Living the Great Commission | Ecclesia: The Church Can Change the World - Week 5

And offering and stuff you've done wonderful.

It's such a gift.

I love that.

Um my voice is a little hoarse.

Apologies.

We had a fun Friday night.

So we uh we had the local high schools playing each other and uh for the first time ever, and um my son decided to have a career game, and I might might have got a little excited about it.

So uh oddly, yesterday my voice was doing wonderful, and I was like, oh, dodged it.

And this morning I woke up and I was like, I have to talk in deep tones to make sure it doesn't break up.

So use the authoritative voice here.

Anyway, uh, there may be a few pubescent breakups here, so just uh that's where that's coming from.

So yesterday was a full day for us personally.

Uh last night, Natalie and I went to Austin for my nephew's engagement party.

And we were there probably around 40 people.

Is that a good estimation of number?

On the back porch of a excuse me, a restaurant down there.

And my brother, who's 20 years my senior, so our dad that we share is 85, he's 65, I'm 45, so we we have some generations, yeah, interestingly, between us, um has really in the last, I don't know, I feel like maybe 10 years, my brother uh showed me his appreciation of me in really interesting ways.

And I realize that he values me um as his brother, but also spiritually.

And so anytime they have this significant event in their family, i.e., his daughter's wedding last year and now his son's engagement, he goes to me and says, Will you will you bring the blessing?

And of course, on paper, that often seems like, sounds like a prayer of thanks for gathering us together and for what you're up to and just go get them, God kind of thing.

And so that's all I meant for this to be yesterday, last night.

And so I just shared kind of with the group, who's all primarily my nephew, who's a mid-20-year-old guy's friends and posse group, kind of.

So you can kind of get the picture of who's in the in the outdoor deck right there.

And I just wanted to share with them what I've been sharing with you and that's been discipling me, and largely this verse out of Micah 2:13 that says, as one breaks through, many break out.

Micah 2:13

And there's just so much application and revelation there.

And so I just kind of blessed them with the oneness that they're coming together in a union, a covenant, becoming one.

And so as one together goes through the access that that will give so many, and just wanted to bless them with that.

And that's all it was.

It was a prayer.

And before the night was over, I don't know how many of the 40, but I bet close to half.

That's maybe been where I lost my voice at, yeah, too.

Came up and just said, What was that?

That that was amazing.

Are you a pastor?

Which I always hate to answer the word yes to because then it feels you feel like they say, Oh, okay, well, okay, that's where the blessing comes from.

It's like that has little to do with it, by the way.

And I realized what I've been realizing is that the pump today is primed for hunger with desperate people who catch something and they say, wait a second.

What what was that?

What did you just say?

Is that real?

Is is that is that actually my life potentially?

And what I know is that uh uh the church is in a really good position to be carriers of the mission of God.

And what I've been saying, and what I'd like to say again today, perhaps repackaged, is that you can have as much of this mission project as you want to.

Um God's on the move, and he's even on the verge of breakout.

Margie, I called an audible there, so uh maybe be ready at the end.

Margie had uh a real relevant word for us that I'd like us to get to today.

So we're in the middle of talking about the Apostolic Church and the mission of God, and how if the church gets a hold of the real invitation, that it has the power to change everything, which I believe was Jesus' mission when he said, Go.

That was the point, that was the hope.

And so last week we brought our friend uh friends Joel and Lauren in with us and always loved to have them here.

And Joel talked about the difference in kind of a pastoral paradigm of church and an apostolic paradigm of church.

And one is not better than the other one, but if only one is done at the expense of the other one, then you don't have the complete picture.

And for the church to be its full picture, for you and me as the carriers of sons of God, daughters of God, we need to have a pastoral move, which is what family on mission really is about.

And we need to have an apostolic heart in us that advances the kingdom at engagement parties on the back decks of places, or in Ross, or wherever it is your life finds you, to be bent in your mind towards there's opportunity here, and there's as much of it as I care to have.

So the idea today is that we want to live the Great Commission, not just agree with it.

Because it's really easy to look and review up to this point, perhaps, in your life and say, I would absolutely check the box, hands down, that this is what the people of God should be up to.

But if I look at my life, maybe I can see I've been a bit asleep or apathetic or self-condemning, and realize I've been believing that maybe I don't have what it takes to participate.

Or maybe I've been believing that somebody else will take care of it, or maybe I've been believing that it's really not as important as I've convinced myself to believe that it is.

Now I want to say this right off the bat, too.

I believe the Great Commission is a lot less about God pitching a manual into your lap and saying, go and make disciples, I'll be over here.

It's a lot more about Jesus saying, This is what I'm already up to.

Come join me in what I'm already doing.

That's a radically different approach to living the Great Commission when you realize you're actually joining the Father as a family member.

This is what the family's doing.

And in that, I find fulfillment like I couldn't find anywhere else.

About 16 years ago, I there was one of those moments right there.

I graduated from uh Liberty University, uh had the opportunity to do some extra schooling, and the entire thing was done online.

I've mentioned that before to you guys, and ended up getting um uh, I think they called it a MAR.

I'm master of arts and religion.

So I'm I'm very artsy and religious.

No, I'm not not that.

Um I'll take the art though.

And so went out on site, Lynchburg, Virginia, and you couldn't help but realize how close you are to Washington, D.C., right there, which isn't real close, but it's close enough that when you're a Texas boy and never been up that way, take advantage of it.

So my sister, who's a history teacher uh of seventh graders, which is a calling, um, went out there with me and Natalie.

I think Cohen was a year old at the time, who's our oldest now, and my uh yeah, and you were pregnant and didn't like to eat seafood, and we were on the East Coast, and that wasn't a great match.

And my mom and dad from Colorado, they met us out there, and we took a trip up to DC.

And I got to, uh, for the first time in my life, lay eyes on and bear witness to some of the history of our world that's preserved there in DC, namely the Holocaust Museum.

Now I knew the story of World War II and the Holocaust, as do you, but something about laying eyes on and witnessing shoes and clothing and artifacts and real pictures does something inside of you that is wreckage of sorts that probably never quite puts you back together.

And that's just one example of many to say that in our world there's lots of broken places, and there have been.

That this world for now has a lot of mess and brokenness in it to drive home the point, the need of the mission of God.

Now, I'll I'll make a big theological point right here.

This is probably worth you knowing, though you're welcome to disagree all you want.

But I believe that the point and the plan of this life in this world is for things to actually improve and get better, not get worse and closer to the doldrums of living, to where you end up just hanging on for all you can until Jesus comes and finally saves the day and gets us out of this Godforsaken place.

Though that's been heard before, that oh, it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

So, you know, the beast is on his way.

So just brace yourself and hold on, because there's a promise that you'll be okay one day.

And I actually believe that the whole prayer that Jesus prayed when he said, pray this way, is that heaven come to earth.

Well, if heaven comes to earth, this place is gonna get a lot brighter, actually, than it is darker.

And so that's just a core belief that I have.

And so you see the broken places in the world, you see the Holocaust moments or the genocide places, or whatever you want to fill in the blank with, with tragedy and sadness.

And rather than saying, well, that's just the way it is, I think the invitation is to realize, yeah, things are upside down in some capacities, and there's some things that aren't right that God has a heart and a plan for.

And here's the point: God knows that and he cares about that.

He cares that there's broken places, he cares that there's injustice in pockets of the world.

And so there's this invitation for me to not feel like out of obligation that I should be a carrier of the mission of God.

But as I'm a son and aware and awake to what is, to say, this is Jesus' heart to make better what's wrong.

And I don't want to get left out of that.

I love Jesus.

I want to be a part of what Jesus is a part of.

And so that's more the motivation and the source of where a talk and a conversation like this one is coming from.

So here's a psalm for you.

We'll look at a couple psalms today.

Psalm 40, in the very first verse, is this message that says, I waited patiently, God bless me for doing that, because it could have been impatiently, for the Lord.

And here's where that got me.

He turned to me and he heard my cry.

What did he do?

He heard me cry out to him.

And he didn't leave me there.

He actually stepped down into the pit where I was when I made my cry.

Now, a lot of Christians, I think, put the period right there, though, and say, Huh isn't that amazing?

I was in despair, and God found me in my despair, stepped into it with me, and took care of me, and now I'm better.

That's wonderful.

And it is wonderful, but that's not the full picture of the gospel.

So Psalm 40 continues, you look in verse 3, and it says, that as he stepped down into the pit with me, here's what happened next.

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.

Many, so not just one person in the course of my lifetime, not a one-off moment where the conditions happened to be right, but many, a ripple effect over the course of my lifetime will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.

And that's not a fear like they became afraid of God.

That's a fear like I'm afraid to not be with God.

Like what I've seen, the pit experience, the moment Jesus picked me back up, was so transformational and powerful that I can't imagine not being in and with him for the rest of my days.

That kind of fear.

The assignment that's been given to us is of the global God who gives the Great Commission.

But I'm not sure that global is big enough to really capture how big God is.

So I'll give you the big theological statement right here: God is real big.

In fact, if we pulled all of our belief together in the room today about the size and greatness, magnitude, and vastness of God, I don't know how much you believe.

I know there's a lot of horsepower in the room today.

It still wouldn't be enough.

We'd still way undershoot the size of who God is, how capable he is, what his plan is, and what he's up to.

So probably a better word for describing God, even though he's a global God who cares about the nations of the planet, would be to say he's more like a galactic God.

And that wouldn't even be big enough because I love the phrase that says the universe was one of God's thoughts.

So Isaiah 6, uh, we mentioned it two weeks ago.

It's really, I think, the place that my mind and my heart continues to go back to as we're thinking about uh Ecclesia, the church who has the authority, is this moment in Isaiah where Isaiah sees God and has a vision of God.

And from there realizes, and I'm paraphrasing here, oh no.

Oh no, look at him.

Look at how wonderful he is, how awesome he is.

The seraphim, which are the angels, are ping-ponging back and forth worship and praise and credit to how good God is.

And Isaiah is in the place to see it and witness it, and because he saw it, he is finished.

And he says, Oh no, I'm unclean.

And then, of course, what we read two weeks ago, you can read it again.

It's right there in Isaiah 6 is God intervenes with his oh no-ness and says, I'm gonna sear my glory on your life that's gonna bring transformation to you, that's gonna change even the way you see yourself, that now you're a participant, you're a player in God's family.

And so there's only one question left to be asked is when the question from God says, Who shall we send?

Send me, it's oh, we're sending somebody?

You're gonna send somebody on a mission?

What else would I do with my life?

Where else would I go?

Here I am, send me.

You know, worship a lot of times we feel like starts with a song, starts with a strum, starts with a piano, starts with a rally, a gathering.

Worship really starts with seeing.

It starts with seeing.

If you haven't really seen God, then you really don't have a song in your mouth.

When Psalm 40 says he put a song in my mouth, it's because the pit dweller saw God step into the pit with him.

And now he's got a song received because God's always giving songs, he's he's he's he's depositing, but you can't really receive it and let it transform your life until you've seen with your own experience, your own eyes, the majesty of who God is.

And once that's really happened, it's all over.

You don't need a three-step sermon to say, well, now that you've seen God, here's the first thing you should do, and then here's the second thing you should do, and then lastly, it'll lead to the third thing.

Isaiah didn't need that.

Isaiah saw God and said, Woe is me, I'm unclean, I'm done.

This is how it ends for me.

Goodbye, world.

I just saw God.

He's he's like, I don't have a word for it.

And then God steps in, puts a song in his mouth, asks the question, and Isaiah's like, I don't have to die.

You mean, and this is the finished work of Jesus, by the way.

This is Isaiah's an Old Testament picture of what's coming and what's made possible.

In Christ, it's a finished work.

And so now we don't have to worship God with with our hands covering our face because woe is me, we're undone.

We now have God inside of us, and so we can worship God in his lap.

Thank you very much.

That's that's the connection point that the new covenant has.

But Isaiah has this moment of God, you're enormous.

And now I'm in you and you're in me.

I will go for you if you're sending somebody.

Not, I agree with it, but I got some other prophet boy things to tend to over here, or whatever else he could have been up to in his life.

There's one thing I'm gonna be up to in my life now, and it's to be a carrier of the mission of God.

Why?

Because I've seen God.

I'm not sure a person can have salvation alive in their heart if they haven't seen God before.

So the question is, do you have a song in your heart?

And the way you get a song in your heart and sing it is you see God.

And so for a lot of people, that's where it starts.

That's where for all people, that's where it starts.

God being seen.

So I'm re-revisiting my night last night, and I'm thinking, what was that about by having 25-year-old, 26-year-olds come up to me and say, hey, that was amazing.

I'd never heard a prayer like that before.

What was that about?

Breaking out?

That was incredible.

What does that mean?

Wanting to talk further about it.

What was that?

It was a glimpse of them seeing the glory of God and realizing in their heart, I can't go on the way I was going.

My road has to shift.

There has to be a change of direction now that I've seen that.

And it's he's all over.

He's all over the place to be seen.

So are we carrying that?

I guess is the question this morning.

We're carrying the raw revelation of I've seen God.

So this isn't an elective that I've chosen to be a mission carrier.

This is a what else would I do kind of life that I'm gonna live?

Have you seen that God before personally in your life?

Not just have you heard about him or heard somebody else's version of seeing him, but have you seen God personally?

And have you felt that desperate before as Isaiah was that desperate?

And have you been touched with that kind of grace?

The grace of God is his empowering presence.

You could almost swap the word.

The grace of God is the presence of God given to you so that you can live a life that blows open doors for the good news of Jesus to be known and not just head knowledge, but gets inside a person and generationally changes the whole thing.

And you could cry thinking about the testimonies of the people that you know, maybe your own, where that's happened before.

And so I'd like to just step back maybe a second this morning and ask this question.

When the question comes forth, who shall we send?

This is the triune God, by the way, having a conversation with themselves.

Who will go for us?

You might ask, well, who's asking?

You ever been somewhere and somebody said, Hey, we need you to move your car?

I might, who's asking?

The police are asking.

You're parked on a fire hydrant.

Like you're on the fire hydrant, get off.

Well, I might do it, but but who's asking?

There's a little bit of that in this of, hey, live the Great Commission.

Okay, but who's really asking?

Who's asking me to live the Great Commission?

Is it the preacher man at the front of the room?

Is it my mom and dad in the house I grew up in?

Is it, you know, the the FCA guy at my school?

Like, who's asking me to live the Great Commission?

Um, who's behind really all of this?

And the question is being asked tonight by a Bigger than galactic size God who absolutely blows our minds and is being worshipped right now this very second.

I just believe that if we can see, like Isaiah saw, a right picture of God, then the conversation of how am I going to live my life on my at the job, how am I going to live my life at school becomes a lot littler, littler, smaller, of an equation to figure out, and a lot more of an outflow of my life.

And so I love what we just did right here.

Jamila and Sam and Melody and Natalie and the team and whoever else at whatever else church you go to who lead you in congregational worship are amazing.

In fact, we prayed over them today, a phrase I've been hanging on to lately, a bellwether.

I don't even know what a bellwether is.

A bellwether is the sheep in the flock who's the lead sheep who has the bell around its neck.

And wherever that bell that sheep goes, the bell rings, and the rest of the flock know we're going this direction.

That's the bellwether.

And these guys are bellwethers for us, and they do a fantastic job all the time, every time.

I think it's one of our strengths around here, by the way.

And it's a proud point to show off.

What's the worship like at your church?

Oh, let me tell you, we got some bellwethers around, and they lead us into the throne room on a regular basis, and it's wonderful.

But God doesn't need our singing songs for him to be worshiped.

He didn't like put this message in the heart of us and say, I'm bringing some people who need to hear this.

So could you guys make sure you get the stage set up and a band set up so that I can get some worship, so I got some momentum to be able to really pour through you on this deal?

This worship time is for him.

It's for my betterment.

So I don't want to miss it.

I need to participate in it.

But he doesn't need my song and my worship.

Why?

Because everywhere he is, he's being worshiped already.

There's constant flow of worship going to him because of his creation.

Every time a baby cries, every time a human laughs, anytime sound is made.

I'll go so far as to say the sound of that what is it, a water fountain machine that's running right now to keep the water cool over there on that side of the room, humming.

Somebody engineered that sucker to work like that from the brain power that God gave them, and now it's making a sound, and I'm not so sure that that sound, you're like, you are stretching here, dude.

I know it's that big.

That thing is humming to the tune of God.

You're like, well, how do you know that?

Well, because Psalm 33, verse 6 says that by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and their starry host, by the breath of his mouth, they go forth.

Psalms 33:6

So uh, Brandy, uh, if you could fire a picture up of the galaxy, if we got that in there, um uh the galaxies, I should say.

Um there's a picture.

By the way, pause.

Everybody go to the hit-a-pause button real quick.

I'm a bit of a wannabe science astronomy nerd.

I put the word wannabe in there because I have no backing on this.

I just have an interest.

And I've had a reputation, and I'll just uphold it now for a minute, if you'll give me some grace, of infusing a little of this backyard astronomer stuff into a message about how great and big and galactic and sizable God is.

I've been accused of maybe going a little overboard, and I'm okay with that.

But this is a picture, it's a it's a a deep ultra image.

There are some adjectives for you to explain that this thing's looking a long way.

10,000 galaxies, just in this picture, that was taken by our friend, the Hubble telescope, that hovers 270 miles above the planet in orbit and has been doing it now for multiple decades.

I think there's a plan to retire Hubble like in 2040, if you were wondering.

It's still taking pictures.

We got the James Webb telescope now.

It's out about a million miles from the Earth where it hangs out and takes pictures without being close to Earth.

Ramon, dude, I know we're gonna talk about this later, so I'm ready for it.

If you were to take an eight-foot-long straw, now eight feet long is a long way, so you'd have to have your cut or cup over there where JR's feet are for me to be able to suck an eight-foot straw out of that distance and look up into the sky and peer through it, eight feet long, that little hole at the end of the straw is what you're looking at right now.

That's how big much sky you'd be seeing to see 10,000 galaxies.

Now, those are galaxies, those aren't stars.

So, in case you didn't take astronomy in college, when your advisor said, Chris, you're shy a science credit to graduate.

So here's your list to pick through.

And I was like, physics needs to be a physics credit, astronomy.

We'll pick that one.

And I fell in love.

I kept my textbook.

You can sell your textbooks back, get a you know, ten dollars back or something.

I kept it.

Things enormous.

Got a nine-inch Mead telescope from my uncle in Dripping Springs.

And anyway, you don't care about that.

I care about that, but you don't.

This is uh one of those dots has something like hundreds of millions of stars inside of one of those, and that's a picture of 10,000 of those things.

Astronomers have for well centuries wondered why is it so big up there?

Why is there so much space in space?

If we're all that there is living, then why isn't it a little overdone?

To which the obvious answer to that is yeah, that's that's huge.

So just for one blue ball to have humanity on it would be enormous.

So money has been being spent over the course of time to put instruments in outer space to try to hear if there's any intelligent signaling coming from the distances.

Because if there is, maybe it's another pointer to that there's life somewhere else.

And maybe now it's not so big for just one section of humanity.

But what they found, they haven't found any, by the way.

I mean, unless you know something that came out this morning on astronomy.com that I hadn't looked at yet, uh, they haven't found, they haven't heard any intelligent life really coming through.

Um, but it's not been money wasted because what they have heard is the song of the stars.

And that that they make great noise.

In fact, I didn't go so far as to try to download a wave file and play this for you today.

If this was like next level stuff, maybe I'd have done that, and then you'd really be like, this guy is way whack.

But if we did, and you use your imaginations for a second, you would hear things like syncopated like pulsars and quasars that are making a noise.

And then you would look at these uh millisecond type stars, which is a measurement um type word, that actually make a string section sound of like that's okay.

Oh man.

That would have worked on Thursday, sorry.

Yeah, and I don't I don't think I got the baritone version of that, so my goodness.

I don't know.

No, the coffee won't help.

I don't even have water to help.

So you get the point, though.

Imagine, without me helping you, a melodic sound to a percussive sound that actually sounds off an anthem, worship.

By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, the starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Psalm 148 starts with praise the Lord.

Now, the psalms aren't in sequential order, okay?

They're kind of all over the place.

But Psalm 148 out of 150, and you need to tell us to praise the Lord, you just spent 147 Psalms telling us to praise the Lord.

We got to have that in here again.

Yes, because everything all the time is doing that.

So why are we gonna have a psalm written without that?

So it starts, praise the Lord, praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights above, praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his heavenly hosts.

So God is explaining to us through the Psalms the picture of how this all works in creation, and he starts big and he finally whittles it down to you and me, small, and he includes everything.

Uh, verse three, praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars and quasars and pulsars and nebulas and whatever else they got to name it, praise him, you highest heavens.

I mean, this is a bit redundant.

I think that there's a point here.

And waters above the skies, let them praise the name of the Lord.

For at his command they were created.

They didn't just show up, they had intention put into them.

What's the intention?

Well, if the place is that big, for the purpose of sounding off to God, so that we can catch a vision with our eyes of who he is, so that it elicits in us a response to be mission carriers of whatever it is he's up to, then yeah, the universe isn't too big.

It's probably just about the right size.

Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at his command they were created, and he established them forever and ever, and he issued a decree that will never pass away.

There's a permanence to the plan of God here.

And I think that it's worth noticing that creation participates in praising the Lord.

But creation doesn't just agree with the fact that he should be praised.

They actually participate in it.

They don't just agree with it, they don't just check the box.

Yes, our Maker, pretty amazing.

Why don't you take over the singing today?

My pulsar meter's a little burned out.

What else are they gonna do?

They were created for one thing.

Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures, and all the ocean depths.

You ever seen Finding Nemo and Dory?

She starts doing the whale call.

She speaks whale.

Yeah, that's their song.

And they sing, and here they are, you great sea creatures.

They're calling it out right there.

Who knew Finding Nemo had such theological implication?

Lightning and hail.

Oh, yeah, I've heard the sound of a thunderstorm before.

Snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, you fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals.

I heard the coyotes howling all the time before they started building more houses around me.

And cattle, the lowing, the mooing, small creatures, the flying birds.

You ever heard the big birds with their wings?

A sound to praise the Lord.

For his name alone is exalted.

His splendor is above the earth and the heavens.

It's everywhere, it's all around.

There's nothing that the praise of God is absent from.

So, yeah, he doesn't need this song necessarily to amplify his voice.

I need it, and I'm gonna participate in it.

But realizing that a God of this caliber, who's not only big in creation, but big in love through the story and the message of sun sending and cross-dying and resurrection power that's given birth to a completely new species called you and me, if Christ is in us, new creation, is worthy of me not just agreeing with a cute phrase, go into all the earth and make disciples of the nations, but actually living my life aimed at it with intention.

Which is why he can't hear me right now because he's in the realm.

A guy like David Ponce has been discipling me personally without him even knowing it so deeply and so well, because every time I turn around, that guy has his head on a swivel and is looking for where's the opportunities, where's the people who need a hand perhaps grabbed and helped walk into the kingdom of God that will potentially change their life.

And all of us are capable of it.

And many of you have great history with doing that.

And I know if I took a magnifying glass to your life, I would be equally discipled.

I realize that we have a family here and a charge given where we are momentous in being mission carriers.

And that's one of the things I'm so excited about being alive right now, being in church leadership, is that I feel like the grandiose plan of disciple nations transform a culture in a community that's growing and building high schools and selling out football stadiums on Friday night, we're well positioned.

If we can make sure and live out of the opportunity that's afforded to us from seeing with our own eyes the greatness of God and letting that lead us.

And maybe the answer, if there's apathy, is taking another glance at God and setting up your life in a way where you see him regularly and you look at him often.

And you don't let last year's look be what carries you into this year's mission.

But you say, I need to see him again, and I need to see him again, and I can't wait for the sun to come up tomorrow because it's a fresh mercy kind of morning for me to see him again.

And if I keep him in view, if I keep my gaze on him, I'll have no problem living out the calling.

Because we're not at our leisure on this thing.

I realize I like to use the word invitation a lot because it is an invitation, but it kind of softens the blow a little bit.

He's invited us in, and he has.

But this invitation, if you're a person of God, if you've really seen God, this is a mandate, is probably a better word.

But it's a mandate born out of the glory and the grace of God.

It's not a dutiful, I have to work for God.

I get the manual pitched in my lap, God's over there somewhere, and I'm his errand boy.

It's absolutely Jesus saying, here, here I am.

Here's the heart, the plan, the size of God, and I created you to go on a journey with us.

And if you keep your eyes on me, you'll you'll want nothing else in life than to go on the journey with God.

So who's asking the question for you to go?

And who in Matthew 28 is commanding us to go?

Who's asking?

Who's commanding?

It's it's this God.

And um scripture says he fashioned a man out of the dust of the ground, and he breathed him uh the very breath of life, and he took a rib from man and fashioned that into a woman while the man was asleep, and he awakened to a whole new life with him, her, and God in harmony together in the garden.

And a God who didn't need anybody to help create this incredible universe has now invited commanded man to go and tend the earth.

That seems crazy on the surface.

That seems strange that I got made out of dust, you got made out of a rib, from a God who the lamb was slain before the foundations of any of this, had the rescue mission in plan, like the sophistication of the whole plan of God.

He didn't ask me for help, he didn't need my input or yours to build this universe, and yet he said, Go for me, tend the earth, disciple the nations.

And you're like, Why me?

And he's like, Because I I've created you for it, and who's asking I am that I am is asking, and then of course, everything went wrong, and the redemption story unfolds, and then the church later is birthed and born, and it was loud in my mic.

You realize God didn't need anybody to do any of this, but he worked us into the plan.

He prophets had a role in proclaiming the plan of God so that humanity would have a heads up on what's going on.

Jesus, being born on the planet, needed parents.

So God decided to involve you in the mission of God, the plan of God.

And it's still going forward.

There's a lot of history to it, but there's a lot of future left to be lived out.

And the world is broken and upside down in plenty of places, and we all know it.

We've all seen it, we've seen the Holocaust Museum, we've seen the evidences of it.

And God is saying, You're it, you're the best I've got, you're on mission.

And so I'll close with this Romans because it's 11:30, and it's time to go out and do this, what we're talking about.

Romans 1, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets and the holy scriptures regarding his son, who, as to his earthly life, was a descendant of David, and who, through the Spirit of Holiness, was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

By the way, that's just the setup for this big revelation he's about to give you.

I hope to write letters with that kind of an introduction one day.

Here it is, verse 5.

Through him we receive grace and apostleship to the call of God.

To who?

To the Gentiles.

That's the whole world.

To the obedience that comes from faith for his name's sake, and you also are among the Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

So we received the grace, that's the Psalm 40, him coming down into the pit with you.

And we received apostleship.

That's the sending and the going out.

That's the song that's in your mouth to be sung.

That's the opportunity.

And Paul just squishes it all together and says, it's this receiving and it's this going, and that's the picture, that's the full picture of the whole thing.

Margie, why don't you come up here if you would?

You have the mic right there.

Margie was just sharing with us before we started today, as we were praying about today, that she senses something special about the season we're in.

And so I've just asked her to tell us what she's sensing and then let us just pray about that.

So we just entered the new season, autumn, and probably like the day after we entered it.

I was at work and um my boss came in and she shared news with me, and it was a major answer to prayer.

And I'm like, yay! And then within an hour, I got a text and uh had another answer to prayer.

And I thought, wow, Lord, we just entered this new season and I'm seeing movement like pretty quickly.

And I felt like the Lord said, This is that season.

So I wanted to encourage you all, this is that season to see your prayers answered.

The ones you've been praying, the ones you've been crying out to God for, this is that season.

And then the other thing the Lord has shared with me recently is that He's resurrecting dead things.

So any prayers, anything that you were believing for years ago, and you thought, you know, Lord, I never saw this.

Maybe this wasn't you.

I'm just gonna let that one fall to the ground and die.

The Lord's saying, I am resurrecting that, and I want you to ask me again.

Because I want to I want to answer that prayer now.

This is that season.

And the worship, someone on the worship team mentioned a shift.

And I do believe this is a season of a shift in our expectation, where maybe we've prayed and thought, one day we're gonna see this answered.

And the Lord's saying, No, now you're gonna see it answered.

So just like the children of Israel, you know, one day we're gonna enter the promised land.

There came a day when they looked at the ground and they said, I am standing in the promised land.

I'm in it now.

And this is that season for for all of us that expect it, wake up in the morning.

Hey, Lord, is this today the day?

Is today the day?

Be ready because it's now.

Thank you, Margie.

Isn't that good?

Just last Sunday, we prayed in here for breakthroughs on jobs.

I don't know if I remember that or not.

A number of of us raised our hand and said, I need a breakthrough on a job.

Um, I don't think they're here today.

Uh, Gavin and Cindy, uh Sydney, Gavin and Sydney.

Uh they live in uh Sunfield and Butah.

They're sitting right about there.

And Sydney, uh, ever since they moved back from Washington State earlier this February, uh, has her nursing degree and has not been able to find a job.

They said there's there's over like 2,000 nursing jobs posted in Central Texas right now, and she's interviewed for so many.

And has not been able to get one.

That was Sunday, we prayed, you prayed.

Monday, she got a call.

Tuesday, she took the job.

The point.

So when you put your faith into your need, it moves God.

He responds.

And he's for you.

Like he's not the one holding back the breakthrough.

He's the one who has the breakthrough.

And so on the heels of what Margie just said, that there's a sense in the air that God's on the move with breakthrough.

Let's end today by praying for that breakthrough to come.

So if you need breakthrough today, and it's okay if it's all of us, uh, would you just stand up if you need breakthrough in something?

Holy Spirit, we love you.

We love your presence.

And we would like to start there this morning by acknowledging how much love and adoration we give back to you.

Because it's you who first loved us.

And today we stand, and for those of us who are sitting, we stand in our hearts with our family with a breakthrough need on our mind this morning.

And just in the same power of the testimony that Margie stood here and said two times, she got breakthrough.

And in the power of the testimony of Gavin and Sidney, that on Tuesday they got breakthrough from about an eight-month prayer.

We say we recognize that you are the God who delivers, you're the God who punches through, you're the God who supplies, you're the God who provides, you're the God who heals, you're the God who answers, you're the God who has enough.

And we open our hearts, we open our hands, we stand to our feet, and we say, We are a recipient of the breakthrough power of God.

And we put our faith with our prayer and believe that today, just as the psalmist prayed, I cried, and he answered.

And he lifted me up and out, and he answered.

We receive your response.

We receive your answer today, oh Jesus.

And as you answer and as you provide, we say the door's not closed at that point.

But instead, we will take your provision and the revelation of it and the joy, like Deanna was talking about, that comes with it, and we will sing the song of your provision.

I know the God who provides.

Hey, community, listen wide.

Jesus does this, and I'll sing about it, and I'll declare it, I'll proclaim it, I'll decree it, I'll join with the stars, I'll join with the moon, I'll join with the sea creatures, and I'll shout my song, I'll praise the one who has all the answers.

And my life, actual or metaphorical, will sing the song of the provision of the Lord.

So, Lord, we pray that everybody standing today would have a testimony soon.

Don't delay.

Bring us out of the pit.

The people, the husbands, the sons, the daughters, the bosses, the strangers who are now becoming friends.

The Garrett's the Gilberts from yesterday, another guy that came.

All of them, Lord.

Let them be the sounding board.

Bring your testimonies, Jesus.

We burn for you, Lord.

We light our lives to burn for you, to be seen.

And it's our pleasure, it's our high calling.

We love you, Jesus.

We love you, Jesus.

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