The Coexistence of Faith and Doubt

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Hi, Andy.

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Hi, Eric.

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- Today is about the question that you just answered.

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What if it were safe, really safe

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to ask God anything?

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What if there were no rules or boundaries?

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What if all of it was fair game?

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What we saw was, for most of us, we'd ask Him

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about something difficult in our lives,

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about a pain point,

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about something that troubles us.

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And today we're going to dive head first

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into those sorts of questions.

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How do you wrestle with them?

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What is okay to ask God and what's not?

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Are there boundaries and are there answers?

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We're also going to wade smack dab into the tension,

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the tension between the hardship of life,

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between the painful moments and the beautiful ones,

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the tension between the questions and the answers.

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Like, the next thing we're going to do right now

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is to sing a song about

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the opposite end of the spectrum, the good.

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It's a song written by Crossroads Music,

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and it's based on a verse from James 1:17.

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It says every good and perfect gift is from above,

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coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,

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who does not change like shifting shadows.

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You may not be ready to sing it.

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That's okay. That's okay.

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Wherever you are, we're just glad you're here.

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We started Crossroads to be a church where it's safe.

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It's safe to bring your real questions,

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it's safe to make jokes,

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it's safe to just be the real, authentic you.

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Wherever you are today, we're glad you're here.

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Would you stand up with us?

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- God, that's our prayer to You.

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We want to follow You.

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We want to know You better.

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I pray that we would know You more in this space

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and in this day to day. We love you, God. Amen.

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You guys brought the heat today.

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My name is Avery. I'm so happy you're here.

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Go ahead and say hi to the person next to you

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and grab a seat.

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- Well, hey, it is so great to be with you guys.

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As Robbie mentioned, my name is Andy.

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I get to -- I get to work with

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the amazing community meeting online

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and in person on special weekends like this

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and in homes, bars, dorms, restaurants,

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breweries, all the things all over the globe.

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And I just I don't abide a liar.

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I just I don't want you guys to be lied to.

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And Robbie is my much, much, much,

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much older brother.

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I wouldn't lie to you.

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He's way older. He's way older.

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And actually, Avery, who just sang that last song,

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that's my niece.

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And, like, can we just say thank you?

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I love it, I love it.

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It's so great to be with you guys

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and I want to -- this is something that I say

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really, really frequently to our folks online.

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I say, "Hey, at Crossroads,

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we are not just content, we are a community."

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And as Robbie said, that's extra true this week

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to have people from five different countries,

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from 20 some different states as far as Japan

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and the Philippines, to be with us here in person today.

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So if you're watching online, hey, just know,

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man, we are a community you can belong to,

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not just content that you watch.

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And if you're in one of our physical locations

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or right here with me in the room in Oakley,

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the message is actually the same to you guys,

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that we are not just a thing to watch,

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we are a movement of people running after Jesus

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that we'd love for you to be a part of.

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This is like a family.

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This is a thing you can connect with.

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And so all summer long, we have all kinds of

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different ways to try and make that easier,

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try different opportunities to help you

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make this big place smaller.

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Two that I'll give you really, really quickly.

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We've got some things

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that we're calling Summer Hangouts,

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and the next one is actually going to be hosted

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by our very own teaching pastor Alli Patterson,

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who's inviting all the women, all the women

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to come here this Tuesday, the 23rd, to hang out,

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to get to connect with each other

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and to get to hear from her.

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There will be some light desserts and food, I think.

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But 7 p.m. here on the 23rd,

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you can just scan the QR code

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to get all of the details on these.

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And then secondly, for you here in our Oakley room,

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there's actually a connect event,

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a connect event right across the atrium

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in meeting room A that you can just head over

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right after service.

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And folks would love to tell you about the church

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and get to know you a little bit here,

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a little bit of your story.

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Cool? Does that make sense? Okay, great.

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So man, this really is, this is so special

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to be with you guys and so special

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to have folks that are normally on a screen with you.

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And I want to tell you, I want to tell you

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all the things that happen, all the things

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that happen as a part of our community,

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in buildings and in homes and families

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and neighborhoods all over the globe,

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they happen not because there's

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a big corporate sponsor of Crossroads.

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They happen because normal, everyday people

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like you and me do exactly what that song

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that we just sang says.

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We're not just with our words,

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not just with a melody, but with our lives

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we say, "God, the future is in Your hands,

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and I surrender because You have better plans."

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And another way to just say that really tactilely

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is this thing that we do call the tithe,

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where we say, "God, I -- This is hard for me,

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but I believe that You can do more with 10%

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of what I have than I can do with 100."

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And somehow God works that thing out.

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And there's a place in the Bible,

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a book in the Bible called Malachi.

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There's a verse in there, you can look it up later.

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Malachi 3:10, where God says, "Hey,

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you can actually test Me in this, test Me in this.

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You can see how I show up for you

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if you're willing to trust Me with your finances."

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And so we have a thing called the Tithe Test

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where you can do that for 90 days.

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You can just experiment with tithing

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and experiment to see how God shows up.

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If you want information about

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what Crossroads believes about money,

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or you want to check out that Tithe Test,

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you can do both those things at

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Crossroads.net/TitheTest.

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Now I want to stop talking so you can hear

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from some other people I want to actually

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introduce you to some friends of mine that

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I got to do this interview with a little bit ago,

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but who are here in the room with us today.

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You're going to get to hear from them

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in just a little bit, who made it here

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dispite Microsoft and Crowdstrike's best efforts.

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I think they were stuck in Canada at one point,

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and then they sort of made it into Columbus, Ohio,

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stayed with our Columbus community pastor Vicki Diller,

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but made it here way, way, way late

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or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it.

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And they got here all the way from the Philippines

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to be here with you guys this weekend.

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And I want you to hear their story.

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- Hey, Crossroads, I want to introduce you

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to some friends of mine.

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These are Fritzi and Andre and, hey,

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where are you guys? Tell us where you're at.

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- We're in Metro Manila in the Philippines.

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- Andre and Fritzi, they are part of

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our Crossroads family,

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part of our Anywhere community,

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even half a world away.

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While they've been a part of our church for years,

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they're actually getting to visit

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for the very first time in person

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for Anywhere Weekend.

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I want a chance to get to hear from you guys

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about your experience being a part of Crossroads,

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even while, well, you've never been there

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in person, but are absolutely 1,000,000%

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a part of this church family.

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- So we're both originally born in the Philippines.

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We really grew up here.

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And basically we found Crossroads during the pandemic.

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- It's something that we were drawn into the

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we run, we go, we laugh,

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and there's just such a match of values.

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- Yeah, yeah, this this online church

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isn't just about just listening to the preacher.

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This one is like, "Hey, we're really serious

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about trying to build a community here."

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We have like a community that doesn't go away.

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For me, one of the big things, of course,

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is our small group, it's just really just community,

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a bunch of people stumbling after following Jesus.

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And we have our chat group, and we pray for each other.

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- The bottom line is we grow,

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gets us into building our relationship with God

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more firm and stronger.

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- Tell me a little bit about your all's decision

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to, like, not just participate,

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but to, like, engage and invest in Crossroads?

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- We would tithe to who was our local

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or our home church, basically.

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And since we felt that Crossroads was our home church,

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that naturally we would just try to find

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a way to just do that.

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- When was the moment where it clicked for you

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that Crossroads was your local church,

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even though it was thousands of miles away?

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- I think when you start feeding from that church,

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that's where you grow. So we're -- it's our home.

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So we give back to our home.

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We love you being crazy generous.

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We've been getting from God so much more,

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something that we don't really merit.

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But, you know, He gives it anyway.

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It's not ours. None of it is ours.

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- That's amazing. - I love it.

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- That's incredible. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

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We started, if you don't know this, we started

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Crossroads Anywhere I think 9 years ago, 2015.

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And back then it was like this idea, you know,

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it was this question which is a theme

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of our service today questions.

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And the question was basically like

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could you make a church where anyone, anywhere

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could fully belong, not just watch,

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but actually part of the community?

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And it's incredible to see, like, yeah,

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actually that's exactly what's happened

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over these last nine years. - That's right. Yeah.

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And we're just getting started,

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like that's the beautiful thing.

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We've got the proof of that right here, I love it.

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We've got the proof of that online.

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I actually -- they're like right brain left brain people.

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They're stat people and they're story people.

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So I'm a story guy, but I hang out

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with a lot of stat people now.

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So I just I'll give you a couple of stats

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in case that's your thing.

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Just last month there was like 50,000 people

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that not just, like, watched a thing or, like,

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clicked on it for three seconds

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and then scrolled on, 50,000 people, like,

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watched the entire message,

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like 50,000 people getting fed just last month,

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which is the highest in years. Like it's amazing.

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- And that's not like McDonald's math right?

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Like we've served 18 billion customers.

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You're like, there's only 7 billion people

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on the earth. How is this possible?

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That's like 50,000 unique.

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- Unique people who are experiencing Crossroads

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not in a building like this.

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It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

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I heard another one thinking of, like,

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the Crossroads Anywhere app on our phones.

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2.5 million prayers prayed in the app this year.

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And we're like halfway through. It's amazing.

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450,000 journal entries.

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People like processing what God is doing with them

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or teaching them in the app.

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650,000 people, 650,000 people engaging with God

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with a daily scripture.

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Like, I hear over and over again, people like,

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"I'm learning how to read the Bible

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and engage with God's Word through the app."

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And I just I love it. So stats, they're great.

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I like stats. I like stories way, way, way more.

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So I just for those of you that only go

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to a building like this, you only have kind of

00:28:35

experienced Crossroads from one of these seats.

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I want to kind of put you in another seat

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at Crossroads, so I'm going to tell you a story.

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Dante, raise your hand. Where are you at?

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There he is. Dante. Dante lives in Detroit.

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He's one of our group leaders.

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He leads a small group at Crossroads.

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He just happens to do it online.

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So he's got his dude group.

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And one of the guys that was still fairly new

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to his dude group.

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He was having a birthday.

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He was having a birthday and didn't have any family

00:29:03

or friends to celebrate with him because

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he was in a long term rehab facility.

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So you know what Dan did?

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He hopped in his old car and drove multiple hours

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to go be with this guy, threw him a surprise party,

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brought like cake and stuff, showed up.

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- Let's go, Dan! - The Zoom call. [applause]

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Showed up with a zoom call

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and had all the guys celebrate with him.

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Like, that's -- These are not just like

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Facebook friends. These are like real friendships.

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And I love that.

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Another one, similarly, this was just last year

00:29:35

at Anywhere Weekend.

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There was two women on sort of both halves

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of the country like way West, way East,

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and named Jill and Prue.

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And they had been in a small group together

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for like four years, gotten to know each other,

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gotten to pray for each other,

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like really, really connected in a deep, relational way.

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The first time that they had ever met in person

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was actually about 15 minutes before

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Jill baptized Prue last year at Anywhere Weekend.

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Like again, real friendships, I love it.

00:30:08

One more, one more for you.

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Some dear friends, they're actually staying with us

00:30:13

while they're here in town.

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But Mark and Carmina,

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they are sort of globe trotting entrepreneurs,

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serial entrepreneurs that are starting

00:30:20

all kinds of things in the tech space:

00:30:22

wearable tech for safety for women,

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and even microfinancing for under-resourced women.

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All kinds of things that I'm not smart enough

00:30:29

to even understand.

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That's kind of their thing.

00:30:31

Yeah, I'm not wrong.

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All kinds of things.

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And they basically -- they basically

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we were having a zoom call with them

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and they said, "Hey, I just want you to know,

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we couldn't have a church

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if it weren't for Crossroads Anywhere."

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And not only are they, like, have a church

00:30:47

that goes with them wherever God takes them,

00:30:50

we hear constantly stories of that

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where people need to relocate for work

00:30:53

or medical stuff or the military.

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You guys are a part of a church.

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You guys are part of a movement

00:30:58

that can go with you anywhere you go.

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I love the reach of our church.

00:31:03

I just want to thank you guys for being a part of it,

00:31:06

and for including us in the Crossroads family.

00:31:08

- Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you. Incredible.

00:31:13

Let me just reveal my personal secret, hidden agenda.

00:31:20

Okay? Can I do that?

00:31:22

Do you know this is a church that your friends

00:31:25

and your family, wherever they live,

00:31:28

can belong to with you?

00:31:30

Do you know this is a church that you can use

00:31:32

to share the message of Jesus in a language

00:31:34

they can understand, no matter where they live?

00:31:36

And I bring this up because this is core to my story.

00:31:39

Long before there was Crossroads Anywhere,

00:31:41

I was a kid in the Bible Belt,

00:31:43

Atlanta, Georgia, surrounded by great churches.

00:31:45

They just didn't speak my language.

00:31:47

And my parents came to Crossroads

00:31:49

and they started mailing me CDs.

00:31:50

They were like these little like,

00:31:52

Frisbee shiny things. Do you remember those?

00:31:54

- Yeah, chrome coasters. - Double as great coasters.

00:31:57

They would mail me CDs of Crossroads services,

00:31:59

and the message just made sense to me.

00:32:01

And we say all the time at Crossroads,

00:32:02

we don't believe that we're the best church.

00:32:04

We don't believe that we're the only one.

00:32:06

No, there's plenty of great churches

00:32:08

that make sense for other people,

00:32:09

but for us, we feel like our call is

00:32:11

to share the message of Jesus in the language

00:32:14

that we speak with anybody, anywhere,

00:32:17

who happens to be the same one for them too.

00:32:19

And I just want to just challenge you

00:32:20

and invite you if you've got a friend,

00:32:23

if you've got a family member who lives far away

00:32:25

and you're like, "You know, I just wish

00:32:27

that they lived closer.

00:32:28

I wish that that they could have what I have."

00:32:30

They can. They totally can.

00:32:33

You can share Crossroads Anywhere with them.

00:32:35

- Yeah. It's an interesting thing.

00:32:37

Like, if you do -- we've done it,

00:32:39

we've actually done the research.

00:32:40

And the number one reason why people come

00:32:43

to our church is not because we have cool t-shirts

00:32:46

or an amazing marketing department.

00:32:47

It's not. Bad news for us, I guess.

00:32:49

No, the main reason far and away, like,

00:32:52

first and distant seconds is just that they're invited.

00:32:55

And that's true of Crossroads Oakley.

00:32:56

That's true of all of our sites.

00:32:58

That's also true of everybody online.

00:32:59

The number one reason somebody attends Crossroads

00:33:01

digitally is because a friend invited them.

00:33:03

So, think in your mind who's someone that you love

00:33:08

that can't drive to a Crossroads location?

00:33:11

I've got a sister who lives in Bali, Indonesia.

00:33:13

I've got a sister who lives in Naperville, Illinois.

00:33:15

I've got former coworkers that have moved away.

00:33:18

This is not a marketing thing for us.

00:33:20

This is there are people who need to hear

00:33:23

the message of Jesus in a language

00:33:25

that makes sense to them,

00:33:27

that you might be the connection point for,

00:33:29

that you might be the link in the chain

00:33:31

that changes their life the same way our lives

00:33:34

were changed through this place.

00:33:35

- Hey, let's thank Andy

00:33:37

and Anywhere for being here. - Thanks, guys.

00:33:41

- You gotta move if you want to grow.

00:33:43

That's true physically and spiritually.

00:33:45

This summer we're looking at six important moves

00:33:48

you can make to experience God more fully.

00:33:51

And today we're hearing from Kyle about

00:33:54

the goodness of God from the book of James.

00:34:02

- Well, we are in this series

00:34:04

called Navigating a Life of Faith.

00:34:06

And I just want to encourage you,

00:34:07

if you've been on vacation,

00:34:09

if you've missed some weeks, whatever,

00:34:10

catch up in the Crossroads Anywhere app.

00:34:13

Last week we heard from Joel

00:34:15

with Student Takeover Weekend. It was amazing.

00:34:17

Really, really good.

00:34:19

Before that was Paco, before that was Chuck.

00:34:20

Catch up on all of it in the Crossroads App.

00:34:23

We're talking about is how do you get

00:34:26

to the destination you have in mind

00:34:28

when it comes to faith, that that place of

00:34:30

life giving safety and purpose and belonging

00:34:33

and love, how do you get there?

00:34:35

The word navigation implies something,

00:34:37

it implies you have that destination

00:34:39

and that you're actively course correcting

00:34:42

to ensure that you end up there.

00:34:44

That's what navigating is.

00:34:46

And I share that for my own benefit because

00:34:49

I am very navigationally challenged, very bad at it.

00:34:53

A few weeks ago, I was in California.

00:34:54

I was driving around and what happened to me

00:34:56

happened there, happens to me all the time.

00:34:58

I got lost. I was lasered in, focused.

00:35:01

I had Google Maps up and everything.

00:35:04

And I'm just looking at that blue spaghetti line

00:35:06

and I'm trying to match the blue spaghetti line

00:35:09

in my little phone to what I see out the windshield.

00:35:11

And I just kept taking the wrong turns,

00:35:13

and I kept getting lost and ended up in places.

00:35:15

I've been so frustrated.

00:35:17

And so I called my wife.

00:35:19

And husbands, you know when you call your wife

00:35:21

and you're looking for like, affirmation, right?

00:35:25

You're looking for her to say, "Oh, honey,

00:35:27

you're so smart and capable and wise

00:35:31

and good at stuff, it's probably not your fault.

00:35:34

It's probably Google Maps' fault."

00:35:36

You know that's what you want.

00:35:37

That is not what my wife said to me at all.

00:35:40

She gave me the gift of truth.

00:35:42

She was like, "Kyle, listen, are you getting lost?"

00:35:44

I was like, "Yeah, I can't figure out what the roads are."

00:35:47

She goes, "Okay, well good news.

00:35:48

Did you know in the corner of the screen

00:35:51

there's a green rectangle and it says

00:35:54

what road to turn on?"

00:35:56

And I was like, "No, what?"

00:35:59

I had never seen it before, literally not joking.

00:36:02

I'm like, "There's a there's a green rectangle. What?"

00:36:04

And this is when I learned that

00:36:06

there's two kinds of people in the world.

00:36:07

There are blue spaghetti line people,

00:36:09

and there are green box people.

00:36:11

Blue spaghetti line people, can I get a shout out?

00:36:14

Anybody, blue spaghetti line people,

00:36:15

just lasered in, right?

00:36:16

That's what you focus on.

00:36:19

We get lost all the time. It's terrible. It's awful.

00:36:21

Green box people, I learned recently that

00:36:23

you all have a theme song. Check this out.

00:36:29

- Dear Apple Maps,

00:36:31

I don't know what a thousand feet is.

00:36:43

- Right? Your little rectangles, like,

00:36:45

turn right in 1500 feet.

00:36:47

And you're like, I don't know what that is.

00:36:49

I've never measured anything in 1500 feet increments.

00:36:53

I don't know what to do. Right?

00:36:55

This is how it goes.

00:36:56

Now it turns out the navigational experts

00:36:58

at Google and Apple, they figured something out.

00:37:00

It's that to navigate correctly, you need both things:

00:37:04

the blue spaghetti line and the green rectangle.

00:37:07

Two things.

00:37:09

Well, it turns out faith is the same.

00:37:12

There are actually two handles that

00:37:13

you need to hold on to, two questions that

00:37:16

you need to ask if you want to make it to

00:37:18

the destination of that life giving faith

00:37:20

that you're after.

00:37:21

The two questions are these, number one:

00:37:23

God, where are You in the bad?

00:37:27

When life gets difficult?

00:37:28

Everything from everyday disappointments,

00:37:30

I stubbed my toe, I got stung by a bee,

00:37:32

all the way up to the tragedies that end up

00:37:34

defining our lives and inflicting pains

00:37:37

that never fully go away.

00:37:39

God, where are You in the bad?

00:37:41

The second question is like it,

00:37:43

but the exact opposite actually.

00:37:44

It's God, where are You in the good in life?

00:37:48

Where are You when things go well in my life?

00:37:50

Is that random chance? Is that accident?

00:37:52

Is that my own effort

00:37:54

or did You have something to do with it?

00:37:57

Now, I find that all of us have a natural wiring,

00:37:59

a default to one or the other,

00:38:00

and one is not better than the other.

00:38:02

If you're one of the bad people, you default to the bad.

00:38:06

You're somebody who sees the bad,

00:38:07

who guards against the good in your life.

00:38:10

The problem with that is if that's what you do

00:38:14

with God, if you never ask the second question,

00:38:15

God, where are You in the good?

00:38:17

If you only stick with the bad,

00:38:18

what you'll end up with is a God

00:38:20

who feels like a distant Supreme being,

00:38:24

a king or a ruler, maybe, but not a loving father.

00:38:27

And you'll struggle to ever love Him,

00:38:29

to ever feel connection because a God

00:38:31

that's like that, while that might be true,

00:38:34

what does that have to do with you?

00:38:35

They don't love you. They're not for you.

00:38:37

They're not in your corner.

00:38:38

Now, on the other side, if you're somebody

00:38:40

who naturally defaults to the good,

00:38:42

I call you the Silver Line Club. Right?

00:38:44

You get at that silver pen

00:38:46

and you just Silver Line stuff, like,

00:38:48

"Oh, I'm so sorry your dog died, but think of

00:38:50

all the money you're going to save on dog food.

00:38:52

Yeah, silver lining that thing, right?"

00:38:57

Now, the problem that you have is while

00:38:59

ignoring the bad things, not thinking about them,

00:39:02

pushing them under the emotional rug, so to speak.

00:39:04

While that might work in the moment,

00:39:06

what you're building is a very fragile faith

00:39:09

that will break when difficulty comes,

00:39:12

and it's going to come. It always does.

00:39:15

And you'll end up with a faith that's shattered.

00:39:17

If you want to make it to the destination,

00:39:19

you have to learn to live in the tension

00:39:22

of holding on to both at the same time,

00:39:26

even when it feels like it's going to rip you apart,

00:39:28

even when it feels like you can't possibly do it,

00:39:30

you have to hold on to both of them.

00:39:33

Now, my hope and prayer today

00:39:35

is that we're able to do that,

00:39:36

that we're able to hold on to both

00:39:37

and collectively together, take a step closer to God

00:39:40

and that life that He wants for us.

00:39:42

For that to happen, we're going to need

00:39:44

God to show up and talk to us.

00:39:45

Let's pray about that right now.

00:39:47

God, thank You for You.

00:39:49

Thank You for being the God who invites everything.

00:39:51

Thank You for being the God who steps into

00:39:53

our reality from the full spectrum

00:39:55

of what it's like to be alive,

00:39:57

from the triumph to the tragedy.

00:39:59

I ask that today You'd help me and all of us

00:40:01

take a step closer to You. Amen. Amen.

00:40:05

Now, today is about questions,

00:40:07

definitely about questions.

00:40:08

And question asking is a skill with a name.

00:40:11

It's called curiosity.

00:40:13

And research has shown that you hit your peak

00:40:16

skill level of curiosity at the age of four.

00:40:20

Really, really, that's when you're at

00:40:22

your prime skill level of naturally being curious.

00:40:25

And and me and my experience as a parent,

00:40:27

it definitely backs that up.

00:40:28

I remember when my son Ben was four,

00:40:31

he was in the bathroom and he just started yelling.

00:40:34

He's like, "Daddy, daddy, come here.

00:40:35

Come here quick. Come here."

00:40:36

I'm like, "Oh, no, are you okay?

00:40:38

You know, did you fall in the toilet?

00:40:39

Did the sink explode? You know what's going on?"

00:40:41

And I go in the bathroom

00:40:42

and he's standing next to the toilet.

00:40:44

And he goes, "Daddy, look at my poop.

00:40:48

Wow. It's green, Daddy. Why is it green?"

00:40:54

And it was, it looked like Hulk himself

00:40:57

had taken a dump in my toilet.

00:40:58

Like it was very -- It was, in fact,

00:41:00

here's a picture of it to check out.

00:41:08

Look, even though you don't think it,

00:41:11

we have taste here at Crossroads, right?

00:41:14

Plus, I couldn't find the picture,

00:41:16

so I can't show it to you.

00:41:19

My other son, Eli, when he was about the age of four.

00:41:22

One day he was standing with his with his shirt off,

00:41:25

and he just kind of looked down and he was like,

00:41:27

"Hey, dad, these dark circles, why do boys have these?"

00:41:31

And I was like, "oh no, no, we can't --

00:41:33

We can't ask those questions, buddy.

00:41:34

That's not -- that's not okay to ask here in Kroger.

00:41:37

Put your shirt back on.

00:41:38

You know that's not appropriate."

00:41:44

Now my son, my son Ben is now 14,

00:41:46

just turned 14 a couple of days ago.

00:41:48

And he's still asked questions, but they're very different.

00:41:50

They're not those unfiltered

00:41:52

whatever comes to his mind questions.

00:41:54

Instead, they're more born out of suspicion.

00:41:55

Something has happened to him.

00:41:57

When I ask him any question like, "Hey, buddy,

00:41:59

can you come here for a second?"

00:42:01

He goes, "Why? Why would I do that?"

00:42:04

"Hey, buddy, can you clean your room?"

00:42:05

"Why? Now? Why, why now?"

00:42:07

It's like he thinks I'm a Russian spy, right?

00:42:10

Like, very suspicious all of a sudden.

00:42:13

Way less cute than when he was four.

00:42:16

See, what's happened to Ben is what happens

00:42:18

to all of us, as we age we learn filters,

00:42:22

we learn safety.

00:42:23

We learn that saying what we really think,

00:42:25

asking what we're really wondering about,

00:42:27

it can lead to a thing called embarrassment.

00:42:29

And that might mean that we feel foolish or look dumb,

00:42:32

or somebody might think that we're unspiritual

00:42:35

or are unfaithful in certain environments.

00:42:37

And so we learn to bottle up our questions

00:42:39

to the point that by the time we're adults,

00:42:42

we naturally ask very, very, very few of them,

00:42:45

which is tragic because it turns out

00:42:48

that question asking, retaining that skill

00:42:50

of curiosity is actually one of the keys

00:42:52

to success in life.

00:42:53

Not just the spiritual life, but life in general.

00:42:56

One of the most successful consultants

00:42:58

of the last 50 years was a man named Peter Drucker.

00:43:01

He consulted across industries, across continents,

00:43:05

nonprofits, corporations in Europe and America

00:43:08

and Asia, all over the place, this guy.

00:43:10

And one time an interviewer asked him, they said,

00:43:12

"Peter, how are you able to be so successful?

00:43:16

What's the key to you being able to connect

00:43:18

and help across this broad spectrum?"

00:43:21

And his answer was, "I ask questions."

00:43:26

See, somehow one of the most successful people

00:43:28

of the last 50 years, they tied their success

00:43:31

to the ability to remain like a child.

00:43:35

I read a book a few years ago b

00:43:36

y a guy named Warren Berger, and he talked about

00:43:38

questions, and the whole book was basically

00:43:41

a call and a warning signal to say

00:43:44

we must learn to return to questions.

00:43:47

Here's one quote from the book. He said:

00:44:09

So you must become neotenous.

00:44:11

Neotenous, by the way, not the new bad guy in X-Men.

00:44:14

It's not like Magneto and Neotenous are coming.

00:44:16

That's what I think of.

00:44:17

What neotenous means is the ability

00:44:20

to retain child-like qualities into adulthood.

00:44:24

You must become like a child, which sounds

00:44:27

very similar to something that Jesus said one time.

00:44:30

His disciples were having their favorite argument,

00:44:32

which was, "Which of us is the greatest, Jesus?

00:44:34

Which of us would You say is the best, you know?"

00:44:37

And Jesus, He looks around to all of them

00:44:39

and His answer, He basically points outside the circle

00:44:42

and He goes, "Hey, I'll tell you.

00:44:44

Hold on a second. Hey, kid, come here."

00:44:46

And into the circle He calls a child,

00:44:48

maybe a four year old.

00:44:49

He puts him in the middle of the circle

00:44:51

and He gives them this answer: Matthew 18:2. He says:

00:45:07

So you've got to become like a child,

00:45:09

might be a little bit confusing.

00:45:10

You know, us parents, we know something about kids, right?

00:45:13

We know something about kids. And it's okay.

00:45:15

It's safe to say it out loud.

00:45:16

In fact, let's all say it out loud at the same time.

00:45:18

Complete the sentence with me, okay?

00:45:20

Kids are kind of stupid.

00:45:26

You guys left me hanging there.

00:45:28

I don't feel like --

00:45:30

I don't feel like you know what all together means.

00:45:34

No, kids, kids are beautiful. Kids are wonderful.

00:45:35

Loved by God, all those things. Right?

00:45:37

That's not -- I'm not trying to insult kids.

00:45:39

Kids have infinite value. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:45:41

And multiple of my children decided

00:45:43

the best place to store crayons was in their nose.

00:45:45

Okay, so just saying, when you're a kid,

00:45:49

you're not at the peak of intellect.

00:45:50

And so when Jesus says become like a child,

00:45:54

does He mean that in order to approach faith

00:45:56

you have to check your brain at the door?

00:45:58

Like that logic that you're naturally gaining

00:46:00

you have to fight against?

00:46:02

And if you can do it, if you can somehow

00:46:03

detach your logical mind and put it on a shelf,

00:46:05

then you can step into faith?

00:46:07

Is that what He's saying?

00:46:09

No, not at all.

00:46:11

See what he's saying is you have to

00:46:13

humble yourself to go back to that spot

00:46:16

when you were four years old

00:46:18

and you genuinely just ask and said whatever

00:46:20

it is you were feeling and wondering,

00:46:22

that's what you have to do.

00:46:24

Jesus says, "Ask Me questions, become like children."

00:46:29

Matthew 7 He actually said it. It said:

00:46:42

Ask and seek.

00:46:45

Seeking, by the way, is just a way of saying ask.

00:46:47

And it's an incredible promise.

00:46:49

If you seek Him, you will find Him.

00:46:53

At Crossroads, one of the badges that

00:46:55

we've worn for years is we are a seeker church.

00:46:57

And sometimes inside of the circle of churches

00:47:00

that's used as kind of a derogatory term for us.

00:47:02

It's saying, "You know, you water stuff down

00:47:04

or you don't -- you don't say the full truth,

00:47:05

you're trying to make it easier, whatever."

00:47:07

And it's a badge that we've actually worn with pride.

00:47:09

We've tried to be a church where anybody

00:47:12

from anywhere can come in and hear about God

00:47:13

in a language they can understand,

00:47:15

in a judgment free zone in a way

00:47:16

that doesn't make you feel dumb

00:47:18

for having questions or anything like it.

00:47:19

We love seeking and part of the reason

00:47:22

is because seeking is not a phase

00:47:24

you go through and then graduate from. It's not.

00:47:27

I think that sometimes we envision

00:47:29

the life of faith as like a football field.

00:47:31

You know, you start at the five yard line

00:47:32

or whatever, and then you make it to the 20 yard line,

00:47:35

and that's called Seeking God.

00:47:36

And then you graduate from that into following God,

00:47:39

and you leave this phase behind.

00:47:41

But you know, the Bible, God never says,

00:47:43

"You're My sportsmanship." He never says that.

00:47:46

He says, "You're My workmanship."

00:47:48

The better image to put into your mind

00:47:50

is that you're a sculpture.

00:47:52

You're being formed out of clay,

00:47:53

which He literally says He made you from.

00:47:55

He made you from dust.

00:47:56

And it's a foundation.

00:47:57

If you ever watched someone create a sculpture from clay,

00:47:59

they'll they'll put a foundation together

00:48:01

and then they'll layer on top of it

00:48:02

and on top of that, and they'll refine

00:48:04

and refine and build over time.

00:48:06

Seeking is the foundation.

00:48:09

It's meant to be the thing you start

00:48:11

and never stop with God.

00:48:13

Maybe you're in here and your faith

00:48:14

feels kind of flatlined,

00:48:16

or maybe God feels distant or impersonal to you.

00:48:19

If that's true, I want to invite you to seek Him.

00:48:22

When's the last big question you asked

00:48:24

God? When's the last time you told God

00:48:27

how you really feel?

00:48:28

If you'll step into that seeking,

00:48:30

He has a promise for you, it's that you will find Him.

00:48:34

But I have to give you a warning.

00:48:36

You can't seek God safely.

00:48:39

You can't bring Him your safe questions.

00:48:41

You have to bring Him your dangerous,

00:48:44

unfiltered questions.

00:48:45

It's the only way to find Him.

00:48:46

Now, I wanted to make this a point

00:48:48

so you all would remember it, put it on the screen.

00:48:50

So I told the guys type this in:

00:48:51

seeking is asking dangerous,

00:48:53

honest, real, noble, unfiltered,

00:48:55

and sometimes emotionally charged questions,

00:48:57

not the sanitized, safe, unsatisfying crap.

00:48:58

Otherwise, you'll only get sanitized,

00:49:00

safe, and unsatisfying answers.

00:49:02

And they said, that'll look terrible on a slide.

00:49:05

And I said, "It's America. Try anyway."

00:49:08

So they made this slide

00:49:11

and I'm not tall enough to have it.

00:49:12

So, we shortened it to seeking isn't safe.

00:49:17

Now there are two ways to seek God.

00:49:20

There actually are two ways.

00:49:21

One of them leads to Him and one of them doesn't.

00:49:24

Just a few verses, in fact, after He said ask,

00:49:27

after He said seek, Jesus laid out the two paths

00:49:31

you can choose to take to try to ask

00:49:34

and try to seek.

00:49:35

Matthew 7:13 Jesus said:

00:49:51

There are two paths:

00:49:53

there's the easy one, the safe one,

00:49:55

and there's the hard one, the narrow one.

00:49:58

Most people take the safe approach,

00:50:00

and therefore they never find the life of faith.

00:50:02

They never navigate to it.

00:50:04

They end up somewhere different.

00:50:05

But if you're willing to lean in,

00:50:07

to ask the hard and the painful

00:50:09

and difficult questions, if you're willing

00:50:10

to take that unsafe path, God says, "You will find Me."

00:50:14

Now, that first method, the safe one, it has a name.

00:50:17

I call it the textbook method for finding God.

00:50:20

Now, the textbook method basically says

00:50:22

the goal in life is to find the right list

00:50:24

of the right answers about God,

00:50:26

mentally assent to them, never question them,

00:50:28

hold on to them for the rest of your life.

00:50:30

Make it to your deathbed,

00:50:31

never having questioned any of it,

00:50:33

never having doubted any of it.

00:50:34

That's the textbook method.

00:50:36

Problems. One, do you know there's not actually

00:50:40

a list of the correct answers in the Bible?

00:50:42

That's not in there.

00:50:43

You won't find that in the table of contents.

00:50:45

The Bible turns out instead to be

00:50:47

a collection of stories about real people,

00:50:50

hundreds and hundreds of real people

00:50:52

over thousands of years who go stumbling after God,

00:50:56

who don't always end up with the right answer.

00:50:59

In fact, more often than not, they don't.

00:51:01

But what they do end up with is a connection

00:51:03

with the living God who loves them

00:51:05

despite the difficulties,

00:51:06

despite their deficiencies,

00:51:08

that's what they end up with.

00:51:10

Now the textbook God,

00:51:13

it's appealing because it's easy, right?

00:51:15

That's why you go after it.

00:51:16

If I can just grab that list of answers,

00:51:18

that would be great.

00:51:19

By the way, finding the right list is going to be difficult.

00:51:21

Do you know there are

00:51:22

45,000 different denominations

00:51:24

in the world of Christianity?

00:51:25

There's 2.6 new ones being born every day.

00:51:28

So to find the right list

00:51:29

is going to be somewhat challenging.

00:51:31

But if you can, the promise of the textbook method

00:51:34

is that you'll find God.

00:51:35

In a way, I'd say, yeah, you will.

00:51:37

You'll find a god, not the God of the Bible.

00:51:40

If you employ the textbook method,

00:51:42

you'll find the textbook god.

00:51:44

He'll fit in your box.

00:51:45

He'll be neat, he'll be nice.

00:51:47

He'll never surprise you. He never disappoint you.

00:51:49

He'll never change in a way that started.

00:51:51

It'll be fine.

00:51:52

But you'll find him very difficult to love.

00:51:55

You'll find he's not a god who's personal.

00:51:58

You'll find if you don't take your feelings to him,

00:52:00

he'll always feel distant.

00:52:03

That's the problem with the textbook method.

00:52:05

Now, the other method I call

00:52:06

the unsafe, unfiltered method.

00:52:08

It's the way that every person in the Bible,

00:52:10

without exception, has always found God.

00:52:13

It's the only way to find Him, the unsafe method

00:52:15

where you go past the facts.

00:52:18

Here's some facts about my wife, Sarah,

00:52:19

just so you know her a little bit more.

00:52:21

She's an introvert. Fact #1.

00:52:23

But she loves her people. Fact #2.

00:52:26

But she also loves her alone time. Fact #3.

00:52:28

She loves to run, fact #4, and hike.

00:52:31

She's a great mom, and she's wicked smart.

00:52:34

Not -- not wicked, smart. Wicked smart. Okay?

00:52:37

That's like compliment there,

00:52:38

in case she's listening. Okay, complimented you.

00:52:41

Those are facts about Sarah.

00:52:43

Now, let me ask you a question:

00:52:45

Now that you have those facts, do you know Sarah?

00:52:49

No. No, you don't know Sarah.

00:52:51

You know facts about her.

00:52:52

But it turns out there's a difference

00:52:53

between knowing facts about somebody

00:52:55

and knowing somebody.

00:52:57

The only way to actually get to know somebody

00:52:59

is to spend a lot of time with them

00:53:01

talking about how you really feel,

00:53:03

asking your real questions.

00:53:04

Not the safe stuff, not the sanitized stuff,

00:53:06

but everything.

00:53:07

Nothing can be off limits to truly know somebody.

00:53:10

There can be nothing that's off limits at all.

00:53:12

It's the only way to find God.

00:53:15

Now, the problem is, a lot of us

00:53:16

have bought into this religious lie that says

00:53:18

there's certain questions you shouldn't bring to God.

00:53:20

That if you were to walk into a church

00:53:22

like Crossroads, there's some stuff

00:53:23

you should probably just leave in the car,

00:53:25

you know, just for safekeeping.

00:53:27

Otherwise, people are going to judge you

00:53:28

and think you strange or stupid or something like that,

00:53:31

but it's not true at all.

00:53:32

Again, like I said, the only way people

00:53:34

have ever found God is the unsafe,

00:53:36

unfiltered method.

00:53:37

Some examples. King David in the Old Testament,

00:53:40

as in David versus Goliath.

00:53:42

He had an up and down life.

00:53:44

You can read all about it in the Psalms.

00:53:46

He wrote some songs that are about

00:53:47

the up moments, the good moments,

00:53:49

and some songs about the bad moments.

00:53:51

And when you read the Psalms about the bad moments,

00:53:53

you'll find these unsafe, unfiltered questions

00:53:55

all over the place.

00:53:56

You even find places where he almost insults God,

00:53:59

he crosses this line in accusing Him.

00:54:02

One example Psalm 13 one David says:

00:54:11

He levels these insults at God.

00:54:13

Now when my kids insult me,

00:54:15

I display infinite patience

00:54:17

and we have really just level headed conversations.

00:54:21

Right? That's what I do.

00:54:23

No, of course not. No.

00:54:25

As humans, we have very limited patience,

00:54:27

and so it's hard for us when someone

00:54:28

levels an insult at us or asks a question,

00:54:31

we just we get insulted, we get get kind of

00:54:33

riled up and we respond that way in anger.

00:54:36

Well, not God. He's the God of infinite patience.

00:54:40

Do you know the title He gives to David?

00:54:42

He calls him a man after My own heart.

00:54:46

That's what you get when you talk to God honestly.

00:54:48

He's the Father who wants us to be honest.

00:54:51

Other examples in the Bible, Abraham and Sarah,

00:54:53

the kind of father and mother of the faith

00:54:55

when He tells Sarah, when God tells Sarah

00:54:56

she's going to have a baby

00:54:58

after decades of infertility,

00:54:59

do you know what she does?

00:55:00

She laughs in God's face and goes, "Really? Yeah, right."

00:55:05

And God doesn't say, "Never mind,

00:55:07

I'll move on to a different family."

00:55:08

He instead leans in, He goes, "Yes, really.

00:55:11

Great question." He said," Yes, really.

00:55:12

Watch Me do it." And He does.

00:55:15

John the Baptist, the man that Jesus called

00:55:17

the most important, the greatest man who ever lived.

00:55:19

You know, the last recorded moment we have

00:55:21

of John the Baptist is the moment

00:55:23

where he questions if Jesus even is the Messiah.

00:55:26

He's in jail and he sends a buddy to Jesus.

00:55:28

And the guy really shows up and he goes,

00:55:29

"Hey, John wants to know something.

00:55:31

Are you really the Messiah or not?"

00:55:33

That's the last moment.

00:55:34

And Jesus doesn't condemn him.

00:55:36

Jesus doesn't throw him down.

00:55:38

He welcomes him in.

00:55:39

He says this man is great.

00:55:42

Job, the oldest book in the Bible,

00:55:45

the one that historians, scholars think

00:55:47

was the first one written.

00:55:48

It's a story about a man who experiences

00:55:50

the depth of bad, just bad thing

00:55:53

after bad thing after bad thing.

00:55:54

And interestingly, in the Book of Job,

00:55:56

it's a long, long book. Long book.

00:55:59

Dozens and dozens of chapters.

00:56:00

And for most of it, Job doesn't say anything,

00:56:03

his friends do. They say stuff.

00:56:05

But he remains pretty quiet,

00:56:06

and God also remains quiet.

00:56:08

God doesn't say anything until Job asks.

00:56:13

This Job 31:35. Job has had enough

00:56:15

and he finally says what he really thinks

00:56:17

and feels. He says:

00:56:24

He calls God out. "God, I'm here.

00:56:26

I'm standing here. I'm looking for answers.

00:56:27

Will you answer me?"

00:56:29

And do you know what happens? God does.

00:56:31

For the first time in the book, God speaks

00:56:33

and He answers Job's questions.

00:56:37

At the start of the service, we ask you

00:56:38

if it were safe to ask God anything what would you ask?

00:56:41

And you know, 99% of what poured in

00:56:42

were those painful things, the hard moments,

00:56:45

the difficulty, the big questions in life.

00:56:48

And I just want you to know that God welcomes

00:56:50

every single one of those questions. All of them.

00:56:53

You probably didn't see mine rolling in.

00:56:54

If don't know my phone number,

00:56:56

any way likely you wouldn't have caught it.

00:56:57

But I texted in.

00:57:00

The thing I texted was:

00:57:02

God, why did my dad have a stroke?

00:57:04

And will he ever get better?

00:57:06

It was about two weeks ago.

00:57:07

I was in a meeting here at Crossroads at work.

00:57:09

We were planning out the 2025 ministry calendar.

00:57:11

Amazing stuff that we're going to put together,

00:57:13

experiences for you all that we hope will bless you

00:57:15

and push you further towards God.

00:57:17

Planning all that stuff out.

00:57:19

It's a Tuesday like 10 a.m., 10:30, something like that.

00:57:22

And my phone rings. It was my older sister.

00:57:24

And she doesn't usually call on a Tuesday morning.

00:57:26

It was kind of strange, but, you know, silence it

00:57:28

and kept going with the meeting.

00:57:29

And about 15 seconds later, though,

00:57:31

my younger brother calls and I answer that one

00:57:33

because that seems kind of strange.

00:57:35

And he says, "Hey, dad is having a stroke right now.

00:57:38

He's on the floor of the garage,

00:57:39

the ambulance is on the way."

00:57:41

And I hung up the phone, went straight to the airport.

00:57:43

My parents lived down by Jacksonville, Florida,

00:57:46

hopped in a plane, flew down to Jacksonville

00:57:47

where he was being taken to a hospital.

00:57:49

And spent the rest of the week trying to deal with

00:57:52

what has happened and why did it happen,

00:57:54

and what will recovery look like?

00:57:57

Learning about terms like conduction aphasia,

00:58:01

where the brain, the image of an object,

00:58:04

and the word for the object no longer connect,

00:58:06

the connections have been broken.

00:58:07

Understanding what does this mean

00:58:09

for his understanding and his future

00:58:10

and all these sorts of things,

00:58:11

these big, big questions.

00:58:13

And so I just want you to know,

00:58:14

if you're in a moment where you're asking God

00:58:16

a real vulnerable question, it is okay.

00:58:20

It doesn't make you dumb.

00:58:21

It doesn't make you unfaithful.

00:58:22

It doesn't make you unspiritual.

00:58:24

God's not mad at you.

00:58:25

He's not going to say how dare you?

00:58:27

He's going to say, "Thank you for trusting Me.

00:58:30

Thank you for approaching me like

00:58:31

a loving Father who wants to give you an answer.

00:58:34

It is okay."

00:58:36

But I also want you to know something.

00:58:38

If all you do is just ask God about the bad

00:58:43

and you never say, "God, where does the good come from?"

00:58:47

You'll find yourself a follower

00:58:49

of the world's fastest growing religion.

00:58:51

It's called cynicism. It really is fast growing.

00:58:54

It's not new.

00:58:55

It's been around for a very long time.

00:58:57

Cynicism goes back to a Greek word, kynikos,

00:58:59

which means dog like.

00:59:01

Not like your fluffy dog, like your cute dog.

00:59:03

It's not that. Like a wild dog.

00:59:06

It is literally the dog eat dog view of the world.

00:59:10

And it has some tenets of its faith.

00:59:13

Number one, it says protect against disappointment

00:59:15

by assuming bad will happen.

00:59:17

It's faith point number one. Number two.

00:59:19

Ascribe all good to chance or your own effort.

00:59:23

And number three, blame bad on God

00:59:26

or reject Him all together.

00:59:28

This is cynicism and it is on the rise.

00:59:31

It's been on the rise for a while.

00:59:33

I did a search through Google to look at

00:59:35

just kind of the popularity of the word cynicism,

00:59:37

how often is it being used?

00:59:39

And you can see it's gone up dramatically,

00:59:41

while at the same time Christianity has gone down.

00:59:44

And so when I say it's fast rising,

00:59:46

I mean, it really is.

00:59:47

It's becoming the dominant religion of our day.

00:59:51

Sociologists are starting to study this trend

00:59:53

because there's some really alarming

00:59:55

side effects of cynicism.

00:59:56

It turns out cynicism is very, very bad for you.

00:59:59

Here's one author who wrote

01:00:01

in the Harvard Business Review. He said:

01:00:19

That author is a professor at Stanford.

01:00:21

He's got credentials. He's studied this.

01:00:24

And there's more folks who have been getting on this

01:00:26

and trying to figure it out.

01:00:27

You know that cynics, besides all those things,

01:00:29

are more likely to get dementia,

01:00:30

cancer, make less money,

01:00:32

and have a more difficult time forming

01:00:34

and maintaining romantic relationships.

01:00:35

It's crazy, like if cynicism were a product,

01:00:38

none of us would buy it.

01:00:40

We'd be like, "Who wants that crap? Terrible."

01:00:43

But more and more people are ascribing

01:00:46

to the cynic mindset as their worldview,

01:00:48

as their faith, and it is a faith.

01:00:51

It's absolutely a faith.

01:00:52

You're leaning into a belief system about the world.

01:00:56

And the reason why sociologists are saying

01:00:59

the reason why people do this,

01:01:00

despite its clear and obvious downsides,

01:01:03

is because of what they've coined

01:01:05

the cynical genius illusion.

01:01:08

The cynical genius illusion is the belief

01:01:10

that we all have, at some level, that says

01:01:12

that it's safer, it's smarter, it's wiser

01:01:16

to expect disappointment than to hope.

01:01:19

That if we expect bad things,

01:01:21

if we lean into bad things,

01:01:22

we focus on the bad things, that's the safer,

01:01:24

smarter way because it will never be let down.

01:01:26

That's the belief system in the world.

01:01:28

But again, everyone's studying this

01:01:30

and they're finding out that that's actually not true.

01:01:32

There's a woman over in the Netherlands, works at

01:01:35

a public research institute in the Netherlands.

01:01:37

And she wrote this. She says:

01:01:57

Worse. It turns out that being a cynic

01:02:00

will turn you into a foolish person.

01:02:02

Did you know this? The Bible said it a long time ago.

01:02:05

Psalm 14 says the fool says in his heart

01:02:07

there is no God.

01:02:08

Which is to say, there is nothing behind

01:02:10

the good in the world. The fool says that.

01:02:13

And if you lean in that direction,

01:02:14

all of these consequences will come your way.

01:02:17

And again, I didn't read you stuff from pastors.

01:02:19

I didn't read you stuff from church.

01:02:21

I read your stuff from Harvard Business Review.

01:02:23

Cynicism will absolutely tank your life.

01:02:27

See, God says, "Yes. Ask me about the bad.

01:02:29

100%. Let's talk about it.

01:02:31

Let's not dismiss it. Let's not sugarcoat it.

01:02:33

Let's not push it under the rug.

01:02:35

Let's talk about it."

01:02:36

But at the same time,

01:02:37

you've got to ask Him about the good.

01:02:38

You've got to say, "God, where does the good come from?

01:02:41

Is it random chance? Is humanity right?"

01:02:45

Whose general disposition, our disposition

01:02:47

as humanity is when something bad happens,

01:02:49

we blame the higher power.

01:02:50

We don't blame us and we don't blame random chance.

01:02:53

But when something good comes along the way,

01:02:55

we don't even think about the higher power.

01:02:57

We just assume it was random chance

01:02:58

or something I did that was really good.

01:03:00

It's my own effort. That's a double standard.

01:03:03

And God says, "Let's talk about the good in life.

01:03:06

Let's talk about the good and where it comes from."

01:03:09

And if you ask God where does the good come from,

01:03:12

it turns out He has a very, very, very clear answer.

01:03:15

James 1:17 He says:

01:03:25

He says everything good.

01:03:27

Do you have good in your life? It's from God.

01:03:32

It's not an accident.

01:03:33

It's not because you're so smart and successful.

01:03:35

It's a good gift from a Father who loves you.

01:03:38

Have you been paying attention to it that way?

01:03:42

Have you been listening? Have you been looking?

01:03:44

Have you been saying thank you to Him?

01:03:47

Parents, if you want a pro tip,

01:03:48

teach this verse to your kids.

01:03:50

Make it the first ones that they've ever heard.

01:03:53

Sarah and I did this years ago.

01:03:55

We taught it to our kids and just said, "Hey, guys,

01:03:57

everything you have that's good,

01:03:59

everything is actually from God, do you know that?"

01:04:02

And it's something we reinforce with them all the time.

01:04:04

We said it again last night.

01:04:05

"Hey, guys, what's something good?

01:04:07

Was it the ice cream cone you had today?

01:04:09

Do you know that wasn't random?

01:04:10

That's a gift from God. Was it good?

01:04:13

The vacation that you got to have, was that good?

01:04:15

Well, then it's a gift from God."

01:04:17

See, there are good things in your life,

01:04:19

if you're willing to ask where are they,

01:04:21

you'll find yourself lifted

01:04:22

above the noise of cynicism,

01:04:24

pulled out of its gravitational orbit

01:04:26

up to higher places where you can see

01:04:29

and find the life that God has for you.

01:04:32

I'll say it right now, I'm in this tension.

01:04:34

I'm sad about my dad. I'm asking God questions.

01:04:37

Why did this happen? Is he ever going to be okay?

01:04:39

Where were You in this? All those sorts of things.

01:04:41

And I'm looking at the good and saying,

01:04:43

"God, where did this come from? Was was this You?"

01:04:47

And there's good in my life at the same exact time.

01:04:50

One of the goods, my dad had his stroke

01:04:53

in an attic workout room in his house,

01:04:56

up 18 stairs, huge staircase.

01:04:59

His right side got paralyzed, but somehow

01:05:02

he was able to make it down 18 stairs

01:05:05

without falling, crawl across the garage

01:05:08

and yell for my mom, who happened to be

01:05:11

in the one room of the house that

01:05:13

you could actually hear him in that spot.

01:05:15

And he was able to get help right away.

01:05:16

That's good, that's good.

01:05:18

And I'm able to say, "God, thank You for that good.

01:05:20

I don't believe that was random.

01:05:22

I don't believe that was chance.

01:05:23

I don't believe that was luck.

01:05:25

I don't believe that's because their architect

01:05:26

built the house in a certain way.

01:05:28

I believe that's because You're a loving Father

01:05:30

who has good things even in the midst of the pain."

01:05:34

Another moment that's good, another moment

01:05:37

that was really, really good with my son.

01:05:39

You know, obviously a spot where father/son stuff

01:05:42

is particularly tender with me right now.

01:05:44

I got to have an amazing moment with my son,

01:05:47

who loves baseball, who made

01:05:49

the Little League All Star Team as a catcher.

01:05:50

I got to throw out the first pitch of the Reds game

01:05:53

to my son in have him catch it. It was good.

01:05:57

And miraculously, I threw a strike.

01:05:59

I don't know how that happened.

01:06:02

That's God is good. So good. Another one.

01:06:06

My boys are going to camp next week,

01:06:08

middle school camp at Crossroads.

01:06:10

Can't wait for it. They are so excited.

01:06:13

That's good.

01:06:14

When they get in the car

01:06:15

and they ask to put on their music,

01:06:17

do you know what they want to play?

01:06:19

Worship music. Why?

01:06:21

Because of the impact of Crossroads students on them.

01:06:23

That's good. That's not random.

01:06:25

That's not an accident.

01:06:27

That's a good Father who loves me.

01:06:29

And so even in the midst of it, I'm saying to God,

01:06:31

"God, You are good and I just want to say thanks."

01:06:34

I want to hold on to the tension of both of them.

01:06:36

And I'm telling you, your temptation

01:06:37

is going to be to let go of one,

01:06:39

because there are times, if you wait in the tension

01:06:41

of holding on to the questions without the answers,

01:06:44

of the good and the bad at the same time,

01:06:46

of the beauty and the pain, you'll find

01:06:48

that sometimes it wants to pull your arms apart.

01:06:51

But when you hold this posture,

01:06:52

you're holding the posture of the Cross.

01:06:56

You know the Cross was the best good to ever happen?

01:06:59

It was the time where humanity was redeemed,

01:07:02

where all of the sin, all of the mistake

01:07:04

s, all of everything can get washed away

01:07:06

for anyone who believes,

01:07:07

and it's the worst bad that's ever happened.

01:07:10

The most innocent man

01:07:12

in the history of the universe brutally murdered,

01:07:14

the most unjust moment in the history of the world.

01:07:17

It is the bad, and it is the good at the same time.

01:07:20

And the challenge of faith, if you want

01:07:22

to navigate yourself to the life of faith,

01:07:24

you must embrace and hold on to both of them.

01:07:29

We started by sending in a lot of questions

01:07:32

about painful things going on.

01:07:35

God, where are you? God, where were you?

01:07:38

And we're going to end by doing the opposite.

01:07:41

I'm going to challenge you.

01:07:42

Get back out your phone and we're going to do the song.

01:07:47

The song based on James 1:17 that says

01:07:49

everything that's good comes from You.

01:07:53

And as this song plays, I want you to text

01:07:55

that same exact number, text something good in your life.

01:08:00

It might be something very small.

01:08:02

Maybe you love Arby's

01:08:03

and you had an Arby's sandwich?

01:08:04

Great. Say God, thanks for Arby's.

01:08:08

Maybe you got a job this week.

01:08:10

Say God, thanks for my job.

01:08:11

Maybe it's your spouse. Maybe it's your kids.

01:08:13

Maybe it's your neighbor, your friend,

01:08:15

your roommate. I don't know what it is,

01:08:16

but text it in and say, God, thank you.

01:08:19

And as soon as you send that in,

01:08:21

I want you to think of something else good,

01:08:23

anything good in your life.

01:08:24

And I want you to send that one in, too.

01:08:26

And then one after that, and one after that

01:08:29

the entire time this song plays.

01:08:32

Let's stand up, let's sing,

01:08:34

and let's text together.

01:13:31

- Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.

01:13:33

Wherever you find yourself,

01:13:34

we'd love to connect with you personally

01:13:35

and pray for you.

01:13:37

You can email one of us directly

01:13:38

Andy.Reider@crossroads.net

01:13:40

or Rachel.Ryder@crossroads.net.

01:13:41

We'd love to chat with you.

01:13:42

You can even just go to the website

01:13:44

and hit the chat button.

01:13:45

And we'd love to pray for you,

01:13:47

process with you, and connect with you there.

01:13:48

- Yeah, we really mean it when we say that

01:13:50

this is so much more than just content to watch.

01:13:53

And I'm just going to say there are thousands

01:13:56

and thousands more people who watch Crossroads

01:13:58

than who actually engage.

01:14:00

And so if you're one of them,

01:14:01

I just want you to know, we actually --

01:14:03

We really want to know you.

01:14:04

- Whether you're near one of our physical buildings

01:14:06

or there's an Anywhere Community

01:14:07

gathering in your local city,

01:14:09

or you're watching online by yourself,

01:14:11

hey, there are so many ways to grow

01:14:13

and to grow with others.

01:14:14

And to make that easier for you, we actually

01:14:16

have a tool specifically for Anywhere Community

01:14:19

spread out all over the globe called the Anywhere Home.

01:14:21

It's kind of the hub and the meeting space

01:14:23

for our community, even as we're spread out

01:14:25

across time zones and even continents.

01:14:27

- Yeah, it is so sweet.

01:14:29

It is a space designed specifically for people

01:14:31

who don't live near a building.

01:14:32

So we have people in all different countries

01:14:34

and continents who actually know each other

01:14:36

and are friends.

01:14:37

It's a place for us to dive deeper

01:14:39

into weekly teachings together,

01:14:41

join groups online, pray for people,

01:14:43

post prayer requests when you need stuff.

01:14:45

And it's the best place to stay in the know

01:14:47

for everything that's happening in our community.

01:14:49

We post funny would you rather questions

01:14:51

and everything in between.

01:14:52

- It really is one of the best ways

01:14:53

to consistently engage with us

01:14:55

and the whole Anywhere family, no matter where you are.

01:14:57

You just go to the app store,

01:14:59

download the Mighty Networks app,

01:15:00

search for Anywhere Home and you're in.

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- As always, thank you for joining us

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and we'll see you again next week.

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