40 Days of Faith III, Just Imagine

I want to remind you that after the service there will be people up here to pray with you if you have specific needs. I was stopped after the first service today by a person that's a newer member of our church. She was just real honest with me about a struggle that she was having. We prayed and talked for a few moments. And you know, folks, that's why we're here. We're here to minister to each other. It doesn't take the pastor or it doesn't take a special person. But I just want you to know that folks are up here who will agree in faith with you, whatever your particular challenge happens to be. And that's why we're here as a church family. I want to invite you. I want to encourage you, really, to take your notes. We're going to be going through a really important concept this morning. And you're going to need your outline. So get your outline out of your notes and let's look together here. Put these aside for just a moment. Welcome our college students back today. I see a lot of you back. You're from your break and Thanksgiving. It's great to have you with us this morning. We're in the third week of our series, 40 Days of Faith. And we've talked about our first week was about who? See, this is what every pastor hates this. You know, the truth is out there. Two weeks, I mean, give me a break. Now, last week we talked about, yeah, we can always remember one week back. But two weeks, man, that's like another lifetime. Abraham Esther. That's right. Thank you. Jack Kennedy got it here in the front row. We're going to be talking today about a dimension of life that every one of us have that may or may not be using. Have you discovered that you live your life somewhere between the high destiny that you believe that you were created for? Now, how many believe that? How many believe that God said, when he formed you, I have a destiny for you? Now, if the person next to you doesn't have their hand up, then they really need to hear this message. Because I want you to know that you have a reason for being beyond just filling up some space and creating kids who don't have any purpose either. You need to know that. But that high destiny just seems to get caught up in the daily drudgery of life. I find that I capture the moments of my destiny, I tend to think about it for whatever reason, at night time especially. And it's not uncommon for me, I shared with you before, I took a couple of courses and did some studying when I was a student in astronomy. And I know something about how things were formed and created. I know that the best that the physicists can tell us now is that the universe is continuing to grow. Imagine, it's still growing and they can't find the end of it. And there's trillions of stars, more than they can count. And the Bible says that God has a name for every one of them. He has named every one of the stars. And so I just get into that and I start thinking, well, you know, what galaxy are you going to put me into that day that you assign me my place in the kingdom or whatever. You know, I start thinking that. And I'm just going down this path of just what a great future we have. And then Carol says, get in here and help me get the dishes cleaned up. Take the dog out. And you get through this whole thing and you go back and forth. But that's what we all start with. We have destiny, but we have drudgery. We have details we have to deal with. And that's what gets going in our lives. And all of us wish we could chase after our destiny, but then we get pulled back into the daily drudgery. Listen to what Gerald May says. He was one of my favorite authors of recent days. And he's somebody that understands this deep desire in all of us. He says, when this desire for destiny is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities. So true. Just get busy. Or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. That could be through substances or, you know, just other pursuits. It is possible to run away from this desire for destiny for years, even decades at a time. And, folks, listen. There are many people that live their whole life and never find it. It's possible, he says, to run away. But we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us. And little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, and our unguarded moments. His book, The Awakened Heart. What about your life makes you say, wow? What do you dream about that makes you say, if only I could be, do, whatever, you fill in the blank? Is there something like that? Can I tell you categorically, if there isn't something about God that does that for you, you'll find something else in life that will do that for you. Because we're all created with this desire to have an if only. The problem is that because of the drudgeries and duties of life, many of us have just sort of erected mental and emotional barriers of ever believing that God will ever let it happen for us. And so, today, I hope we can begin to change our thinking just a bit. Begin to stretch out our imagination. That's my goal today, is just to have you think a little bit outside the box of your imagination, of what you might have believed you could become. And to take a look at the promised land of your destiny, every great accomplishment that has ever happened in the course of history has begun with an idea in someone's mind. I'll further say, if you don't really know what that is, you're not really alive fully. One of my images of India, which lingers with me all the time, is looking into the eyes of people, masses of people. I'll turn into a market square. You might see 2,000 or 3,000 people sort of just milling around, many of them standing around and not really doing anything. And what you see are hollow eyes. Not necessarily because they're starving to death, but just because they're empty. They have no sense of purpose. They don't understand. It just so rips your heart out, because you realize it's like they'll live their whole life and never discover why they were here. But more than having just an idea, you have to have God's dream, friends. Having a dream is one thing, but having God's dream, that's what makes life really alive for you. It answers the why question of life. In fact, if you aren't fulfilling God's purpose for your life, what is it about your life right now that really matters? If you don't really know why you're here. Time is just ticking away down the hourglass. Look at 1 Corinthians 2, 9 on your outline. I know I've read this verse I don't know how many hundreds of times. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. Now, how many times have I read that and thought, Heaven must be a great place. How about you? Have you read it that way? Where does it say that's about Heaven? Where does it say that? And the more I read the context, it's not about Heaven. It's about what God's purpose for you right now. He's saying you can't imagine it. Oh, you're just making that up, Jay. No, I'm not. Look at the next verse. With God's power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine. So God has this great plan for all of us if we're willing to just open up to what it might be. See, imagination is an amazing gift. It enables us to think beyond the human limitations that we all have. And it's what sets us apart from the animal kingdom. We have a chocolate lab named Tucker. Now, Tucker has a lot of cute little things about his personality, but he doesn't have any imagination. I've never seen him go into his hooch and sort of rearrange the toys. Let's just be creative, you know. He just does his little thing that he's wired to do. What sets us apart from other parts of creation? It's that we were made in the image of God. Think of it, the image of God, the imagination. God's given us the ability to create in our mind great things that God wants us to be part of. Napoleon said this, Imagination rules the world. Albert Einstein, he's no intellectual slouch, he did pretty well in his SATs, says imagination is more important than knowledge. And my devotional friend for the last 30 years, Oswald Chambers, says this, Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us, and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. And he goes on to say that nature is God's way of provoking our imagination as to how great God is and what God wants to do through us. How's your imagination doing lately? Is it stirred up, or is it just sort of on kickback? Are you imagining great things for you? What's the if only in your life? Well, just for a few moments today, let's look at four secrets from the life of Joshua. That's who we're going to talk about. Abraham, week one, Esther last week, and we'll look at Joshua. Now, we all know he fought the battle of Jericho, but we're not going to talk about that today. We're going to look at Joshua 1. Let's look up here on the screen, and I want you to read this with me. If you have your Bible, you can turn it if you feel more secure, just to be sure I'm not tricking you. It's in the NIV, Joshua 1, 1 through 11. And I want to read this, and I want you just to pick up on who's the prime mover in this deal. Let's read it. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses' aide, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River and to the land I am about to give to them, to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates, all the Hittite country, to the great sea in the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Are you hearing something here? Or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded it? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. And so Joshua ordered the officers of the people, go through the camp and tell the people, get your hiking boots ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you for your own. Pretty amazing little set up here for this man named Joshua. Let me share with you four things I see, just jumping out at me about stretching your imagination. Number one, you've got to let go of doubt. Just fill in the blank. Let go of doubt. Doubt is always the enemy of God's dream. It always will clamp down on your possibilities. How many of you have thought even this week, I don't believe, I doubt that God could ever use me really significantly. Well James 1, 6 and 7 says on your outline, anyone who doubts is like a wave in the sea, blown up and down by the wind. They should not think they'll receive anything from the Lord. If you doubt that you'll be used, guess what, you're going to get exactly what you believe. So please understand how important this is. Joshua struggled with doubt. He struggled with fear. Back in the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord intervened and said, you know Joshua, he started this be strong and courageous thing. And he says be strong and courageous. Did you read that 3 or 4? Be strong Joshua. Don't be afraid. Clearly Joshua had problems with doubt and fear. Why? Why? I mean we don't know a whole lot about him. He was Moses' aide. Well here's two reasons why he had doubt and fear. Number one, the person he had to follow in leadership was Moses. How'd you like to follow Moses? He was called the greatest person who ever lived. I mean it'd be like going out on a golf course. You know. And up to the tee box comes Tiger Woods. And then you. You know. I mean what chance do you have? It'd be like Moses steps up there and Moses does this incredible thing of redeeming the people. And now Joshua steps in. Like you know, here I am. So that didn't help him. And then number two, look at the people that he had to lead. These were people who murmured and complained and rebelled and wandered around the desert for how long? 40 years they made God miserable. 40 years they complained. And actually most of them had died and just really it was a new generation to come along. And they were not seasoned warriors. And Joshua looked at them and said, remember how this promised land he was going to go into? God wasn't just giving him the title deed. He had to go in and he said, by the way Joshua, there's seven other nations in there and every one of them is stronger than your people. Now how'd you like to be Joshua? No wonder he was afraid. Look, I mean by every rational point of view he had reason to be afraid. Did not look real good for him. But the Lord kept saying to him, be strong and courageous. Be strong and courageous. Friends, listen. God rarely calls us to do the easy and manageable thing. I want to jot that down. If it's easy and manageable, it probably isn't God. Why? Because he wants you to learn to have to trust him. You know, talking about this property next door and our future as a church, I mean, I got to tell you, I said, Lord, early on, I said, Lord, that is just too much. And by the way, it's too soon too. Let someone else buy and keep and sell it to us in two or three years when we really need it. And I went on for a while and I think after about six or seven weeks of complaining, the Lord finally said, are you done? I said, I guess so. He said, good, so watch me work. And he began to work and I need to tell you something and I won't go into a lot of detail. You've heard part of this story. But I will tell you this. The attorney that we work with and have worked with for the last ten years told me recently in a private conversation, he said, you know, in the twenty years I've been developing real estate and helping to close deals, he said, I've never seen something happen like happen on this property. I've never seen the parties come together that were so far apart. I've never seen approvals come so quickly. I've never seen hearts change. I've never seen partners come in. He said, I've never seen anything like it. He said, the only word I can think of and he's not a man who goes to our church, he said, it's a miracle. And I said, well, Lord, thank you for letting us be part of something you're doing. So Joshua, right at the beginning of this adventure, is standing on the banks of the Jordan River. He's ready to go over and God gives him, because he's afraid now, God gives him this pep talk. Has God ever given you a pep talk? Have you ever heard God just get alongside of you and start talking to you? You want to know something about the pep talks he gives you? When he wants you to go ahead and just move ahead? Something about every pep talk I've ever had from God? He never talks about you. Is that right? He never talks. He said that every year. He never says, Jerry, you're the man. He never says that. He always says, Jerry, I'm the man. He says, I'm the one. I will be with you. I will take care of you. I won't fail you. And he gets your eyes off you and puts them on God. Now that's what we have to see, friends. That's God's pep talk. And the problem is, and I have to tell you, it's rife throughout the congregation as we look at ourselves and we limit ourselves because all we see is us. It's all we see. And we fall into this strange trap of believing our doubts and doubting our belief. Let me say that again. We believe our doubts and doubt our belief. Look what Joshua 1.9 says. Be bold and strong. Banish fear and doubt. The word to banish means to purge or dump or get rid of. Unfortunately, when doubt comes into our mind, we tend to want to just go ahead and believe it. So the Lord says, I'm going to do this and I'm going to use you in this way or I want you to do this and I'll be with you in this way. And we just say, well, I don't know. And we start believing our doubts and we get afraid. And, you know, sometimes it takes someone else to come alongside and help us. Speaking of that situation with the property, along the way, after I said, okay, Lord, go ahead and start to work, we were stuck and we weren't making much progress at one point about two months into it, nine weeks into it. And one of the members of our elders council who is very methodical and rational and really would not present himself as a person of faith called me one day and said, he said, Pastor Jay said, I don't think this can happen. I don't think we have the resources to do this. I said, well, what should we do? He said, well, we're just going to have to believe that God's going to change the heart of the owner to work with us a little bit more. And the owner of the property is a very nice gentleman and I know him personally, but he's not a person of faith and he doesn't go to church and he has no interest. I asked him, do you have any interest in helping the church with its mission? No. So when Bill called me and said, we're going to have to count on God to change this heart, I said, Bill, I don't know if I can believe that. Now remember, here's the banker telling the pastor to have faith. And I said, I'll meet with him if that's what I need to do. I sat down with him and we started talking and he said, well, I think I can do that. I can bend this a little bit and I can help this way. At the end of the conversation, I said, Bill, all the things that we had hoped for? He said, yes, I do. I called Bill up and I said, Bill, guess what? He said, don't tell me. I do it all the time. No problem. I just want to encourage you with your faith, pastor, that's all. We need that. We all need from time to time to be encouraged in our faith. There are two reasons why we doubt our beliefs and believe our doubts. Number one, it's not on your outline, but it says, what causes us to doubt? Number one, we compare ourselves with others. We look down the aisle, two or three people, and we say, well, that person's a lot more mature, that person's a lot more educated, that person's a lot more bold or whatever, more talented, and we say, God would use them, he would never use me. Friends, 2 Corinthians, write it down, 2 Corinthians 10-12, 2 Corinthians 10-12 says, don't compare yourself to others. God is looking at people that he created and he says, I'll use you just as you are if you'll let me. It's me and you that matters, not what you've got to bring to the party. And then, number two thing, the second thing we do is that instead of believing God for the future, we replay the failures of the past. How many have a tape that you play in your head all the time about your failures? Most of us do. We remember the time that we tried something and it failed or we reached out and we were rejected or we had something going and it fell apart. And you know what? If you keep replaying those tapes, that's the kind of life you will live. May God help us to see we're not bound by our past. Jesus settled that on the cross when he forgave our sins, past, present and future. And so, if you failed, big deal. Have you read the Bible? Do you know who's in the Bible? You know the great leaders of the Bible? Do you know who they were? People like Moses? What did Moses do to just build his resume? He killed an Egyptian to start out. He committed murder. God still used him to be a great, great, great leader. Or back up a little bit to Jacob. Jacob stole his brother's inheritance, ripped him off. Or back up to Abram. We talked about him a couple weeks ago. Abram, he traded his wife off twice to save his own skin. What a guy, you know? Here, take my wife, save my life. Did that twice. He just said, hey, she's my sister. I don't really know her. And you know, go on to people like David. And you know, we've talked about, here's a guy that committed really weird, difficult things to understand. And yet God said, I'm going to use you as a man after my own heart. Or the great Apostle Paul, you know, the one revered by the theologians, was the persecutor of Christians. And on and on I could go. I mean, I'm just picking out Peter. You know, here's a hard drinking, hard driving, crusty old sea dog fisherman, you know, not known for his couth. And he goes and denies Jesus three times. And what does Jesus do to show him how much he just despised this failure? What does he do? He makes him an apostle of the church. Wow. So, if God can use failures, how many of you qualify? So that's the plan, folks. That's God's plan A. Why? So he can get the glory, you see. So we can't sit down and say, well, God, look what I can do for you. That's not a very healthy place to be in because God will usually have to knock you down a couple of rungs to show you you can't do anything for him. He can only do things through you. So, number one, let go of doubt. Number two, look for a promise. If you're to overcome doubt and be used by God, you need a promise. You see, you can't just go out and just sort of make things up. Hey, I'm going to go and win all of Pittsburgh for Jesus. Well, okay. How are you going to do it? Well, I don't know. you see, you need a promise. Something the Spirit of God makes alive to you from the Word of God. Thirteen times in the book of Joshua we find the word, specific word in Hebrew, promise. In fact, Joshua is called to win the land, the promised land. So, I mean, his whole life mission was about promise. So, here he is. He's standing on the edge of the Jordan River and the Lord says, Every place your foot shall tread, Joshua, I'm going to give it to you. I promise you're going to get it. Now, Joshua had to fight for it, but the Lord gave it to him. Think about it for a second. The promise is only as good as the promisor. If some flake makes a promise, what good is it? But if God, the creator of the universe, the lover of your soul, makes a promise. You know, almost three years ago, my dad made a point of having me come over one day to the house and he said, you know, he said, I'm concerned. He said, I just want to know something. I'm not feeling well. I just want to know that if I want to be with the Lord, I want you to promise me you're going to take care of your mom. I want you to promise me. Now, my dad never asked me to promise him for anything. It was always, he would make, he'd tell me things that he'd promise to do. I said, well, dad, sure I will. Three months later, he died, and I tell you, I think about it every day, look into my dad's eyes and promise him I'm going to take care of my mom. I'll make sure she's okay. I'm not saying I do the best job of it, but I do what I can and I look out for her. And if that's in me and my fallen nature, how much more, Luke 11, 13 says, will our heavenly father keep his promise to those that he loves? So, friends, if God makes a promise to you, you can count on it. You can take it to the spiritual bank. That's right. God will make a promise. He's not going to break it. The promisor is trustworthy. And this Bible is full of 6,000 promises that God makes. You just have to get in the book and start mining out the promises. And let me just give you three that I know of for sure. Flip it, turn your outline over and flip it to the other side. Here's three promises to those who live for God. He promises strength, success, and support. People often ask me, you know, how do you do the things you do over at North Way? And I always answer back, it's the grace of God, God's strength working in us. People ask me, are you surprised at how North Way has grown? And I say, well, you know, I'm surprised at the size that we are perhaps, but I'm not surprised that we've been a success because God promised early on that we would be. And then I often get asked, how are you guys able to do all that? And I say, well, because God promised that he'd support us. And so he uses people to support the work. And I just want to thank you again for your support of the work. You make such a world of difference. You can't begin to know how much you make by your support. God's work and God's way will not lack God's support. But you have to make time to know the promises in this book. And I just want to say, we're getting near the end of the year and we're starting looking toward the new year and that's when most of us say, well, it's time to get in this book seriously. Because these promises that are in here, the 6,000 of them, you don't just drop the book open one day and say, okay, give me a promise. Judas went out and hung himself. No, that's not it. Go and do likewise. No, that can't be right. What's the promise? Well, here's what I've discovered. I can read the Bible Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and not really have something jump out at me. And Friday, whoosh, something will come alive. Now, there's got to be at least one person thinking, well, I'll just read on Friday then, you know. Don't mess with the rest of the week. Well, it doesn't work that way. You just don't know when God's, but you have to be faithful so as you're faithful, God makes it come alive. That's the nature of promise. But you've got to make yourself available to God's Word in order to do it. This Advent Study Guide we presented you today will help you just be faithful to being in the Word. General Douglas MacArthur called Joshua the greatest military leader who ever lived. Think about that. Why would he do that? Because Joshua didn't win just one battle. He rallied an inadequate bunch of people to be victorious time after time after time, sequentially. He taught them how to never give up. Do you ever feel like it's just one thing after another in your life? Do you just feel like you win one battle and you've got another one coming? Or in Chuck E. Cheese analogy, do you feel like it's like bling-ding, bling-ding, you know? Have you ever been to Chuck E. Cheese? That thing that pops up and you get one and... Life's like that. But as you hold on to the promise, you're able to just trust God that He's going to give you the grace that you need. And by the way, look at the next verse. Fight the good fight of faith. That fight, loved ones, doesn't end when you're 25, 35, 45, even 55, even 65. I wanted you here today just a brief portion, and this could be a wonderful long story, but I just want you to hear a little portion of the story of a person who probably could have, as many of you, you know, has reached the point in their life where they could have kicked back and said, I don't know that I really want to trust God and make a change and, you know, reposition my life to be available to God. But he did it. And God's now using him in a new way. Give a warm welcome to Dick Holden as he comes up to share his testimony. Dick, come on quickly, would you please? This is a portion of Dick's testimony. I've heard the whole thing of how he came from atheism to following Christ. I know he'd love to share the whole thing, but that'll be for another time. This is just an important part of how he made a recent transition of faith. So welcome, Dick. Thank you, Pastor Jay. And I'd just like to say that I consider this a privilege to be able to share in front of you this morning just a short story on how God worked in my life, our family's life. Last year, 1999, we started a business. And it's a consulting business. We do work with companies in their area of sales management and sales and general management trying to help them to bring their people up to another level. And most people would say, well, many of you have started a business and what's the big deal? Well, in our particular case, when we started the business, I was 55 years old. And the irony is that we had just five years ago sold a business and invested in another company. And so by some standards, all of this doesn't make a lot of sense. And as a matter of fact, I did it with a lot of trepidation. And I'll give you the details in just a moment. But this story I'm going to share with you really is a story of trust and a story of the value of investing in the community of God, particularly North Way. And just to take you back just a little bit, five and a half years ago, we lived in Columbus, Ohio. My wife and I and son and my daughter at the time attended Otterbein College. And we, after a great deal of prayer and analysis, sold a company down there. And I invested in a company in Youngstown, Ohio with the intentions of uprooting everyone and moving to Youngstown. But because a number of things didn't work out as related to where we would live, we put together some issues with a new house and all of that fell apart and couldn't find a church. Could not find a church that made sense to us. That's not to suggest that there's not a good church in Youngstown that worked for us. And couldn't find a school, a Christian school in which to place our son. And all of that kind of fell apart so we ended up in Cranberry where we were blessed with the ability to find a wonderful home, obviously found a wonderful church and found a great school, a Christian school in which we could place our son. So that all worked out. And two and a half years after I commuted back and forth with Youngstown and working in that business and things were going quite well actually. I came home one day after a lot of thought, not just that day but for a period of time and I said, Linda this is just not working. I'm not happy. I don't really like what I'm doing. And this just isn't it. And she said, what do you mean it isn't it? She said, you moved us from Columbus where we loved where we lived and she said, you uprooted everybody and now you're telling me that this isn't it. And I said, well maybe I can rephrase it a little bit. But that started a major shift in our thinking. I said, we've got to do something different. And I didn't really know what it was. And I don't know if any of you can relate to this but at the age of 55 when you've done a number of things in your life and you're looking at the future and you're just not sure what to do. I mean, I was getting anxious. I was waking up in the middle of the night praying and then grabbing things back and I was getting fearful. I was getting fearful. And I can tell you it wasn't a happy period in my life. It seemed like life made more sense when I was 20. You know what I mean? It seemed like I knew where I was going. But at the age of 55 I was trying to crystallize my thinking and figure out what to do. And I have to confess that sometimes I would say, you know, you're 55. You really can't get another job. Nobody wants you. You certainly can't start another business. You're too old. What I found is that that's not the fact at all. There's a tremendous number of opportunities. As a matter of fact, we found that we were looking at opportunities in Texas and back in Ohio. And so a lot of things were beginning to happen, but we just didn't clearly know what we should do. And I attend a Friday morning men's group here at North Way. As a matter of fact, I had been attending this group ever since we came here four years ago. And I have to tell you, that particular group and the men in that group have meant more to me personally than anything. I mean, it's unbelievable how close you get. And we have the opportunity in that group, you know, to share and to facilitate and speak. We rotate, you know, around and we do that on a regular basis. And it's just a wonderful time. And from time to time, I would share. And it was nice because, you know, every once in a while, somebody would say, hey, Dick, you really did a nice job, you know, and that makes you feel good. And a couple of times, somebody said, you know, you ought to think about doing this for a living. And I went home and shared that with my wife. I said, you know, boy, I was really blessed this morning. Somebody said, you did such a great job, you ought to think doing that for a living. And Linda said, well, can you make any money talking at a Friday morning men's group? Anyway, but seeds were planted. And I starte