Preparing Places for His Presence - 09.13.26 -Kyle Morris

Every day, countless voices compete for the hearts of our children.

Voices telling them where to find their identity, what success looks like, what'll make them happy, and who they should become.

But in a culture that's moving faster than ever, many parents are simply asking, how do I help my kids build a faith that lasts?

Well, the truth is, parents aren't meant to figure it all out all on their own.

Revive kids exist to partner with families during one of the most important seasons of every person's life.

This isn't child care, this is life on life minister.

Every Sunday, kids encounter God's eternity-changing truth with leaders who know them and love them and care about them and point them to Jesus.

They discover that their identity isn't determined by our culture.

Our true identity is only found in Jesus Christ.

They learn that they were created on purpose for a purpose.

As followers of Jesus, we must never abdicate our calling.

Or kids may never discover their true identity in Jesus.

Families might miss out on the abundant life that Jesus promises.

Parents can miss out on precious opportunities to follow Jesus alongside their kids.

When kids search for identity in places they cannot satisfy, the pressures that they carry, it becomes even heavier.

And the future church is actually counting on us to invest our faith in them today.

That's why you matter.

Not because we need more people to fill up a leader schedule, because every kid deserves another trusted adult who's pointing them towards Jesus.

And sometimes following Jesus means choosing calling over comfort.

You don't have to know everything.

You don't have to be a Bible scholar.

You just simply have to be willing to show up, to remember a kid's name, to ask them how their week was, to take a minute and just cooperate with them.

To reinforce the truth that not only does God love us, but that we are his favorite.

Those moments may seem small and ordinary, but the Bible is filled with examples of God using ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

Imagine a generation of children who know exactly who they are because they know who they are.

That's the future that we are building together.

There's a place for you in what God is doing through revival.

You have a part to play in that.

A place where kids discover who God created them to be.

A place where the next generation can learn to follow Jesus.

Preparing a place isn't just something that we do with the building, it's something that we do with our lives.

Revive.

The future church, the next generation, is on the other side of that hallway right now.

And the question is, will you help lead them?

Thank you, thank you.

Good morning, Revive.

Good morning.

My name is Scott.

I am the next gen pastor here at Revive.

That means I oversee from babies all the way through high school graduation.

We have an incredible team, staff, and volunteers that make up Revive Kids.

And I know that uh many of you had no clue about the awesome things that happen on the other side of that hallway.

You just got to a little you got a little taste.

You got a little taste.

It's been a few years since we've done a big uh invitation to come join our team, but there's something that I want you to know, and that is that early childhood that's birthed through kindergarten in the last five years, a hundred percent growth.

Come on! Fertile! We're fertile.

Oh, and I truth as that continues at a 50% growth.

Um just in the last five years.

So we're we're we've got coming out of the ground.

It's amazing over there.

Um, I think it's time for you to know that you're invited to join us across the hallway.

So there's uh uh a few things that I want you to know.

One is that when you play for this and not team for the car, all right?

If you play on the stuff, uh there's no second screen.

Everybody is on the field all the time.

The rest of become the rescuers and more teammates across the hall.

If you think about the sidelines or all kinds of opportunities, uh this QR code right here will get you.

Um you're not setting up for anything.

We're not saying that for now.

You're just expressing interest in like oh, I'd like to know more.

And at the same time, out in the lobby after service, um, you can uh swing by and pick up those.

It's the the list of the current 34 needs that we have uh from birth or through high school graduation or in uh the next generation revival.

You can read through and go like, oh, where could I what's a good spot for me for?

Um I'm positive.

If you're willing, the Lord will use you to do uh incredible things.

Also, if you just have questions, I'm gonna be out at the lobby with uh with Ellie and with Laura and with Ben.

Um and we will be there to uh to talk and to chat and to dream if you'd like uh to see the the next any of the next gun spaces.

We would love to give you a little tour to go to.

Alright?

I'm gonna pray right now, um, and then we get to uh to welcome Kyle to the stage.

I surrender all.

I surrender my will, my being, and I confess, Lord, that there are times when I think I'm the one that is gonna get people to want to be on the kill.

Um and I know that that's not true, Lord.

Um and you place the calling.

So I surrender.

Um I'm just thrilled to get to be a part of an incredible thing.

We're amazing people, we're pointing to Jesus, and the kids love us back.

But I want them to love you back.

So thank you for the next generation.

Thank you for revive, thank you for the growth.

And we trust and depend on you and you alone as you help us prepare a place in our hearts and revive and in our VATA.

Amen.

Amen.

Can we thank Scott?

He's been Scott's been pouring the last 12 years of his life into Next Gen, and man, I'm just grateful for him and the heart that he has.

And I know a number of you are privileged to be on our next gen team, and many of you others, God might be pulling on your heart as you're thinking about where to serve and where to give.

Uh, what a great place to serve and to give is to invest in the next generation.

Um, this morning we are finishing our series called Prepare a Place.

And so far, we've just taken a little bit of time to celebrate the past.

Week one, we talked about the 40 years, almost 40 years of God's faithfulness to this place called Revived Church.

And we talked about the faithfulness of those who have come before us, who have really prepared the place where we are sitting today.

When we think about churches, we don't often think about the history of churches.

We don't think about the thousands who have prayed and who have given, who have served, who have testified to the goodness of God.

So to celebrate the past is important for us to live in the present, but also look to the future and realize how God is calling us to play our part in preparing a place for the generations that will follow us.

Last week we we took a moment to just kind of look down at our feet at the present.

And I hope last week you were encouraged as we celebrated just a few of the stories of life transformation that are happening on our campus, both in our church, but also through our ministry partners here at the bridge.

God has built something very special here.

We don't always see it, we don't always totally understand it because we go to church here, but there have been actually over 20 churches who have reached out to us over the last couple years just wanting either to come here and to see what God is doing or to get on the phone and talk about how, in their context, in their city, how they can join with God and partner with him on their campus to use their space in ways where people can encounter him.

That is not a pat on the back for us.

That is a pat on the back for God and the work that he is doing and that he's invited us to join him in doing.

And so if you didn't get a chance last week because of Labor Day, I get it.

Go back and listen to that message and just give God glory for what he's doing here through the work of Revived Church and the Bridge.

Today, I want us to look for a moment at the future.

And anytime we talk about vision and the future, I want to be really clear.

When we think about future vision, it's like looking out to the west and looking out to the horizon of the mountains.

There are days, maybe like today, when you can look out west and you can see clarity.

You can see beautiful mountain ranges, and there's not a whole lot that inhibits your view.

Most of the time when we're talking about vision, particularly as a church, we're looking out into the horizon, but oftentimes the future is foggy.

It's not quite as clear.

And so we're looking and we're waiting for those clouds to break for a moment to where we can see what God is doing and where we in where we're invited to follow him.

And so today is not meant to be a really clear picture of the future.

It's meant to give us an idea of where we believe God is leading us.

Now, before we talk about some of the places on our campus that we believe God is inviting us to prepare as a continued ministry of Revived Church and the Bridge, we actually want to take some time today to talk about the kind of people that God is preparing us to become.

We are becoming a people who carry the presence of God and who prepare places for others to encounter Him.

We're becoming people who literally carry the presence of God with us wherever we go, and we're actually joining with God to prepare places where others can encounter him.

I've talked about this before over the last couple years, and I want to talk about it again because in many ways, what I'm gonna share today about the future, it's a continuation of where God has us in the present with more detail.

And so I want to talk a little bit about this broad picture of where we are as a church right now and what we're running after.

If someone were to ask you what the Bible is about, how would you answer that question?

I know I've asked this question before.

You might answer that question by talking about the Bible being God's salvation plan for humanity.

You might answer that question in terms of categories.

You might talk about the Bible in terms of the creation and the fall and the redemption and the restoration.

You might talk about forgiveness, that when sin entered the world, we could no longer please God.

And so we needed a substitute in our place, Jesus Christ, so that we could be made right with God again.

And all of those ways would be accurate in explaining the Bible to someone.

But if you zoom out of the Bible and you look at the 66 books spread across it, there is a mega theme that emerges.

And I've talked about this before.

One of the themes that emerges when you look at the entire scripture is God's desire to be with his people.

Like the entire Bible, all 66 books, communicates and I would say screams God saying, I want to be with you.

God's desire, Father, Son, and Spirit, is to be in relationship with us.

How amazing is that?

But but God is not only wanting to be relationship in relationship with us in Scripture.

Actually, if you look at Scripture even more closely, what you'll find is that God is actually preparing places for this to happen.

He's preparing places for us to dwell with him.

This is the through line of the entire Bible.

We talked about the beginning last week.

In the first pages of Scripture in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, what does God do?

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

He creates the cosmos, he sets the cosmic thermometer so that Adam and Eve can exist on planet Earth.

And if you've ever done the study on what has to happen in order for there to be life on planet Earth, you have to look at that and think there's got to be an intelligent designer.

This is what God has done.

He has set the cosmic thermostat, then he created Adam and He created Eve and He put them in this beautiful garden.

And the Bible tells us that not only did he put them in this garden, but he actually walked with them in this community, in this sense of closeness with them.

And then we find out in Genesis chapter 2 that Adam and Eve, they experience a fall.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Sin enters the world.

And ultimately, because sin enters the world and because God is holy and perfect, what happens is God actually removes Adam and Eve from the garden.

But when he removes Adam and Eve from the garden, we find that in Genesis chapters two and three, there's a promise that God makes.

He says, one day I'm going to restore relationship.

That although the serpent got the better of humanity in the garden, I will get the better of the serpent ultimately.

And so we see this promise that God makes to his people.

And as you track through the book of Genesis, we meet a man named Abraham.

And Abraham is chosen by God to basically be the father of the people of Israel.

And God makes a promise to Abraham.

He says, You are going to be my people, I am going to be your God, I'm going to give you a land, and I'm going to give you my presence.

And as we turn the page from Genesis into Exodus, we find that the people of Israel, they're in bondage in the nation of Egypt.

They are being held against their will by the Pharaoh, and for 400 years he works their fingers to the bone, but then God shows up and he prepares for his people a deliverer named Moses.

And Moses brings the people of Israel out of Egypt, and God spares their firstborn.

And not only that, he leads them through the Red Sea, where he delivers them out of the hand of Pharaoh.

And as they cross the Red Sea, they look back, and all of their enemies have drowned.

And so God, He provides His presence in the wilderness at Mount Sinai.

God provides his presence with the people of Israel.

But not only that, he says, I actually, I don't just want to show up every now and then.

I want to live with you.

And Exodus 25, 8 says, Let them make a sanctuary that I might dwell among them.

And so God, He commands Moses to build this tent, this portable tent, portable temple of his presence to be with them.

The problem is the people of Israel, they don't trust in God's promises.

They don't trust that God has this place for them to live with his presence.

And so instead of crossing over the Jordan River, they get too filled with fear and they don't follow God's commandments.

And so for 40 years they wander around in the wilderness and the desert, but even in the midst of their wandering, God is faithful.

He's a God who provides his presence, and he's a God who provides his provision.

And then we find that as the people finally cross the Jordan into the land that God had for them to inherit, there's a temple that's built.

And this is the place where God's presence will reside.

And Solomon builds this temple, and there's this moment that when the temple is opened, God's presence floods the temple.

People experience his presence in a profound way.

But the rest of the Old Testament talks about the rebellion of Israel.

The same rebellion that Adam and Eve exercised in the garden would be the rebellion that would be characteristic of the people of Israel throughout the Old Testament.

Instead of turning to God as their king and as their master, they turn to other idols.

And so what we see is that God's presence in the Old Testament leaves the temple, and there's this silent period, 500 years between the end of the Old Testament, Malachi, and the beginning of the New Testament in Matthew, and we don't hear a thing about God's presence.

And then Jesus Christ breaks in.

God breaks the silence, not with new instructions on how to build a better building for God's presence, no, but actually by God coming Himself.

John 1 14 says, The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Literally, that word dwelt means to tabernacle.

And then Jesus would later call his own body the temple.

And don't forget the words that Jesus said to his disciples before he left.

He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you.

And where I'm going, you can't come right now, but you will.

And then Jesus dies on the cross.

He's raised to life.

And as we've seen in Acts chapter 1.8, Jesus, after he's raised to life, he spends time with his disciples and he makes this statement to them.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

He says, Go to Jerusalem and wait there.

Because when you wait there, you will be filled with a power from on high.

What was Jesus talking about?

Jesus was talking about sending his very spirit not to dwell in a temple, not to dwell in a building, but literally to make his home in every follower of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Eden is restored and expanded.

The tree of life returns to the garden, and the dwelling place of God is finally and fully with humanity.

The story that began with a prepared garden of Eden.

Eden ends with a prepared garden city.

In between, we find an amazing supper, the supper of the Lamb.

And so literally the biblical story ends at this table.

And so when you zoom out, you see a relational God who doesn't just desire to be with us, he actually prepares places where his presence can be with us.

I want to pause right now because this is a grander vision than what we often hear in the church.

This is a grander vision than maybe there's a heaven, maybe there's a hell, say a prayer and hopefully you can escape hell.

This is a grander vision of simply that there is life to be found outside of what we experience on planet earth somehow in heaven in the future.

No, there's something greater than what that the scripture is communicating.

The Bible is painting a fuller and more compelling vision that God's presence is actually with us and lives inside of us.

And so it's not just about enduring this life so that one day we can experience his presence somewhere down the road.

The point of our lives right now is God's presence.

That is the point.

The point of our lives right now is God's presence.

And not only are we invited as followers of Jesus who carry God's presence through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not only are we invited to do that, we're actually invited to help others experience that as well.

I can't talk about this vision of God's presence without talking about a story that we walked through a few years ago in the book of Exodus.

And let me get you caught up.

Let's remember what's going on and what's happening in the book of Exodus.

We already talked about this.

Israel is enslaved, they had been enslaved for 400 years, and they cried out to God.

They cried out to God in their frustration, they cried out to God in their sadness, they cried out to God in their grief of being in this foreign land and being worked to the bone and not being respected and having this history of being God's people.

They cried out to God and said, God, where are you?

Help us.

And God delivered them and he gave them these instructions to build this tabernacle.

And God's message to the people of Israel could not be more clear.

I want to be with you.

I want to be with you.

And he shows up at Mount Sinai and His presence falls on the mountain, and the people experience the manifest presence of God, the real, active, alive presence of God at that mountain.

And what did they do in response?

They built a golden calf.

They took the God, the gift that God had given them.

When they had walked out of Egypt, they had taken all of the Egyptian jewelry as plunder.

And guess what they did with that jewelry?

Instead of worshiping God for the jewelry and the plunder that He had given them, they took all of it, they threw it into a fire, and they made a golden calf.

They literally made a substitute for God.

See, they wanted something they could see and feel and touch and control.

And so Moses, he comes.

Down the mountain, after being in God's presence, he breaks the ten commandments that God gave him as he looks out onto the nation of Israel and he sees them worshiping this golden calf that they have used now to substitute God's presence.

And God speaks to Moses in Exodus chapter 33.

Exodus 33 · chapter mention

And here's what he says.

The Lord said to Moses, Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, saying, To your offspring I will give it.

I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey.

Stop there.

God comes to Moses after the people of Israel turn their back on him, create this substitute form of worship.

And God comes to the people of Israel and says, Okay, you guys can leave now.

That land that I promised you and the generations before you, that land is still yours to take.

It's a land flowing with milk and honey.

It's literally the best land on the face of the earth.

In other words, God says, I'm still going to give you the land.

I'm going to give you a home.

I'm going to give you security.

I'm even going to give you victory over my enemies because there's all of these parasites and all kinds of vites that are standing in your way.

And you will not taste defeat.

You'll win every battle.

Every victory will be yours.

But then comes this devastating sentence.

It says, Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you.

Lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.

But I will not go up among you.

In other words, you can have the place, but you can't have my presence.

You can have the land, you can have the blessing, you can have the security of making it there without any problems.

You can have the provision once you're there, but you won't have me.

And I thought about this in terms of our cultural moment that we are in and the way that success has been described in our nation.

And to be honest, the reason why many people come to our nation, and it's for the American dream.

And this is what God is promising the people of Israel.

He's saying, hey, I'm not going to go with you, but you can still have the American dream.

You can have a home and a security system.

You can have resources.

You can have all the comfort you want in the world.

You can have success.

There's just one little piece of fine print.

You don't get me.

I mean, would you take that deal?

Revive Church, would we take that deal?

Absolutely not.

But I think a lot of people would.

What if you could have everything you ever wanted?

The house, the career, the money, the security, the future, the success?

What if everything worked out exactly like you had hoped and you had planned and you had put in the spreadsheet and you had made this tenure?

What if everything worked out?

But God wasn't there.

Here's the uncomfortable truth.

A lot of people want God's gifts, but they don't actually want God Himself.

I mean, can we just be honest and raise our hands and say that that sentence describes us sometimes?

We really want God to act on our behalf.

We really want him to give us this thing, or we really want him to stop this thing, but we want him as a transaction, but we don't want him in a sense of relationship.

See, they wanted God's hand, but not God's face.

A mentor once asked me, and I've repeated this question.

I think it's one of those questions worth repeating your entire life.

He said, Hey Kyle, do you seek God's face as much as you seek God's hand?

Do you pursue his presence with the same intensity that you pursue his provision?

Because we live in a culture that is constantly telling us the goal of life is comfort and security and success and having enough, in fact, having more than enough.

You see, Moses, he couldn't take this deal on behalf of the people of Israel.

Why?

Because he had experienced the presence of God.

The only way you will get to a place where you're able to say, God, I don't want that place.

I don't want anything without your presence until you look him in the eyes and realize how good he is.

See, Moses understood something we have to desperately understand with him.

The promised place without the presence of God is not the promise.

The promised place without God's presence, that's actually not the promise.

When you experience the presence of God, his nearness, you become the kind of person who can't live without him.

Bill Eliff, who has been a mentor, not just to me, but I would say to our church and bringing us along in this journey of becoming a church that is seeking the presence of God, he says this everything flows from the presence of God.

If you have it, then you have everything.

If you don't, then you have nothing of value.

Not just Moses, but the people of Israel.

They saw the realization of the presence of God.

They knew what it was to have fellowship and company with Him.

And that was infinitely more important than anything else.

And so what you see unfold in the rest of the narrative in Exodus is although God said that he would not go with his people, what does Moses do?

He sets up a tent on the outside of town.

And the people of Israel are not allowed to walk into this tent.

But what does Moses do?

He goes into the tent, interceding for the people of Israel, that God's presence would go with them.

And ultimately, God goes with them.

This hit me this week.

Revive Church collectively.

We can prepare all the places in the world, but without the presence of God, they're just places.

They're just real estate.

They're just landscaping.

They're just square footage.

Last year we hosted an encounter conference, and I think around 350 of you committed to coming to that conference, which is an amazing number.

And we sat for a couple days, and I think each of us learned at a deeper level what it means to live a present-centered life, what it means to actually believe what Bill Elliff said, that if we have God's presence, we have everything, and if we don't, then we have nothing of value.

And it was a moment for our church to say collectively, but also individually, hey, God, without your presence, we don't want to take another step.

And so what does that mean in practical terms?

Here's what it means.

I want to break it down because I think sometimes the truth of what the Bible says, we know it in our minds, but we don't quite catch it in our hearts.

Here's what it means.

If you have believed in Jesus Christ and if you have confessed him as king, you are hosting the very presence of God.

That means that all of what we see in Scripture, what we see in the Garden of Eden, and what we see in the tabernacle, and what we see in the temple, and ultimately what we see in the person of Jesus Christ, all of that was pointing to the reality that one day the Spirit of God that indwelt all of those places would now indwell us.

We are now the place that Jesus has prepared to carry his presence.

We are the temple of God.

So just like Adam and Eve were charged in the beginning with tending to the garden where God's presence was, just like the priests in the tabernacle in the temple were tended, were charged with tending the temple area, just like Jesus Christ came and lived the perfect example of what it means to be human, carrying the Spirit of God that He was given at His baptism.

Now we actually have the amazing privilege of tending to the temple, which is us that carries the Spirit of God.

God is preparing us as a people of his presence.

It's been amazing.

We've watched God take a dying shopping center and bring it back to life.

I mean, if you just take a step back and you look and see what's happened here, spaces that were empty are now filled with life.

Places that lost their purpose and their meaning have now been given new purpose.

Things that were broken have been repaired.

Places that people used to kind of drive past and just assume there's nothing happening there.

People are now pulling into our parking lot to find hope and healing and community and employment and recovery and child care and the gospel.

This is happening.

We've watched God revive a shopping center, but I believe the future of what God is going to do next in the life of our church is actually the greatest revival that He wants to do on our campus.

And guess what?

It's not about the people that are coming here to experience services and experience flourishing.

It's about us.

It's not about what God wants to do around us.

Actually, I believe it's what God wants to do in us.

I believe he wants to do something in us that is so profound.

A couple years ago, we hosted someone on our campus who was a huge part of Foothills Community Church back in the day.

And they hadn't been around in a very long time.

They hadn't heard much about the bridge.

They hadn't walked around and seen the renovations or everything that had happened in the shopping center.

And I just remember as we walked around, I began telling the story of God's goodness.

I began showing these spaces that were renovated that used to be used for this, or they used to be empty, and now they have been filled with life.

And I remember having all of these conversations, and the transformation for the person who was touring the bridge at that point was so overwhelming that the person could hardly speak.

And after that conversation, I felt the Holy Spirit impress something on my heart.

And the question was this what if God has done with this place?

What if what he has done here is a picture of what he wants to do in us?

As we heard God, or as we heard last week, God has revived this rundown shopping center into a place of light and life.

People are coming onto our campus completely unexpecting to encounter the presence of God.

They're coming onto our campus to grab a box of food.

They're coming onto our campus to fill out an application for cross-purpose.

They're coming onto our campus for primary purpose.

They're coming onto our campus to drop their children off at childcare.

They're coming onto our campus for a completely different reason, but in the midst of that, they're encountering the presence of God.

And he's reviving not just the place, but he's reviving the people.

And I believe that what God is wanting to do right now is he's wanting to do the work that we're seeing around the bridge.

He's wanting to do in the hearts of us.

It's a necessary work.

It's a necessary work that each one of us would be transformed by the presence of God.

And guess what?

Not all of you in this room are going to take the next step in your transformation.

For some of you in this room, you're like, I'm good.

I'm kind of good with Jesus on the side.

I'm kind of good as Jesus as an additive to my life.

But when you experience the presence of God, you want more.

You want more transformation in your life.

You want more spiritual fruit.

You want more relationships that are healed, priorities that are reordered, habits that are changing, speech that looks different, forgiveness that is being extended, and forgiveness that is being received.

Because when we when we carry that kind of transformation, here's what happens.

Revived church doesn't just change, but our neighborhoods change, our workplaces change, the places where our kids go to school change, our soccer teams that we're a part of with our children, those things change.

Like what if what if God did something so deep and profound in us that the people who knew us most closely responded to us in the transformation that God is doing in us, like this person who was on our campus who was blown away by the renovation and the transformation of the shopping center?

What if the people that knew us best remembered us one way, not and now not because we're somebody else, but because Jesus has become increasably visible in us, they make statements like, I don't recognize the way that you handle conflict.

I don't recognize the kindness that I experience in you.

I don't recognize your patience.

I actually don't recognize the way that you talk about people.

The way that you talk about people is so honoring and uplifting.

I don't recognize your generosity because for years, every time the check comes, you look at me as though I'm gonna pay it.

And now you grab the check.

I don't recognize your generosity.

Which, by the way, don't be that person.

I don't recognize the way you love.

And what if what if the person looked at you in the eye and said, What happened?

And what if you responded and said, the spirit has been work at work here?

This is not something that God just wants to do around us.

I believe it's something that God wants to do in us.

He wants to take the things that are broken and bring healing.

He wants to bring the things that are empty and fill us.

He wants to bring the areas that have been neglected, the areas where we're wounded and hardened, and the areas where, to be honest, we've substituted worship of God with something else.

He wants to take those areas and he wants to make them new.

So that someday we can respond to a question of transformation by giving him glory, that the presence of God has done this.

This is not about me trying harder.

This is not about me working more.

This is about me surrendering to the power and the presence of God to do the work in me that I know that I can't do.

I don't know if you know this, but if you've been following Jesus for a long time, you cannot change yourself.

We cannot change ourselves.

That's not the way that God made us to live.

That's not the way that God has made us to run.

We need Him.

We're working hard right now as a church to follow the Spirit's leading.

We're building out a spiritual formation pathway here at our church that is intended to give all of us opportunities to grow in our relationship with Christ.

We've spent the last couple years developing a rooted membership process so that people can grow where God has planted them.

If you're someone who just skips around from churches every three to six months because somebody said something that made you mad or there was something that you found out at the church that wasn't perfect, guess what?

You're not going to find a perfect church.

And the more you bounce around, the less you will grow, I promise you.

And so our rooted membership that Grayson mentioned earlier, that there's another opportunity on October 11th, that membership process, the point of it is to walk alongside people, to make sure that every person at Revived Church has at least one pastor or elder that they know and that knows them.

So that there's accountability, so that there's opportunities to walk together and to grow together.

So we've developed this rooted membership process.

We've also developed our mini flock system.

And this is a system because in a church our size, people fall through the cracks.

And so if you have actually gone through the rooted membership process, if you've met with a pastor or elder and you've signed the covenant of what it means to be a revived church member, what you can expect from the leadership here and what we would expect from you, you've been put into a mini flock.

And that means there is a pastor or an elder at our church that is praying for you.

There's a pastor or elder that if you have any sort of issue, you have a direct line to go to that person.

And so we've spent time making sure that that is in place.

We've also developed a baptism process as well as launching our foundations class to walk with new believers so that they can grow into spiritual maturity so that they can understand how the seven marks of a Jesus follower shape our lives.

We've developed a number of different ways for people to connect, to join groups, but we believe that God is calling us to develop more.

We believe that God is calling us in this next season to walk with people who are willing to allow the Spirit to reign and rule in their lives.

In the book of Corinthians, Paul says, he said, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Where is the spirit of the Lord?

It's in you, it's in me.

So what is Paul saying?

Paul's saying there's freedom where the presence of God is.

That doesn't mean that we're gonna live perfect lives without sin.

Doesn't mean that we're gonna live perfect lives without frustrations.

That doesn't mean that we're gonna live perfect lives without challenges, but here's what it does mean.

When we surrender our hearts to Jesus Christ and when we are filled with the Spirit, there should be a transformation that is happening in our lives.

The picture that the Lord gave me was this onion.

I'm not a big fan of cutting onions because I cry almost immediately.

And the picture that the Lord gave me of the future here at Revived Church is peeling the onion.

Because when you start to peel an onion, you realize very quickly that there are more layers underneath.

And for many of us, in fact, all of us in this room, we are not one layer.

There are layers to who we are.

And what the Spirit wants to do in our lives is he wants to join us in the transformation process.

He wants to join us in helping us peel back the layers so that we can experience a more abundant life.

Now, there are moments when you start peeling an onion metaphorically, when you start looking into your past or looking into your present and you start dealing with the woundedness or you start dealing with the hurt, and you gotta put the onion down.

It's like when you're in your kitchen and you're chopping onions, and there is a moment where you're like, I cannot go on any longer.

I'm going to leave the onion.

And there are moments in our lives where we do that.

There have been moments in my life where I've started allowing the spirit to peel back layers, and it's more than I can handle.

But I'm gonna tell you right now, the the fruit of the life that God wants to show you, it's worth peeling the onion.

And so I'm so excited what Tim Corbin and Brenda Caker and our spiritual formation team is doing.

Right now, they are developing real, life-changing content that will help us as followers of Jesus.

For some of us, begin to peel the onion, for others of us, continue to peel the onion, and for all of us, the onion never peels until Jesus returns completely.

And so they're developing real content that will help us understand who we are in Christ Jesus.

That yes, we are new creations, but many of us we have the habits and the mindsets that we had before we gave our life to Jesus Christ, and we're stuck.

My guess is if I were to ask you to raise your hand of one area where you're stuck in your life, every single one of us would raise our hand that we have one area at least where we are not living in freedom.

And so what this process will do is it will invite those who want into experiencing more and more freedom through understanding our identity in Christ and understanding the gift of the Holy Spirit and what he wants to do in us and through us.

But it's not just about us, as we've talked about.

God is preparing us so that we can prepare places for others.

As we look to the future, not only do we believe that God is inviting us to build a robust spiritual formation process that helps us grow into maturity, that helps us be the kind of people who can carry God's presence, but he's actually inviting us to continue to prepare places on our campus.

And so things that we're dreaming about right now, we we envision a space up between Lost Coffee and Cross Purpose.

We we envision what's called the Eden Project up there.

This is a space that we're hoping after we renovate it can invite any person on our property, whether it's a parent dropping off a child at Lionheart, whether it's a revived church member, whether it's a patron at Lost Coffee to come and to sit and experience relaxation and respite.

A place that takes the bridge from simply being a destination shopping center that actually yells out to those on 80th and those up at the pool behind us, come, there is a place for you here.

It's the hospitality of Eden.

It is, we thought of you before you came.

A couple weeks ago, we met with a design firm and a landscape architect, and he was so compelled by the vision of the bridge, and so compelled by this Eden space that he's actually offered to donate his time absolutely free for this project.

So people are seeing what God's doing.

They're wanting, they're wanting to be a part of it.

I mean, it's a$12,000 gift.

We also believe that there's an opportunity to renew our worship center where we are today.

A way to design it in such ways that it communicates welcome and belonging to those who gather here each week, to those who are walking into our doors for the first time.

Most of the time, when someone shows up at a church, if they walk in and the worship has already started, some of you have experienced this.

You walk in those doors and the worship Has started and everybody's standing.

The first thought that you have is there is no room for me here.

There's not a place for me.

And so after serving thousands of people for more than two decades, this room has faithfully fulfilled its purpose, but we are at the end of our life on being able to fix any of these chairs.

And for some of you, you're like, Amen, right?

What took you so long?

And so we we expect this room to be completely renovated by the end of this year.

So all of the old movie theater fabric off of the walls, all of the chairs ripped out and replaced.

We're creating spaces up at our stage through the way that we're laying it out where people can experience the presence of God and to come up and pray and respond in worship.

We think there's an opportunity to invite more people into our space in such a way that it becomes a presence-centered space, even in the way that we're going to lay out our screens.

We're asking that question, God, what would this room look like if you were at the center?

And so we want to strip everything else away.

We also believe that there's an opportunity to fulfill an element of our initial vision that has just taken far too long, and that is a dedicated prayer room.

If you go back to week one, as the people of Israel were exiled in Babylon, if you remember, God commanded them to settle down, to plant gardens, to build homes.

He said, Seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I have called you.

And then he says this, he says, Pray for it, because if it prospers, you will prosper too.

God told the people of Israel to pray for Babylon.

It wasn't separate from the mission, it was the mission.

And so for that reason, we're creating a prayer room where people can come and seek the presence of God, where the needs in our city can be consistently lifted before Him, where we can pray for schools and we can pray for businesses, churches in our neighborhood, community leaders.

We can pray for the ministry of the missionaries of Revived Church all throughout the world.

We want it to be a place where people can come in who are experiencing poverty, addiction, loneliness, anxiety, broken relationships, spiritual lostness.

We want people to come in and to know there is a place prepared for you right now to seek the presence of God.

I'm pleased to announce that prayer room will open mid-October.

So we're excited to have that.

We're also creating a community room where people can gather and build relationships, where they can participate in Bible studies.

We're also creating a room that will better serve our food pantry guests.

Right now, I don't know if you know this, every Tuesday we have about 30 to 40 seniors who are showing up on Tuesdays, and we want to create a welcoming and comfortable space for them to experience the ministry of our volunteers while they wait to go and get their food.

We also have 50 to 80 families who are showing up on Saturday mornings.

And so we want to update that space so that people are comfortable so conversations can happen within that room.

We also continue to pray about opportunities related to food and hospitality.

Someone shared with me a couple weeks ago that if you take the encounters of Jesus Christ in the Gospels, about 41% of the stories that we see in that Jesus is a part of in the gospel, about 41% of them are in homes with food involved and around tables.

And so there's meaningful opportunities for hospitality, but also food.

And so as we consider the possibilities ranging from continuing to have food trucks on our campus to actually maybe God is inviting us to purchase the Buffalo Wild Wings that has just shut down.

We've been asking the question, God, how do you want to express hospitality and this idea of we thought of you before you arrived through food?

As we look to the future, I actually don't think the primary purpose of what God is doing here is to build spaces, but God will use those spaces and the people, us, who carry his presence to transform others.

Because this has never been about property, this has always been about people, it's always been about inviting the presence of God onto our campus and into our hearts.

This is the kind of church that we want to continue to be known for, a church that is filled with the Spirit of God, carrying his presence, but also not so me focused that we are willing to prepare other places for people to encounter God.

For the single mom and her children who have never walked through the doors, who have not yet to walk through the doors, for the families who are in need, who need a place to come and to be loved.

For the people who will be in this room a year from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, who look back and who recognize that there were people who came before them who prepared a place, who prepared a place not just to be, but to encounter the presence of God together.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you this morning for your goodness.

We thank you for the faithfulness that you have shown this church in so many ways.

And I am excited for what's ahead.

I'm excited for how you're going to use this spiritual formation content that's being built to invite people to peel back the layers.

Invite people to invite you in, Holy Spirit, to bring freedom into places where people have been held captive for 5, 10, 15, 30, 40 years.

To live in this new identity that you have given us through Christ Jesus.

To not just read it as words on a page, to let it be our lived experience.

That we are overcomers, that we have been given a spirit that sets us free.

Would we be the kind of people that pursue that not just for ourselves, but for the sake of others?

We would be a prepared place where your spirit can work through us so that we can carry your spirit, so that others, when they see, they will lean in, they will ask questions.

I don't recognize you, what happened?

And that at a moment we would be able to respond, not with a podcast that we heard, not with an exercise program that we instituted, but with the answer that the spirit has been work here.

Amen.

Amen.

As we stand together and