Vision Sunday 2026

Welcome to the First Preds Sermon Podcast, where each week we dive into scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives.

God's word meets us where we are, challenging, shaping, and calling us into something greater.

No matter where you are on your journey, you belong here.

And we're praying that this sermon might help you take a next step in faith towards Jesus.

Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

Hi, my name is Angie Schweitzer, and I'm one of your elders.

Today's scripture reading is from Romans 14, verses 16 through 18.

Romans 14:16–18

Therefore, do not let what you know is good to be spoken of as evil.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

This is the word of the Lord.

I have a a friend who's also a business client.

He had uh reached out to me and said, Hey, I'd like to have lunch with you.

And you know, Doug had said, Hey, would you like to go to church with Kathy and I?

And I thought, that sounds good.

At first I almost refused to sing, I didn't feel right, whatever.

I was kind of holding on to the past, I guess.

Pastor Tim was giving a sermon about the Samaritan woman.

When the Samaritan woman had said, you know, when the Messiah comes, we'll find all this out.

Um, and then he Jesus said, uh, the Messiah you speak of, I am He.

And that kind of really struck me.

A very personal interaction between this woman and Jesus, and he's proclaiming to her that he's God.

I couldn't really get that story out of my head.

So I went uh to the coffee shop over at uh Glen Erie to get an NIV.

I bought a study Bible there, and I was in the parking lot inside my car, and I read that passage probably a dozen times, just kept reading it over and over and over again, and I could really feel like something was moving in me.

As I read that passage, there was just a very personal connection between this woman and Jesus.

And I could say that I I yearned for that too.

That night, actually, it was early the next morning, way early, I was awakened by uh a dream that I had when Jesus came to me.

It was just me and just him, and it was like almost like you know, the woman and uh the Samaritan woman in Jesus in the well.

And uh I remember, you know, I asked Jesus, you know, if he'd accept my love, and at that moment I had a lot of peace, and uh and so that's really you know changed my life since then.

It was almost a year later to the day that I got baptized.

When we make room in our hearts for the Holy Spirit, um, it's important to note that great things can happen.

Who would have known that when my friend asked me to come to church, that I'd be where I am today, that I'd have the faith that I have now, that I feel the love and the peace, and also the challenge.

Um it's been a tremendous thing, and who would have known that that would have happened in just simply asking somebody to go to church with you.

Praise God for that.

Amen.

Amen.

Wow.

So moving that story, and um, that's what it's all about, y'all.

Amen.

Y'all.

All y'all.

That's what it's all about.

And uh we are uh we are are part of a mission.

Uh not to look, this mission is not to introduce Colorado Springs to First Presbyterian Church.

Okay?

This mission is to see people introduced to Jesus.

To see the lost come home.

That's what we're about.

It's Vision Sunday today.

It's good to be with you.

Uh, excited about this morning.

It is a little different from other mornings.

We'll talk about that in just a second.

But let's pray and get into our message.

Lord Jesus, thank you.

Thank you for Simon's story.

Thank you for coming into his life and power.

Thank you for coming into our lives.

And thank you for bringing us together to serve you as a church.

We thank you, Jesus, that you're here with us, that we don't have to do it alone.

We we thank you that you're speaking to us right now.

And we pray that you would bless this time that we spend both in your word and talking about our life together as a church.

Lord Jesus, would you be with us so that as we leave today, we know we've heard from you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

And the church said, Amen.

Amen.

Well, it is Vision Sunday, and so we're talking about big themes, big things, big ideas, and and and I really want to emphasize that that that that video is essential.

I mean, this is what we're about.

We're not about introducing people to first pres, or I'm not about introducing people to me.

We're about introducing people to Jesus.

We want people to meet Jesus, and we want Jesus to intersect with people's lives and to see lives transformed, to see souls transformed for the glory of Jesus.

And that's happening.

I want you to know it's happening.

And I want you to pray for it to happen more and more and more.

We're on a mission for Christ.

To have that moment where Jesus, it's really powerful, isn't it?

Where he says, it's the thing in the Good Samaritan story that stuck out to him.

Do you remember what it was?

It's like, I'm the Messiah you're looking for.

He said, That's a thing that like drilled down in his head, he couldn't get out of his head.

Had to go buy a Bible, had to sit in his car, read the story twelve times, right?

It's how the Lord speaks to us through his word.

He gets into our hearts, and things start to change.

Life transforms.

That's what we're after.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking.

It's not a matter of just what we do, but what?

Of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

There's something God that's doing.

There's things that we're doing, but what matters is what God is doing, as God intersects with our lives with righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That's the kingdom of God.

That's what matters.

That's what the Holy Spirit is doing.

How do we make more room?

Today we want to talk about make more room for the Spirit.

Make more room for the Holy Spirit to do what he does.

We want to make more room for the Spirit in our lives, in our church.

What do we need to do to make more room for the Spirit?

Do we need to remove some clutter?

Do we need to pull up some tent stakes?

Do we need to change some expectations?

What do we need to do?

We want to live with more room for the Spirit.

Let the Spirit of God fill our sails.

How many of you have seen the Odyssey?

You seen it?

Pretty good?

I was certain that by the time I came to give the message on Vision Sunday, I would have seen the Odyssey.

I was a hundred percent certain.

So certain I made it my opening illustration.

Do you know who has not seen the Odyssey?

This guy.

But I did read the book this summer because I am a nerd.

I am a nerd.

And so uh, how many of you read the book this summer?

All right.

Okay, yeah, there we go.

So I know the story.

But the Odyssey, the Odyssey, what kept happening to Odysseus?

He kept getting lost, he kept getting blown off course.

Every now and then he's waking up on a beach, he doesn't know where he is, he's got to figure out where he is.

And a lot of times it's his own fault.

A lot of times it's just these these evil gods, right?

That just like to mess with people.

And so they've he's gotten blown off course and he doesn't know where he is.

Listen, the first job that you have when you wake up on a beach in a strange land is to wipe the sand out of your eyes and figure out what?

Where am I?

Where am I?

And where do I need to go?

And how am I gonna get there?

Vision Sunday for us is a little different.

If you're if you're here for the first time or exploring first pres, this is a different message.

Usually uh I'm I'm go straight through the passage and we go really deep together.

On Vision Sunday, we do something a little bit differently.

We take a time in worship to just do this orientation as a church.

Where are we?

Where are we going?

How might we get there?

How can we encourage one another to get there together?

It's Vision Sunday.

And now, you know, so like Odysseus, we wake up and we wipe our eyes.

But unlike him, good news, there are no gods in Mount Olympus messing with us.

Okay?

We don't have to deal with that.

We don't have these impish, childish, fake gods trying to destroy us.

What do we have?

We have the Lord.

We are the body of Christ, and He is our active head.

We have we have the Holy Spirit.

We are the ship of faith, and our sails are full, not with some random wind.

Our sails are full with the wind of the Holy Spirit.

He's gonna lead us home.

Where are we?

Where are we going?

How are we gonna get there?

Where are we?

First President has been around for 154 years.

It's our 155th year of doing this errand.

I've been here the last ten.

And we've come a long way.

If you don't know the story of our church, we started with eight uh believers who started First Presbyterian Church, eight hearty frontier Presbyterians.

Church grew, grew, grew, grew, grew, all the way to uh in the time of Pastor John Stevens.

How many of you remember Pastor John Stevens or how many of you were members of the church during John Stevens' time?

Yeah.

And at that time, the church actually got up to where the church was gathering on Sundays, uh, about 3,000 every Sunday would gather for worship.

Strong time in the church.

And we went uh all the way up to that period, uh, to the time of uh a pastor named Jim Singleton and his uh his missional ideals for outward focus.

How many of you were here with Jim Singleton?

Well, if you're here with John Stevens, you're here with Jim Singleton.

But you remember Jim Singleton in that season, and and after his time, we went through a bit as a church of a of a of an interim period.

And in 2016 is when I jumped in and started to join this mission.

In 2017, we made a decision to change this room from a banquet space, we called the Fellowship Hall, to the worship center.

We said, let it be a place devoted to the worship of God in this manner.

And do you know what happened?

In the next two years, the amount of people that would gather for worship in these services doubled.

It doubled.

There's an enormous response to that call of Christ.

We uh established a beachhead for Christian creativity underneath your feet.

It's called the creative suite.

We said, look, when we're engaged with culture, we don't want to be in combat and we don't just want to be copying, we want to create beautiful things.

We devoted ourselves to becoming culture makers to the glory of Christ.

In 2019, light and life for the city emerged as a central rallying point of what are we about?

In 2020, the first Prez Way, Seven Values in Our Pursuit of Jesus emerged.

And at 2020, from 2019 into January, February 2020, we were actually at a height of attendance and engagement that we had not seen for over 10 years prior.

What else happened in 2020?

On March 13th, we uh we closed the doors, COVID came.

We went into church online for a few months and limited seating for about a year.

We complied with the city and the state, and that frustrated some people.

Um but we wanted to prove that as a church we were willing to sacrifice our preferences for the well-being of the population.

People ask me often, uh, would I want us to do it the same way again?

Would I do it the same way?

And do you know what I say?

Don't ask.

Don't ask.

But look, we wanted to love God, love neighbor, we we worked hard to follow the Lord's leading, and we knew that we had the capacity to go online and continue the mission.

And so we did.

And still, though, five years later, we wake up and we sort of ask, Lord, five years later, when will we return to strength as a church?

We're still returning to strength.

Where are we?

We wake up on the beach and we recognize that in ten years we have endured political unrest, economic swings, a global pandemic, and an internal staff and session reorganization with some associated emotional storms.

We've been through a lot together.

If you've been here for 10 years, you've been parts of these things, you've been in these waves, you've been in these storms.

We wake up on the beach again.

Wipe our eyes.

Where are we?

It's September 2026.

Where are we?

You know where we are?

This is a strong and growing church.

Lost souls are coming to the Lord.

People are being saved through the ministries of this church.

Kids are growing up in the Lord.

We have strong and powerful transformative worship services in both sides of the house.

We have a mission that is on the rise.

We are poised to make an enormous impact for Christ on Colorado Springs.

A few things.

We welcomed our largest class of First Press Fellows this year at 12.

12.

That's the largest, it's the most we've ever had.

You say, what difference can 12 people make?

Anybody read the Bible?

Yeah.

We've got a great class of first pres fellows.

And the alumni of fellows, they're they're spreading out and making differences all across our city.

And in fact, uh, three of them by the end of next month will be part of our staff here at First Pres.

There's a big thriving movement of reaching this next generation with leaders.

Alpha class.

Last year in winter, we held an alpha class.

We were praying for people to get involved in alpha.

And this got about 70 people involved in the Alpha class.

It's the largest Alpha class I've ever heard of outside of Holy Trinity Brompton in London where it started.

And it's like, what is happening here?

Well, we were praying to fill up our alpha class halls.

Why?

What is the alpha course?

This is a place where you can bring friends who don't know the Lord, who've got questions, who don't have the answers, and they'll be hosted and loved around a table with meals.

You can ask any question.

It's a safe place to ask whatever you want, and people come to know a little bit more about Jesus.

Well, our alpha class was enormous in the winter.

And then and then uh yesterday we hosted all the training for all the alpha classes that are happening in any church in our city, and 50 people were here just to be trained how to lead alpha classes.

So we have an alpha course that's starting on Thursday night, and I hope you're praying for that.

I hope you're inviting someone.

Be a part of that.

God's using this church.

In 2023, our elders made an important commitment.

They made a commitment to help us to form a healthy staff culture.

This was really important to us.

And so we started on this project, and last year, if you were here for Vision Sunday last year, you heard me say in 2025, for the very first time, two years after that that commitment of those elders, two years later, First Pres was registered as a best Christian workplace, as one of the best Christian workplaces in America with this organization Best Christian Workplaces.

And yeah, that's good.

What is Cullins doing, man?

You're not going to get anywhere, man.

Yep.

And so some of you are like we can give you that picture later.

Um some of you are in that this game with us.

You wonder how are we doing now?

Last month we took the anonymous survey again.

And what I want to tell you, church, is the scores for our staff were even higher.

And so we're registered again as a best Christian workplace for 26-27.

Why does that matter?

When we started this, the first time we took this anonymous survey, our church tested in the second percentile of healthy staff engagement.

What that meant was among churches taking the survey, we were in the second percentile of being able to say our staff is engaged in the mission of this church.

Second percentile.

This year, as we took the survey, we're in the 64th percentile.

Just three years later.

Praise God.

And I want to say thank you, church and congregation, for hanging in with us and for getting us through this change that needed to be made.

Because let me tell you, as someone who wears a name tag and works here, you cannot believe how different it is.

And this is releasing our church to a new future.

So thank you for helping to make make it through this this path.

We'll keep going.

We have an installed executive pastor, and we're building a team around a solid vision.

Let's wipe this.

Don't laugh at Greg.

He's a good guy.

What?

Huh?

Did I oh yay! Okay, good.

I'm with you.

I'm totally with you.

Yay, Greg! Woo! We're excited.

We're excited.

Let's wipe the sand out of our eyes.

Just do this a minute.

Just wipe the sand out of your eyes, okay?

Where are we?

Where are we?

This is where we are.

First Press gathers each week, about 1,600 strong, five generations deep, in two strong, powerful worship services and two beautiful spaces, one glorious campus in the heart of downtown Colorado Springs with zero dollars of debt and an infinite range of possibilities of what our Lord will call us to do and be as we continue fulfilling his mission.

That's where we are.

Hey, hey, we're in a good spot.

We're in a good spot.

We're in a good spot.

And as a congregation, we're praying, don't leave us behind, Lord.

Use us for your glory.

Use us.

We're yours.

Use us for your glory.

This healthy staff is like a beehive buzzing with creativity.

You're experiencing some of that this morning.

Our session ministry teams are like little engines of ministry activity that are pushing, pushing, pushing ahead.

We're in a good spot.

It's a good church to be a part of.

That's where we are.

Where are we headed?

I had the opportunity to sit with a leader named Ed Stetzer a few weeks ago.

And Ed Stetzer is uh a uh uh uh pollster and a Christian leader and an author.

He he he runs trends on Christian life in America.

And Ed said, you know what?

Tim, churches like yours are in a good space.

We're headed in a good direction.

Where are we going?

Do you ever wonder like, is there a future for this church in the way that we do it?

He says, You're heading a good direction.

You're heading a good direction.

We offer things that others can't.

We offer multiple generations worshiping together, five generations deep.

And yet we're a good place, a great place to raise kids in the Lord.

We have a thriving family ministry.

We can offer some things.

We offer a great downtown campus with also a place to park.

Right?

You know, you don't realize most downtown churches don't have that.

We got a pretty nice parking lot, it's actually kind of smooth, right?

We have longstanding global mission relationships and a stable presence in our city.

This is amazing.

We've got both of these things to offer.

And you know what?

We have classic worship that is spiritually alive and faithful to the gospel, and we have thoughtful modern worship that is shaped after the rhythms of the gospel.

Christians are hungry for churches like ours.

Churches that have a strong accountability structure and can speak up with leadership integrity and have deep and rich theology in the teaching.

Larger churches are trending upward nationally.

People want enough size to have uh excellent ministries, but not too big to be left behind.

We're in a good spot, you see.

I was off with a uh a trip of Christian leaders, and and one of them said to me last month, he said, We're we're actually looking for a church with more reverence.

He said, nightclub worship has gone a little thin.

I thought, ouch, that's a little hard, right?

And I thought, well, I want you to know that's not what we do.

Not in here, not in there.

That's not what we do, nightclub worship.

No.

This is not an entertainment.

You're not an audience.

This is a congregation of believers.

And in both sides of the house, we have rich and deep, thoughtful rhythms of worship.

In fact, uh, people have come to this worship service and said, that's the most liturgical service I've ever been in, because they've been in some other spaces.

And I don't want to disparage what other churches are doing to reach people for Christ.

We're doing some awesome things in town.

I only say that because I want you to have hope and confidence that what God is doing here matters.

And you can invite people into this with confidence and joy.

Because God's given us a way forward.

Where are we headed?

Where are we headed?

This is not thin, showy stuff.

This is real soul-shaping, God honoring, life-transforming worship.

Where are we headed?

The wind of the Spirit is in our sails.

Look at our passage.

Paul told the Roman church look, you've come from all these different backgrounds, and Christ is intersected with your life, and now you're the body of Christ.

Now you're the church.

And what he said to them in this passage is you've got to hold on because life after this is gonna be different from life before this.

What is coming next is of entirely different order.

It's of an entirely different order.

Because what's coming next for you is that you're the church.

You're the body of Christ.

And your next chapter is not going to depend on your capacity or creativity or Roman strength or your ability to work out the programs.

What's coming next, and you better hold on, is that the wind of the Spirit is going to be filling your sails and pushing you in the direction that He wants you to go.

You're the church, the body of Christ.

Therefore, do not let what you know as good be spoken of as evil.

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking.

It's not just about how we arrange our life together.

It's not just about what we're doing, it's not a philosophy of life or a coaching strategy, it's not about just the way that things are ordered.

It's not about eating and drinking, but it's about what?

It's about first righteousness.

We've been studying Romans.

If you study Romans, you gotta know righteousness is Paul's shorthand for a right relationship with God, won by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

What the kingdom of God is about?

It's about righteousness.

It's not just about what we're doing on this plane, it's about an intersection of God from above, a strange and alien work.

It's about God showing up righteousness.

The kingdom of God is not just about eating and drinking, it's about righteousness and what?

What's next?

Peace.

Peace and joy.

You say, how do I have peace?

How do I have joy?

You're gonna be blown by the wind of the Spirit of God.

You're gonna be the people of God, the ship of faith.

You're gonna be under sail and filling your sails with the wind of the Holy Spirit.

Where are we headed?

I believe our next season is the best season.

I believe our best season is opening up as a church.

I believe that.

We have room to rise in our engagement, in our attendance, to bring more people in, to rise to where we've been and even further.

We have opportunities to serve the Lord, to rise in strength, to be a place where souls are being saved.

We're poised to make a great impact for Christ on our city of Colorado Springs in the next season that's opening up right now.

Listen to me.

If first pres were never here, what would the city be like?

If you don't know, let me tell you.

The city would be a darker place.

It'd be a less Christian place, it'd be a less hopeful place, it'd be a place of greater despair, greater darkness, greater division, deeper pain.

And the errand that we're on is not our errand, it's an errand of the Holy Spirit, and that errand continues now in its 155th year.

God's calling to be a part of it.

Where are we headed?

We're headed to full potential again, reaching Colorado Springs for Christ.

Okay, how do we get there?

How do we get there?

Look, you've been handed a next steps guide, a new next steps guide.

Let's talk about some insider stuff here a little bit.

We've changed some of our language about how we talk about people.

We used to talk about our discipleship pathway in five categories.

We would talk about the community member and the participant and the worshiper and the disciple and the activated disciple.

Anybody remember that?

So, yeah, like two people, like two people remember that.

Okay, so so we we've we've said we need to pivot this from being kind of insider language to being an invitation.

We want our people to walk along in five steps of invitation.

Number one, be known.

Don't be isolated, don't be alone.

We want to know you, be known.

And then belong.

You can belong with us.

We love you, we care for you.

Even before you believe everything we believe, we want you to be a part of us.

We want you to belong.

And then what do we want?

We want you to believe.

We want you to know that Jesus Christ is worthy of praise.

We want you to know that he's Savior and Lord.

We want you to believe in the Lord and be transformed for eternal life.

And then after that, we want you to become more of a disciple, more devoted to him.

And then we want you to bear fruit.

We want to help you bear fruit.

Please pick this up and see how we're sort of changing some of our language and we want to be more inviting to the people out there.

This is not insider language.

This is something that anyone off the street could understand who we are and what we're about.

We need to make the next 100 decisions as a church for the next 1,000 people that aren't even here yet.

Christ has other sheep.

He is out seeking this seeking the lost and saving in his name.

We can all help people feel part of this body, reach out a hand.

We want to know one another better.

And so we're doing something.

A little surprise out there.

How many of you stopped at the photo booth and got your picture made?

Got your picture made?

Good.

Yeah, stop at the photo booth, have your picture taken and put in there.

Why?

Well, you know, back in the old days we used to have something called a church directory.

Anybody remember that?

And you had your dog in there and stuff, and Olden Mills would come in, take a picture of you, and you'd say, oh.

Well, churches don't do that anymore, really.

But here's what we're rolling out.

This is your surprise.

We're rolling out a digital directory for members so that you can get in here and you can recognize who the people are that are in the church, and you can think about, I think I met somebody, you can get to know people a little bit better.

A digital directory for members.

And so would you stop and put your picture in there and give us your information?

And you can decide how much people know about you.

If you don't, you know, you say, I don't want, I prefer to be alone, isolated, and alone and untouched.

That's that's what I prefer.

That's fine.

You can do that, man.

But if you want to be known, you know, if you want to be part of the community of faith as members, jump in there, be part of this digital directory.

All right.

Let's voice a few goals.

And when I say goals, I'm saying these are three things that we believe God is calling us to do.

Goal number one, we'll restore our worship to fullness through three methods.

Restore our worship to fullness.

This is the heart of what we do.

We worship God, we glorify God together.

How can we fill these halls of praise to his glory?

We're gonna do it through three ways.

Number one, we're gonna pray.

Unless the Lord builds a house, the laborers labor in vain.

This is a work of the Holy Spirit to gather his church.

We're gonna pray, Lord, would you use us?

Would you reach non-believers and draw them into faith?

Would you draw your church together to glorify your name in this space?

We're gonna pray.

And here's what I want you to pray for.

I also want you to pray that when First Pres comes up in a conversation in our city, that the Holy Spirit would do what none of us can, which would to make that conversation positive, that it would draw hearts, that it would draw hearts to meet First Pres?

No.

To meet the Lord, to come into this community of faith and meet the Lord.

Would you pray?

Number two, invite.

People need to be invited.

They need to be brought along.

We're not just an audience, we're a mission for Christ.

And so there's spaces here to invite people into.

Watch for opportunities to invite.

Say, come to this next sermon series, would you come to this event?

Would you come to Christmas Easter?

Would you come to this thing with me?

Invite people along.

And number three, we're going to pray, invite, number three, is through devotion.

We're going to devote ourselves.

I learned that Christians, committed Christians, in our time, they're asked, are you a believer?

Yes.

Are you a committed believer?

Yes.

Do you consider yourself fully devoted to the Lord?

Yes.

And then they ask, how many times do you go to church a month?

And you know what people say in our times?

They say just a little bit over one time a month.

One 1.4 times per month.

Devoted believers.

Some of you are only 0.4 here right now.

At this point in the Vision Sunday message, you're like, what is on earth is he talking about?

This is totally what is what's going on up there?

You're like, I was halfway with you, and now I'm a little less than halfway.

I don't know how you get 0.4.

1.4.

The younger generation, are they doing better or worse?

What do you think?

Generation X, millennials.

They actually, if they say I'm a committed Christian, I'm fully a believer, they're going to church more than that.

They're going to church 1.9 times per month.

Those numbers are the lowest they've been in the history of our country.

Here's the thing.

The Lord, your creator, he set one day in seven to set aside for what?

To stop all that other stuff, to stop all the striving and the pushing and the being and the proving and to stop, stop all the desperate chasing of things that might soothe your soul, and to step aside and come into the house of the Lord and offer thanks and worship and praise that He is due to be the family of God.

One day in seven.

If your life had a manual, that would be in the manual for the order of your soul, for the health of your family, for the health of your life.

One day in seven, devoted to the Lord.

Say, Tim, I can't, I can I can't.

I've got to polish up my pickleball game, you know?

I've got to get out there and polish up my golf game, you know?

Wasn't that funny?

Simon is so open.

He's like, I didn't want to go to church.

I play golf on Sunday mornings, right?

I play, amen.

But not Sunday morning.

Here's what I'm saying.

Polish up your pickleball later, all right?

After you've given the Lord what he's due.

So church and towns challenged said, hey, let's take 40 Sundays in the next year and just write on your calendar right now.

I'm gonna be at church.

40 Sundays.

How many Sundays are there in a year?

40 Sundays.

And just let's do it.

What if we could do that?

Take 40 Sundays in the next 52 and right now and put it in your calendar.

That's where I'm gonna be.

I'm gonna be with the family of God.

We're gonna fill the halls of worship through prayer and invitation and devotion.

That's our first goal.

Second goal.

Second goal.

We're gonna reopen the cafe 225, a new cafe 225 designed to bring hope.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

There's a lot to figure out in this.

Pray for us.

Pray for us as we figure out all the details.

But we're gonna open a new cafe 225 designed to bring hope.

What do I mean?

We're gonna do three things.

Number one, we're preparing to launch a Christian counseling center, bringing hope to young people in distress and to families struggling to find answers.

Number two, we want to renew a partnership with Springs Rescue Mission to give hope to those who are coming out of homelessness that they can learn again how to be baristas, serve in a coffee shop, find a new track for their life.

And number three, we want to bring hope as the doors are open, if the doors can be opened again, that the Palmer High School kids that are there would be intersected by Christians who would bring hope to the Palmer High School students who gather there.

We believe that the Lord is calling us to set this out in front of us as a goal for the coming year.

We happy warriors are about to strike a blow for hope.

For hope.

You see, we'll change the direction of our city by being a church who's willing to move into the place where a city needs us the most, in the place of despair.

And third, you know, we've had the First Press Forward initiative.

We learned so much in First Press Forward about how to care for our body.

Of these 18 initiatives, nine of them have been satisfied.

Over the next two years, we're resolved to satisfy all 18.

This will free us from the past and uh free us up to grasp the future with joy.

Church, we're under wind.

We're at sail.

And the wind that's filling up the whole the sails is not some random breeze.

It's the wind of the Holy Spirit of God, the breath of God.

He's pushing us, he's driving us for the kingdom of God.

This is our verse.

Would you say it with me?

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Pray, invite, devote yourselves, be faithful, be a part of this.

Delight and life for the city.

Some of you are from the outside, you're looking in on this.

All I ask of you is, you know, you hear this strange talk.

What I want you asking is are their actions matching up with their beliefs?

We want to be moved by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We're at wind, we're at sail.

The power of the Holy Spirit is driving us home.

You say, how do we do this?

How do I activate this?

How do we make this happen?

It's a question of letting the Lord.

Will you let the Lord?

Romans is full of these commands, and they are these incredible sort of, as we learned from Pastor Mateen a few weeks ago, they're actually passive commands.

They're commands to let the Lord, they're commands to be transformed by the Lord.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Be saved.

Be set apart.

Be the Lord's.

How do I do this?

It's a question of letting the Lord work on you.

Your soul is like a wick of a candle.

What can a wick of a candle do before it's lit?

Can it bring any light?

Can it bring any heat?

It can't do a thing.

It sits alone.

Until the fire is brought.

Until the fire is brought.

Your soul is like a wick.

The Holy Spirit is the fire.

And as the Lord brings the fire into your life, the question is, will I be transformed?

Will I be saved?

You ask, how do I do this?

I ask you, have you been born again?

Will I be born again in the Spirit of God?

Will I trust the Lord with all my life?

Will I devote myself in passion in response to his love?

Your soul is like a wick.

And when the fire of the Holy Spirit comes and lights it up, you know what happens?

That wick, it doesn't start asking, now how do I shed light?

It just does.

How do I bring heat?

It just does.

Why?

You've been transformed.

You belong.

You belong to the Holy Spirit of God.

The kingdom of God.

It's not eating and drinking, but righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.

And when you believe in Christ, that belief doesn't just change how you see the world.

That belief is a belief that makes you a new person, a new woman, a new man, a new kid.

Because you belong to Jesus.

And the fire of the Holy Spirit has lit your life.

Jump in.

Lean in.

Be a part of what God is doing here.

Every hand is needed.

Stop by the belong hub.

Take up a next steps guide.

Do whatever you want to do.

Learn, learn, learn.

Take a little bracelet just to remind you: Jesus is the light of the world.

He's the one who lights our lives.

He's the one who is lighting up the darkness.

We want to be his.

We're his.

We're his.

At the end of the Odyssey, what happened?

Odysseus made it home.

He made it home through a cascade of bloodshed, didn't he?

But he made it home.

We're on an odyssey, a journey.

We're the church.

The ship of faith, the people of God.

And we don't have to worry.

Because the wind in our sails is the wind of the Holy Spirit.

And we're going to make it home.

And when we do, we're going to look back.

And we're not going to turn and look back and say, look, we did it.

We're going to turn and look back and say, the Lord has done it.

The Lord has done it.

And He has made us glad.

The hero at the end of the story.

See, on the top of the Odyssey in the billing, what's the name?

The Odyssey.

On the top of the billing is not the Odyssey.

And the top of the billing is not first press.

On the top of the billing is not Pastor So and So.

It's not any of that at the top of the billing.

That's the name Jesus.

We can come home in the wind of the Spirit.

Because the blood that's been shed is the blood of Christ shed for us on the cross.

And through his shed blood, we are forgiven and redeemed.

And we are drawn into the family of God and the purposes of God forever.

And it's his glory and his story that we get to be a part of today.

All glory to him, all praise to him, all honor to him, for he is Jesus.

Hallelujah.

Amen.

Lord, thank you for this time to think about what we're about.

Lord, thank you for intersecting with Simon's life in the ways that you did.

Thank you for intersecting with my life.

Thank you for intersecting with each of our lives.

Lord, we pray for more and more of it.

We pray that we would be a church ready in your hands, that we would belong to you, use us as you will for your glory.

We pray that, Lord, that we would feel your wind of your spirit, that there be more room for your spirit in each of our hearts, in each of our in our in our church body, in our whole lives together, more room for your spirit.

Lord, I pray that you would grab a hold of us and light us up with the fire of your Holy Spirit, that we can shed your light abroad to the glory of your name.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hearing God's word is just the beginning.

What connected with you?

What challenged you today?

Maybe it's surrendering something, stepping into community, or simply trusting Him more deeply.

Whatever it is, don't leave it for later.

Act on it today.

We're praying that this message moves you closer to Jesus.

And we'd love to walk with you in that journey and answer any questions you've got.

Connect with us by visiting firstpresdos.org.

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Check in next week and we'll continue to grow in our faith together.

See you next time.