What Does God want from me? | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

August third is gonna be fun.

This is the first time that we've ever had all

of our campus pastors, all of the worship leaders at

all of our campuses involved in one service. So they're

all gonna come August third for that worship night. You

will not want to miss it. It's gonna be incredible

and it's gonna give you an idea of the reach

that venture church has. It's also gonna help you see

the talented leaders that we have at all these other

campuses leading worship and leading those other campuses.

I think you'll be really encouraged.

If you don't know who, I'm Brandon, I'm the lead

pastor of the church. I'm glad that you've come to

join us. Here mid July the buildings in complete, utter disarray,

but we're hoping by Christmas Eve. You can sit in

that balcony, so it's.

Gonna be great.

If you're new to the church, I'd love to meet you.

I'll be hanging out in the lobby after the service. Please,

if you're here and I haven't seen you this for

here in three weeks, so if you're a new three

to five weeks, please come up. Introduce yourself to me,

I'd love to be able to put a name to

a face. I was reflecting back as I was writing

this message on.

Before I came to faith. Now.

I gave my life to Christ when I was in

high school, but even before I gave my life to Christ,

I would have those moments where I would lay in

bed at night just to my thoughts and I would

contemplate all of the big questions of life. I don't

know if that's normal for a junior hire to do,

but I did it.

I remember.

One of the biggest things that I wrestled with is

our human minds cannot comprehend something that has no beginning

and no end, like we can't like our minds are

created to have a beginning and an end. So when

we're told things like God has always been and He

always will be mind blowing like, we can't wrap our

brain around it. For me, as a junior higher, I

couldn't wrap my brain around this one that the universe.

Has no end.

That just made no sense that you could keep going

and going and going and it would never end. The

image that I had as a junior high kid was

of a white piece of paper with a black splotch

on it, and that black splotch was the universe and

the eventually you could get in a spaceship that would

travel you far enough and fast enough where you'd get

to the end of the black, and once you got

to the end of the black, it was just white paper.

I mean, that was the way my mind worked.

These I have these huge questions, and when I gave

my life to Christ in high school, well I still

had these questions.

But whenever I would ask people these.

Questions, especially in the church, I was quickly corrected and

told I was doubting. And the answer that I got

to very sincere questions. I was being a seeker, just

wanted to understand. It was always you just need to

trust God, you need to have faith. And it almost

got to the point where if I had any sort

of doubt, people would question whether or not I was

really saved. And I learned when I first came to

church that questions were bad. The problem was this was

a misunderstanding by those I was talking to about the

motives behind my questions because my questions were sincere. My

questions were a desire to understand, They were a desire

to learn more about this faith that I was now

in the midst of this journey. Questions came from a

real desire to understand and wrestle through my faith. But

back then, questions were bad. And I became a youth

pastor at one of the biggest ideological philosophical conflicts that

the world has ever had, and it was the transition

from a modern world to a postmodern world. I'm going

to explain this as simply as I can, the modern

mindset versus the postmodern mindset. This is enough to make

you dangerous, and this is enough to make you want

to get up and leave it ten in the middle

of the the summer.

Okay. A modern mindset is.

A worldview, and it came from the belief that most

of the people in America. Let's just deal with our country.

About sixty percent of the people in our country believed

in God, so that shaped their worldview. They might not

have claimed to be Christians, but they believed in a

higher power. They believed in a God, and that was

really a modern mindset. So even though you might have

disagreed on your political views, you all agreed there was

a God. Even though you might have disagreed on some

social issues, everyone believed there was a God, and so

there was this foundation and worldview in a modern mindset

that there was a higher power, there was a creator.

That was the vast majority of the world.

Now, in the late eighties early nineties, there became a

shift in America to a postmodern mindset, and this was

the first time where there were less people in America

who believed in God than there were those that don't.

It shifted from sixty percent believing in God to sixty

percent not believing in God. So now you have a

world that does not understand and have that belief that

their worldview is not shaped on a belief in God.

Modern, postmodern you get it.

So when you grow up in a postmodern world, you

don't grow up with a belief in God.

You have a lot of questions.

When you grew up in a modern world, you write

off a lot of these questions as faith and trust

God did it. It doesn't make sense, but I just

accept it. Those two worlds collided in the late eighties

in early nineties, and when people would ask that we're

finding faith in the late eighties early nineties, they would

ask hard questions, but the answer just have faith was

not good enough. Interestingly, the question for those that grew

up in a modern world, those that had been a

part of church forever, the questions being asked frustrated them.

Some of you were here today and you remember when

your kids started asking you those hard questions, and the

questions themselves frustrated you. You just wanted your kids to trust,

have faith, get it. There's a God, He created it.

We can't understand it, and that wasn't good enough for them.

The question frustrated you, and at the same time, the

answer was frustrating those that were asking the question, because

just telling us to have faith and just believe wasn't

good enough. We wanted to wrap our minds around what

all of this meant, and there was this huge collision,

especially within the church, but it happened all around the

world from this postmodern modern mindset, and it really is

summed up in a willingness.

To answer questions and respond to questions. Follow along.

Here's an example. I was a youth pastor at my church.

When they stop using hymnals, Remember hymnals, some of you,

when we played Amazing Grace, here's what you thought.

Finally they're doing a godly song.

Those of you that are younger were like, what in

the world is this? Can we sing something cooler? And

I remember when our church transitioned from hymnals. Because I

wasn't raised in church, I'd never out of a hymno before.

I didn't know these were a thing. And we started

projecting the words to the songs on the wall, and

people would come in and meet with me and they'd

blame me. They'd say, it's because of you and your

youth ministry that we have words on a wall and

we're not singing out of a book anymore. And I

didn't know that was a thing. Here's another one some

of you. In fact, I had somebody in the first

service and he told me afterwards he was like, as

my first son, I was totally taken aback by the

fact that you were wearing a hat while you were speaking.

So I did this on purpose.

I have a couple hundred hats, so I love wearing hats,

but I don't typically wear them while I speak.

But I was a youth pastor in the early nineties.

Our youth minister grew from about a dozen students to

hundreds of students. And these hundreds of students who had

no church background, started coming to church, and they were

and didn't know how to play the game. And there

were people who loved Jesus. They loved Jesus and they

loved other people who would stand in the lobby on

Sunday mornings as teenagers would stroll into church wearing hats,

ordering them to take their hat off because there is

nothing more disrespectful than wearing a hat in God's house.

Remember those days.

And I would try to meet with these people and

talk them off the edge of the cliff and say,

these are teenagers that have never stepped foot in church before.

When you were raised in church, you don't realize how

weird of.

A foreign culture this is.

The church is a subculture that the outside world doesn't get.

They don't speak our language, they don't understand our values.

And you're taking people that are sincerely wanting to explore faith,

feeling awkward coming to church to begin with, and now

you're telling them to sit there for two hours with

hat hair. This was this conundrum that the world was having.

I want to tell you this, if you were here

and you were new to church, it is okay to

ask questions here. Questions don't threaten me. They don't threaten

my staff, they don't.

Threaten your small group leader.

We want you to feel free to ask good questions,

hard questions, sincere questions. By the way, there's some of you.

You've been at church your whole life. You remember when

Amazing Grace was a new song. I want to encourage

you that it's okay for you to ask questions too.

I shared that in the first service, and a gallon

our church, who has been here almost since we started

the church, like she's probably been a follower of Jesus

going on forty years, came up to me and she said,

I was reading the Old Testament, and she said, and

I was really struggling, as I've been studying the Old

Testament by how an outsider could read this and think

God is really mean? And she said, I was really

struggling with this. And she said, I was feeling guilty

that I was struggling with the fact that people would

view God as mean in the Old Testament. And she said,

in Brandon, then you said it was okay to ask questions.

So I want to ask you right now, as somebody

who's spent my whole life in church is goten mean,

and I was like, thank you for asking. Let me

answer this for you. It's okay to ask questions. This

new series that we're starting today is called God Problems,

and what we want to do is ask the questions

that people ask us, and we are going to try

our best to answer them as well and as clearly

as we possibly can. Now we by no means can

exhaust all the questions that we get asked. But we're

gonna hit on five this summer and we're going to

talk about aren't all religions the same? How many of

you have heard that one? What about this one?

Have you heard this? Pb?

Can God really forgive this huge mistake I made?

Can God forgive all my sins?

I have people all the time that come and meet

with me and say I understand God forgiving.

The lying and the pride, But I.

Made this an epic mistake. God can't forgive that. Kenny,

what about this one? If God is a God of love,

why is there evil all over the world? Why is

there evil in my neighborhood? We're gonna answer that question.

What about this one? I'm really nervous about the future.

What does the future hold, What does the future look like,

and today I want to answer this question, what does

God want from me? I've been serving Jesus, I've been

following Jesus.

What does God want from me? Did you know? That

is a really good question?

And that was actually a question Jesus was sincerely asked

and he answered it in Matthew twenty two.

The question came from someone.

They said, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

An incredible question because by the time Matthew twenty two

was written, there were six hundred and thirteen different.

Jewish laws they were supposed to follow.

I don't know about you, but I can't remember to

follow the speed limit yet alone trying to follow six

hundred and thirteen things. So we asked, sincerely, out of

all commandments, which one can I follow the most? There's

a lot of them, which ones matter? And Jesus answers

really simply. He says, love the Lord your God with

all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,

and with all your strength. This is the first and

greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your

neighbor as your self. I want to ask everyone to

buy your heads, close your eyes. I want you to

repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say, Dear Jesus, speak

to my heart, change my life in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So Jesus says, what I want from you is to

love me.

What I want from you is to love others.

That is the gospel summed up love Jesus. Your life

should be striving to love Jesus.

But that's not it. That's not the only thing. You

don't get it. Just pick which one of these two

you liked the most. He says.

Not only do I want you to love me, but

I want you to love those I love, so you

love your neighbor as yourself. That is so hard for

us today. We want to love our neighbor with qualifications.

We want to have some exceptions.

I will love people as long as they vote the

way I vote, But as soon as they don't vote

the way I vote, I don't like them.

I cancel them.

I love people as long as they feel the same

way about social issues that I feel, and as soon

as they disagree with me, I'm out. There was a

day in the modern world where everybody had this belief

system that there is a God and their worldview was

shaped on God, that they could sit around the dinner

table and disagree about politics, still love each other and

be friends, thank you. But in a postmodern world where

there is no foundational belief in God, if we disagree

on stuff like that, we become enemies.

They're like the other side, the other people.

But Jesus says, I want you to love me, and

I want you to love those I love. This is

my job, so I get it. My job is to

love everyone. And here how I reconcile the fact that

I don't like everyone, but I'm supposed to love everyone.

And I reconcile it this way.

That this person is loved by Jesus.

This person is loved by Jesus as much as I

am loved by.

Jesus and Church.

I'm not gonna stand. I'm not like Diabells. My wife

just loves everybody. That's just who she is. I have

people that I don't like. I don't like people that

are bullies. I don't like people that are abusers. I

have a really hard time with people that are self centered.

But Jesus doesn't care what I think.

Did you know that he loves them as much as

he loves me?

And he said, you don't get a pick and choose

who you love.

I want you to love me with all your heart,

and I want you to love those that I love,

which happens to be everydy. I think the most practical

way for you and I and we get to love

Jesus part, but to do the love other's part is

to serve in ministry in the local church. The most practical,

simplistic way to you to love those that Jesus loves

is to serve here today, I want to talk to you,

just really quickly about how you know you're called into ministry.

There are some of you you've been wrestling with whether

or not you're supposed to be doing what I'm doing,

and I.

Want to share with you.

Using these signs, you'll notice there's some street signs. What

is the purpose of a street sign? A street sign

is to help guide you, regulate you, warn you to

safely and orderly make your way to your destiny, to

get you where you're going safely and efficiently. So there

was a letter that was written by a guy by

the name of John Newton. John Newton was an Anglican cleric,

and he is most famously known for writing Amazing Grace,

But In this letter, he wrote the five signs that

you know you're called into ministry.

Now, I know some of you know you're not.

But it's also the same five signs that let you

know if the time has come for you to serve

in ministry at your local church. So I want you

to wrestle through both of these with these signs. Number

one sign is that you have the desire to lead.

You want to lead, you feel compelled to lead. Paul

says this. He says, here is a trustworthy saying. Whoever

aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. There

are sometimes we feel guilty that we want to be

a leader. We feel like, okay, is that my pride

that's wanting me to lead in this area? Is it

my pride that wants.

Me to do this?

But Paul is telling Timothy, hey, if you want to lead,

you are desiring a noble task, that that is a

good thing that you want to do.

Peter said this.

He said, just as shepherds watch over their sheep, you

must watch over everyone God has placed in your care.

Do it willingly in order to please God, and not

simply because you think you must. As a minister, you want.

You want to know that your pastor that I don't

is the pastor of this church because I don't feel

like I have another choice. Like if I stood up

and said, hey, I'm your pastor, I'm gonna continue to

be your pastor because I can't do anything else. I

would There's no only way I can provide for my family.

I do this out of utter obligation. You don't want

to hear that from me, like I do this because

this is the joy of my life. I do this

because I want to, I feel called to, I have

a desire to do it.

I get offered jobs all the time.

I got offered a job in the last month that

some of my closest friends told me I was insane

to say no too, Well, why did I say no?

Because I want to do this? Like Dian and I,

we love the idea that in our early thirties we

started a church and then we spent our entire ministry

career serving that same church.

We love the testimony of that.

So Peter is saying, you serve because you want to serve.

You don't do it because your arm was twisted and

you were forced to the best leaders want to be

in leadership. The best ministers want to serve. But here

is the key. A desire to be a leader does

not make you a leader. It is just the starting point.

Just because you want to lead doesn't mean you were

qualified or ready to lead. The desire is the thing

that peak piques your interest.

But there's a lot of work.

Especially if you want to do what I'm doing, that

goes into someone who's called into vocational ministry.

Most of you, that's not you. But you're called to serve.

So my question for some of you is, if you're

called to serve, and it is the most practical way

for you to love your neighbor as yourself, why aren't

you serving?

Why aren't you.

What is it it's causing you to just sit and

not serve?

What is it?

Some of you are thinking, well, PB, I'm working on

me right now.

I gotta fix me. You will never be done fixing you.

Yeah. If you wait to serve till you are like

a whole, complete person, you'll never serve. If I've given

you the idea that I've figured out life in my

life and everything I have failed you like, you will

never be a finished product. You are a lifelong project.

Don't wait to fix you to serve. Jump in serve now.

If not, why.

So?

Number one, you have a desire to lead.

Number two, you're competent to lead. You have to develop

the qualifications to carry out the ministry that you're called to.

If you're called to be a worship leader, you should

probably learn how to play an instrument. You should probably

take some singing lessons. I can't just announce the pastor.

David.

Hey, I want to be on the worship team. I'm

your boss. Give me a microphone, because if I started singing,

you would leave. You got to gain the competencies to

serve in ministry. One of the things that I will

tell you about full time vocational ministers is there's one

thing that we all have in common is that we

are lifelong learners.

Like we don't have an option.

That's why most ministers have at least graduate level degrees

and many have doctorates. Because we're constantly in school, we

constantly read.

We are rabid readers.

Every time people do their goals and they post at

the beginning of the year, they post at the end

of the year how many books they've read. People love

to tell you I read fifty books this year. I

don't ever do that, and that is because I couldn't

tell you how many books I read in any given year,

probably at least fifty a year. But I've been doing

that for twenty five years because I don't have an option.

Because leaders have to sharpen themselves. Pastors are constantly growing,

We're constantly going to conferences, We're constantly having mentors, we

always have coaches, we always ask questions. That is how

you progress in ministry. But I will say this, the

number one thing that makes you competent to lead is character.

There are a lot of people that are incredibly gifted,

and your talent will give you an opportunity, but your

character will sustain.

You in that position.

There's too many ministers that were incredibly gifted but low

in character and ended up shaming the gospel. So part

of being qualified to lead is you have to be

a person who lives a life above reproach.

Paul said it this way.

He said, you are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God

were making his appeal through you. You and I are

ambassadors of Christ. What is an ambassador? An ambassador is

someone who is an accredited diplomat sent by a person,

an organization, a country as its official representative to someone

outside of that organization, person, or country. You are called

to be Christ's ambassadors. What does that mean? It means

you represent Jesus. He has basically said, I appoint you

to go out and be Me to people that don't

know me. Did you know that when you park cars

in that parking lot, you are parking cars on behalf

of Jesus?

Do you?

Everyone?

How would Jesus work in the parking lot? How would

Jesus park people? How about when you're a greeter, you

are a greed not just on behalf of venture, but

you are a greeter on behalf of Jesus. How would

Jesus greet someone who's never come to church before when

they come to church the first time? How would he

do that? I was thinking this. Somebody asked me this

in the first after the first service. If you're volunteering

in the cafe, you are making coffee on behalf of Jesus.

How would Jesus make coffee? But that that's who you are.

You represent Jesus. You are his ambassador. You are Jesus

to other people. You are Jesus to these people that

he deeply loves. How do you know you're called in

a ministry? You feel called to lead, you feel competent

to lead. Number three, you are a firmed by the church.

In other words, other people see leadership qualities in you.

Other people agree that those qualities are there. Out of curiosity,

I asked this in the first service. Let's see if

I get a similar response. How many of you watch

American Idol or however, okay, way better? First service, two

people watched American Idol. Terrible illustration there. I only like

the tryout round. I love the tryout round, and I

love the tryout round where they stand before these judges

that are experts in this field. And then you take

these people that have grown up singing in their church

choir or singing in their school choir, singing in front

of their parents. They've been told they're awesome their entire life,

and then they wonder, am I really awesome? And then

they stand up and they sing in front of these

extra critical judges. And some of you are like, I

love it when the judges rip them. I actually don't

enjoy that. I love it when the judges say to them.

They look at each other and they say you're going

to Hollywood, and then the people like burst into tears

and they jump up and down, and they run out

and they hug their parents and they hug their friends

because their gifting has been affirmed by experts in the field.

And there is nothing more encouraging than that. If you

sense a call to serve, if you sense a call

to ministry, ask us the pastors, what we think, because

there's nothing that will encourage you more than when those

that are experts in the field affirm the call of

God on your life. I remember when this happened with

Pastor Johnny, our youth pastor. Did you know that Johnny

served as a youth leader for three years here before

he was ever our youth pastor. But when Johnny served

as a youth leader, all the other youth leaders saw

this call in anointing on Johnny.

I mean they saw Johnny was someday going to be

a really good youth pastor.

The pastors at this church, we watched Johnny for a

couple years, and we were convinced that he was going

to be an amazing youth pastor. I'll never forget the

day the pastor Tony, who was our youth pastor came

into my office and he said, Brandon, I hate to

do this, but I need to resign. And I was

like why, and he said, because Johnny's the next youth

pastor of the church and I can't stand in his way.

And now that's literally a true story.

So then I said, we got to figure out where

we're going to have you do, Tony, because I don't

want to lose you either. But when Johnny became the

youth pastor, it was the smoothest transition ever because the

parents knew Johnny, the students knew Johnny, the leaders knew Johnny,

and everybody affirmed this calling over Johnny's life. Number four,

how do you know you're called to serve? How do

you know you're called to be invocational ministry? If that's it,

they're open doors to serve, the doors were open to you.

One of the surefire ways to know if you're called

into ministry is someone's offering you a job to do it,

because there's a lot of people that are available to

hire for ministry jobs. And if someone gives you an

open door you're asked to serve, that should be okay.

Maybe there's something in me that others see that I

should really evaluate myself. We have like an amazing example

of that right now. Our kids pastor resigned and Morgan

and I met. We didn't know what we were gonna do,

cause it could have taken six to twelve months to

find a kid's pastor. So Morgan and I thought, let's

find let's find a group of moms that we think

can step in and lead our kids ministry, by the way,

without an end in mind, because we didn't know how

long it was gonna take. So we went out and

we asked four moms, Carla Petrick, Nicole Butcher, jennar Ment,

and Vanessa Naugle. This is what we asked them. Until

we find a kid's pastor, will you guys lead our

kids ministry. Now, these moms weren't sitting around thinking I'm bored, I.

Got nothing to do.

I'm hoping someone gives me an opportunity to fill my

time because I've got too much extra time. I mean,

these are moms that are super busy. They don't need,

we need extra demands on their schedule. But the door

was open, the need was there, the request was made,

and all four of these moms have stepped in and

led our Kids Ministry incredibly effective in this interim period.

They're very excited. We have a kid's pastor now. But

that's what I'm talking about. How do you know that

you should serve well? You should serve in kids ministry

because we need kids workers.

You should serve.

In the cafe because we need more people to make coffee.

You should be a.

Greeter because we need greeters. Can I tell you why

you should serve in the parking lot? Because we just

added three hundred seats to our auditorium and we took

away three parking spots. We had parking issues before this.

Now we've added more seats. We need parking lot people. Please,

we need you to represent Jesus in the parking lot.

How do you know?

Because there's open doors to serve. The Psalmist says this.

The Lord says, I will guide you along the best

pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch

over you. Sometimes all you do is you just walk

through the open door. You trust God is guiding you.

What my hope is for all of you is, at

the minimum you at least feel compelled to serve a

little bit, maybe once a month. Some of you it's

every week, but you have this compelling, this sense that

I should be doing this. I want to do this.

Hopefully most of you are just wondering where what should

I do?

What do I do with this desire? What do I

do with the fact.

That I feel compelled to serve? But I'm not sure

where I'm needed most?

And then will.

Help you figure that out. And that's number five. You

feel compelled to serve? How do you know you're called

in a ministry? How do you know it's time for

you to start serving.

In the church?

You feel compelled to serve. When I got called into

ministry as a sixteen year old, I never thought i'd

be a youth pastor. I had a zero desire to

be a youth pastor. I thought I was going to

be a senior pastor. The ironic thing is, there are

people here today and I was your youth pastor. Like

you look back and you think my life was transformed

as a teenager because of die in Brandon's ministry. Yet

I didn't even want to be a youth pastor. How

I ended up in youth ministry. My wife and I

were dating at the time. We were both nineteen and

she came back from a missions trip and had this

compulsion to serve. She looked at her little, tiny Lutheran

church and she thought, they don't have a youth ministry.

And so she went to the pastor and said, I'll

run the youth ministry. We don't have a youth ministry here.

She then looks at her boyfriend and says, I'm going

to lead the youth ministry at my church. Do you

want to help me lead the youth ministry? And I thought, sure,

why not.

That is literally how we ended up being.

Youth pastors for twelve years. We walked through an open

door that started with this compulsion that I gotta do something.

I got to serve somewhere, and if this is where

the need is, I'll just see what happens. They need

youth leaders. Venture needs youth leaders. I think I can

do that. Venture needs people to greet once a month.

I can.

I can say hi to people. Venture needs people to

work in the parking lot.

I can. I can do that.

I can drive the shuttle, I I can help with

set up. I I can do that. That's that's literally

where it starts. I love the Rocky movies. I think

they're the peak of cinema, the Rocky movies. In the

movie Creed two, there is this part where Adonis, who

is uh Rocky's protege, is now the heavyweight champion and

he's about to fight Evan Drago's son, and he wants

Rocky to train him, and he's trying to convince Rocky

to do it, and Rocky doesn't want to, and then

he says, come on, Rocky, we've been in this together.

I need you to train me. I need you to

train me one more time.

This is it. I need you to train me.

And Rocky makes this famous statement, he said, I just

don't want to. I think oftentimes, when push comes to shove,

why don't we serve because we just don't want to.

What does God want from you? What does he want

from me? He wants us to love him with all

of our heart, mind, soul and strengths. It's really easy.

We get that one you go to church, you pray,

you worship, you read the Bible, you meditate on God.

We know that we should have this desire to love

God more. But then he also says, you love your

neighbor as yourself. And I believe the most practical way

for us to live that out at the minimum is

we serve within the local church that we have, because

you are literally representing Jesus to every single person that

walks through this door when we do this big outreach

in Federal Wagh.

On August twenty second, if.

You go and you serve at that you are literally

Christ's ambassador and you are loving on people that he loves.

What does God want from me? Love Jesus, love people

We serve because we are loving the people that Jesus loves,

and if you love him, you're willing to love those

He loves.

And the door is wide open for you. We need you.

Our kids ministry needs you, our guest care team needs you.

Our parking lot, your cars need you. I want to

ask everyone to buy your head, to close your eyes.

I just want to pray for you to close the message.

Then moregan will come up close the service. Dear Jesus,

right now, I thank you for these people, and there's

so many here that serve so faithfully.

And Lord, for those that right now serve.

Selflessly, I pray massive.

Blessing on their life.

God. I pray that they would see fruit of their

service and I know Lord that there are others they

feel this compulsion inside of them to serve, and Lord,

I pray that this would be the moment that they

would step out and begin the process of serving within

the local church.

God, may that be what we are known for.

May Venture be known as a group of people that

passionately love you. But in addition, we love our neighbors

as ourself. In your name, I pray, Amen.

Amen, Amen.

Hey, there's a couple just practical things that I want

to encourage you to do as this message is kind

of hite your hearts. And I love this message because

here's the truth. We wouldn't have to talk about this

message if God wasn't expanding the footprint of this church.

But he is.

More people are coming here and we need more help.

We need everyone serving and doing their part. And there's

a couple of ways that you can sign up to

practically serve here at Venture. Actually, I want to invite

you to pull out your Venture app really quick, and

if you click the Mill Creek campus and you go

to connection card, there's a button there at the bottom

of your connection card that says serve at Venture. If

you click that button, one of our staff members will

follow up with you this week and help you find

a place to serve. You can also on that mainscreen

scroll all the way down to where it says upcoming events,

and just below that there's some little stick figures. It

looks like my kind of art, the kind that I

would draw. And if you click that button, it says

join to serve a team. You can begin serving on

one of our Venture teams right now. You can find

all the different practical areas that you can begin serving

right now at Venture.

Encourage you go and do that.

And the second thing I want to encourage you with,

here's a message on man if you feel a call

to ministry in your life. Out in the lobby, we

have a table set up with Venture Internship information. The

Venture Internship is expanding to also provide practical ways for

us for adults who feel that call to ministry. Not

not just college aged people, but adults who are maybe

in their career or retired, who are feeling that call

to ministry. We want to connect with you at that

table out there to begin to develop you into people

who are stepping into ministry in real ways. So two

ways you can respond to this morning's message. I want

to encourage you to stand to your feet this morning, actually,

not encourage, I want to invite you to stand to

your feet this morning. Encourage and invite, but I would

just want to thank you so much for being here

with us at Venture Church. We love you, guys. We're

praying over you and your families, and we're praying that

you guys have a blessed week.

God bless and we'll see you later.

Thank you again for joining us. If you enjoyed today's service,

go ahead and subscribe to our channel so you can

see future messages. If you'd like to learn more about

Venture Church, you can like the link that's in our bio.

We hope to see you again, but.

Sh to

Clup, clup, clup, clup, clup,