A Better Plan - August 23, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast. I have made the

Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Not long ago, I was looking through some pictures through my computer,

were trying to find another photograph.

And while doing that, I came across several pictures. This one picture in particular,

was a picture of my great-grandparents, the Reverend Russell and Vida Green.

They were holding my grandmother, my Grandma Curry, my dad's.

And in this picture, they're standing in the snow in Anderson, Indiana.

And so I thought about sending this to Emma to say, look, they do get snow in

Indiana, so be ready to drive in it. You're not escaping driving in snow just by going back there.

You know, this couple answered God's call. They were married,

and then they went out across the country to the Church of God,

Anderson's College at that time, not yet a university, and they studied.

And my granddad, he studied for

the ministry. He was a preacher and an evangelist in the Church of God.

He had this calling. One of his first churches was in South Bend, Oregon.

And I have another picture I could not find, but it was a picture of him standing

out in the field next to an old Model A with another lady that was leading singing from a hymn book.

And they're out in this field, and they were getting ready to have a.

That was my grandfather and my grandmother, great-grandmother,

always seeking the Lord's will.

The next picture in the middle there is of my grandmother. She's holding a Bible

next to my aunt, and they're there. They're getting ready to go to church.

And this is in front of the first house Melanie and I ever bought.

Only about $52,000 it was at the time.

What a deal, but not at the time. It was a lot. We had hoped this would have

been in our family continuing, but this was where my grandparents lived when

they planted a church in Hanford, California, where three of my four children were born.

And it was in this house that they used as the parsonage.

Later on, you can see Grandma and Grandpa Green there, my great-grandparents

in front of that same house.

And I was looking hard because we have several pictures of our kids standing

on the stairs, getting ready for school, getting ready for several things.

And, you know, it's not the house or it's not, you know, these great stories

I get to tell you, but I want to center in on what the most important thing

that I learned from my great grandparents was, and that was,

how to live as a Christian person.

How to model my life after Jesus Christ.

You see, we lived in Boise, Idaho, so we got to go out there when I was a kid now and again.

But it wasn't until I went to Bible college that I really got to interact with

my granddad. And he was in a memory care. They didn't call it that then.

He had developed Alzheimer's and my grandmother had passed away sometime before that.

And it was the opportunity I had to really kind of pick what was left of his

memory as far as what it meant to be an evangelist, what it meant to be a preacher,

what it meant to follow Jesus.

But their whole lives, my grandpa and grandma, they followed Jesus through thick and thin.

I looked at one time at what they made as evangelists and pastors,

and it wasn't very much at all.

They truly lived by faith. They truly trusted Jesus for everything.

Their legacy lives on today in the faith that they passed on,

not as something tangible, but as something modeled for us to see.

And as they lived in faith, I've got to tell you, it's very important because

they believed in me as well as all the rest of the grandkids,

that they could also follow Jesus.

I don't know if my granddad really understood. He never got to see me be ordained as a pastor.

He didn't live long enough. They didn't live long enough to see my children

come to faith in Christ and be baptized.

But yet, their obedience, even before they knew how any of their grandkids,

their kids would even turn out.

They modeled obedience to God in every aspect of their life.

And their obedience, I want to tell you, it still matters beyond their lifetime today.

You know, we live in a culture that is all about what's right now and what's

right in front of me. That's the most important thing.

What do I want? What is most important for me? What works for me?

What makes my life better right now? It's all about here and it's all about now.

But as we read through Hebrews 11 last week, and we'll read some this week,

reminds us that our faith is never our own. It's never personal.

Now, don't misunderstand me.

Your faith matters to you, and your faith should be personal to you,

but it goes beyond your person.

It also matters to the people that are coming behind you, the people that are

with you now, your faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, the people named in Hebrews chapter 11, as we read last week,

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

And as we will read this week, important people, valuable people to the Scriptures.

The fact is they didn't live long enough to see, to get to receive what their faith was all about.

But they believed yet that it was still going to happen, that the promises made

were still going to come true.

As we read in the Scripture today, in just a minute I'll ask you to stand.

But we see right off in verse 17, we see Abraham. We see Isaac later on.

We see Jacob, we see Joseph, we see Moses' parents, we see Moses mentioned,

we see what Moses did by faith, we see what the Israelites did.

I mean, it just covers a great historical narrative in just a few short verses

of how God was faithful and how God's people were faithful in response to that.

We see how the walls of Jericho fell.

We see all of these things, even that there was this lady named Rahab who was

a prostitute, a woman of the night, and how God saved her and how her lineage

became part of Jesus' lineage.

We see amazing stories of faith, and by faith, what happened.

And that leads us up to verse 32, where we're going to start reading this morning

and close out the chapter to verse 40.

Let's continue. Would you stand if you're willing and able?

And let's see what else the Word says here.

In verse 32, the Scripture continues, Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell you about Gideon,

about Barak, about Samson and Jephthah, and about David and Samuel and the prophets,

who through faith conquered kingdoms,

administered justice, and gained what was promised,

who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames,

and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength,

and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.

Women who received back their dead, raised to life again.

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might

gain an even better resurrection.

Some faced jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment.

They were put to death by stoning. They were sawed into. They were killed by the sword.

They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated.

The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains,

living in caves and holes in the ground.

Days were all commended for 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 would they be made perfect.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word today and every day.

God, thank you for the example that we have here today.

Of how you have worked in the lives of human beings, people just like us.

Lord, how you've worked through the faith that we have had and expressed in

you. Lord, how you will continue to work.

Lord, how you have joined us

with your people. Lord, how you have made believers, have grafted us in.

And Father, we praise you today and we thank you, Lord, for what you're going

to do and how you're going to speak to us through your word today.

It is in Jesus' name that we pray all of this. Amen.

This morning, I want to just cover three important facts from our text today

about God's better plan,

a better plan for salvation, a better plan for you, this great plan that includes

our legacy, this great plan that includes the choices that we make,

this great plan that includes a bigger story that we are all part of.

And so this morning, let's dive in.

First of all, we see in our scripture passage, starting in verse 17,

that our faith receives a legacy.

And as I get older, I'm starting to think, what am I going to leave for my kids?

I already know what my inheritance is going to be, and that's a big, fat zero.

I'm okay with that. I'm not all about stuff and that.

I mean, stuff is fine, but And, you know, I start to think, what can I leave

my kids, you know, other than, you know, a broken down Ford in my driveway with

flat tires, our GMC truck that didn't want to start this morning. I had to jumpstart it.

I mean, other than a bunch of baseball cards that no one seems to really want

because they're probably not worth much.

What am I going to leave? And then as I was thinking about that and meditating

upon the scripture today, I'm.

I thought about the legacy of faith that I get to pass on. It doesn't really

translate maybe to dollars.

Well, I think in a sense it does because you don't waste a lot of money on stupid

stuff. You don't need stuff that will ruin your life instead of building your life up.

But as I thought about this and this legacy, this idea, I got to thinking about

those photographs I found. And, you know, we really stand on the shoulders of

those who came before us.

Kind of like maybe when you were a kid and you wanted to see the parade that

was going by and you guys weren't at the front and you asked if you'd get on

your dad's shoulder so you could see everything around.

So you could really get the view and your dad hoisted you up and put you on

his shoulder so you could see the whole world, the whole parade and what was happening.

You know, it's times like that. It reminds us that we do stand on the shoulders

of everyone who's gone before us.

I'm very aware of that as I stand in the pulpit this morning.

I'm very humbled and privileged to be here in the church that Pastor Chuck Ryan

pastored, a good friend of mine, a man that I love dearly.

And before him, there were other pastors on a little church building in that

little corner in Holmdale, just across the river, who faithfully served God.

Though maybe short terms, they continued to answer his call to stand faithful

in the pulpit and to preach.

Each and every one of us, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before.

Our scripture tells us that ultimately all believers stand on the shoulders of the patriarchs.

We're talking Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.

Each one of those men all looked ahead beyond themselves, beyond the here and beyond the now.

They trusted God's promises even though they weren't going to see the fulfillment of them.

They held out hope, not just for themselves, but for their kin,

their next of kin and down and so on through the generations.

I mean, when we look through this scripture, Abraham offered Isaac because he

trusted that God would keep his promises even through death,

even if he had sacrificed Isaac,

that God would somehow raise Isaac from the grave because that was the man through

which God's promise would be fulfilled, Isaac.

We see also Isaac and Jacob, then blessing future generations by faith. Our text covers that.

We see then the story turns to Joseph as we go through the history of the Israelites here.

Joseph gave instructions about his bones, what they were to do with his bones

after he died, because he believed that God would bring his people home. Now think about this.

Joseph was like the prime minister of Egypt. He was in charge of the day-to-day affairs.

And yet he wasn't just worried about that, but he considered what would happen with.

His bones when he died. He wanted

them to be taken to the land that was promised, not to remain in Egypt.

He had the foresight of this, not to have a pyramid, so to speak,

made for him in Egypt that we could discover later, but that his bones would

be carried, carried to the promised lands.

They did not see everything that God promised, yet they lived as though God,

was going to do everything he said he would do, and God did.

You know, something that occurs to me and maybe to you as well,

that we need to honor the faith of those that came before us,

those that have passed down this legacy of faith to us by practicing it, by living it out.

You did not start the story of faith in Jesus Christ.

It did not originate with you. I want to tell you, because the faith that you have now in Jesus.

Perhaps you have had that for several years, decades even, or perhaps you're new to faith in Christ.

But I've got to tell you that someone was praying for you, not just was someone praying for you.

Someone maybe taught you about what it meant to follow Jesus.

Someone prayed for you, they taught you, maybe someone served you.

They sacrificed for you so that you could know Jesus in his fullness,

so that you could know what a life with Jesus Christ was all about.

Maybe someone even showed you, like my grandparents, even from afar off,

what it was like to follow Jesus Christ and how my grandmother...

Modeled that for my dad and how my dad modeled faith for me.

Maybe that was your story as well, this legacy of faith that was passed down

to you, and then you're practicing it now.

It could have been a grandparent. It could have been an aunt and uncle.

Maybe it was that Sunday school teacher that kept bugging you to come to church.

Maybe it was your youth pastor who would not let you stay sleeping through church or youth group.

I mean, you think about it, maybe it was a friend or just another person in your neighborhood.

Maybe it was that little church on a corner that fought so hard to keep the doors open,

so that down through the years, others might come to know Jesus and maybe even

a new bigger building be built so that it could house everyone that wanted to

come and worship on a Sunday morning.

You see, we stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before,

and we honor their faith passed down by living it out, by practicing it.

And so my encouragement to you today is do not treat the spiritual investment

of others in your life as something just to consume, just to eat up,

but rather receive it as something that you're going to carry forward and pass

on to the next generation,

of your kids, of your grandkids, of your neighbors, of those that are inside

your circle of influence that do not know who Jesus Christ is.

It's an investment made in you so that you could turn over that investment.

Now, the Lord's been good to me, so I've got a little bit saved up as I look

forward to what legacy I will leave the children.

And I've got some ideas there, not just financially, but the greatest legacy

that I could give them is a legacy of faith, of their personal relationship

with Jesus and how to live that out.

And when we think about this, you might ask yourself this question too.

Who helped make your faith possible?

Who led you to Jesus Christ?

Who gave you those building blocks of faith so that you could truly full-on

believe in Jesus and take your life to the next level with Him?

We stand on their faithfulness, folks.

We stand on their faithfulness. They may never have fully known how we're going

to turn out or how we are today.

I mean, someday, I trust the Lord that I might have grandchildren,

and I hope that they will come to know Jesus and great-grandchildren and so

on until Christ returns.

And I hope that's the legacy that they have. How do we honor them?

Those that have gone before us, well, we honor them today by living faithfully

according to the promises that are available in God.

Secondly, the second fact this morning is not only that our faith receives a

legacy and we're supposed to do something with that, but our faith,

we see here, chooses what matters the most.

As we look through the Scripture, starting in verse 23 again.

We see a very, very important story for us to wrap our mind around.

It says, every generation must choose faith over comfort for the sake of the next generation.

An example that we see in the Scripture in verse 23, Moses' parents,

they saw something in their child worth protecting.

They went all out to protect their baby.

They saw that God was going to do something special in him, and they wanted to see that happen.

And so they took a risk because they feared God more than Pharaoh.

And as we look in the Old Testament, we think about this story of Moses,

how he was hidden in a basket and sent down the Nile River because the Pharaoh

decreed an edict that all these children should be killed.

That were of this certain age.

And Moses' parents knew that the child was to be killed by the government.

Decree But the midwives, the Hebrew midwives, were in it They did all they could

to thwart the efforts of the Egyptian Pharaoh And Moses survived,

we know And not only did Moses survive,

We know that Moses' basket was guided or floated down the Nile,

To the daughter of Pharaoh and she saw this Hebrew baby and she took him in as her own.

You want to read more about that, look back to the Old Testament,

to our first book back there in Genesis.

It's a tremendous story. You can look in Exodus, see the rest of the story.

And if you do that, you'll find out that Moses later had to make a choice.

He could keep living in the comfort and the privilege and the security of Egypt,

from a young age until he was older.

He could have had that comfort, had that pride and prestige of being part of the royal family.

Having been protected by God, or the choice he could make was to identify with

God's people who were suffering at the hands of those that welcomed him in and made him comfortable.

Ultimately, we know, spoiler alert, that Moses chose God's people over Pharaoh's house.

He chose reproach over status. He chose what was eternal over what was immediately

comfortable and safe for himself.

You know, every generation, we today face that same question.

Will we choose comfort or will we choose faithfulness to God?

This is hard for us to hear as 21st century Americans. Man, you know how many

complaints I get when this air conditioner goes out?

When the heater doesn't work?

Boy, we prize comfort. Don't get me wrong. I want you to be comfortable.

But I also want you to be cognizant, be aware that we have brothers and sisters

at certain parts of the world that are meeting under a big tree just to have

shade, praying for a breeze to blow through.

There are men and women, boys and girls, teenagers that are meeting in secret,

because if they were caught, there would be punishment involved.

So sometimes it's hard for us to hear these words. Are we going to be comfortable

or are we going to be faithful? Sometimes you can be both. Don't get me wrong.

Those are great times and we celebrate that.

But sometimes we have to choose. The choices we make today, and this is why,

they're going to shape the generations to come.

We're going to shape the spiritual environment of our kids, of our grandkids,

of those we have influence on.

Our neighbors, new believers that will inherit the kingdom of God.

We have an influence on them. What does faithfulness look like?

Well, it might look like this. Faithfulness might mean that you prioritize worship

when life gets really busy.

And folks, you are very busy.

I'm very grateful when I get to see you gather together and worship.

It does this pastor's heart good to know that you've prioritized the first day

of the week, the first time that we gather together, to meet together,

to worship God, to fellowship, to hear from the Word and later to respond to it.

Sometimes it's not always comfortable, not just when the heater goes out,

not just when the air conditioning's not working.

Sometimes there's a word spoken that really challenges you.

When you hear this verse read, prioritizing worship when life is busy, it's faithfulness.

Serving when it'd be easier just to sit back and let somebody else do it.

That's another way that you can be faithful, is by going out and serving when no one else will serve.

Folks, when you go out into our community, I hope you have eyes to see what

the Lord sees, to see those needs that aren't being met, that to see people

that are just kind of being shoved to the side and,

that really needs someone to come in and to love them and to be with them.

Looking for those needs that can be met through the gifts and the graces God

has given you and through the gifts and graces that God has given our congregation as well.

Faithfulness looks like worship. It looks like serving. Faithfulness also looks

like giving generously, even when your finances are tight.

Not long ago, a gift was given by our family, and I just said, Who gave that?

Because it was one of those times in the middle of paychecks,

right? When it seems like the money is thin.

Boy, did I get convicted about that. Because I've always said,

and I've always learned, and I've always heard that you can't go wrong in giving.

God always knows what you give, and God always sees what you give,

and God always blesses what you give.

So we are faithful in our worship and our serving and our giving,

but also in passing on our faith at home.

Not assuming the church is going to do it for you, but really it's ultimately

the parent's job to pass on the faith, to model the faith at dinnertime,

at bedtime, in the midst of just living life.

That's what faithfulness looks like. Faithfulness looks like choosing to be

holy and to follow a way that isn't sin when compromise would be easier.

Choosing to do what God wants you to do rather than just giving in and going

with the flow, even though it might mean you have to take a hit on your reputation,

even though it means you might have to miss out on something that everyone else is doing,

but choosing not to compromise even when it's easy and no one will know about it.

Still choose to follow God.

It also means, faithfulness means investing in our children,

investing in our teenagers and new believers who may not yet realize what God

can do in them and through them.

Folks, that's what faithfulness is all about. That's what we need to choose,

to choose to follow God in this.

John Wesley once said this, what one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.

What are we tolerating? What are our kids, our grandkids, those disciples of

ours that we're teaching to follow Jesus?

What are they seeing us tolerate?

Because they're going to be tempted to embrace that full on.

They're going to be tempted, if it's something holy and something righteous, to embrace that.

Oh, I remember when grandpa used to talk about going on this short-term mission

trip and how he went and how he was blessed and how he blessed the people there.

And he went year after year.

That's something I want to do. Grandpa did that. It built his faith.

And so that's something I want to be a part of. Well, I remember grandma.

She would always give us quarters when we were sitting by her in Sunday church.

And she would always be generous. And she never needed anything.

She had everything she needed. She lived modestly, but yet she didn't have riches.

Her car seemed like it never broke down. It seemed like the tires never ran

out. She always had quarters to give us on Sunday.

When she passed away, they discover that grandma left a great sum of money to

her local church because she believed in the mission and she wanted to pay that forward.

That's what her kids and grandkids will embrace, that generosity.

But the other side is true.

If we turn a blind eye to sin and we just tolerate sin, And we're teaching our

kids, our grandkids, those disciples that we're leading and teaching how to become Christians.

They'll embrace that because we didn't think it was a big idea.

Oh, that's no big deal. I mean, look at how it's played out.

I'm going to sound like an old codger now, so please forgive me.

Hey, I'm a year older, right? So I almost qualify if I don't already. Okay.

Look at, let me personalize this.

When I see what's happened with Wednesday nights and Sunday nights,

in the whole scope of the church, going back to when I was a kid,

Sunday nights were sacred. We still had Sunday night church. We met together.

That was a great time. That's where I learned how to start preaching,

was on a Sunday night. Man, they weren't going to give me no Sunday morning to preach.

I was just starting out. I was just learning how to do all this and what God wanted me to do.

That's where I could stand up with my brother and my sisters and sing a special on Sunday night.

Because they didn't care how bad I was cackling when I sang.

And my sisters carried me and my brother in a song.

And then Wednesday night, when I was in high school, middle,

junior high and grade school, there wasn't any school kind of thing scheduled.

No sports activities, no concerts on a Wednesday night.

Why? Because they knew people went to youth group on a Wednesday night.

People had Bible studies on Wednesday night. And so that was a sacred time.

Well, look what's happened over the 30 or 40 years.

We're lucky if we do anything on Sunday night. Some churches still do.

We've kind of gotten comfortable with Sunday nights. Well, it's a time to relax.

It's a time to hang out with friends and family, to get ready for work to get ready for school.

Wednesday nights, man, there's all kinds of activities that compete with Bible

studies and youth group activities.

And so we kind of, as the church as a whole, we kind of tolerated Sunday nights disappearing.

We kind of tolerated Wednesday nights going away and giving to other priorities.

And now these next generations that we have right now, boy, they're busy every

single night of the week.

And church people, you're busy every single night of the week.

It's just how it is, right? But it's important for us to take to heart what John Wesley said.

Be careful what we're tolerating, because the next generation is going to embrace that full on.

There's a whole political angle to that I won't get into today.

But you can see that played out in politics and the culture of our nation,

the culture of the world.

And so I just want to close this section. I know I went a little long, but,

just with this point, that the faith choices you make today become the freedom

someone else walks in tomorrow, or I would add to that, or they might become

the bondage that the next generation is yoked with.

So we've got to be careful on this. I would rather the next generation have

freedom rather than bondage, don't you?

Yeah. So third this morning, the third fact is that our faith belongs to a bigger story.

God's plan, God's better plan, is that all his people are completed together in Jesus Christ.

The scripture says in verse 39, these were all commended through 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

would they be made perfect, would they be made whole, would they be made complete.

That's beautiful. The saints of Hebrews in chapter 11 were not forgotten.

Their faith was not wasted. Their story finds its completion in Jesus Christ.

It's not like the Old Testament doesn't have anything to do with the New.

I beg to differ on that point. It has everything to do with the New Testament.

The faith of our patriarchs, the,

prophets, the faith of the believers, all of this plays into and leading up

to their completion in Jesus Christ.

Did you remember ever hearing, either in syndication or live,

Paul Harvey on the radio?

And what was the name of his program? Do you remember the rest of the story?

And you can just hear his unique voice, even as you say it, an incredible piece of American history.

When we think about how he would tell a story and put everything together and

it culminated right at the end of what he was saying in a final minute sometimes

a final seconds of what he was saying I think about the scripture in that way,

how we say that we live in the end times because Jesus has arisen and he will come again,

and we know that we are waiting him to return and for all everything to happen

to come to that conclusion to hear the rest of the story And as we think about

that, we know that God's redemptive plan has always included,

one family united in faith.

All of us together who have faith in God, faith in Jesus Christ.

God's plan, his redemptive plan is that we're one. Now I know that some of you

are thinking, well, man, when I came to church this morning,

I passed the Assembly of God church, I passed the Baptist church,

I passed maybe a Presbyterian church.

I mean, you think of all these different churches that are out there,

some you would never darken the door of because you're either not that reserved or not that crazy.

I mean, it goes both ways, and we're considered that for some people.

Don't get too proud this morning.

But even with all the different denominations, there's one people of God,

and we are a part of that family, and that's God's plan.

God knows that the church of the Nazarene is not going to reach everybody.

We want to, but there's some personality types we're never going to reach.

There's some personality types. There's some people that, man.

The Lutheran church is just ministering to them full on. They're growing in

Christ, and their life is vibrant with Him.

There's some in some charismatic churches in the Assembly of God church.

They're just on fire for God, and they're reaching people that we couldn't reach.

There's people that we are reaching out to that none of those other churches

I mentioned would be able to reach out to.

And so it takes all of us together. And guess what? We're still standing on

the shoulders of the patriarchs, the prophets, the Israelites,

all of those who came before us.

When we think about the whole of Christianity, God's redemptive plan includes all of us.

Includes all of us who are preaching Jesus, who are learning Jesus,

who are staying true to the Scripture.

Hebrews is not saying that we save the heroes of faith. That's not what it's

saying. Or that we add something to Christ's work. That's not what I'm saying either.

What I'm saying is that Christ alone completes and perfects God's people.

It's only what Jesus did that's going to bring everything to its culmination.

As a believer in Jesus, you today are part of a story that is older than your life.

You today, and God's great plan, you're part of that story that is bigger than this congregation.

You today are part of a story that is broader than just one generation.

You're part of a story that is centered on Jesus. You are part of a story that

is moving ahead, moving forward toward God's final restoration and the culmination of all things.

In fact, your life is a chapter in the one story that God has been writing for

generations and will continue to write.

And Christ is the one that is going to bring the whole story together right

at the end, right at the exact time.

Be blessed. You are a living letter. You're a living epistle,

as the New Testament says.

We wrap this up this morning, I want to encourage you to leave something behind.

Now, don't leave your Bible behind or your glasses.

Don't leave your purse behind or something you need. Don't leave your trash behind.

We have receptacles for that.

But you remember the photo of my grandparents, of my granddad,

great-granddad and grandmom holding my grandma curry before she even thought

that she was ever going to be married.

She was so young back in the 20s, the 1920s not the 2020s.

They could not see the impact of their faithfulness, and they did not live to see that.

I believe someday they will, but they didn't need to see what was going to happen

in order to obey at the very moment that God asked them to do stuff.

When God asked them to leave Indiana and come all the way across to Oregon,

they followed God's call. When God called them to leave Oregon and go down to

Oildale, California near Bakersfield, part of Bakersfield, they went.

When God called them to leave there and go to Hanford, California,

or to go to Oakland, California, and plant a church to go to Hanford,

California, and plant a church, they did.

Whenever God called, they obeyed.

That's the legacy of faith that's passed down to the Curry family,

that obedience to follow God.

One day, someone's going to look back at your life, and what are they going

to see? They may not remember every time you went to church.

They may not remember every sermon that you told them about.

Every meeting that you attended, every Sunday school class you went to or taught,

or every task that you completed for the Lord.

But what they will see, I hope, is that they will see and remember that you trusted Jesus,

that you served faithfully, that you prayed and praised persistently,

that you loved deeply, and that you made room for them to come along in the

journey to follow Christ.

This week, I've got an action point for you, and it's this. This week,

I want you to write a little note or send a message to someone who has influenced your faith.

Perhaps it was that family member, perhaps a Sunday school teacher,

perhaps a neighbor, whoever it was.

Express your gratitude for the impact that they've had on your faith today.

It's just a little note. It doesn't even have to be long Someone that had an

impact on your spiritual journey Mike, why are you making me do this again?

Why do you want me to do this again?

These are crazy things you come up with. Well, it's school time.

You've got homework, folks. No, that's not the only reason.

Here's why it really matters. When you take a moment to appreciate those who

have influenced your life, especially your spiritual life and your growth in

Christ, your spiritual journey in following Jesus, it doesn't only strengthen your faith,

but it creates a legacy of gratitude as part of your faith journey that you're passing on to others.

It inspires those around you, your kids, your grandkids, your friends, your neighbors.

It's inspiring to them to know that they had a part in someone else's life,

that they can have a part in helping someone else get to Jesus.

And so this morning, God's better plan is not that we live for ourselves.

But that together in Christ, we become part of a faith story that will outlive us all.

Can we do that this week? Let's pray. Father, thank you for the opportunity

we have to gather together today.

Lord, we're here because someone else left a legacy of faith for us to follow.

It originated in the scripture. Lord, it continues in the scripture and that

impact upon our life that we feel today.

And Lord, that we are living out today and following Jesus.

God, help us this week. Bring to mind that one person, maybe it's more than

one person, that we can send a text message to an email, maybe write little

notes and send it to them.

Lord, that expresses our gratitude and our appreciation for the part that they've

played in our faith journey.

And so, Lord, this morning, as we get ready to conclude with this final song,

with the prayer and then going out and on to lunch, I just pray,

God, that you'll be glorified, that we'll remember these heroes of faith in Hebrews chapter 11,

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

because ultimately, we are somebody's hero in faith to someone else that doesn't

know Jesus, whether we've met them yet or not.

And so, Lord, may we live up to the calling that you have given us today.

It is in Jesus' name that we pray and that we thank you. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website.

Www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.