Stand Guard

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

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

Well, what an honor it is to be with you.

You know, many of you have been friends and family, and you have prayed for me through a lot of hard journeys and through a lot of unknown journeys.

You've heard my dad tell stories about me.

You're welcome because I am his number one sermon illustration.

And so you're welcome for all the humor in his messages.

I have provided you with that over my 30 years, 31 years of life.

But man, it's an honor to stand here with you today and kick off a brand new year to trust God with something new in this place and in this house.

You know, one of the things that's really fun about being a daughter of the house is I get to hear how my parents talk about you.

And man, do they love you.

They talk about you all the time.

You would think that you are their fourth child, their most favorite child at times.

They just, they lavish love on you guys.

They pray for you all the time.

The last two times that I have come to visit, we have been sitting around the dinner table, and stories will begin to be told about how the Lord is working in your lives, how he's healing you, how he's giving you promotions.

This just happened this week.

We were sitting at the table, and my dad got all choked up as he talked about a member of Gateway Church who had just received a big promotion.

And he was so excited because God was blessing you and he saw how God was using you, and that is his heart desire.

And man, you are well loved, but you make it easy.

You love the Lord with your heart, you worship.

Just being in here worshiping with you all has been so much fun because you fall in love with God every single weekend.

And I just want to honor you and say thank you for being you.

You made it easy for my family to love you and to be a part of it and be here on this journey with you.

And so today I want to carry kind of what he just shared about this heart for the next generation.

But before I get there, I thought I would tell you just a funny story about me being a daughter of the house.

Now, listen, being a daughter has a whole lot of perks.

Like we get drinks, like that was my favorite thing as a teenager.

I always went to the green room and got the free snacks and the Dr.

Pepper.

That was my favorite thing.

There were a lot of perks to being a daughter of the house.

But when I got married, I decided I was gonna change my name and take my husband's last name, Fisher.

And right after that is when I really started to travel and speak and do different conferences and different things.

And so I was at a women's conference one time, and a group of women were attending the conference, and after the conference, they came and told me this story.

There were two sisters sitting in the audience, and I began to tell a story of mine.

And one of the girls leaned over to her sister and she said, Um, this isn't her story.

The sister said, What do you mean this isn't her story?

She's telling us her story.

She goes, Nope, I heard Pastor Robert tell this on TV, and this is not her story.

And the sister goes, You do know who that is, right?

That's Pastor Robert's daughter.

So now I tell people who I am, but I don't obviously need to tell y'all, but that was just my journey of being a daughter of the house.

And so it's been a fun journey, but also being a daughter of the house, I hear my dad talk about his heart for the next generation.

He just gave you a very small glimpse a while ago, but this has been something that has been a conversation at our table for quite some time.

And last year, I felt like the Lord dropped a message in my heart about the next generation.

And I told Ethan, when I get invited to Gateway, this is the message I'm going to preach.

And I thought I would have a lot more time, but my dad decided to give me that like rookie learning experience of, hey, here's a couple weeks to prepare.

And I don't, you can preach on whatever you want.

And anxiety seemed to take over.

And I called him and I said, Dad, there's this message that I really want to preach, and it's about the next generation.

And I feel like it's your heart for the church.

Is this right?

And he said, Absolutely, go with it.

And so today I want to bring to you a message about the next generation.

As a church, as a body of Christ, we have a part in helping passing something of value to the next generation.

And I think the thing that will determine if we actually hand something of value to the next generation will be how we choose to live our lives.

In the Bible, there's a definition of a complete generation.

That means the old and the young come together to after one vision and mission, and that is to make the name of Jesus famous.

And in culture, we have defined a generation by an age group.

Remember, whatever year you were born may mean that you're a boomer or a millennial or a Gen Z, but you are defined as a generation because of when you were born.

And I have a heart that we would not just be a part of an age generation that grabs and gleans all the lessons from the generation before us, but that we would also be a generation that hands something of value to the next.

But I also have a heart to be a part of a complete generation, one where the older and the younger come together with one vision and heart and mind.

And I think if we really are going to do that, we have to choose how we live.

You know, we can determine value many ways.

You can determine it by how much it cost.

But now, if you'll remember Christmas, we all have an ornament that probably didn't cost you very much.

And if you tried to sell it today, you wouldn't make very much on it.

But it probably holds so much value to you for one of two reasons.

Maybe a child made it and it has a really precious handprint on it, or it's a weird reindeer.

We just saw this on my mom's Christmas tree, a weird reindeer that I made as a little girl that's still on the Christmas tree.

Or maybe it was something that was handed down from someone important to you.

But the question is, how are we handling what has been given to us?

Our life.

It was handed to you by someone very important, and it is actually very precious, but oftentimes we don't hold it with the same value that we should.

And I believe that we need to start holding the life that we have been given with value.

And so I titled today's message Stand Guard.

Stand Guard.

When I was a little girl, I loved spy shows.

I always wanted to be a spy.

I pretended to be a spy.

This may have an effect because I only had two older brothers, so Barbies got blown up, but I was a spy and how they got blown up.

And I loved this journey.

And then I had four little kids and they have fallen in love with spy movies.

So I tell you that because this message may have slightly been inspired by watching spy kids about a thousand times.

But I got to asking myself, what would it be like to be a spy for Jesus?

And I remember two instances in the Bible where spies are talked about, and I want to dive into those two instances and glean some truths for them so that we can be prepared to hand something of value to the next generation in this year.

So let me start by the first one.

This is when Moses was the leader and he sent some spies to the promised land.

You can find this in Numbers 13.

I'm gonna start in verse 17.

It says, Moses gave the men these instructions as he sent them out to explore the land, go north through Negev into the hill country, see what the land is like, and find out whether the people living there are strong or weak, few or many.

See what kind of land they live in.

Is it good or bad?

Do their towns have walls?

Are they unprotected like open camps?

Is the soil fertile or poor?

Are there many trees?

And do your very best to bring back some samples of the crops you see.

It just happened to be the season of harvesting the first ripe grapes.

So they went up and explored the land.

The next couple verses are them exploring the land, but I want to jump down to when they come back to give their report to Moses.

And here it is in verse 25.

It says, After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned to Moses, Aaron, and the entire community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Peron.

They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.

This was their report to Moses.

We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Here is the kind of fruit it produces.

But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are huge and they're large and fortified.

We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak.

The next verse is gonna tell you where they all live, and it's a lot of ice and a lot of interesting words.

So we're gonna skip down to verse 30.

And it says, But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses.

Let's go at once and take the land, he said.

We can certainly conquer it.

But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed.

We can't go against them, they are stronger than we are.

So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites.

The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there.

All the people we saw were huge.

We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak, and next to them we felt like grasshoppers.

And that's what they thought too.

I find that little phrase so interesting.

We're gonna come back to it in just a minute.

But I want to now look at the next incident where spies are talked about in the Bible.

In this one, Moses has died, and there's a new leader.

Joshua is now going to send some spies.

And here's what it says in Joshua 2, verse 1.

Joshua 2:1

Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Achaia Grove.

He instructed them to scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho.

So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night.

Rahab is a prostitute, and she lived in a house that was in the city wall.

So it was a convenient place for travelers to stop.

Sometimes they may stop for their services, but we never, in this, we have no reason to believe that anything immoral happened when these two spies stopped there.

But while they were at her house, the king found out there were spies coming to check on the land, and he sent some guards to Rahab's house.

And he said, Go and tell them they need to leave.

And so here the guards come to Rahab's house, and she says, Oh, I'm so sorry, you just missed them.

They they went out that way.

And she sends them on a journey outside the city gates, and as soon as these guards leave, the gates close for the evening.

And she goes upstairs to where she had hidden the spies, and she says, Listen, the whole land, they know that this land is yours, that God has given it to you, and the entire land is terrified of you.

And she began to beg them, Hey, since I spared your life, would you please spare mine and my family?

And so they made an agreement that if she hung what we would know today as a piece of fabric from her window, that anybody that was in her household would be spared.

Any family member inside her household.

But if for some reason a family member was outside of her household when the Israelites came to conquer the land, then their blood would not be on the Israelites.

And then after they made this agreement, she sent them on their way, but in the opposite direction she had sent the spies to protect them.

So here they are now coming back, and look at the report that they gave Joshua.

And I want us to notice the difference.

Here it is in Joshua 2, starting at verse 23.

Then the two spies came down from the hill country, crossed the Jordan River, and reported to Joshua all that had happened to them.

The Lord has given us the whole land, they said, for all the people in the land are terrified of us.

After I read these two passages and I began to study them, I asked myself a few questions that I would like to ask us today.

Does my life inspire the next generation to confidently conquer their promised land?

Or does it cause them to doubt the goodness of God in it?

Does my life inspire the lost to want to know Jesus more?

Or does it cause them to want to back away because they're not so sure it's a good thing?

And I just began to be so burdened about this that I got to saying, you know what?

If I really am going to hand something of value to the next generation, am I really going to live a life that confidently encourages them to conquer their promised land?

I'm going to have to stand guard and live my life in a way that does.

And so today I want to talk to us about three things that we need to guard if we want to hand something of value to the next generation.

And the first thing is guard your purpose.

Now, I feel like my dad does this very well.

He knows that he has a purpose to feed the body of Christ.

And because he knows that, he will guard his quiet time.

He will say no to other different invitations that he may receive or different outings that he may go to.

He will guard his purpose because he understands that it has value.

And because he guards it, it has become something that is valuable to the next generation.

You may know this, you may not, but there are pastors all over the world that will use his messages to equip the body of Christ.

You and I have all benefited from his messages because he has guarded his purpose.

And now there is something of value for us.

But the Israelites did not do the same thing.

Moses recounts the story, and here's what he says, but it gives us a little uh glimmer of insight of why they did what they did.

It's in Deuteronomy 1.

And it says, But you all came to me, this is the Israelites, came to Moses and said, First, let's send out scouts to explore the land for us.

They will advise us on the best route to take and which towns we should enter.

This seemed like a good idea to me, so I chose twelve scouts, one from each of your tribes, and they headed for the hill country and came to the valley of Eshkal and explored it.

They picked some of its fruits and brought it back to us, and they reported, The land the Lord your God has given us is indeed a good land.

Do you know why Moses sent the spies?

It was to appease the Israelites.

But here's what he did: he gave them a reason to go.

He gave them a purpose.

They were going to determine where to enter, not whether to enter.

They were going to determine how they were going to conquer the land, not if they were going to conquer the land.

But we sometimes lose sight of our purpose and we cause some more problems, I could say.

Have you ever been to the grocery store and you forgot the list and you're hungry?

What happens?

You begin to wander around and you have no purpose.

You pick up things you do not need.

You end up leaving with more things than you even needed, right?

You pick up what was never meant to be yours because you have forgotten your purpose in the grocery store.

But what we do it all the time.

We walk into a plan where God has called us into something and we're still trying to decide: is this a good thing that God has given me?

Is this a good thing he's asking me to do?

And because of that, we're wandering around, forgetting our purpose.

And because of that, we're picking up things that were never meant to be ours.

The Israelites picked up something that was not theirs.

God has a vision for you.

He has a purpose for why he puts you on this earth, and it is to build the kingdom.

And if you lose sight and you do not guard your purpose, you will end up wasting time.

A question you can ask yourself is Am I looking for a path or a problem?

Am I looking for possible opportunities or am I looking for a potential exit?

Because if you're looking for an excuse, you will find one.

The Israelites did not trust God.

They were doubting his promise and his power.

And why would they do that?

Because they still were unsure if God would give them a good thing.

Maybe you have doubted God in an area and you're still unsure, would he give you a good thing?

Can I tell you, you will know if you are doubting God by how you want to enter your promised land?

Are you trying to send some tests to go out before you?

You know, the Israelites, they ruined themselves because they decided to hold man's voices louder than God's.

They ruined themselves because they held on to the report of people more tightly than they held on to the divine revelation of God.

It's sad to me because they were willing to be held in suspense, waiting for people to tell them that it was good instead of walking in obedience and finding certainty in the covenant of God.

There are so many things that we miss out on because we allow doubt to hold us back.

We allow fear to overtake us.

But Joshua, he wasn't going to create a place for people to trip and fall into doubt and fear.

He sent spies for a battle plan because he had one thing in mind to keep wisdom close and fear at bay.

Notice the difference between Moses and Joshua.

Moses sent 12 spies and Joshua sent two.

Moses said, Come back and give a report to the whole community.

And Joshua said, Come back and give a report to me, and I will lead the community.

Moses said, Survey the entire land.

Joshua said, go to the specific place because it'll be the first place that we conquer and the only one that is important right now.

Moses sent it to appease the people.

Joshua sent them for a battle plan.

Moses' trip instilled fear, and Joshua's trip instilled confidence and wisdom.

He held on to wisdom and he let fear move out.

But you and I sometimes we struggle and we bring fear in close and we let go of wisdom in the process and we let that go farther out.

But God wasn't giving them a glance of their future so that they would be full of fear.

He was giving them a glance of their future so that they would be reminded that their best days are yet ahead.

God is telling you that your future is bright.

He's giving you a glance, he's giving you a word for the year, he's giving you something, not so that you will be full of fear, but that so you will let faith rise up in you because your best days are yet ahead.

You know, we have to guard our purpose.

The Israelites had a lot of problems.

In hindsight, we could read their story and tell you they had a lot of problems.

But I think they had one major problem that affected all the others.

And it was their complaining and their grumbling about everyday discomforts in life.

They allowed their complaining to take over.

They allowed this lie to maybe fester in their heart that said, My problems will rob me of my victory, but with God, problems don't rob us of our victory.

And I think that they didn't guard their purpose, but the second thing they did not guard is they did not guard their thoughts or their words.

They did not guard their thoughts.

And if you and I are going to have a life that is worth value to the next generation, to the generations around us, we are going to have to guard our thoughts.

In 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5, it says, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

I love how the message says this.

It says, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of a life shaped by Christ.

That word captive, it comes from a military background.

And they would use it to maybe describe that if a robber were to break into the house, they would hold up a spear and they would say, if you take one more step, I'll kill you.

And when he used this in this passage, it was as though he was saying, Hey, the next time the enemy comes after your mind, the next time the enemy comes after your marriage or your children without one little thought, why don't you pick up the closest weapon you have and hold it up against him and say, if you take one more step, I'll kill you?

Why don't we begin to allow the truths of God's word to be the weapons that we start using against the battles that we are facing in everyday life?

Why is it that you and I protect our car and our house more than we protect our mind?

You have security systems, you have keys all over, but do you have it for your mind?

Are you protecting, are you guarding, are you taking it captive and allowing the God of the universe to put a shield around you so the enemy cannot win?

Because if he wins against you, he may just win in the next generation, too.

We have got to learn to guard our thoughts.

Proverbs 23, 7 says, For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

Have you ever heard where you focus is the direction you'll go?

I once read a story about a skydiver, and before they went on their journey, they said, Hey, listen, the field that you're going to land in at the very back corner is a really small dumpster, but whatever you do, just don't notice the dumpster.

Don't look at it and don't focus on it.

The field is huge, though.

You'll be just fine, okay?

Y'all know where the story's going, right?

As soon as he came Close to that field, he noticed the dumpster, and for some reason he couldn't take his eyes off the dumpster because all of his mind was like, Don't land there, don't land there.

And we all know what happened.

He landed in the dumpster.

This is what happened to the Israelites.

They went into a land and all of a sudden they saw giants and they began to believe that they were grasshoppers.

I love that the passage said, and they thought so too.

You know, this is funny to me because if I were me and I walked into a land of giants, I don't think I would go, um, excuse me, excuse me, sir, um, you're a giant, and I'm not so much so.

Um, and I was thinking, I've been feeling recently that like I feel like a grasshopper, and I I know that's probably not your intention or your heart, so I just thought you would maybe help me through that feeling.

Um, do you see me as a grasshopper?

That didn't happen.

I have no proof to say a conversation happened while they were in the promised land.

So here's what I think.

I think it was an assumption.

I think most of the lies that you and I began to believe and say out loud over and over again and begin to build a life on are based on an assumption.

I think sometimes we give more power to what we assume they believe about us than what the ultimate truth God says about us.

I think we sometimes walk with these assumptions, and here they were living a life of fear, choosing to wander in their desert over walking into their promised land because of an assumption that they made that they could not when they were never asked if they could.

They were only told to obey what God had said.

And yet, long before they lost the battle of taking over the con the promised land.

And what I mean by they lost is it took them a lot longer to get there because they chose to not guard their thoughts.

They chose to not protect what they said out loud.

Here's what I think.

I think most of us are not firsthand cowards, but I think most of us do fall into a trap where we will choose to allow man's voice to be louder than God's.

I think most of the time we would rather listen to what other people are saying than ask God what does he think about the situation.

I think most of the time we're trying to go after a consensus.

When we're not ever supposed to go after a consensus, you're going after confirmation.

You're not looking for the world to agree with you because truth is often not the largest number.

You are looking to be confirmed in what he has said.

Think about Joshua for a second.

He heard one uh phrase seven times.

Seven times.

And he heard it through multiple people.

But do you know why God repeats himself?

Now, some of you may have heard this because my dad has preached this before, but obviously I gave this to him many, many years ago.

Um so let me just tell you why God repeats himself, okay?

The first reason why God repeats himself is to emphasize.

We do this with kids, we do this with coworkers, we want to make a point, we want to make sure they have it.

We want to make sure they understand clearly what we're trying to say so we emphasize it.

Now, the first thing that the reason why God repeats himself is to emphasize.

We do this with parents and kids and I'm kidding.

The second reason is to encourage.

I've never run a marathon before, but I've heard that when you do run a marathon, you usually will repeat a phrase to yourself to remind you to stay in the game while you're trying to accomplish your goal.

But the last reason only God can do this, and it is to empower.

And it means to create or to mold.

When God created the world, he just used his words and he spoke it into existence.

Is it possible that when God was speaking to Joshua in the early days of his career, that he wasn't just trying to emphasize, be strong and courageous?

He wasn't just trying to encourage him, you're going to need to be strong and courageous.

Is it possible that he was actually creating within him the ability to be strong and courageous?

Is it possible that that word that you keep hearing through a coworker and through a mentor and through different people in your life, is it possible that maybe God is trying to get your attention?

Maybe next time you hear that word, stop and go, you know what, God, is there significance in this word?

Are you trying to do something through me with this word that I keep hearing?

Because our words have power.

When I'm talking about the next generation, I remember being a new mom and I had a very fussy toddler baby with me.

And I just remember someone coming up to me and being like, just wait till the terrible twos.

And you don't want to get there when they're a teenager, it's just even worse.

Thank you.

I remember being a newlywed, and I was telling stories.

They're like, Yeah, that's the newly fed ways.

Just wait.

I'm like, I don't want to wait anymore.

What's coming?

All of these thoughts that we say, all these comments that we say as off-handed comments, we don't understand.

But what it did for me is it instilled fear instead of faith.

Is it possible that the words that we're saying off-handed is causing the next generation to be fearful about where they're headed instead of being faith, full of faith with where they're headed?

Is it possible that we need to start guarding our words so that we can protect them?

Now listen, the Israelites still had a battle ahead.

They still had to conquer the land.

So please hear me.

I'm not asking that you do not tell them about the hard road ahead.

I want to know.

But please remind them that the goodness of God is in that land.

Please remind them that the faithfulness of God will walk them through their battle.

Please remind them that they are not fighting for victory, but they are fighting from victory.

Please remind them that they will never be left alone, that God will never leave them or forsake them.

Please, can we be a generation that gathers around each other and reminds each other of the goodness and the faithfulness of our God?

Can we guard our thoughts and our words?

And the last thing that we need to guard is we need to guard our actions.

Guard our actions.

Now, just as a little side note, um, this over the holidays, I had a personal accomplishment as we're talking about guarding our actions.

And um, I burned 2,000 calories in one setting.

Would you like to know how?

So you can all do the same.

Um, it's the last time I will ever put brownies in the oven while taking a nap.

And I'm obviously kidding because I have four young kids.

So my dad actually told me that joke because he gets naps, and I will one day.

All right, here we are.

Guard your actions.

Caleb was one of the original spies that went into the land with Moses when Moses sent spies.

And Caleb understood his purpose and he guarded his thoughts, he guarded his words.

He was one of the spies that said, No, no, no, we can't conquer the land.

And during that time, he made a promise with Moses that when they conquered it, he would get a part of the land.

Now, all this time has passed.

There's a new leader in charge, and he goes to Joshua and he says, Hey, um, if you remember, I was one of the original with you, and I believed we could take it just like you did.

And uh Moses promised me a piece of land, and I would like that.

And of course, Joshua said, Absolutely.

But the part of that story that really caught my eye is this.

It's in Joshua 14.

This is Caleb talking.

He said, For my part, I wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.

See, Caleb couldn't control the Israelites grumbling, he couldn't control the actions that were done to him, he couldn't even control the journey he would have to take into the promised land.

But the one thing he could control was his heart.

And he said, For me, I wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.

I wholeheartedly was in this, and I kept my eyes on him.

You want to know why?

Because he had a vision that was greater than himself, and his vision produced faith in his life that he knew that the faithful God would lead him where he was calling him.

And so today I just want to ask a question as you step into a new year, whose vision are you following?

Because Satan's vision is full of fear, and God's vision is full of faith, but it will require a lot of faith from you.

You could even change those words up a little bit, and you could say that Satan's vision is fearful, and God's vision is faithful, meaning he will remain with you through the whole thing.

You have what you need to do what God's called you to do.

You just have to guard it.

Faith is a muscle.

In James 2, there's a chapter about faith that I just want to read a little bit as we learn how we can guard our actions.

Starting in verse 14, it says, What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but don't show it by your actions?

Verse 17 says, So you see, faith by itself isn't enough unless it produces good deeds.

It is dead and useless.

Now some may argue some people have faith and others have good deeds, but I will show you my faith by my good deeds.

You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God good for you.

Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in fear.

Notice they are full of fear because of whose vision they're following.

How foolish! Can't you see that faith without good deeds is useless?

Now, in just a second, we're gonna jump down just a few more verses.

But if you remember, there was a woman in our story, her name was Rahab.

And yet here is her name mentioned in this chapter of faith.

It's found in verse 25.

It says, Rahab the prostitute is another example.

She has shown to be right with God by her actions.

When she hid those messages and sent them safely away a different route.

Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works.

See, action is the breath that gives your life, your faith life.

Action is the breath that gives your faith life.

One life can make a difference.

Rahab wasn't remembered for her past and for all the things she had done wrong.

She was remembered for her faith.

Her circumstances changed because she put her trust in God.

And when she did that, God granted her the desires of her heart.

In Matthew 1, it says that Samon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.

Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, and Obed was the father of Jesse.

Jesse was the father of King David.

And we know that that is the lineage of Jesus, meaning Rahab was granted the family, and she was part of the lineage of Jesus.

Why?

Because of her faith and putting her trust in God.

I know one thing to be true: obedience is a generational blessing.

And if you will choose to hear God, believe what he says, and obey him, I promise you the next generation will be wanting to know what's going on.

I promise you that if we'll guard our purpose and we'll guard our thoughts and our words that we speak and we guard our actions, the next generation will be curious about what's up.

I told you all in the beginning I wrote this message or it came to me last year, and I want to just tell you a quick story.

It actually happened this summer.

I went to speak somewhere, and because of different circumstances, my four kids were gonna come with me.

And it was the first time they had ever gone on a ministry trip with me.

And so here they are, they're coming with me, and I brought a friend to help.

And so we drove there, it was in driving distance, and I spoke on a Saturday night and two Sunday services.

And on that Saturday, we were sitting in the hotel room, and one of my daughters curled up next to me and said, Mom, how do you write a message?

And I said, Well, I just hear God and I write down what I feel like he's saying.

And she got a little notepad out and she started writing, and that moment really didn't mean much to me.

I didn't know anything about what was really happening until the next day we had two services.

My friend said, Would you mind if I brought your girls to one?

I said, Absolutely.

If they want to come, sure.

And during worship, my two girls stood next to me as we began to worship.

And the senior pastor had three girls, and they were all between the ages of about six and eleven years old.

And these five young women began to worship Jesus with all they had.

And if I'm honest, I became a little bit of a wreck inside.

Because you see, I didn't grow up seeing a lot of women on a platform preaching, and it wasn't because it wasn't offered, it was just not what I maybe put my attention on.

And here I was, to the senior pastor's knowledge, I was the first female communicator to preach to that church on a Sunday morning.

And there are five next generation women sitting right there worshiping God, and they're asking a question can I confidently walk into the promised land God's calling me to?

And I've always struggled with a little bit of fear stepping into my purpose.

I've known for a long time that I was called to speak and to write books and to travel and to do these different things, but I did also see an unfun side of ministry, and I just wasn't quite sure that's what I wanted to do.

And I let fear and anxiety cripple me in so many situations.

I remember that day I got up to preach and I walked off, and my little girls had taken so many notes to the best of their ability.

And I remember saying to the Lord, I may be too afraid to do it for me, but I won't be too afraid to do it for them.

I think if we want the next generation to follow God with their whole heart, you and I are going to have to confidently conquer our promised land.

We are going to have to let go of fear, and that may be that you have to stop saying it.

It may be that you have to stop repeating it.

It may be that you have to start guarding your thoughts and your words.

It may be that you have to say no to opportunities because you have to guard your purpose.

And you need to guard your actions because there is a generation, no matter where you are, we are a part of a completed generation, and there is a generation watching you asking, is the goodness of God ahead?

And I hope that my life and your life says yes and amen.

The goodness of God is ahead.

Would you bow your heads and close your eyes with me?

In this moment, would you just take a moment and say, God, what is my part?

What part do I maybe need to guard a little bit more this next year?

What part do I need to maybe quit repeating?

Quit speaking out?

What do I need to do so that my life is one of value to the next generation?

God, you are a good God, and your faithfulness endures forever.

God, may we be a generation that declares the goodness of God and the faithfulness of God.

And this next year, God, would you help us to guard our purpose?

You have put us here for a reason.

Would you help us to guard our purpose and to guard our thoughts and our actions so that we may be ones that inspire the next generation that they can confidently conquer their promised land?

May we be a generation that attracts the lost and that inspires the next to live boldly for you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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.