“Your Next ‘Yes’” by Pastor Hope Adams

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Amen.

Didn't you enjoy last week when we had our young communicators sharing across all of our campuses at Gateway Church?

It's such a treat.

We get to do some of those things during the summer.

And today is a big treat.

And I wanted to personally introduce you to who you already know.

But at Gateway, one of the things that we value so greatly is worship.

And you know, you know that if you are part of Gateway, you know that worship is just a big thing around here.

And the person that oversees that has such a gifting and an anointing on her life.

And so at all of our campuses, you've probably had Hope Adams leading you in worship at some point.

She's led here.

But her and her husband, John.

John is the pastor at our Plano campus, but there's such a gift to Gateway Church.

And we are absolutely blessed to have Hope Adams on staff.

And so she is bringing the word today.

Now let me say this.

She typically is leading worship.

So not usually what you see her up here behind this little platform here, but she's bringing the word today.

So I want you to stand and give her a great big gateway welcome.

Thank you, Hope, for sharing with us today.

We love you.

We're grateful for you.

Hello, hello, gateway family.

How are we doing today?

It's a great day to be in the house of God.

Want to welcome all of you who are in the room across all of our campuses.

Those of you who are watching online, hey, you chose a great day to be in the house of God.

I'm so honored to be bringing the word of God to you today.

But before I do, I want to take a moment and just honor a few people.

Um, first and foremost, I do want to honor Pastor Mark.

Give it up.

Aren't you grateful for Pastor Mark Harris?

So when my husband, John and I first came to Gateway over 11 years ago, we weren't on staff.

We just came here because we know the Lord called us here to plant our family so that we could flourish.

And when we came here, he and his wife Jodi were actually some of the first leaders that reached out to us and pulled us in, helped us find community.

It was in a very pivotal season of our lives.

And so I'm so grateful, Pastor Mark and Jodi, for your leadership and your care.

Um, I also want to take a moment to honor Pastor Daniel and Pastor Tammy for this opportunity.

We are very blessed to have Pastor Daniel and Pastor Tammy.

They have, if you don't know, they've been on break uh this past summer, just taking some time with their family.

But Pastor Daniel will be back next Sunday to kick off our new series, TikTok Theology.

So make sure that you make plans to join us.

Uh, my husband, as um Pastor uh Mark had mentioned, my husband is here with me today, who's usually at Plano, but he's here with us.

Shout out to all of our loved ones at the Plano campus.

And my two teenagers are here with me today.

My son Jackson, who is 17, my daughter Emmy, who is 15.

You know what?

Yeah, show them some love.

You know what?

They grew up in this house, and their lives have been impacted by the kids' ministry, by the youth ministry.

If you are a parent and you have your kids in this house, let me tell you, this is the best place to be.

Are you not grateful for our next gen ministries here at Gateway?

We are so very blessed.

And in fact, we have a very special event that we are just days away from YouthCon.

And yes, all the students in the house across all our campuses.

I know they're very excited about it.

And can I just take a moment, just from one parent to another, and just tell you if you do not have your students signed up, do not delay.

Do it today.

Register them today.

My teenagers have been going to YouthCon for several years now, and every single year their lives are marked in a very significant way.

So again, register your students.

If you need more information on that, you can text youth to 71010, but it's going to be such an impactful time.

Make sure that you register them today.

Well, we are gonna have a great time together in the Word of God.

And before we go any further, I would love for us to pray together.

All right, let's bow our heads and pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you so much.

We are so grateful for your presence.

Lord, thank you for already meeting us here in such a beautiful way.

Holy Spirit, I ask that you lead and guide my words, and I pray that every person under the sound of my voice, their heart would be open to receive your word personally today.

Let their ears be open, let their eyes be receptive to receive your word today.

And it's in your wonderful name we all pray in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, I have a question for you today.

Have you ever thought about the fact that on a daily basis we say yes to probably hundreds of things?

Think about it.

We say yes to filling our calendar, we say yes to picking up our phone several times throughout the day.

Maybe some of us said yes to hitting that snooze button this morning before we got here.

All of us said yes to showing up to church today.

Well done.

That's right, give yourself a pat on the back.

And sometimes we have to say yes for other people in our lives, right?

Like our kids, when they say, no, I don't want to go to school, or no, I don't want to go to church, and we say the answer is yes, yes, you are, you're going.

And sometimes we find ourselves saying yes to things we never intended to, like stress, worry, anxiety, fear, distraction.

And not every yes we give seems significant, but many yeses in our lives will shape who we become and become defining moments.

I know in my own life over the last few months, as I've been in my quiet time with the Lord and just in prayer with him, I have felt a new invitation for him, from him, to bring him a fresh yes.

Yes to whatever he may ask of me, yes for wherever he wants to lead me.

And can I tell you today, I believe that invitation is for you too.

That the Lord brought you to this place today because he wants to invite you into something new.

He wants to invite you to bring him a fresh yes.

But here's the thing: we may never know the impact our next yes will have on our lives or in the lives of others.

Have you ever thought about that before?

Your next yes could change not only the trajectory of your life, but someone else's.

And so my title for my message today is Your Next Yes.

Your next yes.

Now, if you're a note taker, I want to encourage you to write that down.

Take notes.

And if you're not a note taker, what does Pastor Daniel always say?

Write it down anyway.

That's right, that's right, church.

You know, as followers of Christ, I believe we all desire to say yes to God.

I don't think any of us wake up in the morning and think to ourselves, man, I cannot wait to tell God no today.

Of course not.

That would be silly.

But often what stands between us and our next yes are the things that we wrestle with on the inside.

And many times the thing that we can wrestle with is fear.

It's fear.

Now I have some good news for you today because what we find in the Word of God is God not only using ordinary people, ordinary men and women to do extraordinary things, but we also see their messy middle.

We see the moments when they've wrestled with their humanity, they've wrestled with their insecurities, and they've wrestled with their fears.

And one person in particular that I want to highlight today is the life of Moses.

Now, for most of us, whether you grew up in church or not, probably the most iconic things that you remember about the life of Moses are the moments that God called Moses to go and set his children free from the oppression of Egypt and Pharaoh, or the parting of the Red Sea when that took place.

Some of us may remember or recall when God sent Moses up to Mount Sinai and he came down, his face glowing with the glory of God, with the Ten Commandments in his hand that God spoke to him and etched in stone himself.

Moses was a man of God.

He was holy, he was righteous.

And all of those things are true.

But did you know Moses did not start there?

In fact, Moses' first response to God was not yes.

I would love for us to look at this together.

If you'll open up your Bibles with me, we're gonna go to a few places together.

And it starts in Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

As I previously said, we know that God comes to Moses.

Moses is out, he is tending his father-in-law's sheep, and God comes to him and speaks to him in a burning bush, and he says, Moses, I've called you, I've set you apart to set my people free from Egypt.

And here is Moses' response.

In Exodus 3.11, but Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?

And then if we go to Exodus 4.1, Moses answered, What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, The Lord did not appear to you?

Exodus 4.10, Moses said to the Lord, Pardon your servant, Lord, I have never been eloquent.

Neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant, I am slow of speech and of tongue.

And finally, in Exodus 4.13, Moses said, Pardon your servant, Lord, please send someone else.

Now, in our vernacular today, it might have sounded something like this God, you got the wrong person.

Please someone else.

Please send someone else.

But did you notice something?

Every excuse that Moses gave God, who am I?

What if they don't believe me?

I'm slow of speech and tongue.

Please send someone else.

Underneath every excuse is fear.

Now, I don't know about you, but I actually read these passages of scripture and I'm encouraged because I have moments of wrestling with fear.

I have moments of hesitating and wanting to tell God yes because of the fear that holds me back.

There's a couple of things today that you need to know about me.

Number one, I was deathly afraid growing up of a few things, okay?

I was afraid of spiders, snakes, and rats.

Now you might think rats, wow, okay.

But here's the thing, y'all.

I grew up in the country, okay?

So that's a bad combination of being really scared of snake, spiders, and rats and growing up in the country.

But here's the thing: our house was set right in the middle, smack dab in the middle, of hundreds of acres of fields of crops, and we had what were called field rats.

Now, if you're not from the country, you, I'm sorry, you do not know what a field rat is, okay?

I'm not talking about those little mice that you find in the garage and they're scurrying around here.

No.

Field rats were so huge, so huge they could carry away a baby, okay?

They were so huge.

I was so scared.

Now, here's a couple of things, though, you need to know about my husband.

He grew up with two brothers, and if you have a house full of boys, you know this to be true.

Boys like to prank each other, they like to scare each other because why?

Scaring people is what?

It's funny, right?

No, it's not.

It's not funny.

But little boys think that it is, and some guys do too, and my husband is one of those.

So one day we were newlyweds, and he was cleaning out the dryer and was cleaning out the lint tray and started to collect the lint and noticed something very interesting.

The lint was gray, it was very large, and all of a sudden he had a brilliant idea.

You know what?

I'm gonna scare Hope with this, and it's gonna be really funny, and she's gonna think it's really funny.

So, what did he do?

He took that lint, he put it in the kitchen cabinet, knowing the very next morning I was going to get up to make my coffee, but he didn't stop there, y'all.

He's pretty innovative, okay?

He took a string, attached it to that ball of lint, and then took the other side of the string and connected it to the inside of the cabinet so that when I opened up that cabinet door, you betcha it would swing out and scare me to death, right?

Okay, so I wake up the next morning.

Of course, I do make a bee line to make my coffee.

Y'all, I'm not a morning person, okay?

So I gotta have my coffee.

Any other coffee drinkers in the house?

Yeah, okay, yeah, you know, you you feel me.

So I go to the kitchen, go to open up my the cabinet, and as I open up the cabinet, half asleep, out swings this ball of lint to which I think is a rabid rat.

I have a flashback from my childhood because I think this thing is jumping out to attack my face.

To say that I screamed and ran is an understatement, y'all.

But I will say this that was the very last time John ever scared me.

I love you, honey.

But here's the thing.

I look back at that and I think, man, why did I get so scared?

It was a ball of lint.

A ball of lint cannot do anything to me.

It cannot even threaten me.

But you know what?

Many times that is what fear does to us.

It makes us think things are what they are not.

It makes us think things have power that they don't have.

And many times what the enemy will do is he knows that if he can get us to take the bait of fear, he will keep us from the things that God has for us.

And while some fears make us run from a ball of lint and scream, other weightier fears keep us from saying yes to God.

They keep us from stepping into what he has for us.

And three fears that I believe many of us wrestle with are number one, the fear that I am not enough.

Again, let's go back to the life of Moses.

Moses gave three different reasons as to why he was not the man for the job.

Who am I?

In other words, I'm a nobody God.

Why are you gonna use me?

I'm nobody.

The second, they will not believe me.

In other words, I'm not respected, my voice is not valued.

The third thing, I'm slow of speech and tongue.

What he was saying was, God, I'm not gifted enough.

Bottom line, Moses felt he would fall and he would fail God because he felt he was not enough.

How many of us in this room and across our campuses have ever felt that?

Or you're sitting in your seat right now and you feel you are not enough.

You're not enough to have a relationship with God, you're not enough to be loved and valued.

But can I tell you today, whether that's something you've told yourself or you've allowed the enemy to whisper into your heart, that is a lie from the enemy today.

Your yes to God isn't built on believing you're enough, it's built on believing that the God within you is more than enough.

He is more than enough.

God consistently chooses people who believe they were not enough, yet he reminded them, I am with you and I am in you, and I am more than enough for you.

Do you believe that today?

Amen.

The second fear that we can all wrestle with is the fear of losing comfort.

The fear of losing comfort.

You know, we live in a day and age, y'all, we are all about comfort and convenience.

We can eat, sleep, shop, work, all basically live our lives from the comfort of our couch.

Here's the problem with that, though.

It has shaped us to a place where we have gotten so comfortable that when God comes to us and calls us out to step into something that might be a little uncomfortable, we hesitate.

But can I just tell you today, saying yes to God will cause us to step out in discomfort.

He has not called us to live lives of comfort, he's called us to live lives of purpose.

2 Corinthians 5:15 says, He died for everyone, so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves.

2 Corinthians 5:15

Instead, they will live for Christ, who was raised, who died and was raised for them.

You know, you think about the life of Christ, even Christ himself modeled saying yes when it was hard.

If you remember, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane just moments before the cross, and we find in Luke 22, 42, he said, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.

Jesus's yes was costly, but oh, the reward was worth the cost of every discomfort.

Aren't you so grateful today that Jesus said yes and obeyed?

That he went to the cross for us and he died and rose from the grave in three days.

I know that I am I am so grateful today.

The third fear that we can wrestle with is the fear of losing control.

This is a big one.

At least if I'm honest, it can be a big one for me.

Because many times when God comes to us and asks us to step out, you know, sometimes I just want a little bit of a sneak peek.

God, can you just tell me a little bit of what you're gonna do?

Can you give me a maybe just a little rough draft so I can read it before I officially step out into it, you know?

But in Matthew 16, 24 and 25, Jesus said, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.

But whoever loses their life for me will find it.

I love what the message paraphrase says: anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.

You're not in the driver's seat.

I am.

Now, honest moment here, I can wrestle sometimes with being a backseat driver, okay?

And in fact, as I was preparing for this message, I asked my husband, honey, would you say that when we first got married, that I struggled sometimes with being a backseat driver?

To which he said, When we first got married?

So I'm a work in progress, y'all, okay?

But here's the thing: if you don't know what a backseat driver is, it's basically someone that whether they're sitting in the back or they're sitting in the passenger seat, they cannot help themselves, but try to tell the driver what to do.

Why are you driving so fast?

Why are you driving so slow?

Why did you turn left here instead of going right?

Why are we parked here?

Why are we waiting?

Just constant, constant.

I don't love the way you're driving.

But here's the thing: it's kind of funny.

We do the same thing to God.

We hand over the keys of our lives to God and say, God, take the will of my life, lead and guide me wherever you want to go.

And then God says, We're gonna park right here and wait.

And you say, What?

Why are we parked here, God?

Why are we turning left when I wanna go right?

And then it's in those moments we have to make a choice.

Am I going to allow God to steer my life, knowing that His plan and purpose for my life is Is so much greater than I could ever plan for myself.

Or am I going to allow my fear and my need to be in control?

Self-sabotage me.

I want to remind you of a powerful scripture that I'm sure very uh many of us are familiar with, but it's Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.

It says, Trust in the Lord, not in myself, not in my ability, not in my efforts.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not depend on your own understanding.

Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.

Can I just tell you today?

I can say it from my own experience.

When we choose to trust the Lord, He never fails us.

He never fails us.

He's never gonna take you down a path that is a path of destruction.

And I just feel impressed of the Lord to say to many of you today, God is asking you to release control to Him.

He is saying, if you will just trust me with all of your heart and not lean on your own understanding.

I have so much for you that you cannot see.

But you're gonna have to trust me.

You're gonna have to trust me.

The presence of fear, you know, I had to learn this in my life.

The presence of fear does not mean you need to shrink back.

Many times the presence of fear means you need to press through.

Do you believe that?

Many of you today, you're facing a fear in your life.

Can I just encourage you?

Don't shrink back, don't hide away, press through it.

Hold to God's unchanging hand and know He's gonna lead you through it.

And if we can press past those fears, let me tell you, what's waiting for you on the other side of your yes will exceed your expectations.

Here's what I believe can happen with your next yes.

The first thing, your next yes will shift the circumstances before you.

Let's go back and look at the life of Moses.

God told Moses at the Red Sea, raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea.

Imagine that.

Imagine being Moses and standing in a place where there's nothing but water, and behind you are the Egyptian army coming after you.

Yet Moses trusted God and he obeyed.

Then the sea parted.

And some of us keep telling God, God, once my circumstances change, then I'll really give you my life.

God, once my calendar gets to a place where it's not so hectic and crazy, then I'll really get planted in the house of God and use the gifts that you've called me to use.

But let me tell you today, God is saying, no, no, no.

If you will trust me and say yes, take that first step of obedience.

Watch me part the waters in your life and work in a miraculous way.

He's waiting for many of us to take that first step.

The second thing our yes will do is shape the character within us.

It'll shape the character within you.

Our yes to God doesn't just do something through us, it does something in us.

And God is often far more interested in who your yes is making you become than simply what your yes is going to accomplish.

You know, if you look at the life of Moses, I love this so much.

When Moses first met God, who am I?

I can't speak, send someone else.

Forty years later, Moses was speaking to God.

The Bible tells us face to face.

He was a friend of God, he was a humble leader, he was a faith-filled intercessor, a confident shepherd of Israel.

Think about this.

The greatest miracle wasn't just Israel's freedom.

It was Moses becoming the man of God that he had called him to be.

We are all here today because of someone else's yes.

And I'd like to take a moment to share a story with you and close with this today.

And it's a story that reminds me why our yes to God is never just about us.

It's a story of a young girl named Pam.

Pam was the oldest of five children.

Growing up in a family she adored, Jesus was at the center of their home.

Church was a normal part of their life.

And as far as she knew, the future was full of possibility.

Her world felt safe.

Then, on Father's Day, just a few days before her ninth birthday, her family packed a lunch and headed to the park near a creek.

It was just another ordinary family day together.

But while the children were playing near the water, Pam's seven-year-old brother Anthony waded into the creek, and moments later, he disappeared beneath the surface.

Pam yelled out for help, and her father immediately dove into the water after him.

But by the time he reached Anthony, it was too late.

Anthony died that day.

And in many ways, the family Pam had always known died with him.

The grief devastated their family.

Pam watched as her father began turning to alcohol to numb the pain, and eventually he walked away from their family, and he walked away from God.

Almost overnight, Pam's childhood was gone while she was still trying to understand her own grief.

She was helping her mother care for and support her three younger siblings.

Pam had every understandable reason to become bitter.

It would have been all too easy for her to have to blame God, walked away from her faith and never looked back.

But she didn't.

Somewhere in the middle of all that pain, Pam made a decision.

She was going to stay close to Jesus.

Not because everything suddenly made sense, because it didn't.

And not because life became easier, because that didn't happen either.

But even at her young age, Pam courageously chose to stay close to him because she had already come to know him as her best friend.

And when so much else in her life had fallen apart, she believed he was still her hope.

She kept saying yes.

She said yes to following Jesus when she didn't know what her future would look like.

She said yes to continuing to go to church, even when that meant walking through the doors alone.

And over time, one yes became another.

Eventually, she met a godly man at her church named Rick.

They started dating, got engaged, and then got married, and together they went on to build a marriage centered on Jesus.

And they raised five children in a home shaped by their faith.

Church wasn't simply somewhere they attended, it became the community that helped hold their family together and form who they were becoming.

By God's grace, all five of those children grew up knowing Jesus.

Pam and Rick have now been married for 52 years.

And after everything she has lived through, Pam is still in love with Jesus.

She is still trusting him.

She is still saying yes.

That frightened, heartbroken young girl grew into a strong woman of God.

And that young girl is here today.

Mom, will you please stand?

I can tell you honestly that I love Jesus today in no small part because she kept saying yes.

Her first yes didn't erase the pain of what happened.

It didn't answer every question or fix everything overnight.

But it became the beginning of a lifetime of his faithfulness.

And that faithfulness didn't just change her life, it shaped me.

It shaped me.

I opened my message today by saying you never know what your next yes could do, that it could change the trajectory of not only your life, but someone else's.

And I believe that.

I believe that your next yes could impact your children, your children's children, your neighbors, your coworkers.

But here's what I want to tell you it starts with you first.

It starts with you saying yes to Jesus.

And I believe right now many of you feel and sense a stirring in your heart, Jesus is speaking to you, that he brought you to this day for such a time as this.

With every head bowed, every eye closed.

I just want us to take a moment to allow Jesus to speak to our hearts.

What is Jesus inviting you to say yes to today?

Maybe it's saying yes to surrendering a part of your life to Jesus that you've never surrendered.

You've held back.

Maybe it's saying yes to you, finally getting planted in the house of God, no longer standing on the fringe, kicking the tires.

No, today is the day that you're gonna purpose in your heart, me and my family, we will serve the Lord and we will get planted in this house.

For others, maybe it's finally pressing past your fears to step out and use the gifts God has given you and to use them right here in this place.

And for some of you, maybe it's saying yes to Jesus for the very first time and surrendering your life to Him.

I believe many of you, under the sound of my voice, are one yes away from stepping into a journey of healing.

You are one yes away from God's purpose for your life.

You are one yes away from becoming who God created you to be.

If you are here today and you say in your heart, today's the day that I want to give my very first yes to Jesus.

I want to give my life to him with no one looking around.

If that is you today, I just want you right where you are at your seat, just lift your hand.

If you want to give your life to Jesus right now, I see your hands in the back, all over this room, across our campuses, your oversight pastor at your campus, they'll see your hand.

Just keep your hand up.

Yes, yes, saying yes to Jesus.

Now, if you lifted your hand, I want you to repeat after me and all of us in this room across our campuses.

Let's do it for the benefit of those who are going to be praying this.

Let's all pray it together and repeat after me, Lord Jesus, I come before you.

I lay all that I am at your feet.

I ask that you come into my heart.

I receive you as my Lord and Savior today.

I ask that you forgive me of all my sins.

And I thank you that today, as I say yes, this marks a brand new day in my life.

And it's in Jesus' name we all pray together.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, let's give it up for all of those who made that special decision today.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.