Replay | GPS (Global Positioning Savior) with Rudy and Matt Walker

You can have all of me

And face in the little peace

You can have it all

Welcome to Hub City Vineyard.

To get connected or to give online,

go to hcv.church or give.htv.church.

If at any point during this message

you feel called to make a change in your life,

text changeme to 970-00.

Thank you and enjoy the message.

It feels good to not be the only knucklehead in this building.

Hey, good morning guys, welcome.

Is this your first time in the building?

Can I tell you that you are a blessing to us?

And I just want to welcome you from the bottom of my heart.

You now that you showed up today

are a part of this crazy family.

Whether you're here in person or you're watching online,

maybe you're on a jet ski in the middle of the lake,

just thank you for joining us.

Before we start,

Chris and Jess are headed on vacation.

They're taking a much needed rest, some sabbatical.

And what I want to do is just spend a minute

just praying over them.

And we're going to do that together in a moment,

but I want you to consider,

to be a lead pastor of any church is no small feat.

And the bigger the church gets, the more stress,

the more things that you have to figure out.

So what we want to do is we want to pray Chris up,

we want to pray Jess up,

and we just want to ask God to give them

the wisdom that they need,

the direction that they need to lead us.

Because if it's not for Chris and Jess being obedient to God

about 17 years ago,

none of us are here worshiping Jesus

and being able to party like Jesus partied.

Okay, so if you would, just put your hands out with me,

join me in prayer just lifting them up.

Come, Holy Spirit.

God, I thank you.

I thank you for putting leaders in our lives,

mentors in our lives.

Chris and Jess and anyone else who's a mentor,

we just thank you.

We honor them.

We ask God that as they are able to take a rest,

to take this sabbatical over these next couple days,

that you really speak to them,

that you really give them direction,

but most importantly, that they are able to just lean

into the love that Jesus has for them

and rest their bodies.

And I pray that for all the rest of us,

that we can just lean into the love that Jesus has for us.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Now, some of you have been around for quite a while,

and you know that about two years ago,

when Chris was on vacation in August,

Carl and Rhett, our worship team leaders,

did this cool little podcasty conversation.

They didn't use a couch,

but similar to what you're about to see.

We got such great responses from that

over the past couple years

that we decided to turn it into an entire series

called One-on-One Conversations,

Conversations on the Couch.

So you're gonna see, since the big cat is away,

Rudy and the other leaders are gonna play

the next couple weeks and switch things up.

So if this is your first time, again, thanks for coming,

but we do not always bring out a couch and get comfortable.

Right?

But you're gonna see that today.

But there's two things I want you to keep in mind

both today and throughout the rest of the series.

The first thing is this.

How many of you loved house parties last week, last month?

Hanging out, partying?

Because like we said, Jesus loves to party, right?

Now, what we want to do is we want to encourage you

to keep those parties going.

But what happens is, once you're around people for so long,

you start to develop more meaningful relationships

where you can have discussions like the discussions

that we're gonna model for you here on the couch.

So keep that in mind.

Keep partying, but know, partying might look like a cup of coffee

instead of a red solo cup.

Right?

And then the other thing we really want you to understand,

I want to break down some Christianese for you.

You have two words that you hear thrown around all the time

in churches, your testimony and your witness.

And oftentimes we take those two words

and we use them interchangeably, right?

But there is a difference.

Your testimony is your personal story.

Thank you.

I know I've only been not teaching for a year and a half,

but your own personal story, right?

That's your testimony.

Your testimony is this is the heathen that I was.

This is how I met Jesus.

And this is how my life is so much different

now that I'm in a relationship with him.

That is your testimony.

But let's not get confused testimony with your witness

because your witness is a little bit different.

Your witness is how you live your life day in and day out.

Are you connected to God?

When you walk out of this building,

do you sever ties with Jesus and live your own life?

Because trust me, people want to know your story

when you're connected to God.

But if you're not acting in such a way,

they don't care about your story.

So keep that in mind as we sit

and we have these conversations over the next month,

what it looks like to have a witness and a testimony,

what it looks like to party

and to have one-on-one relationships,

one-on-one conversations.

Now, are you ready for this?

Because I'm about to bring out somebody that some of you know,

some of you hold dear to your hearts.

I still consider this man my pastor.

This gentleman was the very first paid employee

that wasn't named Schlatterbeck at this church.

This gentleman was the first assistant pastor,

assistant to the lead pastor at Hub City Vineyard.

And again, we have a very iron sharpens iron relationship

that we want to exhibit that for you today.

So if you would put your hands together,

help me welcome Mr. Matt Walker.

Applause

When I walked out, they just looked at me like,

who's this knucklehead?

You get a huge almost standing ovation.

Well, you know, it's the purple couch

and everybody knows I'm a Ravens fan.

Cheers!

Carrie, I'm going to need you to get all of my black and gold paraphernalia.

I'm going to need you to bring my terrible towel,

my stealer's blanket,

and every single piece of stealer's clothing that I have

so I can put it on.

This is like, yeah, you just called her with the safe word.

He's bringing up the Ravens.

No, as I said in the first service, this feels very Prince.

Like, I feel like I should have a blouse on.

A flouse.

I feel like I should have doves.

This is what it sounds like when doves cry.

That's my tryout rep for the worship team.

Call me.

Speaking of, listen, we have scripted this a little bit,

but we also want to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you today.

So while it's scripted, we're probably going to go off script.

I don't know, I was on vacation a couple weeks ago

and I kind of got thrown under the bus

because Chris and I had an audition tape

that you guys might have heard singing Let It Go.

I mean...

And for some reason,

I'm not on the front line singing today.

I don't understand.

I just, you know, I just...

There's no, there's absolutely no reason

why you shouldn't be up here in your Olaf costume singing every Sunday.

Where's Carl?

I feel like that's where we should be.

But, you know, there is a reason, too.

The couch is special, right?

It's not, and I'm not talking about this particular couch.

I'm just talking about the idea behind the couch.

Hub City Vineyard, in its purest form,

is meant to be like a living room.

I know it's hard to think in that way and kind of envision that

because, you know, there's a ton of seats out here

and there's a stage now and there's lights and all types of stuff.

But the whole idea between what could be church

and what, you know, the vision behind Hub City Vineyard was

was to have that welcoming spirit of a living room.

That people would walk in, you'd share a cup of coffee,

share how your week was going.

You'd bump into them during the week at the grocery store.

You'd go to a small group together.

That you'd be texting one another.

So this whole idea of a living room is intentional.

And so I think that that's why this series is so good

because it really distills down that feeling of being in a living room

and sharing conversations.

I mean, Rudy and I have done this in living rooms together, you know.

So we're doing a message, but it also kind of is

what we're comfortable with as well.

So that's one of the reasons why we wanted to do this series

is to really hearken back to that idea of living room and how we are.

And I know it's cliched.

I know it's cliched to say we're family.

But that's the feeling that we want to get from one another

is that family atmosphere.

Right.

Now, we do want to be careful because if you know either Matt or I,

you know that we could talk all day.

And at some point you guys are going to get lunch.

So we're going to jump into our points.

And if you read your bulletin, if you read the email that came out the other day,

you know that today we're talking about failure.

So if this is your first time, hey, guess what?

We're talking about failure.

In fact, point one says failure is inevitable.

So thank you for joining us.

We're going to fill you full of joy, full of failure.

It's a hit of the summer, failure, right?

It's that fine transition that we made from party time, P-A-T-R-Y,

because we got to failure.

We're going hard in the paint on point one.

And we've chosen a particular scripture to share with you with this point

because when you read that point of failure is inevitable,

you're like, oh, what am I in for?

But there is goodness that we want to share with you

and importance that we want to share with you.

John 16, 33, excuse me, from NIV.

I have told you these things, by the way, this is Jesus speaking.

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.

In this world you will have trouble.

Right there, Jesus is already telling you, this is going to be a bumpy journey.

This is not going to be smooth.

There are going to be troubles and tribulations through your faith journey.

But I love how he follows up that sentence.

But take heart.

And he's not just saying, but take heart.

He's not doing it kind of cool and collected.

He's got an exclamation point there.

But take heart.

I have overcome the world.

And if that isn't the good news, I don't know what is.

Right there, I have overcome the world.

So while failure is inevitable, Jesus has defeated death,

which we really need to talk about first.

Which, you know, again, point one, we're going morbid.

We're talking about death.

Nobody likes to talk about death.

But again, it's inevitable.

But we really need to talk about how failure and death kind of go hand in hand.

And what I mean by that is we need to die to ourselves.

We need to die to ourselves.

And before we kind of get ahead of ourselves, let's back up a little bit.

Let's back the train up a little bit.

Because some of you might be thinking, what does die to self mean?

What does that look like?

And what I mean when we say die to self is simply relying on God.

When we depend on our own abilities, when we depend on our own understanding,

our own skill sets, we will inevitably fall short.

And, you know, to unpack it even a little bit further,

when we talk about dying to self, we need to talk about control,

which nobody in this room wants to talk about giving up control.

Not one person in this room is like, yeah, let me give up more control of my life.

We like to be in control.

And so often we will even subconsciously say to God, yeah, you can have this,

but you can't have this.

You can be in control of this, but you can't be in control of this.

You can be in control of this, but you can't be in control of this, or vice versa.

Control is something we do not like to give up.

We as humans like to believe we are in control all the time, and we are not.

Which is, for Matt and I, was evident in just the writing of this message today,

because when we write a message individually, it's all between me and God, right?

I am brainstorming, I'm writing down ideas, I'm whittling those ideas down to what God wants me to say.

I'm taking stuff in, putting stuff, taking stuff out.

And then you sit with somebody else who may or may not have the same writing style,

may or may not have the same delivery style, and now I don't control all of it.

And I'm not saying I do, the Holy Spirit does, but I don't control all of the message.

So just in the writing process, we have to put our faith in God to make sure that this message today

comes across not how Matt wants it, not how Rudy wants it, but how the Holy Spirit wants it.

That's tough even for a pastor that's going to stand here and say,

give up control, but I'm controlling what comes out of my mouth.

But think about it this way, how many of you trust yourself to wake up all by yourself in the morning?

How many of you, some of you might still wake up to an alarm clock radio.

How many of you, like for me and my wife, we both have about 18 different alarms set to go off

with the snooze buttons, right?

I can't even rely on myself to get my butt out of bed after the alarm goes off, however many times.

How many of you use GPS, right?

Oh, don't lie, you're not all Magellan's. Stop it.

She's got a Rand McNally.

Well, that's what I was going to say. OG's up here on the couch.

We remember the Rand McNally maps. We remember getting them out and unfolding them.

I will tell you that there is no bigger dread.

I remember being in college and going down to concerts in D.C.

I still don't understand D.C.'s grid.

There are people that the legends say understand it. I don't believe that.

But I remember that there was no greater scary moment in my life than ending up in Northern Virginia.

Like I'd be driving around D.C. and I'd be like, oh, there's DuPont Circle, okay.

And then all of a sudden I'm in Northern Virginia and I'm like, what? No, no, no, I need to go to Maryland.

I need to get back to the home state.

Did you need a passport for that?

You do now.

I remember coming back from a concert once and I wasn't driving and I was like, why does it say Annapolis?

We live over there. Why? That's just how you get to Annapolis.

I used to end up in Dundalk a lot. I used to end up there a lot because I would.

Anyway, anyway. But see, here's the thing about GPS is we are entrusting our lives to the GPS.

You may be like, that's a little bit of hyperbole right there.

But no, I mean, seriously, like if you're going to visit somebody and you don't know where they live,

you kind of know the area, but you don't really know or you're trying to find a new restaurant or whatever,

you're putting that address into the GPS and you're like, little machine, take me to my destination.

Like you are trusting yourself that it's going to take you there in the briefest least amount of miles.

I'm just like and it's funny to me, like you mentioned the phone, like we put so much trust in the phone

and then GPS and things like that. But then when we ask ourselves, am I putting that much in God in my day to day life?

So that one hurts a little bit. So let's talk about this saying and this is Matt's notes, but I'm still on it.

There's an old saying, everyone wants to get to heaven, but no one wants to die. Right?

And then go ahead and flip it, Matt. I'll let you finish your notes.

Everyone wants to experience life in God, but nobody wants to die to self.

Nobody wants to die to self to experience God on a level. We want to believe that we've got it. Right?

And a lot of times, you know, and Chris has said this and other people that have been up here have said it.

A lot of times when we're preparing messages, like we're not just preparing it for the greater masses.

Like we don't view it. I mean, a lot of times, like these messages come out of things that we're struggling with,

things that we're parsing through our heads and be saying, am I truly trusting God in this process?

Am I truly dying to self? When I walk out that door, am I saying, all right, God, like this journey that you're putting me on today,

I'm going to be open to divine appointments. I'm going to be open to stopping and helping somebody.

Am I open to, you know, pulling a few dollars out of my pocket or am I sitting there being like, no, my day is X, Y and Z.

I've got a list. I'm following that list.

And I think when we start to dwell on what we want and then when we fail, we start to dwell on our failure.

Yeah.

And I want to make two points, kind of counter, but sometimes some of us need to hear both of this.

Failure isn't always due to you. Sometimes failure is due to the fallen world that we live in.

Right. So for some of you, you need to know that it's due to the fallen one.

Now, there are others of us that need to know, hey, sometimes I just failed and I need to walk away from that failure and give it to Jesus.

Right. But if you're like me, sometimes I just well on. I failed when it's not necessarily me.

It might be the circumstances around me causing me to fail.

But no matter where the failure comes from, no matter how much we get wrapped on ourselves, point two is a big one.

God's got you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Let's go ahead and look at Luke 8 in verse 22.

It starts like this. And you guys, you guys all know this story.

You've heard plenty of messages spoken from this story.

I want to put maybe a little bit different spin on it.

One day, Jesus said to his disciples, let's go to the other side of the lake.

So they got into a boat and said, as they sailed, Jesus fell asleep.

A squall came down to the lake so that the boat was being swamped and they were in great danger.

The disciples went and woke him up saying, Master, Master, we're going to drown.

He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters.

The storm subsided and all was calm.

Where is your faith? He asked his disciples.

In fear and amazement, they asked one another, who is this?

He commands even the winds and the water and they obey him.

Now, see, you've all heard different takes on this and we've all heard it in different messages.

But I want to ask this. What if Jesus wouldn't have been with them?

Would they have turned back?

What if they weren't able to wake him up? Would they have given him?

Would they have just given up?

And I want to add something that's not in my notes.

Their response should have been this.

And he says, where is your faith?

Their faith was exactly where it should have been.

Because the only one that could get them through that storm is the one that was asleep and they needed his guidance.

So when you're going through the storm, go to Jesus for guidance.

See, but I also want to back up to the beginning of that scripture.

Because he says, let's go to the other side.

And what else does he tell them?

Does he say, hey, there's going to be a storm?

Does he say, hey, it might get a little rough out there?

He looks at them and he says, we are here and we're going over there.

And sometimes we have to remember that God looks at us and he says, Rudy, this is where I need you to go.

Without giving me all the details.

See, some of you have watched my Facebook account and you saw that I just traveled to New Hampshire a couple weeks ago on vacation.

And then last week all the church staff was at a conference.

We traveled down to Asheville, North Carolina.

So what did I do?

I took out my GPS and I punched in, how do I get to New Hampshire?

And then I made a decision.

Do I want to follow this route or do I want to follow this route or do I want to follow that route?

I even said, oh, I want to stop in Cooperstown.

So I was able to change the route.

See, with God, he doesn't give you all the step-by-step directions.

He doesn't say it because if you're like me, like I literally look at every single turn.

Right.

Like I want to know when am I turning left?

When am I emerging or slight right or whatever that means.

Right.

I want to know all these things before I set out.

But when you set out with the Holy Spirit GPS, he says this is where you are in.

This is where you're going.

And guess what?

He doesn't tell you, but there's probably going to be storms on the way.

And there's probably going to be bumpy roads on the way.

And it may have to recalculate.

One of the things that we're going to do today is tell some stories and some things to illustrate points.

And years ago, when I first walked into Hub City Venue, we were like I said a little bit earlier, we were over at E. Russell Hicks Middle School.

And this great program came to Hagerstown.

Some of you might remember Convoy of Hope, a fantastic organization.

But they came to Hagerstown a few years in a row.

And that first year, nobody quite knew what to expect.

Right. But it was it was met with a lot of fanfare and Convoy of Hope in case you're uninitiated.

It was this fantastic organization that literally brings in 18 wheelers and has them just packed with groceries and shoes.

And they do free haircuts and family photos.

And there was free food, carnival games.

I mean, there was just a sense of community happening at these places.

Now, one of the other facets is because it's a faith based organization was there is a prayer tent.

Very important, right. It's a community.

And I remember Chris said to us on a Sunday morning like he often does and like was said this morning about the backpack giveaway.

Hey, we need volunteers.

We want Hub City Vineyard to be visible and part of this.

And we want you to be proactive and being part of community in our in our fair city of Hagerstown.

And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm fired up.

I'm like, yeah, I want to be part of this.

Let's clarify. Yeah. You aren't a pastor yet.

You're no. Yeah. I was just I was very new.

Yeah, I just I was very new.

I mean, I think it was within the first year and I was all fired up to be part of this.

And so I wrote down what I thought was the meeting I wanted to go to because, you know, at that point, I was like, I'm going to be security or I'll be like a food person like some like kind of behind the scenes person.

Right. Like I don't want too much responsibility.

I just want to I want to be part of it, but I don't want to be part of it.

You know what I'm saying?

And so I show up at the meeting and I find it odd that they're not really talking about anything besides the prayer tent.

And I'm like, all right, well, maybe they're starting with the prayer tent and then they're going to work their way backwards and they're going to talk about each place.

And then all of a sudden the speakers like, all right, we'll see you on Saturday at the prayer tent at the prayer tent.

And I'm like, what?

And it just so happened that Barb and Patricia were there and they're like smiling at me at the end of the row and Patricia comes up to me and she's like, I'm so glad there's going to be a man in the prayer tent.

And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wrong, dude, wrong, dude, wrong, dude, wrong, dude.

I at this point, like I, you know, from me coming from a backer, like I was raised Presbyterian, like, I mean, and no offense to anybody that came from Presbyterian might be Presbyterian that's here.

But they you know, the nickname is the frozen chosen.

And, you know, we didn't we didn't lay hands on people that we prayed for people, but we didn't lay hands on people.

We weren't like, you know, proclaiming healing and stuff like that.

That's going to get at me in trouble. My mom's going to text me after this.

And so I'm mom.

So, yeah, so we're in the prayer tent.

I'm thinking, oh, I'm just going to be behind the scenes.

I'm still going to be behind the scenes.

I'm not going to actually do anything in the prayer tent except for hallelujah.

Amen. All right.

I'm hoping like I'm just going to stand back and let other people do the thing.

Well, everybody decided to go to lunch except for me.

And so I was there all by myself.

And wouldn't you know it?

Somebody comes in and asks for prayer.

And I have no idea.

And man, was it a whopper?

Somebody was like, I've got a tumor on my leg.

Will you pray for it?

I'm like, can you come back in 15 minutes?

No, I was like, I was like, OK, all right.

All right, God, now's the time to show up.

And so I have a good dad.

No, I'm just kidding.

So I but here's here's the beauty of this.

I was so naive.

And I wish I could go back to that naive because I like to you know, we were talking earlier about keep it simple, stupid.

Right.

There is a beauty in simplicity and our gospel message is simple.

And we like to add all the extra stuff to it.

But when it comes down to it, our Lord loves us and wants to be with us and wants to share that with everybody.

And that's the simplicity.

And so when I was praying, I just did a simple prayer and it wasn't me.

The Holy Spirit healed that man.

I could feel it underneath my hand.

I could feel the tumor go down.

And I was like, oh, boy, you've really brought me to something here, Lord.

And all of a sudden, I realized that it was intentional.

I had a different idea of where I was going to be at that convoy of hope.

Right.

And it wasn't to say if I would have worked security or, you know, food or whatever, I wouldn't have had the same experience.

But the Holy Spirit rerouted my GPS and brought me to that place.

And I will say that that set me on a course that totally changed my life.

It totally brought me closer to the Lord.

It pushed me into ministry.

It just completely changed my outlook of who I wanted to be because of that moment.

God knew it.

The Holy Spirit moved.

I didn't know it until later.

And that's the beauty, beauty of this faith is because when we depend on God, where can he take us?

So I just I just want to pause there for a second because there's a lot of doubt.

Right. And many of you probably have a lot of doubt.

Like, I don't know about you.

I've been here for eight years.

And sometimes when Chris says, hey, let's pray for our neighbor, sometimes I'm like, I'm the assistant pastor.

Sometimes I'm like, oh, Gary's on him.

He's good. I don't.

Right.

Because I have doubt.

But I want to pause and I want to get back to something.

We sometimes try to overcomplicate our prayers.

The prayer for that tumor is as simple as this.

Wait, you have a tumor?

God, take away this tumor. Amen.

Don't overcomplicate it.

Don't worry about the Christian ease.

Don't worry about the these or the Dalles.

That's going to give you more doubt.

God, take away this tumor.

That's it.

So when you're in this building and you see someone needs prayer, don't be like, hey, Rudy, I need this guy to be prayed for.

Pray for him.

He can't throw because his rotator cuff.

God, please fix his rotator cuff so he can throw.

That's it.

Right.

But what happens is we doubt.

And it's OK to doubt.

And I want to read Luke 7 to you because John the Baptist, who was sent to pave the way for Jesus and Luke 7, we read this about John the Baptist.

John's disciples told him about all these things, things that Jesus was doing.

So John calls two of them and he says he sends them back to Jesus and they're supposed to say, are you the one who has come or should we expect someone else?

When the men came to Jesus, he said, John the Baptist, they said, John the Baptist sent us to ask, are you the one who has come or should we expect someone else?

Even John the Baptist doubted.

So when you find yourself in areas of doubt, it is OK to have doubts.

It is not OK to live in doubt.

You push it to the side and you lean on the Holy Spirit.

OK, because we all have failures in life, which leads us to our next point.

Everyone has failures in life, but our failures do not define us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't want to allow our failures to grip to us like tar.

Right.

Think about like you think about if you've ever gotten like something sticky on your hands like like super glue or, you know, maple syrup or, you know, something like that.

It's hard to get off.

Right.

And failure and that feeling can kind of stick to us like that.

And if we're not careful, it becomes our persona.

And what I mean by that is that's who we start to define ourselves as.

We start to be.

I'm a failure.

I failed at marriage.

I failed with my kids.

I failed at my job.

I failed at, you know, staying clean.

All these things weigh on our shoulders and we start to walk around our shoulders kind of rounded in our head down and we start to associate more with that failure.

The the life that Jesus gives us.

And so we need to be very cognizant of how we're thinking about failure and how we're allowing it to rest on us.

And we'll talk about this a little bit more in a little bit.

So I just real quick.

Somebody told me this failure is not a person.

Failure is not you.

It's not your identity.

Failure is an event that happened.

Your identity is not your failure.

You are still you.

Now, we we both have a story.

We're going to pause on this point just for a minute, because many of you know that Matt left Hagerstown to go to Alaska to plan a church.

So I want to talk real quick and fill some of you guys in about that story from Alaska, because because his story and in the follow up story really, really speak to what we're talking about today.

All right. So this is one of the reasons why we wanted to do this.

And it was real important to use these examples.

Because a lot of times people feel like if you're speaking in front of church that you've got it all together.

If you're a leader in the church that you've got it all together.

If you're, you know, visible in the church, you've got it all together.

You don't have it all together.

None of us have it all together.

And so in 2017, I set out to plant a church in Juneau, Alaska.

Beautiful, beautiful capital city of Alaska, southeast Alaska, that nice panhandle that kind of is against Canada there.

And prior to that, I didn't want to be a church planter.

Like Rudy said, I was I was happy here. I was an assistant pastor. I loved my job.

I loved hanging out with people, going to get coffee and just being around the whole atmosphere of church.

I just loved being around church.

But this this still small voice in my head kept on saying, hey, go plant a church, go plant a church.

And initially it wasn't Alaska.

Alaska was never like the choice.

Right. Like initially thought, oh, Baltimore, where I'm from or or the beach, Florida, Hawaii.

I know. Why couldn't it be?

So I thought about Morgantown, WVU fan, thought Morgantown maybe thought, you know, just Ocean City, right?

Somewhere, somewhere nice like that.

None of them felt right.

None of them felt like a good fit.

And then one night had a dream about Alaska and it just felt right.

And so through this process, decided, yeah, this is this is the next step.

This is where God is leading us.

And I still to this day believe that this is where God was leading us to Alaska.

And through the grace of God and through, you know, people having, you know, believing in this this mission,

we were able to get to Alaska.

But the thing about Juneau is Juneau, you can't get to it by roads and you can't get to it just by driving there.

You have to take a ferry in.

So either you get to it by ocean or by air.

There's no driving into it.

So the journey to four thousand miles away.

Somebody told me that Poland is closer than Alaska, which is just mind boggling.

So didn't know anybody in Alaska.

Effectively parachuted in.

And so we decided, all right, we're going to take a year, year and a half to kind of feel the rhythms of the city.

Right. We're going to we're going to try to figure out what makes this town click.

I mean, we had done our research.

We knew where we were going.

But, you know, you don't know someplace until you go.

Right. Which, by the way, we had only visited one time.

So that's a whole nother thing.

So we got there, waited a year, kind of met with people, had a lot of coffee, had a lot of people over to the living room, did a lot of friends giving, did all types of stuff.

Decided, all right, now's the time after like a year and a half decided, all right, now's the time we're going to we're going to have a Sunday service.

Wouldn't you know it, a little thing called covid came up.

To to say that I felt defeated is an understatement.

That you travel four thousand miles away, you say goodbye to your friends, your family.

You jettison all your stuff.

And you say, Lord, I'm going to follow.

And then you feel alone.

I was depressed.

That was probably the lowest I have felt in my life.

Hopelessness. Absolutely.

I felt like I had been deceived.

I felt like there was a miscommunication that I had misheard.

Covid, covid, you know, whatever.

And then people start opening up again like businesses and all that stuff.

And we decide, all right, we're going to start it up.

And in Vineyard, if you know Vineyard Lore, the first Vineyard service was on Mother's Day.

And so it just so happened that we were like, hey, let's do our first one on Mother's Day.

How about that for that? That's going to be a statement.

So we did that.

And then divorce it.

And again, you're just thrown into this maelstrom of of just emotions.

And to say that I felt like a failure, that I couldn't keep everything together.

That I was, you know, I fancy myself a strong person.

And one of my favorite movies is Never Ending Story.

And there's this scene, right, in it.

And if you know the movie, there's this guy named Rockbiter.

He's like, I got these hands.

I tried to hold on, but everything slipped away.

And I just felt like everything was slipping away.

Felt like a failure.

Felt like God had abandoned me, but he didn't.

And I had so many friends who called me, checked in on me, texted me, and made sure I was OK.

Family members who were making sure I was OK.

And I tried to hold it together, and it just didn't work.

And then I started in my prayer time asking God, why?

Why did I come 4,000 miles for this to happen?

Failing at church.

Failing at marriage.

Failing in a job that I wasn't crazy about.

Why did you bring me 4,000 miles away?

Why did you make me leave a community that I loved?

Why did you bring me away when my sister had cancer?

Why did you bring me away when my grandfather died?

Why? Why? Why?

And it was to strengthen me.

Because I fully believe that God works through strife.

He doesn't cause strife, but he will use it to make you stronger.

And there are people in this room who are so strong, because you have gone through that strife.

And God has brought you outside the other end.

Whether that was through life circumstances of just not having a family.

Maybe you've been divorced.

Maybe you've got kids that just don't want to call you parents anymore.

Maybe you've just been through the wringer.

Maybe you've been subject to addiction.

You feel those feelings that I felt.

We have a kinship.

Every single person in this room has felt those failures before in their lives.

I'm not special.

But this is my story.

But you have stories as well.

And it cannot define you.

If I let it define me, honestly, I don't know if I would be here.

And I'm not being morbid or whatever.

I'm not trying to make it dramatic or anything.

But you and I both know there are times that you are so down in it.

You are so face down in the mud that all you feel is failure.

And if I hadn't have placed everything, every fiber of my being into my faith,

into trusting Jesus and putting the rubber on the road that I said I believed,

I don't know what the outcome would have been.

We cannot allow our stories of failure to define us.

Because God will see you through.

It may not be the story that you thought you were going to have or that you signed up for.

But God is good all the time.

So let me read Hebrews and then we'll go on to our next point.

Hebrews 11 says this, these were all commended by their faith,

yet none of them received what had been promised.

Since God had planned something better for us,

so that only together with us and with God they be made perfect.

Which leads us to our step four.

There is a difference between failing and not finding success.

And I want to real quickly just tell you my story because many of you know right before I became a pastor,

a little over a year ago, I was a middle school math teacher.

What many of you don't know is back in 1999 I graduated from Shepherd College

with my degree in health and physical education.

So while I was a math teacher now, I was a physical education teacher.

I got a job in 1999, I taught for two years and I failed at it.

I was too young, I didn't do all the things I needed to do, I didn't stay the course and I quit.

But I remember having this conversation with my students saying,

hey Mr. Rudy it's time for me to move on a different chapter, da da da.

And some of the kids would be like, ah, but Mr. Rudy do you feel like you failed?

Like no, no not at all.

And here's why.

All the schooling that I got, they can't take away that knowledge.

All the experience that I got from teaching you, they can't take that knowledge away.

So I'm good, right?

Now fast forward about 12 years later, Carrie's pregnant with Kingston.

I'm a restaurant manager and I know that when my son comes,

I do not want to be a restaurant manager driving an hour to work, working.

If you've ever been in a restaurant, it's a marathon.

I would have been away from my family more than half of the time, right?

So I needed to make this shift.

So I'm at a party, house party with a bunch of my friends, like I need to make a shift.

What should I do?

I have a degree, what should I do with my degree?

And somebody says, you should teach again.

Mind you what I said to my students, my initial thought process was, yeah right,

I failed at that already, not going to do that again.

But there's a difference between failing and not finding success.

What I did find was lots of experience, like I mentioned,

that made me a better math teacher than I was a physical education teacher.

I had plenty of times that I screwed up then that gave me the tools I needed

to be an effective math teacher.

Now was I always an effective math teacher? Probably not.

But if I didn't learn from all those failures from before,

I would have never been the math teacher that I was.

And that's what we want to do today, okay?

We want to shift, we want to shift your perspective, right?

Zephaniah says this, Zephaniah, it's a real book in the Bible.

Zephaniah 3, 17, the Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you.

In his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.

And what I think is a failure before, he turns into a success as a math teacher.

If I would have dwelled and not shifted my perspective,

and thank you to those friends that were at that house party with me

that really shake me and say no, you can do this again, right?

Chris mentioned this quote a couple weeks ago when he was preaching,

and I wrote it down. It's A.W. Tozer.

How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none.

That's a good one.

My failures become a limitation, but through God,

there are successes that become a stepping stone to the next great thing that he has in store for me.

Okay, think about a baseball player.

They hit the ball four out of ten times, they're batting 400.

That's good.

There's only two men who have ever hit 400 in a year, not career, a year.

So what we're saying is, if I only make four out of ten, man, I failed.

But if they have a 300 batting average, they succeeded that year.

So what we want to do with you today is we want to change your perspective.

We want you to adjust your lens.

See, nobody escapes failure and disappointment.

So we might as well plan on it and prepare for it with a view that we can profit from it,

which leads us to our first action step.

We need to move.

Matthew 28, it's the Great Commission.

It says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

teaching them to observe all thy commanded and behold, what does it say?

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Go.

He starts his sentence with go.

He doesn't start it with pray.

He doesn't start it with read your Bible.

He starts it with go.

Now, that's not saying we're not going to pray and we're not going to make a plan,

but this is what needs to happen.

If we're in stasis, if we're not moving, God cannot give us direction.

Right?

He might blindfold us and spin us in circles, but he can't.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest.

So I need to take the first step.

If he wants me to go west and my first step is east, who cares?

As long as I'm moving.

Because the first step might be that way, but if I'm truly engaged,

what's the second step?

Right?

Which leads us to our next one, our next action step.

Sometimes we need to reroute.

Going back to that GPS scenario, we need to reroute.

Sometimes there might be traffic.

Reroute.

Also, sometimes we may have to sit and try.

That's right.

Because recently we were going to a concert and it was going down to

Merriweather.

So of course, you're going 70, right?

That's the route.

You're going to hit 70 all the way and then take, you know,

you guys know how to get that down to Merriweather, I'm sure.

But you go down 70.

Well, the GPS is saying, hey, you need to get on 40.

You need to get on 40 towards Boonesboro.

And I'm like, what?

No, I'm not doing that.

And then guess what?

Traffic.

The GPS knew.

It's not like God.

Like God will tell us, hey, you need to go over here.

And we're like, no, I know the way.

And then all of a sudden, the proverbial traffic.

And, you know, I want to talk to you about how we can reroute.

There's three ways that we can reroute kind of our thinking.

So that, you know, I was talking about how failure can become our persona, right?

There's really three things that we can do.

I mean, there's a lot of things that we can do.

But three things that we want to do in the face of failure.

Number one is we need to acknowledge our feelings.

Don't push them down.

I know that sounds really crunchy granola, right?

Like, hey, man, you got to, you just got to be with your feelings, man.

But it's true.

Like, you have to be, you have to be with your feelings, right?

Like, you have to understand.

Like, I'm feeling depressed.

I'm feeling upset.

I'm feeling this way.

That's legitimate.

Like, we have feelings for a reason.

God gave us these emotions and things like that, right?

There's a reason why we feel those things.

So we have to be cognizant of that, all right?

The second thing is we need to accept that you don't need approval from others.

All right?

You don't need approval from others.

You just need it from God.

And God loves you unconditionally, so you got that covered, right?

So like Bill Murray said in Caddyshack, so I got that going for me.

And then the third thing is you got to allow Jesus to mend your wounds.

You got to allow that time for Jesus to heal you.

Take your time.

You don't have to jump into things right away.

When I was going through what I went up in Alaska, I had a lot of people praying for me,

praying with me, and therapy, you know?

You know, you have to take time for Jesus to work through those feelings.

It's very important.

Let's talk about time because in John 15, we are told to abide in Jesus.

If we stay in Jesus, we'll produce fruit, right?

Now, the opposite of abiding is giving up.

Giving up on Jesus, giving up on ourselves.

I want you to think about this.

If you were to plant a grapevine today or at the beginning of the season,

if you got to the end of this season, guess what?

You're not going to have fruit.

Why?

Because it takes two to three seasons of growing before you get fruit.

So if you're not staying in Jesus, if you're not abiding, if you're not allowing him to reroute,

if you're not doing step, action step number three, listening,

you can quickly give up on your garden and walk away from the grapes thinking you have sour grapes.

But if you stay the course, you listen, you allow him to reroute you,

you'll have grapes just in his time, not in your time.

Which leads that when you think about that, that word listen,

you think about Matt's scenario about the GPS.

What did the GPS say?

Re-route, buddy. But what did Matt do?

I got this.

He didn't listen, right?

Proverbs 1-5 says this, let the wise listen and add to the learning.

And let the discerning get guidance.

I was not wise.

There's a quote that I heard on a podcast a while back and it's from Joseph Campbell.

And Joseph Campbell is, or was, I can't remember if he's still living.

Anyway, he wrote this book called The Hero Has a Thousand Faces.

It's basically an anthropological study of our heroes and how a lot of these themes come up and up and up.

And he has this quote, it says, it is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

And what that meant to me when I heard it was, sometimes I'm afraid.

I'm like a small child. I'm afraid.

Remember when you were a kid and like thunderstorms would happen?

I don't know, if you were like me, you might be a little scared by the thunder and the lightning.

Sometimes life is like that.

There's thunder, there's lightning.

And you're scared, like you don't want to move.

You don't want to listen.

You don't want to do anything because you're scared.

You want to hide under the covers until it goes away.

And I feel like sometimes when we push into that, we listen to the Holy Spirit and we move and we go into those dark places that we're unfamiliar with.

We find treasure and we grow and we become further.

We become further and further into our journey.

And man, I'll tell you, when that happens to you a few times, your faith just goes up and up and up.

Because you learn to rely more and more on God because you've been through those battles together.

And you see that God's got to get you through it.

He is the best wingman.

He is the best shield carrying person.

I don't know.

It's like on The Office when Michael's like sometimes I talk and I hope it's going somewhere.

Hopefully you get there by the end of your sentence, which leads us to our last fourth and final point.

Don't be afraid to fail.

I used to tell my students all the time, I want you to fail.

You can fail 20 times and still get an 80% if you know how to do the math.

You can fail 30 times and still get a 70% as long as you keep going.

Right?

John 16, 33, I have told you these things so that you may have peace.

In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

Listen to this.

This point I wrote down last week at the conference.

They interviewed Rick Warren.

Super cool quote.

In God's garden of grace, even broken trees produce fruit.

And we are all broken.

And then the last thing I want to leave you with is Thomas Edison said this in creating the light bulb.

I have not failed.

I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work.

So the point here is keep going.

Keep moving forward.

Keep tapping into God.

Change your perspective so that you can look back and take every failure that you feel is a failure and allow God to use it as a stepping stone to the next big thing.

So first service, it felt prompted to, and I feel the same thing, because I feel like sometimes we are up on the stage and it feels like, hey, there is a separation.

At least I feel that way.

And I, we, we have to go through this life and it's not easy.

Make no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Each person in this room, in this world is fighting battles every single day.

It could be that you have kids that aren't listening to you.

It could be that you are going through divorce or trying to recover from that.

It could be that you are in a job that you just feel that you are ill-equipped for.

It could be that you woke up today and you said, Lord, I'm going to give you one more chance.

I'm going to give you one more opportunity to speak to me.

And today maybe that's, this is the Holy Spirit maybe talking to you, saying, hey, I love you.

You are special to me.

You have a place in this world.

No matter how hard things get, I will lift you up.

And no one should leave this room not feeling that they are valued.

You are so loved.

And this world would not be what it is without you.

It would not be as bright a place.

And I guarantee you no matter what darkness you may be going through today,

or you went through yesterday or you are going to go through tomorrow, no matter what darkness you go through,

the Lord will shine his light on you.

We are taught, knock and I will answer.

Maybe got that backwards.

Anyway, we are in the moment.

We are in the moment.

The idea is if you ask the Lord to come, he will come.

But you have to relinquish control.

You have to allow yourself to open this and open this, your mind.

Throw away all that whatever you want to call it of I got this.

No, you don't.

But the Lord does.

And that is even better.

Would you stand with me?

And I know we are really running over on time, but I don't want to let this moment go.

If there is something in today's message, if you feel, yes, God, I need to give up control, I need to give it back to you.

If you have never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, I want you to raise your hand right now.

We are about to say a sinner's prayer, salvation prayer together as a family to invite Jesus into our hearts.

So as a family, we all say this together.

Jesus, I'm broken.

I need to give up control.

I need to give it to you.

Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God.

Jesus, I believe that you died for my sins.

Come into my heart.

Make me new.

Give me new life.

Give me new direction.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Now in a moment the worship team is going to play.

We are going to have the prayer team come up here to your left.

If you need prayer because there is something in your life that you are hanging on to that you feel is a failure.

If you are living in a spirit of failure, I want you to come up and get prayer.

Also, if you are a parent that has a kid back there, don't stay in worship.

Go get them now because I'm going to get my butt kicked.

Otherwise, thank you guys for an awesome time.

I hope you truly felt blessed by this speech, by this message.

Enjoy your week.

Take it away, worship team.

Amen.