Changing Lives - One Thousand

Well, like I said, thank you very much for being here today.

I am so excited about this moment.

I believe that today is a very momentous day for our church.

Every six months or so, we take a Sunday and we talk about where we are as a church and where we're going.

It's important for us as a family to have a unified vision as we move forward into the role as a church that God has for us.

And there's a really simple reason for that.

It's that we are his hands church.

His hands is not an organization.

His hands is not a building.

This is not his hands church.

You are his hands church.

It's people.

And so if we're going to be the church that God wants us to be, we have to all be on the same page as much as possible.

So every few months we take a Sunday and we focus on that every six months or so.

If it's your first time here or you're relatively new, I'm actually really glad you're with us today because you're going to get an understanding of who we really are as a church.

You'll get to see our heart, and it'll make it really easy for you to choose whether or not this is your church.

I hope you do, by the way, because I hope this church has the same impact on you that it's had on me.

I want you to understand that I have no ability to talk about his hands church completely objectively.

Sometimes in my role, I have to take a step back and look at this church objectively so that we can make sure we're doing what we need to be doing and doing it in the right way.

But I do not have the ability to talk about his hands and be 100% objective.

Just like I don't have the ability to talk about my son Liam or my daughter Lily and be 100% objective.

I love them way too much.

I can look at my kids and I can see some potential issues, but mostly what I see is who they will be and who they can be.

I love them and I love this church.

So when I talk about his hands, I need you to know that it's it's out of a place of love and it's out of a place of passion.

And if sometimes I seem like I believe that maybe we're even further along than we actually are, it's because I see us for what we can be and I know what God put this church on this earth to do.

I love his hands, church.

I love this place for what it's done for my marriage.

It's changed my marriage.

When Megan and I came here about nine years ago, we had been married for about a year and a half.

And if I could pick one phrase that was spoken or at least thought the most in our first year of marriage, it was not, I love you, you're so wonderful, I just love waking up next to you in the mornings.

It was, this is not how it's supposed to be.

There were times that Megan even looked at me and she said, This is not what I thought this was gonna be.

Both of us had a very romanticized idea about marriage.

We were high school sweethearts, and we believed that marriage would solve our problems.

We believed that marriage would relieve the stress in our lives.

And when reality turned out to be very different than our ideas, it was like a punch in the stomach.

And so we were mad at one another.

We were really mad at one another for that first year or two years.

We were mad because I thought Megan was gonna make my life magical.

And it didn't feel magical, and she was mad at me for the exact same reason, and so we put all these expectations on one another, saying, It's your job to make me happy, it's your job to make my dreams come true, it's up to you to make me feel good.

And that was an incredible stress on our marriage.

Being here changed that.

All of a sudden we we started to learn and realize that we really could depend on God to meet our deepest needs.

I had this idea of God before his hands, that it was up to me to meet God's needs.

As strange as that sounds, that's how I thought.

I had to worship enough and study enough and serve enough in order to meet whatever needs God had.

This is the church that taught me that God wants to meet my needs.

That I can depend on God to meet the deepest needs in my heart, my need to belong, my need to be loved, my need to be accepted.

God Himself wants to meet those needs.

It is Megan and I both grew in that, the pressure in our marriage decreased.

We were able to release one another from that pressure of meeting one another's deepest needs and rely on God for that.

And today there is a likeness and a freedom in my marriage that has never been there before.

We still have fights every once in a while, like everyone does.

Our biggest fight today would not have registered 10 years ago.

But I have this church to thank for that.

So I love this church because it's changed my marriage.

I love this church because it has changed and is changing my children.

My son is four.

He has only known this church.

When he hears the word church, this is all he thinks about.

And I love that.

That's amazing to me.

This church has taught my son that God is for him.

I know I've told this story before, but it's just so perfect for this moment.

A few months ago, I had to spank my son.

I don't do that very often.

He's an amazing young boy, but we had gone through all the timeouts and the taking toys away and the rationalizing conversations.

We had been through all that, none of it worked, and the only thing left on the table was a spanking.

And so I sat Liam down.

I did all the things you're supposed to do as a dad.

I said, This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.

You're supposed to say that.

That's what my dad said, even though I really never agreed with it.

And I told Liam, I've got to spank you, and so I did, I spanked him, and I'll never forget this.

He turned around, pointed at me, with his intensity in his eyes, said, That hurt, and Jesus is mad at you for spanking me.

And I was caught off guard.

I'm like, oh, oh, really?

And then he points to his bottom and he said, But he will heal me, and if you spank me again, he'll heal me again.

And there was, yeah, heck yeah.

There was such defiance in that moment, but I wasn't even interested in addressing it because I was so blown away by the fact that my four-year-old child knows that God is for him.

He knows that God loves him so much that if he is hurting, he believes God must be upset about it too.

I have this church to thank for that.

Two weeks ago, I was putting Liam to bed.

And a lot of times, children, they're like exaggerated versions of us, right?

All of their emotions are exaggerated.

So if they're excited, they are very excited.

If they are upset, they are extremely upset.

And Liam was just frustrated as I was putting him to bed.

And I didn't know why, so I asked him, I said, Son, what's wrong?

And he just threw his arms up in the air and said, I'm not a disciple.

And a lot of times when you have children, you're trying to figure out what they mean.

There's a lot of new words you have to learn every single day.

It's like another language.

And I said, Son, what do you mean?

He said, I'm not a disciple of Jesus.

I said, Oh, disciple.

Okay.

He's talking about being a disciple.

I said, Well, son, what do you mean you're not a disciple of Jesus?

He said, I don't know enough about Jesus to be a disciple.

And I said, Well, Liam, that's not what, that's not what a disciple is.

A disciple isn't someone that knows everything about Jesus.

A disciple is someone that wants to know everything about Jesus.

A disciple is someone that just wants to know Jesus.

And so I asked him, Do you want to be a disciple of Jesus?

And he looked at me in the eyes, and I'm not joking, almost with tears in his eyes.

He said, Yes, I want to know everything about Jesus.

So I got to pray with my son two weeks ago in his bed.

I got to pray, God, Liam wants to know you.

Jesus, Liam wants to be your disciple.

He wants to know everything about you.

So he's gonna spend his whole life learning about you, Jesus, and following you.

And that is one of the most precious memories I will ever have.

I would love as a dad, thank you.

I would love as a dad to take credit for that moment.

I would love to say that it's been under my tutelage as a father and my example that he has developed this passion for God.

But I see what happens every single Sunday here at his hands.

He asks me almost every day, is it church day?

And when he leaves church, he is excited, he is wide-eyed, and he is full of amazement at whatever it is he's learned about God.

I love this church because it is changing my son's life.

It will do the same for my daughter.

I can't wait to see how that's gonna progress for the next 20 years.

I love this church because of what it's changed in me.

I'm a different person than I was before His Hands Church came into my life.

I say all the time that I believed in God.

I believed in Jesus long before I came here, but but it's because of this church that I am in love with Jesus.

I fell in love with God here.

When I came to His hands, I had an addiction to pornography.

It was a 10-year-long plus addiction that started at a young age.

A lot of men in my generation were exposed to it at a very young age, like I was.

I was completely unequipped to handle that temptation.

I had no idea as a third-grade child what to do when I was presented with that.

And over time that progressed.

And I grew up in a church culture where you did not share your deepest, darkest secrets.

You did not open up about your biggest struggles.

And so in my church, we would pray for one another, and I would often say I had an unspoken prayer request.

And that meant I didn't want to talk about it.

A lot of us guys had unspoken prayer requests in those days.

I was so ashamed of that sin that I hid it.

And I hid it from everyone.

I hid it from my wife, I hid it from my friends.

I was terrified about anyone finding out about that sin in my life.

So doing what I'm doing right now and just talking about it with a bunch of people, that would have been my biggest nightmare seven, eight years ago.

But his hands changed that for me.

You see, I knew in my head that God forgives us, I knew in my head that we have grace, I knew in my head that we are not accepted by God because of what we've done, that we're accepted by God because of what Jesus has done.

And I knew in my head because I had been told this in church, that God does not see us simply for our worst.

He sees the best in us, but I had never been in a church that actually lived that out.

I had never been in a church where people really were accepted, regardless of their biggest issues before.

And being here for several years changed me.

I developed a confidence in God's love for me and an ability to stop hiding that sin and actually begin to deal with it, to talk about it with my wife, which was fun, to talk about it with a counselor.

And I've been free of that addiction for over four years, but it wouldn't have happened without his hands church.

So I love this church because of what it's changed in my life, of what it's changed in my marriage and my children.

When I talk about his hands, it's a labor of love.

And I know that many of us feel the exact same way.

And it's interesting, right?

Because when you love something, when you really love something, you don't want it to change at all.

That's a strange dynamic that we have as people.

I'm sure I've shared this story before, but a few years ago I got home and I heard my wife crying in our son's room, and I walked upstairs and I found my wife holding a pair of my son's pants.

He was about nine months old at the time, and she's crying, and I looked at her and I said, Well, honey, what's wrong?

Why are you crying?

And she said, These don't fit them anymore.

I'm a guy, I'm not that in touch with my emotions.

Sometimes I forget that they're there at all.

And so I just said, Well, we have lots of pants.

Like, we if I shrink them or something like that, I'm really sorry, but I think we can survive with one fewer pair of pants for Liam.

And she said, No, you don't understand.

She's huge tears in her eyes.

She said, He's getting bigger, he's growing.

And again, being a man, not knowing what's really going on, I'm like, that's that's good, right?

We we keep feeding him.

That's he's nine months old.

I think he's gonna get a lot bigger, actually.

And Megan said, No, you don't understand.

This phase of his life is over.

He'll never be a baby again.

He's a toddler now, soon he's gonna be in school, before you know it, he's married.

That's how we think sometimes as parents.

And I understand now what Megan was dealing with.

When we love something, we don't want it to change.

We fight to preserve it.

There are things at his hands that we will always fight to preserve.

There are aspects of who we are that really make his hands his hands.

It's the things that give us our soul as a church.

We are a genuine church.

That's one of those qualities that we will fight to preserve.

We are genuine.

We are not putting on a show.

This is not a production.

If you ever bump into anyone that you see on a stage here at the grocery store and they they talk and act like a very different person than they are right now, there's a problem with that.

We are genuine.

We don't have to be the church versions of ourselves here.

You don't have to be the church version of yourself.

You can be who you are, you can be genuine.

We value that very much.

We will always fight to remain a genuine church.

We're about life at his hands.

In the book of Genesis, there's this story.

It's really the first story in the Bible of these two trees.

One is the tree of life, the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they really represent two different approaches to God.

We can approach God through the tree of the knowledge, good and evil.

We can learn all the rules, all the do's and the don'ts, and we can commit our lives to making sure we always do what's right, we never do what's wrong.

And if we do just enough, maybe, just maybe, God will love us and accept us.

Many people approach God in that way.

And I commend them for their efforts.

But from experience, I can say that that is a very long, difficult, frustrating journey.

Full of disappointment.

It often leads to denial above anything else.

Another word for that is religion.

It just doesn't work.

But we can also approach God through the tree of life, and that's about love, that's about relationship, that's less about what you can do, and it's more about who you can be.

And you can be a child of God.

You can be a son or daughter of God through a relationship with Jesus.

The Bible says that when we accept Jesus, we are adopted into the family of God.

And if we choose to approach God through the tree of life, it means that we're family, and when you're family, even if you don't follow all the rules perfectly all the time, you are still accepted.

You still have a seat at the table.

You don't have to search scripture very hard to find out which approach Jesus recommends.

In Matthew 11, 28, he said, Are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion?

Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life.

I'll show you how to take a real rest.

Walk with me and work with me.

Watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

It's a tree of life.

We are a church that is all about love.

Everything we do has to run through the filter of love.

And in church culture, love is often viewed as a really nice optional thing.

The most important thing is that we are right.

We are right, and we will communicate how right we are to the world, and we'll do our best to make sure we tell the world how right we are in as loving of a way as possible.

But oftentimes being right is valued much more than really loving people.

See, love is not just this nice thing to add to the equation.

Love is everything.

Love is the filter that everything has to run through, Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1 said, If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

1 Corinthians 13:1

If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but didn't love others, I would be nothing.

If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it.

But if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.

We as a church exist to love people to Jesus.

It's our job to give people a taste of God's love because all you need is a taste, right?

Just a taste of God's love will make you hunger for more.

So we get to be like the people that give out free samples at the grocery store.

Those people are awesome.

I love those people.

We just get to hand out little samples of God's love, and when they like it, we say, Hey, I know where you can get more, because as a church, we will always be a place where people can come and get more of God's love.

This is a place where people come to get God's love, grow in his love, and give his love away.

We are a church that is absolutely focused on Jesus.

We are Jesus-centric.

That means we're not pastor-centric.

That means there will never be someone's name on the building.

There will never be a billboard with someone's face, which I'm really excited about, by the way, because if God wanted that to be me, he would have given me a very different face.

Okay?

There is one person that ever has or ever will get famous at his hands church, and that person is Jesus.

That's it.

And those are the things that we will fight to preserve.

We will fight to make sure that those qualities never change.

But oftentimes as a church, it's very much like us as parents with our children.

Change has to happen.

In fact, it's bad if we don't change sometimes.

If we don't grow.

If you've ever bumped into a child and you're like, they need to grow up.

It's time to change a little bit.

As a church, we can't become stagnant.

We can never let ourselves stay in the same place for too long.

Because God loves to do new things.

God loves to do new things.

In Matthew 9:17, Jesus said, No one puts new wine into old wineskins.

Matthew 9:17

The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins.

In those days, they would store wine in wineskins, and an old wineskin had become brittle.

It was no longer flexible.

And if you would put new wine into that old wineskin, it would explode because the new wine would change.

It needed to be stored in something that was adaptable.

And Jesus was talking about the new thing he was doing on this earth, and there were a lot of people that were not going to get to experience that new thing because their lives were like old wineskins.

It's very easy for churches to be like old wineskins, to be so focused on the way it's always been and doing things the way we've always done them that we can't change.

We become rigid.

And then we can't experience the new things that God wants us to experience.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited for the new things that God wants to do in our generation.

I'm excited for the new things that God wants to do in this country and in this community.

I'm excited for the new things that God wants to do in this world, and I want us to be part of it.

I know you do too.

So we have to be excited to change.

We have to be excited to grow.

We should always be changing.

We should always be moving forward in a way that allows more and more people to know Jesus.

Because when we really boil it down, that's what we are at his hands.

We are changing lives.

Our lives are changing.

Once we start a relationship with Jesus, a process of change begins inside of us.

2 Corinthians 5.17 says that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone.

A new life has begun.

It has begun.

When we know Jesus, we begin to change.

Sometimes that change is instantaneous.

It's like overnight change.

Most of the time it is a slow, steady process.

We might look at ourselves now and say, God, I don't see the change happening, but five years go by and we realize how far we've come.

And then we realize how far we have to go.

But that's okay.

That's the way that God wants it to be.

He wants us to be changing lives, like new wineskins, flexible, ready to grow, ready to adapt to whatever new thing he wants to do.

We want to be changing lives.

We are not changed lives, we are changing lives.

I think that's one of the reasons that heaven lasts forever, because God's never gonna be done doing something new with us.

Jesus said in Luke chapter 9, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily and follow me.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

I love that word daily.

It's there on purpose.

Every single day can be a day that God does something new in your life.

And the more we as people and as a church are like new wineskins, excited about change, ready to grow, the more we get to experience those new things.

And it can happen every single day.

See, the amazing thing is that we're not just changing lives.

God wants us to be changing lives, changing lives.

He wants us to be agents of change in this world.

And so as he is changing us, as he is growing us, he wants us to be playing a part in other people's lives, changing.

We're supposed to be changing lives ourselves, but we are changing lives who are changing lives.

Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says, You are the light of the world, like a sitting on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket.

Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house.

In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Every once in A while, you'll read a scripture and you'll realize that the opinion Jesus has of you is so much higher than the opinion you might have of yourself, or than the opinion anyone else has ever had of you.

That he looks at you and he says, I think you're amazing.

I think you're the light of the world.

I want to put you on display for everyone to see.

That is Jesus' method of choice for changing the world.

It's to work through us.

And I'll be honest with you, knowing myself, sometimes I question his judgment.

There are times where I'm like, God, really?

This is your plan?

It's us?

It's me?

Do you know me?

If you read the gospels, if you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you read about disciples, as my son talked about earlier, the disciples of Jesus, these guys don't ever seem to really get who Jesus is.

They rarely grasp whatever it is Jesus is trying to teach.

Even if he does something very heavy-handed, it just goes right over their heads.

And in Matthew chapter 28, Jesus has died, he's risen, and he's about to go back to heaven.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

And he says a few things to them right before he leaves.

He says, I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

And what you would expect, knowing the story up to this point, knowing all the failures of the disciples, especially this most recent failure of abandoning Jesus on the cross, you expect his next statement to be, so you are fired.

And I'm going to find some new disciples, okay?

But that's not what he says.

He says, Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you, and be sure of this.

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

So Jesus takes these guys who have just failed time after time, and he says, Hey, it's on you.

I trust you.

I think you're ready for this.

I'm entrusting you with the most precious task that has ever been entrusted to mankind.

You can do this.

I'll send you the Holy Spirit.

Don't worry about that.

He'll be there.

But you can do this.

And I would imagine that many of the disciples were sitting there going, No, we can't.

We really need you to stay here, Jesus.

Jesus didn't wait for his disciples to arrive before he set them out to change the world.

He was completely comfortable with their lives still in a process of change.

From the beginning, this has always been about changing lives, changing lives.

And I believe there's a new thing that God wants to do in us, at his hands, and through us.

If you've been here for the last few years, there has been a lot of change.

This church is not the same church it was two years ago, and two years from now, it should not be the exact same that it is now.

Because we'll always be changing for the better.

But the change that I'm talking about this morning, it's not a change in structure.

We're not installing a pipe organ or anything like that.

Although, I bet Ben could do some cool things on a pipe organ.

I just have a feeling.

I see you, Ben.

We're not changing our style or anything like that.

It's nothing cosmetic, okay?

What needs to change, the new thing that needs to happen is a new mentality in all of us, myself included.

It's time for us to fully embrace our role as changing lives, changing lives.

It's time for us to live up to our name, to be his hands church.

I've always loved the name his hands.

That's a powerful name when you think about it.

You look at the hands of Jesus in Scripture, those hands had an effect on this world.

Jesus grew up as a carpenter.

He worked with his hands.

He would have spent many of his days hammering nails into wood with his hands growing up.

I wonder how many times he did that, knowing that one day those nails would be hammered into his hands.

See, with his hands, Jesus cleared the temple of people who were using God to abuse others and take advantage of others.

From Jesus' hands, Peter was pulled out of the water as he was drowning in the sea.

With his hands, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples in an act of service that they could not even comprehend.

With his hands, Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish, and he miraculously multiplied it to feed hungry people.

With his hands, Jesus healed people.

With his hands, Jesus changed this world, and he did it with his hands.

Mark chapter 1, verse 41, tells an amazing story of Jesus and his hands.

Mark 1:41

It says a man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed.

If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean, he said.

Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out and touched him.

I am willing, he said, Be healed.

Instantly the leprosy disappeared, and this man was healed.

You know, it was illegal to touch a man with leprosy in Jesus' day.

That disease was so widespread and it was so dangerous that to touch someone with leprosy was an illegal action.

And Jesus did not have to touch him to heal him.

There are many times where Jesus healed someone or performed a miracle just with his words.

But Jesus chose to reach out with his hands and touch this man.

The hands of Jesus are powerful.

The very existence of Jesus on this earth shows us that God desires to be a hands-on God.

And he was not content to stay in heaven.

God is hands-on.

Jesus was hands-on, and if we're going to be his hands, we have to be hands-on in the lives of the people in this community.

That's the new mentality.

To be his hands in our places of employment.

Because when you go to work, you are his hands.

You are this church.

His hands is at your work.

When you go to school, you are his hands.

His hands is at your school.

When you stand in line at the grocery store, his hands is in line at the grocery store.

Because you are his hands church.

And I believe that God put us in this community to make a change.

I believe there are thousands and thousands of people walking around that maybe even know about God.

They can maybe even quote Bible verses to you, but they do not know in their hearts that they are loved by God.

And they're settling for being a worker of God or a follower of God when they could be the son or the daughter of God.

And if we're going to make that change happen in their lives, we have to get hands on.

But it's us as a church, it's us as individuals coming together.

It's not about his hands as an organization coming up with a program that we all play a part in one Sunday a month or something like that.

It's about a mentality that we carry with us every single day that says, I will not let what happens in here stay in here.

I believe we're ready for that as a church.

I believe we're ready to move forward and be his hands.

I believe that with all of my being.

And so today we have a mission, we have a goal.

As a church, we are going to have a mission, a purpose that unites us.

Because I want you to know that a church is not something we attend.

It shouldn't be.

What a church should be is a movement that we get to be part of.

It's a movement, something bigger than ourselves, that we can come alongside, play a great part in, but know that we are accomplishing so much more than we could ever hope to accomplish on our own.

His hands is a mission.

And we're part of that together.

And so today we're going to start a mission for this next season in our church.

This is not the mission that we'll have for the next 30 years.

It's just a start.

And that mission is 1,000 lives.

As a church, we are going to make a change in 1,000 lives.

1,000 lives in this community are going to be affected by what God is doing in us and through us.

We'll spend the next few weeks talking about how we as a church can be changing lives, changing lives.

But anytime you have a goal that has a number attached to it, you have to have a way to measure it, right?

So we're going to measure this goal with stories.

Starting next Sunday, there's going to be these cards at the back four columns where we have prayer requests, where we have giving.

And those cards are there for us to record the stories of what God is doing in this church, of what God is doing in our lives, of what God is using us to do in the lives of others.

And I'm telling you, as a church, it's going to happen.

We're going to have 1,000 stories of amazing things that God has done.

We're going to have 1,000 lives that have been changed by what God is doing in us and through us.

We are going to get there.

And I imagine we'll get there sooner than we might think.

I mean, I think about this last year and what God has done in this last year at His hands.

If you've been here for the last year, it's been a ride.

And it's been amazing to be part of that.

I'm proud of this church.

Back in June, I stood here and I announced another goal.

We were going to two services.

We're going to start moving forward as a church and making room for more.

And I was blown away by how much work and time it would take for us to be ready for that, more than I anticipated.

But that's okay because it's worth it.

One of the things that had to happen for us to get to that two service goal is we needed hundreds of people to join teams for the first time.

And you responded.

We had hundreds of people join teams, and it's crazy because now we can do two services better on a Sunday than we could do one a year ago.

It's crazy, and that's because of you.

That's because you stepped up as a church.

Back in June, I talked about how if we're going to move forward as a church, we've got to move forward when it comes to generosity and supporting this church financially.

We have learned how to do things very cost-effectively at his hands.

We spend three times less than the average church our size.

But if this church is going to be secured for our children's generation and generations to follow, we have to step up financially as well.

At the time, we were averaging$61,000 a month in giving.

Now, since that point, we're averaging$71,000 a month in giving.

That's$10,000 more every month.

That is incredible progress in a very short period of time.

And that's because of you.

Many of you decided for the first time to become percentage givers.

That's how we do it at his hands.

We don't tell you what to give, we don't tell you what percent to give.

We just say, hey, God wants us to be percentage givers.

We look at our lives, we say, what percentage can I give?

Is it 1%?

Is it 10%?

What is it?

And we commit to giving that every single month, and that's how things get done.

Many of you decided to make that jump back in June.

You are making a huge impact.

Many of you who are already percentage givers decided to give more.

You are making a huge impact.

That's$10,000 extra every single month, and that bleeds over into what we give back to this community.

And it's crazy because I said at the time that our goal was$85,000 a month, and it might seem like that extra$14,000 is some giant hurdle to overcome.

It's not.

If every single person that's at his hands today, every single adult actually that's at his hands today started to give$14 extra every single month,$14 on top of what they're giving now.

So if it's zero, they gave$14.

If it's$100, they give$114, we would hit that goal this month.

That's all it takes.

If 50 families decided to be percentage givers for the very first time, we would hit that goal this month.

That's all it takes.

We are so close.

We are going to get there.

And I'm proud of this church for how we're moving forward.

I hope you're excited about that too.

And so when I say we're going to reach a thousand lives, I want you to know we are going to reach a thousand lives.

We're going to measure it with these incredible stories.

Now, it's going to be tempting next week to want to run to these cards and record all the things God has done in the last year or two years or five years.

Because I know He's done so much.

But it's very important for the purpose of this mission that we have to reach 1,000 lives beginning today, that we make sure that whatever stories we share are stories that happen from this point on.

Stories that begin today.

Now, if we had started this goal, this mission just a few months ago, we would already have some really incredible stories.

This is a story that a woman sent me very recently, a couple weeks back.

She said, I want to say that I've been attending his hand since January, and it has changed my life.

I look forward to coming every Sunday, and I don't think I have ever felt this way about a church before.

Last December, my husband served me with divorce papers.

We'd been married for 25 years at the time, and even though he had been unfaithful to me at least five times during the course of our marriage, I was willing to stay with him and honor my vows.

Attending his hands and praying has gotten me through all of this.

Here's another story that an amazing young woman named Marjorie shared with me just this last week.

She said, I struggled with severe depression all my childhood and attempted suicide when I was 17.

On top of that, I've struggled with anorexia since I was 14.

I've had a rocky relationship with God.

I grew up in the Catholic Church, and God was seen as someone far away, as an angry God we had to work hard to please.

And that correlated with my relationship with my father, who was very abusive.

I was bullied in school every day, and that's what led me to attempt suicide.

Fast forward, I went to live with a man who was very abusive.

I had a child with him, and the day I left him, I thought I had left all my problems behind me.

I thought I could finally have my peace.

A year later, my son was diagnosed with autism, and I just became so angry with God.

I didn't want to believe in him anymore.

I couldn't even hear someone mention his name.

I was done with God.

For the past year, I've had amazing people bring me back to God and show me what he's really like.

For the first time in my life, I feel like I know God and I know that I'm favored by him.

Marjorie was baptized here two months ago.

It's awesome.

We're gonna have a thousand stories like that to share.

I can't wait.

I can't wait.

So, how do we get started?

That's a big goal.

How do we get to a thousand?

The answer is that we start with one more number.

And that number is one.

It's one.

You know, a thousand is just a bunch of ones.

That's all it is.

And if you read Jesus, he valued one life very much.

In fact, in Luke chapter 15, Jesus said, If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?

Luke 15 · chapter mention

Won't he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go search for the one that's lost until he finds it?

And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.

When he arrives, he will call together his friends and his neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep.

In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over 99 others who are righteous and haven't strayed away.

Jesus saw one life as valuable.

To Jesus, one life was worth celebrating.

It's as if Jesus believed that we should change the world one life at a time.

And if you read the Gospels and you read the miracles that Jesus performed, it's amazing how few of them were mass miracles.

How rarely Jesus does a miracle that affects a lot of people at once.

Almost every miracle that Jesus performed was personal.

He healed one person of a disease, he healed one person's blindness.

He forgave one person's sins.

He did it one person at a time.

We as a church are gonna be a part in changing 1,000 lives.

And one day it's gonna be 5,000 lives, one day it's gonna be 10,000 lives, but our method is never gonna change.

We're gonna do it one life at a time because every single life in this community is valuable.

Every single life in this world is a life that God is waiting to celebrate.

And we have the ability as a church to affect one life at a time.

So I want to ask you this morning to pray about one life that God wants you to help change.

One person that you are gonna take an active role in becoming his hands to that person.

It might be someone you know right now.

You may already have the life locked in your mind.

It may be someone you know that's in your family, it may be someone that's a friend of yours that you work with.

Maybe their life's in crisis, maybe not, maybe everything looks good on the outside, but you know they don't have the love of Jesus, they don't know God, and so they're just one problem away from ruin.

Who is one person, one life that you can start working on?

Helping, serving, loving.

This week, pray for an opportunity to speak into that person's life.

Pray for an opportunity to invite them here.

It's a simple thing to do.

I can't wait to read stories where people say, I invited my good friend to his hands, and their life has completely changed.

Their marriage is healed.

Or I was invited by my neighbor to his hands.

And now I know God, and I never have before.

I can't wait to read stories like that.

That one life, that one person, looked for an opportunity this week just to serve them.

I can't wait to read stories like the story we got this last week.

There were some of our women group leaders that heard about a woman in our community going through a really difficult surgery.

And so these women group leaders got together, put together these amazing gift baskets, and took them to that family.

And the family received them and said, You do realize that we don't go to your church, right?

And our group leaders said, Yeah, we just want you to feel loved.

I mean, that's a story.

And we're gonna have hundreds and hundreds of stories like that.

And it starts today.

We are changing lives, changing lives.

We are his hands, and beginning today, we're gonna make a difference in a thousand people's lives.

I believe that's gonna mean a thousand people know Jesus.

And we're gonna pray here in just a moment and finish.

Our focus as a church, as we walk out of here today, as a team, as a family, it's on one life at a time.

Our focus is on that one person that we're gonna start praying for an opportunity to help, to serve, to change.

But I don't want us to lose sight of how big of a deal 1,000 lives really is.

We're not afraid of odd things here.

Um and since that time, we've had right at a thousand people get baptized.

Now, we don't keep meticulous records, but everyone that's ever been baptized here has signed a wall.

Actually, a few walls now.

It is really hard to count those signatures.

Let me just tell you that.

There is no semblance of order, they're not in nice little neat rows, and I love that.

That kind of gives it a charm.

But we've had right out a thousand people get baptized here.

And if you ever stand in that room and you look around at 1,000 signatures, and you know that that's 1,000 people who went all in with Jesus simply through what God is doing here, it's amazing, it's inspiring, it gets you fired up.

So, what I'd like to do as we close is I'd like to pray.

And then I'd like to show you those 1,000 signatures as an inspiration, as a reminder of what 1,000 lives knowing Jesus really looks like.

Because we are going to do this as a church beginning today.

So please pray with me.

Jesus, thank you.

Thank you for giving us a church that we can be so confident in the fact that you're going to move, you're gonna show up, you're gonna do things through this church.

This church is his hands, and we want to be his hands in this community.

We want to live up to our name Jesus.

I pray for every single person here that you make it a personal mission, not just a fleeting nice thought, that we are gonna start praying and looking for an opportunity to reach into one person's life and invite them here, or just share who you are with them, or love on them in a way that is tangible and real.

I pray that every single one of us by the end of today has a person in mind that we're gonna start being his hands to.

And as we leave this morning, I pray that you show us that a thousand lives is meaningful, a thousand lives is significant, but a thousand lives is just the start.

Thank you for this church, Jesus.

Ask all this in your name.

Amen.