Living Legacy | Part One | Pastor Brodie Kalamen

Thank you for listening to the Kelowna Christian Center podcast.

Our desire is that today's message will be fresh and encouraging to you.

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We really want to be able to uh carry out each other's challenges, and I know many of you have been tracking with Sean and Val, and Sean and Val are uh in the Lawn family are are on their way on Tuesday, planning to go down to Mexico to get some extra treatment.

And uh Sean is one of the pastors on our team who last year at about this time of the year was diagnosed with uh liver cancer.

And so we're just continuing to believe, amen.

We just continue to believe for healing for his body and in their family that they would be able to be carry this and carry it through to the end.

Amen.

Keeping on believing, uh their daughter Mila shared with me her testimony the other day.

She found me and she had her notebook and she shared her story, and she's believing for her dad.

And I told her, Mila, we're gonna keep believing with you for his healing.

So we're gonna pray the first step he needs to get on that plane, get down there.

As many of you know, uh the border to Mexico and the whole uh conflict there between the U.S.

and Mexico at this point in time creates a little bit of disruption, a little bit of challenge.

So we're praying that God just makes open doors for them the whole way down.

Amen.

Well, if you're taking notes today, this is a good time to take your pen out and uh some note papers out or open up your your digital notepad.

Some of you may bring those to church.

And uh, we're gonna start on a new series this month of December called Living Legacy.

Would you say that with me?

Living Legacy.

I'm excited to uh share it with you next week.

Pastor Ed is gonna be sharing and continuing on the series.

Uh, but for this morning, the sermon uh title is entitled Here and There.

Would you say that?

Here and there.

Here and there.

Now I'm sure you may, we've been talking and singing about heaven already this morning, but uh many of you maybe like me go back to a time and place where your mind, your body was present in a geographical place, but your mind was somewhere else.

You ever do that or remember that point?

You know, maybe you were in school, uh, perhaps you were um on a date, maybe not.

But your mind, you're like your body is there, you're listening, it's like when my son's talking to me about some things related to his game, he's playing or whatever.

My body is there, but my mind just is not there.

It's not present at that place.

Uh, I remember a time when I was in university, and I was I was just really struggling because it was so nice outside.

And I'm sitting in the library up at uh the university here, and I was looking at the mountains, and they were changing colors, and everything was really nice, and I was single at the time, so I was like, I could go wherever I wanted, and uh I could go hunting or outdoors, and I was watching the mountains, and and I was present in that study hall, but my mind was somewhere else.

I was thinking about the mountains.

My emotions, my thoughts were connected somewhere else.

Have you ever been in church?

It's a trick question, by the way.

You're pretty smart.

Where you're like, you're here and you're listening to the pastor, and you're like, good job.

No, you're like, you're listening, but uh your thoughts are on lunch, you know, it may be.

This is where we live as humans.

We live in uh a duplicitous place, we live in a complex place.

Uh there's where we currently are is here, and we're on planet earth, but our eyes and our our thoughts, and even today as we were singing these songs, uh, it was pointing us towards a spiritual place.

Heaven.

We're here and we're there.

We're here and we're there.

As Christians, we're heavenly minded.

We always think about heaven.

The scripture always challenges us.

Don't don't just think about earthly things.

Don't be so earthly minded.

Consider heaven.

And there's gonna be this tension in us that keeps pulling us to think earthly when our when Jesus' instruction is to think heavenly.

So our thoughts, our anticipation, our desires, our emotion shouldn't necessarily all be connected to this place, but should be connected there.

Um, I love Christmas, I love the time.

You know, we've rolled into the December holidays.

I've already been to two staff Christmas parties, and uh I'm hoping that's it for us until Christmas.

But if you're honest, if we're honest to a lot of people, this time of the year is actually a very difficult time of the year.

In fact, and it's kind of a piece of sad news, is that there are more suicides that happen in the month of December than happen all the rest of the year combined.

It's a difficult year for a lot of people.

And as much as you might enjoy it or you might be fine, there are a lot of people who are struggling at this point of the year, not because they don't have that more problems, it's because they're be they've become more aware of the problems that they currently have.

Financial challenges, family, relational challenges, all these things collapse on them during this time of the season.

And uh it's not it's not about uh this the season or this time, it's reminded, it's a good time of the year to remind ourselves that we can't be putting our our thoughts on this right now.

That there is somewhere else beyond this place, beyond the here.

There's a there.

You know where I'm going.

I'm telling you, our job, our mission is to represent God's heart to hurting people and broken people, and you can experience so that they can experience hope and healing in Jesus, right?

It's why we exist.

We exist to be able to point people to Christ.

That's why we gather here.

We don't build a church primarily for church people.

It would be actually selfish of us to do that, to build a service that is just for church people.

It would be selfish of us to be in that place because the reality is that heaven and hell exist.

The acknowledgement that there is a heaven, the acknowledgement that there is a place where God's presence is there, but there's no way to activate that that power is there.

We'll spend our time in one of those two places.

Eternity will be spent in those two places.

It'd be selfish of the church to just think about church people and not people who aren't here yet.

To think of the one that's not here.

So we can't just provide an atmosphere and an environment in a church service that is just for us.

This is a huge shift in some of the ways that we think because it used to be church would build for church people, but we have to consider the people who aren't here yet.

And when we go to heaven, or if Jesus was to visit us here on earth, he wouldn't say necessarily, hey, uh, you know, it's great you built a great service for yourself.

The the point is he'd say, hey, who have you been reaching out to?

Who have you brought?

Who's here?

Because you stretched out your hand and welcomed and embraced someone else into this place.

Um here's the here's a fact that 90% of people who accept Christ accept Christ during a church service.

90% of people who make a decision to follow Christ make a decision to follow Christ during a church service.

So there's a place in our church and our time in church that needs to be open to people to know God.

We need to create a space in church where people have an understanding of who God is.

So in church, we want to be a place where church people can come and unchurch people come, right?

So, how many of you would say unchurch people are welcome here?

That's right.

Unchurch people are welcome here.

Atheists, people with questions, skeptics, or they're people from different faiths.

They're welcome in church.

They're welcome to sit beside us, experience the service like us.

And I believe that God's grace is enough in this space that no matter who comes in the door, they can leave better and point it towards Christ.

That's our heart, and you play a huge part in people coming to know God.

So sometimes we step back so other people who are on the outside can step in.

Other people who don't know.

Sometimes we'll change our language, maybe from something you've been familiar to, a Christian language, we'll we'll change it so that people actually hear in a common and be able to understand from a common space.

Um, secondly, we want people to find freedom.

And that's not just gonna happen on its own, it's gonna happen in the context of relationships.

We believe that uh small groups and our connect groups are the best place for people to actually connect and to find that space of freedom.

Once they make a decision to follow Christ, I believe that there's stuff that gets worked out and it's worked out in the company of other people.

I'm grateful for the people that would came around me in my life and helped me to grow.

Even though there were some people in my life who were real good at like supporting me, and there were other people in my life who were really good at challenging me.

Iron sharpening iron.

They were the ones who like challenged me.

It's important that we have that space to grow, and that we have our connect groups starting again in February, and we encourage you all to be a part of it.

And next, we want you to discover your purpose.

Discovering purpose happens within our next steps program.

There is uh um a lot of people get to a place where they're connected, they make a decision to follow Christ, they connect with the community, but they never discover actually their purpose, their calling.

They never find that sweet spot where their spiritual gifts are aligned with their leadership style and their passion and what God has put them on this earth to accomplish.

And I believe that each of us have a sweet spot of life, of exercise, where it doesn't take anything for you to get up and go because you love what you've been called to accomplish.

And you'll never know that sense of uh appreciation than or or uh sense of validation when you're actually working in the place of your purpose, you're actually leading people in a place of your calling.

And so we want to help you find that calling.

So we again in January, we're gonna be starting our next steps program, and we encourage each person to be a part of that.

And uh the the challenge is that sometimes we just say, okay, now work on me, work on me, work on me.

And it's all about me and helping me grow, but there comes a time where God says, Okay, now that you found your calling, I want you to start serving other people.

And that's where you can make a difference.

And it comes to a place where we actually make a difference in another person's life.

And how awesome is it when you can actually uh you can actually exercise the gifts that God's given you to actually reach other people, and other people come to know Christ because of you, and that's what's so exciting.

So we want you to find this place of purpose.

We want you to find this place of living your life to full potential.

We turn to your the person you're sitting beside and say, full potential.

Full potential, that's right.

And that's the legacy that we leave behind.

That's the legacy we leave behind.

I when I think of legacy, not only do I think of like oftentimes we think of a legacy that was left behind, we hear about that at a funeral.

People's legacy that they left behind, but sometimes we're only reminded of the legacy after people are gone.

And they don't build towards that legacy while they're still breathing.

It's at this point of our life where we're above ground, where we want to be building towards the legacy that we're gonna be remembered for and known for after we pass.

So we build a legacy, we leave a mark in eternity, we leave a mark in our community, we leave a mark in our family.

And the Bible talks about a motivation, a motivation of our, and in scripture it talks about this great motivation to leave this legacy, and this motivation to live generously and to give our life away.

Because it's not about how much we take in today, it's about how much we can give away now for uh while we still have breath.

And the motivation that God tells us over and over is heaven.

Heaven.

The fact is we live on earth for a short time, and uh the scope of eternity is so vast.

My kids, I love talking to my kids about what the word eternity means.

They just like get mad at me because I'm like, it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And they're like, Dad, stop it, because it just bothers them.

They can't see an end.

Eternity is about eternity, it's about time that forever and ever and ever and ever, eternity.

We we have this moment in time, this 80 years that we have on this earth to actually prepare and invest in eternity.

So we make every moment in this space, we maximize every moment.

We maximize every breath, we maximize every conversation, we maximize every contact point, we maximize it for the for the for the view and from the for the perspective of eternity.

Um, the Bible talks about heaven, the space of eternity, but it also talks about earth here.

It says you can do certain things on earth today that will create a reward for eternity.

There'll become an eternal reward.

And we don't often talk about this eternal reward because oftentimes our ears want to hear, what can I do for God now that gives me a reward now?

Instead of saying, what do I do now that stores up a reward for me there?

We see here and we see there.

We look at both places and we say, God, what have you got planned for me for there?

When it comes to eternity, when we place our attention on eternity, we get God's attention.

When we think eternity-minded, we have God's attention.

When we think heaven-minded, we have God's attention.

In Scripture, it talks about uh treasures in heaven.

It talks about a blessed hope, a hope for this afterlife.

It says, even those who pass away, for those who mourn, we don't mourn as those who have had have no hope ourselves, but we also are planning for our eternal place.

I I read an article this morning, just to make sure I got some of the statistics right.

And I read this article that said, even though people, like there are a lot of people who don't believe in God, that night over 90% of people believe in an afterlife.

Not necessarily heaven, but an afterlife.

But those people who believe in the afterlife don't necessarily believe in God.

They believe, though, that we all go somewhere.

So in Ecclesiastes it says, well, why is that?

In Ecclesiastes says that the seed of eternity is in the hearts of every individual.

Like, why does someone think of eternity?

Why is eternity in the hearts of men?

Because God put it there.

God put it there.

We all know of our mortality.

We all think beyond this body and this current 70, 80 years of life.

We need to think beyond it.

1 Timothy, um, or today I'm gonna show you two places in Scripture and show you why we should place our resource, our energy, our time into heaven and not just on earth.

So let's look at 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 17.

1 Timothy 6:17

And you can read this in your Bible.

I've got it on the screen.

It says this command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

And some of you may look at it and go, Well, I'm not rich.

So that doesn't apply to me.

Yes, of some kind of a benefit to not being rich.

And I would say to you today, you are rich.

I always sat yesterday with a number, I had some great experiences over this last few days at the staff parties, meeting with people from Natalie's work and people from my work, and being able to connect with these different people from different perspectives and different worlds.

And uh it was interesting that one of the fellows we were sitting with at the table yesterday came from Brazil.

He says, You know, you think people are poor here?

People in Brazil, and he started to share with me about the poverty that they're experiencing in Southern America right now.

He says, This is real poverty they're going through.

He says, People in Canada, we we don't know what it's like to see poverty.

We don't know what it's like to be poor.

I would suggest every one of you, since you're wearing clothes, you found a way to get here, you're sitting on a comfy seat, are rich.

Turn to your neighbor and say, You're rich.

You're rich.

It says, command those who are rich in this present world not to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain.

Don't put your hope in wealth that's so uncertain.

It's incredible.

We get to this place where we can we can start to put our hope in things that are in our resources, and we start to cling and hold on to our resources and our wealth, thinking that we'll gain some kind of security in that.

And I thought, you know, maybe some people had learned the lesson of the global financial crisis of 2008.

You can hold on to it all you want, and it'll still slip through your fingers.

It'll still, you'll still lose it.

You'll still lose that bottom end.

It'll slip through.

But the Bible says that we need to live as those who are blessed to be a blessing.

Amen.

So to command those who are rich in this present world to not be arrogant and to keep and consider eternity.

Verse 18 says this command them to do good.

Do good, to be rich in good deeds.

So if you're gonna be rich, be rich in doing good.

Be rich in being generous and willing to share.

So all of us in this room today, I don't I don't know your bank statement, I don't know what it looks like, I don't know your bottom dollar, but it's my job today to tell you you need to be rich and generous and willing to share and be rich in good deeds.

Be looking for ways to express the gratitude the heart of God to this world for the sake of eternity.

So we've Got our eyes on here, and we've got our eyes on there.

We live kind of like cross-eyed on that.

One eyeball here, one eyeball there.

And we're looking at life from two different perspectives.

What can we do here that affects us there?

So the last thing we want to do is hold on to the things of the now because those things now can make a difference for eternity.

So the scripture says, is anyone selfish or greedy?

Anyone?

Anyone?

A few honest hands went up.

It's interesting.

We have a prayer meeting, and no one comes up to the front saying, I just want to prayer for the fact that I'm just a greedy individual.

I'm just selfish.

No one goes that way because everyone thinks they have room for more greed.

There's always more.

I can handle more.

I can handle more.

But when is more enough?

Is anyone in the room selfish, greedy?

The Bible says you need to be willing to share more.

Now, this is the secret to legacy.

A great legacy is a legacy of sharing, of generosity, sharing your gift, your talent, your life, your insight, your wisdom, your instruction.

It's releasing that into the world.

Releasing and sharing it with the world.

It's not looking for financial compensation here or there.

It's saying I'm going to freely give everything I have to determine a legacy of my name and the name of the church and the name of my Lord.

That's the message that we have.

I sometimes have moments of selfishness, I have to admit.

Last night I was we were I was still having to put together some of the PowerPoint for my message, and I've been thinking about it.

And I went out after this uh dinner, uh dinner, and I said, Hey, I I just need a coffee.

I'm just gonna grab a coffee.

I knew it was late, but I'm like, I'm gonna grab a coffee.

Natalie, do you want a coffee?

And she's like, no, no, it's okay.

It's all right.

So we found a Starbucks that was open, and I grabbed an Americano, and it was really nice, a nice Americano, and I brought it in the car, and I sat down with this Americano going home, and I look over, and my wife picks up my Americano, and she starts taking a sip, and then another sip, and I'm thinking of all that nice creamed Americano, you know, creme on the top, and she's just sipping it back and talking to me and sipping.

I'm like, hold on.

Does any man in here relate to what I'm talking about here?

And I said, I don't mean to be greedy or anything, but I'm being greedy.

Put that down.

I asked you if you wanted something, she's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

She puts it down.

Then I see you're sneaking another one.

And this was her response.

You should have bought a bigger one.

It's a struggle.

The struggle is real, people.

And so on every occasion, though, the Lord is saying, be willing to share, be willing to bless, be willing to be a blessing.

And part of my job as a pastor is to prepare you not for the now and the here, it's to prepare you for the there.

And there is really uncomfortable.

Because in order to prepare you for there, I need to tell you to give some things up on the here.

To sacrifice here, to give yourself away here, to challenge you now where you're at.

To put you in an uncomfortable place here.

I'm surprised any of you are at church today.

It's a super uncomfortable place to be.

Because it is, I'm saying, you need to change.

You need to allow the Holy Spirit to come and speak to you and to listen to him and obey him and do the hard things and do the uncomfortable things.

And I'm telling you, that's my job.

That's my job to do it.

My dad was always better at it than I am.

He could just tell you, I'm I like you.

I don't mean to be hard on you, but this is the message.

It needs to still come out.

We need you to be thinking heaven-minded.

So, number one, or or one of the thoughts we have here is that heaven, it not earth is our home.

You've got to think this way.

Heaven, not earth, is our home.

That's why you and I are here.

That's why we're living the way we're living, that's why we're doing what we're doing.

That's why you're sitting in the seat you're sitting in today.

Heaven, not earth, is your home.

You come here because you get a taste, a little taste of what heaven is going to be like.

Worship his word, his presence, his spirit.

You're getting that sense of what it is.

Heaven is not our home.

Uh, the disciples, they in John chapter 14, they were having a real tough time with life.

John 14 · chapter mention

And they they were feeling really depressed.

And they came to Jesus, and all 12 of them were like kind of dragging their feet, and they came to Jesus and they said, We're down, we're real, we're suffering.

And Jesus stopped and he looked at them, and it was interesting what he said because Jesus didn't find a depressed person and just say, just say, you know what?

Let's pray together and we'll just crush this right here and now.

We'll just tell the depression to get lost.

He didn't go to that place.

He said, the way you're gonna deal with this is you've got to start thinking heaven-minded.

So he stopped them, and this is what he said.

He said, uh, he said this, um, what'd he say?

He said, John chapter 14, verse 1, he says, Don't let your hearts be discouraged, troubled.

John 14:1

Don't let yourself be down.

So this is like, when I say that in the house, people always say, like, are you trying to tell me to flip a switch?

Like, it's not just gonna happen that easy.

When I tell people that, it's like, no, he Jesus says, Listen, you're depressed, I can see it, you're down, you're I can see it.

Don't let your hearts be troubled.

Don't look down.

You believe in God, believe also in me.

My father's house has many rooms.

If that were not so, would I have not told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you.

So what he did is he said, I want you to get your mind off of here and put it on there, and you'll get out of your head trouble.

Anytime you're in a space of anxiety, trouble, depression, feeling down, get your head, start looking and say, Am I looking here?

I should be looking there because God's preparing a place for me there.

I've got a bitter and a bigger future there.

That is my true home.

That is my true space.

And these thoughts about heaven are really, really important.

And I think that in years previous and years past, uh, people used to sing a lot more songs about heaven.

I'm so glad that we sang the song today about heaven.

One of our songs in pop culture today is really a song called I Could Only Imagine.

How many of you have heard that song, seen the movie?

It sold over two million, two hundred million songs.

Like it sold 200 million uh of the song was the song of the year.

It was the only Christian song to reach three times platinum.

Amazing song about heaven because the whole world is when they turn their hearts towards heaven, something happens on the inside.

Because they're thinking beyond the here and they're looking at there.

I want to give you a new perspective of something, a new perspective of heaven.

Because the more you have here on earth will trick you into thinking that this is all that.

The more you have here will trick you into thinking, okay, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

But the more that you acquire down here, you have to be careful that this blessing doesn't become a stumbling block to you.

Um, our citizenship is in heaven, and that's where our life is, that's where our home is.

And so God needs to be that first place, that needs to be your first thought.

You're you're kind of living in that in that in-between space, between here and there, and you're just looking at heaven as our home.

Number two, eternity is longer than our time on earth.

It really is.

We invest in heaven because uh our time in heaven is so much longer than our time on earth.

Even if, like I heard yesterday that it was a um the our former the former president of the United States passed away at 94 years of age.

That's a long time to be alive.

And even if they developed a pill that said, hey, we'll give you an extra 50 years, 60 years, and you live to 150, 150 years in the scope of eternity is still nothing.

It's still zero.

Even if we could triple your years on this earth, you've still got nothing compared to eternity.

It just gives us that space.

So we gotta think about if our time is gonna be spent, most of our time is gonna be spent there, then why do we put all of our energy into here?

I think about our vehicle.

Natalie's been bugging me a little bit about it.

We're driving around in my truck, and I think it's because I've driven off-road quite a bit with it.

The shocks and the springs are kind of bouncing a little bit, and so the kids think it's fun, so I leave it like that, right?

We're bouncing around in the truck, and and Natalie's like, we should do something about this.

And I said, Yeah, we probably should.

But I'm looking at the truck and I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna keep it.

And if I don't know if I'm gonna keep holding on to it, why would I invest more into it?

Instead, I should be thinking about my next investment.

I should be looking ahead.

You can't, you can invest a little bit here on earth, but really, why would you invest everything here?

Instead, invest it in the place where you're going.

Hebrews says this.

It says that uh that the men of faith in Hebrews 11 that they were people who looked at the reward that was set before them.

They looked for the better place, the better city.

They were looking to a heaven country.

They looked forward, and many of them looked with a lot of enthusiasm to what heaven was going to be.

And I'll tell you this today that heaven has like a bad rap, or rep, as some people would say, rep, reputation.

I think it comes from Hollywood because Hollywood's like kind of projected heaven is this place where there's you die and you become this fat little angel with a bow sitting on a cloud or joining a choir for all of eternity, and that that would be hell to me.

Heaven is not like that.

Heaven is something we have to get a different perspective of heaven.

Heaven is gonna be a place that we can't even with our finite minds even imagine.

Like Revelation talks about it in general, but even in Revelation, it's talking about throngs and of angels and and and like the colors and the vibrancy of life at that space.

Like, I don't even know how to how to explain it to you.

I I think you just need a revelation of it.

Yourself.

The Bible says there's no pain, there's no suffering, there's no mortgage, there's no medical, it's nothing.

There's no sickness, there's no sorrow, there's no envy.

It's you're there and you're in the presence of pure pleasure and pure joy and pure love and pure satisfaction.

You're in a space with family and friends and living life, and the Bible talks about the multifaceted part of who God is.

That I think eternity is just God just shifting a little bit, and it just changes our perspective on who He is and what He's called us to.

Heaven is far better.

The people in Hebrews 11, you can read about their perspective and the reward that they lived their life for was really for this better place.

We have a limited amount of time, but incredible opportunity.

It seems like you can you can get older and time flies.

I think Facebook is terrible for this because it sends you like a little reminder every now and then.

This happened 10 years ago.

And you're like, 10 years ago?

Felt like yesterday.

It's just time is going, time is flying.

And and one of these studies was done with uh families that or people who were 94, 95 years of age, and they said, tell us what you would have done differently if you had had more time, more opportunity.

And they said they would have spent more time with family and friends, like building into the relationships that would have mattered, and they would have taken more risks in order to make a difference.

And I think that challenge is really important.

Um, I this week we had a great opportunity, and I love hearing these little things that little points uh that come into our office, but we have um someone who doesn't attend our church, uh doesn't connect with us on a weekly basis, but decides each each month to put money aside.

I don't even know if they're a believer.

We've we've talked about it, their perspective on God is is um just just uh unclear to me right at this point.

And we're just trying to process and we're just on this journey with this individual.

But this individual came through, uh came to the church, and he said, you know what, I see what you're doing with the uh Rutland Community Food Center.

I see what you do every Tuesday, and I I want to help and I want to be a part, and I just want to give because of something that's inside of him.

And this week he cut a check for$3,600 towards our Rutland Community Food Center to helping our community.

And it was just an incredible blessing.

And this is from someone who's not even a part of our church, who's watching from the outside, who's got a heart for the people that are being ministered to in this place.

It's the opportunity to be able to invest.

And that's what I like to hear.

It's what I hope is the return of our investment, is that we're actually making a difference.

Uh, in our church here, I'm so happy to say our property's been paid off, the building's been paid off, and the lights are on each week.

There's comfortable seating and space for all of the ministry going on from children uh throughout the week.

But I don't believe God gives us what we have right now so that we can just sit back and just enjoy it.

And I don't believe God just gives us resources so that we can just stack it up in the bank and just sit on this big stack of cash.

Instead, I believe God wants us to utilize it to be able to reach more people and help them find the hope and the healing in Jesus Christ.

I believe that there are more people out there that need to hear about Jesus.

There are more churches that need to be planted.

I heard this week that six to ten thousand churches were closed in the U.S.

last year.

Six to ten thousand, and I'm seeing it little by little, the trickle effect in Kelowna.

I'm seeing churches that are just being taken down and dismantled.

And I'm saying, Lord, what are we gonna do to be we need more churches?

We need more people reaching out, we need more pastors and more worshipers and more children's workers and administrators and helpers and elders and support builders and engineers and teachers going into our community and reaching it with the gospel, with the message of who Jesus is.

It's not time for the church to shrink back.

That won't do anything for the legacy that we leave behind.

It's in time for the church to stand up and to announce who God is and to stand firm in the message that we have.

Because we're righteous people, when they stand up and they attract and we operate with righteousness in place, the scripture says that the people around us will be happy.

And I believe that there's going to be a that's where the scripture talks about the streets, where people are dancing in the streets.

There's an environment in our community that is God-centered, heaven-centered.

We're thinking eternal.

We need more.

And so this is what I've been challenged with in the last number of weeks.

I I don't want to leave the KCC legacy as a church that just created a great place for people to come and gather together.

I want the church to be known as a place that reached out and reached into people's lives and helped rescue people from their journey to hell and bring them towards heaven and help them point them to Jesus Christ and help them from spinning their tires trying to fix their own problems and let them know that Jesus is there and Jesus will help them on the journey.

Amen.

I and you know what, it's not about me.

Like I'm glad we take care of our the finances.

I'm glad we we watch our resources and watch the money that we give.

I'm glad that we're, you know, we have money in the bank, we don't like leverage that which we don't have.

Um we take very good care, and it's okay to actually, in my perspective, like move slow, but I I don't want to move at the pace where where we're we're not moving forward.

I want us to be challenged in our pace.

And I believe that we'll expand at the place of our our corporate willingness to actually move forward together.

And it's not gonna be one person moving forward on their own, it's gonna be the church together moving forward, and we're gonna move at the speed of the generosity of the church.

I'm not talking about just finance, I'm saying use your gift.

We need you.

Turn to your neighbor and tell them we need you, we need you to reach people, to reach the city, to reach this community.

We need you.

And uh we don't know the duration that we can have in this life, but we know that we've got a donation that we can do and and give.

And each of you know your own donation.

In our church, we don't say uh, you know, we don't spend 20 minutes on a on an offering and we don't talk, like put this whole message out there and challenge people to give and pull out your checkbooks and you spell thousand T-H O U S handy.

Like last night we were at uh my wife's staff party, and we're just it's always interesting.

Oh, what does your husband do for a living?

Oh, he's a pastor.

Oh, we went to church, but my wife won't go to church because they take up offerings.

And I said, Oh, that's interesting.

That's what I'm speaking about tomorrow.

I'm talking about it because it's a big part of who we are.

But some churches, he said, the churches they he used to go to, they'd spend 25 minutes talking.

Talking about the offering.

We just say this.

We won't ever tell you how much to give.

We'll just say you're responsible to ask the Lord, what do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

My time, my relationships, my capability, my finance.

What do you want from my family?

And then we trust you to be obedient.

There's never going to be a pressure.

It just we'll just move at the pace that the church moves at.

But we want to challenge you.

Ask God, take a moment, stop, ask the Lord, what do you want from me today?

Amen.

Amen.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Father, we thank you this morning that heaven is our home.

And there's no lack there.

There's no lack of anything.

But other than it's in our heart, you said the kingdom of God is in our heart.

It's righteousness, it's joy, it's peace.

It's that joy that comes by the Holy Spirit, your spirit in us.

And Father, today we just trust that you will take us the next step of the journey.

You'll take us the next steps forward.

And I just want to take a moment as every heads are bowed, every head is bowed, every eye is closed.

You may be in the room tonight, and you may be thinking that I want to take this journey, and the first step is going to be making the decision to follow Christ and to do things his way and to make him the Lord of my life.

And the Bible says to take a moment and it says you don't have to, you don't have to stand, you don't have to come to the front, you don't have we're not going to pray for you in a public way.

But the Bible says there's a way to do this, and that's to acknowledge, acknowledge Him.

And we just want to ask you today, if if anyone's here for the first time, they just want to make a decision to follow Christ.

I just am going to ask you to just raise your hand and say, I'm I hear what you're saying.

I want to make a decision to follow Christ today.

Is there anyone in this room who's in that space, in that place?

Raise your hand real high.

We want to make that opportunity available for you today.

And for those of you who are in that space and you said, you know, I want to.

I've made that decision to follow Christ.

I've accepted him as my Lord and Savior.

I believe in him.

I've confessed him as my Lord.

But he still, I trust that God, you've got more for me.

I just want to pray for you today as well.

Father, we just pray today for for each of us in this room.

You've got a special calling on our lives.

You've given us a special destiny to leave a legacy.

And I ask, Lord, that you just help us to realize the significance of it and desire, Lord, to, and the seriousness that there's no one else who can accomplish the task that you've called us to except ourselves.

And so, Lord, would you help us to be able to see from a perspective of heaven?

Open up our hearts to trust you, to see through your lens, and to be able to see eternity the way you have us see it.

And to live our life every moment, every day from that perspective of having that cross-eyed vision, an eye on the here and an eye on the there, and be able to think, be heavenly minded in our space of earth.

We ask this, Lord, in Jesus' name, trusting that you're going to do great and awesome things through us, incredible things through this church and through our relationships with the people around us.

In Jesus' name, Lord, we bless you.

We love you.

We ask for you, Lord, to continue to bless and promote your name in this city.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's give the Lord a hand.

Welcome up, Trisha.

Come on up, Trisha.