of myself. And it was after a service like this where someone was challenging me to live for God. And I thought, well, that's for everybody else. That's not really for me, that I went after the service. It was a Sunday night service at my church. And I'm going to tell you, God was messing with me. And I went behind the church in this vacant field. It was a football field for the Christian school of that church. And I paced back and

forth. And I didn't do anything other than say, God, you can have it all. You can have my life, my dreams, my career, my marriage. I wasn't even married yet. You can have it all. God, I'll take everything that I have belongs to you. And that's where I heard the call of God on a football field after a church service that I was called to the ministry. I'm just telling you, you got to make sure that the dream that you're living out is not just something that's just for yourself. And if it is, you probably have sense that emptiness, even in your own pursuits. Here's the third type of person. And as you have a good dream, but it's just gone stale. I call it a stale dream. So it burned at one point. You were fired up about it. And either

probably through delay or through some set of problems that you did not plan on, it's barely flickering. It's kind of just barely hanging in there right now, and it's dying out. And that's perhaps why God had me come to Life. Church to be at this service with you watching or you attending today just to have this crazy Cajun from Alabama to blow on your dream and say, come on, let's burn again. Let's get this thing. Come on. You all right, everybody. Let's just dream again. And here's what I know. I've been a Christian for more than 40 years now, and I've been in ministry for 36 years now. And here's what I do know about a stale dream, and that is you don't casually go back into it.

So if that's where you are in these different five types of people, if that's where you are, you don't casually go back into it. Just take my advice. You'll probably have to do something radical to get it back. And for me, I'll just tell you what I do, and I'm not saying you have to do this. I'm just telling you for me, prayer and fasting works. I take time and try to separate as much of the world as I possibly can, and I try to connect as much as I can to my God. Because really, some of our problems, the reason why we go stale in our lives,

we have too much of the world and not enough God. Are you listening to me, everybody? And prayer and fasting, they literally combat both of those. Fasting is not about just starving yourself from food. It's about how much of the world can I disconnect myself from, from media, from anything secular. What can I do to just create, even just for a few days, some type of separation? And can I add to the time I spend in God's word and in prayer? And I promise you, you'll see this fire start to burn again on the inside.

Paul prayed even for people in ministry. I remind you to fan and defame the gift of God that's on you. I'm here to blow on somebody today and just say, hey, it's time. It's time to get that dream back. I know it's been a long time. You've been dreaming at a long time. Maybe you've gone through a set of circumstances that's even delayed it. God still wants to do it in your life. Can I hear a good amen, everybody? He still wants to. All right, so just do something radical. The fourth type of person is what I call a vague dream. So you have a dream, but you've not spent the time that's needed to really articulate it, to dream it more thoroughly, and better. yet, it's shocking to me how many don't do this to write it down. I'm shocked at the number of people who don't write their dreams down. When there's a verse that says, it's kind of hard to understand

because it's in the, you know, it's, because it just, it's really hard to understand. It's really deep because it says, write it down. I mean, I know, I know. It's like, what do you mean, God? Yeah. He says, write it down. Write down what I reveal to you. Can I encourage you to get in the habit if you want a vibrant Christian life and a person who's living a life of purpose and someone who's making a different just to get in the habit of dreaming and then writing it down? I have things on my bucket list that I would not have done had I not written them down because I've disciplined myself to once a month read my bucket list. And every time I do, I go, oh yeah, I need to call somebody and see if I can make that happen. I need to see it back in. I need to work a little more toward that.

I need to commit this more to prayer. Write it down. Write it down. Habakkuk 2-2. Write down what I reveal to you so that he may run who reads it. In other words, if you don't write it down, you won't be able to read it. And if you don't read it, you're not going to be able to run the play. Write it down, write it. If you don't get anything else out of this message, would you please get alone with God? Start writing your dreams down. I'm just here. I'm just here. my name is Chris, I'm your friend. Come on somebody, right? I'm just here to help you take some next steps with God

because God has more for you, perhaps, than what you're currently experiencing. And I'm just trying to get you moving again in that direction. Here's the last one. And that is a God dream. A God dream. The dream that we want is a God dream. A dream that is several things.

First of all, it's God honoring. In other words, it's a dream that doesn't just puff you up or make you say, I was in of F-16. No, that's fine and dandy, and I still have those things on my dream list. But I have some things because there's going to be a day that I want you to prepare for. So I hope you know this, that there are two judgments. Some Christians don't know this. You don't just go to heaven and did you accept Jesus or not? Okay, come on. It's open. No. There is that judgment. It's the everybody judgment. It's the great white throne judgment.

it's the judgment where you're entered into heaven because Jesus paid for your sins, and you decided to accept what Jesus did for you on the cross. You do know that hell is not a place that God sends people that he's mad at. Hell is just a place that people pay for their own sins, but they don't have to. Come on, somebody, right? You understand that? All right, that's that judgment. But so many Christians don't realize that there's also another judgment after that judgment.

It's a Christian judgment. It's a judgment that doesn't determine your eternal existence. It determines, though, what you're a judgment. eternal existence is like because it's a reward judgment. The judgment seat of Christ where he says, okay, welcome in. Oh, I love you so much. And then he says, hey, I gave you this and I gave you this. And I gave you the best church on the planet. I gave you Oklahoma or Texas or wherever you are around the world. I gave you this generation. I gave the technology with the generation with technology. I gave you, in my case, all that amazing good looks. I gave you so many things. Y'all didn't have to laugh that

all right. But there is the expectation. Watch this, that you were leveraging that which God gave you. Because we want a God, we want a well done and good and faithful servant kind of a dream. Amen, everybody. It also is a dream that's culture defying. That has the courage to even stand against injustices on the earth and say, not on our watch. We're not going to allow that to happen. A culture-defying dream, a heaven-impacting dream, that we're going to plunder hell and populate heaven. That's what I love about this church, that everyone. Everything you do is focused on getting more people in heaven out of hell. Can I get a better amen, everybody?

And lastly, it'll always be a dream. I'm just going to warn you that is seemingly impossible. A dream that is a God dream will always require God's help. And so I am so in over my head. I have been years ago, to be honest with you. And the things that God has asked me to do, but it keeps me on my knees knowing that it's going to take great faith and a great God in order to pull it off.

And I wanted to close today. I want to invite the keys to come on. And I just want to read a verse, a story. And I actually was going to do this at the beginning of the message. And I felt like the Spirit of God spoke to me to do this at the end of the message. And I just want you to get out of your head. I've taught you and you've had lists. Give me this for a couple minutes.

Because there's a story in Mark chapter 8 that I want to read to you. Just receive this with fresh eyes and ears. It says, they came to Besseta. And some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. And it interesting that he brought his friend who was blind and then told Jesus how to do it. Not a good idea. So Jesus didn't touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and let him outside the village.

By the way, sometimes in order for God to speak to you, you've got to change the environment that you're currently in. And it says, this is hilarious to me. I see humor in scripture, forgive me. when he spit on the man's eyes. He asked him to touch him. Not going to do it. And so anyway, I think he did it on purpose because the guy told him to touch him.

Do the hand thing. No, I'm going to do the spit thing. All right, so anyway. Because we think Jesus is in a system in a certain way of doing it, and he's trying to get you to say, don't create the rules for me to work in your life. And then Jesus asked, after he spent on the guy's eyes,

he said, do you see anything? And the guy looked up and he says, I see people, and they look like trees. And I got a question for you. If he's blind, how does he know what trees look like? There's only one answer that he once had sight and he lost it. Because he knew what trees looked like. I see people. They look like trees.

And then you get two of the words that I wanted you to hear today, Life Church. You ready for it? Next two words. Once more. Do you know that Jesus, Jesus who had the ability to heal perfectly, prayed for the God the second time. I think those are some of the most consequential words in the story because God is saying,

I'm willing, even though you had a vision and you lost a vision, I'm ready to give you a once more kind of experience, especially for some of you guys that have been in church for a whole long time. And even your church experience has grown stale. Remember, I'm here just to get you moving. again. Once more. Once more. He's a once more kind of a God. I'm telling you that's someone that's here right here in this room and at every one of our churches today to someone who's by themselves in front of a computer screen right now. You need to know that God, come on, has a once

more kind of a touch for your life right now. Listen, listen. And once more he laid his hands on and he saw everything clearly. Father, that's my prayer for this church. In order for this church to be all that you've created this church to be, every single one of us, Lord, we need to see everything clearly. God help us to get beyond our own personal pursuits and just our own personal agenda that many of us are discovering is leading to emptiness and dissatisfaction.

God, help us to see once again. If that's you today, at all of our locations, all of our churches, you say, that's me. I need to see again. I need a fresh wind, a fresh fire in my dream again, all over locations. If that's you, would you slip your hands up right now and just say, pray for me. I need fresh vision. I need a fresh fire. That's it.

At all of our locations, would you, you're watching online. There's a place for you to join in with us. And let me just pray for you. Father, I pray God for just fresh vision. and God, let them leave here. God, following your word, writing it down, getting close to you, shutting out the volume of the world.

And I pray, God, that we get the vision that you've intended for us to have so that we can make the difference you want us to make. And all of our churches today, would you just keep your heads bowed and your eyes closed? I'm going to ask for nobody to move around. These are holy moments

where we make decisions of faith. And I believe there's people here today who say, Chris, I need to know God. I need to know God. I'm far from God. In fact, here's how you know if you are. God seems a million miles away. Did you know that the real purpose of Jesus, watch this now. This is Ephesians 2, that Jesus came to destroy the barrier between you and God so the two of you can be close. That's what salvation is. Salvation is being close to God. It's not perfection. It's just God in your life, God in a real relationship, a committed, devoted relationship.

Jesus comes and he pays for sin and destroys the barrier. For some of you, you know exactly what I'm talking about because it feels like a distance. It feels like a gap. It feels like a barrier. That there's something in the way. Would you allow Jesus' say to destroy that? He did that by going to the cross and paying a penalty for something he never did. And that is sin.

for everything that you ever have done or doing and will do, Jesus said, I'll take it all, I'll pay for it all, I'll give you my life, and in return, he just asks for the same thing. I'll give you my life. Would you give me yours? I'm not even asking you to join this church, although I think that's a good thing to do.

I wonder how many of you today need to join Jesus and say, I'm ready for that barrier to be destroyed, and I'm ready to get close. If that's you at all of our churches today, to everyone watching online, would you just say that's me? Would you just lift your hand? Come on, just at every one of our campuses or churches today, count me in that prayer. I'm ready to give my life to Jesus.

Come on, Life Church. Would you celebrate with me today the number of people who are getting their life to Jesus today, letting that barrier be destroyed and coming into a real relationship with God? Right there where you are, you're watching online, church online, wherever you are. just pray this prayer right there in your heart say, Jesus, I need you in my life. Would you please forgive me for my sin? Come inside of my life and change me. Make me more like you. In fact, at every one of our churches today, let's make a declaration, I believe you are the son of God. I believe you died and you were buried and you rose again. And today I put my faith in you.

In your name, I pray. Amen. Would you give Jesus a great praise? Come on, everybody. Thanks again for joining us today. We'd love to continue to see you grow in your relationship with Christ, and we have a great resource to help you do that. Just go to life.church slash next, and there you'll find all kinds of ways to help take your next step in your relationship with Christ. And if you've enjoyed today's message, you can find all of our messages on our YouTube channel or inside of the Life Church app. It's free and available wherever you download your app. We'll see you next time.