From Cautious To Courageous - Week 3 - Why Not Us? - Damon & Ti'eshia Moore - March 1, 2026

Yeah.=

You're 10.

You're 10, man.

You did it.

How many of y'all, how, how many of y'all have been coming to city place for less than a year? Oh wow.

Two years, three years, four years, five years, six years, seven years, eight years.

Nine, 10.

Come on, celebrate yourselves.

Listen, it doesn't matter what part of the journey you, you came along.

The fact of the matter is God is building his church, and the Bible says that the gates of hill cannot prevail against it.

At the end of our service, there's some pastors from, uh, around the US that wanted to send their love and will show that to you there at the end.

But, uh, we just want to celebrate today and I would love to have my wife come on up here.

Come on, Taisha.

This is my wife.

Now, just so y'all know, I, I, I, I, she, she flew in on Friday from Austria.

She was working and, and she landed and I gave her, uh, what a night.

And then I was like, Hey, Ty, it's year number 10.

I think we should do this together.

And then she was like, huh.

And so I, I, I wanted, I, the reason why I, I really wanted you up here.

It was kind of like a setup.

It, it really was a setup.

And so, uh, what I wanted to do, and, and I could get emotional, but I wanted to say thank you publicly.

Aw, drop it girl.

You should have kept those in your pocket.

You would've had this real men cry in my case a lot.

But, but I wanted to say publicly, uh, the journey that we chose to take over a decade ago, God spoke to us in 2012 that we were going to be planting a church.

And if, you know, the theme of this year is from cautious to courageous, we were very, very cautious.

We prayed for a whole year before we ever spoke to our pastors and asked them what did they see, and then we prayed like another whole year before we were ever going to talk or do anything else.

I wanted to publicly, and the boys have already left.

I don't know if someone can grab the boys or maybe they can come back in later.

But I wanna say publicly, thank you for doing this journey together.

We've had highs and lows.

Church planting will reveal a lot on it.

Woo.

But I wanted to publicly thank you and I got you a gift.

Yeah.

So you think you're preaching.

Where's the Maserati? If a pastor whose church is in a school rolls up in a Maserati is us and our family up in here preaching each other.

Come on.

How many of y'all know what I'm talking about? Y'all know good And well, if y'all see me roll up in a Maserati, I can be like, Hey, Kay, wait a second.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We live to give.

But why are they rolling in a, in a Maserati, right? That is actually a running joke in our family.

We tell the kids that when you leave.

We in a Maserati.

So if y'all do see us in a Maserati, the kids have left.

I'm just telling you right now.

And at which time we won't look bad.

Hey, you almost left me hanging.

No, no, no.

But I wanted to publicly thank you.

And just kinda while we're taking the journey, give you your flowers.

So Ms.

Colleen, would you mind to bring the flowers? I just wanted to give you your flowers while you're here and tell you I love you 23 years in.

Still got game.

I love you.

I love you, baby.

Now, do you want to stay? Would would you like to say something? Oh, my kids come here.

David didn't know.

Would you like to say something, babe? You're gonna just have 'em come up and they, the poor things, they don't even know what's happening right now.

Did you? They ran? Yeah.

Well he ran.

It's been, um, it's actually been quite a ride.

Hey, I, I, I know that you took time to say thank you to me.

Um, but the truth is, is that the real visionary came from, from your pastor.

And, uh, I, I remember the night where, where you leaned over and we were in bed.

We were in our comfortable North Carolina house.

And, and he just said, babe, don't you, don't you feel that? And I was like, feel what? He said? Don't you feel that there's more.

I feel that there's people and I can't see them, and I know that they need Jesus.

And I know that there's people who, who need to step into their calling.

And I remember that night that started a snowball of things.

I remember the day where we flew our family to, um, here to Orlando and Noah was still in a stroller.

David had Mickey ears on.

We were, we were pretending to be tourist on I drive.

And, um, and, and when we took off from Orlando, we had lived here about 10 years prior, but we took off.

And I remember thinking, this is home.

I know it's home.

And so we couldn't see you and, but we are so grateful that you're here and very much remember that the times and the sacrifices Yes, of course, uh, that it takes to build God's house, uh, when people don't know you.

Right? We, we didn't know each other when you walked in the door for the very first time.

But God did something.

God began to knit our hearts together.

And um, and in the process, in the meantime, he's kept us.

Together as a family in love with his house.

And it's been a wonderful ride.

And um, I know you said thank you to me, but I really thank you for helping change the trajectory of our family's life to do this great work.

So we love you and to our boys publicly.

You know, being, being pastor's, kids ain't easy.

People, uh, sometimes expect the pastor's kids to be perfect.

And I remember in the first year of our church, we were like, our kids aren't perfect.

They're gonna run around the church, let 'em run.

But then you can also be their mama and auntie and uncle.

Tell 'em to stop running after they're running.

But please don't tell them you should know better.

Please don't tell 'em.

You should know better because otherwise what we're saying is, is that everybody else is elevated, even us.

And we're like, no, we're doing this journey together.

And so they have.

Is this like a whole set? Is it like the second set? How many more you got in there? A lot.

A lot.

You need to be like keep it, keep it in your pocket.

No, but you have, you have sacrificed, you have sewn, you've given, you have invested.

You have given in ways that everyone will not see.

For the times we came in late.

When we came in late tucking you to bed because there was someone there that needed prayer or we left the dinner table early.

Rushed to your game a little bit late.

Thank you for the times when you prayed for kids' ministry to grow.

When kids were leaving and you were like, God, why are my friends leaving for the times you stood and prayed for your youth group when it was just you.

And someone else.

Thank you.

If you don't know this, Noah's me.

Noah's my twin.

So we honor you, we celebrate you, and when we leave we gonna celebrate.

But I just wanted to publicly say thank you because it is sacrificial.

It is sacrificial.

Can we celebrate the more kids? Oh no.

You good? You good? I love you.

We just wanted to say thank you.

We, David just said, this means we should go out to lunch.

We, we, we, you, you, we gonna get you, man.

I told you that now since he's 18, that boy short us talk back a lot.

I'm gonna tell you right now, short us talk back a lot and the, and the kids, city kids gave us these glasses.

They gave us these glasses.

They're celebrating in there too.

Isn't that cool? Look at your neighbor beside you and just say, I can't see you clearly.

Oh, sorry.

That only applies to me.

That only applies to me.

No, but we're grateful.

We're grateful.

And so, babe, I love you.

Here you go.

Thank you for letting me set you up, y'all.

She was looking at me cross-eyed.

Like, preach.

What? We gotta talk about this.

We gotta talk about this, y'all.

Okay? As I gather myself, if you have your Bibles, go to Joshua chapter one.

What'd you say? You might as well, I might as well keep this up here.

You know what I heard, and I think I, I shared this with y'all.

They say that as you get older.

A man's estrogen level rises.

True.

They should have told us that.

You know what I'm saying? I'm not gonna lie, I would've been shooting more testosterone, taking my, you know, that collagen and the protein, you know? Yeah.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

Dr.

Ard, please help.

Please.

I'm good.

I appreciate it.

So it is the collagen in your knees.

Should I keep going? No.

Oh, stop.

I thought you meant keep going.

But it's, it is year 10.

It's year 10.

And, uh, what we wanted to do is we just wanted to share some vision with you over the next couple of weeks.

We're gonna take a journey back and we're gonna look forward.

And so, uh, some of us, you come in and you can kind of see the train moving and you hop on the train and it just looks like it's always been going.

There's been a number of people, uh, who've been paying a price and we've been building upon their shoulders and legacies being built.

The goal of the local church is not to just, uh, have a group of people that gather.

It's to make an imprint for the kingdom of God.

And so this is an eternal thing that God wants to do, not a momentary thing.

And so, uh, God is up to something and we just wanna make sure that we are doing our part.

Joshua chapter one, Joshua chapter one, been thinking about, uh, the last 10 years and all that God wants to say and, and do.

And, uh, I don't know about y'all, but can I just put this out there publicly? I, I think Pastor Tasha preached real soon.

Anybody else? I'm just gonna put that out there.

I won't to leave you alone.

I've been like, I've been like, she, I heard that How many of y'all were at the sisterhood night? Like people were coming up to me like, Ooh, is she gonna preach that message on the platform? And I'm like, Ty, you should preach that message on the platform.

And she was like, I don't know.

So I'm just putting it out there into the atmosphere.

We'll talk about this on the ride home.

Don't forget I gave you flowers.

Joshua chapter one, Joshua chapter one.

We, we've been in this text over the last two weeks and, uh, we're going to, we're gonna just read the first few verses and then, uh, we're gonna skip down to verse nine and I'm gonna have us read that together.

But it's the first few verses that I wanna focus on for today.

It says this now, after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass.

The Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of none, Moses' assistant saying, Moses, my servant is dead.

Now therefore, arise and go over this Jordan, you and all this people to the land, which I am giving to them.

The children of Israel.

Let's just keep going.

It's so good.

Every place that the sole of your feet will tread.

I have given you, as I said to Moses from the wilderness of this Lebanon as far as the Great Rivers Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down to the sun shall be your territory.

Verse five, and then we'll go down to verse nine.

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life as I was with Moses.

So I will be with you.

Now go to verse nine.

Verse nine, verse nine.

It says this, have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage.

Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed for the Lord.

Your God is with you wherever you go.

So here's here, here's what I want us to do.

We're gonna read verse nine together, and I want you to put your name in front of have.

All right, so to sound something like this, Damon, have I not commanded you? Got it.

On the count of three, we're gonna read it together and say your name in front and then say it out loud.

We're gonna read it together.

Ready? 1, 2, 3.

Damon, have I not commanded you? As I was thinking about today's message, I was thinking about 10 years ago, the very first message that we preached was a message entitled, why Not You? And I was thinking about Joshua chapter one, and there's that verse that I read where I, I almost stopped, but it, he says to, uh, Joshua, he says, Hey, Moses is dead a rise.

Go.

You and all the people go to the place that I was show you.

And I was thinking about 10 years ago, and I was thinking about the day and I started asking my myself this.

I was like, well, why not us? If God spoke to the people of Israel, at that time he was speaking to Joshua.

He was like, you and all these people, you're gonna all go and inhabit God's promises.

I was wondering like, does it have to just be one of us that'll believe the promise of God during a season? Couldn't it be all of us? So the question this morning is on year number 11 is why not us if he's speaking to Joshua, but he's declaring it for all the people.

Shouldn't we all walk in courage? Shouldn't we all walk fearless and shouldn't we all know that the Lord thy God is with us Wherever we go? Why not us? So look at the person beside you.

Say, why not you? Look at your second choice.

Say, why not you? I love, I love, I love the fact that God tells Joshua that we're going to take territory, but it's just not Joshua's assignment.

It's the assignment of the people as well.

You have a leader that gives vision, but then the people grasp it and go, that's for me too.

If God is declaring it, I want it.

I wanna see it.

Last Sunday, I said that God was speaking to to Joshua, and he says, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

And I said that there are things in our life, we talk about generational curses, and we pray and ask God to break those.

But then there are also things that God has declared for your generation that you and I need to claim, grab hold of, and pursue.

And so as God is giving the promise to Joshua, he's also giving that same promise to the people.

And so this morning, as we're thinking about moving from cautious to courageous, I want us to ask ourselves, why not us? There's this, there's this gospel song.

A Bishop, Bishop Paul Morton sings it and it goes like this, Lord, whatever you're doing in this season, please don't do it without me.

Lord, if you, if, if you're doing something in this season.

Please don't skip over me and just let some others get involved.

Come on, please don't let me be asleep to the movement and the momentum of what you wanna do.

Why not us? Whatever you're doing in this season, please don't do it without me.

If Orlando needs to be changed, I don't wanna spectate if, if there's a movement on my campus, please don't let me miss the meeting.

I don't wanna read about Southeastern University being the place where worship is falling in Florida.

I don't wanna just read about UCF having 1800 people I think it was, that got saved in a night.

God, whatever you doing, we wanna be a part of it.

So please don't do it without us.

God, there may have been seasons in my life where I felt unqualified, but if one season ends and you begin a new season, please don't do that without me.

Why not us? How come.

We can believe it for others and not feel like God wants to do it through us.

Y'all okay this morning? Yep.

If you're ready, say Let's go.

Let's go.

Are y'all gonna be quiet this morning? Is it too hot in here? Yes.

Yes.

I know, right? I know, I know.

I know.

It's too hot.

It's too hot.

It's too hot.

That was an object lesson for this morning.

Now listen, whatever God wants to do, he is going to do whatever God wants to do, he's going to do.

But how amazing would it be if he did it with us? So this morning, I want us to keep that thought in our mind, and I do want you to write some things down.

And then on the backside you're gonna have to write a lot.

But I ain't want to get caught this week.

'cause somebody last week y'all, I made it to the last blank.

And then I had people who, who were trusted leaders like Fabiola.

Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna call y'all Fabiola and Melissa.

They said, pd, the only thing that we ask of you is to fill in these blanks.

Can you please do what we ask you to do? So this week I figured I'll just give you blanks and end of day empty.

Gotcha.

No, but write this down, write this down, write this down.

And this may be an ad-lib moment, but watch the Lord is very clear when he declares his word, his plan and reveals his purpose to us.

You may not have a blank, so you gotta write it in those other blanks.

The Lord's gonna be very, very clear to us when he declares his word, his.

And reveals his purpose to us.

In Joshua chapter one, Joshua is hearing an echo of a promise that started with Abraham.

They went through Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and the people have been meditating on these promises of God for 400 years while they were in bondage.

Imagine being stuck for 400 years.

Generations are being born and they're dying, but they keep echoing and they keep holding on to the promise of God.

We're going to a land full of milk and honey.

We're going to outgrow in in numbers that cannot be measured.

God will continually fight for us.

He will deliver us.

They have this promise over and over and over again, being repeated over and over again, and God gets to Joshua, Moses is dead.

One season is ended, one season is beginning, and God get real.

Gets real specific.

This is what I'm going to do.

This is the land that I have for you.

This is the way you will lead.

You will divide the land as an inheritant.

You will walk in places and you will not have to fight by yourself.

God is very, very clear if we will position ourself to here, the closer we get to him, the clearer his voice becomes.

Have you ever been in a place and you felt like you don't know what you need to do anybody? Or am I alone? The question is, is how close are we in that moment to really hearing what he has to say? And so throughout biblical days, the the, the patriarchs and the matriarchs would lean in to the voice of God.

So they had full clarity because they knew that if God was speaking, he would give the instruction.

But as they continue to walk out in faith, he would also make it clear.

One of the things that I've learned over my 42 years of life, uh.

I couldn't figure out what lie I was gonna tell about my age this week.

One of the things that I realized is that God gives us the vision.

It's the process that is hard to decipher.

It's the faith that gets us moving.

So God shows us this, and then he's expecting us now to step towards him in faith.

It's the total reliance.

It's the, it's the God, I need you, God, I want you, God, show me.

And so he draws us close after He gives us that big vision, and we start walking it out in faith.

But God is very, very clear.

Every step that we take on his plan and on his purpose for your life, God does that with Joshua.

It's from here to here to here.

Here's another thing that I realized.

Write this down.

It should be a blank vision from God brings clarity of pursuit, vision from God brings clarity.

Of pursuit gives clarity of pursuit.

There's this promise that Joshua's holding on to God says, it's your time to move.

It's not just for you, it's for the people as well.

So it's why not you? You all go, it's your time.

Then God says, here's the specifics from this side of the river to this part of the land, to the north, to south, the east and west.

He even identifies who his enemies will be, and he lets him know that it doesn't matter if some sort of financial strain comes at you, if some sort of mental attack comes at you, if some sort of enemy tries to attack you, no one and no thing will be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

So that lets us know that there will be an enemy that will try to come against what God has spoken, but God makes it clear.

Again, this is what I have for you.

This will be my response.

This is where you're going.

This will be your benefit as you stay aligned with me.

So vision from God brings clarity of pursuit.

Today's city place celebrates 10 years, and Ty started sharing the story of us, uh, just starting to dream.

And the way, the way it started to happen was that God started to show us almost like a kaleidoscope.

Maybe you've heard this story before.

And in the kaleidoscope we couldn't see your faces.

It was like this group of people and, and they kept bumping into each other.

And it was like they were trying to get to places, but they kept bumping into each other and we couldn't see your faces.

And so that vision caused us to have to pray because we knew that there was a group of people bumping into each other, but we couldn't see you.

And so what it caused us to do would go, God, well can you bring some clarity of what you're asking of us? And here's how it happened.

The more we prayed, the clearer the vision started to become.

And this is what God started to say.

There are people who have been heard in church.

There are people who want nothing to do with me.

There are people who do not know me at all, haven't accepted me as Lord and Savior, and there are people who are not dreaming, you know, like a kid where you sit at a at a stoplight and you're dreaming about whatever.

Like God started making it clear.

As we started pursuing him and just seeking after him, he started saying, it's Orlando Taisha talked about the burden.

We came here on vacation.

We were having a great time until we were on the airplane.

We thought it was like vacation itis.

We didn't wanna go back home.

We needed a few more days, but what it caused us to do, that feeling caused us to pray.

Well, Lord, why do we feel this way? We said, we will never move back to Orlando.

We thought we were gonna move to Arizona until we flew there in summer.

At night and we got off the plane and it was 110 degrees.

We said, Lord, no.

And he is like, I didn't ask you to go there, but just in case, no, AKA Jonah, like we flew and the burden fell and we had to go back to him because we couldn't describe it.

We couldn't, we didn't know.

So it kept drawing us closer.

God will give us clarity in the pursuit with the vision.

If you're like me, sometimes he's giving me the kaleidoscope and I start running and then I start planning and then I'm like, what is going on here? Have you ever done that? You get an inkling of something that business, and the next thing you know, you print business cards before you write down the business plan.

Then you start selling stuff and you haven't even bought the merchandise to sell it yet.

Got a website, don't even know what you're gonna sell, but the website's up.

Anybody ever been there? Why do we do that? We take the vision, but we don't sell it enough so that we have the clarity of the pursuit.

And God goes, Joshua Moses is dead.

Just so you know, you're going over here.

You go right here.

I got this part.

I got that part.

This is your territory.

Because sometimes we step in the territory God never gave us.

So we try to pursue stuff and God's like, whoa, whoa.

No, it's right here.

It's right here.

Because if you stay in this box.

Got it.

So the clarity of vision, it is.

It is made clear as we keep going after God, I know that there are things that we can do in our own strength, but the purpose is not for us to just get it done.

It's for us to journey with him.

Y'all trending, all right.

If you hear say, I'm here.

I'm here.

So we, we feel the burden and we keep going after God.

And those four groups of people keep burning in our heart.

And then God just started dropping.

People gonna start dreaming, then they're gonna start doing, they're gonna start believing.

So we had to go back and say, well God, what does vision look like? And that's where we got our vision as a church.

That City Place Church would be a life-giving church.

That's gonna be a multi-ethnic, multi-generational church that builds dreams, ignites faith.

That's on your sheet of paper that establishes leaders that win the loss for the Kingdom of God.

Come on, on the count of three, can we read this together? 1, 2, 3.

City Place exists.

So we had our vision statement.

God downloaded the vision statement, but the thing is, is well God, what do you mean by that? Because this is Matthew 28.

In our context, like this is go ye therefore make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And Lo, I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.

This is how God gave us Matthew 28.

Come on.

But God, what does that mean? How do we make it simple so that as we're casting vision, it doesn't just sound like you're gonna build my dreams.

I wanna get that Maserati because if we're just hyping everybody up for a big dream, where will that point back to the father? Me having the Maserati, how will that get to people being saved? Because I can have the Maserati, but never testify of his goodness.

That got me in the Maserati.

Y'all good? So we had to keep going back to the father every time he kept downloading more clarity while we are pursuing, like, I loved it because every time we grew closer, he said more, we grow closer.

He says more, we run harder towards him.

He says more, here's where I made a couple of mistakes.

Can I just be real honest? I would, I would look at this vision and Taisha, she would get mad at me in the first year of City Place, and you may have heard this, we, I, I apologized during the pandemic, but I would be so focused on the vision that I would look past during preaching.

I would look past you because I'd say there's an empty seat there.

No, we doing the Facebook ads.

Lord, we gotta invite cards.

We.

Why don't I see what you showed me? And I remember the Lord was like Damon, and I would complain to Taisha.

Remember last week I talked about complaint that if you get complacent, complacent can turn to that complaining.

And I was complaining and she looked at me like she was like, she looked at me like, Damon can there, can there please be one Sunday when you don't show me something that's wrong? Can we just celebrate what he is doing? Y'all y'all, y'all turning all right? Like I can have the vision and I can just start doing it all on my own instead of keep doing what we've already done so that God brings more clarity.

So we had to ask God, well what does this vision mean? How can we make it simple? And do you know what we did? We went back to him in prayer.

We started getting with some of the leaders and say.

How can we make this vision so practical to where every aspect points back to the father.

And it's not just a quotable vision that's great on a billboard or a t-shirt, but that it can echo to eternity so that when someone else is here and people are standing on the shoulders of so many others, how can we say it was the Lord who birthed this church? And God gets the glory and he gets the flowers and he gets the praise and we are just alone for the ride.

And this is what the Lord started showing us.

Right? Just on your sheet of paper so that you know when we talk about building dreams, here's what it really means.

It means to unlock the prophetic voice of God.

You can use a little bit of piano, piano, piano.

The mood music has me slowing down.

I feel like I need to do a end of service club.

Building dreams.

You hold out that dreams because it goes with the chords.

Now listen, it means that we will unlock the prophetic voice of God.

When we were going back to God and we were seeking God's face, it was like the Lord was just saying, Hey, listen, before anyone will ever dream my dream, they have to hear my voice.

Like the Bible says that God is the one that gives us visions, and he's the one that gives us dreams.

Psalms 37 says, if you delight yourself in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart.

Like so often we may think that it's us asking God, but really we're just returning back to him the thing that he placed in us.

So when you hear us talk about building dreams, do you know what we want you to be able to hear? We want you to be able to hear God for yourself so that you're not relying on the pastors or or the YouTube preachers.

Or your friends? No, you can leave here when you stand before the Lord and say, God, I have learned how to hear your voice.

The Bible says, this is what Jesus says.

He says, listen, my, she will know my voice and a stranger they will not follow.

If I'm not careful, I can get up here and I can just give you something and it can sound real good with the soft music.

But what we want is God to be able to speak to us.

So when we talk about igniting faith, we talk about experiencing freedom so that we can truly live in faith like we, we, we, we wanna break free into freedom so that we can truly have the God kind of faith that yes, he will.

One of our, our leaders gave a huddle today, and he was talking about trusting in the Lord.

And he said, you can trust in the Lord partially or you can trust in the Lord with your whole heart.

And he said, and you could have trust that God will do it, but you can still be questioning.

I don't know, but I'll go ahead and quote the scripture.

He said, or you can go all in and say, God, I just know that no matter how this thing plays out, you're still good.

You're still God.

And I just want you to know I'm in it.

And so when we talk about igniting faith, what we're talking about is us positioning our lives so that we can walk in freedom, so that we can say, yes, God will.

And if God will, then why not us? Why not us? The Bible says that he is no respecter or person.

If God does it for the person beside you, he will do it for you.

The question is, is will we lean in as we go into this pursuit? We said that we would establish leaders.

We're simply called to disciple others.

Into their relationship with Christ.

We say it like this in next steps, which is next steps today at the end of service.

If you're ready to plant yourself at City Place Church, we'll we'll share this in even greater detail, but we said that the reason why we established leaders is 'cause if we don't, the vision of the kingdom will leak.

The vision of the kingdom will leak.

It's our responsibility to win the loss for the kingdom of God.

It's our responsibility to disciple more people.

That's the reason why city groups is not a program of the church.

It's a pillar.

Last night our couples got together and they were writing letters to each other as married couples and they was spending some time together in doing life together.

Maybe it was a, a good pause for them to reignite what God had already started.

Our sisters are getting together, man cave, getting together today, ya is getting together and they're going through the scriptures and growing in God.

Why? Because if we're not careful growing as disciples in Jesus Christ, we can.

Start to see the vision of God leak and then all of a sudden we turn into Christian consumers.

God never designed us to just sit in his house and be fed.

We can't just sit in God's house and be fed year after year, week after week.

That means that we have become consumers, which then means if I'm a consumer, I can say I like that.

I don't want that.

No, we have to disciple others into the kingdom.

And then the last one is, is that we win the loss for the kingdom of God.

We win the loss for the kingdom of God.

At the end of the day, winning loss is his victory proposition.

This is the reason why city place exists so that the kingdom of heaven can be filled city place.

Everyone here today, I want you to know that we will always go after lost people.

We will always go after broken people.

We will never apologize for ministry moments.

And one of the things that if you call City Place Home, the reason why we're taking these next few weeks to cast vision is because I believe in this season that there is a shared burden that the Lord wants us to have this season.

That there are more people that need to be reached.

The first 10 years were amazing highs and lows and ups and downs, but we're still standing and God's been speaking life to us and we've been seeing God do so many amazing things.

A few weeks ago, 12 people were baptized on a Sunday.

The team has told me over the last few weeks, it's like almost 30 plus people said yes to Jesus or rededicated their life.

This is not normal when one person, just one person receives Christ.

All of Heaven parties.

There's not some sort of, Hey, let's get 10 this week.

No, we party at one.

Heaven parties at one.

And so my prayer is that as a church, we will allow ourselves to receive the burden of this house playing our part in this city as we move forward over this next season of City Place.

Here's God's heart.

God's heart is for lost people to be found.

Found people to be free.

Feed PE free people to be equipped and equip people to be mobilized by, by a quick show of hands, not for my own sake, but I just wanna know how many of y'all feel like your lives have been impacted as you've been a part of City Place Church? Yeah.

How many of y'all feel like there are people that in your sphere of influence, that need to be impacted, not by city place, but by the gospel message of Jesus Christ? Here's my.

Is that if God is doing something in you, let's now turn to a mobilized group of people and let's see, people saved like never before.

Over the last 10 years, and you may have heard me mention this, over the last 10 years, there has been over 900 people, 900 people that have said yes to Christ or rededicated their life to Jesus Christ.

Can we give Jesus some praise for that? Over 900 people, over 900 people.

Whether it's outreaches, whether it's the, the, the things that we do in kids' ministry in Easter, God's been faithful.

We've had 138 people baptized.

You all have given hundreds of thousands of dollars away to missions.

Like God's doing something and has done something in the first 10 years.

We're serving every single month in our city.

That was a prayer that we prayed when no one was here to do outreach ministry and everybody on a Sunday morning during the hurricane season, we would stop church and we would serve the local school at Odyssey Middle School.

What could we do now in this new season? So here's a question or here's a thought.

God will always impact his purpose, his plan, his people, and his church, but it's gonna involve you and I.

He is gonna always impact his purpose, his plan, his people, but it's gonna involve you.

And here's what we're gonna talk about over the next few weeks.

Think about this thought here.

What God, what vision doesn't reveal is the process of our spiritual growth and our maturity.

What vision doesn't reveal is the process of our spiritual growth and maturity.

Here's the thing, y'all, when God was speaking to Joshua, Joshua was in the wilderness.

When God was speaking to Joshua, Joshua was in the wilderness.

Have you ever said to yourself, man, I'm in my wilderness season? Anybody ever say that where it feels like it's just a grind? It's hard.

When God was speaking to Joshua, Joshua was in his wilderness season.

He was not at the high of high.

When God goes, now you're gonna go, these are the things.

Joshua was in the wilderness season.

In fact, Joshua was in the wilderness season that he didn't choose to be in.

He spied out the land.

He was like, let's go.

God does some of his best work in the wilderness season.

In the wilderness season.

The thing is, is will we draw close and will we continue to pursue? Why? Because vision is unlocked from God and it brings clarity and it brings clarity.

Next week and in the weeks after, we're gonna be casting more vision over the next few weeks about where we're going as a church.

Is it all right if we take some weeks and cast some vision? Is that all right if we do that? Now here's, here's what's getting ready to happen.

Can y'all play that first song a little bit? Like, uh, uh, with the heat, right? With the heat, you get a little slow jam.

It's like, whew.

I can see y'all.

Y'all know that, right? I can see you.

So listen, over the next few weeks, we're going to cast some vision on what God's gonna do, okay? Because there's something that I noticed in the scriptures.

Can I just give y'all the sneak peek over the next few weeks? Write this down, write this down, and I'm, and I'm jumping ahead head.

If there is no voice of God, there is no vision of God.

If there is no voice of God, there is no vision of God, because God speaks and he begins to give Joshua territory.

If Joshua's not trying to listen, then he's gonna miss out what God wants to do.

So if there is no voice.

There is no vision.

So remember I told y'all that we kept going back to God in prayer.

So the more we kept going after God, God kept speaking.

And so here was the one of the final things that the Lord began to share with us in the middle of our journey.

About five years in, I wanna share with you the church that God sees.

And the next week we'll springboard into where God is gonna be sending us.

Can I read this to you? I wish Taisha was up here too.

'cause then we could read it together.

No, no, no pressure.

No babe.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Y'all see how it worked? That in, oh, you gonna stay there? Oh my God.

Hey, listen.

Next week we'll be preaching on marriage.

No, listen.

I should, we should have went last night.

Write that letter.

Write that letter.

No.

Here, here's the church.

Come on babe.

Come on up.

Real for real.

Come on.

You don't know what to do.

All right, so I'll read the first one.

You read the second one.

I don't have my glasses.

Oh, Lord Jesus.

Stretch forth your hands to us.

No, I I I'll read it.

You just stay there.

How about that? We see a life-giving, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-campus church filled with thousands of people worshiping God on the weekend, doing life together in community.

During, during the week, discovering their gifts and purpose through serving inside and outside of the local church while making a difference.

In the central Florida community, we see weekend services that reach the people, lost people, and ignite the Christian.

We see an atmosphere of worship where God's presence rests every day.

Where our worship teams write songs that influence and shift culture.

Because we are worshipers first, we see city place and its families influencing cultures from the school classroom to the marketplace.

Through leadership development and strategic partnerships, we see local missions of church planting, mentoring, and serving in underserved populations.

We see city place facilities as a community pillar.

A place that serves the community seven days a week.

It'll be a place where community activities and events are hosted.

City place facilities will house education classes, workshops, training after school athletic programs, community and business groups and civic organizations.

We see international missions that reflect the type of work being done at home in our local cities.

Not a few people impacted, but thousands.

Somebody say thousands.

Thousands.

We see kids and student ministries that function as a community go to spot throughout the week.

A place where students are impacted through creative and relevant interactive activities.

A place where students can know God in a safe place that grows them As innovative leaders, we see thousands of leaders dream teamers and people being inspired and equipped to impact their world.

We accomplish this by helping others.

Know God, connect with others, discover purpose, and make a difference.

This is going to be the church that we will be, but here's the thing, we have to keep pursuing because what will God say to us in this new season, even though he's spoken in the previous season, this week is your challenge.

It's to go, God, why not us? Why not us? Somebody say, why not us?