World Changers: Move Up Sunday | Part 3

Welcome to the Awakening Church Podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Okay, then go ahead and turn to your other neighbor and tell him you're a world changer.

And he went, oh wow, we we really got cheesy in church real quick there.

We're concluding today a series called World Changers.

We've been spending the last three weeks on this.

Uh, and I want to spend the next little few moments talking about why.

Uh why we're talking about this, why this is such a big deal for us at Awakening Church, why it should be a big deal for all of us.

Now, week one, we had our Protege Sunday, as we had our proteges do a nine-month leadership development process.

We celebrated them, we commissioned them.

Last week was Youth Sunday.

Roland gave a message uh on Daniel, and we're just celebrating our youth.

Today's Move Up Sunday.

There was a lot of energy when the teens were in here uh cheering.

So I expect that from you guys.

You gotta make up the gap, all right?

There we go.

There you go.

Uh and so this is just one of those times where we take a pause as a church for a few weeks to remind ourselves of what's most important.

And the way we say it is we long to be a church that is a strategic training center to raise up the next generation of world changers.

Now, uh a number of years ago, I was uh on vacation with my family, and we were down at a beach town, and my wife sent me out to go get groceries.

And uh when I go get groceries, I often get things that are not on the list.

Anyone else like that?

Yeah.

And so my wife's like, stick to the list, Ingram.

I'm like, okay, I'll do that.

And so on the list, um, we had some people coming over, so I got some chips and some salsa, and then we needed some bread to make sandwiches later that day.

Uh, we are running out of toilet paper, and Lord knows you don't want to run out of toilet paper.

We need some paper towels, and then also we had, you know, just some sparkling water that we wanted there.

And so you can imagine at this little market in this small beach town, and I'm come up to the place and I, you know, we're checkout stand, and I drop all this off, and as he gets, you know, you know, all of me checked out, he says, Do you want a bag?

And I look at that, I go, nah.

I'm good.

I'll save the planet right here all by myself.

And so I say no.

Uh now the problem was because I'm in beach mode and I grew up in Santa Cruz, so this isn't too um uh this is my normal kind of attire.

I was in uh board shorts and flips, and I didn't have any pockets, so I had my phone, I had my wallet, uh, and my keys in my hands, and then I'm trying to grab all this stuff, so I got this in my hands, I got this oh geez.

I I don't know.

You as you can see, literally, this is how I can't even get the salsa at this point.

What was I thinking?

Now I walk out of the store without the salsa apparently.

Um I walk out of the store and there was a group of guys just chilling.

I'm like, who hangs out at a market?

Like these teenage boys, and all of a sudden I'm nervous, you know?

And and as I'm going, uh right in front of these teenage boys, uh the toilet paper begins to slip out of my hands.

And my natural instinct is what?

Is just simply to save the toilet paper.

So as it's slipping, I s I grab the toilet paper, but something else slips out of my hand.

My phone slips out of my hand, and so I save the toilet paper, and then no lie, this is how it felt.

It felt like it was moving in slow-mo.

I'm watching my phone goomph, voom, voom, and then it just lands face down flat on the ground, and I'm stuck holding toilet paper.

And right there, one of the I think most important questions we can ask in life, I was confronted with as I was holding toilet paper in front of a bunch of teenage boys and a broken phone.

What is it that you can't afford to let fall?

What is it in your life that you cannot afford to let fall?

Because here's the reality, isn't it true?

We're all like juggling and carrying so many things in our lives, and they all feel important, they all take up some sort of space, and the minute one thing begins to kind of budge, we just react to what's most urgent, we react to what's needed, and in doing so, oftentimes, isn't it true that we can drop what's most important in our lives?

What is it for you that you cannot afford to let fall?

I've known a few men that I've talked to and journeyed with that the desire to provide for their family what they didn't have, and so they worked countless hours, 80 hours a week, and yet they're not present for their kids, and their family is in mid-flight.

Marriages are in that same area as we rush around for those of you who have families, and you rush your kid to every single sport, and you're just like ships in the night.

And your marriage is in mid-flight right now, isn't it?

Or you're so like focused on being successful, that your spirituality, your walk with Jesus' significance is in mid-flight right now.

What is it in your life that you cannot afford to let fall?

See, we know this, we get this, we understand this, this life axiom because we see it in other people so clearly, but it's hard to see in ourselves that misplaced priorities lead to a misspent life.

And if you've been around some people and you you watch the end of their life and you they look back with like, I wish I would have spent my time differently.

I wish I would have invested in these relationships.

I wish I would have not spent so many late nights here or going off with the boys or that hobby.

Because why?

Misplaced priorities.

When we overvalue toilet paper, we end up dropping cell phones.

It's just reality.

Lead to misspent lives.

In fact, Howard Hendricks, a professor, yeah, was a professor at Dallas Theological, he'd say it this way, as a commencement speech to these seminary students.

He said, I'm not afraid that you will fail.

My fear is not that you'll fail, but that you'll succeed in doing the wrong things.

What is it that you cannot afford to let fall?

Have you ever thought about this?

What is it for us as a church that we can't afford to let fall?

What are the things?

We're juggling all of this stuff in life as a church, as a community, as the Jesus people walking with him in Silicon Valley.

What is the thing that we go, no, we don't want to drop and have floating in the air.

And by the way, the tech companies, marketing agencies, entertainment has answered this question with crystal clarity.

Their answer, and they actually put a value to it, their answer is this generation.

What they can't afford to let fall is this generation, because if you don't capture the hearts and minds of the next generation, you're gonna be out of business eventually.

And they spend billions of dollars capturing the attention and keeping the attention of the next generation because that's what a generation is worth to them.

See, what is it that we can't afford to let fall?

It's this generation.

Another way to ask this, think about this, is what's at stake if we don't?

What's at stake if we don't reach this generation?

You know, uh in the book of Judges, I think we get a picture of what's at stake if we as a community, as a church, as the church, don't answer that question well.

Now, Judges was written about 200 years after Israel entered the promised land uh under Joshua.

Let me give you a little history if uh you're not familiar with it.

Uh Moses was the great liberator of Israel.

They're in bondage in Egypt for 400 years.

God raises up Moses, he goes and he says, Let my people go.

Yeah.

And God uses a miraculous intervention.

The people of Israel are freed.

They are now wandering in the wilderness for 40 years under his leadership.

And then God raises up a young leader under Moses named Joshua, and Joshua leads the people into the promised land.

Now, these people gotta encounter God working in incredible ways.

When they crossed uh through the Jordan that flood stage, God stopped up the river so they could walk and try ground.

When they're stepping to formidable foes, God says, Hey, by the way, I just want you to like, you know, do like a worship service around the walls of the city called Jericho.

Like, what do you mean?

Yeah.

So march around the wall and just sing.

Oh, that's that's a real good military campaign, God.

You brought us here to sing.

Thank you very much.

And they do it day one, they say, let's do it another day.

Okay, another day.

They're blessed in the horns, and do it seven days, and they do it seven days, and then they do it seven more times that day, and they watch God miraculously the walls fall down.

They gotta see God show up.

Judges.

It's 200 years after that moment.

And we get this picture of what's at stake if we don't answer the question well, what we cannot afford to let fall.

Notice how the author of Judges says it.

He says, The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him, these who walked in and stepped by faith into the promised land, and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.

Those who had grown up and watched, they weren't necessarily stepping out faith.

They were the kids watching uh, you know, their parents step into this new season.

Then notice what happens.

After that, whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors.

Another generation grew up who neither knew the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.

Think about that.

Not too far after, let my people go, crossing into the promised land.

An entire generation grew up that did not know God or what God had done.

And here's the consequences or the reality.

Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt.

They followed and worshipped very gods of peoples around him.

We see actually in this text three generations, and there's this progression here, and we see it repeated throughout history.

And it doesn't have to be, but it's just this kind of reality when we just think that our faith will just translate or transmit to the next generation, and we're not intentional with it.

First generation knew and experienced God.

They stepped out by faith and watched God part the Jordan, walls come tumbling down, and they gotta see God do incredible work.

The second generation knew of God, but didn't experience Him.

Friends, uh, for those of us who are followers of Jesus and we have kids, so often we want to save our kids from things that are hard, and they miss out on a God who's working in the middle of it and shaping them.

And they don't have to take a step of faith and trust.

See, they knew of God, but they didn't experience him.

They saw their parents' faith, and so they had, hey, that God's great, but I don't know that I can trust him, but I I I'm confident my parents could.

I didn't experience his work.

And then a third generation grew up that neither knew God or experienced him.

Now, here's what's kind of interesting, and I look at the generations today, and we look at our church, we say it this way: we're a four-generation church that's for this generation.

And somebody corrected me after a first service said, No, Ryan, we're a five-generation church because her mom comes to our church and she's amazing.

She's like in her 90s, and so we're a five-generation church that's for this generation.

Doesn't sound as cool, but that's way cooler than having five generations there.

But here's something when you kind of look back on the history of the church uh across the generations that we tend to miss.

Today's generational uh breakdown, uh baby boomers, those of you who are 58 to 76 years of age-ish, somewhere around in there, um during your kind of um adolescence to 20-something, experts were saying that the church was gonna die, that Christianity was obsolete and irrelevant, and it would eventually go away.

Uh the rise of the summer of love and hippie uh movement and all of this, it was like, we're beyond that.

And the baby boomers were the original generation that left the church, by the way.

Now, something happened in the 70s, late 60s, early 70s.

There was a movement of God.

There's actually two movements.

One was called the Jesus movement, and the other was called the renewal movement.

And we saw the Jesus movement sweep across, starting from the West Coast, and the renewal movement worked in the charismatic circles and even the Catholic circles, and we saw this movement of God that was a fresh move where people were saying, this is gonna be obsolete and the church is no longer needed, and we saw revival break out.

And I'd like to say that then as we move down from baby boomers to Gen Xers, and if your Gen Xers 42 to 57 years of age, uh, that we look at this and we see this a little bit of progression if you're looking at it in the macro, not in the micro, but uh, because there's always God working in different areas and ways and through people significantly, but these macro movements of God, where it would just we haven't seen.

We've seen a generation that you know navigated the postmodern shift over the last you know several decades.

And and Gen Xer is one, we don't like to be labeled, and we're kind of rebelling from our parents and you know, fiercely independent.

And and by the way, we thought that we brought in all the arts into the church.

Um, we didn't.

We brought in some candles, but that's been around for centuries.

Um but baby boomers, by the way, they brought in a new way of doing church.

They actually are the ones that brought in drums into the church, and they're the ones that brought the arts and uh all different things into the church to bring the gospel in a relevant, powerful way to their generation and generation after that.

Now when we see the millennials, something that's happened in the church over the last several decades, that as a millennial, did you know that 59% of millennials who grew up in the church will disconnect in a significant way?

Many never to return.

And so we're seeing the same progression play out.

And part of it is back in the baby boomer days, there was this heart to beat to reach this generation.

You saw campus ministries rise up, crusade, campus crusade for Christ, navigators uh sweeping this heart for this next generation, and somehow in the church we've lost it.

Just consider, man, as long as I'm coming and I'm getting my needs met, I'm okay.

Uh, you know, if other people aren't getting their needs met, as long as you're meeting mine.

Instead of going, no, what's we can't afford to let fall is this generation.

Gen Z?

Do we have any Gen Zers in the house?

I love it.

You guys have walked through some things.

We all have walked through it, but just think about Gen Z, by the way.

They're also been called the I generation because they are always have grown up with social media and the iPhone, a smartphone.

That's crazy, right?

They never grew up with right, and you didn't even know what that was.

You're like, what is he doing?

What is he doing?

And thinking about as a kid walking through the great recession that we had, and then another decade later walking through this worldwide global pandemic and all the rest of it, you you can feel like, is there any hope, right?

How do we even navigate this?

I just want to give a word to you, Gen Zers.

Did you know that, by the way, the generation before baby boomers, what's their name?

Anyone?

The greatest generation.

Do you know what the greatest generation was called before World War II?

Sociologist, and um, it was across newspapers.

There was widespread concern for that generation.

They're coming out of the Great Depression, uh, and there's just widespread concern.

They were called the lost generation.

Of a hundred men, young men that were uh interviewed, uh what was it?

Here, let me get it just so I'm exactly right.

Um, 75% were suffering from a health defect induced by mental anxiety.

That doesn't sound too dissimilar from today, right?

And the lost generation who navigated World War II eventually would become known as the greatest generation.

See, your circumstances don't have to dictate your destiny and what God has for you.

And yeah, we live in turbulent times.

There have always been turbulent times, but we have a great God who stops up the Jordan and walls come crambling down.

And as I just look at this generational breakdown, here's what I see: I see a fresh moment for a wide-sweeping move of God across all the generations.

Like, isn't it time that we see a move of God?

Young people, you're in your 20s, you're in your teens.

Did you know this?

That when God wants to bring about a change, he often chooses and uses young people.

See, we kind of think somehow in the church, we've said, well, one day when you get mature enough, when you're not so, you know, confident or cocky or you need to get more wisdom under your belt.

And God's going, I'm gonna choose and use young people to bring about worldwide change.

Think about this.

When God wanted to save uh the people of Israel, they're just a small tribe from famine, and then actually bless all the surrounding nations, he put a dream in a cocky little teenager, heart and mind named Joseph.

And God had to spend a few years developing them, I think 13 to be exact.

And God used Joseph to deliver his people and all of the people in that time.

Think about this.

When God wanted to restore the kingdom of Israel under corrupt leadership, he sent Samuel to identify the next king.

And Samuel's looking at all these great young men from the line of chastity.

And God says, not that one, not that one, not that one.

It's like there's no more.

And so he's like, there is.

David, who would become the greatest king of Israel, his father didn't even invite to the table.

He was out watching sheep.

And he got overlooked.

And some of you have been overlooked, and God's saying, No, no, no, I haven't overlooked you yet, right now.

Think about this, Esther.

When God wanted to save the people of Israel from a genocide, he raised up this young woman who would become queen, who had the courage to put her life on the line for her people.

Last week, Roland talked about Daniel and these four young men: Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abindigo, teenagers, ripped out of their homeland, stripped from their identity, their culture, called to embrace a brand new way that's antithetical to all that they knew, and with resolve in their heart, they said, we will not bow the knee, because it wasn't the age thing.

They still had a big God.

And God raised them up to places of influence in the hostile culture of Babylon.

Think about when God wanted to bring about the salvation of the entire world.

And he chooses Mary, a teenage girl living in this obscure podunk town, nowhereville, said, I entrust the greatest gift this planet has ever experienced to you.

And then these disciples, when he wanted to spread the good news of God's love and saving grace, think about Jesus.

He's walking along the shore and he sees these young, you know, teenage boys fishing with their dad.

He says, Follow me.

I'll make you fishers.

See, when God wants to bring about a change, he often chooses and uses young people.

And as a church, as awakening, what we can't afford to let fall is this generation.

That's why we're a four or five-ish generation church that's for this generation.

That's why a decade ago we planted this church seeing the gap in the valley to awaken this generation to new life in Jesus.

The fastest growing demographic in the valley are millennials, followed by Gen Zers who are now stepping into the workforce.

The missing generation in the church, hello.

The future of the church rests in the hands of the next generation, and we were called to steward that generation.

That's our role.

That's what's happening in kids' ministry across the way, where adults are giving their time, sacrificing their day to spend with your kids to help them know the God who loves them and wants to meet with them and wants to use their life.

There's future world changers.

The way we say it over here is there is no junior Holy Spirit.

He's working the same in this room as he's working in those rooms over there, and with our teenagers and those leaders who are serving our teenagers.

Future of the church.

Don't you want to leave the church in a better place than when you found it?

Come on.

Don't you want to pass the baton of leadership well?

Where we actually raise up the next generation of world changers, where we let young eagles fly and yes, make mistakes, but we're there to help them along the way.

Those in your 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Don't you want your kids to love Jesus for a lifetime and not just a time in their life?

I got three teenagers in our youth ministry, and my prayer is they'll never have the experience of coming back to church because they never left.

And that when they come to awakening, it's coming home.

And I'm so grateful.

I'm so grateful for the college and young professionals that are serving with our teenagers that they get to see a vibrant faith of a generation just ahead of them.

Teens and 20s.

Don't you want to be the generation that reaches your generation?

Like where we see once more a move of God across this nation, across this world.

It's about time.

You know, when Jesus showed up onto the scene, he um he showed up at just the right time.

And we kind of miss this sometimes.

See, Rome was the ruling empire, and at the time uh there's something called Pax Romana or the peace of Rome.

It was enforced uh simply by force, and yet so you had across the entire Roman Empire peace, and so you were able to travel in ways that you were never able to travel in ages before that.

Now, for Rome to enforce this peace by force, they created highways and roadways that stretched across the entire empire, and so you could travel at greater distance in safer ways than you ever could before.

And at that point in time, it and thirdly, okay, got ahead of myself, there was a common trade language, Koine Greek, and so you could communicate the gospel across uh multiple countries and lands.

I mean, it was this incredible time where the gospel spread rapidly.

Now think about this.

We live in Silicon Valley, where what happens here impacts and shapes the entire world.

Do you think God would want to burst something here through you and your gifts and through this community and through churches here that would then begin to have the same spreading impact of the gospel?

Come on now.

God who showed up when Moses said, Let my people go.

And Joshua walking into the promised land is the same God who's working and showing up today.

And so let me leave you just with this question.

As a church, what we can't afford to let fall is this generation.

And we started awakening.

It's the reason we've done the World Changer series the last three weeks.

But how about for you?

Personally.

What is it you can't afford to let fall?

Maybe it's your walk with Jesus.

And it's just been you always intended to think, you know, I'm gonna get up earlier.

But it just has gotten pressed out of life.

Maybe it's your marriage.

Maybe it's with your kids or a key relationship.

What right now do you feel is like in mid flight?

I'm gonna close with this psalm.

It's the psalm of Moses, it's the only recorded psalm that we know that Moses wrote.

And scholars think that he wrote this psalm, probably sitting on Mount Sinai looking into the promised land where he wasn't able to lead Israel.

His predecessor Joshua would do it.

And he begins this way, he says, Lord, you've been our dwelling place throughout all generations.

Next slide.

And then he, and that's what we want our church to be.

The dwelling place throughout all generations.

That this would be the place that every generation would find home in his grace and in his love.

And then he closes the psalm this way says, May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us.

Would you pray that for awakening?

Would you pray that for your family?

Like when you step into your workplaces, may the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us.

And then he says this establish the work of our hands, oh God.

Establish the work of our hands.

That word establish means to prepare or to get ready.

And for some, that that's where you're at.

Even as we're talking, there's things that you're realizing what you can't afford to let fall, but there's a preparation.

And there's a there's a readiness that you're going, God, would you prepare my hands?

Yes, I want to be a part of what you're doing.

I mean, that's why we do school of faith, that's why we do protege, that's why we do groups, is we want to prepare and make ready.

But that word establish also can mean to fix or to put right.

And for many, you came in and you literally feel like you're in mid-flight.

And for others, you feel like you've just crashed.

And you feel broken, and you feel like your life has fallen apart.

And you're like, that's great, Ingram, but I just I don't see the hope.

I don't know how I could be a part of that.

And God could never want to use my life.

I just want to share the lengths to which God goes to establish the works of your hand.

To strengthen your hands, to fix and make right, no matter where you're at.

A story I've shared before, so if you've been around a while, you'll recognize it.

But it's one of my favorites.

Years ago, uh, my wife and I were at a wedding in Carmel.

We had three nights there.

It was amazing.

Um, one of the days I had to get up and work, and so I needed a good coffee shop to get some work done.

And I go to the first coffee shop.

In fact, I even got a little coffee there, but it wasn't a place, you know this, any of you coffee shop workers, yeah.

It wasn't a place where I wanted to like spend the entire day working.

And so then I go to the second coffee shop.

I didn't even go into that.

I'm like, uh-oh, I'm not doing that.

Third coffee shop, finally the fourth coffee shop.

I'm like, this is the place, this is where I'm gonna spend the day, but it's packed, of course, because it's an awesome coffee shop.

And the only seats that were open was that big, those big communal tables, you know, you've seen those at and I was like, okay, well, awesome, I got a seat, but I also don't want to be that guy that takes up the big communal table and no one feels like they can sit at it, you know, because it's a packed place.

And so I'm sitting there, I got my Bible out, my computer out, I'm doing my work, and I'm just kind of being aware of people if they didn't have a seat, trying to make sure, hey, you can sit at my table uh here.

And so this couple uh comes in behind me, or at least I thought they were a couple, and they're looking for a place to sit, and they couldn't find any.

They're about to walk out, and I turned to them, I said, Hey, you can sit at my table, because obviously I own it.

Um they kind of look at each other and go, You want to?

Yeah.

And so he goes to get in line to buy some coffee, and she sits down and she sees my Bible and she says, Oh, are you a Christian?

I said, Oh, yes, I am.

Um, are you?

And she's like, Yeah, well, it's it's complicated.

I'm like, Oh, okay.

Um, and then he comes back with coffee at that point.

They sit down, and I quickly realize they're not a couple.

In fact, he's her financial planner.

Um, and apparently he hadn't been doing a very good job because this was his firing.

Headphones in.

Thanks for sitting at my table.

And so I'm doing my work and hearing this, and like the Spirit of God is just kind of like, hey, you need to talk with her.

I'm like, no, I don't need to talk with her.

And the guy gets up and leaves, and he's like, You do?

I'm like, God, I'm preparing a sermon for you.

And uh I'm like, fine, I will.

So I get up and get a refill of coffee.

I come over back to my chair and I look across the table.

I said, How are you doing?

And she's like, not, not, not, not well.

And then she immediately changes the subject.

She goes, What do you do?

I'm like, Well, I'm a pastor, but I grew up in Santa Cruz.

And I don't even know why I threw that little tidbit in there, but I'm like, but I grew up in Santa Cruz, and her eyes got big, and she said, When you grew up in Santa Cruz, did you ever happen to go to Chip Ingram's church?

I said, Well, yes, I did.

He's my dad.

And I gotta tell you, this lady, she I I could have been, you know, Steph Curry at this moment.

She's like, oh my gosh, yeah, whoa, are you kidding me?

I'm at Chip Ingram's son's table.

And I'm like, I know, I own this table, I get it.

We already got that established there.

And she was so excited, and then she began to pour out her heart.

In the midst of this crowded coffee shop, we had this deep, sacred moment, and she's going through this really painful divorce.

And she was losing her home that she raised all of her kids in.

And she confided even to the extent that she had thought a few times about taking her own life.

And she's like, Ryan, do you know what got me through those dark times?

Up where we live, we only got one radio station, is this Christian radio station?

And so I turned it on, and it was Chip Ingram, and I listened to him every single day.

And as she was talking, this refrain in my mind just kept coming to me.

They're like, I need to share this with you.

And so, as I listened to her, I said, I just feel like God has me here to say this word to you that all is not lost.

There's still hope, and God's not done with you.

All is not lost.

There's still hope and God's not done with you.

You may feel broken and desperate and lost on the ground, but all is not lost.

There's still hope and God is not done with you.

And then I couldn't help myself.

I said, Do you know the lengths to which God wanted to share that with you?

That he would take Chip Ingram's son, the person that God used to help you in your darkest hour.

He sent me to four coffee shops.

There's no lengths that God won't go to to establish the work of your hands, to prepare and to make ready, to fix, and to put right.

And so, as we worship, would you take this moment?

What is it that you can't afford to let fall?

And maybe you feel like it's already broken around you and where you would say, God, I bring it to you.

Would you prepare it?

Would you fix it?

Would you make it right?

You will go to the greatest lengths to meet me.

Thank you.

I'm here to meet you.

Will you stand?

Let's worship.

Heavenly Father, I pray for my friends in this moment.

That that thing that came to mind when I asked the question, they would just bring it to you.

They would allow you to have your way in them.

Holy Spirit, I know you're just working in some people's lives right now.

Pray against any like resistance, just allow them to experience you.

To be drawn to your heart, to release the things that we're holding so tightly to.

God, keep us from holding toilet paper.

Meet us here now.

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