Blank Slate

Venture Church. How are we doing this morning? Let's go

dan y'all, y'all are loud.

I'm not gonna lie.

The A thirty they were a little bit louder than you, guys,

and it was like, have y'all put you on hand?

Ha hahn. Life just came back on. Whoa, what's going on? Guys?

Good morning? Oh there it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I

love it.

If we haven't met yet, my name is Johnny White.

I'm the youth pastor here. Before I get started, I

want to give a special shout out to a few people.

One are online family. If you're watching out home, I

want to say, hey, we love you. You're awesome. You're amazing.

I know Pastor Kelsey's hosting you guys right now. You

guys are amazing. I also want to give a special

shout out to our lead pastors, pastors Brandon and die Bill's.

Can you get some love for our lead pastors?

Come on, they're amazing. Well yeah, man, I'm excited.

I want to hop straight in the title of my

message today is called blank slate. Everybody say blank slate,

Blank slate. I want you guys to open up your

bibles to Isaiah forty three Versus eighteen through nineteen. Before

you go there, before we read it, I want to

sh with you a little bit of the context. I

want to forewarn you this is not a message about

how to set your top five goals. I'm not gonna

encourage you to get a peloton. I'm not gonna charge

you to get a gym membership. This is not what

this is. I believe that to be the best version

of yourself, the closer you get to God, the rest

begins to follow. To be informed that to say we

are a believer, to say that we know God, is

a call immediately to call us to a greater version

of ourselves. Sen Corinthians Chapter five tells us that we

are a new creation, and the old things pass away

through our belief in who Jesus is. If you want

a one liner, I'll give it to you. We are

new because we're known, and to be known by God

is to be called hire by God. And so today,

in this morning, I want to reveal to you just

deep ways that we can't reawaken, challenge and.

Grow in our faith.

But before we do that, let me give you some

context of the Book of Isaiah. I've put together a

little timeline for us. I was at the airport yesterday

and I was like, you know, this might help a

little bit. So this is a really the Old Testament

history and an you might be like, there's some parts

missing and there's something's happening.

He's going through a lot.

Good for you that there is an amazing resource that

you can check out that tells you all about this.

It's called the b I B l E.

You can get it at the store, you can get it.

In the lobby.

You can download an app, and it's free. But for

the sake of ob we're I'm just gonna speak through this.

We start off in Genesis with Creation week. Abraham has

many sons crazy if you grew up in church. We

leave the Promised Land because of a famine. We head

over to Egypt. This is where we are enslaved. Then

Moses comes onto the scene Pharaoh. Pharaoh, let my people go,

and then we head off into the wilderness for forty years.

Now in this wilderness, the people get testy, everything's challenged.

God tells Moses you will not be the person to

lead them into the Promised Land. So good old Joshua

comes into play and takes us in. Once we get

into the Promised Land, we go into the time of

the Judges. This is where you see people like Gideon, Samson, Samuel.

Then we go into hey, this realize we want to

be like the foreign nations around us. Give us some kings,

and they're like, all right, we got the perfect king

on the way.

But if y'all can't wait, we got you.

And we start off with this unified Kingdom where we

have Saul, David, and Solomon. After Solomon dies, the Unified

Kingdom splits off in the two parts. Oh no, then

there's Northern Israel and then we have Southern Judah now

Northern Israel, and the Old Testament timeline is the first

to fall, the first to be overtaken by the Assyrians.

And then right now where we're at in the Book

of Isaiah spans between Southern Judah and the Babylonian exile.

Little did you know.

That you'd be getting a Bible course an Old Testament

history this morning. But you know, I just said, you

guys deserve it, you guys are worthy. And so that's

where we're at in this time. The Book of Isaiah

is kind of broken off into a couple of parts.

Chapters one through thirty nine are really about the impending

doom and the judgment and the Israelite saying that's not

gonna happen. And then the rest of the chapters are like,

oh crap, it's happening. So what God begins to put

on the role of comforter and it's stealing a promise

in a truth. As we begin to move forward, there

are two ways to read Isaiah to working theories of

how it was written. Either the prophet Isaiah was given

two hundred years of foresight moving forward, or that there

are multiple authors post chapter thirty nine and pro to

Isaiah and deutero Isaiah. So just a couple of ways.

I'm gonna preach it straight up, and we're gonna go in.

Who's ready, Let's go, Come on, all right. Isaiah forty

three eighteen through nineteen says this, do not remember the

past events, pay no attention to the things of old. Look,

I am about to do something new. Somebody says, something new.

Even now it is coming, do you not see it? Indeed,

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers

in the desert. Let's pray, Dear God, I thank you

for what you're gonna do in the service. And I

declare that your authority would ring true, that you would

stir up our faith, challenge us, call us to hire,

call us to more and transform our lives. It's in

your name, we pray. And everybody in their room said, Amen,

come on, let's go. I want to take you into

our youth ministry for a second. The title blank slate

is actually the theme of our youth ministry this year

and where it came along.

We were at summer camp this past year.

Yeah, look at that cool dope. We were at summer

camp and a lot of wins. We had taken our

biggest group yet to summer camp. But it was also

bittersweet because we had graduated out a lot of our

seniors and it was their last hurrah. These people that

I'm looking at are seniors who have been the faces

of our ministry for the past three to four years.

And for context, the summers for youth pastors, this is

when we take a breath and we regather ourselves.

We begin to study and plan the next year.

And all I could think about was this group of

kids and how I what do we do after this?

What's next, what's going on?

And in the last days, I'm looking back and looking

at these people who have led our ministry for so long,

I see just I feel like God giving me this

picture of him putting the finishing touches on a beautiful painting,

and it's just a simple statement of this is good,

but it's finished. And he begins to take the painting

off and he puts it to the side and he

brings on a blank canvas. And what I felt that

the Lord was saying in this moment is that it

is time for something new. That we won't be determined

by what has happened in these ministry in the past,

but something fresh is coming. There's gonna be new leaders,

there's gonna be new encounter, there's gonna be new focus.

And can I tell you we are six months into

a faithful promise of students stepping up and God showing

up in new and amazing ways. And it had me

thinking of there's so much more on the table for

you and I in a blank slate kind of mentality,

because it's funny that we come up with this theme

in the summer and then three or four months later,

our lead pastor stands here in front of all of

you and says we're putting a pin in the last

twenty years and God is writing our next chapter. Now

you may call that coincidence, but I call that God's providence,

God unligning people's hearts of We can honor the past,

we can appreciate the past, but can I tell you

God has bigger things in store for Venture Church and yourselves.

Isn't that exciting? Come on?

And so Monalda just kind of came together and I

was like, what And here's the thing.

I'm the youth pastor. They don't include me in those

vision meetings.

Okay, I'm like, we're doing that amazing love that like

if itit's in perfect and it's one of these great

moments where there is a next thing. I'm believing today

that the blank slate faith that I'm calling for us

to have, that I'm pointing and highlighting is for you

to have fresh encounters, fresh experiences, and let this dictate

how you live your life. That as we begin to

focus and get closer with God, the rest of our

life would be informed to better and higher standards that

we didn't even think were attainable. The first thing that

I want to submit to you in these three truths

that I'm going to go over, is this, we are

not confined to our past experiences with God. We are

not confined to our past experiences with God. Let's go

back to verse eighteen. Do not remember the past events.

Pay no attention to the things of Oh. This specific

comment that God is sharing with the people of Israel

is in reference to Exodus and Moses. If we think

about what happened in that timeline, when Moses begins to

make these moves and deliver the people, God's providence is

obvious and abundant. There is the staff turning into the snake.

There is a splitting of the Red Sea. There is

bread coming down from heaven. There are plagues, there's the presence,

the physical manifestation of God.

And it's easy to be like, Oh, God was with us.

What God doesn't even happen to mention, and what you

and I might be aware of is that even while

these crazy signs are happening, the Israelites are still complaining.

There comes a moment where literal bread is coming down

from heaven and they're like, you got like any cheese,

like since you already opened the count the clouds of

heaven like you dropped on the steak, something like that.

And it's in these moments that God is saying, do

not look for me.

In just this manner.

The Israelites of this generation are aware of their history,

They're aware of what God has done, and in this moment,

this word of comfort is coming to people who are

in hardship. They have been exiled from the promised land

that they know generation after generation has fought so hard

to get into, and they have this feeling that God's

not showing up. How we heard that he shows up,

he has abandoned us. He has left us. For some

of us, that's how we feel in this room that

we don't feel God. We don't see God moving the

ways that we have in our past, and because of

that we assume this nature of him. He's forgotten about me,

he's left me. He's not working in my favor anymore.

He's not answering my prayers. He's ignoring me. And what

God is trying to tell them is not do not

be contained, Do not sum up my power into a

past event, that there is so much more on the table.

That command to forget the former things is not to

dismiss what God has done in their life. But it's

to remove an unhealthy attachment to the past. Can I

tell you the past will be a chain to you.

If you let it, you will be so held up.

You will be so held back before you even realize it,

or that you are waiting for something that God is

obviously abundantly moving. But because your eyes are filtered through

this only expression of God, you're missing it.

We miss it. It goes over our heads.

And the whole time we're saying God is not moving,

and God's saying, bro, look over here me, Hello, I'm

not in this anymore.

I'm moving differently. I'm showing up in different ways.

I do not want us to make the mistake of

making our past.

The ceiling of our future.

With a blank slate, we begin to answer the question

of God, what can you do next?

What will you do in my life? What will you

show up? And what will you bring?

The past is meant to be appreciated, not always replicated.

God does not shown himself in one time, Formulas shows

himself in his majesty, someone who is without limits, someone

who is in a new way of living. And if

I could say it like this. The original Exodus with

Moses did not exhaust the creativity in the power of

our God.

It just revealed his nature.

And this is key for us to know that the

method will always look different. But God does not abandon

his children. And it may not look how it looked

like in the past, it may not look like how

it looked for this past generation. But God is saying,

don't hold me to those standards. Open your mind for more,

open your faith for more, for me to intervene in

what we have going on.

God's new work.

Is not intended to replace what he has done for

your life. It's meant to surpass what He's done in

your life. And this is what happens when we embody

a blank slate faith. We say, come one, Come a God.

How whatever you want to do, I'm ready for it.

We are not confined to our past experiences with God.

The second thing that.

I want to show you is that a new thing

is an original thing. Somebody say original thing.

Come on.

That first part of verse nineteen says, look, I am

about to do something new. That word new in the

Hebrew is this word hadash, which has two different meetings. Look,

didn't even know that you're gonna get a Hebrew lesson

Old Testament history and a language lesson. You guys are

spoil Just kidding anyways. It has two meetings, New Duh

and also Fresh. I just happened to be in Texas

this past week to celebrate Christmas with my family, our

first Christmas Eve service since like.

I don't even know, like a minute.

And when we were back in Texas, I'm from a

small town called Lubbock. They just opened up a Brazilian steakhouse. Listen,

I'm gonna give y'all free game. If you have not

been to Brazilian steakhouse, I'm praying for you. We need

to go check that out. Gotta focut a child and

Linwood hit it up. Lunch prices twenty two to fifty.

Come on, gotta memorize, all right. So I don't know

about y'all, but when I go out to eat, I

don't want the krusty steak that's been in the backspice

it that looks like it's been aging for a little bit.

When they walk around, I'm looking for the thing that's

still steaming. You guys have have been out to a

Mexican restaurant and they bring out the fijidas and it's

still sizzling. It's like the whole restaurants like dang. I

kind of wish I got that. I didn't know it

was gonna be all steaming like that.

I want that.

And that's what God wants to show us, is that

in this new thing and this original thing, it's something

that you haven't seen before. It's something that it changes

the way that we think. When we box our expressions

with God's whether we acknowledge it or not, we tame

our expectations for how God wants to show up, we

limit how much our faith can actually grow. Now, this

is not a hardship. This is not an indictment on God.

This is more so an indictment on ourselves. God just

not really showing me.

No, we are not.

Opening ourselves up to receive what God's actually trying to

do in our life, to see how we're trying to

show up in our lives. And it's hard and it's

difficult because a new thing, an original thing, is something

that is uncomfortable because you haven't done it before.

Like I've never done plates.

I'm probably not gonna do pilates, but I'm sure that

if I tried it, it'd be uncomfortable for a little bit.

I don't even know what plates does, but I'm sure

it's something that it's great, So shout out if you

do pilates. So I don't even know where they came from.

God wants to work in new ways. So what is

this new, original thing that God is trying to tell

the Israelites about. Well, we get the benefit of seeing

the aftermath because we have the whole Bible.

We get to skip into the future.

And this is why it's imperative that the fulfillment of

this promise, which is called immediate, doesn't happen for over

one hundred and twenty years, which is crazy. Like imagine

saying like I got you in eighty years. Sometimes it happens.

And it's this line that God in the former Exodus

has yet used these miraculous things, these overly clear, abundant signs,

the the splitting of the Red Sea, these obviously just

raw power moments, and he does something even more miraculous

for these Israelites. He uses the geopolitical sphere, and like,

what does that even mean? Seventy years into the Babylonian exile,

the Persian Empire overtakes Babylon, and it is this king

named King Cyrus, who lets the Israelites go home. It

says just the second Chronicles and the first year of

King of Persia. In order to fulfill the word of

the Lord spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord roused the spirit

of King Cyrus of Persia to issue a proclamation throughout

his entire kingdom, and also to put it in writing.

This is what King Cyrus of Persia says. The God

of the heavens has given me all the kingdoms of

the earth, and has appointed me to build him a

temple at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among

you may go up, and may the Lord his God

be with him. God tells him earlier and Isaiah chapter

forty five. Whatever you seek out to do, I'm gonna

empower you to attain victory. I'm gonna give you over

and here. Don't don't get this twisted Persian king, foreign king,

non believer, and who God is. God is not convinced

by this. This is what he tells. This is a

conversation between Cyrus and God himself. That says Isaiah forty

five four through five. I call you by your name.

For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my

chosen one. I give a name to you, though you

do not know me. I am the Lord, and there

is no other. There is no God but me. I

will strengthen you though you do not know me. There

is a caveat attached to this fulfillment of the promise

that I'm gonna get to in a second. But what

this really highlights is that God works all things together,

and nobody is bigger than the plans of God. Nobody

is bigger than what God has ordained for a moment.

It may take different avenues, it may be a back

road instead of a highway, but God is faithful to

his promises. Where the Israelites would have been expecting and

looking for the all miraculous wonder of what God was

gonna do, God was behind the scenes working in your favor.

Maybe that's a reminder for somebody in the room who

needs it. That you've thought God has abandoned you, that

he's left you, that he told you no to your prayer.

But things are working that you are unaware of. The

Conversations are being had that include your name, that include

that blessing that you've been hoping for and just when

you thought you were abandoned and left, God does his

best work and showing I am for you, I am

with you, I've never forgotten you.

I've heard every prayer.

Something I've been telling our students is you have to

realize no one has a better clue of what you

need than the person who crafted you.

The person who.

Sees the beginning, middle, and end all at once at

the same time, maybe has a reason for telling you

no to your prayer. The gut check that I tell

our students is can you believe that a no to

you contains love? And it's in this fear that we

see that this was not to glorify the king as

an unbeliever, but to show the avenues that God is

willing to go for his people. There is no hill

amount that he won't climb. There is no thing that

he won't use for you, guys, to live in the promise,

to live in the future that He's ordained for you.

It is a lie of the enemy that arenas of

our life are off limits to what God can do.

There is no job, no.

Ailment too big or too small that cannot have transformative effects.

And what God is doing in your life and through

around you. Such things that are off the cuff that

you don't think twice about, that have ripple effects throughout

the people around you, in your community, Small things that

you would never know the long term effect of what

it looks like and what God is doing. Everything can

be used. Yeah, I got time. I want to tell

you about this artifact that gets found. And for some

of the scholars in the room, you might roll your eyes.

Let me finish. I got you now the confirmation and

what I told you there was a caveat on when

God was telling Cyrus.

You do not know me.

Let me explain in eighteen twenty nine. Make sure I

got that year right, eighteen seventy nine.

Excuse me.

This artifact was found called the Cyrus cylinder, and it

looks like this. Well, actually that's a lufa. Let's go

to let's go over, let's go to the actual picture.

It's the exact same thing.

The first time I saw it, I was like someone

just put out a lufah, put some dust on it,

and just called it. Today they're like, yeah, it's it's

the Cyrus cylinder.

It's it's everything. It's amazing.

Now Christian influencers are making these videos that this is

the ultimate proof of an old prophecy, the historical evidence

that what God was doing in the moment, this is

what is said. Now what this thing says technically, Now,

I'm gonna paraphrase, Cyrus gives this decree to Babylon saying,

God has given me the victory of what we're doing

and where we're at. It's pretty much just laying out

the law now that I'm in charge. Here's what we

got going on. Great Now, if you take a deeper look,

the god that Cyrus talks about in this is not Yahweh.

It's actually a god named Marduke, a false god that

the Babylonians worshiped. And so then you might be like, well, then, Johnny,

why did you bring it up If it's not proven

what you're saying it's proven. Here's Cyrus's move, him overtaking

multiple cultures. His role in goal and method for keeping

the peace was religious tolerance.

And he would never pull.

Up to somebody's kingdom, pull take over a group and say,

my God gave me the victory over you. No, he's

better than that. He said, your God gave me the

victory to win over. You trust your God. You can

worship whoever you want to worship. You can build a

temple of whoever you want to build up with. But

know that that God is the one who allowed me

to get victory.

Smart.

Now this the proof of what this shows is the pattern,

because when Cyrus and God are talking, this sets the

element that this wouldn't be his only decree, not a

one time trick. But God looks at him and he says,

I know your tricks. I know what you would say,

I know what you would do. Put that verse back

up of the Isaiah forty five.

I give you a name, though you do not know me.

Here's the raw truth.

You can lie to your pastor, you can lie to

your family, you can lie to your spouse, you can

act any kind.

Of way and say you are a believer.

But the one person that you cannot lie to is

a person that crafted you. And so what God is

saying in this moment is you can step out and

send out that decree that says God gave me the victory.

And I know you mean nothing by it, but I'm

gonna use that anyways. Your words are empty. You don't

mean what you say, I'm not the lord of your life.

And so just so you know, I am the one

and only true God, and I'm gonna use your empty

words for the deliverance of my people because that's just

how good God is. I made a promise and I'm

gonna keep it, and I'm gonna expose you to do it.

That's just how good our God Isn't that good?

Is this for somebody? Oh you're good? Can we keep going?

Well, I'm gonna keep going anyways, I got ten minutes

the new thing of what God is trying to do.

The people change and the execution looks different, but one

thing is very clear. God does not abandon his people.

The fulfillment of the promise might look different, though, we

have to be okay with it, because if we're not,

we will rob ourselves of the deliverance that we were

actually in store for. We are not confined to our

past experiences with God. A new thing is an original thing.

And the last thing that I want to share with

you is that with God, nothing is off the table.

That last verse nineteen says, do you not see it? Indeed,

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers

in the desert. How many of you have ever felt

like you're you're you're in the wilderness, either right now

or you've been in the wilderness. It looks like everywhere

you turn you can't see away everything, your your vision

is blocked. There's always something happening, there's always something going on.

It looks like there's just nothing. Every something's always happening.

There's always a problem that either it's your kids, it's

the marriage, it's it's your job, it's it's something that

you you don't have any time to actually look at

where you're going, and you just feel like you're walking

around aimlessly.

For some of us, it's a desert.

People are asking you, what's going on with your life,

what's the next thing you're excited for, And you have

to lie through your teeth because it's nothing. You feel

like you are in a barren wasteland. In life, you

are living in scarcity. There is no nothing growing around you,

and you look out and as far as you can see,

there's nothing to attain, there's nothing to reach for it,

there's nothing to walk towards, and it looks like.

This right now, in this moment, there is no other light.

Sometimes we hyper focus on the problem, and it looks

just like this where we're at, where all we can

see is the problem in front of us. What I

love about God in the scripture, and you don't have

to go there. I'm just gonna repeat it again. Just

keep this desert picture up. God acknowledges. He doesn't say,

if you stumble into the desert, if you stumble into

the wilderness, No, this is a given. He's like, this

is obvious. You are going to encounter this. You are

going to go through hardship. You're going to be in

the wilderness. You're gonna be in the desert. You're gonna

go through suffering. But I will not let you be destroyed.

That is the focal point of what you're trying to

say in your hardship.

When you feel like you have been.

Alone, abandoned and isolated, hold on to the truth and

the word that I am willing to make a way

where you are struggling.

I'm willing to make a river where there is droughts.

That's who God is in this life, and too many

of us, in our humanity, all we see is the

desert in the wilderness. But if we begin to look

in our faith and this is what I'm telling you

to look at your life, not the sheap of not

in the shape of goals, not how to be a

better person, but how to be a better follower, a

better son and daughter.

This begins to reveal itself. We begin to.

Look at the desert, look at the wilderness with there's

gonna be a river here, There's gonna be a way here.

I don't know, I don't see it. But here's the

trap that you and I fall into. We go to

the short term relief. And I want to say this

that when God would offer the way, we are satisfied

with the mirage of the enemy. Think about what a

mirage is. The mirage is what you desperately want and need.

It's not what you actually need, it's what you feel

like you deserve. It's what would fix the solution. It's

the quick duct tape on the machine that's broken. It's

everything like I need this. And what happens when we

stumble into the mirage We go to what's easy. We

go to what's low hanging fruit. We go to what's

gonna instantly make us feel better. It's the enemy, and

how the enemy operates is in timp impiary, temporary until

it's too late. And so when we begin to chase

the mirage, this is what I think I need. This

is what I think I need. When the mirage disappears

and it will, you realize that there's so much there.

There's a bigger catch that as you were following the

mirage and the mirage goes away, you are deeper in

the wilderness and deeper in the desert than you've ever

been in your entire life, and you ask the question,

how did I get here? There is no way back,

there is no way out.

Can I tell you?

This is just another example of God setting the ultimate

precedence that when you needed deliverance, when you needed freedom,

when you needed the exodus, it was paved away for

the ultimate exodus, that in our drought and our hardship,

there would be a day that in the death and

the resurrection of Jesus, God is coming to for all

the grace, all the promises to deliver his people. Jesus

is the Way, the truth, and the light, and he

begins to elevate us in what we're doing. Oh, that

was a nice media team, like hey coordinated with the

hand move and everything. Okay, all right. I know you

had it in your game like that. That's nice.

What is this required?

That first part of verse nineteen says do you not

see it? It implies that God's new work may be

hard to discern because it's unconventional or it's subtle. So

I asked the question, how do you train your ear?

Some of us have become so calloused in our faith

that we don't even recognize the new voice. The new

reminded the new direction that God is trying to give

us to walk into. And we've become hyper obsessed with

the desert, hyper obsessed with the problem that we are

blind to the avenues. As the desert was up and

this was commanding your attention, you would often forget that

there are four doors to get out of here.

And that's often how God's working.

We get so obsessed with the problem, so obsessed with

the hardship, that God is trying to tell you, can

you turn around? Stop walking this way, take a right,

take a left, open the door. Quit going where the

sands at the desert. When the enemy offers mirage, God

offers away. A couple weeks ago, Me and Mike and

Anderson also shout out to Anderson long Care if you

have any long care needs. He's a sponsor of the podcast.

They paid me to say that. And I was kidding.

We were doing a Bible study going through the Book

of Luke. We do it every Tuesday morning. I mean

with a couple of our leaders throughout the week. That's

not the invitation. Don't show up. I was kidding. We

were going through Luke twelve. You ever like read a

piece of scripture.

That like you hear it.

At the right time and it just cuts you to

the core, like it's just what you needed to hear.

I was always reading this. It just I did it.

I had to do with double take.

Luke twelve, uh verses thirty one through thirty two says this,

but seek his kingdom, and these things will be provided

for you. Don't be afraid, little flock, because your father

delights to give you the kingdom. That word don't that's

just that phrasing, don't be afraid little flock took me

back doing some more research on it. That term little

flock is a double diminutive, which simply is a literary

feature that is meant to convey the smallness of an

ordinary object, often use as a term of intimacy or endearment.

This is literally like Jesus saying, oh, little flock, you're

so small, but you're my flock. And I love the

continued language of what he says of not only little flock,

but because your father. There are often accounts in Jesus

talking with his people, he says, our father. But Jesus

takes the extra step in this moment to say, I

don't want you to get it conflicted. I'm gonna remove

myself from this equation right now. Your father delights to

give you his kingdom, delights to answer the promise he

gives you to answer you in your drought. Don't don't,

don't reflect, don't don't even He cares about you. Whenever

I saw that term little flock, it reminded me of

my grandpa. He passed away this past October, and I

had fly flashbacks. When I was a kid, he'd wake

me up at five am on weekdays, disgusted for no reason,

just like get up, and he would take me in

his suburban and he'd turn on Garth Brooks, Friends of

Little Places come on. And he would take me to

go get coffee with his old friends, and they would

talk about Westerns and whatever else old people talk about.

Sorry, I sea some people talk.

About And I remember he had the nickname for me.

He called me his number one grandson.

We'd go out on the weekends and we'd go to

garage sales and he's like, there's my number one grandson.

And as I got older, i'd come back and visit.

I'd be in college eighteen nineteen and I'd come back

twenty two, twenty one, And whenever he'd see me, he said,

how's my number one grandson?

And it would just like pierce me in the soul.

Oh. I'm like, you don't have to call me. I'm Johnny.

You're always be my number one grandson. And it always

took me to a place when he said it. I

felt like I was five again. I'm like, yeah, I am.

I am your No One grandson. I was his only grandson.

But still, if there were others, I'm convinced I would

have been number one. All right, you can't tell me otherwise.

The name means something, And I want to ask you

this question.

Have you forgotten your name? Too?

Many of us and my step on toes here, we

prioritize being a mother and father. We prioritize being a

husband and a wife. We prioritize being a brother and

a sister. We prioritize being a good coworker, We prioritize

being just a good person. Indeed, before we turned to

what should be the most important thing, being a son

and daughter. This is important because this is not a position.

This is not a role. You don't clock out of this.

It's an identity. When I have the mindset, I am

a son and daughter. This is how we grow and

everything else. You want to be a father and husband,

be a better son, You want to be a better mother,

better sister, be a better daughter. Lean into our creator,

lean into who God is and not will transform everything

because that's just how good our God is. A blank slate.

Faith invites in the newness, invites in the original, and

it will take you places you couldn't even fathom. You

may be on the end of your life, you may

be closer to the end of the beginning. Can I

tell you there's still something for you, for my youth students,

you're just getting started. There's a lot on the table.

I want to pray for you and about you. All

stand up on your feet and there's two groups of

people I want to pray for. Number One, you're in

this room. You're in your wilderness, you're in your desert,

you're in an affliction. You're hearing these terms of son

and daughter, and you didn't even know God could be

that personal. The reality is, two thousand something years ago

God sent his son in the form of man to

die for you on the cross. But the story wasn't over.

Then He rose for you too, for you to have

an opportunity and a choice, like a moment like this,

to say, God, I accept you into my heart. Jesus,

I declare you as the Lord of my life. And

so with every head bout and every eye closed. If

you're in this space and you would say I have

never accepted God into my heart and you want to,

I'll tell you now it's a huge decision. It's not

an easy decision. Is life gonna be peachy right after

you do it?

Probably not.

It's honestly, probably gonna suck immediately after because the devil

wants you to, wants to make you feel like what

you decided was fraudulent. But take one thing from today.

God does not abandon his children. You will suffer but

you will not be destroyed. And so if you're in

this room and you would say I'm ready to make

that choice, I'm gonna count to three, and I just

want you to stick your hand up. Ready, one, two, three,

No one's looking, it's just you and me.

Come on, come on, all wait, Thank you Jesus. Everybody

repeat after me.

Dear Jesus, I accept you as my Lord and savior,

transform me, save me, and only the ways that you can.

It's in your name, I pray. Heymen, can we give

a handcuff the people which give a life to Jesus.

Bible says that if you believe with your heart and

confess with your mouth, salvation is attainable. And you have

a father that is just looking so much so forward

to building that relationship with you. The second group of

people I want I want to pray for is you've

been walking numb, you've been walking blind, and you're ready

for a blank slate type of faith. You're ready to

open up your heart and your mind for the newness

that God can break into your own life, your family

and beyond. I'm not even gonna count down if you

want that. If you want that blank slately, I just

want you to stick your hand up, no countdown, know nothing.

You don't have to be ashamed of this. This is

an amazing thing. And I want to pray over you,

Dear God. I lift up every person who's raising their hand,

and God, I declare your providence would be in their life. God,

out of clare the softening of the hearts and the minds,

that your nature would begin to reveal authentic and new

things that we welcome, the original thing. We welcome the

answer to your promises. And Lord, we trust you with everything.

So God give us that blank slate type of faith

in your name, we pray Amen. The last thing I

want to say I would did this last year is

a free plug.

I know him over a little bit. Forgive me.

Don't look how over all myn bro. Come on now,

don't expose you like that. We have our winter camp

coming up. That's right, shout out, that's great. We only

have thirty spots.

And here's the thing.

This is not a big push for you, like break

your kids arm, make them come da.

That's not this.

I want to tell you what this means. It's not

because we have a dop venue. I honestly I don't

care about that. It's because I believe, without a shadow

of a doubt, this is gonna be the winter camp

that we talk about for years, that as we start

the new picture, God is gonna do something genuine and

authentic and the whole church is gonna reap the benefits

of the overflow. And if you're like, my kid's not

going to that, I would ask you this, then would

you contend for these kids who are going to camp

like you would pray for your baby boy, your baby

girl that they would have an unreal encounter in a moment,

I'm believing for unforeseen things. And if you want to

get signed up, talk to Melanie me min A Lobby.

It'll be great. But I'm great for this and I'm

grateful for what we do and the best is yet

to come. Clear Take it away.