We Go

00:00:00

- We are Crossroads.

00:00:01

A group of Jesus lovers

00:00:03

who are more interested in being real

00:00:05

than looking good.

00:00:06

We believe the church is called to love God

00:00:08

and our neighbors.

00:00:10

No memberships or secret handshakes required.

00:00:13

We strive to do what we see Jesus do.

00:00:15

We run to the lost, the hurting, the hungry,

00:00:19

to those who are asking questions and seeking truth.

00:00:22

We will do anything short of sin

00:00:24

to reach our friends and neighbors.

00:00:26

We believe that everyone has a seat at God's table.

00:00:29

We go outside our walls

00:00:30

to serve the forgotten and marginalized.

00:00:32

We believe we are called to be

00:00:33

the hands and feet of Jesus on earth.

00:00:35

We laugh as often as possible.

00:00:38

The world wants to beat us down and leave us helpless.

00:00:41

Laughter is our way of saying no to despair and yes to joy.

00:00:46

We don't take ourselves too seriously.

00:00:48

We believe God has a sense of humor

00:00:51

and that farts are funny.

00:00:53

We challenge ourselves and each other

00:00:55

to get out of our comfort zone and do hard things.

00:00:59

We believe that God uses any struggle

00:01:01

and adversity we face to sharpen us,

00:01:04

grow us, make us stronger,

00:01:06

and take us to new places we can't get to from our couches.

00:01:09

We sacrifice everything for the cause

00:01:12

to go the way of Jesus.

00:01:14

We believe everything we have is from God and for God.

00:01:18

So we give our time, talents and money.

00:01:21

We choose to die empty.

00:01:23

We endure through any struggle we face.

00:01:26

Jesus overcame the world,

00:01:27

so when things get hard, we push through.

00:01:30

When we get knocked down, we get back up again.

00:01:33

Yesterday, today, tomorrow we will follow wherever God leads.

00:01:37

We are Crossroads. This is us.

00:01:50

- Today, we're going to hear from Kyle about how we go,

00:01:53

how there is no plan B

00:01:54

and how we're called to change the world.

00:01:57

Now, a few years ago, I was on a motorcycle trip

00:01:59

with our senior pastor, Brian Tome,

00:02:01

and it taught me so much about Brian

00:02:03

and about what it means to be a part of this community.

00:02:06

We were riding motorcycles off road

00:02:08

across the state of Utah and having the time of our life.

00:02:12

We were on this route called White Rim Trail.

00:02:14

You should Google it. It's incredible.

00:02:15

Thousand foot cliff drop on one side,

00:02:18

beautiful mountain vistas on the other.

00:02:20

It is just like pinch yourself incredible riding.

00:02:23

And we every time we'd stopped,

00:02:24

we'd just give each other high fives

00:02:26

just celebrating that we got to do this.

00:02:28

It was so much fun.

00:02:29

But something changed with Brian

00:02:31

about three quarters of the way through the trip.

00:02:33

I noticed as we were all hanging out,

00:02:35

he kind of went off by himself to look at his map

00:02:37

and look at his GPS.

00:02:38

And I saw him go from like having a great time

00:02:41

to decidedly not having a great time

00:02:43

in about two seconds flat.

00:02:44

So he's looking at his map, looking at his GPS,

00:02:47

looking at his map, looking at his GPS.

00:02:49

And he calls me over and says, "Hey, Candy, get over here."

00:02:51

So I walk over and he says, "We've been riding all day.

00:02:54

We started this morning right here, right?"

00:02:56

And I said, "Yeah."

00:02:57

"But right now we're right here, right?"

00:03:00

I said, "Yeah."

00:03:01

And you just saw his -- he just, like,

00:03:03

instantly his face fell and he looked up at me

00:03:05

and said, "Did we just spend all day

00:03:08

driving in a freaking circle?"

00:03:10

The man could not handle it.

00:03:12

Didn't matter how good the scenery was,

00:03:14

the guy could not handle ending the day

00:03:16

in the same place that he started it.

00:03:19

And for me, that crystallized who we are as a community.

00:03:22

We never want to end in the same place that we started.

00:03:25

We always want to move forward and take new ground,

00:03:29

and that's actually why we exist.

00:03:31

That's what we want for you,

00:03:32

to help you go to a new place with God.

00:03:36

Whether you attend one of our physical sites

00:03:38

or are a part of our anywhere community all over the world,

00:03:41

there are tons of great opportunities for you.

00:03:43

The best way for you to stay in the know

00:03:45

about all of them is just

00:03:47

to download the Crossroads Anywhere app,

00:03:49

enter your location and click on happenings.

00:03:51

That story with Brian is just one of many, many.

00:03:54

But there are so many stories of everyday people

00:03:57

making a huge impact, and I want you to hear

00:04:00

from a few of them right now.

00:04:06

Now we're talking, this is. Go. We go.

00:04:08

We go.

00:04:09

- One of the unique things about Crossroads is we go.

00:04:12

We've done that, what? 26 years I guess it would be right?

00:04:16

Right, Vivian? How long has it been?

00:04:17

That we've done Go Trips? - Yeah.

00:04:18

- We didn't do them in the very beginning.

00:04:20

When did you start them?

00:04:22

- The first Go Trip was 2006. - Wow. - Really?

00:04:24

Yeah.

00:04:25

You were on that trip, weren't you?

00:04:26

- Yeah, I helped lead that trip. Yeah.

00:04:28

Who was? You both were?

00:04:30

Yeah. - Oh, wow.

00:04:31

- Crossroads had started a relationship

00:04:33

with a church in South Africa, and we had built the --

00:04:36

Or we were building the AIDS hospice.

00:04:38

And this is like the height

00:04:39

of the AIDS crisis in South Africa. Right?

00:04:41

So, but at that point, all we had done is send money,

00:04:44

like, the only people who had even been to South Africa,

00:04:47

where I think Brian and Libby had been there,

00:04:49

and Tim Seneff, who was the reachout director at the time,

00:04:51

his wife, and like maybe two other people.

00:04:54

And it was Tim who said, you know,

00:04:56

"I don't just want to send money.

00:04:58

We got to get people involved in this thing."

00:05:00

So he recruited a couple of us

00:05:02

who were his volunteers at the time.

00:05:04

He's like, "Let's figure out how to take people to South Africa."

00:05:07

- Not like ten more people. - Yeah. - No. - Right?

00:05:12

- Right. So we were used to doing things big.

00:05:14

So we're like, how many people can we take?

00:05:16

And so we decided on 300, which the --

00:05:20

- That is crazy.

00:05:21

- Well, that's -- what most people don't know is

00:05:25

the reason we did 300 was because at that point

00:05:28

there were two flights a day from the US to Johannesburg

00:05:31

and the airlines would give us 150 seats per flight.

00:05:34

They wouldn't give us more than that because

00:05:36

if we canceled, they'd be in huge trouble. Right?

00:05:39

So they would give us 150 per flight.

00:05:40

So, that's how we landed on 300 people.

00:05:42

- Wow. - Wow.

00:05:43

- So, yeah, so we took 300 that first year.

00:05:46

And I remember flying home from that trip

00:05:49

and I was sitting next to Tim Seneff.

00:05:50

And I remember telling him I'm like,

00:05:53

"Every single thing this week went perfectly, like, perfect."

00:05:57

It was so obvious that God had blessed that trip,

00:05:59

and I think it's because He knew if anything went wrong,

00:06:02

we never would have done it again. Right?

00:06:03

- Right. - Right.

00:06:04

So it was just seamless

00:06:06

and we had no right for to be because we knew nothing.

00:06:09

Like, I remember we had a guy on our leadership team

00:06:12

who was a doctor and I remember he told us,

00:06:15

"There is a chance that someone might die on this trip."

00:06:17

- What? - Wait, what?

00:06:18

- And we're like --

00:06:19

- Don't tell the H.R. person that.

00:06:21

- Yeah.

00:06:22

[indiscernible crosstalk]

00:06:25

- Yeah. He's like, "Well, it's not a high chance,

00:06:27

but there is a chance."

00:06:28

That was, like, I never even thought about.

00:06:30

- It didn't even cross your mind.

00:06:31

- Not at all. - You were running?

00:06:32

- Not at all. Yeah.

00:06:33

- You started Go Alabama, but that's not really your HR job.

00:06:36

That's you in a volunteer role. - That's tru.

00:06:38

- Seeing a need, not doing a thing that's on your work plan.

00:06:41

No one would have ever been like,

00:06:43

"Latasha, why haven't you started this Go Trip?

00:06:45

- I was a tagalong, to be clear,

00:06:46

I wasn't even invited on the trip.

00:06:47

But I threatened to tell cancel everybody's paychecks

00:06:51

unless I got invited on the trip.

00:06:52

Gosh, we were experiencing all the same things

00:06:55

that everybody else was experiencing during Covid,

00:06:57

and we were lamenting. We were really lamenting.

00:06:59

And we had connected with a pastor whose name was Brian

00:07:04

and we were -- the leadership team was all on Zoom one day.

00:07:08

And I said something about, "Gosh, we love this Brian,

00:07:11

but my favorite Brian is still Brian Stevenson."

00:07:14

And Kyle pipes up and says, "You know, we're going there?"

00:07:17

in his normal, like, jovial way. And I said, "Going where?"

00:07:21

And he said, "Alabama."

00:07:22

And I'm like, Why? And there was a message.

00:07:25

- To talk to your guy. [indiscernible crosstalk]

00:07:29

- Yes, the series the series that you all

00:07:31

eventually called What color is God?

00:07:33

And they were, they, not me, because I wasn't invited,

00:07:36

we're going to meet Brian Stevenson.

00:07:38

And I'm just looking at the screen

00:07:40

and Kyle at some point says, "You should come."

00:07:44

"Oh, dang, Skippy.

00:07:45

I mean, like, do you realize the

00:07:47

power that I have at my fingertips?

00:07:49

Thank you so much for inviting me on this trip."

00:07:51

And so I go and have zero reason to go

00:07:54

and I get a chance to go and sit in the room

00:07:57

and listen to Brian Tome and Brian Stevenson talk.

00:07:59

And so Brian Tome was leaving and he had like an hour to kill.

00:08:04

BT was like, "Hey, does anybody want to go process

00:08:06

what's happening? Hannah, do you want to go?"

00:08:09

- No. - We had more work to do.

00:08:11

We actually had things to do.

00:08:13

[indiscernible crosstalk]

00:08:18

- No, actually, I can't go. Sorry.

00:08:20

- "Kyle, what about you? Do you want to go?"

00:08:22

I mean, like, he's going down the list and he gets to me.

00:08:25

"Latasha, do you want to go across the street?"

00:08:27

And I'm like, "Yes. I mean, I

00:08:28

don't have any reason to be here."

00:08:31

So we go across the street and we were lamenting

00:08:33

and I was like, "I think we should bring people here."

00:08:36

And he said, "You're absolutely right."

00:08:38

And literally I'm talking to him.

00:08:40

He's not paying attention to me anymore.

00:08:41

He is texting 25 people saying, "We need to go do this

00:08:47

and create a list."

00:08:48

And all of a sudden there was an email that said 20 people,

00:08:51

"We need to create something around Alabama."

00:08:54

- And all of a sudden you had 40 more hours of work

00:08:56

not tied to your job. - That's right.

00:08:59

Okay, Great. Volunteer.

00:09:00

- Absolutely. Absolutely volunteer.

00:09:03

Unbelievable experience, unbelievable blessing

00:09:06

for me personally during that time to be able to go

00:09:09

and live in Alabama for a couple of months

00:09:11

to help create something that all of you guys were there

00:09:16

and a part of and just over the top delightful.

00:09:18

So very, very grateful for the opportunity.

00:09:21

And I guess it's that easy, right?

00:09:23

I mean, we see a need and we fill the need

00:09:26

and that's it, we go. - That's good.

00:09:27

- There's something about not overthinking it there.

00:09:29

That's like, "Hey, we see a need here.

00:09:31

We're going to go do it.

00:09:32

We're not just going to send money or thoughts and prayers.

00:09:34

Go make it happen."

00:09:35

- One of the things I love about our church

00:09:37

is that most churches you visit or talk to

00:09:40

their outreach efforts, usually it's just giving money

00:09:43

and they kind of outsource it because it's really hard.

00:09:45

Like, I'm not judging them for that. It's difficult.

00:09:48

But we have always had our own reach out department.

00:09:51

We have staff dedicated to it.

00:09:52

I think we put like 10% of our budget towards reach out

00:09:55

and we said, "No, it's our job. We're going to do this.

00:09:58

There's nothing wrong with other ministries out there.

00:10:00

They're fantastic, but this is

00:10:02

what we're called to do and we do it."

00:10:04

And it's allowed us to do some crazy things over the years.

00:10:07

But they've been fun,

00:10:08

and I think some real good has happened, too.

00:10:10

- Yeah, absolutely.

00:14:17

Put your hands together like this.

00:14:19

Every song we sing is a prayer set to a melody.

00:14:22

This is called the Lord's Prayer,

00:14:24

the words of Jesus He gave us. It goes like this.

00:14:38

Try it out with us.

00:17:48

- That's right. Let me pray.

00:17:50

Father, I believe those words are true,

00:17:53

that You actually want to give us our daily bread,

00:17:56

meaning You're actually our provider,

00:17:59

that You say we could find peace by coming to You.

00:18:02

And so today I say I'm open to You,

00:18:06

open to You guiding me, taking me.

00:18:08

So I say, Father, let Your Kingdom come

00:18:11

and let Your will be done and let it start with me

00:18:14

right in my heart today.

00:18:15

I pray all this because of You, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

00:18:22

That's the new one, but y'all picked it up real quick.

00:18:24

Hey, if you're new with us, you're here for the first time.

00:18:26

You're in the right place, right?

00:18:28

You're in the right place today.

00:18:29

If it's your first time, you're in the right place.

00:18:31

And I want you to know this, for those of us

00:18:33

who call this place our church, we believe those words:

00:18:37

It's Yours, all Yours.

00:18:38

So we give everything to Him and say

00:18:41

You can do better with it. It's all Yours, God.

00:18:43

And so one of the ways we do that is

00:18:44

at Crossroads.net/give, and you can join me there

00:18:48

and do that together.

00:18:49

Right now, why don't you turn to somebody next to you

00:18:51

and just say, "Hey, I'm glad you showed up today.

00:18:53

Glad you're here. Glad to be here with you."

00:18:55

Then you can have a seat.

00:19:12

- Good morning. There we go.

00:19:15

Good morning. How are you? My name

00:19:16

is Kyle, if we never met before,

00:19:19

aka the Thinking Man's Brian Tome.

00:19:21

If you want to go that way.

00:19:23

He actually has a master's degree and I don't,

00:19:25

so joke's on me there.

00:19:27

Good to be with you this morning.

00:19:28

Those words we just sang are everything:

00:19:32

Father, let Your Kingdom come.

00:19:36

You know that we have a Father who runs after us?

00:19:38

We talked about this last week.

00:19:40

Who'd do anything to reach you.

00:19:42

There's no length He won't go to to find you and to love you.

00:19:46

And if you're brand new today,

00:19:47

maybe that's all you need to hear.

00:19:48

God's not mad at you. He's not in a bad mood.

00:19:51

He's not chasing you down to punish you.

00:19:54

He wants to grab you and wrap you in His arms

00:19:57

and give you a seat at His table.

00:19:59

But it turns out that that Father, He's also a King.

00:20:04

And when you're adopted into His family

00:20:06

and you get that seat at His table,

00:20:08

you not only have a place forever and always with Him,

00:20:11

but you actually have an active role to play

00:20:13

in His ever advancing army.

00:20:16

We're in this vision series and we're talking about

00:20:19

these concepts, these big concepts that form

00:20:21

the foundation of who we are as a church.

00:20:23

And last week we hit we run, like the Father runs.

00:20:27

We'll do anything short of sin to reach people.

00:20:29

And this week is how we go,

00:20:31

because the King goes to advance His Kingdom.

00:20:35

And here at the start, I just want to put

00:20:36

one question in front of you that I think

00:20:38

Your Father, the King, is asking you and me and all of us.

00:20:43

It's a question that He asks many different places

00:20:45

in Scripture, in many different ways,

00:20:47

but maybe the most clearest in the book of Isaiah.

00:20:51

He says this in Isaiah chapter six:

00:21:09

Friends, the question to wrestle with for all of us today

00:21:12

is when the voice of the King cries out,

00:21:16

"Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?"

00:21:20

What will you say? Will you say pick someone else?

00:21:25

Or will you say, "Here I am! Send me"?

00:25:12

- Will you pray with me?

00:25:15

God, I know that song is big and I know it's inspirational.

00:25:19

And I also know that You don't like empty words.

00:25:23

I also know that You like follow through.

00:25:25

So today, God, I'm praying that for those of us

00:25:27

in the room who are in a place of being scared to go,

00:25:30

You'd give us courage.

00:25:32

For those of us who are in a place

00:25:33

of where we're too comfortable to go,

00:25:35

You'd make us uncomfortable.

00:25:36

And for those of us who simply just didn't know

00:25:38

that You had the call to us, that we'd have

00:25:41

the bravery to raise our hands and

00:25:44

say, "Here I am, Lord, send me."

00:25:46

Be with us today.

00:25:47

Thank you for being our Father and King. Amen. Amen.

00:25:52

Well, good morning, everybody.

00:25:54

I didn't get a chance to properly

00:25:55

introduce myself there earlier.

00:25:56

I apologize for that. My name is Kyle.

00:25:59

I've been called the thinking man's Brian Tome.

00:26:01

You could go with that if you want to.

00:26:04

Best part of that joke is he has a master's degree,

00:26:06

and I don't, so joke's actually on me there.

00:26:09

What are you going to do about it? You know.

00:26:11

We're in this vision series, like I said,

00:26:13

and we're doing this for a reason. Two of them, actually.

00:26:16

One, there's a lot of new people here.

00:26:17

We're up over 20% in growth in sites, which is incredible,

00:26:21

new people year over year.

00:26:22

We're up 80% in viewers online.

00:26:24

So just a lot of people. Welcome, Welcome.

00:26:28

We don't want it to take years for you to figure out

00:26:31

who we are and what we're actually about.

00:26:32

And then for the veterans of us around,

00:26:34

it's just we're just overdue for a refresher

00:26:36

on the stuff that matters and how we apply it here.

00:26:38

Now, none of the things you'll hear in this vision series

00:26:41

are unique to Crossroads in that these are all things

00:26:45

that God calls all believers to do

00:26:47

with any church they're a part of.

00:26:48

So the warning might be if you get through this series

00:26:50

and you're like, "That's what Crossroads is about?

00:26:52

No, thank you." Totally cool.

00:26:55

Find some other community to do these things with,

00:26:58

they are not optional.

00:27:00

This series is about how we apply them here

00:27:02

and what they mean to us.

00:27:03

Now this is also not a commercial.

00:27:05

It might seem that way to you, not a commercial.

00:27:07

This is the why behind every

00:27:08

commercial you'll see at Crossroads.

00:27:10

And the why is because our Father, the King,

00:27:13

asked that simple question: Whom shall I send

00:27:16

and who will go for Us?

00:27:19

It's a question I've been asking a lot more

00:27:20

in my house ever since we got our puppy.

00:27:22

I ask this question all the time.

00:27:25

Puppy needs to go out.

00:27:26

At first we were like, well, the problem is

00:27:28

we don't know when the puppy needs to go out.

00:27:30

And so we solve that one by getting a doggy doorbell.

00:27:32

Have you seen this? It's like a little

00:27:33

hockey puck you glue on the wall

00:27:35

and then she just kind of goes up.

00:27:36

She hits her nose on it and goes bing-bong.

00:27:39

And then she just waits for someone to let her out.

00:27:42

Do you know how many times a day a dog wants to go out?

00:27:46

A thousand, maybe more.

00:27:47

I don't know how many times are there? All those times.

00:27:50

And so this common scene now in my house is

00:27:52

Annie goes to the doorbell and she rings it

00:27:54

and it goes, bing-bong, and then silence happens.

00:27:58

And if you've never been to my house, you don't know this.

00:28:00

My house is not quiet. It's like a frat party.

00:28:03

But the little bing-bong happens

00:28:04

and all of a sudden it's a zen garden. Serenity.

00:28:07

You can't find anybody. Enya starts playing.

00:28:11

Sail away. Sail away. Know it's like quiet, calm.

00:28:15

And I'm just there, like, "Who will go for me

00:28:18

and whom shall I send?"

00:28:20

And none of my kids answer. That's it.

00:28:22

Now my kids don't answer, probably,

00:28:24

because they don't view me as their father, the king.

00:28:27

I don't talk about my kingdom enough

00:28:29

is probably my problem.

00:28:30

Jesus made sure we understood His Father was a King.

00:28:33

He talks about His Dad's Kingdom all of the time.

00:28:36

In fact, the topic that Jesus talked about the most,

00:28:40

more than anything, is the Kingdom.

00:28:43

The gospel writers actually summarized

00:28:45

all of His teachings, all of His thoughts,

00:28:46

all of His worldview, all of His theology,

00:28:48

all of His perspectives as the Gospel of the Kingdom.

00:28:52

Matthew 4:23 says:

00:29:04

The Gospel of the Kingdom.

00:29:07

When He taught that prayer, the Lord's Prayer,

00:29:10

that's where that music comes from, by the way,

00:29:11

is the Lord's Prayer. He said, "Pray this way.

00:29:13

Pray: Our Father, in heaven, hallowed be Your Name.

00:29:17

May your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven."

00:29:22

It seems like this whole thing, our Father, the King,

00:29:24

what He's after is to have His Kingdom come here, like now.

00:29:28

What would that look like? How would you know

00:29:31

if the Kingdom had arrived? How would you know?

00:29:33

Would it be, like, all night worship services?

00:29:37

Would the preaching at every

00:29:39

church suddenly become way amazing?

00:29:41

Way, way better than any of us here? Like prayer?

00:29:46

Well, how would you know?

00:29:47

Well, the answer in the Bible is really clear.

00:29:50

All those things are great, but the

00:29:52

answer isn't any of those things.

00:29:53

See the sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God,

00:29:57

the sign of its arrival is that the poor,

00:30:00

the oppressed are taken care of.

00:30:04

The stranger has taken in. The widow is cared for.

00:30:07

The orphan is adopted. Its physical needs are met.

00:30:13

Did you catch that when Jesus went

00:30:14

and He was preaching that gospel, Matthew says

00:30:17

He went into all the towns

00:30:18

and He would heal sickness and disease.

00:30:21

Jesus, who I think we tend to think about through this,

00:30:23

like, elevated spiritual lens, which, yes, yes, He's God,

00:30:27

yes, elevated, yes, spiritual.

00:30:29

But we tend to miss the physical helper part of it.

00:30:32

He never showed up in a town and preached the gospel

00:30:35

without meeting physical needs.

00:30:37

His mission statement, by the way, is to come to

00:30:40

the poor, the oppressed, and the needy.

00:30:42

That's specifically who He came to.

00:30:44

When He got baptized, He came out of the water.

00:30:46

He goes into the wilderness, He gets tempted.

00:30:48

This is the very beginning of His ministry.

00:30:50

He's in the wilderness. He gets tempted for 40 days.

00:30:52

Maybe you've heard some of those stories.

00:30:53

Right after that what He does is He leaves the wilderness

00:30:57

and He goes to His hometown of Nazareth.

00:30:59

He walks into the synagogue and He goes to the attendant.

00:31:02

And he says, "Hey, will you get me the scroll of Isaiah?

00:31:06

The one where He says, God says, 'Whom shall I --

00:31:10

Who will go for me? Whom shall I send?'

00:31:12

Give me that one off the shelf. Give me that one."

00:31:14

So they tend it, grabs it and gives it to Jesus.

00:31:16

They roll it across the stone table

00:31:18

and Jesus starts rolling it out.

00:31:19

And eventually He finds what we now know as Isaiah 61,

00:31:22

and He reads these words as His mission statement:

00:31:44

He says this, He looks around to everybody and He goes,

00:31:47

"Today, this is fulfilled in your hearing."

00:31:49

Mic drop, walks out. "This is who I am.

00:31:52

This is what I came to do,

00:31:54

to preach the gospel to the poor,

00:31:57

to heal the brokenhearted, to give liberty to the captives."

00:32:01

See if you want to follow Jesus,

00:32:03

if you want to follow Jesus, you better get used to

00:32:06

being around poor, oppressed, and needy people.

00:32:09

You better get used to it.

00:32:11

In another place. Jesus said, "The

00:32:13

poor will be with you always."

00:32:15

And some people have taken this to say,

00:32:17

"Well, that's a that's actually a reason why

00:32:19

we don't need to meet physical needs, Kyle.

00:32:21

We don't need to meet physical needs

00:32:22

because we'll always have them.

00:32:24

And so why would you ever fight a losing battle?"

00:32:27

But that's not what Jesus was saying.

00:32:30

See, Jesus was saying, "The poor will be with you always."

00:32:32

Why? "Because I'll always be with the poor.

00:32:35

And so if you're following Me, guess where you're going to be,

00:32:38

around poor, oppressed, and needy people."

00:32:41

It's a mission that He got and He passed on to us.

00:32:45

See whether or not you know it today, your life has a call,

00:32:49

and I would even say your King has a demand of your life,

00:32:53

it's that you would advance His Kingdom.

00:32:55

And what that might look like

00:32:57

is being around poor, oppressed and needy people

00:32:59

and meeting all of their needs.

00:33:00

Matthew 28 Jesus gave us this in many different places.

00:33:04

It shows up in many different places.

00:33:05

This is one of the most famous, known as the Great Commission.

00:33:21

Go. Go was one of Jesus's favorite words.

00:33:24

He said it all the time. He's always like,

00:33:26

"Hey, go over here and go over there

00:33:28

and go take care of this person, go to this town,

00:33:30

go to this thing." Always saying, go.

00:33:31

If you do a search for Jesus and go,

00:33:34

you'll find more than 100 results.

00:33:36

You can read through them all yourself

00:33:37

and to see Him, Jesus and go, 100 results.

00:33:40

On the other side, if you search for Jesus and stay,

00:33:43

you will find exactly four results, four.

00:33:46

And all of them sound basically like this.

00:33:49

This is Luke 12:35, Jesus said:

00:33:56

Dressed for action. This'd be a problem for me.

00:33:59

I sleep in my underwear. This might be TMI.

00:34:02

Not dressed for action. Brian sleeps naked.

00:34:04

That's even more than you wanted to know. Now you know.

00:34:07

I don't know. I don't know why.

00:34:09

I just felt like I needed to tell you.

00:34:11

Jesus says don't do that.

00:34:17

You know, here we're just all sinners.

00:34:18

That's what we've always said,

00:34:20

we're not we're not perfect people.

00:34:21

We're sinners, all of us.

00:34:23

Now Jesus says go. He never says says stay. He says go.

00:34:27

So my question is this: Why is it then

00:34:31

that we think the Christian life is meant to be

00:34:34

static and boring and safe?

00:34:38

Why do we think that?

00:34:40

This is how it seemed to me as a kid.

00:34:41

I grew up in and around church.

00:34:43

I remember being seven years old and service had ended.

00:34:45

It lasted what felt like 17 hours

00:34:48

of just boring hymn after boring.

00:34:49

It was just awful. And finally,

00:34:51

church ends. We're out in the lobby.

00:34:52

And then my parents decided to start talking to

00:34:54

other people and they're talking and talking.

00:34:56

And 7 year old Kyle, who has undiagnosed ADHD,

00:34:59

does not do well in these situations.

00:35:02

So I'm like, I want to go home. This is so boring.

00:35:05

And then I see it. Salvation.

00:35:09

It's a little red square on the wall about this big

00:35:11

and it has one word on it and white letters P-U-L-L,

00:35:14

and a handle. Have you seen these? They're everywhere.

00:35:19

I had never noticed. They were everywhere.

00:35:21

I was like, "That's it."

00:35:23

And then the voice of God called to me from the red box

00:35:27

and it said, "Try it." And I was like, "yes."

00:35:29

So I went over and I pulled and the lights went off

00:35:32

and the sirens went and the fire trucks showed up

00:35:34

and everyone starts running around.

00:35:36

And to be honest, I was -- I was shocked

00:35:40

at how awesome it was, like,

00:35:43

better than I could have imagined, it delivered.

00:35:48

Now. Funny thing, no adult said thank you.

00:35:51

It was like, I fixed the

00:35:52

boringness. No adult said thank you.

00:35:54

I now know it costs lots of lots of money.

00:35:56

Please don't pull our fire alarms.

00:35:58

It costs so much money when the fire trucks -- don't do that.

00:36:00

I didn't know that then.

00:36:01

I just knew all the adults were angry at me.

00:36:04

And that's the moment I figured out, "You know what?

00:36:06

I'm probably not getting into heaven.

00:36:09

Probably not going to happen for me."

00:36:11

But I was pretty okay with it. Why?

00:36:13

Because heaven seems just as boring as church.

00:36:17

It's like, "Oh, it's going to be awesome.

00:36:19

Kyle, one day you're going to go up into heaven

00:36:22

and you'll sit on clouds and angels will have harps

00:36:25

and sing hymns and you'll sing with them forever."

00:36:29

And I was like, "How do I not go there?

00:36:31

That's -- that's not great, you know? It's not great."

00:36:36

I would say if that's your picture of heaven,

00:36:38

I don't have time to talk about it,

00:36:39

but that's not what heaven is like in the Bible.

00:36:41

If that's your picture, it's not what it's like.

00:36:43

I don't have time to talk about it.

00:36:45

The point is, churches, I think, have a really bad habit,

00:36:49

I might even say a pattern of something that borders on sin

00:36:53

that we keep making the Christian life

00:36:55

seem like it's supposed to be static, safe, and boring.

00:36:58

And it's not.

00:36:59

If your life is safe and boring, you are doing it wrong.

00:37:03

Can I just push you on that?

00:37:05

If it's safe and boring, you're doing it wrong.

00:37:07

You're meant to be --It's meant to be danger and adventure

00:37:10

because you're in the army of the King.

00:37:12

No one ever enlists in the army and is, like, "Wow,

00:37:15

I didn't know it would be this uncomfortable or hard,

00:37:17

you know, like this -- Wow. I thought it'd be safer."

00:37:19

No, no, your life is meant to be moving,

00:37:23

advancing the Kingdom of God.

00:37:27

You're supposed to look different

00:37:29

than your neighbors. Do you?

00:37:30

Is there anything in your life you're doing,

00:37:32

any places you're going, that's what go would imply,

00:37:35

you're actually going someplace.

00:37:36

Is there any place you're going that they find odd?

00:37:39

Are you going anywhere they wouldn't go?

00:37:41

Are you being around people that they wouldn't be around?

00:37:44

In Deuteronomy 10 God says this:

00:38:07

Guess what'll happen if you start loving strangers?

00:38:12

You will become strange.

00:38:15

It's not normal to be around strangers.

00:38:17

It's not normal to go to people who have needs.

00:38:19

It's not normal to hang around with the poor,

00:38:21

the oppressed, and the needy.

00:38:23

But Jesus said, "Go, go."

00:38:27

One of my earliest faith heroes was a man named Jim Elliott.

00:38:30

He was a missionary in the 1950s,

00:38:32

went to an unreached people group in Ecuador.

00:38:35

He made contact with them,

00:38:36

started establishing friendships,

00:38:37

and then tragically, he was actually brutally murdered

00:38:40

by the people he was trying to reach.

00:38:43

And he knew this was a possibility before he went.

00:38:46

Now, years later, his wife, Elizabeth,

00:38:47

published a lot of his writings and journals,

00:38:49

which are just spectacular.

00:38:51

And I want to read you this a little bit from what he said:

00:39:28

Oh, that God would make us dangerous.

00:39:30

If you want to know the vision of Crossroads

00:39:32

as it relates to we go, it's that, man,

00:39:34

Oh, that God will make us dangerous.

00:39:36

All the principalities and powers

00:39:38

would shake when we show up.

00:39:40

Oh, that they would say, "Not Crossroads. Oh, no. Oh, no."

00:39:44

We want to be dangerous.

00:39:47

See? But your enemy, he doesn't want you to know any of this.

00:39:49

He doesn't want you to know this at all. He

00:39:51

wants you to think that you coming to church

00:39:53

and watching church equals you doing church

00:39:56

and being the church.

00:39:57

That's what he wants you to think, it's a trick.

00:39:59

He's been running it for literally

00:40:00

hundreds and hundreds of years.

00:40:01

That's what he want you to think.

00:40:03

And if you fall for that lie, you'll become the thing

00:40:05

that Jim Elliott called out, the sideliner.

00:40:07

Any Bengals fans in here? Bengals fans?

00:40:10

Browns fans, I don't want to talk to you.

00:40:12

We are not in a good place, you

00:40:14

and I. Don't want to talk to you.

00:40:15

Bengals fans, though I have this habit

00:40:18

of when I talk about the Bengals, I use the word we.

00:40:20

You know, I'll say, "Hey, I know we had an off week last week."

00:40:23

Even thought I didn't play in the game, "We had an off week.

00:40:26

But I believe we are going to beat

00:40:28

the Ravens today. Who Dey! you know?

00:40:30

I say that, we.

00:40:33

I've never played a down of football in my life.

00:40:35

That'd be a bad idea for me.

00:40:37

I'm not really built for football.

00:40:38

I'm more like a jockey kind of build, you know,

00:40:40

not really football, never played it down.

00:40:43

I say, we, why? Because of what I call the Sunday myth.

00:40:47

And the Sunday myth affects football

00:40:49

watchers and church watchers,

00:40:51

we think that watching makes us part of the team.

00:40:53

But please hear clearly you watching church

00:40:56

no more makes you a Christ follower

00:40:58

than you watching football makes you a football player.

00:41:01

They have nothing to do with each other. Nothing.

00:41:07

And I know it can be confusing.

00:41:08

You know, we get you in this in this room

00:41:10

and it's a comfortable place and it's nice and it's clean.

00:41:14

And we give you coffee and a comfortable seat.

00:41:16

And if you're watching online, we have all the lights.

00:41:18

We have that cool sliding camera thing that follows us.

00:41:20

All that stuff, right?

00:41:22

And so it's like, "Oh, the goal must be to be comfortable."

00:41:24

No, no, no, no, no.

00:41:26

All the comfortable stuff, I'll let you in on a secret,

00:41:29

is just to woo you in here so we can get you here

00:41:33

and then fire you up to go. That's the only point.

00:41:37

It's just to go.

00:41:40

There's a there's a dividing line

00:41:42

and a choice you're going to have to make in your life.

00:41:44

You can choose to aim for a safe life or an impactful life.

00:41:49

You can't have both.

00:41:50

See, the call of the King demands that you embrace danger,

00:41:54

difficulty, demands that you get okay

00:41:57

with being uncomfortable because

00:42:00

that's what happens when you go.

00:42:03

It can be near or far, by the way.

00:42:06

Not long after he said that great commission

00:42:08

of go to all nations, Jesus kind of doubled down on it

00:42:10

and described it in slightly different terms,

00:42:12

same exact idea in Acts 1:8:

00:42:22

In your town, in your city, in your nation,

00:42:25

and to the ends of the earth.

00:42:27

You don't have to get on a plane to go.

00:42:29

You can. That's great.

00:42:30

But you can actually just go right around the corner.

00:42:33

But every single time I just want you to know

00:42:36

there's a line you're going to have to cross.

00:42:37

Some alarm bell is going to go off in your head

00:42:39

and say this isn't safe. I don't know if --

00:42:41

It's too dangerous.

00:42:42

Some alarm bell is going to go off and say

00:42:44

that's too difficult. I just, man,

00:42:46

what a lot of effort. I just can't.

00:42:47

Alarm bells are going to go off and just go

00:42:49

I'm just not comfortable here.

00:42:51

And you're going to have to fight through that

00:42:53

if you want to have a life of impact.

00:42:55

I've gone so many places that are dangerous, difficult,

00:42:58

and really uncomfortable for me to be around.

00:43:01

And I've seen God move, dangerous places,

00:43:03

places that people said, "It's too dangerous,

00:43:05

you can't go there."

00:43:06

I went to South Africa at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

00:43:09

I had people say, "Is that a good idea?

00:43:11

Couldn't you catch HIV?" Oh, yeah, probably could.

00:43:16

Been to Nicaragua twice.

00:43:17

I don't know if you know this, they have

00:43:19

a horrible dictatorship of a government.

00:43:21

I walked through an anti-America demonstration,

00:43:23

just right down the middle of it.

00:43:24

Didn't even know. I wasn't paying attention. Okay?

00:43:26

I walked right through the middle.

00:43:28

Is that dangerous? Yeah, probably.

00:43:30

I went to India to try to love some of the girls

00:43:32

who were on the street in the red light district

00:43:34

of Sonagachi where armed guards with guns were watching us.

00:43:38

Was that dangerous? Yeah, probably.

00:43:42

One of the more dangerous places I've been

00:43:44

is just a few miles from here.

00:43:45

Went to help out and serve at the ministry

00:43:48

that my friends Larry and Patsy Plum run.

00:43:50

They went to the police in Cincinnati and said,

00:43:52

"What are the most dangerous streets in our city?"

00:43:55

The police were, like, "Well,

00:43:57

why would you want to know that?"

00:43:58

"Oh, because we want to buy a house and move there."

00:44:01

And they did it almost ten years ago.

00:44:04

That's called going.

00:44:05

And see if you talk to Larry and Patsy,

00:44:08

safe wasn't in the equation should we go and where do we go?

00:44:11

Safe wasn't part of it. Comfortable wasn't part of it.

00:44:14

How difficult is it going to be,

00:44:16

that wasn't part of the equation.

00:44:18

You cannot have a safe life and an impactful life.

00:44:21

You're going to have to pick one now.

00:44:23

At Crossroads the work that we take on is not safe.

00:44:26

It's also not part of our decision making criteria.

00:44:28

We take on dangerous stuff.

00:44:29

Some of the more dangerous work that we do

00:44:31

is on the other side of the world, in India, in Nepal.

00:44:33

It's to help rescue children who are trafficked

00:44:36

into forced sex slavery,

00:44:38

oftentimes by their own families.

00:44:40

It's very, very dangerous work.

00:44:41

And if you're in a room, you're actually right now

00:44:43

going to watch a video from one of our partners

00:44:45

describing some of this dangerous work.

00:44:47

And if you're online, you're not going to get to see this video.

00:44:50

And I want to be really clear as to why.

00:44:52

It's because the Indian government is cracking down

00:44:55

on religious nonprofits in and around their country.

00:44:58

And if this video were to get in the wrong hands,

00:45:00

not only could the work be jeopardized,

00:45:01

but lives could be jeopardized.

00:45:03

And so if you're watching online, hang tight,

00:45:05

top off your coffee and come right back.

00:45:07

If you're in rooms, check out Juan's story.

00:45:42

Incredible partner, incredible. [applause]

00:45:46

Did you catch the turning point

00:45:48

in the dividing line in that story?

00:45:50

He said people told us if we went to this village,

00:45:53

if we said yes to going, whom shall I send?

00:45:56

Who will go for us? If we said yes to that, we would die.

00:46:00

What was his response? "Well, we got to try."

00:46:04

That's the attitude of men and women

00:46:07

who have always advanced the Kingdom of God forward.

00:46:09

That's the only option.

00:46:10

If you want to have a life of impact

00:46:12

and push the Kingdom forward, you have to have

00:46:14

that same exact mindset. You cannot play it safe.

00:46:16

As a church we will not play it safe.

00:46:18

We'll go out for the giants in our world, the giants.

00:46:21

And it might seem like, Oh, well, that makes sense

00:46:23

because we're such a giant church.

00:46:24

And we are a very giant church. We're a giant church.

00:46:27

There's tens of thousands of people.

00:46:28

You might be in a room where you're like,

00:46:30

"Oh my gosh, there's only 100 people here."

00:46:32

Or maybe you're in a room of a thousand people.

00:46:34

And you think this is the size of Crossroads.

00:46:35

No, it's a big church by church standards,

00:46:39

but please don't be deceived.

00:46:41

In light of the problems that we're trying to solve:

00:46:44

ending sex slavery in an entire nation,

00:46:48

the largest one on the planet, India,

00:46:51

we're not Goliath; we're David.

00:46:53

We're itty bitty. We're this big. Tiny.

00:46:58

But do you know that small things can take down big ones.

00:47:03

How? Force, that's how.

00:47:05

Not The Force. Some Star Wars fan

00:47:07

got very excited for a second.

00:47:09

You were like, "I knew Brian Tome would never

00:47:12

talk about Star Wars, but yes, here we go."

00:47:14

No, not, not the The Force, force.

00:47:17

Maybe it's been a minute since you took physics.

00:47:19

Force has an equation.

00:47:21

It's a law of the universe written by God.

00:47:24

Force is mass times acceleration.

00:47:26

Mass means, like, how many people,

00:47:28

how much of us can you stick together,

00:47:31

how many can we collect together?

00:47:32

And then acceleration is increasing

00:47:34

velocity in a given direction.

00:47:36

Can you get us all together and then aim us at the right spot?

00:47:38

And when that happens, friends, a very small object

00:47:41

can be shot out of something like a slingshot

00:47:43

and kill a giant. That's how it works.

00:47:46

See, what God is looking for is more men and women

00:47:49

who will raise their hands and say, "I want to be a man,

00:47:52

I want to be a woman of force

00:47:55

to take down the kingdom of darkness, to attack it."

00:47:58

There's a verse in the Bible that has been

00:48:02

in call it the last decade or so reexamined.

00:48:06

Its traditional translation has been relooked at,

00:48:08

and I'm going to read you how it's been translated

00:48:11

up until this point, Matthew 11:12, it says:

00:48:22

That paints the picture of, like,

00:48:24

the kingdom of heaven is under attack.

00:48:27

And these bad people are coming

00:48:29

and they're just not agreeing with our morals anymore.

00:48:32

And they're just making it hard to be a Christian.

00:48:34

And it just -- (sniffs) it's pretty hard.

00:48:37

It's pretty hard right now. That's how it sounds.

00:48:40

The Kingdom of Heaven, we're losing.

00:48:43

And I think we have an enemy who wants us to believe that.

00:48:47

Who wants us to go, "Man, cultures turned against us.

00:48:50

Time to just pack it in. You know, let's --

00:48:52

Let's just build walls around here. Let's make a fortress."

00:48:56

And many churches are doing this.

00:48:57

There was a book that came out a number of years ago

00:48:59

called The Benedict Option that promoted this that said,

00:49:02

"Hey, the best thing we can do is a monastic movement.

00:49:04

Let's retreat from culture

00:49:06

and build walls to preserve

00:49:07

Christianity. That's what we'll do."

00:49:10

If we did that, friends, it would kill it

00:49:12

because Christianity is not about being behind walls,

00:49:15

it's not a fortress.

00:49:16

And we will never be a fortress church.

00:49:18

It's not building walls, it's building bridges.

00:49:20

It's going where no one else will go.

00:49:22

That's the call of God.

00:49:24

The second we stop that, we've lost it.

00:49:28

Now, the new translation is interesting.

00:49:31

People are looking at this.

00:49:32

And I say new, and really I would argue

00:49:35

that it's actually the old one. It's the original one.

00:49:39

See, if you actually go back to the Greek

00:49:41

and you look at what these words

00:49:42

mean, the words "suffer violence"

00:49:44

is the Greek word "biazo,",

00:49:46

which actually means to apply force, not suffer violence.

00:49:50

You apply force and the violent who are taking it by force,

00:49:54

that word is "biazetai,", which actually means

00:49:56

the strong or the forceful.

00:49:59

So a much better reading, I would say

00:50:01

the original one sounds like this. Matthew 11:12:

00:50:15

Now, this interpretation, not just the language, fits this,

00:50:17

but I'd say the whole context of the Bible fits this.

00:50:20

The Kingdom of God has always exclusively advanced by force.

00:50:26

When the Israelites come up to the Jordan River

00:50:28

and the Promised Land is on the other side,

00:50:30

which is occupied territory, by the way,

00:50:32

they don't cross the Jordan, step on the shore,

00:50:35

and all of the people in the Promised Land go,

00:50:37

"Oh, we're so glad you're here. Take our house,

00:50:40

have my sheep and my goats or whatever."

00:50:43

That's not how it goes. They have to use force.

00:50:46

The Kingdom's always advanced by force.

00:50:47

It's always a battle, every single time,

00:50:50

every front we've ever tackled is a battle.

00:50:53

We stand on stages like this, you watch videos,

00:50:55

and we say some stats and I'll say some stats

00:50:58

even yet to come that I hope will

00:50:59

be really encouraging to you.

00:51:00

But we say these stats and the problem

00:51:03

with just saying them is you miss the battle part of it.

00:51:05

None of them have come easy.

00:51:07

One of the classic, and I think important to remember,

00:51:10

war stories in our church is a story of the CityLink Center.

00:51:13

20 years ago we had this vision and we said,

00:51:17

"What if we actually took this Kingdom of God thing seriously?

00:51:20

What if we took it seriously to care for the poor,

00:51:22

the oppressed and the needy in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,

00:51:26

ends of the earth, in the cities where we are?'

00:51:28

And so we started work on this center

00:51:30

aimed at ending generational poverty.

00:51:33

And it was a fight. It was a battle.

00:51:35

People hated it, picketed it.

00:51:37

I remember I was the producer in this room

00:51:39

helping make services and we had picketers out on the corner.

00:51:42

I was like, "How do we deal with that? Do we stop service?

00:51:44

Like, what do we?" It was crazy. Crazy.

00:51:46

Everything's been a battle.

00:51:48

But see what we're after when we have these battles,

00:51:50

it's not new, it's not like we're

00:51:52

the first ones to ever face it.

00:51:54

This has always been the church.

00:51:56

See, our vision for the CityLink Center in part

00:51:58

was inspired by what we saw happen in Rome 1700 years ago.

00:52:03

Do you know that 1700 years ago the Christians

00:52:05

were so good at caring for the poor, the oppressed

00:52:07

and the needy, so good at going, so good at saying,

00:52:10

"Here I am, Lord, send me," so good at that

00:52:12

that it pissed off the Roman Emperor?

00:52:15

Seriously, he wrote a letter about it.

00:52:17

Here's a part of it. He said this:

00:52:20

Atheism, or Christianity because he called it atheism

00:52:22

because they didn't believe in the Roman gods.

00:52:46

This has always been the church. This isn't new.

00:52:49

We're not inventing something that hasn't been here.

00:52:51

Like I said, this vision series, it's not stuff

00:52:53

that's like, "Oh my gosh, we just thought of this

00:52:55

in the year 2023. Wow. Pretty cool."

00:52:57

No, it's the stuff He's called every believer to

00:53:00

all the time, every time.

00:53:03

Citylink Center, by the way, has been open for a while now

00:53:06

and it has helped. I'm so incredibly happy to tell you,

00:53:08

5000 people, 5000 clients have gone through its doors.

00:53:15

And it's not a quick thing.

00:53:16

It's not a step in, check in, hour conversation.

00:53:19

We're talking weeks and weeks and months and months

00:53:21

and months of hard work.

00:53:23

Now, that 5000 is incredible.

00:53:25

I want you to think about what that means.

00:53:26

Generational poverty, not just 5000 individuals,

00:53:29

but their kids and those kids' kids and those kids' kids.

00:53:33

What will 5000 mean 500 years from now? Imagine that.

00:53:38

That's the generational impact that we're having.

00:53:41

Now how has that happened? Force, men and women of force.

00:53:46

Do you know that Crossroads volunteers have given

00:53:49

45,000 hours to CityLink over the last time period?

00:53:53

That's 100 hours a week every week for ten straight years.

00:53:59

That is force.

00:54:01

We don't sit in rooms and just pray, "God, help the poor."

00:54:04

No, you go and you do something about it.

00:54:06

And then you keep doing something about it.

00:54:08

It's always force.

00:54:09

God is looking for men and women of force.

00:54:12

I think if God had a prayer for His kids, so to speak,

00:54:16

I think his prayer would be that

00:54:17

we would step into our destiny to be men and women of force.

00:54:22

Parents, what's your prayer for your kids?

00:54:25

What's your prayer?

00:54:26

I know one of them is that they would move out someday,

00:54:28

right? Of course. Of course.

00:54:32

I'll tell you what I pray for my kids.

00:54:35

I pray that my kids will become men and women of force.

00:54:39

I have prayed since they were this big, first born,

00:54:43

just come out, every one of them, tThat God would use them

00:54:46

to reach millions of people.

00:54:48

That millions of people who are poor, oppressed,

00:54:52

and needy would know God and have salvation,

00:54:55

would find their needs met through my kids.

00:54:57

Millions of them.

00:55:00

Do you know what I never pray for them?

00:55:03

I do not pray that they'll have a safe life.

00:55:06

I don't pray that. Why would I curse them with that?

00:55:09

Why would I curse them with a safe, comfortable, boring life?

00:55:14

But I think that's our vision often for life.

00:55:16

How can I make it more safe?

00:55:18

How can I make it more comfortable?

00:55:20

How can I make it more predictable?

00:55:22

But the further we go in that direction,

00:55:24

the further we get away from what God's call is.

00:55:27

Do you know that your Father has already given you

00:55:30

safety and security guaranteed for eternity?

00:55:32

He did that. That's the we run part.

00:55:34

You have a place at His table forever.

00:55:36

But He's giving you safety so you don't have to seek it.

00:55:40

He's made you secure so that you can be dangerous.

00:55:43

That's your Father, the King.

00:55:46

Will you go?

00:55:48

I think the reason our church has been potent

00:55:50

for 27 years and counting is that we're full of people

00:55:53

who just go, full of them.

00:55:55

We have the stories, we have the battle scars to prove it.

00:55:58

There's some more things just on our history of going.

00:56:01

Do you know that we've been going to Nicaragua

00:56:03

for about ten years now.

00:56:04

We've sent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds

00:56:06

of people down to Nicaragua to serve.

00:56:08

We as a church, all of us individually as families,

00:56:11

have sponsored 15,000 kids in Nicaragua who are getting

00:56:17

access to health care and education in the Bible

00:56:19

through us every single day.

00:56:23

Do you know how much money that represents?

00:56:24

[applause] Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:29

Do you know how much money that represents

00:56:31

coming out of our bank accounts to them?

00:56:33

$20 million. Do you realize that?

00:56:38

Again, in the face of the world, $20 million is not that much.

00:56:42

But but us together moving with force,

00:56:44

we're taking down a giant called poverty

00:56:47

in a country so far away from us.

00:56:49

Prison ministry through the

00:56:50

volunteers that have gone into prison.

00:56:52

You want to talk about dangerous,

00:56:53

you want to talk about uncomfortable, difficult,

00:56:55

go to prison.

00:56:56

And did you notice that Jesus specifically calls out

00:56:58

going to prisons again and again and again?

00:57:01

It's close to the heart of God.

00:57:03

Do you know that 61,000 inmates have watched

00:57:05

a Crossroads service and heard how they matter

00:57:07

because of the volunteers who have gone to them?

00:57:09

61,000 inmates. Crazy. Crazy.

00:57:18

One more mind blowing number for you. Keep going, one more.

00:57:21

India, Nepal, we've been working on that for a very long time.

00:57:24

And this is not just exclusively from our effort or work,

00:57:26

but the work that we get to partner with.

00:57:28

Our partners have rescued or prevented the trafficking

00:57:31

of 44,000 children. 44,000. [applause]

00:57:41

Friends, the kingdom of heaven is not suffering violence.

00:57:44

These times aren't, "Woe is us."

00:57:46

These times are, "Let's get armed up

00:57:49

and let's go out because it's working."

00:57:51

That's the times that you and I live in.

00:57:53

It is working, but it only works --

00:57:56

It only works if you say I'll go.

00:58:00

It only works, it only works if when the King says,

00:58:03

"Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?"

00:58:06

You raise your hand. Your hand.

00:58:09

At the end of His life, literally just days before

00:58:11

He was crucified, Jesus told a parable about a King

00:58:15

and the consequences of that King with His servants,

00:58:19

His subjects, and whether or not they said,

00:58:21

"Yes, Lord, here I am. Send me," or "send someone else."

00:58:24

And I want to read you this whole parable.

00:58:26

This is Matthew 25.

00:58:54

And they look around and they're like,

00:58:55

"When did we do that, exactly? When did we do that?"

00:59:08

And they're like, "Whoa! Mind blowing."

00:59:11

And then sweet peace and love Jesus, you know,

00:59:13

just so kind, just so comforting,

00:59:15

sometimes He doesn't know when to stop.

00:59:16

Like, that would have been kind of cool,

00:59:18

like, end the parable right there.

00:59:19

But He kept going and He said this:

01:00:03

He draws the line.

01:00:05

And to be clear, the line isn't a salvation line.

01:00:07

If you're like that sounds the opposite of last week we run

01:00:09

and the Father who just runs to us and adopts us

01:00:11

no matter what we've what we've done.

01:00:13

Let me be really, really clear,

01:00:15

this isn't about earning righteousness;

01:00:17

this is about revealing it.

01:00:19

Have you spent time with the Father?

01:00:21

Have you been around His table?

01:00:23

Because if you have, the heart of the King would grow in you.

01:00:26

And the courage to go and the heart to go

01:00:28

would naturally be flowing out

01:00:30

of, you couldn't possibly stop it.

01:00:33

I got a new piece of artwork for my office

01:00:35

about 3 or 4 months ago, something like that.

01:00:38

It's these tree rings and it's an artist who takes, like,

01:00:41

slices of trees and he dips them in ink and just stamps it.

01:00:43

And this tree, I really wanted this one

01:00:45

because this tree is over 300 years old.

01:00:48

And I wanted when I look up from my desk to look at that.

01:00:51

Why? Because I don't want Crossroads to be

01:00:53

a one generation movement, you know, flash in the pan.

01:00:56

It was here. Do you remember that thing?

01:00:58

Uh, kind of. I don't know. You know?

01:01:00

I want it to be that.

01:01:01

We want it to be a movement that continues for hundreds of years,

01:01:05

for dozens of generations.

01:01:06

And so I keep that there to remind myself

01:01:08

of what we're working, what we're building for

01:01:10

is bigger than any of us.

01:01:12

And someday it's likely our doors will close.

01:01:18

It's likel, even with that idea, even with that effort,

01:01:21

it's likely that someday it'll end.

01:01:23

Someday the building that you're in,

01:01:25

somebody will come to the doors

01:01:26

and they'll put a chain through the door handles

01:01:28

and they'll put a lock on it.

01:01:29

It's likely to stream you're watching will go blank

01:01:32

and never come up again.

01:01:34

And when that happens, on that day,

01:01:38

I want our cities to mourn. I want our nations to mourn.

01:01:44

I want our world to mourn, to go, "Oh, no,

01:01:47

Crossroads is gone. What are we going to do?"

01:01:50

Why? Because we mattered.

01:01:52

Because we tackled the problems no one else would tackle.

01:01:54

We went to the people no one else would go to.

01:01:56

That's why. That's the vision of this place.

01:02:00

That's the heartbeat.

01:02:02

If what you're looking for is a safe church

01:02:04

that will let you stay comfortable, this is not it.

01:02:07

You're going to want to find a different one.

01:02:09

But if you're willing to be pushed,

01:02:12

if you're willing to go,

01:02:14

if you're willing to get uncomfortable, man,

01:02:15

there's a seat at the table for you.

01:02:17

It doesn't matter what you've done.

01:02:19

Doesn't matter whether you're qualified.

01:02:21

This isn't about that. It's about whether you'll go.

01:02:24

It's inaction or action, that's the dividing line. That's it.

01:02:28

And by the way, this isn't a hero complex,

01:02:30

if anything, sounding that way to you,

01:02:32

"Oh, man, what a big high and mighty kind of idea

01:02:35

Crossroads must have hero complex."

01:02:37

No, because we don't go as the heroic rich.

01:02:40

We go as the called poor.

01:02:43

See, God doesn't have a history of using

01:02:45

the strong, impressive people to go accomplish His purposes.

01:02:50

He seems to prefer the weak, insignificant, and flawed ones.

01:02:55

That's who He tends to use, and that's us.

01:02:59

We go as the called poor. Poor how?

01:03:02

Poor in spirit, low in hope, low in faith, lacking.

01:03:07

But friends, I want you to know when you go

01:03:09

the most amazing thing happens.

01:03:11

When you go you get faith, you get a blessing

01:03:16

you can't get any other way.

01:03:17

James 2:5 says:

01:03:25

Hasn't God chosen them?

01:03:27

See, when you go, you get faith.

01:03:30

Are you low on it? Simple solution: Go.

01:03:32

When you do it, something unlocks.

01:03:35

The book of Isaiah ends in kind of this parallel.

01:03:39

In the beginning, God says, Who will go?

01:03:40

And Isaiah says, Here I am.

01:03:42

At the end, God responds to the people who said, I'll go

01:03:46

and He says, Here I am.

01:03:47

Something unlocks and breaks over your life.

01:03:49

Listen to these words.

01:04:26

Here I am. There's more for you, man.

01:04:28

There's more for you. You can get it if you go.

01:04:31

I wish that we could get us all on a plane

01:04:33

and send us over.

01:04:34

We're not going to do that right now.

01:04:36

We're going to do something that's

01:04:38

more like a reverse Go Trip.

01:04:39

If we could, we would have taken

01:04:40

all of the kids in India and Nepal, we would have

01:04:42

got them on planes and we got them here.

01:04:44

And for lots of different reasons, that's just impossible.

01:04:46

So instead what we did is we sent a crew

01:04:49

to capture something they wanted to give to you.

01:04:51

It's a blessing.

01:04:53

It's a blessing meant to inspire courage in you,

01:04:58

to remind you that your Father is with you.

01:05:01

He's keeping you safe so that you can be dangerous.

01:05:06

They're going to sing these

01:05:07

songs, this these words over you.

01:05:09

These words come from Numbers 6:

01:11:19

- Hey, thanks so much for watching.

01:11:20

Now, today isn't just about Crossroads,

01:11:22

it's about who God made you to be

01:11:24

and where is God sending you?

01:11:26

If you're unsure or don't know where to start,

01:11:29

we'd love to help you discover your unique wiring

01:11:31

and what opportunities there are for you to be sent.

01:11:35

That's literally why we exist as a church.

01:11:37

One of the best ways to do that is

01:11:38

heading to Crossroads.net/volunteer.

01:11:41

There are loads of ways that our physical sites

01:11:43

and all over our community, all over the world

01:11:45

where you can make an impact.

01:11:48

And it's not just about how God's wired us to be,

01:11:51

it's actually about leveraging every part of who we are,

01:11:53

including our finances.

01:11:55

If you've got questions about what Crossroads spends money on

01:11:58

or if you want to join the team of faithful givers

01:12:00

who makes this impact possible,

01:12:02

you can head to Crossroads.net/give.

01:12:04

Now, have a great week.

01:12:06

We'll see you next week on Crossroads

01:12:07

as we talk about why we laugh.

Recent Series