The Prophetic History of The Road - Why The Road

We'll listen to the road as a teacher.

Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I will do a new thing.

Now it shall spring forth.

Shall you not know it?

I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

So, church, that's what God wants to do in each and every one of you.

There's things that you need to leave behind.

There's things in your past because God wants to do a new thing in your life.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Hey, today's kind of a little bit strange for you that are guests.

Normally, we teach from the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

We're actually on a series called the Kingdom of God Revolution from the book of Matthew, which we'll pick up later.

But today's our five-year, we've decided today is our five-year.

It's actually about a week ago, is literally our five-year birthday or five-year anniversary of starting the road.

And it's been quite a journey.

So we're going to give you guys today, Liz and I, a little of what I'm going to call a prophetic history of the road.

So some of you may know prophecy from the perspective of the teaching of the word, which is prophecy.

And by the way, it's the most important prophetic way in which God speaks to us is through his inerrant and infallible word of God.

That's why we're C by C and V by V, chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

But also God speaks to us through visions, dreams, impressions, senses about things.

And the more you get in touch with the supernatural workings and voice of God, the more you experience that.

And so I'm not elevating the foretelling of the gift of prophecy, but I am accentuating it today because it's our testimony, isn't it, Liz?

And so we want to start, though, with something that happened at UCLA when Liz was a student there that we think is very important for our city.

And this is not our message, but this is a kind of a commercial for something.

So this is also a story about prophecy, and a prophetic word came to me when I didn't even know prophecy exists.

Don't you love how God is so amazing?

Some of you heard my testimony a few weeks ago that at UCLA I had established a whole life built on secular partyism at the campus, and I got radically saved by an encounter with Jesus.

So I mean, like within a few minutes.

And so it was over Christmas vacation, and I gave my whole, like everything to God.

I'm like, Lord, I don't know what to do with all of this stuff that I've created on my own that's not that good.

So I'm gonna let you just uh weed that out or show me what to do.

So um I had met my sophomore year, a um budding actor, and we were friends, just friends, and uh he um is actually best known for his appearance in Friday the 13th, and he went to UCLA.

So he and I are friends, and he would tell me his girls' uh problems.

And um anyway, I just said, Lord, what do I do with that relationship?

Like you have to tell me, I don't know what to do, and I'll just do whatever.

I'll just say, can't can't ever meet you again, or whatever, because we were just friends.

But anyway, I have this dream that my friend John Shepherd is a large tree with a lot of fruit hanging off it.

And I've never even heard of prophecy, and I'm like, what does that mean?

Like, ugh, like I don't know what that means.

And I felt like the Lord said, Go witness, witness, witness to him.

So I do that.

I'm thinking of just sharing my faith, telling him how to receive Jesus the first time I meet him.

He said, You know, I've been to church as a little kid, I'm an American, I'm good.

And I was like, whoa, this is gonna be hard, Lord.

And I felt like that dream kept coming back to me.

So I'm like, okay, I'm chipping away at this.

I'm and you know the thing about prophecy, it gives you strength, it gives you a direction.

You keep going because you just uh feel that the Lord is leading you.

So on his birthday in November, I felt like the Lord said, give him a Bible.

And back in the late 70s, early 80s, the hot Bible was the Ryrie Study Bible.

Anybody remember that one?

Yeah, Ryri.

So um I gave him that, put his name on it, and I wrote in there, I said, I said, Um, you are the son of a king, the king of kings.

And royal blood is running through your veins.

And he read that and he was like, whoa.

And then I felt like God said, tell him to go to Urbana.

Now, if any of you know Urbana, it's a huge missions conference.

I'm like, really?

Like, I'm gonna tell this non-Christian to go to a missions conference?

I do that.

And he goes, And he gets there two hours early accidentally.

He sits in the front row by accident, he and his best friend, and Billy Graham is there.

And Billy Graham gives an altar call, and two people get saved.

And it's my friend John and his friend.

And he ends up meeting Billy Graham, he um starts working for the Billy Graham Association, starts making movies for him, stars in a movie called The Prodigal, if any of you saw that.

Um he starts just uh he actually spoke at a Billy Graham crusade that had 50,000 people, and I'm just remembering oh, the fruit on the tree.

Awesome.

And he is fired up as a believer.

And then now he is paired up with the producer of The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart, We Were Soldiers.

He and him worked together with Empowered Pictures.

That's Steve McVeady, so he worked all with the Mel Gibson movies until after the Passion of the Crist.

So they create movies for the mainstream public, and we're gonna see a trailer here in the next second.

And what it is is it's for the mainstream people, and it has the message of the cross and the resurrection in it, and we're so excited to have you watch that.

And I'm really proud of John and I'm proud of God for helping this whole thing get going.

So this movie is called Emmanuel, it's only here for two days in Colorado Springs.

It's in three theaters in the area.

It's about the Charleston shooting, and so uh let's watch.

What's up, guys?

It's Stephen Curry.

I'm here with the amazing director Brian Ivey.

We are very excited to show you guys a trailer uh for the new documentary called Emmanuel.

The highlights of tragic shooting in 2015 uh in Charleston, South Carolina, and the amazing story of how these families responded to it.

So enjoy all the tooth.

Appreciate you guys.

Appreciate it.

You better go.

I got you.

Of course.

Yes, you guys want to do it.

Yes.

But I forgot.

All right, you guys.

I want to really encourage you to go watch this movie and support what's happening.

You can go online, it'll get filled.

It may already be packed out for all I know.

I did this same kind of motivational message out to Charleston and some other cities with friends of mine in contacts, and they were already packed out and filled.

So that's what we want to see.

We want to see the place filled to capacity.

It is at Regal Interquest, so right over here, these are all at 7 p.m.

on that Monday and Wednesday, January 17th and 19th.

So Regal Interquest, AMC Chapel Hill is right over here, and then down at Carefree Circle on Powers.

All the proceeds go to the families that lost members.

Isn't that cool?

All right, would you turn in your Bibles, you guys, to Jeremiah 29.

Jeremiah 29 is um, I think, a beautiful summation of what we're gonna share.

We're gonna share in testimonial form today.

So Liz and I will be kind of toggling back and forth with each other.

Um we've done this a few times, as you know.

Um, so bear with us.

But look at Jeremiah 29.

Many of you are familiar with this passage, 11 through 13, because um as we look back, I mean, as Liz and I look back over the years, and when we became open, when we became open to the voice of God, when we became open to the power of God, not just in the Bible, but even extra biblical revelation that God gives us at times, God began to open up stuff to us.

It was amazing.

But I think this sums up what God is all about in all of our lives.

For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord.

Thoughts.

So God's got thoughts, right?

So He's thinking about you, He has thoughts for you.

In the Psalms it says, more than the number of all the sands of the earth.

And I remember when I was in college, I did the calculations on that based on some mathematical theory, unbelievable, the thoughts that God has for us.

Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future.

And I hope some of you in this room have probably blamed God for bad things and hard things that have happened in your life.

I want to challenge you on that, that this is truly what God is like, but there's an enemy, and you're always in a battle with the enemy, and here's what I know is that they say that 98.6%, listen to this, this is what mental health experts are saying today, that 98.6% of all that you are is mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Only one and a half percent of who you are is physical.

Isn't that amazing?

So, so God's got thoughts for you.

So start with that.

If you get nothing out of the message today, God's got thoughts for you, and they're to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I'll listen to you.

You get it?

So there's a part that you play in this.

You've got to seek him, and you've got to go after him, and then he'll reveal himself to you.

And you will seek me and find me.

When you search for me with all your heart, and I'll be found by you, saith the Lord.

So, Father, in the name of the blood of Jesus, we just we settle our hearts here this morning, and God, we are so grateful for the last five years.

Birthed out of hardship, birthed out of shock, birthed out of surprise, and yet it never surprised you.

You are already on the move, you were you were working behind the scenes, even with some things and plans and strategies of man that were not wholesome and good, but you're wholesome and good.

And you are working that out in a mighty way.

And so, God, we just pray that you bless Liz and I, and uh that we would speak what the key points.

There's so much we could share, Lord, but give us the key points.

And Father, I pray this would be a blessing to your flock, to these precious saints that love you, that are here today, that we would come away wanting to seek you with more of our whole heart and go after you and to pray and to call out to you that you might show us great and marvelous things.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So, Liz and I, I'm gonna take you back.

We were in Japan, we've been in Japan for five years, I've been in Japan for longer than that, but we were in Okinawa, Japan, and and we're ministering in Okinawa, and we're with Campus Crusade for Christ.

And so we're ministering there, and I read a little book called Power Evangelism by a guy named John Wimber.

And I was just fired up to see the power of God show up in Japan.

So it started off in Tokyo.

I started laying hands on the sick, and people got healed.

And I started casting out demons out of missionaries.

I mean, I was, I was, it was weird, okay?

Missionaries aren't supposed to be demonized, but they were.

Anyway, I got them out.

And so suddenly these people that were depressed and despondent and despairing were getting fired up for God and for Jesus.

And in Campus Crusade, that wasn't exactly the ethos, you know?

And so they shipped me to Okinawa.

So I go to Okinawa, we keep doing the same thing, but here's the difference.

The difference in Okinawa was we started working with local churches.

So we started working with churches instead of just doing the college ministry, and all I can say, gang, if this hasn't happened to you, I hope it will, I fell in love with the church.

I started hanging out in the church, and what I saw, there was the biggest difference I saw between parachurch and church, and that was it was multi-generational.

And I just dig that, you know, and I'm a family guy, and I grew up in a multi-generational cousins and grandparents' family, and my dad, when he pastored, had churches like that.

So, whereas when I was with Crusade, everything was just kind of young people, I would get in these churches and I would see fired up 60-year-olds and fired up 40-year-olds and fired up little kids, and I fell in love with the concept where Christ said, I'll build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Man, I read that, I went, oh, this is hot.

This is so cool.

So we began to pray, Lord, what are you saying to us?

We love you, we love what we're doing, we love working with local churches, I love working with pastors, and then Liz had a dream.

Well, in Okinawa, um I always said, I'm not smart enough to get it when I'm awake, so God has to download it when I'm asleep.

So, yeah.

So, anyway, um I had a dream that I was in a house and I looked out a window and I saw these snow-capped mountains that I'd never seen before in real life.

And I had I noticed everybody in this house, and they had different clothing on.

They had some had summer clothes, some had fall, some had winter.

And I felt like the Lord was saying, This is how people are clothed in Christ.

That there were people that are didn't have much of Christ yet, and there were some that were heavily clothed in Christ.

And I felt like this was a church.

And then I looked out the window and I also saw a rodeo there, and I was like, whoa.

So I ran to Steve, I go, um, I have this, I have this amazing dream.

And by the way, there was also a one of our kids in the dream that we weren't pregnant, but there was a kid we hadn't had yet, and her name was Deborah, and I'm like, now who who's that in the Bible?

And I look and I'm like, oh wow, you know, this is gonna be a powerful woman.

Um, so I saw this girl in this dream, and that was another part of the prophetic um message God was giving to me.

So behind the rodeo, the part that Liz left out were these snow-capped mountains.

And so then I get a call six months later from a guy on a gymnastics team when I would competed in gymnastics.

I had competed against him.

He was at Long Beach State when I was at University of Georgia, but we had done athletes in action together, and he had then gone on staff just like me with Campus Crusade, but he was a women's coach out of Colorado Springs.

I don't know anything about Colorado Springs at the time, except for the Olympic training centers here.

That's it.

And he's asking if they could come to Okinawa and do evangelistic outreaches using the women's gymnastics team.

So I said, Yeah, we'll set everything up.

So I set everything up.

We went to schools and thousands of people came to these events that they did.

And then at the end of their time there, we're doing RR.

So we go up to this beach in the northern part of Okinawa, and we're sitting on this veranda, all the girls have gone out to the beach, and uh, Dale and I were sitting around, we haven't seen each other in something like seven or eight years at that point.

And I just said, So I'm just trying to make conversation, you guys.

I've forgotten about the dream.

And I said, So, Dale, tell me about Colorado Springs.

What's it like living there?

And he goes, Well, huh.

I hadn't thought about that.

I guess I'd say if you were sitting any, you were in any house in Colorado Springs and you had a large window and you were looking west, you would see snow capped mountains about 80% of the year.

And the Rodeo Hall of Fame is also in Colorado Springs.

And if you're looking west, it's kind of it's kind of there between the mountains and you.

And then Liz goes, you remember my dream?

And I go, What dream?

You know, the dream I had.

And we're like, whoa.

And so that began a process, and that was just step one, of many other words that came to us where God spoke to us, I could tell you guys so many stories, unbelievable stories, and some stuff that happened in Atlanta.

Can you imagine being in a charismatic Presbyterian church that meets in a Jewish synagogue?

That's literally what this church was that had another word, but I won't go into all that details to take too long.

But God spoke to us 37 times that he was leading us to Colorado Springs.

So I resigned and we came to Southern California.

When we get to Southern California through another set of bizarre circumstances, starting with a guy that I met at a hamburger shop.

Next thing I know, within a year and a half, I'm the assistant to John Wimber.

Remember the guy who wrote the book, Power Evangelism?

At his 5,000-member church.

I don't know anything about anything.

And I'm his personal assistant for 5,000 people in this church.

And I'm like, I'm just sitting there one time in my office and going, This is ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

And I had people that would come up to me at church and go, I hate you.

And I go, what?

And they go, I've been working here for five years, and I've never even talked to my senior pastor once.

And you're his assistant, and you've been here for like five minutes.

So that began a relationship with John that we became pretty close.

And in the closeness of the relationship, he had heard about the calling we felt to go to Colorado Springs, and then one day he says, Get in my car.

So we get in his Volvo, we drive through your Belinda.

Anybody ever been to your Belinda?

Beautiful area, gorgeous area, swimming pool behind every house, you know, that kind of place.

He goes, Pick a house.

I said, What?

He said, You just pick a house, I'll pay for it.

You want a pool?

You got it.

Here's what I would I'm offering you as a salary.

Why don't you become the evangelist for the Association of Vineyard Churches worldwide?

And I'm going, but John, I feel like God's calling me to Colorado Springs.

He said, Well, you know, God might have different plans for you.

And so the pressure was placed on Liz and I, and we began to become actually quite uneasy about this proposal, to the point where Liz and I would go and walk around your Belinda in these beautiful neighborhoods and talk about it, and we were trying to convince ourselves that we wanted this stuff.

We didn't care.

And we really, we don't care today, but we didn't care then.

But there was this, I mean, John Wimber.

And he was probably, at that time, John was probably the most famous pastor in the United States in the early 90s.

So this was like, you know, a really strong voice in our life.

Well, we went into three days of fasting and prayer.

We had to nail this down.

We had to make a decision because John was saying this and our hearts were saying that.

And if we were missing something, then we wanted to submit to our leadership.

But if we were submitted to Christ first, then we wanted to hear from him and make sure that maybe maybe we had the timing wrong or something like that.

So I walk into staff meeting, and it's March the 1st, 1994.

And the staff meeting is done, we're leaving.

This lady walks up to you.

Her name is Romy Zarrett.

Some of you may know the name Steve Zarrett.

Steve Zarrett was one of the founders and presidents of Marinantha Music in the day when Calvary Chapel was booming during the Jesus movement.

Then he had come over and he was doing Vineyard Music Group, VMG, at that time.

And he and I become pretty good friends, but I'd never met his wife, didn't know her from anybody.

And she walks up, she says, I'm I'm Romy.

She didn't even give me your last name.

She says, Your name is Steve.

God told me your name is Steve, and God's got a word for you.

And she starts pointing her finger at me.

And I'm like, What?

And he goes, Well, I had a vision of you during staff meeting, and you're standing on a rock.

No, you're standing on rocks.

No, you're standing on the Rockies.

And God's told you what to do.

And you're not doing it.

And it's March the 1st.

And it's time for you to march.

And I was like, whoa, what is this is crazy?

And I started to cry and I fall to my knees and I go out.

So I hit the carpet, I'm out for probably five minutes.

Bob Fulton, John Wimber's brother-in-law, is down next to me.

I come out of it, I wake up, he's sitting right next to me, and he goes, Dude, you gotta resign.

I said, dude, I gotta resign.

So so I get up, he's been walking through it with me the whole time, and so he knew what this was about.

And uh so I kind of stagger to my office.

I go into my office and the phone rings.

Phone.

Okay, phone is it's kind of a black banana-shaped thing with a little.

So anyway, this phone rings and uh it's on a cord, okay?

And I go, so I answer the phone, and it's John Wimber from London calling me from London.

I mean, this is like 30 minutes max after the whole event that just occurred.

Um, and he goes, he goes, Hey Steve, I was getting ready to get on the flight, and God told me to call you.

You have something very important to tell me.

Oh, wow, John.

So I told him what had happened.

And then his response, I'll never forget his response, he goes, Romey, that little squirrel.

So we come back and we begin the process of resigning and turning over everything over, and we come to Colorado Springs in uh the fall of 1994.

And so we come and we start the church with 10 days of fasting and prayer.

It's called Mountain Springs Vineyard at that time.

And so with five of us, and I always laughingly say that we started in the living room because the basement was too big.

So we didn't know anybody.

And so we just started fasting and praying, and we ended up with about, I don't know, like five couples or six couples after the 10 days of fasting and prayer, and then it grew from there.

And it was an exciting journey, you guys.

I mean, we went from a storefront, we went from our house to a school to a storefront, and then we built three buildings out on Woodman out there today.

Um, beautiful, um, I think around a 55,000 or 60,000 square foot building on 17 acres.

We got 17.6 acres for$300,000.

How about that?

So that and front, and it was frontage on Woodman, and that was another dream.

That was another dream and a vision that is another great story.

So, um, and by the way, let me just say this.

This has happened a lot, and I just thought about this.

At the end of the service, we obviously have the barbecue and all the stuff that we're doing.

But if you would like us to pray for you to begin to have visions and dreams from the Lord, we would love to do that.

Lots of people, uh thousands of people have asked me for that over the years, and almost everybody I know who I pray for or Liz prays for starts having visions and dreams from the Lord.

So I don't understand it, it's just kind of a weird gift.

But anyway, if you'd like prayer to hear from God in some of those ways, love to pray for you.

So, how do I transition this?

So we go from five to six to a few thousand people.

Really gross.

I'm on the radio for nine years.

Many of you know that I was on the radio with the Salem group on KGFT 100.7 for nine years.

Great run, really cool.

And then one day at a meeting, some of the leaders say to me, this is around fall of 2013, they said, hey, we had a meeting with a lawyer, and I remember thinking that I should probably get the name of this lawyer, but it I didn't follow through with that.

And he said that you've got too much power here in the church, and so we feel like we need more power.

And then they said it kind of like, we just need checks and balances.

And I said, Okay, well, that's what the lawyer said, and they said, Yeah.

And so I signed off on a few things.

I didn't, I don't even remember reading the document, because it didn't even occur to me that there could be anything dark behind some of the stuff that was happening.

Um, so then what happened was one day I'd done a seminar on spiritual warfare.

I was coming down the mezzanine, and uh there's this somber-looking board member there, and he asked me to come to my office, and they they read me all these things I've done wrong.

And it's it's dealing with culture and some complaints from some of the pastors and stuff like that.

And they made it sound like everybody had this perspective.

I found out it was three out of 32 staff or something like that.

So they'd built this case and they put me on a six-month sabbatical.

And all I can say to you guys is that God was actually behind it, even though I think the enemy was actually working it.

So, do you how many of you know that even when the enemy is at work, God's working harder?

Yes.

Okay, so Liz, you can share so.

Um that day was November 23rd, and um in October of the 20, October 26th, um that weekend, I went on a retreat.

And when I go on a retreat, I like quiet.

And whenever I go on a retreat, my family knows like she needs to go on a retreat.

Like, go, please go, mom, please go.

So I went, and what I do is I take a lot of books with me, like seven, and I have this big thing, I wheel in, um, and I just go in town because I don't want to it's the main thing is quiet, not driving, not tourism, nothing.

So I go there, I have seven or eight books, and I just go and have quiet.

Well, um that day I read um I took Jesus calling, and the the thing that came off the page to me was um you, however, have been called to take a road less traveled, continual dependence on me.

And I I was like, okay, cool.

Yeah.

And then I read a Kiplinger's uh financial book, and it it had something about the road less traveled.

Like, huh, that's so interesting.

Hmm.

And then, like I said, I like quiet, but I wanted to watch TV.

Like it is not me.

If you ask my kids, they're like, I can't even get her to go through a whole I mean for her to watch the movie we just show you the trailer for is a miracle.

Yeah.

Either she falls asleep or she walks out.

So anyway, um, I th thought I want to watch TV, and then I have this like like angel over here saying, Don't do it, don't do it, you're gonna ruin your retreat.

Then I have this like devil figure going, Yes, you can, you can.

It's a Roman 7.

She must have been battling.

Yeah, anyway, so I turn on the TV.

Like after I'm battling, like, what if I don't turn it off?

Oh no, I'm weird.

So anyway, I turn it on and I see Robert Redford in an in an interview, and he's talking about the road less traveled.

I'm like, this is so weird now.

This is getting weird.

You know it's weird when you get a prophetic word from Robert Redford.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, it was really weird.

So anyway, I come back to the retreat and I tell Steve, I'm like, something really weird happened on the retreat.

And I don't get it at all.

It's probably nothing, but three times I heard the road less traveled.

And I don't think it means anything because we know what our what our course is.

Like God's laughing.

Like this is October, and then November, this happens.

So, yeah, so hers precedes what I said.

So then I walk in, this thing happened.

And then Ethan, I'll I'll take the next one.

Yeah, Ethan, you want to go back to the back of the back.

So then we're um our kids come home after the sabbatical and they ask us, what happened?

What's going on?

And we kind of don't know a lot, so we're saying what we know, and then we haven't even connected the road less traveled to this whole thing.

But then Ethan turns to us, our son, who is up here giving announcements, said, Have you ever thought that God has put you on a road less traveled?

And then Steve and I are like getting the chills.

We're like, oh maybe.

Oh no, oh no.

So over the next few months, we are we're just um wondering what God's doing.

Um, sometimes it was very depressing.

Sometimes we were battling for our hearts in a big way, we didn't know what was going on.

Um one thing, another thing that happened was we decided we're gonna take a prayer walk and we're gonna repent of everything we can think of, that we were a part of this thing.

We just want to do that.

And it was so powerful, it was so good.

And when when I got back, when we got back, I took a nap, and God um gave me this dream of his hand reaching down a road, like that that no one was on.

And I was like, oh, that feels like the road less travel again.

Then I'm driving in the car a little while back, and um, oh no, I'm sorry, a little while later, and um I feel depressed.

And I thought, I'm gonna turn on the radio because I'm tired of my thoughts.

Like, who else is on the radio?

I turn it on.

It's this guy named Gino Geracy.

And uh so he's on and he says right away, he goes, you know, Robert Frost died such and such years ago, and he wrote about the road less taken, and he he read the poem and he talked about it.

I was and I pulled over and called Pam Doyon.

I'm like, again, the road less traveled.

Oh my gosh, I almost had a crash when I heard that.

And uh, so Stevie, you share the last one.

That was six times we heard the road less traveled.

So we go, how many of you know HB London?

Anyone know HB London?

So HB was the vice president for Focus, he's a cousin to Dr.

Dobson, really close friend of ours, him and Bev, and um mentor, buddy, and he had retired.

Um, and he's now in Palm Springs.

He and Bev invite us out to Palm Springs during this thing.

So we go out to Palm Springs and we're hanging out with him and Bev.

We've had dinner, we've kind of shared the whole thing.

So it was the last time we were gonna meet, and we've now been um prayer walking, fasting, um, seeking God.

This is now like March of 2014.

And I share with HB, hey HB, here's an interesting thing for you.

I didn't share this with you, but six times God has spoken to us about a road less travel.

And he gets this deer in the headlights look, and he says, What?

He says, I can feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

And then he goes, and I'm a Nazarene.

And uh and he and he says, Look, and he pulls out the poem by Robert Frost, and he says, I'm preaching on this poem tomorrow.

And uh, and so then we went up into Joshua Tree.

How many of you ever been to up to Joshua Tree?

And we hiked there in the desert areas and and and spent time with the Lord.

Soon after that I would resign.

But the summation of this six-month period before we went into prayer with a group of people was a feeling of embarrassment, shame.

How could someone who planted a church and built it into the thousands get kicked out by a few guys?

I mean, I mean, believe me, I'm a I'm a competitive person.

And when I thought that one through, I thought, man, Steve, you are such a loser.

How could you be, how could you sign that document?

How could you, and I went, how could you like 25 things?

And so, how many of you have seen Forrest Gump?

You guys have heard me tell that story.

I feel like I definitely felt like Forrest Gump.

Um remember that part where Jenny comes back to see him and he's on the he's on the lawnmower out there, and uh they spend time together, and then she leaves again, and next thing you see him, he's out on the porch with his Nike shoes and his gump shrimp hat on.

And he says, I don't know why, but one day I just got up and started running.

And I ran to the end of town and I just kept on running, and I ran to the end of the county, and I kept on running, I ran the end of the Alabama line, and I just kept on running till there was no more place to run.

And then it shows him, you know, on the Santa Monica pier there, and he said, And then I just turned around and I ran back.

And then I turned around and I ran back.

Well, one day I just sometime during that, I don't know if it was the first month or so, I can't even remember now.

I just got up one morning and I put on some shoes and I started walking.

And for the next four years, I walked almost every day for one to two and sometimes three hours.

And I just walk and pray and walk and pray, and walk and pray.

I've prayed all through these neighborhoods here.

I prayed all over Black Forest and walked all over Black Forest.

I got shin splants, I had issues with my uh my calf, I tore my calf muscle from walking so much, but it didn't stop and kept on walking.

And I would come back sometimes, you guys, and I'd sit by the fire, and there'd be a few guys waiting there by the fire, some of you, and you'd watch me cry.

Because I'd cry almost every day.

And um you guys would listen to me and you would and you would love me, and you'd love Liz, and you supported us.

And um I got during that time born again again.

Because when I got born again the first time, it was a guy named Jesus, but this time it was a guy named David.

And I began to read 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles and went through all the Psalms.

And that was the beginning, the genesis of the book Worship or Warrior, that we just came out.

And I began to see that it was okay to be broken, and it was okay to be ashamed.

That the greatest thing you can do with shame is you can be vulnerable about it, and you can get it off your chest and deal with it.

2 Corinthians 4 was powerful in my life at that time because it talks about the light shining in the darkness, and juxtaposed to that, you know, 2 Corinthians 4 is Matthew 22.

And Mark 12, it says, Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all your mind, all your strength, your neighbors, yourself.

Well, how can you love your love God with all of your heart if some of your heart's still dark?

Must mean you're supposed to love him with the dark places of your heart, too.

And I got turned on to all the books by Brene Brown, read all of Brene Brown's books.

I think it's one I haven't read.

She talked about shame and vulnerability.

And all I can say is that some of you guys were there, and God began to birth within us a desire to build a different kind of church, a church that was open and vulnerable and caring for people, whatever their background, whatever they've been through.

Learning to be wholehearted.

So we went into 40 nights of prayer here at this church, and it's a long story, but through Bobby Sanders, who was the pastor here, we became really close friends and we merged the church two years ago, and uh it became from it went from the road to the road at Chapel Hills to honor the Chapel Hills Church and this beautiful location.

I don't know if many of you know this, but Chapel Hills Mall was preceded by Chapel Hills Baptist Church back 40 years ago, and Chapel Hills Mall got the name Chapel Hills from the church.

Isn't that cool?

So um, so to incorporate that into the name seems so honorable and so right to the history of this church.

So, like I said, a week ago, five years ago, we started the church, and and this is this is the journey that God's had us on in our in our journey with Him.

And I thought I would conclude with what I think are some of the distinctives of our church.

And if you brought a pen or if you want to jot these down, I don't think I've ever given these before in one message, but these are what I think are the distinctives of this road less traveled that we're on.

But turning your Bibles to Isaiah 43.

This was the passage God gave us during the 40 nights.

He actually gave it primarily to Pam Doyon.

Pam's in the back praying for me.

Been a prayer warrior here at the church from day one.

You guys have been with me the whole time, you remember this.

It wouldn't be right not to read this passage.

Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I will do a new thing.

Now it shall spring forth.

Shall you not know it?

I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

So, church, that's what God wants to do in each and every one of you.

There's things that you need to leave behind.

There's things in your past because God wants to do a new thing in your life.

And here's five things, five new things that I believe God has birthed and made us distinct here at the road.

There's a lot of things.

I mean, we've got a prayer room we're getting ready to do.

There's so much creative stuff going on with our, with uh so many of you with video and with uh ministry to children that Liz is leading and her team that she's developing is really exciting.

But here's five, if I could say five principles or five things, and you guys that were with me from the beginning, I think you'll agree with this.

Matter of fact, you that are here that were in the 40 nights of prayer, would you guys stand?

You that's that are out there.

Wow.

There you go.

You guys didn't quit.

That was our group.

So here's number one.

Number one distinctive is no formula.

We do not copy other churches.

There's no formula.

And we want God to lead us.

We want God to speak to us in everything that we do.

We want to be a word and spirit church.

We want to be word-rooted, but spirit-led.

We want to be word-rooted, spirit-led, and culturally engaged, but there's no formula for this.

So, how many of you felt a little uncomfortable at times with the things we do here?

Raise your hand.

Man, you guys are just awesome.

My wife raises two hands.

I mean, remember the first few years we changed up the service all the time.

Sometimes we did a liturgy, sometimes we didn't do a liturgy.

Sometimes we opened with worship.

Sometimes we opened with the word.

Then we went to worship.

Because I just felt like I was gonna be led by the Spirit, even if it made everybody a little bit uncomfortable, and we were gonna be the best that we could be for what God was telling us to do.

So it's been a little bit, this is not a roadless travel.

This is a roadless travel.

And it still sort of is.

So I'll just say this if you're a guest with us or you're checking us out.

If you need it like everything to be exactly the same, always every week, you are absolutely at the wrong church.

Go to 99.9% of all other churches because that's what they do.

But you're gonna have times where you come and you're gonna have a testimony like this.

And then sometimes we're going verse by verse for weeks, you know, through the word.

But I will tell you this: as the senior pastor and with a great, wonderful pastoral staff team, we're doing the best that we can to seek God.

We're trying to hear from God.

And let me just tell you this, we will make mistakes.

And we're a word and spirit church, and what I mean is sometimes you guys that come out of really strong charismatic backgrounds, it's like we don't do enough with the spirit.

And you that come out of strong word backgrounds, oh, they do too much in the spirit.

And so we're we're in that middle road, it's an uncomfortable middle ground, but you'll have to trust really that we're trying to trust and listen to the Holy Spirit in that.

Have you read the book of Acts?

I hear people say, man, I want a church like the book of Acts.

Oh, really?

People die in that church.

People get killed by God in that church because they lie.

And you don't want a book of Acts church.

Give me a break.

What we want though is we want what the Holy Spirit's doing in 2020, 2019 church, right?

We want what he's saying to us today.

Number two, learning to be wholehearted.

Learning to be wholehearted.

This means that we're learning to love and be loved even with our dark places.

The dark places of our heart.

We're to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we're to pull out the best in each other.

Most churches pull out the worst in each other.

I know I grew up with a churchman.

My dad was a churchman.

I mean, I grew up in the Lutheran church.

I watched the politics that goes along with church.

And then I've been a pastor now for 25 years, and then all the churches in Okinawa and America and all the place, the church is terrible.

Most of the time, the church is horrible at building wholehearted disciples.

Because we say we want it, but when someone actually struggles with stuff and they start getting vulnerable about their dark places, we squash them.

Jesus came not to start a religion, he came to start a revolution.

And it's a revolution of love.

And he says, Love me with all your heart.

That means with your broken parts, you guys.

Some of you guys are loving God with all your heart, and you're a mess.

You are a mess because of the background you come out of in your childhood and stuff that's been done to you and stuff you've done to others.

But it's a road we're on.

We're not a finished product.

And so that road that we're on means that some are here and some are here.

So you've got to learn, and we've got to learn together to look back and say, well, they're not there yet, but I'm going to pull them along because look what God's done in my life.

Don't have a, we need to have a short memory for other people's sins and a long memory in our own life of the grace of God, how he pulled us out of our sins.

Because when we do that, we have grace for each other.

And I don't like it.

And we have it sometimes happening in our church from time to time where I hear people talking about other people negatively.

And I've done it too.

Because I'm not perfect in this either.

But listen, on this journey game, we got to learn to zip it up and we got to learn to believe the best.

And the only way to do that is for us to hold each other accountable.

And we call them D groups, but I'm changing that name to whole heart groups.

So we've been using the word D groups for our small groups of men with men and women with them in three or four, and I want to call them whole heart groups because I think that describes even better what we believe in each other being wholehearted.

Number three, and this is this leads well to number three, that is blood-stained allies.

Bloodstained allies.

That's a term that we coined early on when God was speaking to us about the need for each other.

Men around a fire pit came to me and loved me.

And I never will forget that.

And I'll be there for others as God leads.

You need trusted allies.

And when I say bloodstained, I don't mean bloodstained by the blood of Jesus, though that's true.

I mean blood stained by life.

I mean bloodstained by hardship.

I mean bloodstained by tough times in your life, or you've had fears in your life, or you've been through a divorce, or you've been through an abortion, or you've been through drug addiction or porn addiction or sexual addiction.

God can pull you out.

But I'll tell you this: most of the time you won't get pulled out without some bloodstained allies.

And so until you guys get serious, this is when I know a guy's serious about really walking with Jesus, is when he starts having a couple guys in his life that he's meeting with regularly, and they can share their heart with each other, and they can even get mad at each other, but they're still gonna hang together.

When a woman decides she's gonna get serious with God and she starts having some women in her life, and of course, the bloodstained ally concept begins with your marriage if you're married.

But sometimes it's beyond that.

There's some things, even in a marriage, that maybe the best person's not your spouse to share with, and you need some other guys or you need some other women in your life.

So bloodstained allies is so important.

Number four, covenant of harmony.

Number four, what we call a covenant of harmony.

And so it used to be in the early days, we made everybody sign it to be a member of the road.

We changed that as the church became more and more variegated with different folks.

But we do talk about it at our orientation for membership here at the road.

When we have our roadmap out there, we always talk about the covenant of harmony.

We give you the document, and basically what a covenant of harmony is, and only the staff sign it, you don't have to sign it, but it's saying we're gonna follow the biblical injunction in Matthew 18 that if we've got a problem with someone, we go to them and we talk about it, we work it out.

This past two weeks I've had like three kind of mediation times with the covenant of harmony, and and each one of them were beautiful, they were awesome.

I've done this now like, I don't know, 20 or 30 times in these five years with some of you, um, either as a mediator or you coming to me and we talk about stuff where I've hurt you or you hurt me or whatever, and every time we're batting a thousand, we worked it out.

A church, a church working out their differences.

Now that's an oxymoron.

If we could quit judging other people, and let's say this, if we could spend half as much time loving other people as we do judging other people, we could see a revival, folks.

If we could quit pointing the finger at other churches that don't believe exactly the way we believe, and we was just start blessing what is kingdom in them, we would see a kingdom of God revolution.

So covenant of harmony.

And then fifthly and lastly, just write down the word Hern Hutt.

H-E-R-H-U-T.

I don't know if that's spelled or is it two R's?

Two R's, okay.

So it's a German word.

H-E-R-R-N-H-U-T, Hern hut.

And I want you to write this.

I want you to write 24 slash 7.365.100.

It's a picture God gave me the other day.

24-7 dot 365.100.

Here's what it means.

I'm copying what God put on my heart many years ago because of my background with the Moravian church, my great-grandmother was a Moravian missionary to the Appalachian uh children in North Carolina, that they started a 100-year prayer movement.

It lasted for 100 years.

Church, listen, we can get way too enamored with an eschatology of the second coming of Christ to the point where it's all gonna go to hell anyway.

When what God, I believe, is saying in the Old and New Testament, I'm reading a fantastic book on this right now, called The Day the Revolution Began by N.

T.

Wright.

He's actually not talking about this, but I'm extrapolating aspects of it, is the idea that when Christ died on the cross, the way the early church viewed it was not necessarily the way we viewed the penal substitution atonement theology that we have today.

That's what grew out of it.

But rather they viewed the death of Christ in terms of exile, slavery, with the forgiveness of sins that brought freedom with an Abrahamic covenant blessed to be a blessing.

So, men and women, listen, God has blessed you to be a blessing.

And I believe we should think long-term, just like the Puritans, the pilgrims did, Martin Luther before that, and John Calvin before him and Zwingli before that, that God has called, when the pilgrims came in their documents, if you read any of the Puritan documents of Pilgrim Governments, they said they wanted America to be a light on a hill, they wanted to be a new Israel, and they believed the Great Commission was going to be fulfilled with the founding of America.

Now that's a big vision.

And so when I say 24-7, I believe God's giving us a room, we're getting ready to start renovating a room here where we can have 24-7 prayer, because that's what they did at Hearn Hutt in the 1700s.

365 days out of the year, you can come in that room and pray for a hundred years.

Let's have a 100-year vision.

That means when we look down, when you look down in this floor and realize that our kids are getting discipled down there, those are the future leaders of America.

Those are the future leaders of the road.

Those are the future leaders that are gonna change the world.

And we've got to disciple them well.

Guys, we've got to love these kids.

We gotta love these kids.

We gotta love these middle schoolers.

Man, that that graduation with eighth grade by Ryan and Amanda was unbelievable last night.

It was so powerful with our six young girls and our six young boys going through where they learn about masculinity and femininity and the gifts that were given by their parents.

Oh my goodness, it was powerful.

They have got a foundation that's being laid down here, and then in the eighth grade, and now in high school, and young adults.

We're a multi-generational church.

Some of you that are older, the kids are all out of the house.

God's calling you to disciple some of our young people.

Don't think that your days are gone and you're gonna spend the rest of your life on the golf course.

How boring.

That's such a boring sport.

I told you guys my story, right?

I'm I'm left-handed.

Okay, I'm right-handed when I throw, but I'm left-handed when I bat.

Never played golf before in my life.

I'm in Japan.

We go to this golf course.

I'm hanging out with a bunch of guys.

They said, You want to play?

Stephen.

I said, No, I never played golf before.

And they said, Well, come on, man, just hang out with us.

Just do the best you can.

I'm sure they're thinking you'll make us feel a whole lot better.

So, so it's a three-par, three-par golf course, which I didn't know what that meant, but I do now.

And I said, Well, I'm I'm left-handed.

Well, then there's no left-handed clubs, because they had clubs you'd get.

I said, Well, okay, I've never played for, so I'll play right-handed.

So I took a right-handed club, first tee off, boom, clicks, straight down the fairway, lands on the green, that far from a hole in one.

That is the easiest sport.

I don't know what y'all's problem is with that sport.

All right, if the worship team could come up, Liz, you want to add anything in?

I just want to say that um as I've thought about what this road less traveled is, first of all, the vision, the words that I got in October, and then through that um year of 2013 and 2014, um, was from many different places.

It was from people who don't know the Lord, it was from a pastor of pastors, it was from our family, it was from a financial book, it was from the Jesus Calling book.

And you know what?

God said the roads forever.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.