Build the Boat

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

It is such a gift to be at Access Church.

My name's Noah, as Pastor Jason said.

A couple things about me, Jesus Christ changed my life.

Changed my life.

When I was 21 years old, uh through a YouTube video, and so I just love how many people tune in to these sermons online and on YouTube.

It makes a difference, made a difference in my life.

The second thing you need to know about me is that I love basketball.

I love basketball.

My favorite basketball player is a player, maybe you've heard of him.

His name is Steph Curry.

And uh Steph Curry has changed the game of basketball.

In fact, there's a high school basketball coach who attends our church in Nashville, and we were talking about basketball, and I told him Steph Curry was my favorite player, and he got super serious, and he said, Pastor Noah, I don't think you understand just how much Steph Curry has changed the game of basketball.

He said, the way that he shoots threes, the way that he spaces the floor, the way that he cuts, the way he's unselfish.

He said, if you go to a high school game, a middle school game, even elementary school basketball players are playing the game different because of Steph Curry.

And on my way over to Access Church this morning, I thought, man, I get to preach today at a Steph Curry church.

At a church that is literally changing the game for the next generation of church leaders, of churches.

And so sometimes what I've noticed about me is when I am around something special, I tend to take it for granted the longer I'm around it.

And I just wanted to be your new best friend at Access Church and say, don't take for granted the move of God that is happening right here.

That is literally spreading all over Lakeland, Bartow.

It's absolutely incredible.

It would not be happening without your amazing lead pastors, Pastors Jason and Liz Burns.

They are one of one.

I'm talking humility, giftedness.

Come on, can we honor our lead pastors?

Can we thank them?

We love you guys.

Thank you for trusting me to be here.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn them on.

You have an Android, just leave it in your pocket, alright?

Don't disturb the airwaves like you disturb our group text.

But we're gonna be in Genesis chapter six.

Genesis chapter six, if you want to turn there.

And uh, as you do, I'd love to show you just a couple photos of my family because statistics say you'll listen to me longer if I do that.

So um my name's Noah.

I'm married to my dream girl.

Her name is Maddie, and uh, we just celebrated seven years of marriage.

I think we have a photo of her and I.

Here she is, she's the best.

Uh, she's from Sweet Home, Alabama.

And so when she speaks, she has a slightly southern accent.

You ever met somebody when they when they talk?

It sounds like it should come with the sight of mashed potatoes and gravy.

That's my wife.

And uh, she gets more and more southern whenever Alabama is losing in football.

And so I like both of those things when she's more southern and when Alabama loses in football.

And so uh she is the best.

We have three kids, as Pastor Jason said.

This is my son Lion.

We named him Lion because Proverbs 28:1 says, The wicked flee at the first sign of trouble, but the righteous are bold like a lion.

Proverbs 28:1

And uh that little boy, he is memorizing scripture, he shares the gospel, and uh, this is a true story.

He goes to a school where they take care of animals, and so the other day I picked him up from school, and I pull up to the school, and he is literally riding a sheep bareback.

And so, pray for us.

Uh, we have two daughters.

This is my first daughter, her name's Mila, and she can have whatever she wants.

And then this is our second daughter, her name's Navy, and uh God has been so so good to us.

We recently found out we are pregnant with our fourth baby boy.

Very excited.

My wife and I, we really like each other, and uh, we're trying to grow the church, trying to grow the church, and so we're doing our part.

Hope you're doing yours, you know.

But uh it's been it's been amazing.

We started Way Church in Nashville, Tennessee.

Uh, we just celebrated our third birthday, and God has just been doing so many amazing things.

I'll just tell you the thing I'm most excited about is that in three years, as of this morning, we have seen 1,969 people put their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of their life.

And so, if you're ever in Nashville visiting, um, come join us at Access North Location.

We would love to have you be via real gift.

So, um, this is what I believe.

I believe the book that we're about to read from is the only book where the author is always present when we read it.

It's the only book that could speak to you in one season in a particular part of this book, and then you could get to another season of your life, and the same passage could speak to you in a different way because it is alive and active, it is sharper than any two-edged sword.

I don't believe that this book should be edited.

I think our phone gets updated, but this word does not.

And when we approach the text in that way, it doesn't matter if you've been following Jesus your whole life or for just a few minutes, you can be transformed by the words of this book.

And so today, because it's an alive book, I hope you'll give me an alive response.

I can already tell this is a church that loves the word of God.

You can say amen.

You can say hallelujah, you can say preach a white boy, whatever you want to say.

You can say it.

And uh if you hear something you don't like, just email me.

It's my personal email address.

It's jason at accesschurch.com.

And so just email me right there.

Um, I'm excited.

Genesis chapter 6, verse 8.

Genesis 6:8

This is my favorite verse in the Bible that I'm gonna share with you today.

Genesis chapter 6, verse 8.

Genesis 6:8

It says this, but Noah was different.

God liked what he saw in Noah.

My name's Noah, that's why.

It's my favorite.

Uh you ever just need it for your soul?

You know what I mean?

I'm not gonna use that verse.

We'll go to verse 18.

Um, that was just for me.

Sometimes, sometimes you just need to you just need to hear something encouraging.

And um, verse 18, it says this, but I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark.

You and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.

You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.

Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal, and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground, will come to you to be kept alive.

You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.

Verse 22, this is the best.

Says this, Noah did everything just as God commanded him to do.

That little sentence right there, I cannot think of a better sentence to be said over a person's life than that sentence right there.

Can you imagine what it would be like to get to the end of your life?

You you go to heaven to be with Jesus, and your closest friends and family come to your funeral, and they're able to say those words over your life.

That should be the goal for every single one of us that calls ourselves a follower of Jesus.

That they would say, you know what, they weren't a perfect person, but man, they did everything they could to do what God told them to do.

That is a successful life in the kingdom of God.

And so today I want to talk to you the title of this message is three simple words.

It's Build the Boat.

Will you say that with me?

Ready, one, two, three.

Build the boat.

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for your word, your word, we thank you for what you're doing at Access Church.

God, we're so grateful, we don't take it for granted.

And today we just come to you with an open heart and we say, Have your way.

We love you so much.

We thank you for Chick-fil-A, and everybody said, Amen.

So I showed you a photo of my wife and I, uh, been married for seven years, and um, I remember when we met, my first thought was, I've never met a girl so beautiful in my life.

My second thought was, I need to convince her to marry me as quickly as possible before she realizes there are much better options.

And so we um start dating, and we'd only been dating for a couple of weeks, and I start thinking about saying the L word.

I I start thinking about telling her that I love her.

And if you've ever watched a romantic comedy movie or been in a relationship, you know that saying I love you for the first time is a really big deal.

And so I'm very nervous.

I remember one time I walked into her parents' living room.

She was living at home when we were dating, and uh, I remember I walked in and I had every intention to tell her that I loved her, and I walked right up to her and I said, Maddie, I gotta tell you something.

And she said, What's going on?

And I said, Your parents are out of toilet paper in the spare bathroom.

Because every time I'd go to say it, I would just get nervous.

Well, long story short, we had this big friend group, and we decided that first summer we were together that we were all going to go to Hawaii together.

Okay, now this sounds very bougie.

It was not bougie.

Uh, it was a group on.

In fact, I wish that it had been more bougie.

It was very not bougie, and I was sleeping on a pullout couch uh with my friend Andrew for four days.

Okay, that's that's how it was with no AC in Hawaii.

We did not do it right, but in my mind, I was thinking, what better place to tell the woman of my dreams that I love her than in Hawaii?

I'm picturing me surfing up on a surfboard, coconuts in both hands, you know, Justin Bieber acoustic music is playing in the background.

This is this is how I had it.

Well, the first morning that we're there, I'm on this pullout couch and I wake up to the sound of the sliding glass door at the back of the Airbnb opening.

I'm thinking we're being robbed.

So I jump out of the pullout couch and I run to the back of the Airbnb, and I see Maddie, my girlfriend at the time, walking towards the ocean at five o'clock in the morning.

Take off after, like, wake up, stop sleepwalking.

She said, No, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine.

She said, Um, I just had some bad fish last night.

My stomach is messed up, I just needed some fresh air.

And it was like I heard the audible voice of the Lord say, This is your time.

And so we start walking down the beach.

I'm just gonna tell you, it was perfect.

Could not have been more beautiful.

The sun starts to rise, the sky is pink and blue, and orange, and the birds are chirping, and the wind is starting to blow, and we're just all by ourselves on this stretch of beach in Hawaii.

And we walk down about 10 minutes, and we get to this little spot, and I turn her to look at me, and I grab her by both hands, and I stare deeply into her beautiful blue eyes, and I said, Maddie, I love you.

And immediately I was like, And she squeezed my hands and she looked into my kind of average-looking eyes, and she said, Noah, I'm gonna throw up.

And she ran to the bushes.

Welcome to my life.

I tell you that story because just two months later, I would get down on one knee on top of a mountain just outside of Birmingham, Alabama.

I would ask her to be my wife, she would say yes, a photographer hiding in the bushes would take a photo of the moment, we would post it on social media, it would go viral, and the owner of the ring company, of which I put on her finger, reached out and said, We would like to pay you to use your photo on every billboard in the southeast that our company owns, 250 billboards.

I just want you to know, we said yes, we needed a coffee table, praise God.

And for the next three years, if you drove down certain interstates in the southeast, you would see the photo of me proposing to my wife.

Amazing.

Amazing.

But if you saw the billboard, you would not know about Hawaii.

If you saw the billboard, you would not know about our first date where I spilt 32 ounces of sweet tea all over my shirt.

If you just saw the billboard, you wouldn't know about all the other little moments in our relationship.

You would just know the perfect moment that got posted on the internet.

I think sometimes we go through life like this.

I think sometimes we read the Bible like this.

We read stories that we're familiar with, we know how it ends, we know the climactic ending of the story, the conclusion of the text, and we just skip ahead and we actually miss the lessons that we could learn from the middle of the story.

And I think if there's any story in the Bible we do this with more than others, it would be the story of Noah.

The story of Noah is the story that we read to our kids.

It's like God told Noah, build a boat, put two of every living animal on the boat.

We thank God he remembered the dogs.

We don't understand theologically why mosquitoes made the trip, but apparently they did.

Noah did everything God asked him to do, and his family survived.

He was faithful.

It's this cute little bow story.

But when you actually look at the story of Noah, what you see is the story of Noah is one of the most difficult stories in the Bible.

Did you know that Bible scholars believe that Noah built the boat for somewhere around 120 years?

Can you imagine doing anything for 120 years?

I'm just gonna let you know right now, I cannot.

I have had the same New Year's resolution for the last seven years in a row.

Every January, I start the year off saying the same thing.

This is my year, I'm gonna get ripped.

And for the first 10 days of the year, I'm doing it.

I'm getting up early, I'm lifting weights, I'm eating grass, I'm doing all the things.

And around day 11, I'm back at Chick-fil-A.

Why?

Because starting things is easy and finishing things is hard.

But as followers of Jesus, starting things is easy and finishing things is biblical.

We are absolutely called to be starters.

We're called to start the church, we're called to start the business, we're called to start the career, we're called to start the family, but you're not just called to start it, you're called to finish it.

You're called to be a finisher.

Noah was able to build this boat for 120 years because his measurement of success was the same as God's.

Faithfulness.

God's measurement of success was, is, and will always be faithfulness.

Are you faithful to what God has asked you to build with your life?

Will you build the boat?

I came across this article in the New York Times not long ago.

It caught my attention because it was written about Gen Z and millennials.

And if you ever come to a Waychurch in Nashville, Tennessee, we have a lot of Gen Z and millennials.

Uh I myself, I'm kind of right in between those two generations, and so anytime people write stuff about us, I'm like, I want to know what they're saying.

And so I read this article, and basically, these uh this research company had put together all of this research on gin Z and millennials entering into the workforce.

And their conclusion was pretty staggering.

They found out that the average gin Z and millennial by the age of 30 will hold 14 different full-time jobs.

Now, the point was not to say that it was good or bad, they were just presenting their conclusion, 14 different full-time jobs by the age of 30.

And what they were saying is, unlike any other time in human history, human beings are all about the next best opportunity.

If we can find an opportunity that pays better, we'll take it.

If we can find an opportunity that leads to a better reputation, it leads to more clout, it leads to more people following us, we'll take it.

We are looking for the next best opportunity.

And on the one hand, I get it, I get it, but on the other hand, we've got to be really careful as Christians that we do not become obsessed with opportunities.

Because there is a big difference between an opportunity opportunity and an assignment.

And our God does not just give opportunities, he gives assignments.

An opportunity will put more money in your bank account, but an assignment will put more people into heaven.

An opportunity will bring your name fame, but an assignment will bring God's name fame.

An opportunity will bring hype and excitement to your life, but your assignment will give you purpose for as long as you have breath on this earth.

And I came to Access Church in Florida today to say that today is not the day to give up your God-given assignment for a man-made opportunity.

Because one day we're gonna stand before the Lord and we're not gonna hear, Well done, my good and rich servant, we're not gonna hear, well done, my good and famous servant, we're not gonna hear, well done, my good.

You got a lot of followers on Instagram, servant.

We're either gonna hear nothing or we will hear, Well done, my good and faithful servant.

Are you building what God has called you to build?

I want to be faithful, and I want to build the boat.

Galatians 6 9, one of my favorite verses in the Bible, it says, Let us not grow weary in doing good.

For at the proper time we'll reap a harvest if we don't give up.

What I love about this scripture is there's a promise and there's a job.

The promise is that we will see a harvest, and the only job that we have is to not give up.

Really, the heavy lifting all goes on the Lord if we will just stay faithful.

If we stay faithful, it's God who brings the harvest.

It's God who works through us, it's God who does the hard stuff.

It reminds me of the first time that I signed up for organized sports.

I was four years old, and my parents signed me up for T-ball.

And my T-ball coach could not see the athletic promise in me that I could see.

And so they put me in right field.

Now, if you've never been to a T-ball game for four-year-olds, let me just explain: the ball never goes to right field.

And so the first game, nobody hit it to me.

And I remember complaining to my mom.

I was like, mom, baseball's the worst.

No, there, it's no fun.

I just stood out there and tried to catch butterflies the entire game.

And you should have signed me up for soccer or or basketball or something where you actually get to do stuff.

And my mom is one of those, she she's a uh a preacher's wife, and she's a little old school.

And I remember she almost wrecked the car when I told her when I said the Q word, she almost wrecked the car when I said I wanted to quit.

She pulled over, she looked at me in my eyes, she said, Noah Heron, you're a heron, and herons do not quit.

There's five games, you're gonna play all five, you're gonna put that little purple belt on, and you're gonna smile your heart out and right field.

I said, Yes, ma'am.

Now, game two, everything changed in my heart.

Because game two, they started giving all of the players free snow cones.

Game changer for me.

Fast forward to the fifth game, the final game of the season.

Nobody had hit a ball to right field.

And about the third inning, this little boy gets up to the plate and he rips one.

And by rips one, it rolled underneath the first baseman's legs into right field.

And everyone's going crazy.

This is the moment.

Everyone looks into right field, there's no right fielder.

Because in the middle of the third inning, the right fielder had walked around the fence and was standing in the snow cone line.

True story.

My mom, she's a scrapbooker, and so she had all these photos of that first season, and she's showing my wife at my parents' house, and she's laughing, and she's telling the story, and I'm sitting over in the corner and I'm laughing, and I'm, you know, embarrassed and all the things, and then all of a sudden I just felt the Holy Spirit say, Noah, how often are you that same four-year-old boy?

How many times have I given you a position?

How many times have I put you in a place?

And you believed it was me when it was time to start.

You were excited about it on day one.

You were excited about it on month one.

You felt me moving on day one, but then some time passed, and reality didn't match your expectation, and you started looking around, going, Is this really God?

Is this really where you have?

Me, is this really what you want?

Maybe the word of the Lord today is that you don't need a position change but a perspective change.

God, if you haven't told me to do something different, I'm just gonna do the last thing you told me to do.

God, if you haven't told me to do something new, I'm just gonna do the old thing faithfully, believing that you are bringing what you said you were going to bring.

Some of you you've been praying for kids to accept Christ, and you're like, God, do you not hear my prayers?

I'm telling you, don't stop praying.

Don't stop fasting.

Don't start, don't stop sending the text messages.

Some of you, you've been believing for things in your business or you've been believing for things in your calling.

Today is the day to dig in and say, I'm gonna be faithful to what you've called me to do because Galatians 6 9 says that he will bring the harvest if we don't give up.

If we don't give up.

I love the story of Noah.

I think the story of Noah can speak to you in any season that you're in.

In fact, um I believe that the story of Noah would make for one of, if not the greatest, Netflix shows ever made.

I thought about this a lot.

My wife thinks I'm a bit dramatic, but I have a note in my phone where I rank my favorite Bible stories and how they would make as TV shows, in case Hollywood ever calls me.

Noah has been number one for like eight years, and here's why.

I want you to just picture this.

This is season one, episode one of Noah's Netflix show.

Are you ready?

Noah walks in, his wife is maybe sitting at the dinner table or something, and he walks over to her.

Hey babe! I just quit my job.

Okay, Noah.

Why did you do that?

I'm gonna build a boat.

God told me.

Okay.

How are we gonna pay the bills?

Noah?

Is it gonna be a fishing boat?

Are you gonna catch fish and sell the fish?

Is that how we're gonna pay the electric bill?

Is it gonna be a fishing boat, Noah?

No, no, think more carnival cruise ship.

Okay, all the married people.

Let's just imagine that combo went great.

No problem.

Noah's wife is on board.

What about year 10?

What about like episode seven?

How's that dinner combo going?

Um, Noah.

You know the dinner parties we used to get invited to?

With the neighbors?

With the tea and the trumpets?

Now it's a British Netflix show.

We just made it British.

You know the dinner parties?

We don't get invited anymore because everybody thinks we're crazy.

What is it?

No, we're doing.

I just gotta keep building the boat.

You're 20, you're 30, you're forty.

You know, I've read this story hundreds of times in my life.

You know what I don't see?

I don't see a single person celebrating Noah's faithfulness.

Nobody's writing articles about him, nobody's tagging him in Facebook posts, congratulating him for year 15 or year 30.

Which says to me, if I need other people to celebrate my faithfulness in order for me to be faithful, I'm probably not gonna be faithful.

But if I know that there is a God in heaven who is not only celebrating but rooting and helping me be faithful, I just might be able to end faithful.

What about year 50, year 60?

I just imagine the people of the town who we know weren't following the Lord.

I just I just imagine as Noah's out building the boat, them saying things like, Noah, you crazy old man, you're still out here 70 years.

Wow! What a waste! Some of you you feel like that.

What a waste! I've been believing for decades, I've been praying for decades, I've been hoping for decades.

What is Noah doing?

We keep building the boat.

I think one of the reasons we stop building what God has called us to build is because we look around at all the other things that God's building to other people's life.

Oh man, God, but look at their boat! It's got two motors and a tube on it! Mine's a rowboat.

But in the kingdom of God, success is not me compared to you.

Success is me compared to what God asked me to do.

That's success.

And if we will pick up the hammer and build the boat God's called us to build, here's the thing: no one else can build that boat.

Okay, let me let me backtrack because some of you, maybe this is your first time at Access Church.

First of all, you gotta come back next week.

You gotta hear Pastor Jason.

I promise it only gets better from here, okay?

But maybe you're here and you're like, excuse me, is he about to try to sell me a boat?

You're very confused right now.

You're like, I thought this was a church, I think I'm at a boat convention.

This is unbelievably confusing.

What we're talking about when we say the boat is what God has called you to do, what God wants to use your life to do on this earth to reflect his glory and serve other people.

That's what we're talking about.

And so what I know is that every person at every single location of Access Church has a boat that God's called them to build.

And the boat is bigger than you think.

Because the boats that God calls us to build are not mediocre boats.

Because God doesn't give mediocre callings.

In fact, he never calls us to something that we won't need his help to do.

Never once.

So here's just a couple examples.

Maybe you're here, and the boat that God's calling you to build right now, today, you came to church and you you rushed here.

You're you know, I'm never more rushed than I am to church on Sunday mornings.

You know what I'm saying?

Just this crazy morning.

Maybe you got here and by the grace of God you made it.

And the whole reason you're here today is for a 31-year-old who knows like this much about marriage to remind you that your marriage is is a boat worth building.

That it was easy to build that boat, year seven.

But somewhere along the way, date nights stopped happening.

Somewhere along the way, you stopped praying together and now you pray separate only.

Somewhere along the way, you you stopped doing the things that made the relationship great at the beginning, and today is the day to pick back up the hammer and to pursue your spouse the way you used to.

Maybe today the boat that God's calling you to build is the boat of your singleness.

I see a bunch of young people in here, that's amazing.

You know what I've noticed about young single people?

They love to worship Jesus.

But it's always with the left hand because they want to make sure that you know that there's space on this finger.

Maybe you're here, you're single, and everybody knows because you have let us know.

But if you're honest, you're pursuing a relationship more than you're pursuing Jesus.

And maybe today's the day to go, you know what?

I'm not gonna waste this season wishing it away, and I'm gonna submit my singleness to the Lord because I have more time to give to his kingdom and to his purposes, and I'm not gonna waste it, and I'm gonna hope that one day I will look over to my right and there'll be someone else building God's kingdom in the same way that I am, and I'll marry him.

I'm gonna build that boat.

Maybe the boat that God's calling you to build is Access Church.

Maybe, maybe you've been coming, you love it, you're like, Man, I love Pastor Jason, I love Pastor Liz, I love the kids' ministry here, it's amazing.

The worship's amazing, but maybe if you're honest, you would say, I've just been coming, I've just been attending.

And maybe it's now to go to go from attending to building.

How do you build?

Hey, where can I serve?

Hey, you you got you need people who serve in kids' ministry?

I don't have kids, but I can YouTube it.

I can serve in the parking lot, I can serve in the youth ministry, I could I can play keys.

Maybe it's to go, you know what, I'm gonna start building this church with my finances.

I'm gonna start tithing, I'm gonna start giving, I'm gonna start showing up to serve days.

I want to be a part of a move of God and I wanna be a builder.

What's the boat that God has called you to build?

I love this quote from Albert Einstein.

He says this he says, it's not that I'm the smartest, I just tend to stick with problems a little longer than the person beside me.

When I think about the Christian life, I think about that quote right there.

That we are called to stick with problems longer than the person beside us.

Why?

Because we serve a God who stuck with a problem longer than anybody else was willing to stick with when he died for us.

The Bible says, while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

Stuck with a problem.

I want to close with this.

Um, I have a little sister, and uh there's a boat in her life that's been really cool to watch.

Uh, when my sister was 14 years old, she went to a mission, she went on a mission trip to Nicaragua, and um, it changed her life.

She went, she felt like God called her to be a missionary to the country of Nicaragua.

She came back as a 14-year-old, she taught herself Spanish uh on YouTube.

And uh the next year, as a 15-year-old, she led her first ever missions trip.

60 adults, she did all of the translating and half of the teaching at 15 years old.

Unbelievable.

Like my parents, when we're at social gatherings and they're introducing their kids, they'll spend like 15 minutes talking about Mother Teresa, and then and then they'll be like, Oh, that's our son, he lives on Broadway.

I'm like, no, I don't live on Broadway.

That's very misleading, you know.

She's amazing.

So, long story short, she gets to the end of her high school years and she feels called to this college called Emanual College.

It's this college in Georgia, they're known for their missions program, and she feels like that's a part of the boat God's calling her to build.

And so she tells my parents about it, and they get online, they look up Emmanual College, they find out it costs$40,000 a year.

My parents are like, Are you sure you heard from God?

My parents, they've been pastors most of my life, and and God's always blessed um our family, but there's been some seasons where we were so poor we would walk by the pond and the ducks would throw bread at us.

And so we're in one of those seasons.

And um, so my parents, they make a deal with my little sister.

This is what they said.

They said, Carson, if God's calling you to go here, he'll pay for it because we can't.

And so let's just start praying.

Well, they did that, they prayed, they fasted.

She gets all the way to the end of her senior year, no scholarship money had come in.

And so they're sitting at the dinner table one night, and they say, Carson, you can't you can't go to Emmanuel College, this isn't gonna work.

My little sister pushes her spaghetti to the center of the table and she says, My whole life, you've told me that faith doesn't need plan B's.

Now you're telling me something different.

She said, Can I please be excused?

My parents were like, Do we ground her?

They let her go upstairs.

And my parents tell the story, they hear my little sister weeping in her room, just weeping uncontrollably.

About 10 minutes later, she stops crying, she starts singing that song, Waymaker, Miracle Worker, Light in the Dark, My God, that is who you are.

She just starts singing it in her room.

So my parents are like, Well, we might as well sing it.

So they start singing it at the dinner table.

The next day was a Saturday, college visitation day at Emmanuel College.

You go meet the teachers, sign up for classes, tour the dorms, all the things.

My parents, they take her even though they don't know if they should.

They're about to leave, and this student at Emmanuel College comes up and says, Is your name Carson Heron?

My sister says, Yeah, that's me.

How do you know that?

She said, I've been looking for you all day.

Will you please follow me?

My little sister and my dad go into this office, they find themselves sitting across a desk from the president of Emmanuel College.

President of Emmanuel College says, Carson, this is gonna sound crazy.

But last night at dinner time, I got a phone call from one of the biggest donors in our school's history, and he said that the Holy Spirit interrupted their date night to tell him he's supposed to donate four years full ride to an incoming freshman, catch this, who wants to be a missionary to a Spanish-speaking country.

He said, There's 400 incoming freshmen, and you are the only one who specified that that's what you're called to do.

He looked at my little sister, he said, Would you like to come to Emmanuel College for free?

My little sister looked at my dad and goes, I told you.

Because this is what I know about the God we serve.

If you pick up the hammer and say, I'm gonna build what you've called me to build, it's not you who does the heavy lifting, it's the Lord who does the heavy lifting.

Exodus 14, 14 says, You don't have to fight the battle, you just have to be still.

If you're here and you're like, what's against me?

It's so much greater than what I've got inside me.

Romans 8.31, if God is for me, then who can be against me?

If you feel like your past disqualifies you, 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, He who knew no sin became sin so that you and I could become right with God.

Today is the day to pick up the hammer and say, God, I don't have a lot, but I'm gonna do what I can with what you've given me.

I'm gonna build the boat.

Will you stand with me at every location?

If you're here today and you would say, hey, I wanna get in the game.

Uh maybe it's it's I've put the hammer down and I wanna pick it back up.

Or maybe it's just for the first time saying, I wanna be faithful.

If that's you, will you just stretch your hands like this?

I'd love to pray over you.

God, thank you for these amazing people.

Thank you for this amazing church.

Thank you for the boats that are represented in this room.

God, boats that are gonna lead thousands and thousands and thousands of people to you.

Thousands of people impacted for your kingdom.

I thank you for the families and the careers and the businesses.

I thank you for the seasons of life, the marriages, the grandkids.

God, I thank you for all of those things.

And God, I ask that you would help us be faithful.

Be faithful.

God, we pray that you would get the glory from it.

That people would not go, wow, they're great.

They would go, wow, God's great.

Because of the boats that they see in our life.

We love you.

In Jesus' name, with every eye still closed, you can put your hands down.

If you're here at every location, you would say, I would like to put my faith in Jesus Christ.

Very simply, the Bible tells us that we all have missed the mark.

The mark is holiness, that we all fall short when we do something called sin, when we mess up.

Sin is that thing that you regret, it's those actions that separate us from God.

We could not close the gap with God.

And so, what God did is he sent his son Jesus to do it for us.

That he literally died the death, that our sin should have caused us to die, so that we could live the life that Jesus should have gotten to live.

And so, if you put your faith in Jesus Christ, if you call on him as Lord of your life, all of your sin gets exchanged for all of the righteousness of Christ, and you immediately become a son or daughter of God.

If you're here today and you would say, I want to become a son or daughter of God, will you just stretch up your hand at every location?

It's amazing.

That's amazing.

It's amazing.

You can put it down.

I'm gonna lead you through a prayer.

I'm gonna ask everybody at Access Church to pray this with our new brothers and sisters.

Can we say this, dear Jesus?

Forgive me of my sins, the ones I remember, and the ones that I don't.

Thank you for your grace and your mercy in the cross.

I want to follow you for the rest of my life.

Be Lord of it all.

In Jesus' name.

Come on, in Jesus' name.

Come on, can we celebrate?

Come on, we can do better than that.