Sermon Transcript

One of the most famous verses in the Bible; Joshua says, “Choose this day whom you will serve. . .but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15, ESV) For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about this choice we have to make. It all starts with an individual choice that begins with. . .who? Me. It all starts right there. Nobody can choose for you. If you haven’t chosen to serve the Lord, what are you waiting for? It’s time for you to move onward, from wherever you’ve been wandering, to serving the Lord.

But once we make that choice, that choice is going to impact, what? My house. “As for me and my house. . .” Your decision is going to impact the other “little me’s” in your home, right? And so, you can make a choice that actually determines the onward progress of your house.

Today, we’re going to talk about how the choices that we make—and the houses that we build—are going to impact the world around us. We found out in Joshua 24, after Joshua had called the people to make the individual choice to impact their families, we finally get to Joshua 24:28, “Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance.” “Go, live out this service in the geographical territory that you occupy.”

Now, I am of a generation that was introduced, when I was a teenager, to a room that looked like this. How many of you are of that generation? You remember walking into a room and seeing the glory of a Pac-man machine, or Asteroids, or Galaga, or Tempest? Keep going? I mean, that was a glorious thing. That was a crowded room at the local video arcade, and there were people standing in line, waiting to get on a machine.

And there was a little tradition, if you wanted to be the next person to get a game—do you remember what you would do? You’d take a quarter out and put it on the machine. And there might be as many as ten or twenty quarters lined up, but whenever the next quarter was yours, it was your turn to play. And the question at the arcade was this: “Who’s got next?”

How many of you are familiar with that phrase, “Who’s got next?” I’ve said that to some older people in our church and they have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe it wasn’t a video machine for you—maybe it was on a basketball court. You’d show up for a pickup basketball game, and there’s people wanting to get on the court, but there’s only one court—there are only two hoops. And you had to wait in turn.

The implication to the question of “Who’s got next?” is this: after you’re done, there is somebody else who’s going to do it better than you, right? No matter what the high score was on the video game, there’s somebody standing in line who’s not intimidated by your onward progress on that game. They think they’re going to get the next high score. That’s what we’re talking about here.

All of the book of Joshua has been about this onward progress, but we finally get to the next chapter, and here’s what we’re going to learn:

 

Big idea: Our journey is not finished until we pass the truth onward to the next generation.

 

Now, in the book of Joshua, “onward” is measured in very tangible ways. It is measured by square footage; it is measured by the number of giants killed; it is measured by the number of miles they’ve traveled and how much time they’ve occupied, and how much plunder they’ve gotten from neighboring cities that they have conquered.

That’s not our battle. The book of Joshua is preserved for us as an example of what a person can do by faith, moving onward from wherever you are, to conquer some territory God wants you to occupy by faith and obedience. You see, our onward progress is not measured by square footage or miles or time. Our onward progress is measured by faith, obedience, worship and the victories over sin and temptation. That’s the lesson for you and I in 2016. We still need to move onward.

For me, as I’ve studied this—and I feel like Joshua’s just become a friend to me—I’ve been challenged by the book of Joshua to think in terms of “what’s next?” Who’s got next? So, as I’ve thought about “me and my house,” it’s very natural for me to think about, “Who is the next generation of Griffiths who need the truth passed on to them?”

So, it’s not easy for me to see five little Griffiths running around—“Hey, you guys you realize—you’re next, you’re up next. You need to go places that I haven’t been able to go, and you need to do things that I haven’t been able to do. ‘You’ve got next!’ Are you going to carry the baton? Are you going to go onward, even after I’m gone?”

But not just my family – outside of my family, outside of my house, it’s real easy for me, as I’ve been thinking about the onward progress and the next generation of disciples that need to be made in our church. We are not interested in a quantity of disciples. We are interested in—and giving our lives for—a quality of discipleship. But, I always love to follow that up by saying we are not opposed to a large quantity of quality disciples around here, right? We want to reach as many people as possible, because it’s our mandate to make disciples.

So, as I’m studying the book of Joshua, I’m asking, “What are we going to do as a church to make the next generation of disciples? Where are the next generation of leaders?” I loved what we just did to recognize that God is raising men up to give leadership, to move the church onward to the next territory we need to conquer. I’ve thought about the next generation of churches that need to be planted.

We saw one time, if you were here, the Liberian people. There are eight Harvest Bible Chapels that have been planted in Liberia. It’s the next generation. The question is, “Where’s the next Harvest Bible Chapel going to be planted, and what are we going to do about that?” So, we need to always be thinking about what’s next.

By God’s grace, Harvest will be a place where the next generation of leaders and disciples and churches are always what’s next. People are standing in line saying, “I’ve got next!” How about you? Is that you? Are you ready to move onward as a part of what God’s doing here?

Now, as we get into the Scripture – and we’re about to read it here in just a minute – I’ve waited way too long to read the Bible. But one more comment here: I want you to think on two different levels tonight. We need to think about the onward implications for our families, for our children. We touched on this a little bit last week, but there are some onward implications to what we’re about to read. But there are some onward implications, not only for our families—there are some onward implications for our church family.

So, I want you to be thinking about the “little me’s” in your house, but I want you to be thinking beyond your house and how all of the houses that make up Harvest Bible Chapel—how are we going to move onward. What’s next for Harvest? Who’s got next? That’s what we’re going to be talking about.

Let’s first of all think about the onward implications for our children. Let me just say this as we jump into it: If you are a parent, and you think that it is the responsibility of Michelle Helmkamp and Tyler Downing to disciple your children, you are sadly mistaken. If you think they can do—in one hour on Wednesday night or a week of vacation Bible school—what you haven’t been able to do in the one-hundred-sixty-seven hours that they live with you, or the other fifty-one weeks that they spend with you, you are delusional.

Here’s what we want to understand tonight: It is a parent’s responsibility to pass the truth onward to the next generation of people in your home; it is the church’s responsibility to come alongside of parents and create an environment where we help and we serve. And maybe we’re kind of a safety net in some situations where God uses different people in different ways. We want to be a ministry and offer that, but it’s a parent’s responsibility to pass the truth from one generation to the next in your home. It is the church’s responsibility to pass the truth onward to the hearts and lives of parents that are not even yet in our church. So there are implications for our family, there are implications for our church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this: “The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children.” What are we doing about “who’s next?” and how are we moving onward? We’re going to jump into the Scripture. Let me give you the point, and then we’ll read.  First of all, if we’re going to make the generation of disciples we need to:

 

• Model what it looks like to know (Joshua 24:29-31; Judges 2:7-10)

 

Let’s see here from Joshua 24. Let’s begin reading in verse 29: “After these things…” What things? Everything in the previous twenty-three chapters. “Joshua the son of Nun…” I always think that was sad, that Joshua was the son of “none”— “the servant of the Lord, died, being 110 years old.”

            How many of you here are fifty-five years old and younger? Raise your hands proudly, as long as you can. Can you imagine reaching your fifty-fifth birthday and realizing, you just reached half-time? Joshua was given one-hundred-ten years. I want you to think about the onward progress Joshua made in one-hundred-ten years.

One-hundred-ten years ago, Joshua was born as a slave in Egypt. One-hundred-ten years later, Joshua dies as a victorious warrior enjoying the Promised Land. What kind of onward progress did Joshua make in one-hundred-ten years? He lived a life that demonstrates how far you can come from where you began. I don’t know what kind of ancestry you have. None of us gets to choose our ancestry, but all of us get to choose our legacy. And you can change your legacy. Where you finish is not determined by where you start. If you had any upgrade over being a slave in Egypt, you got a better start than Joshua. You can move onward, no excuses.

Some of us had some horrible ancestors and bad track records and bad parenting, and yet Joshua overcame all of that. Why? Because of the demonstration of two things God said, “You must have…if you are going to move onward.” We learned it in the very first chapter – what were they? “Joshua, you must be strong and courageous.” That’s the way you make it, one-hundred-ten years, from being a slave in Egypt to a victorious warrior in a land of promise.

So, it says, “After these things Joshua. . .died. . .They buried him in his own inheritance at Timnath-serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel.” Then Scripture tells us that they took the bones of Joseph, and it tells us about Eleazar—he was that priest that kind of negotiated when there was almost a civil war; we read about those things.

We are now finished with the book of Joshua, but I want you to turn, probably two pages, in your Bible. We are now in the book of Judges, and I want you to find chapter 2, and I want us to read what it says, beginning in verse 6: “When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years.”

            Does this sound familiar? This is identical to the last few verses in the book of Joshua. The passage goes on in verse 9: “And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.” And then, this comment is added in verse 10. What happened next: “And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers.” That’s a kind way of saying, “They died, too!”

They were gathered to their fathers, “And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” That generation did not receive the knowledge of the Lord. We’re not told what happened, but at some point there was a failure in the previous generation to make known to the next generation all that God had done.

It’s not just about passing on head knowledge, but it is about modeling what it looks like to know the Lord. It’s not an ACT Bible test; it’s not a Bible quiz; it’s not Bible trivia that is going to make the difference in the next generation. It’s going to be when they see someone who has the knowledge live it out in a way that makes them say, “I want to serve the Lord the same way you serve the Lord.”

Do you think it’s significant that, for one-hundred-ten years, that generation had a model to follow in Joshua but when Joshua died and all the elders died, apparently there was no model to follow, at that point?

Do you know what a model is? Think about that. A model is someone who wears something and makes it look so good, you want it, too. Has that ever happened to you? Right now, I am modeling this jacket. “He looks good! Where’d he get that? I want one of those!”

Hopefully, the best thing I model for you is not a coat. Hopefully the best thing I model for you is how to live a life that knows God. How do you live and survive in a world—with all of its aches and pains and temptations and trials and sufferings of this life, and all of the obstacles and all of the enemies? Do you know what Joshua modeled? He modeled strength and he modeled courage, and he modeled faith—and he modeled what it looked like to move onward.

Thursday I was in my office, and a dear member of our church came to the office, and she was so excited. She said, “I had to come to the church and I had to tell the pastor what happened last night!” She said, “Two years ago, my husband lost his job. It was a very prominent position, and he’s a very qualified man, and for some unknown reason that job was taken away. He was jobless and he had to start the job search.” All the while, they were living for the Lord, they were serving the Lord, and there were question marks in their minds as to why the Lord would allow this job to be taken away.

As they were processing the book of Joshua, as they were processing the numerous times that God had told the people, “Do not forsake the Lord; do not abandon the Lord to serve other gods-with-little-g’s” – for the first time it clicked in their minds, and the wife said to the husband, “I think I know why the Lord took your job away. Quite honestly, your job was your god. How good was God to take away the other god so that, two years later, we could walk knowing Him, being more intimate with Him, more in love with Him than we have ever been, and seeing all the onward progress in our life that never would have happened if the God with the big G hadn’t decapitated the god-with-the-little g?”

And as they were sharing this story, they were just filled with joy saying, “We’re just so grateful for the trial, even though we didn’t understand it at the time.” What were they doing? They were modeling—to their family, to their children and even to their church—what it means, what it looks like, to know God, even in a difficult circumstance.

Do you model to your children what it looks like to know God and to walk with God and to discern the ways of God? Or, when something goes wrong, you get mad at God because you just don’t really know Him or trust Him the way that Joshua knew Him. So, we can model for our children what it looks like to know God.

Here’s the second thing:

 

• Speak often about what the Lord has done for you. (Judges 2:10)

 

Look again here at Judges 2, verse 10: “All that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or…” notice, “the work that he had done for Israel.” Now, we’ve spent the last seventeen weeks studying—and speaking of—the work that the Lord had done for Israel. Do you remember all that the Lord had done? Let me just give you a little reminder.

It was God who called Joshua to be strong and courageous. At that point, Israel was leaderless because Moses had just died. Now it’s interesting, here, that Joshua and the elders called attention to what the Lord had done for Israel. Do you think it was a temptation for Joshua to take any credit for what was done? All of this happened under his leadership.

But what he wanted that generation to know; it wasn’t Joshua who did these things. Joshua is not the hero of the book of Joshua. God is the hero of the book of Joshua. It was God who called Joshua, and gave him the strength and gave him the courage, to go onward.

Do you remember the story of Rahab? Rahab was a prostitute. Can you imagine all the shame, all the guilt, all the sexual abuse that she had experienced? And yet, God was so gracious to rescue her out of that land, and then use Rahab to rescue the spies that had come in.

Do you remember that it was God who cut off the waters of the Jordan and allowed His people to cross over on dry ground? It was God who caused the walls of Jericho to fall. It was God who exposed the sin of Achan and it was God who gave them victory over Ai in Game 2. It was God who made the sun stand still. It was God who gave strength to eighty-five-year-old Caleb; gave him the strength of a forty-year-old.

It was God who gave the twelve tribes the land, and it was God who gave the land rest. It was God who made every promise come true. And it was God who gave them a land for which they had not labored and cities they had not built. That’s the story of Joshua. And the next generation didn’t know what you now know. Because it wasn’t spoken of. The story wasn’t told.

As we read the book of Joshua, we have to understand that the book of Joshua models for us what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. We learned early that the name “Joshua” is actually the same word, translated into Greek, as “Jesus.” It simply means, “God saves.” As we read the book of Joshua, we have to think and we have to speak of what Jesus has done for us, that’s modeled for us in the book of Joshua.

Do you understand, you and I were Rahab? Guilty as Rahab, guilty as a prostitute, as worthy of judgment as a prostitute. And you and I were Achan—who had sinned and stood worth of death, worthy of every stone that God would bury us with. Yet, what did Jesus do? Jesus said, “You can stone me and treat me as if I was as guilty as Achan,” so that all of those modern-day Achans and all of those modern-day Rahabs could be forgiven and set free. Are those the kind of stories that you tell in your home and remind your children of? This is the great thing that God has done for us. We need to speak often of what Jesus has done on the cross.

And then, not just that, but the daily, practical things that God does every day to prove that God is fighting for us. Do you understand that God is still fighting for you? And do you see Him at work all around you?

Memorial Day was a day off. I don’t know what you did. We have a friend in our church who has a boat and they invited us to go out on the boat, which we love to do. Our friend who has the boat loves to take his boat on the St. Joseph River and ski on the river. Now, do you understand that skiing on a river is like skiing on an obstacle course? I mean, there is all kinds of stuff in the river that you can’t see and you could hit.

We enjoyed a wonderful day of skiing, and I was driving the boat along—it was kind of the last round—and I hit something. And there was this horrible noise that came from the motor. And so we turned it off and we realized something major had just happened. I hit a huge log or something – maybe a dead body. Al Capone? I don’t know. Something in the river broke the motor. And sure enough, as we inspected it, the big brackets were busted, there was oil leaking and it was bad news. We had to get a tow back from another boat, and it was a bad day.

Now, in the boat was my daughter, Brooke, who had plans to go to Silver Beach. She was going to meet a friend and go to Silver Beach to watch the sunset, but because we were dead in the water, it delayed her trip. Brooke was not real excited about this. “It’s a bad day now, and I’m not going to get to do what I wanted to do.”

We were delayed about an hour, and we finally got back to shore. Brooke finally made it to Silver Beach about an hour later than she’d planned on being on the beach. As soon as they got there, they decided instead of going to the beach, they were go up on the bluff where the ice cream shops and everything are. As soon as they got there, they heard gunshots down on the beach. And everybody on the beach started running for their lives. There was just a mass of humanity that was running from the beach, up the bluff.

What if we hadn’t hit that log in the river? What if Brooke had arrived on time at the beach? Could it be that God actually was at work in me destroying my friend’s boat? That’s my story! I’m sticking with it! I’m just trying to counsel my friend. But when we tell that story, how do we speak? “How good is God to fight for us?” Is that how you speak of the Lord? Speak often of what the Lord has done for you.

And then finally this. . .

 

• Point them onward toward battles yet to be won. (Judges 2:11-15)

 

Let me read to you some of the saddest verses in the Bible, continuing here in Judges 2:11-15. “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord…” They started going backward! “…And served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods…” with little “g’s” “from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.”

            “They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them.” The Lord’s keeping His promises, still. “And they were in terrible [terrible!] distress.”

            There they are. And they lost all the onward progress that they had made in the one-hundred-and-ten years that Joshua had led them. It’s a tragedy when we do not multiply what the Lord has done, in our own lives, to our children.

If you are a parent, you probably are aware—or need to be aware—of these verses in Psalm 127:4-6. Let me read them to you: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them [whose quiver is full of them]! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate [when his enemies speak of him in the gate.”

Now just think about this. The Lord gives us an analogy here of the next generation being like arrows. If the next generation are arrows, what does that make this generation? The bow! As a parent, you’re a bow. I would like to think of our church as a bow. The Bible says that God has given us arrows.

This is known as the quiver. The quiver holds the arrows, but the arrows are not intended to stay in the quiver! In church, they are! If you go hunting, you are a sorry hunter if you just leave the arrows in the quiver. The goal is to get the arrow in flight and to get the arrow to fly straight. So, our job in this generation is to straighten the arrows, and to sharpen the arrows, so that when the arrow is shot toward a goal—when it arrives—it does damage. It makes an impact.

So, God wants us as parents to think about “who’s next?” What’s the next bulls-eye? At what are you aiming your children, what are you pointing them toward? Now, I said, this message has implications for us as parents—you can think of the different things—but, do your children understand you’re not to stay in the quiver? Or the basement, for that matter? You have a purpose! And if I’m doing a good job as a “bow,” I’m going to point you in a direction, and I’m going to give you all the momentum you’re going to need to fly straight and to make an impact when you get there. Because there is something God wants you to do that is onward, beyond anything I’ve ever been able to do. That’s the way a parent talks.

That’s also the way a pastor talks about his church, when he wants his church to go onward. Our church is seven years old—not one-hundred-and-ten—but seven. And we can look back over seven years and see some territory that’s been conquered. We can see some victories that have been won. We can sit back and we can say, “Whew! The work’s been hard, but God’s been good,” and we can just sit here and be satisfied with how far we’ve come. Or, we can apply what we’ve been studying for seventeen weeks as a church and say, “Who’s got next?” What’s next for us as a church? I’ve been thinking about that question.

There are some obvious things staring us in the face. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but it’s getting a little harder to find a seat in church—again! Some churches have problems finding people to fill the seats; our church has a problem finding seats for the people who are showing up. And so, we have questions to ask as an elder team: “Lord, what’s next for us? Does that mean we need to plant something; does that mean we need to expand something?” Those are questions, right now, that we’re seeking the Lord about. Please pray for us as we think about what’s next for our church. Lord, what do you want to call us onward to?

I think one of the things that the Lord’s been burdening my heart about is just thinking about where the Lord has strategically placed our church. Our church is in a college town—have you noticed that? There are colleges and university surround us. Do you understand what that means? There are over twenty-five-thousand college students within a thirty-minute drive of our church. What are we doing to reach them? There’s the next generation.

How of many of you could get excited about going onward into some territory where college students are? Anybody want to sign up for that ministry? Anybody want to lead that ministry, right now? I’m looking for volunteers—I need a Joshua, right now, to lead the college ministry. I’m serious! We’re looking for that guy.

As we’ve talked about Joshua, there have been times in the seventeen weeks we’ve studied this that I’ve shown you maps of Israel. Do you remember the maps? Here’s a map – I just pulled this one down from Google Maps. This is a map of modern-day Israel. I just want you to look at that for a minute—all eyes on the screen. You can notice there are two water features there. At the top, that’s the Sea of Galilee, there’s a river that flows out called the Jordan River. That’s the river they had to cross over to enter the Promised Land. It flows south and eventually lands in the Dead Sea.

Now, I want you to just look at that for a minute. Does that remind you of anything? Does that look like any map close to us? That’s Berrien County today. There’s a river that runs through it—it’s called the St. Joseph River. Down there in the bottom right, you see a star. That’s where we are right now—that’s Granger—that’s Harvest Bible Chapel. To get to Berrien County, you realize you have to cross over the St. Joseph River.

Do you see that star up there at the top? We’ve actually sent “spies” into the land, and there is a YMCA that sits at that intersection right up there. The only time of the week that parking lot is not filled is on Sunday morning. We’ve talked to the people at the YMCA and asked, “Would you be interested in us putting a church here?” “How much will you pay us?”  “Well, whatever we need to, to plant a campus.” “Okay, let’s do that!”

Do you understand, there are people in our church who live in Berrien County? How many of you live in Berrien County and you drive a significant amount of time to get here? There are about fifty people who have been nagging me for about two years, for us to plant a campus of Harvest Bible Chapel Granger in Berrien County, because they drive about forty-five minutes to get here, and they want to invite their friends to come to a church in their community up there.

So, we’ve been praying and asking God, “God, how can we move onward?” Here’s the thing: we have a location, we have a core group, we have resources. We think we have a strategy. The only thing we’re lacking—and that we’ve been praying for—is, “Lord, we need You to send us a Joshua” to lead the people into the land.

Well, I told you I was excited. And one of the reasons I’m excited is because today I’m going to introduce you to the “Joshua” who’s going to lead us to plant the campus in Berrien County! His name is Jamie Maxim and I’m going to invite Jamie—and his wife, Angie—to come join me up here on the platform, because I want to introduce to you the new campus pastor of Harvest Granger, who’s going to lead us into that land.

I’m so excited about you being here, Jamie. I know you have a thousand questions! I have more. I don’t have all the answers, but some of the things that pop up here: Jamie will be a part of our staff; he’ll be the campus pastor of Harvest Granger, Berrien County. What that means is, we’ll be one church in two locations.

Over the course of this summer, we are going to we plant a church. The key word is “we,” not “him” or “me.” We are going onward as a church, and we’re going to strap some weight to you; we need you to carry some responsibility. You are now designated arrows—that’s the bow. We are going to shoot you if you don’t carry some weight around you! We’re going to shoot you out of here to carry some weight, as well.

Now, listen, here’s the timeline—we are going to spend this summer getting ready to plant that campus. We would like to launch that campus—first Sunday open the doors at that YMCA, Harvest Granger— “Welcome to Harvest Granger Berrien County” – we would like to open the doors of that church the weekend after Labor Day in September. That’s fourteen weeks from today, okay? So, we’ve got some work to do. Jamie’s going to be leading that effort. He’ll be the shepherd; he’ll be the leader at that campus. That means he’s responsible to minister to that core group, give vision, direction and leadership to that group, and get the word out.

What will take place on that campus up there—there will be a live worship team (so you can be praying for Micah and the worship team)—you’ve seen some different worship leaders up on this platform. Well, now we’re going to need two worship leaders on a Sunday morning—one here and one up there. We’re going to need two bands. We’re going to need two children’s ministry teams. We’re going to need ushers and greeters and all the things that happen around here on a Sunday—we’ve got to multiply that up there. So, I hope the Lord is pricking your heart about those things.

What we’ll do, for the preaching and the teaching, we’re going to simulcast or livestream, and figure out a way that the teaching here is shown and heard up there. So that’s kind of the way it’s going to look. You’re going to get to know Jamie over the course of the next few weeks.

Jamie will be here at the end of the service. Please come and introduce yourself to him. Tonight he’s going to share more from his heart at the Fresh Encounter prayer meeting. Be here at six o’clock for that. Feel free to eat some ice cream after church tonight, and then Jamie’s going to be preaching here next week, okay? So, great opportunities to get to hear from him and know him! Why you don’t stand together with me? I’m going to pray for Jamie, and for Berrien County, and would you join me in believing God to do something miraculous there through our church?

Lord, thank You for leading us onward, and Lord, we feel the weight of that. I know Jamie does. I pray that you would fill his heart with strength and courage; I pray the same for Angie and their family. God, thank for their boldness to pursue you with all their hearts, and I pray, Lord, that they would model for us what it means to pursue You and to love You, to worship You, to obey You. And I pray, God, for people in our church that would say, “I’ve got next! Give me something to do. I want to follow the Lord onward into the next season of my life.” So, God, we need You, we commit this work to You. Thank for you for the promise that you will build Your church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.