How To Make Your Vision a Reality

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- Welcome to Crossroads

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and a belated Happy New Year to you!

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Hey, I'm Andy, the community pastor

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for Crossroads Anywhere.

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Crossroads is a church that you can be a part of

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no matter where you live or what you believe about God.

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We're just really glad that you're joining us.

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Hey, we're starting off our year

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by going into the book of Nehemiah.

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It's a book in the Old Testament

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written by a man named Nehemiah

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who had a vision from God.

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And in January we all tend to kind of reset, right?

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New year's resolutions are popular for a reason.

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We set goals and we get a vision for the life that we want.

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Now, typically we have a vision for, like,

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a better body, better relationships,

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better emotional health, better jobs, etc.

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The problem is, making a vision a reality is hard.

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Nehemiah shows us how to make

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our seemingly impossible visions a reality.

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Right now we're going to start off our time in worship.

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This is just singing songs to and about God.

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This might feel awkward and uncomfortable,

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like a new workout or new routine, but that's okay.

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We do this as a way to turn our attention towards God

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and to orient our life around Him.

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So, you can turn up the volume, you can go full screen,

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you can put in your AirPods and let's get started.

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- We're gonna sing a new song together.

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- This is a brand new song that our team wrote for our church.

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That's right, and the reason we're doing it

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right now, week one, is because I believe

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it's a great setup for the new year.

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Anybody have New Year's resolutions?

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And maybe you don't like that word.

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Maybe you got personal goals.

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Personal goal I got some personal goals of mine.

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And what I want is for those goals

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to come up under the King.

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And that King's name is Jesus.

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And these are the words from Jesus in Matthew 6:33 it says,

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seek the kingdom of God above all else,

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and live righteously,

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and He will give you everything you need.

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So don't worry about tomorrow,

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for tomorrow will bring its own worries.

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As I start the new year, as we start the new year,

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I think it'll be great for us to start it

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in a posture of saying, "Lord, I want more of You

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and I want to commit to seeking You."

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Maybe that's new for you.

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Maybe you've never done that before.

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And I want you to say, hey, the slate is clean.

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You can start new right now

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because there's a Savior who has more for you,

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who has more for me.

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And so as we sing the rest of this song,

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I'd invite you, I dare you just to extend your hands

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right now in this moment as we commit to following

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the true, the only true Savior.

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We say, I follow you.

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- Come on, think about the year ahead of you.

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- I love that. I love that, that hand thing.

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Lets, you know, it's our first time gathering together.

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Thank you for giving me your microphone.

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I forgot to get mine. I'll get it in a little bit.

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But you know, it's the first time

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worshiping together as a church.

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Maybe your first time to Crossroads ever in 2024.

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And let's keep that hand thing going

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just as a sign going forward. Okay?

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Let's let's take our hands right now

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and let's just do palms down.

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This is the universal sign of dropping something.

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You may have come into 2024 with stresses,

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whatever it is, just put your palms down

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and just run through those stress points,

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those things that you've been fixating on,

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the concerns you've had.

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And just go to God and say,

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"God, I'm dropping them right now.

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I'm dropping them right at my feet, at Your feet.

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I'm dropping them. I'm emptying them out."

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What is it? What are you stressed about?

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What are you fearful about?

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What is it on your mind?

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You need to give that to God.

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Just drop it. Drop it.

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Just come on, just keep dumping it out.

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There you go. Just drop it. Just let it go.

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Let it go. It's doing you nothing.

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It's doing you nothing holding it, nothing.

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You think you're being responsible?

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You're not, you're not.

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You're hurting yourself

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and the work that God's doing in you.

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365 times the Bible says fear not.

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365, one for every day.

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Right now. Drop it. Come on, drop it, drop it.

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You can do it. All right.

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And, uh, then let's, um, let's turn our palms over.

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Turn them over. This is the universal sign of receiving.

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What do you want from God this year?

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Just go ahead and mutter to Him.

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What do you want Him to put in your hand?

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What is it, a relationship, a raise? What is it?

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A new spiritual gift? Just ask Him right now.

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Put it, put it in you right now. Ask him.

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And then take our hand, universal sign of surrender,

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put them up. Like, stick them up, I surrender.

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God, what do you want this year?

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All of us, God, who have our hands up like this,

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we're not doing this as a church.

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We're saying to you, God, we surrender.

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What do you want from us this year? What is it?

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We give up? Where do you want us to go?

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What do you want us to do? What do you want us to stop?

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We surrender. Why?

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Because we want to be in Your Kingdom.

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It's Your Kingdom, not my kingdom.

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It's Your life, not my life.

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It's Your vision, not mine.

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You, it's Yours.

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- Now let'ss say this:

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- Pray this prayer because I know

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He's a good God and generous God.

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He has life to give.

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- It's a statement of trusting, we put our trust in Him.

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- The last time I spent Christmas with my son,

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man, I think this was the first time

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probably since pre-COVID, so probably about 2019.

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- Last time I spent Christmas with my family

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is probably two years ago.

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I was up all night anxious about this.

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- I don't know anybody from Crossroads, you know,

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at the church and people who don't know me from Adam

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could recognize and care enough that

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I could celebrate Christmas with my family.

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One of the things that I deal with is just feeling

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so insignificant and feeling so forgotten.

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It's just beyond words to to think that

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some strangers will be willing to sacrifice

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that we can have Christmas with my family just means the world.

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- The Crossroads church, and even PCI,

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that there's people out there that even give,

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you know, that you even cross their mind,

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whether they even know who your name or not,

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that that means a lot to me.

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And I know that my family got a lot out of that today too.

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- It felt good, and it felt normal.

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For a little second it was like we weren't incarcerated.

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For that moment I just got a chance to just kind of

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be dad with my son, man. So it felt really good.

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It just really fueled me up.

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I hope he felt, in a way, the way I felt:

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noticed, loved, not forgotten.

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And I hope that he felt like he mattered.

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- Spending this holiday with my family, Uh, it, uh,

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it means the world to me.

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This is actually the first visit I actually had

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with my kid in almost a year.

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Last time I saw her, she wasn't even talking.

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I got to hear her tell her she loves me.

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And for her to run up and say daddy in the middle of it.

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After this morning, I hope my daughter knows

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that I love her, and today kind of gave me

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some reassurance that she still remembered who I was,

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which is a big fear that I had, that she would walk in

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and not not know who I am.

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For me today, after experiencing that, it was,

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you know, motivate you to keep going

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or remind you what what you got outside waiting for you.

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I just want to thank you guys for doing this

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because it meant a lot to me.

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- I just wanted to say thank you.

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I want to say thanks.

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I want to thank God first because I recognize

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that Crossroads and what you guys did today,

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you guys were His hands and His feet.

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And that joy, it pierces the darkness, man.

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There's a there's a cloud of sadness and heaviness

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that just sits on these places

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around these times of the year.

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You guys literally penetrated to darkness today, man.

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So it's going to spill outside of here

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and carry on to the compound.

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And really, man, uh, means the world to me.

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- Man, I love that video and I especially love it

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because I got to see this stuff first hand,

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and it was just a beautiful picture of what it means

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for people to not just go to church,

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but to be the church.

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For a church like ours, to leverage everything we have,

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our time, our energy, our resources, our money

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to make sure that people who are oftentimes forgotten

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this time of year and actually get our best.

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And I will, I'll never forget.

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I will never forget the joy on these family's faces

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as these kids ran through these huge locked doors

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to just jump into their father's arms,

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wrap their arms around him, and give him a huge hug.

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It was a beautiful picture of love

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and a beautiful picture of what it means

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to creatively and aggressively serve and care for one another.

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And I love that our church is creative and bold

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and aggressive in ways just like that.

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And I'll just say this, man, my kids

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will probably forget the gifts

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that I bought them this past Christmas.

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Those things will be long forgotten a year from now,

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but I can almost guarantee you that the gifts

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that these families received and were able to give

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one another this past Christmas, that you

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and our faithful community made possible,

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they will never forget it.

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All the stuff and a ton more happens because

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of a team of faithful givers who make this stuff possible.

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If you want to join that team

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or you just have questions like, hey,

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what does crossroads think about money?

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Or what do they spend their money on?

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All of that and more you can find

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at crossroads.net/give.

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Hey, I'm so excited to hear from Brian today

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as he begins to unpack the book of Nehemiah

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and how Nehemiah didn't stop with just having a goal,

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but how he made that vision a reality.

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- Hey, if we haven't met, by the way, my name is Brian.

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I'm what's known as a Senior Pastor around here.

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Happy 2024 to everybody.

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I am excited about today.

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This is one of the most inspiring

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books in the Bible for me.

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Ever since I came to know who Jesus was

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and had a personal relationship with Him at age 17,

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which is what now sheesh 40, age 15, 16,

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40 some whatever years ago, a lot of years ago,

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a lot, a lot, a lot of years ago.

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And if this is your first time at Crossroads,

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you might have kind of heard of our reputation in many ways.

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We have a lot of different ways that people see us.

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Or if you've been around here for a while,

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you might know that one of the things

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that we're known for is that there's

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an uncanny number of visions that we have in our church

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that actually get done,

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a number of visions that come to realities,

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whether it's an AIDS,

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privately funded AIDS hospice in South Africa,

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whether it's going to Compassion International

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and taking every single child on the rolls in Nicaragua

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to be in an education system into fed,

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whether it's multiple sites and multiple states,

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whether it's an app that many churches are using

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all over the country.

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And by the way, in which our app, just Crossroads,

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4.9 million prayers were prayed in our app

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in our church just this last year.

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Like a first in class thing,

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a vision that really came to reality.

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Camps, camps that people would come

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every state in the Union this last year,

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multiple countries all over the world

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coming to experience a primitive camping experience

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and poop in the woods.

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I could go on and on and on and on.

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These are all things that were visions that became reality.

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So today, this is not about Crossroads today at all.

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I'm just saying all the things that are in

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our 28 year history, I'm going to talk about

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how it is you bring vision to reality in your personal life.

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Because they're actually the

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same steps and they're the steps that we see

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in the book of Nehemiah. Let's go to Nehemiah.

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I've got an old fuddy-duddy Bible here.

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Nehemiah chapter, one paper Bible.

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Nehemiah, here's the story of Nehemiah.

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He is a Jewish guy who is in exile

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from his homeland of Israel, in Persia.

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So Persia has conquered Jerusalem,

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and they've basically kicked everybody out.

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They've just taken all of the riches out of the temple.

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And there's a few people who are Jews

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left in Jerusalem, and everybody else

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is kind of dispersed all over the place.

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And Nehemiah is dispersed to Persia.

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He's serving King Artaxerxes, one of the greatest

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and most brutal rulers in world history.

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And he's risen to sort of the top of the food chain

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with him, where he's the cupbearer.

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That means that the king trusts him,

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that he's going to have a good taste for wine

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because he tests the wine,

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and that he's going to be very smart

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to sense when wine is going to be poisoned.

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He's the one to get poisoned,

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so the king doesn't get poisoned.

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But somebody, it has to be somebody very smart

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who's the cupbearer, because hopefully

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they can figure out its poison before they themselves take it.

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So he's a very smart, very high ranking Jew

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in the land of Persia.

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And something happens to him that's going

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to change the course of of his life.

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He's going to get a vision.

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And this vision is going to become a reality,

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not just a daydream. It's going to become a reality.

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Now we have a lot of folks.

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And by the way, I'm going to use

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these these terms today synonymously:

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goals, objectives, visions, resolutions.

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There are some nuances and differences between those terms,

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but for today's terms I'm going to use them all the same.

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New Year's resolutions.

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Let's talk about New Year's resolutions.

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Uh, I'm not going to ask how many of you

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make New Year's resolutions, because those of us

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who did are going to feel real proud

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and stick our hands up in the air,

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and those of us who didn't are going to feel like,

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"Oh, I didn't do that. I'm a loser."

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And all the people have their hands up,

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"You're a loser. I have my hand up. You don't."

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I don't know if you feel that way.

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I know I do when I do those kind of things.

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And that's why I don't oftentimes

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make official New Year's resolutions.

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But what I do always do is I have something

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I'm working on, some goal, some objective, some vision.

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It's one thing to have a resolution.

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It's another thing to have something that's getting done.

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And very few of us, if we have a resolution or not,

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very few of us actually do them and get them done.

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Time Magazine said this, it said:

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So we have a vision of what we want to do,

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but the reality of it never actually happens.

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Nehemiah is going to have a vision,

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and if you've made a resolution, a goal,

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objective you have for this year,

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or maybe you're going to maybe have one

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at the end of our time today, or maybe

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you're going to make one March 1, April 1,

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December 1, whatever it is.

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What Nehemiah did is what we need to do, all of us.

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Let's read it, Nehemiah 1:3. Here's what it says.

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Nehemiah is told from somebody

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who comes from Jerusalem, "Yeah, the walls,

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man, they're down.

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The walls, they're, they're just --

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They're, they're, they're nothing. They're down.

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The gates are burned." And Nehemiah is wrecked.

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He's wrecked because these walls represent

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the pride of the nation of Israel.

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It would be like today if you found out

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that the Lincoln Memorial was smashed or blown up,

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or the White House

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or some monument that's important to you.

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It's like, "Man, this is America, this thing."

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This is bad, bad news.

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It isn't just that the walls being down

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mean we can't defend ourselves against intruders,

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because actually we can't defend ourselves at all.

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It's not needed because we've lost.

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We are broken up and we are dispersed.

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And Nehemiah loses it. Everything is in disarray.

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And he gets a vision.

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Four things about vision today.

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Vision is seeing, is seeing.

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And I'm not talking right now about 20/20.

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I'm talking about seeing something in your mind

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that other people aren't seeing,

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seeing something that other people aren't seeing.

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There's been loads of people who have seen

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that the walls are down, but none of them

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started a building campaign to rebuild the walls.

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But Nehemiah did.

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The reason why many of us are spiritually perishing,

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the reason many of us are lacking zip,

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are lacking joy, are lacking just the X factor

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of the presence of God and an awareness

00:32:59

that He is working in our lives is because

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we're lacking vision.

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The Bible says in the Book of Proverbs 29:18 that:

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When we don't have something we're working for,

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we don't have something we're working towards,

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when we don't sense that God has given us an assignment,

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we perish because all that's left is

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Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, it's off to work I go.

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All that's left is swiping right or swiping left.

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All that's left is medicating ourselves

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in front of a screen because there's no vision,

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there's no, there's nothing I'm supposed to be about.

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There's no difference my life is making.

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There's no, there's no wall on building.

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There's no hill I'm taking.

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This is what God says, "When we have no vision, we perish."

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So you may not have made any resolution,

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but I'll tell you this right now,

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if you never make resolutions, if you don't make goals,

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if you don't have vision, you are perishing,

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you are dying spiritually.

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You cannot go with your life simply surviving.

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You must have something you're working toward.

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It doesn't have to be some big, massive thing,

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but it's something, something that you see

00:34:14

in your mind that you want,

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and maybe somebody else doesn't see it.

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Nehemiah sees this. Nobody else does.

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The second thing that the vision is,

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it's not just seeing it, noticing it,

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vision is also feeling it.

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You notice that it says here when Nehemiah heard

00:34:36

that the walls were down, he sat down

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and wept and mourned. He lost it. He felt.

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If you're not having feelings, if you don't feel it,

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then it's not a vision, it's just an awareness

00:34:53

of something that would be good if it happened.

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You have to feel it.

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Now, when I say feel it, I'm talking about

00:35:01

within your bandwidth of emotions.

00:35:03

Like some of you guys cry every week.

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Must be fun. Must be nice.

00:35:08

Uh, actually probably not.

00:35:09

But it'd be interesting if I could cry every week.

00:35:11

I get a good cry, maybe,

00:35:13

well, I just got one looking at the prison video,

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so I don't know. I'm getting older.

00:35:17

I'm having more cries, but I'm not a big cry guy.

00:35:20

That's been my history.

00:35:21

But within my bandwidth of emotional bandwidth,

00:35:24

I have emotion there, and I can feel it

00:35:26

when I get emotional inside of my bandwidth.

00:35:29

And when I'm feeling something,

00:35:32

I assume that God's doing something.

00:35:36

I assume that he's stirring something up in me

00:35:39

because he wants me to see something,

00:35:41

and it's the feelings that God uses to get our attention.

00:35:46

Now, I've had to grow in this because for a long time,

00:35:50

most of my life, I did everything to stuff my emotions,

00:35:53

to jam down my emotions.

00:35:55

Partially because I grew up in

00:35:56

a very, very non-emotive family.

00:35:59

And so I didn't have a lot of emotions happening there.

00:36:01

And then I went to a very non-emotive seminary,

00:36:05

and I had a very non-emotive start of my Christian walk,

00:36:08

where actually was drilled into me that

00:36:10

emotions aren't facts, your feelings aren't facts.

00:36:15

And so it caused me to just be really wary

00:36:18

any time there was emotion.

00:36:20

And it is true, our feelings are not facts.

00:36:22

It is true that many of us, we feel something

00:36:25

and we just think that's truth.

00:36:27

No, that's your feelings. That's not truth.

00:36:29

It's your feelings. Your feelings are important.

00:36:32

And it's also why I'll talk in a little bit later.

00:36:35

We want to really do the best we can as a church

00:36:38

to help you get into the Bible this year

00:36:41

so that your feelings can be informed.

00:36:43

So all of this to say, I've had --

00:36:46

I've been a bit like feeling, but I realize

00:36:48

that when you take a look at Nehemiah,

00:36:49

it's his feelings that are motivating him.

00:36:53

It's his feelings that are pushing him.

00:36:57

Why is it that so few of us that make resolutions

00:37:00

are going to last past February?

00:37:03

Why is it that, I keep referring to this one

00:37:06

over and over again because all of us,

00:37:08

at some point, if not every year,

00:37:10

make this sort of resolution, something about

00:37:12

working out, losing weight, getting fit,

00:37:14

right, going on a diet.

00:37:16

I mean, just about everybody has done that

00:37:18

at one point or another, and that might be you.

00:37:20

I'm not trying to pick on that topic.

00:37:22

I'm just going, that's one we could probably all relate with.

00:37:24

Why is it that so many of us have

00:37:27

those sorts of goals or visions,

00:37:30

and yet it drops, it doesn't happen?

00:37:33

You know why? It's because we're not feeling it.

00:37:37

It's because someone told us it would be good to lose weight.

00:37:40

"Okay, I guess I could lose weight."

00:37:42

It's because we feel like that's what

00:37:44

a good person does is just get in shape.

00:37:46

They get on the treadmill.

00:37:47

It's a it's a rational thing, "I guess I should,"

00:37:50

but we're actually not feeling it.

00:37:56

And then when we're not feeling it

00:37:57

and then we have failures,

00:38:00

then we just don't even have visions anymore.

00:38:02

Here's a graph that shows the number of us

00:38:04

who have resolutions, how many actually follow through.

00:38:07

20% of us have one New Year's resolution,

00:38:11

18% of us have two,

00:38:13

and 62% of us don't make any resolutions.

00:38:17

And so it's okay not to make any resolutions.

00:38:19

It's fine fine, fine, totally totally fine.

00:38:21

The Bible doesn't say thou shalt doth maketh

00:38:22

a New Year's resolution. It doesn't say that.

00:38:28

But many of the 62% who don't make resolutions

00:38:32

don't have visions all year long.

00:38:35

They just, or you just are in a habit

00:38:38

of just gliding by and just living life

00:38:41

and just eking by instead of feeling alive

00:38:44

and having a zest, an emotional feel

00:38:48

that's kind of pushing you forward.

00:38:53

What is the emotion that pushes us,

00:38:55

the resolution that makes that happen?

00:39:00

Uh, I have a -- I work out regularly. Uh, two reasons.

00:39:05

Two quick reasons. One um, every week I have

00:39:08

tens of thousands of eyeballs on me,

00:39:10

so I don't want to look like a slob.

00:39:11

That's one reason why I work out.

00:39:13

I've wondered if I didn't have a lot of people

00:39:15

looking at me, would I work out as much as I do? I don't know.

00:39:18

The second reason, though, second reason why I do

00:39:21

is because I do a lot of hunting, and I do a lot

00:39:24

of things where I need my body to perform.

00:39:27

This last year I had a couple elk hunts.

00:39:31

I had one elk hunt that was set up.

00:39:35

It was going to be a really hard, strenuous elk hunt.

00:39:37

And then I had another one that came up,

00:39:40

a friend of mine, uh, a friend of a pastor out West.

00:39:45

He's got a guy in his church who has

00:39:47

a million plus acres, the cattle rancher,

00:39:49

a million plus acres.

00:39:51

I swear, if you looked at him,

00:39:52

him and the guy went hunting with,

00:39:54

have you ever seen Yellowstone?

00:39:55

It's Kevin Costner and Rip. I kid you not.

00:39:59

I've showed everybody they say that's them.

00:40:00

I swear they patterned that show,

00:40:03

if you like Yellowstone, off of this guy.

00:40:05

It was a fun hunt.

00:40:07

It was a pretty easy hunt because it was private land,

00:40:09

herds of elk, herd and got one. It was wonderful.

00:40:12

I think I have a picture of the bull elk

00:40:14

that I got, it was pretty, pretty cool.

00:40:16

Not a great picture, but big six by six.

00:40:19

Then I went into the next one, which was a more real hunt.

00:40:22

Not on private land where there's herds,

00:40:24

but where you got to go find them.

00:40:26

And we had to go up 13,000ft, three days out of four.

00:40:32

The last day, or the second last day.

00:40:36

It was the last day of shooting,

00:40:38

the last hour of shooting, me and the person I was with,

00:40:41

uh, it's a long story.

00:40:43

I'm not going to tell you all of it,

00:40:45

but basically an elk went down and there we are

00:40:48

at the top of this mountain,

00:40:49

and we've got to bring down, each of us,

00:40:51

100 pounds of elk and bone from 13,000 feet

00:40:55

down a 45 degree incline with snow up to our shins

00:41:00

and dead fall and no paths and nothing.

00:41:02

And I kept thinking to myself as I went down,

00:41:05

that's why I workout. That's why I workout.

00:41:07

When I workout, I think, "There's going to come a day

00:41:09

I'm going to have to do this,

00:41:10

a coming day I have to do this.

00:41:12

And my emotion is, I don't want to be caught naked like that.

00:41:15

I want to be able.

00:41:17

And it's actually an emotion that stirs up in you.

00:41:19

You've got to figure out whatever your vision is,

00:41:22

is it something God wants you to do?

00:41:24

And you have to tap into the emotion,

00:41:26

which is your motivation to get it done.

00:41:28

One book says this:

00:41:41

Emotion leads to action.

00:41:43

That's what happens with Nehemiah,

00:41:44

where reason leads to conclusions.

00:41:48

I had a friend of mine, and he was telling me

00:41:50

this last week that he one of his resolutions

00:41:53

is to lose weight and do this and that.

00:41:55

And I was like, I said, "What? What? Really?"

00:41:58

"So yeah, I got this and that."

00:42:00

And I tried talking him out of it, like, "I think you're fine.

00:42:03

I don't know what you're talking about."

00:42:04

And I realized, "Oh, I'm not helping him right now."

00:42:07

And I told him, "I'm sorry.

00:42:09

I should be supporting you in your vision

00:42:11

to lose 30 pounds."

00:42:12

He's a tall guy. He hides it well.

00:42:14

And his name is Steve. Sorry.

00:42:16

Now he's probably mad that I said he has to lose 30 pounds.

00:42:19

So you guys know who he is.

00:42:21

Um, so, Steve, uh. And I said I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

00:42:24

And why was he saying this?

00:42:27

Well, it's because he has a history in his family

00:42:29

of heart disease, and his mom just had a another issue.

00:42:33

She could be fine, but another issue with it.

00:42:35

So emotionally, he's like, "Oh, my gosh,

00:42:38

this is in my DNA, like, I could die very soon.

00:42:44

It's in my DNA."

00:42:46

It wasn't a rational thing of,

00:42:48

"Oh, I probably should lose it."

00:42:50

No, it all of a sudden it kicked into emotion

00:42:52

and now he's doing it differently.

00:42:53

What is it for you that you feel? What is it?

00:42:57

What do you feel?

00:42:59

There's probably something in there

00:43:01

that God has for you and He wants from you,

00:43:04

and He wants you to get into,

00:43:06

wants you to have a vision for.

00:43:08

See, Nehemiah, he was the guy.

00:43:11

A bunch of other people didn't have the feels

00:43:13

when they saw the wall. Nehemiah did.

00:43:15

And that's why he's in the Bible,

00:43:18

because he's the one guy who said, "I got it,

00:43:20

I feel it, I'm on it."

00:43:22

There could be a future for you that is amazing,

00:43:26

but it starts with you having a vision.

00:43:28

And you have to understand what is

00:43:30

your natural motivations, the motivations God's giving you

00:43:33

that are actually in your emotions.

00:43:37

Let's keep going. Verse ten. Verse ten.

00:43:42

Nehemiah 1:10, here's what Nehemiah now processes with God.

00:44:08

Nehemiah here, his emotion is being informed by God.

00:44:12

That's what I want you to see here. He is --

00:44:16

This is about God.

00:44:17

This is about him accomplishing a goal.

00:44:20

This is about God.

00:44:22

And he's saying to God, "This is your project.

00:44:25

I want to be your guy.

00:44:27

I also recognize that we as a people,

00:44:29

we have sinned and we need to repent for our sin

00:44:32

and we need to ask forgiveness."

00:44:33

There's a whole layer of spiritual depth that's here.

00:44:36

This is not just somebody having

00:44:38

a project management attitude and a type A driven personality.

00:44:42

This is about God, and you've got to see that

00:44:44

with the vision God gives you.

00:44:45

It's about God. It's not about you.

00:44:49

It's about God, not about you.

00:44:51

Let's go back to physical fitness for just a moment.

00:44:54

You could say, "Well, I could lose whatever, whatever."

00:44:57

Or you could say, "God has blessed me with a body.

00:45:01

It's His body, not mine.

00:45:04

And He wants me to take care of it."

00:45:05

Because when someone borrows your car

00:45:07

and doesn't take care of it and puts dents in it

00:45:09

and leaves trash all over the inside

00:45:11

and jams it with French fries, you're like,

00:45:13

"What the heck are you doing, man? It's my car."

00:45:15

Well, that's what your body is, if you're a believer,

00:45:17

that's what your body is to God.

00:45:20

He's like, "What are you doing trashing my body, man.

00:45:23

I'm gifting you this body.

00:45:25

I'm blessing you with this body.

00:45:26

But you gave me your life, and that's my body."

00:45:31

And you can think through that, go, oh man,

00:45:33

all of a sudden now this becomes personal

00:45:35

because now it's a God thing. It's not a me thing.

00:45:38

This is what Nehemiah is doing.

00:45:40

It's personal with him and God.

00:45:42

It's not a need that he has to do something else.

00:45:44

It's personal.

00:45:45

Now Nehemiah spends about four months

00:45:51

from the time that he processes and gets his vision,

00:45:54

four months before then and when he does it.

00:45:56

That four months, he's praying,

00:45:59

he's processing with God.

00:46:00

Or as I like to say, he's crockpotting it.

00:46:04

He's crockpotting it. This is what a vision does.

00:46:06

You don't just immediately --

00:46:08

And I will tell you right now,

00:46:09

maybe you're starting to feel something.

00:46:11

Hold the horses.

00:46:12

Maybe you're starting to feel

00:46:13

the beginnings of a vision in here right now.

00:46:16

Let me tell you, do not,

00:46:18

do not leave here today and tell anybody about it.

00:46:23

Don't do it. It's too soon. It's too soon.

00:46:28

You need to process it.

00:46:30

You need to figure out if you want to own it.

00:46:32

You've got to think through it.

00:46:33

You got to pray through it.

00:46:35

It's got to be between you and God for a season.

00:46:37

That's the way it was with Nehemiah,

00:46:39

it was between Nehemiah and God.

00:46:42

And then all of a sudden he starts coming out with it.

00:46:46

Uh, I love hunting.

00:46:47

I've talked about that a number of times.

00:46:49

And I'll tell you what I don't like though,

00:46:51

I don't like cooking. Some of you, that's your hobby.

00:46:54

You like to cook. That's awesome.

00:46:55

I wish I was like that. I just don't like to cook.

00:46:58

I just want to get it cooked as fast as possible

00:47:00

and then get it in my mouth as fast as possible.

00:47:02

You know, people like, "Oh, I'm smoking it."

00:47:05

"How long does it take?" "Oh, it's six hours.

00:47:07

"Oh, that long?"

00:47:08

"Oh, you just got to go out

00:47:09

every once in a while and check."

00:47:11

I don't want to go out every once in a while

00:47:12

and check on something for six hours.

00:47:14

No, I want to put it in the microwave and I want to eat it.

00:47:16

No, I want to put it on the on the skillet

00:47:18

and, like, brown it and eat it.

00:47:21

I know it'll be great. It'll be awesome.

00:47:24

But this is the way visions are like.

00:47:25

You can't microwave a vision.

00:47:26

You can't put it on the skillet

00:47:28

and just brown it and make it happen.

00:47:29

You have to crockpot it.

00:47:31

You have to let it marinate in its juices.

00:47:34

You've got to think about it. You've got to process it.

00:47:36

You've got to allow God to do something in it.

00:47:40

You're going to hear about a vision I think

00:47:44

God has given us a church sometime later this year.

00:47:48

Not now because it's crockpotting.

00:47:53

I'm not ready to go public with it.

00:47:54

And there's pieces to it that I haven't heard from God.

00:48:00

I'm like waiting, like, "God, what is -- what is there?"

00:48:02

There's just pieces missing.

00:48:04

There's enough there that I could say some stuff

00:48:06

and it would give direction and maybe some excitement,

00:48:09

but it's not -- it's not ready. It's --

00:48:11

I don't even know when it will be.

00:48:13

It's marinating though.

00:48:14

A lot of prayer that's happening in it,

00:48:16

a lot of processing, all that stuff.

00:48:19

I learned that from Nehemiah.

00:48:21

And that's the same way it should be for all of us.

00:48:24

One of my resolutions I failed at,

00:48:26

I did it a number of years ago was Spanish.

00:48:28

I said, "I'm going to learn to speak Spanish this year."

00:48:30

It was a stupid thing to say because

00:48:33

then all you people who speak Spanish

00:48:36

kept coming up to me and like talking to me,

00:48:38

like, in Spanish, to, like, test me.

00:48:39

Like, come up and go like, "Cuatro cinco?"

00:48:42

I go, "Uh, nueve? Cuatro. Ocho. No, whatever it is."

00:48:47

People just come up saying something.

00:48:48

I'm like, man, this is not fun.

00:48:50

I'm not supposed to be passing a test

00:48:53

every time I come to church and I failed, I failed.

00:48:55

Why did I fail?

00:48:57

Uh, it wasn't just because I didn't do the homework.

00:48:59

Why didn't I do the homework?

00:49:01

It's because I didn't feel it.

00:49:02

I thought it was something I should do.

00:49:04

Now, if 20% of Crossroads were Spanish speaking people,

00:49:08

I would learn.

00:49:11

As our Spanish speaking ministry grows,

00:49:13

it's happening right now. It's growing.

00:49:14

Emotionally might kick in, like all of a sudden,

00:49:17

"Ooh ooh ooh ooh, I want it.

00:49:18

I want to be able to talk to people

00:49:20

in their own native tongue."

00:49:23

But I had to crockpot that.

00:49:24

I should have crockpotted that instead of

00:49:26

just brashly saying I'm going to do that

00:49:28

and then and then it doesn't happen.

00:49:30

We pray. We pray about it.

00:49:33

But hear me very, very clearly.

00:49:34

Praying is not substitute for doing.

00:49:37

One of the things you'll rarely hear me say,

00:49:39

if you ask me to do something,

00:49:41

you're rarely hear me say, "Well, I'll pray about it."

00:49:44

Uh, I don't like that. I don't like that.

00:49:46

Because people I know that use that

00:49:47

as a knee jerk reaction, I'll pray about it,

00:49:49

never do about it.

00:49:51

They use a spiritual smokescreen of spirituality,

00:49:55

and very frequently people use that phrase immediately,

00:49:58

there's no follow up.

00:50:00

Praying is not about pausing.

00:50:03

Praying is about marinating and preparing to doing.

00:50:07

That's what prayer is about.

00:50:10

And Nehemiah is praying while he's expecting to do.

00:50:15

Vision is doing. It's doing.

00:50:19

Nehemiah 2:1. Here's what happens,

00:50:22

in the month of Nissan or Toyota, whatever it is.

00:50:49

The king sees that his guy is not well,

00:50:55

and this opens the door for him

00:50:59

to make an ask of the king and start doing.

00:51:02

And he asks the king for resources to build the wall.

00:51:06

Let's go down to verse seven.

00:51:42

I love that, here it's about God,

00:51:44

the good hand of my God was with me.

00:51:47

He's planning, he's preparing,

00:51:50

he's gathering resources to go forward.

00:51:52

Let me tell you, here's the thing.

00:51:54

There's certain brands of spirituality

00:51:56

that have phrases like, I'll pray about it,

00:51:59

but they never do about it.

00:52:02

Phrases like, "Well, if God's hands in it, you know."

00:52:07

What, God's hands in it, that means you don't do it?

00:52:09

You just expect His hand to do it?

00:52:11

There's a form of spirituality in our country

00:52:15

that assumes that if God wants it to happen,

00:52:17

it's going to naturally happen.

00:52:19

Yeah, it will, you know how? From you and I.

00:52:22

It happens to somebody who has a vision.

00:52:25

It doesn't happen by angels coming down and redirecting.

00:52:27

Somebody has a vision, somebody has a drive,

00:52:31

and somebody says, I will actually do this,

00:52:34

and I'll lay my life down, for whatever it is,

00:52:36

building a big wall, getting a college education,

00:52:40

being the first person in my family not to get a divorce,

00:52:43

starting a business, learning a second language

00:52:47

so I can interact with the people group

00:52:48

that feels oppressed,

00:52:52

starting something at the local community center

00:52:55

that will give people purpose,

00:52:57

being a coach that builds into kids and students.

00:53:01

I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds

00:53:02

and hundreds of them.

00:53:03

But we have to do.

00:53:05

We have to actually put our foot forward.

00:53:08

Let me say, one of the most creative visions

00:53:11

was in 2023 was that our camps, you know,

00:53:17

we have all these camps, Women's Camp,

00:53:19

Man Camp, Vet Camp, on and on and on and on.

00:53:21

I can't even remember them all.

00:53:22

And one enterprising woman had a vision.

00:53:27

She went to woman camp and she realized,

00:53:30

"I want to have a man in my life."

00:53:33

She realized, well, let me tell you how I found this out.

00:53:37

Guys at Man Camp, they go out

00:53:40

and they have an hour to hear from God,

00:53:43

an hour of solitude.

00:53:44

It's one of the things that happens.

00:53:46

And we give them a book.

00:53:47

We give all of us a little booklet.

00:53:49

You can kind of walk through with God

00:53:50

and just solitude time, you and God.

00:53:52

No music, no nothing, and just see what, you know,

00:53:55

maybe you hear from God.

00:53:56

Maybe God tells you that He likes you or whatever it is.

00:53:59

And so there were these signs that

00:54:04

a woman from Woman Camp weeks earlier had posted

00:54:07

all in the woods, all through, here it is:

00:54:11

single woman camp in search of Man Camp man.

00:54:17

Had them all in the woods.

00:54:19

The man's going to come out here in a few weeks,

00:54:22

I'm going to be ready for him.

00:54:24

And then, uh, call Jenny.

00:54:26

And so of course, I found that, I'm like,

00:54:28

"Okay, I'll participate in this vision,

00:54:30

made announcement at Man Camp, got her a couple dates.

00:54:32

I don't know what's happened with her yet,

00:54:34

but that's -- that -- it's awesome.

00:54:36

We called her up and we called her up,

00:54:38

and we try to make sure she wasn't wacko. She wasn't.

00:54:40

She said, look, uh, I don't think she was.

00:54:43

She said, "Look, I read the book Five Marks of a Man,

00:54:45

and I'm not going a date

00:54:47

unless somebody actually reads that book

00:54:49

and they're a five marks kind of man."

00:54:50

I was like, "Oh, wow, okay."

00:54:51

And we screened a couple guys and, etc.

00:54:55

Interesting. I don't know what happened.

00:54:56

Here's what I know: that's a vision, right?

00:55:01

She did something. She did something creative.

00:55:07

She pushed.

00:55:08

And what she's doing, what everybody else

00:55:10

who has a vision, what we do is we endure.

00:55:13

Vision is enduring.

00:55:17

Here's you and I right here.

00:55:20

And there's the vision over there.

00:55:22

There it is right there.

00:55:24

To get from here to there

00:55:26

we need these things I've talked about.

00:55:27

There's I got to see something.

00:55:29

I got to feel something. I've got to do.

00:55:32

I got to do something. I got to -- I got to start.

00:55:34

Start putting some stuff up and doing things.

00:55:37

I gotta, I gotta do something.

00:55:39

But in the midst of all of that,

00:55:43

what's between here and there, where I am now

00:55:47

and the vision, is two things time and difficulty.

00:55:51

It's going to take time to get there

00:55:53

and it's going to be very hard.

00:55:57

It's going to be painful.

00:56:01

And other people will quit.

00:56:04

But if you have a vision and you're feeling it,

00:56:08

and God is calling you to it,

00:56:13

you will endure until it gets done. You will.

00:56:17

You will keep pressing because you realize

00:56:19

maybe I think the vision is that,

00:56:21

but maybe, maybe God has a vision,

00:56:24

and His vision is to grow me in the enduring process.

00:56:28

Very few people want to do difficult things anymore.

00:56:31

I always like to have mottos.

00:56:33

My family had a motto when we were growing up.

00:56:36

We still have it, it's Tomes hustle, chop chop.

00:56:39

We hustle, like kids are not --

00:56:41

Kids are dilly dallying around, like,

00:56:43

getting their socks on, taking 20 minutes

00:56:45

to get their socks on. Not my kids.

00:56:47

Kids hustle, Tomes hussle. Let's go. Chop, chop.

00:56:50

Get your freaking socks on.

00:56:51

Like, it's in the family DNA.

00:56:53

We hustle. We hustle. Right?

00:56:55

What I've been thinking about the last year

00:56:58

because of things that I think God's asking me to do

00:57:00

is I've just owned the statement.

00:57:02

The statement is, um, I do hard things.

00:57:04

That's just what I do, I do hard things. I do hard things.

00:57:08

So at 12:30 a.m. when I'm carrying

00:57:10

100 pounds of elk down a 45 degree incline

00:57:15

through deadfall, pitch black,

00:57:18

never carried that much in those conditions.

00:57:19

I just kept going, "I do hard things.

00:57:21

That's what I do. I do hard things."

00:57:25

When there's an emotionally very sticky situation

00:57:28

to get into and speak into,

00:57:29

and no one wants to speak into it

00:57:31

because it's going to be very tough,

00:57:33

I just say, "I do hard things.

00:57:35

That's what I do. I do hard things."

00:57:39

If you're going to be a person of vision,

00:57:41

you have to embrace that

00:57:43

you will do hard things, whatever it is.

00:57:45

It may not be going down a mountain at 12:30.

00:57:47

Those are examples in my life.

00:57:49

But for you, for to us to endure,

00:57:52

it's going to have to be hard.

00:57:55

Nehemiah 2:11.

00:57:56

Here's what Nehemiah says or what happens.

00:58:08

There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode.

00:58:14

He doesn't tell anybody. Why doesn't he tell anybody?

00:58:17

It's because he's crockpotting this vision

00:58:19

and it's too soon and if he tells the wrong person,

00:58:22

they're going to dash his dreams.

00:58:25

That's me with my friend Steve.

00:58:27

I had to apologize, like, "I'm sorry.

00:58:29

You're telling me your vision, your goal,

00:58:31

your resolution, and I'm dashing your dreams.

00:58:34

I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

00:58:35

You got to be really careful who you tell

00:58:38

your dreams to, your visions, your resolutions,

00:58:39

your goals, objectives.

00:58:41

Again, there are differences,

00:58:42

nuances there to all those things.

00:58:44

But for the purpose of today,

00:58:45

I'm using those all synonymously.

00:58:48

You have to figure out who you can trust

00:58:50

and you've got to -- you've got to protect that vision.

00:58:53

And you can't let the wrong person into your vision

00:58:57

who's going to be doing anything

00:59:00

but blowing oxygen on the little ember

00:59:03

of flame that you have inside of you.

00:59:06

This is what Nehemiah, we see with him.

00:59:08

Then verse 13.

00:59:21

Finally he gets to see the actual walls.

00:59:25

He's seen them in his mind. He's felt it.

00:59:29

He's raised money and resources for it.

00:59:32

He's made the journey.

00:59:33

And finally he gets to see it.

00:59:36

Now we're going to be taking a look at

00:59:39

all the steps that he goes through over the next few weeks.

00:59:42

And all these steps are the steps that you and I

00:59:44

have to go through for our vision

00:59:46

of being a college graduate,

00:59:48

our vision of finding a mate,

00:59:51

our vision of having healthy kids,

00:59:54

our vision of, uh, having a growing bank account.

00:59:59

It's not always entirely evil, you know.

01:00:01

Our vision of having an idea that blesses my community,

01:00:06

our vision of whatever it is,

01:00:08

all of these things all come together.

01:00:10

And I'll tell you what we all need.

01:00:12

We all need to know that we're hearing from God.

01:00:16

You're from God and He can use our feelings,

01:00:19

but our feelings need to get informed by His Word,

01:00:22

His Scriptures, the things that actually work.

01:00:25

So here's a vision for you you can you can embrace.

01:00:28

Where you can do this with all of us

01:00:30

here at Crossroads who are in the app,

01:00:32

we're going to have a Bible challenge this year,

01:00:34

and we're going to read

01:00:36

the entire New Testament in one year.

01:00:38

It's not a lot, but it's a goal you can have.

01:00:40

It's an objective you can have.

01:00:42

Actually there's other challenges too inside this year,

01:00:45

we're actually going to have the book of Nehemiah

01:00:47

that you're in right now. Read that.

01:00:48

You can read the book of Proverbs,

01:00:50

but on the Crossroads app, which is really,

01:00:54

really I can't tell you enough

01:00:55

how many of us are blessed by it.

01:00:57

You can hear what, see what other people are journaling.

01:01:00

You can have things prayed for.

01:01:02

You can celebrate things.

01:01:03

Different spiritual exercises.

01:01:05

It's one way for you to actually get strengthened.

01:01:08

You can also just use the app

01:01:10

and see what the readings are that we're all doing,

01:01:12

and read it in your fuddy-duddy paper Bible if you want.

01:01:15

But I'm telling you, if you want something different,

01:01:18

you're going to have to do something different.

01:01:21

And that has to be informed by a vision

01:01:23

that you have for your life.

01:01:25

God has them for you, you know.

01:01:27

You're made in the image of God.

01:01:29

That means you and I can see things

01:01:31

that other people can't see.

01:01:33

We can see things that the animals can't see.

01:01:37

We see them because God is working in us,

01:01:41

and He wants you to do a role that only you can do.

01:01:46

I have a friend of mine who's a movie producer

01:01:50

who has produced movies, and he said

01:01:51

the worst thing about a movie script,

01:01:55

the most difficult thing about it

01:01:56

is whenever there's an action movie or a drama

01:01:59

and he calls it, "But there's slow danger."

01:02:03

All right. What do you mean, slow danger?

01:02:04

So, like, well, when you want to start the movie,

01:02:08

you want, like, immediately, pretty quick in the movie

01:02:11

for there to be an element of danger.

01:02:12

And it's got to be real pressing danger,

01:02:14

like a bomb is going to explode

01:02:16

and half the country is going to die.

01:02:18

It's really, versus slow danger.

01:02:20

No one wants to see a movie of a person who's born,

01:02:23

and the next 95 years,

01:02:24

this person is going to die at some point.

01:02:26

That slow danger, right?

01:02:28

Because it it forces action.

01:02:31

If you're going to be a person of vision,

01:02:33

you have to get away from this slow danger thing.

01:02:36

You have to believe that if you don't do this

01:02:38

danger is there, danger.

01:02:41

Danger, Will Robinson, the name an old TV show.

01:02:44

Danger. It is dangerous to your heart

01:02:47

if you don't do the thing that God is putting on it.

01:02:51

It's dangerous to your body if you keep doing

01:02:54

what you're doing and you're starting to feel it.

01:02:57

It is dangerous to an entire community

01:03:00

if you have a vision that God's given you

01:03:04

and you're not working that vision,

01:03:05

it's dangerous to that entire community.

01:03:08

You're the hands and feet of Jesus,

01:03:13

and you and I get to be enlisted in

01:03:17

the greatest thing on God's green earth,

01:03:18

that's the Kingdom of God.

01:03:20

And you're part of the Kingdom of God.

01:03:21

Your mind, your heart, your physical fitness,

01:03:25

your relational patterns, you're part that.

01:03:28

And so you best be spending some time

01:03:30

with God this year and seeing the visions

01:03:32

He has for you. You have one. He has things for you.

01:03:35

He does, because you're wonderfully and preciously made.

01:03:40

He knit you together in your mom's womb,

01:03:43

even if you didn't know who she was.

01:03:46

And He's got a plan for you and a purpose for you.

01:03:50

And instead of searching for some grand thing,

01:03:52

just notice what you see and what you feel and get on it.

01:03:59

God, I shudder to think what could happen

01:04:03

if just a small percentage of us

01:04:06

got a vision and went after it.

01:04:09

And I pray that happens a large percentage of it.

01:04:11

I pray that we would hear stories years from now

01:04:16

of the time that you spoke to us

01:04:17

during our Crossroads series on Nehemiah,

01:04:20

and a vision was birthed and a vision got done.

01:04:24

We thank You for caring about us

01:04:28

and being important enough to You that

01:04:31

You would actually want to use us in some way, shape or form.

01:04:34

You're so patient and You're so good.

01:04:36

I pray these things according to the name of Jesus. Amen.

01:04:41

- Hey, thank you so much for watching.

01:04:42

Now I've got something that I want to put on your radar.

01:04:45

It's not going to be for everybody here,

01:04:46

but if it's for you, it is really for you.

01:04:49

Now, we all know that life can be difficult,

01:04:51

and many of us are in a tough spot

01:04:53

where we're processing or working through

01:04:55

something that's especially challenging.

01:04:57

Now, Crossroads actually offers something

01:04:59

that has been really meaningful for me personally,

01:05:01

called Healing Groups.

01:05:02

Healing Groups are the chance to walk through

01:05:04

some of life's most difficult experience and moments,

01:05:07

but to not do it alone,

01:05:09

to do it in the context of community,

01:05:11

where you can grow with other people

01:05:12

and where you can heal with God.

01:05:16

I actually experienced this personally

01:05:18

in a grief group, a healing grief group

01:05:21

after the death of my mom and sister.

01:05:23

And it was really powerful and helpful for me

01:05:25

to not get stuck in my grief,

01:05:27

but to move forward and to grow.

01:05:30

If you want to join a group of like-minded people

01:05:32

who want to heal in the midst of things

01:05:34

like divorce or loss, man,

01:05:36

we'd love to walk with you through that.

01:05:38

You can find more info at Crossroads.net/anywhere.

01:05:43

We'd love to walk with you when life is good

01:05:45

and when it's not.

01:05:46

Hey, thanks for joining us.

01:05:48

We'll see you back here next week.

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