Base Camp - Start Here

Hey, I'm Pastor Forrest, and welcome to the Multiply Church Podcast.

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Now, let's dive into this week's sermon.

As you grab your seat, we're jumping into this new series.

It's called Base Camp.

The title of my message today is Start Here.

If you're new with us, welcome.

I'm Forrest Lee Pastor here at Multiply.

If you're new, glad that you're here.

We'd love for you to grab the connect card that's in the seat back in front of you.

Get connected with you as you jump off this new year and as you start here this first Sunday of the year.

As we're talking about building this foundation in Christ and what it looks like for us to go back to the basics of this base camp.

Now, I I've I've never I've never climbed a mountain, but I've been to the top of one a couple of years ago.

Emily and I went to Denver, out to Denver and Colorado, and we went to Mount Evans and got to the top of it, mainly because you can drive almost all the way to the top.

And so we drove all the way up to about a half mile away from the summit, and it's about 14,000 feet above sea level.

And when I got out of the car and this very short half-mile hike up to the top, there were other people there that were at the top.

I thought it was gonna be no big deal, but actually I could not breathe.

My lungs were on fire.

At one point I thought like I was gonna pass out while I was taking this short walk up to the summit of this mountain.

It wasn't a long walk, but the thing is that the thin air, it exposes your fitness.

And see, our normal life that we have, our normal life is at a level of altitude that's high that a lot of times we feel like that we're in thin air just in the normal day-to-day.

Maybe it's the challenges that are at your job, or there's difficulty and strife in relationships or finances or just the craziness of parenting.

It's easy for us to feel like that we're drowning or that we can't even come up for air.

But as we are doing this life and we're climbing this life and this year, as we're starting this new year, a real climb, it requires a base camp.

And before you climb, you have to start at the base camp.

See, everybody loves the summit.

Everybody wants to take the pictures up at the top of the summit, but you have to start at the base camp, and how you start determines whether you make it it or not.

Many of you are preparing for this year of 2026 and have been thinking about different ways at the start of maybe new resolutions and new goals.

But ultimately, as we think about all the different ways that preparing for this new year, what is most important is our relationship with God and how we meet with God and how we begin to grow closer to God and not just chase spiritual highs or spiritual mountaintops and mountaintops, but that we begin to learn how to live at a higher elevation and our relationship with God and the difficulties that we have in life and the challenges and the great times that we are walking in relationship with God, not just doing a bunch of religious activity, but that once we meet God, then we continue to meet with Him daily.

Because if you're gonna make it to the top, it requires us to have a proper foundation at the base camp.

Because altitude sickness is real.

Get in the thin air.

See, the problem in life isn't just that life is challenging and we have hardships.

It's trying to deal with those challenges and hardships if we're disconnected from Jesus.

And maybe for you in 2026, you've already been thinking about all the ways that you're gonna get better this year.

Maybe you've already gotten in the gym, you've already been to the gym, you're thinking about optimizing your health, you started the diet, you got the new goals at work, or you've already made decisions and plans about how you're gonna make more money this year, or maybe you've already started on your summer beach body down in January.

You got all these goals that you're setting, and those those climbs and those goals are positive, they can be good, but without God as your first priority, that nothing else really matters.

And so as we pursue God in this climb in our life, we want to make sure that as we're walking with God, that we're not holding ourselves to a standard of perfection.

Nobody in here is perfect.

That's why we have grace from Jesus, but we should focus on being faithful to Him.

And maybe for you, you're like me, and maybe you wish you weren't, but you're bringing some things into 2026 that you wish you would have left in 2025.

That's just real life.

Maybe it's a coworker that just won't get off your back and it seems like it's your enemy, or some annoying family member that just won't give it up, or maybe it's some person that won't forgive you, or a financial stress that's in your life that only got more stressful during the holidays.

See, we've got plenty for us to focus on in 2026, but 2026 has already started, and some of the things that we're bringing into 2026, we're trying to understand not just how to survive, but how for us actually to be able to grow and to thrive in this new year.

And for some of us, faith is in one of those categories of the fact that you're on the path, but you feel this pressure that you need to go deeper, that you need to get better.

Here's the thing: January is saying get better, and Jesus is saying get closer.

The problem isn't that that life is hard and that there's challenges, it's trying to handle those challenges if we're not connected to the true vine, to the source, to Jesus.

And we drift away from him as the year goes on.

Then we're getting disconnected from the true source source of life that we have that's going to actually sustain us throughout the year.

Because ultimately, you're you and I, we're both going to be influenced in some way or another in 2026.

We get to choose whether that influence is the Lord as our top priority or all the other things in life.

Because if you stay disconnected from Jesus, the world is going to disciple you some way or another.

And you might find yourself ending up trending in the same direction as the world around you, people who are not following God, that's just going to lead into this drift in a direction of anxiety and of chasing after and striving.

But we see Jesus tells us what will flow from us and from faithfulness if we stay connected deeply to him this year.

And he tells it to us in John chapter 15, where he talks about us remaining in him, the true vine.

John 15 · chapter mention

This is what Jesus said in John 15, verse 4 and 5.

John 15:4

Remain in me and I will remain in you.

For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

Yes, I am the vine, and you are the branches.

Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

We have to stay connected to the true vine, to Jesus, who's our who is our lifeline and our source of life all this year.

And it's easy for us at times, and it's easy for me at times to be so busy with doing things for God or confuse information about God with actually having intimacy with God.

That for me, especially as a pastor, it's easy for me to get busy and doing stuff for God and then still be running on fumes.

And maybe for you, it looks like that it's possible for you to do churchy things or to come to church, but still not truly meet with God.

You may have a lot of info about God or you're learning things about God, but you're you're you're ingesting info, but you're starving spiritually.

And what we need to do is we need to start remaining connected to the true vine, our Savior Jesus, and part of that is the rhythm of public worship weekly.

This rhythm for 2026 that we should be worshiping God together with the family of faith in a rhythm of weekly worship and daily rhythm of us worshiping God and being connected to the vine.

And I know how it goes, and you know how it goes as the year goes on.

It's easy for us to get distracted, and there's trips and there's different things in life, and we want to stay in our bed on Sundays, and it's easy for us to be like, well, you know what?

I'll I'll I'll get consistent once life slows down.

But then life never slows down.

See, this isn't about us being perfect, it's about us choosing faithfulness to Christ.

And here's the great thing: 2026, every single one of you already has perfect attendance to church in 2026.

You've been there every single Sunday of 2026, praise the Lord.

It's not about perfect attendance, but it's about us being faithful.

Because we need to be faithful to God and to be connected to the vine in order to have this foundation that's actually gonna sustain the climb that we have all year long.

There's a very talented climber named Nims Perja who is actually a Nepali Sherpa, who that's a climbing guide.

And a few years ago, Nims shocked the world when he went to break the world record of climbing the tallest 14 peaks across the globe, and he did it in just under six months' time, demolishing the previous record by years.

And there's this whole Netflix documentary about Nims and his team, and what he is is uh a Sherpa.

And what a Sherpa is, is these guys that basically live in the mountains.

They are paid to be guides and to carry the packs and to and to to to create the rope lines and to blaze the trails for the people who are showing up to clown my Mount Everest or some of these other huge peaks for the very first time.

And Nims talks about that for him as a Sherpa that that there's a sustaining that you have to be able to do and a fitness that you have to have in order to be able to uh survive when in a low oxygen environment.

These giant, massive mountains that they're trained to get to the top of, some that people live their whole life and train to get to the top of Mount Everest, and these guys do it all the time.

And what he said is that once you feel like that you have given everything on the climb up a mountain like Mount Everest, you realize that even though you feel like you've given everything, you still have 40% more to go.

Because these guys are the experts, they're the ones who are blazing the trails through tall snow so that people can follow behind and have climbed these mountains countless times, and people have trained their whole lives just to do it once, and they're doing it over and over again.

In 2008, he at the top of Mount Everest had a picture go viral when he turned around at the summit of Mount Everest to this highway of climbers at the top of Mount Everest who were all trying to get up to the peak.

And all of those climbers that were up there were up there because these Sherpas had already run all the lines and run all the ropes and blazed the trail for them to get there.

See, a lot of people got to the top of Mount Everest as a tourist or somebody to do it one time, but these guys do it all the time.

And in our relationship with God, oftentimes it's easy for, and there are plenty of tourists that try to just have a little bit of God in their life.

But when you're walking faithful with God, what that actually turns into is then you now aren't a tourist, you're now beginning to influence others and you're a guide for others.

The way that this happens is that in this year, instead of you being a tourist of the things of God, you then become an influencer for others, an influencer for God.

That now that you're walking in faithfulness to Him, despite whatever things are going on in your life, you're still remaining close to God all year long.

And so we don't want to be tourists when it comes to the things of God.

We want to be influencers.

We want to be the ones that are able to blaze the trail.

And we do that by remaining connected to the vine and being able to sustain the climb, even at this high elevation, and when life gets challenging and life gets tough, and we want to remain close to God all year long.

Jesus gave us the example of doing this.

Jesus, oftentimes in the Gospels, we'll see Jesus break off and go to an isolated place just to spend time with the Father.

One of those moments is in Mark chapter 1, is an example, verse 35.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

Jesus, before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

We see Jesus do this all throughout the Gospels.

And if Jesus needed to do that, don't you think that we should do that?

Don't you think that we need to do that?

If Jesus took the time for him to break off and to have time with the Father, that he's Jesus and He needs to do that, of course we also need to have this rhythm of us, a sustaining rhythm of the time that we're spending with our God.

And I know for me, and this is so true for me, that oftentimes when when life's getting challenging, I just want quick fixes to those problems instead of pursuing the quiet presence of God who is truly going to help me in the circumstance.

To take the time to break away, to open the word, to pray, to truly meet with God.

And maybe for you, maybe there's been times and seasons in your life where you have really wanted to take time to meet with God, but then you find yourself realizing by the end of the day of the long and busy day that you've had that you haven't spent any time with God, what we need to do is start sustaining.

We start remaining in Christ, but then we we we sustain by a private private time of being in the word of daily devotion to God.

Of us being rooted in God's word.

And maybe for you, you you're you're thinking about being in God's Word every day, and you're thinking, man, I I don't even know where to start.

I don't even know where to start.

Or maybe you've tried before in the past to have a daily time of being with God and and you got off track and it didn't work out and you feel like you failed.

Here's the thing: we were made to meet with God.

We were created for us to be in relationship with Him, with close relationship with Him, a sustaining relationship with the one who is the true vine.

And if we are disconnected from Him, apart from Him, we can do nothing.

We were made to meet with God.

So are you gonna be somebody who chooses your first priorities in life, or are you gonna be someone who lets the world choose your priorities for you?

I told you that Mount Evans that Emily and I went to a couple years ago, that it was at 14,000 feet.

What's crazy to me is the base camp for Mount Everest is at 17,000 feet.

Just the base camp is higher than where I've even was.

If I tried to just go to the base camp of Mount Everest, stick a fork in me, put me back on the plane, I'm gonna die.

I could not even breathe.

I couldn't breathe at 14,000 feet, let alone just being able to sustain at the base camp.

And these these Sherpas, they talk about in the climbing community that 8,000 feet from the summit is this area, is this portion called the death zone, where it's one-third the amount of oxygen that you normally live on.

See, there are times in our life, in our normal everyday life, where we're at this altitude where it feels like that we're drowning, and we have the job and all the expectations that there are around family or the difficulty, or you have something going on in a relationship that keeps holding you back and entangling you, or maybe it's a sin thing that you just feel like you can't get over, and it's just holding you back and holding you back, or maybe it's some financial struggle, or maybe the craziness of raising a family and raising kids.

It's easy to get in the state of feeling like that we're drowning, that we can't come up for air, but the word of God is your oxygen.

The word of God is the wind beneath your wings, it's the lamp to your feet and a light to your path because God has things appointed and anointed for you to accomplish in him if you would just sustain, if you would keep walking.

This is so plain to us in Ephesians 2.10 that says we are God's masterpiece.

He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

There are things that God has planned for you to do as you walk with him and sustain with him for you to walk out this master plan that he's given to you, his masterpiece.

He's created you anew.

If you're in Christ Jesus, you are a masterpiece.

Everybody say masterpiece.

You are a masterpiece, the scripture says.

And you've been created anew so that you can then walk out and climb the mountain that God's already uh uh anointed and appointed for you, the good things that He's planned for you long ago.

And for me, it's so easy for me just to get into survival mode and forget that I was made for more.

That there are things that God has for me to do, good things to be a blessing to others and to my family and to me.

If I would just sustain.

Maybe for you, maybe you're coming into this new year and you ended this last year and you felt like you were just trying to hold everything together.

And just the thought of being able to be used by God.

There's some of you in the room you can't even imagine that God would use you.

Can I tell you that God loves you and you're a masterpiece?

That He wants to and has created you anew.

Not so that you can just sit on the sidelines and settle for being a spectator, but so that you can be used by God and so that you can blaze a trail of faith with God in the purpose that He has appointed for you.

You gotta start blazing.

Blazing the trail.

There's a path to there's a purpose to the path that God has already lined out for you.

And as you walk with God, and as you are being somebody who's following Jesus and being disciplined and being a disciple of Jesus, you're either going to be discipled by the world and your drift from God or your devotion to God.

Your children are either going to see you drift away from God or for you to be fully devoted to Him and faithful this year.

They're going to see it.

And I'm sure, you know, you think about this, and it's like blazing a trail, like who, what?

Forest.

I don't even know what God wants me to do.

God's asking you to be faithful, not perfect.

He's asking for you to have a response to his faithfulness to you.

That isn't just for you.

It's for people that are going to be helped through the works that God has already appointed for you to do good works that's going to be a blessing to others.

And you say, Well, you know what, Forrest, I mean, who am I?

I can't help anybody.

I need help myself.

You're blazing a trail of faith, and you're not just doing it alone.

You've got the Holy Spirit who is helping you, who is guiding you on the path, and it's not just about you.

Trailblazing and blazing a trail of faith is not just about what you get out of it, it's about who you help along the way.

Because the fruit that's produced by being connected to the vine, it isn't just for you, it also feeds others.

The fruit that comes from being connected to the vine is the is the basics of the faith, which is us producing the fruit of the Spirit.

That if we're in Christ, the things that we're going to produce out of the overflow of the Holy Spirit in our life is lined out in Galatians chapter 5, verse 22 and 23.

Galatians 5:22

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is no law against these things.

This is the basics.

We talked about love and joy and peace over Christmas as we went through the Advent.

And now as we talk about the other fruit of the Spirit and we hone in on what it looks like for us to have a fruit that flows out from faithfulness in our life.

The love, the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, the faithfulness, the gentleness, the self-control, it flows from being close to God.

It flows from being close to Jesus.

Because the world's just gonna put all this pressure on you.

Get better.

Do more.

But Jesus is looking at you and saying, Come closer to me.

Because you can't fake fruit.

You can't fake the fruit.

You just can't.

You can't fake the fruit.

You can't fake having healthy roots in Christ that's built down deep.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine this next year?

If you got to the end of the year and you weren't burnt out by the end of the year, but instead you've stayed so close to Jesus that He's changed you all year long?

And that you've had this remaining and sustaining spiritual growth.

And you actually look different at the end of 2026 than when you started.

You look more like Jesus at the end of this year.

Can you imagine what your home would be like or your schedule would look like?

If faithfulness to the Lord was a top priority, and how that would affect everything else that flows from it?

Or imagining your kids beginning to be faithful because they're following your example and faithfulness.

So we go back to the basics here at multiply.

The way we say that around here is we say, meet God, make friends, make disciples, and multiply good.

And what that means for us is that we need to be meeting with God daily in prayer and in his word, that we need to be recentering each week as we come together and as we worship God together with the family of faith and with the body of Christ.

And as we're doing this climb, that we're not doing it by ourselves in isolation, but we have others that we're doing it together with, you're doing it with somebody else as you're climbing up this mountain of a year.

One thing I want to invite you into is as we start here in the beginning of 2026, is that if you haven't already chosen a Bible reading plan, I'd like to invite you to do a Bible reading plan with me.

Starting right now, there's a card in your seat that looks like this.

It's the same as on the screens.

I'd love for you to scan it.

It goes to the UVersion Bible app, and this is a chronological order of the New Testament that goes for 182 days, and it's gonna flow through this year and end with us in the fall going into the book of Acts.

And I'd like to invite you all, if you haven't already chosen a Bible plan, for you to scan the code and to do this Bible plan with me this year as it goes through the New Testament and don't do it alone.

Do it with a friend, maybe your small group, maybe a buddy.

You can on the Bible app, you can invite people to do it with you.

It's just a a chapter or so a day as you go through 182 days.

If you skip a day, it's not about perfection, it's about faithfulness.

If you miss a day, just pick back up and keep going.

As you're rooted in the word, as you're letting the word minister to you, change you, mold you.

Here's the thing: if you will be in the word daily, it's gonna change your life for the good.

It's gonna change your family for the good.

It's gonna change your future for the good as you get closer and closer and closer to Jesus.

Maybe for you, you're in the room and you've been walking with Jesus for a long time, but you know that at the end of 2025 or somewhere in the last season that you have have drifted from him, it's time for you to come close to Jesus, to come back close to him, and for you to to sustain and and drive roots deep into your priority and relationship with God.

Maybe you're in the room and you're just you're just trying out this Jesus thing for the first beginning of first Sunday of 2026.

And for you, you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, you never received what He's done for you on the cross, where He forgave you of all your sins by putting Him on His back and purchasing a pathway for you to be in relationship with God on this side of heaven and into eternity with Him.

And today is your day that you need to take the step for you to receive Christ as your Savior, for you to be saved, for you to be forgiven, for you to be set free.

We're so grateful you joined us for this week's message.

At Multiply, we believe life was never meant to be lived alone.

If today you made the decision to follow Jesus, we'd be honored to walk with you on this journey.

Visit multiplyky.com to let us know.

We love you and we'll see you again soon.