Made To...Walk By Faith with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

So good to be here with you.

We have a great rest of the service planned, but just for you guys at the 11:30, we have something special.

You guys get to know those of us who are on stage.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here.

Our worship leaders, kind of forward-facing public personas here at MetaCurch.

But we are not what actually makes this movement move.

It's all of the people working so diligently behind the scenes.

And today I want to honor someone who has been a part of this movement for a very long time, and they are retiring and moving on to other things.

I want to introduce you to Toxie Turner.

Toxie, would you come on out?

He's been one of our officers for a long time.

But you know, we didn't ask them when we brought them out to like be a part of this movement.

We desired that, but that was up to them.

And they have been invested in what God is doing here.

And you guys have been a key, crucial part of this movement beyond just what your roles are.

And I mean, I wanted to acknowledge you and I want to pray for you as you're moving into retirement.

So would you guys just join me in praying for Toxie?

God, uh, I lift up my brother to you.

I thank you for just his years and years and years of service just to our city and to so many people, and specifically for how he has come in, um, kept us safe, kept us uh orderly.

God just um came in every single Sunday willing to put anything on the line to protect this movement.

And uh God, I pray you bless all of his years and investing in what you are doing here.

Um, that you would just show up in incredible ways in his life.

Um, that God, you would just bring him peace and abundance.

And we pray all of this in Jesus' name.

And everyone in agreement say, Amen.

Amen.

One more time.

You'll help me thank Mr.

Toxie turn.

Man, I'm so glad that you guys uh joined us.

You know, we started this series, seven-week series about the values that guide and shape our movement.

In week one, we saw that we were made to move together.

That is what we believe about you.

You were created on purpose and with purpose.

Uh, Toxie and our other officers, man, that is part of what they're doing.

They're living out a piece of their God-given purpose by serving us in that way here at MetaCurch.

In week two, we saw that you were made to live with the end in mind.

You were made to love unconditionally, and last week you were made to give sacrificially.

If you need to catch up on any of those, you can do that at youtube.com slash metachurch.

Today, we're gonna see that we were made to walk by faith.

We were made to walk by faith.

And one of the things I've loved in this series is every week our video team has put together a video of one of your fellow members of this movement really living these values out, videos just like this.

Hi, I'm Pam Holland.

I've been on the prayer team for about six years.

I wasn't raised in the church, so I didn't know what really church looked like, and I just really enjoy the energy at Meta.

Well, prayer's just always been a part of my relationship with the Lord, and I know there's a great deal of power in it, and so I wanted to be able to minister and help others to draw closer to the Lord, especially in their time of need.

Well, there's a lot of people that have issues that are bigger than what they feel that they can deal with.

And oftentimes, two coming together and being in agreement helps to lift those burdens.

And so I think that's a big part of it.

I love it when people walk away with the joy of the Lord.

When they realize that they are loved, they have access to the peace of God, the joy of God.

Serving on the prayer team has allowed me to get to know other people who also have a love and a desire to enter into God's presence through prayer.

So our prayer team is very powerful, and so I love the team.

It energizes me to be around them and encourages me to continue on the prayer team.

Y'all give it up for Pam and the rest of our prayer team.

Not only are they walking by faith, they are helping us do that as well.

Uh, would you guys pray with me?

Jesus, we are here seeking you.

Holy Spirit, we know that you are moving, and your deepest desire is to communicate something that would change us today.

So I pray that we are open to that.

We love you.

We ask all this in Jesus' name, and if you're ready to walk by faith, say amen.

Amen.

2 Corinthians 5 says, For we walk by faith, not by sight.

We walk by faith.

That's contrasted with not walking by our sight, or what always makes sense, or what always brings us instant gratification.

Another way to talk about walking by faith is being led by the Holy Spirit.

In Romans 8, 14, it says, For all those led by God's Spirit are God's Son, and that is contrasted with being led by your flesh.

In the preceding verses it says, So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh or to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, then you will live.

And this is the tension that we live in as followers of Jesus.

A desire to do the things of God, to be led by the Spirit of God, to walk by faith, but a constant pull by the culture around us to walk by sight, to live in order for the instant gratification of pleasing our flesh, of pleasing our desires, not keeping our eyes on the end goal of eternity, but just making decisions that will benefit us today.

This is the pool.

And these conversations about walking by faith and understanding the spirit's prompting in our life, they can feel very confusing.

I have a feeling that if I were to take a poll of everyone in this service, everyone watching online right now, and just asked whether or not you felt confused by how to hear from God, most people would say they do.

And we don't give good answers about how to follow the Spirit in church.

Either they fall far too simplistic, like when you're like, I don't really know how to hear from God, and I don't understand what it means to walk by faith.

A lot of times you'll get this really Christian simple answer of, well, you just need to have more faith.

And that's called a circular answer.

Like, how do I walk by faith?

Have more faith.

Well, that's a problem because I'm asking about faith itself.

You can't use in your answer what my question is.

On the other side, we get these like convoluted, overly complex answers of how do I walk by faith?

How do I like allow my life to be led by the Spirit?

And they'll just say these crazy things like, you know, you just gotta tap into the ethereal reality of the metaphysical subconscious conscious.

And it's like, what so what was the first word that you said there?

Like, I didn't get any of that, you know?

And so it's either way too complicated or way too simple.

And by the end of our time today, I hope to just kind of demystify this and give us some actual next steps because every one of us, we were created, we were made to walk by faith.

We were made to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and allow God to lead our life.

Today I want us to spend our time in just five verses.

It's kind of an unusual story in the book of Acts, chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

It starts in verse 6.

It says, They went through the region of Phrygia in Galatia.

They'd been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.

And when they came to Messiah, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

And so passing by Messiah, they went down to Troaz.

And during the night, Paul had a vision in which a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, cross over to Macedonia and help us.

And after he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Now, this is what is known as the second missionary journey of the Apostle Paul.

Apostle Paul, along with some other missionaries, they went on three missionary journey journeys in total, and this was the second of those three.

And it's very, very peculiar what happens because Paul puts a plan in place, and he's doing exactly what Jesus called us to do in the Great Commission.

To take his gospel, that's the good news of Jesus, to the ends of the earth.

And so the plan is anywhere and everywhere that we can go, we are going to tell people about Jesus and help to plant churches so people can meet together and move together as a part of what Jesus is doing on the earth.

But when he puts his plan into play, somewhere along the journey, the Holy Spirit intercedes and forbids them to go to two different locations.

First, in verse 6, it says, They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia.

They had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.

It's kind of weird.

And then right away in verse 7, then they came to Messiah.

They tried to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

Forbid them and did not allow them.

Now, they were doing good things.

This is a good plan.

It's not like the Holy Spirit stopped them from like a layover in Vegas where they were gonna turn up real quick.

They were doing good things, God, godly things, but the Holy Spirit stopped them anyway.

And if you're like me, you're very curious, you might wonder how the Holy Spirit stopped them.

You know, often in Scripture we get these stories, and there's a lot of details, and then in these key moments, they remain somewhat ambiguous.

One of these examples is in another part of Scripture.

It talks about how the Apostle Paul was given a thorn in his flesh by God.

Like some kind of suffering, some kind of ailment, some kind of mental condition, some kind of temptation he couldn't overcome.

We don't know what it was, and scripture is ambiguous on it.

And so, what scholars and theologians do over the last 2,000 years, they've spent like millions of hours trying to precisely figure out what the thorn in Paul's side was.

So, do you want to know what it was?

We don't know.

The Bible doesn't tell us.

This is the same kind of situation.

The Holy Spirit forbids them from going.

The Spirit of Jesus does not allow them to go in.

So, like, what happened?

Did the clouds part and dove descend and lightning strike?

Did it spell it out in the clouds?

Was it just a still small prompting in their heart?

Was it something practical like the military of those regions didn't allow them to pass through?

Did someone on the trip get too sick and they weren't able to travel there?

Did they show up and nobody listened to them?

We don't know.

And I think often, like you gotta remember, we start with this premise that scripture is the inspired word of God.

It does not make any accidents.

And I think that often scripture is precisely ambiguous.

Now that's kind of an oxymoron, right?

Precisely ambiguous.

And here's the problem: if we knew exactly what Paul's thorn in the flesh was, then we would be able to categorize it and put it in a corner and just assume that God doesn't understand our own sufferings.

Instead, it's precisely ambiguous so that you can apply it to any suffering in your own life.

If we knew exactly how the Holy Spirit stopped Paul and his missionary journey, then we would be able to categorize that and put it in a box and ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our own life.

It's precisely ambiguous.

We don't know how it happened, we just know it happened.

And that Paul and the people in his party obeyed.

The bottom line is both to go down into Asia and up into Bithynia, those were closed doors.

And this is often a good metaphor for how the Holy Spirit works in our life when we are sensitive to the Spirit and when we are humble enough to allow the Spirit to take the lead, is God will open doors in your life and will close doors in your life.

And this can happen in any number of ways.

And oftentimes, when God closes one door in your life, in retrospect, when you finally find the open door, you're as thankful for the new opportunity as you are for the opportunity that you were saved from, even if it doesn't feel that way in the moment.

There was the great philosopher Garth Brooks.

You know, he says, Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.

Y'all remember that?

And you know this because if you have any perspective on your life, you can look back to things you were devastated by, and now you are so thankful.

You know, when you finally found the love of your wife and you just thank God for all of the train wrecks that he kept you from in the past, you know?

You know how this works, a job that you just had to have, and you just couldn't get the position, and they wouldn't hire you.

And now you see the working conditions, or they finally went bankrupt, or you finally found your actual purpose.

This is often how things work, and sometimes Christians complain that they they're never hearing from the Holy Spirit and they don't feel God prompting them, and they just feel stuck in life.

And often what I find is those are Christians who have had a door shut on them and they just haven't moved on from the door.

They're just still angry at God that it didn't work out, just like begging.

Like, could you could you just crack the I just want to look in for open the door, let me go in for 10 seconds, I'll come back out, then you can shut it.

I just want to know.

And behind you are all the open doors of possibility and opportunity for you to live the purposeful, powerful life that God created you to live.

I mean, we've experienced this as a movement.

We really, really thought that God was going to open a door, not to this building that he miraculously gift wrapped for us.

We weren't looking at a bingo hall, we were looking at a Kmart.

I mean, we prayed for the Kmart and begged for the Kmart, raised money for the Kmart, and the door shut.

But no sooner did it shut than a better door opened.

This is how it works.

We are sensitive to the prompting to the movement of the Holy Spirit, and if we are humble enough to allow the Holy Spirit to set the direction of our life, which means a willingness to give up sometimes on our own plans.

Paul had made a plan.

Paul had outlined the journey, and the Holy Spirit said no.

And isn't it interesting?

You know, sometimes God will shut doors to keep you from making terrible choices, sometimes God will shut doors just to keep you from doing something stupid, right?

And sometimes, this is the one that doesn't make sense to us immediately.

God will shut the door on a good thing in order to move you to a god thing.

And do we trust the Holy Spirit even when we have good intentions, and even when we're trying to serve Jesus, and even when we're trying to build his kingdom when doors shut, that maybe he's keeping us from a good thing so that we can move to a God thing.

And here's what we see that Paul was humble enough to allow a closed door to be a closed door.

And in response, God gives him a very clear open door.

In verse 8, it says, passing by Messiah, they went down to Troaz, and during the night, Paul had a vision in which a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, cross over to Macedonia and help us.

Paul had a vision, calling him and his missionary party over to Macedonia.

Now, when I was in school, there were a few subjects that I was okay at.

Confession time, I am embarrassingly terrible at geography.

Like I am so thankful for the Bibles with the maps in the back, so I can have some idea of what is going on here.

And I think the geography actually matters for you to be able to see that even though Paul could have gone down into what they called Asia, which is where like Ephesus and Colossae and Laodicea and all these churches that he would start later, all of those churches were down there, and he could have gone up north, he could have, but there was a God thing that was in store for him, and the amazing richness of just these five verses and all that God was doing in them, we gotta take our time to really understand.

So let's pull up map number one.

This is a map of Paul's second missionary journey.

Um, it goes counterclockwise.

If you see the word Asia right there, you can kind of see it.

You can nod your head so I can know if you kind of see the word Asia.

Right above the word Asia, this is where the doors were closed on Paul by the Holy Spirit to keep him from going south into Asia or north into Bithynia.

Instead, they go to Troaz, which is an important port city.

And so let's zoom in on that map just to this part that we're really focusing on.

It's here that Paul gets the vision to go to Macedonia.

And to go to Macedonia, you'll notice it says the man said, cross over to Macedonia.

That means Paul's gonna have to charter a ship and go across the Aegean Sea.

Now, like I told y'all, I am really good at geography, so of course I knew what that meant.

What that meant is that the gospel was leaving Asia, what we know as Asia, and was passing over into Europe for the first time.

When Jesus said that you will be my disciples in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

This is a concentric movement of the gospel all around the world.

And it was moving, but it had not crossed the sea into Europe.

And because it crossed the sea into Europe, it eventually crossed into the West.

This is the moment that the gospel went on a trajectory to ultimately end up here.

A lot of people think of Christianity as like a European religion or something like that.

It most certainly was not.

It started in the Middle East.

You may not know this, but the gospel and the scriptures went down to Africa long before they came to Europe or across the seas, eventually to America.

This is a key moment for the spread of the gospel.

Not only that, but you'll notice a few names over in the Macedonian area, names like Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea.

These are where the churches started to the Philippians and to the Thessalonians, and these became the strongest churches in the first century.

As a matter of fact, this area that they existed in is known to history as Gentile Jerusalem.

This is like where the people of God were moving in full force.

These churches were so strong.

The church of Philippi became the primary contributor to the church under persecution in Jerusalem.

In a world with no automobiles, no airplanes, no electronic communication, no steam-powered ships, from Philippi to Jerusalem might as well have been from San Antonio to the moon.

Like this is wild.

And it shows the unity and the power, the cohesiveness of this church movement because Paul was willing to allow a closed door to be a closed door.

And that's not the only thing that happened.

All of these could have been good things turning into God things.

If you're like me, you're incredibly curious, and when you heard Paul had a vision of the Macedonian man, one of your thoughts would have been, I wonder who that was.

Like who is the Macedonian man, this strange figure that changed the trajectory of the church forever?

Now, we don't actually know.

Scripture doesn't tell us, but we have a pretty good guess, and even if we are wrong, something happened because Paul was willing to go to Macedonia.

That changed how we viewed the church forever.

And to get this, we've got to go back to about sixth grade English.

And we got to pay attention to the grammar.

And I know we don't want to do this, but I've highlighted, I've made it really easy for us.

Acts 16, verse 6, it says, they went through the region.

Acts 16:6

They had been.

In verse 7, when they, they tried, but the spirit did not allow them.

In verse 8, passing by, Mystius, they, these are all third person pronouns.

Verse 9, there's no pronouns.

Verse 10, everything changes.

In verse 10, it says, after.

After Paul had seen the vision, we.

So it's they, they, they, them, they.

Then in verse 10, it all changes.

First person, we.

And so all of the book of Acts, chapter 1 through 16, 10, it's all third person until verse 10, which tells us the author of Acts has now entered the chat.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

All of a sudden, he is a part of the story that he's telling.

Now, uh, pop quiz, which means you're gonna have to answer out loud.

Who wrote the book of Acts?

Luke for a thousand points, give it up! That was amazing.

Okay, that one was easy.

Y'all don't know what give it up means.

That means clap, clap for the person who got the, yeah.

Like most pop quizzes, this is gonna get more challenging.

What other book of the New Testament did Luke write?

Luke! That's right! 10,000 points! Man, you guys are Bible scholars in here.

Luke wrote the book of Acts, and Luke wrote the book of Luke.

There are four Gospels, four historical accounts of the life of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered the synoptic gospels.

They give a synopsis of the life of Jesus.

But Luke stands out as very irregular from Mark and Matthew in the style of its writing.

And here's why.

Because Luke was a Gentile physician.

He was not Jewish like most of the authors of the New Testament.

And he was highly, highly educated and meticulous.

And so in his gospel, the Gospel of Luke, we have a historical style of writing that has become a bedrock and a foundation for the affirmation of our beliefs and the reliability of all of our gospel accounts, as well as the reliability of the historical fact of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

Luke has been leveraged by scholars and theologians and normal everyday Christians like you and I to defend our faith in a unique way because of the uniqueness of who Luke was.

And he also wrote the book of Acts, which details all of the beginning of the church itself and how decisions were made and how it was supposed to function.

The book of Acts is like the handbook for Christian leaders to take the movement of Jesus and put it into today's context.

And without Luke's contribution, what we know of church and how we think of church might be completely different.

And Paul would have never met Luke if he didn't allow a closed door to be a closed door.

And many people, again, conjecture, think that Luke was the Macedonian man in Paul's vision.

It would explain why Paul allowed a Gentile physician he presumably had just met to join his missionary journey, which changed the course of Christian history.

All of the things that resulted were from Paul walking by faith and not just walking by sight.

Paul had made a plan.

Let's go to Asia, and that was a good plan, but it wasn't a God plan.

When that got shut down, he made a new plan.

Let's go to Bithynia, let's go north.

It was a good plan, but it wasn't a God plan.

The Holy Spirit interrupted where he was going, and he moved a good thing into a God thing.

And here's one of the great obstacles to us allowing the Holy Spirit to direct our steps, to actually walk by faith and not by sight.

Am I the only person who really does not like when my plans change?

Huh?

Am I gonna be the only non-liar in church service this morning?

Am I the only person who really dislikes being told no?

Anyone?

No?

You're not raising your hand, but your spouse is staring daggers at you, so I'm gonna take that as uh of course not.

And here's the problem.

We live in this very selfish, narcissistic, self-indulgent, hedonistic society that tries to convince you you can be your own God.

And if I live thinking consciously or subconsciously that I am my own God, when I lay a plan, it should happen because I laid it.

And I'm not saying you can't have some level of success with your plans.

There are people who are far from God, who have heard the good news of Jesus, rejected it out of hand, who still rise to fame, make lots of money, have lots of influence.

You can do that.

But if you live long enough, you will come to understand that in building your own kingdom, there will still be something missing at the deepest part of who you are.

It will still lack significance, it will still lack fulfillment.

You were created on purpose and you were created with purpose, and you discover that purpose by following the spirit of the God who created it and placed it inside of you.

Incredible, incredible things happen when we begin to let Jesus direct our steps.

I told you, just these five verses are rich almost beyond comprehension.

In just these five verses, we see working in Paul's life all three members of our triune God.

I'll show you.

In verse six, it says they had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit.

In verse seven, it says the spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go on.

And in verse 10, it said that the vision was affirmed when they concluded that God the Father had called them to preach the gospel in Macedonia.

The affirmation of God the Father, the redirection of God the Son, who is Jesus, and the conviction of God the Holy Spirit, all at play in your life.

You cannot convince me if you are a child of God that you are not meant to live a massively impactful, powerful life, the full power of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, desperate to unleash and unlock in your life the very purpose that you were created and put on earth to live out.

And so, how do we do it?

How do we make this practical?

Walking by faith, because we can go real simple.

If you want to walk by faith, have more faith.

We can get really complex about all of the metaphysical properties of the universe.

I want to demystify this.

I want to give you three steps that I see in this story.

Step number one is to get moving.

Get moving.

You know, Paul, um, it says that the Holy Spirit interrupted his plans, but it doesn't say the Holy Spirit sat down before the second missionary journey and pushed pins into a map to show him all the spots to hit.

Paul just had marching orders already.

Go into the world and preach the gospel.

A lot of times, as Christians, I think we want to sit still.

You'll see Christians who will show up to church every day.

They're in a different church program every day.

And they're just hoping that the clouds will part and the voice of God that probably sounds like James Earl Jones or Samuel L.

Jackson or like that voice will just tell us, like specifically, you know.

And so until it gets like written in the sand, you know, for us, we're just gonna kind of sit and wait.

And I am telling you, that is the wrong approach.

Step number one, get moving.

I used to have a boss, he would say this all the time he'd say, You can't steer a parked car.

That's just true.

If you're in the car, ignition off, car in part, you can't go left, right, forward, or backwards.

You can steer a car, you can nudge it nice, gently, left, right, you can hit a UI and go in the whole other direction, but only if the car is moving.

You have got to get moving.

And look, the Holy Spirit does not necessarily have to uniquely instruct you every moment of your life because the Holy Spirit has already given us 66 books broken down into two testaments, in one Bible, these spirit-inspired words of God to show you how to begin living.

So get moving.

Love unconditionally, serve radically, put others ahead of yourself, share your testimony, be a shoulder to lean on, start living and loving like Jesus.

These are the fundamentals, and you gotta get moving on the fundamentals.

We want these unique callings, and sometimes Christians are like, man, why isn't the Holy Spirit just like audibly speaking to me in my mind right now?

And it's like, bro, you're not even kind to your wife.

You don't show up and work hard at your job.

You spend hours just damning people on Facebook all day who are your political opponents.

So it's like, do the fundamentals, just get moving first.

I'm gonna say something, and someday I might stand in heaven, and Jesus was like, hey, I like most of what you said, that one thing on that one day on June 25th.

I don't know, but I'm gonna say it because I think it get moving in the entirely wrong direction.

Just get moving.

Give Jesus a chance to be like, I love your heart here, man, but we're just gonna oh no.

Who is that philosopher Carrie Underwood?

Jesus, take the wheel.

Remember that was Y'all want Jesus to take the wheel, but Jesus is like, push start first, you know?

Take the on-ramp.

Get moving.

God can do a lot with a Christian life that is passionately moving in the wrong direction.

God can do very little with a Christian life who is just sitting still.

You can't steer a parked car.

We thought we were cruising towards a Kmart.

We were going 140 miles an hour towards a Kmart.

And Jesus was like, You thought that was a blue light special, that's how you turn.

Let's see over bingo hall, over this way.

Get moving.

Do the things you know you should do because they're written in God's word for you.

Once you get moving, keep listening.

Sometimes we walk through one really significant door and we get so busy doing the work of Jesus that we stop paying attention to Jesus.

Keep listening.

You know how you can be in a crowd and your wife can say two words to you and you hear her voice and know it's hers.

You know, there's some celebrities.

You could play me one word from Kevin Hart.

I would know it's Kevin Hart.

I've just listened to enough of them.

If you want to learn what the Holy Spirit sounds like, read his words in your scripture.

They were inspired by him, and he speaks through them.

If you've watched five Kevin Hart stand-up specials, you know his voice.

Some of you don't know the Holy Spirit's voice because you've never gone to where he is.

Listen.

Pray.

Get in Christian community, have Christian conversations.

Allow somebody in your life to hold you accountable to the life that you're living.

Get moving.

And once you're moving, keep listening.

Just because one door is open doesn't mean the next one is gonna automatically open.

If you are listening, God will gently reach over and steer your life in the direction it should go.

Get moving, keep listening and stay open.

The more spiritual winds we get, the more we are tempted to take credit for them.

I kind of got this figured out now, you know?

Like I probably I'm pretty sure I could probably tell open door and closed door, I don't even gotta pray about it.

When you hit that level of hubris, all of a sudden you think your plans are God's plans.

You have mistaken the separation between creator and creation.

Keep listening because God's gonna keep speaking.

And so often we lay a plan and we think we're doing God uh like a service by kicking down a door he closed.

And I keep running into these closed doors.

This was me for years.

Like this is a good plan.

This is a good plan.

Like Jesus would like this plan, and this door, Jesus, I got it.

Ha! You know, if you kick down enough doors, I promise you disaster is incoming.

I promise you.

Because I've lived it for years.

I promise God.

When we thought to get a building, I promise.

I promise my staff I will not kick down a door.

I've done it too many times in my life.

And I was tempted.

And maybe I would have missed the door that was open.

Stay open.

Stay humble.

Realize He is God.

We are not.

And I'm not saying you can't make something of your life and do something and have somebody and have some success.

What I am saying is the life you could live if you get moving and listen to the Holy Spirit and stay open to going exactly where he calls you to go.

What I am saying is if you will walk by faith and not by sight, you will unlock and unleash something in your life that is unimaginably powerful, unimaginably impactful, and will finally fulfill the deepest longings of your soul.

Walk by faith, not by sight.

Let me pray for you.

Holy Spirit, this is what we desire.

We desire to be open to whatever you want from us, wherever you want us to go, whatever you want us to do.

We desire to hear from you.

I pray that we would just stick to the fundamentals, loving well, giving generously, living with the end goal in mind, living with eternity in view at all times, loving without condition, giving generously, crazily, like giving in a way of our time, energy, our resources, our talents, that we would just actually live out these values that are found in your word.

That we would get moving on these fundamentals, that we would step into the flow of what your Holy Spirit is already doing.

No more standing still, no more waiting, no more thinking we're not good enough or smart enough or don't know enough Bible or haven't been a Christian long enough.

Just get moving.

That we would continue listening, continue hearing for what you're saying to us, and how you're calling us and how you're moving us.

That we would be open.

You are God and I am not.

That we would trust you with the closed doors, even the painful ones.

And be bold and confident to walk through the open doors that you present.

That we would walk by faith, and as we come into a time of worshiping you, that even now, Holy Spirit, you would be speaking to our hearts.

We love you.

We pray this in Jesus' powerful name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.