"Dream Disease" | Pastor Peter Haas

our hope is for you to know god find freedom discover purpose and make a difference after the service begin that process by connecting with the leader and joining one of our many small groups or teams but for now sit back and enjoy this message from pastor peter haas [Music] what is up substance make some noise wherever you are at you made it to church and uh if we haven't met yet i'm pastor peter haas and i just want to welcome everybody joining us downtown minneapolis west side minneapolis online monterey mexico we love you guys we love you guys and we are so glad you're in church and today is extra special because it is substance's 17th anniversary you turned 17 today you did it you did it at 17 years ago we we we had this like small group that started at bethel university and then we we started doing sunday services 17 years ago u of m st paul convention center tucked right behind the state fair in fact whenever the state fair was going on we could never even meet there it was frustrating but we launched with 282 people right out of the gate which was like wow i've never even heard of a church plant launching that large and then we slowly grew our church all the way down to 61 people by that december which was really depressing and we had weeks where we had more people in our worship band than were in the audience which is really awkward right because that one new family's like we're the only ones here and the entire worship band is like put your hands up you know it's like oh my gosh it was weird i wouldn't have even come to my own church had it not been the pastor but i was just you know aren't you glad aren't you glad god wasn't done with our story aren't you glad failure is never final and aren't you glad god always has another chapter for us as long as we continue walking with him and i i just you know i i just and now here you are you're a gorgeous 17 year old you finally got your driver's license last year you know what i'm saying yeah at 16 and and at 17 you're almost a legal adult next year at 18 you'll be able to vote you'll be able to join the military and and how many of you know when you're 18 you can get body piercings without your parents consent so next year's substance might be a wild one for you you know i don't know we'll find out right but i i just listen here's the thing okay if god can do this in 17 years can you imagine what's possible over the next 17 i'm just saying because for half of those 17 years we had no resources come on we've only had buildings for the last five years right i mean we've almost always been understaffed and half our stand ba staff bandwidth would go towards you know setting up portable church or moving it every you know we had 13 facilities we've been in so far and and now but i think about like now like now where we're at i just keep thinking it's exciting because i keep thinking you know if god can do that in the last 17 then now man i see a church coming with ministries devoted to every imaginable topic spiritually i see small groups devoted to almost every single book of the bible i and we're going from like a portable military hospital into a full service hospital where we're going to be able to help all sorts of spiritual issues and i i just church this fall i'm going to be unveiling some plans of what we really believe god is going to be doing in our church in the future and we're going to start dreaming out what i believe is possible in the next five the next 10 years and i'm going to be sharing some of this stuff and so you guys are not going to want to miss church this fall but you know it's kind of like mark patterson preached a couple weeks ago i love the verse that he talked about because it's so important that we meditate on it zechariah 4 10 says this do not despise the days of small beginnings do not despise the days i remember like our first pulpit uh it wasn't even a pulpit it was like a it was like a a tray for uh waiters and waitresses to put you know glasses and plates on it it was just like a folding thing you know what i'm saying i i just we humbling things this is all we had right we didn't even we didn't even have a music stand you know what i'm saying like do not despise the days of small beginnings for the seven eyes of the lord that's kind of a weird expression the seven i does god literally have seven eyes no okay seven is the number of perfection and so what the author is saying he's prophesying prophetically he's saying for this the perfect eyes of the lord the vision of god is perfect for the perfect vision of god that ranges throughout the earth will rejoice it says even now will rejoice now god's word says this for a reason and here's what the reason is this is kind of obvious this isn't profound the reason why he says do not despise the days is because there's something in all of us that will despise the days in other words when god starts doing something in our lives all of us will be tempted to say well that isn't that big well that isn't that cool that isn't that miraculous that i mean you know like we we kind of criticize the beginning of what god is doing and we end up spoiling it and so god says no no no don't spoil the beginnings of what god is doing don't get impatient about how he is unfolding your life in his perfect timeline with his perfect vision and that's actually what i want to talk about is how to get god's vision i think a lot of us the reason why we experience frustration in our lives is because we're not thinking like god thinks seeing what he sees feeling what he feels and that's why that's a prayer that i regularly pray god as i as i go through the day i pray that i will not judge reality through my eyes but through your eyes i wouldn't feel my feelings i would feel your feelings it's a surrender type prayer and i i want to talk about how to stay in sync with that so that the devil can't just get us up in turmoil you see colossians one actually teaches here's how you know you're in the will of god you're naturally gonna have a supernatural amount of of endurance colossians one teaches patience joy thankfulness all of these things are just abounding in our lives when we know what god's will is gratitude joy and so whenever we're lacking those things we can just take inventory of our hearts and say god where am i out of alignment with your will where i'm not seeing what you're seeing thinking how you're thinking and so how many of you could use a little more patience today a little more joy okay so then before we dive into how we're going to do that i want to give you a little back story especially on an anniversary sunday like this i want to start by telling you a little bit about my family now you guys know that i've got three kids i've been married a little over 25 years now and i just how many of you know when you have little kids you get to say things that normal human beings would never say you never thought those words would come out of your mouth until you were a parent with small kids and you were like uh can we do not play with toilet water i never thought i'd have to say that we do not suck on your sister's hairbrush i never imagined having to say that until all of a sudden i had my kids and then i was like wow you know like okay sentences will come out of your mouth that you never imagined saying and to and you know i'll i'll never forget okay that was just the setup for this i'll never forget my three kids were watching cartoons in their pajamas and they were getting ready to eat lunch in front of the tv and my older daughter just got a bowl of hot soup out of the microwave and uh and she was trying to i don't know what they were thinking there she was trying to balance it on my son's chest and and she was saying eden don't move don't move the soup will spill don't move and i had to say no no no no no we do not balance bowls of hot soup on your brother's shirtless chest i never thought i'd have to say that and of course you know you know my son was just flowing with it like hey dad i'm a human tv tray you know like i'm like no yeah you're going to say that until you're kids are so creative they're creative where else would you ever get to say things like that and of course these types of weird sentences will fly out of your mouth twice as often when you are on a family road trip come on how many of you guys ever taken the great american family road trip before where you put all your kids and you stuff them into a car and you take a drive that is way too long anybody ever do that come on it's like a it's a part of our tradition right to be honest i actually love road trips because i don't know like when i'm maybe i have to fly a lot for for my job and so then i i feel like i have to work on an airplane i can't relax on an airplane so let's just drive driving i feel like i'm in control i got nothing but me in the open road i can listen to weird music and i can crank it i can go from starbucks to starbucks it's awesome you know what i'm saying and i i love road trips and maybe because i also love forced intimacy with my family which is kind of weird like what do you mean by that okay like when you're in a car that long guess what you're guaranteed two things intimate conversation and number two conflict in fact actually intimacy is forged through healthy conflicts and so hey we can get both we can get a lot done on that trip every time i ever did a road trip you know i became aware of a few new flaws in my kids like oh interesting so and so is getting a bit sassier and less compliant you know what i'm saying you become intimate with their flaws oh so and so needs to be taught how to use deodorant a little better oh interesting so and so pixon so-and-so and guess what they found out the same flaws in me too oh dad's a control freak oh dad's addicted to starbucks oh dad really has some weird taste of music you know what i'm saying we become intimate right and you know but but yet i love them because how many of you know by the end of that road trip we logged hundreds of hours of convos on conversations that we never would have normally had i get to know all of their friends all of the things that they feel about all their friends all the things that they feel about their lives all the biggest questions they're sorting through and had we not done that i never would have had those conversations i'm convinced just over the years now that now that i'm kind of launching all my kids the reason why a lot of christian kids walk away that that grew up in church the reason why a lot of them walk away from god it isn't so much because their parents weren't great role models in fact i think a lot of christian kids who walk away from church walk away from god it wasn't that their parents you know their parents were great role models rather these great role models simply didn't log enough hours with their kids it's kind of like if you were at our first wednesday service that i i talked about just this last month september i you know i i talked about uh parenting and discipleship if you could like reduce it to like say 2 000 conversations demonstrations impartations if you could kind of reduce all of life you know like 50 dating conversations and then the 50 follow-up dating conversations and then the 50 demonstrations of forgiving someone or 50 demonstrations of generosity inconvenient generosity demonstrating to kids in in in all of that if you could reduce it to say 2 000 and that's just an arbitrary number i'm convinced that most parents what what happens is is most of us we live in such a a busy culture that we only end up logging about 700 of them by the time our kids move out and it was just you know it wasn't so much that we weren't role models it was that we just didn't model we just didn't log enough hours by the time people left right so and i talk all about how to kind of redeem the time and how church how we're trying to shift the way that we do church kind of to meet this weird modern american busy paradigm and and so you know but with this in mind about 11 years back i i took my family on one of these road trips because this is kind of the goal when i take a road trip it's really parenting trip and and every time we do a road trip we'd always start with a family picture okay so let me give you a this was like our our the the the one that we did i don't know this is probably 10 years ago and uh you know it's kind of like the national lampoon's family vacation in front of the loser cruiser that's what we would call this car and it was rusty minivan with uh missing hubcaps and it was all we could afford at the time but we take the car topper and and then of course you know what's fun is over the years we would reenact that same picture every time we do another road trip and so here's the you know my kids are slightly older a couple of years older we're due for another reenactment again at some point but we don't have the cool minivan anymore um but you know you get so this this trip that i want to tell you about this happened probably about 11 12 years ago we had an eight-hour drive to kansas city and uh to make it easier after eight hours i thought you know what let's stop at a hotel with like a giant swimming pool right like let's go to like the really cool swimming pool hotel and so before we left our driveway i could tell everybody was getting a little chippy with each other and and so as the dad of the family i thought i need to manage everyone's expectations hey guys this is how we're going to do bathroom breaks on this drive this is how we're going to do uh you know food this is how we're going to do you know this is how we're going to share this is how we're going to talk this is how we're going to and of course i could tell they needed an inspirational speech you know what i'm saying okay so as the dad of the family the coach of the football team i am gonna give them a peter haas pep rally and and i'm like hey listen you guys this is how the day is gonna go okay we got eight hours ahead of us and i know that's a lot i know that's a lot it's going to be a long day but let me tell you something there is a swimming pool and it is coming okay eight hours from now you are going to be in a state of refreshment and i started leading on many of my years of vision casting to describe this amazing hotel pool if there was such a thing as an amazing and hotel pool in the same sentence but i was like kids this is a wonderland of refreshment like a double-decker pool with a waterfall a field with the bluest most mystical waters you've ever seen anywhere on earth and of course my three-year-old son was just like riveted like really this is so amazing it was wide eyes and before i could finish my speech about this pool my son bolted out of the car and i'm like what are you doing he gets out of the car and he just runs around it opens up the back and he starts pulling out i mean stuffed animals are now falling all the things that i carefully placed in my strategic places he's pulling out a suitcase and then and and out he came with this big thick foam swimming jacket and started clicking it all over his small body and i'm like whoa whoa whoa whoa hold on a second eden his name is eden and i was like wait a second eden we are not going to get to this pool for another eight hours like and he's like dad i know i know and then i'm like well then why are you putting it on well i just want to get ready for it i want to get ready for this pool dad and he literally started jamming his water winged body into this tight car seat i mean he could bare he couldn't even stretch the five-point harness over his bulking life jacket and that's when the crazy parental one-liner came spewing out of my mouth i'm like dude you are not gonna wear that big giant foam swim jacket for an eight-hour car ride you are gonna be hot you are gonna be sweaty i mean come on you can barely even fit into your car seated and he just looked at me with this you know steely-eyed look and he's like you want to bet i'll wear this if i want to wear this and it kind of turned into this fight and i'm thinking this is the wrong way to start off the family road trip and i looked at my wife and she looked back at me and she's like peter don't fight this battle right now just let him do it let him wear the jacket and so i'm like i'm like snapping the thing over his bulking life jacket and and of course no matter what he insisted on wearing it he was convinced this was somehow going to increase his pleasure and remind him of the destination and can i just say my son is stubborn and over dramatic just like his mother some of you are like oh no you didn't you know like okay we all know that my wife is the angel okay let's just be honest but i actually i i happened to snap a picture of my son right before we left and this is what he looked like and uh he was so cute i mean my gosh look how happy he looks but let me tell you something that joy lasted only a mere 20 minutes and we hadn't even gotten past burnsville before he said dad are we there yet i mean i'm like 20 minutes into an eight-hour drive like what the heck his joy lasted 20 minutes and i just looked at my wife and i'm like baby this is gonna be a long day and and we can laugh now about how silly kids are but today i want to ask you are we adults really any different i mean let's be honest okay over the years i've noticed that all the silliness we see in kids it actually doesn't leave us we adults are just a more dressed up dignified version of that silliness we just cover it up better until we're on facebook or instagram and then you know but i got no seriously as adults i i actually think all of us we all have dreams in our hearts timelines in our hearts we're on the journey not towards the perfect pool but towards the perfect job the perfect salary the dream marriage the perfect family and we have all these conditions all these criteria and we constantly pray god why aren't we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet like if we could just like snapshot of all of our prayers are we there yet are we there yet and and we're just constantly praying that and just like my son we start getting mad dad you promised we'd be at a hotel with a big swimming pool and god's like yeah i know jail yes i did in fact promise that to you and it is in fact coming but i need you to stop it you know what i'm saying there's something in all of us that hates waiting that despises the days of small beginning come on am i right have you ever ended up have you ever seen like you're driving on the road and you see a stoplight you see a yellow light and you're like yes i got to wait none of you okay most of us were like gun it and like oops yeah i kind of burned that road along you know what i'm saying like we're the opposite of patience there's something in all of us that hates waiting and of course you know what was funny about that road trip is in my son's mind he could see that my hands were controlling the steering wheel right and he would he would comment on that he was like dad you're you're driving the car so you promised me there's a pool and i'm like yeah i know i i did yeah there is a pool yeah but dad where is it where is the pool and and then he he went from dad he kept reminding me that i am not fulfilling my promise about the pool and then he switched to another level and he started saying this is what my son started saying daddy don't you love me like i suddenly as if his timeline for the pool suddenly became the litmus test of my love for him do you see what he in his mind he's starting to think i don't see a pool therefore my daddy must not love me and he must not be fulfilling his promises and as i as he said this i kind of realized oh gosh i wonder if i do the same thing to god in prayer i wonder if i do the same thing but i'm just a more dignified dressed up version of that same conversation you know we we whoever we perceive is driving our car controlling our happiness we start to complain to them or about them and i i just for example okay you can just go into a modern-day culture look how many christians they perceive that their boss is at the steering wheel of their happiness they perceive their co-workers are driving their happiness maybe it's or for other other people it's politicians as though politicians have all the power they're the ones controlling all of our happiness oh no but then for this person oh it's my spouse they're the one who's at the wheel of my life and then people of course they leave churches they leave marriages they leave jobs over the silliest stuff and of course we never see the problem as our expectations right it's always the problem is always out there and as long as we can point the finger at the problem out there nobody's looking at us okay in psychology they call that deflection everybody always wants the problem to be out there instead of in here and in islam and which the only way to do that is to play the victim right so victimization is one of the signs we're out of sync with god because god didn't make you a victim are you hearing me and so that's how we know we're kind of getting out of sync right when the problem is always out there and sometimes we'll even take out our anger on god we're like after all god you promised me a poo i've been praying for so long and so there we are okay let me describe an image of what a lot of you look like okay in your prayer life and just stick with me for a second because this thing right here it symbolizes the dreams in your life this thing symbolizes the bulky prayers that you're praying in your circumstances you we all have these dreams with all these prayers these timelines that we have for our lives and so we put them on and we're like god i'm going to trust you this is going to be exciting and then we're like [Music] we strap our dreams so tightly to ourselves and then then all we all like you suddenly become aware that your life is a little awkward right because you're a visionary you dream big dreams and and you you you're optimistic and you're just looking around and everybody's like wow look at that he's a dreamer and you feel like yeah look at me god's gonna do big things through me you know what i'm saying we're gonna see big things happen in my generation and we're gonna we're gonna you know and everybody kind of starts out a little idealistic right and they're just we're excited though we're excited because and this thing is on right nobody's gonna get this thing off easily right and then after a while we start getting a little hot and you're like man this is kind of awkward right you know just day after day after day you live this life this is you you can't look to the right or left because your head can't move right because your dream it's there and your prayers and after a while you're like god what's the deal i why why did you have me put this on and when you know god's like i didn't have you put that on actually you put that on and you're like god where's the pool why am i so doggone sweaty why is it so hot why is iowa so boring why does this car seat feel so constricting ignoring the fact that our life jacket has anything to do with it and pretty soon our dream starts irritating everyone else in the car come on if you don't know who you are your friends do your family does have you experienced this okay now this is what i like to call dream disease dream disease it's what happens when our dreams our theology the way we think life should work as opposed to scripturally we have our view of reality instead of god's view of reality our view of what really is going to lead us to life god has his view right our expectations our timelines they become toxic our worldview is a toxic worldview and sometimes our worldview is in fact in sync with the bible but our timelines are out of sync right and the sad thing is by the time we've contracted dream disease our coworkers know it our family knows it the church knows it a lot of people know it why because here are the symptoms we're constantly complaining about something complaining is a symptom of being out of sync with god actually it's it's a symptom of being um like opposite of god okay if you re if you do a bible study on complaining in the old and new testament [Music] tough stuff we constantly complain about the drivers in our lives whoever we perceive the drivers are politicians family members co-workers maybe even god right we start complaining about the driver and then the second thing that we do is we constantly pray prayers that are like this are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet it hijacks our lives we're always praying for circumstantial things okay actually our relationship with god becomes hijacked with this singular obsession just like my son daddy don't you love me you're driving but you're not doing it you're driving but you're not doing it you know what i'm saying and and when we have dream disease we're never praying god how can i serve you more god do you do you want to add an extra 13-hour leg and maybe pick up some more people to enjoy the swimming pool we're never thinking about other people we're never thinking about the mission it's always this kind of self-centered narcissistic me and my issues and and you know again we want everyone to kind of play into our victimization we all have dream disease you see it's always it's circumstantial happiness that's why okay i can't preach anymore like this this is like ah no seriously okay so like in my book my last book broken escalators actually wrote that the surest way to know if you're uh if you're promotable from a spiritual standpoint from a biblical standpoint if you're on the fast track towards promotion versus demotion all you got to do is look at your prayer life okay and if 90 of your prayers are asking god for circumstantial things it's usually evidence that you are out of sync with god in other words you're asking god for things god doctor my circumstances if that's a that's a sign we're out of sync with god see conversely 90 of our prayer life should actually be dominated by thanking god for things just constantly god i'm so grateful that you even allowed me to be born in this country god i i'm so grateful that you even allowed me the health that i do have god i like we should be thanking god for things we should be magnifying god which is making god bigger than our problems lord i'm so grateful that you are ten times more powerful than all of the world's politicians put together i am so grateful that you are bigger and that you have greater wisdom than we're magnifying god or or or if you think about healthy prayer life it's also listening to god it's just us sitting there god if there's anything you want to speak to me about some tweaks and adjustments in my own lives if there are any new desires that you want to birth into my heart if there's any people you want me to reach out to tough case scenario individuals who you just want me to love on people you wanted me to give money to people that you want me just to call them and just encourage them you know like again it's listening to god and being used by god that's what our prayer life should be dominated by and yet and yet for many of us we're just so obsessed of why isn't this happening why is this happening and then and so when when that dream disease it influ it just kind of infiltrates our lives it really boils down to you gotta you got two choices either a we submit to our heavenly father his will who's driving the car or we make life a living hell for every single person around us in the car you know what i'm talking about or we just eject ourselves from the car all together i'm just gonna quit believing in god i'm just not even going to go on this journey with god at all and clearly i'm better off just walking to my own destination it just feels faster right we end up doing that and that's why and that's such a sad place to be isn't it i've watched so many long-term christians eject themselves from the car simply because they didn't realize dream disease was actually afflicting the way they were perceiving all of reality and so listen if your prayer life is is is tweaked if it's if it's inverted like i just described i need you to just stop and take inventory of your heart because again i i think this is something that that the last couple years in american culture have really revealed whether or not we have dream disease whether or not we have our faith in the proper things and so i i want to i want to quickly meditate on a passage that will undercut this mark chapter 14. and if you haven't read it it's the story of jesus in the garden of gethsemane it was on the night he was betrayed it was it was it was right before the crucifixion it was right before he knew he would have to surrender uh and and go through the trial and get falsely accused and all of that kind of stuff so jesus knew what was happening he just did the last supper the what the communion ceremony with the disciples and we get to have a front row seat to jesus in in the midst of one of his roughest moments and jesus knows he's about to be betrayed by one of his close friends judas he knows the crucifixion is coming and watch how he communicates with his heavenly father in mark 14 verse 35 i love this he's in he's in this little prayer retreat in this little garden going a little further jesus fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him abba father he said everything is possible for you okay think about this jesus is saying hey everything is possible for you if there's a way that i don't have to go to the cross if there's another way to redeem mankind all things are possible for you i'm just going to throw that out there you're all powerful and because of that he says take this cup from me in other words don't make me have to do this don't make me have to die a miserable naked death with nails through my hands don't make me have to do it this way take this cup from me and then he says yet not what i will but what you will now what's interesting about this passage is is if you were ever out there and you're wondering did jesus ever experienced unanswered prayers the answer is yes because we see this i mean he prayed take this cup and did if i can avoid the cross then i would love it father and did did god provide another way no he did not and in a similar way i think we've all prayed similar prayers god i would really love it if you would just bring along that job that raised that spouse a little faster you know what i'm saying and we all pray and there's nothing wrong with those types of prayers in fact god loves to hear those prayers god even said always pray and never give up in other words don't stop praying those prayers if you need something in your life it's actually great that you would share it but but there is this point where that can kind of tip into an obsession where we actually are praying out of distrust and fear not out of trust if you trusted god you're just not going to waste a whole lot of time saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over again okay let me give you an example i remember early on um in the first year of our church we we did not have a whole lot of money uh my wife and i were living at poverty level in fact the only reason why we were able to plant a church is because the previous 10 years we paid off all of our cars we got rid of all of our debt we lived on nothing i mean we we never went out to eat ever because we couldn't afford it we never bought any new furniture throughout all of our 20s why because we knew we were going to plant a church at some point and we knew that hey in order to plant a church you have to be able to live at poverty level for quite some time and so we we literally were both working full-time for the church you know around 20 grand a year and uh with two kids at the time you saw the picture and and our third was on the way in two years but i you know and then and the worst of all things happened our church suburban that carried the trailer which is the only means by which we can do church it it the church suburban died and it was like one of those expenses where it was like several thousand dollars and then on top of that then you know we had the one church projector and the bulb died in it and and the i mean this is easily going to be ten thousand dollars to fix these two things and and we don't have anything i mean this is coming out of our money and we already didn't have anything and i i just i i remembered you know just kind of being so desperate like god this is so humbling like god like seriously like i know so many pastors who have all the money in the world and can't grow a church and yet god i started whining at god like god why why do we have to be suffering like this we could use the resources but you know and i finally had to stop myself and just say god i trust you god i trust you and my wife was like peter we just need to get on our knees and just pray and ask god for for deliverance and so i'll never forget we got down on our family room floor and we just prayed and and um god i just i just know that you have a solution for this you've got a way to to to solve all of this and the very next day we got a random check in the mail for the exact amount of all of it from this random couple we had not talked to in years and it came with this letter and the letter said hey peter and carolyn we heard you guys were planting a church and we just had this extra finances and the lord kind of put it on our heart the other day to send this letter in the mail and and hopefully you guys can put this to great use and i kept thinking about that like like they wrote the letter like a week before we had a problem god's eyesight his vision the seven eyes of the lord the perfect vision of god he knew exactly what was going to happen and he already had provision for us before we even knew we had a problem come on church some of you you need to chill and allow god's perfect timeline to come to pass and yeah sometimes there's a little bit of a roller coaster god was up in heaven the moment that bulb went out the moment my car died like oh you're gonna like this peter you're gonna love this one and yet i'm like [Music] you know what i'm saying like that's like like how how much wasted emotion do we have just because we don't actually trust the lord and so i i just you know listen i'm saying this because god does oftentimes show up in very very powerful miraculous ways and there are other times where god's like oh peter you're just going to have to trust me you're just going to have to stay buckled into that car seat yep it's hot yep it's sweaty and i think back on the last 17 years of our church and there were a lot of years where it was fun and there were a lot of years where it was not so fun people quitting staff leaving these types of things god what else could possibly go wrong and god's like here's five things that could go wrong and here they are boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and we're like what like i think for a lot of us we don't have a theology of pain we we think that christianity is supposed to be just like a straight line upwards that's not how the bible teaches it at all in fact actually the the bible teaches that there are crosses to bear that there are death moments to be had there are there's there's big dramat dramatic drops in the roller coaster and so ultimately we have to be able to survive some of those drops and so what do we do well let's go right back to mark 14 35. notice that jesus prayed take this cup from me but then he says yet not what i will but what you will in other words not my will but yours be done another transition another translation says jesus always finished his prayers with submission with surrender prayers in other words in those submission prayers what he was doing was he was taking off the hot swim jacket the dream and he was laying it down before the lord and saying god this is my agenda i'm laying it down again not my will it would be great if i could get a pool today but you know what not my will but yours be done and guess what happened the power of the holy spirit so fell on jesus that moments later when he was betrayed he was able to heal a guy's ear zap it back onto another dude think about it in the very moment his darkest moment instead of being a crazy dude he was actually a blessing to other people what if god could use you in your darkest moments like that god wants to use you to do miracles even in your worst years ever and i i think it works the same for us there's some of us we're waiting on a spouse a job a physical healing maybe you're waiting to be pregnant waiting for a long-term dream to happen and god says to you his word to you is this he hears you matthew 6 8. he knows what you need even before you ask and his eyes his perfect vision has already gone out in front of you and he's rejoicing in the days of small beginnings and if you could just take that deep breath and just trust him in that one area i'm just telling you it's not going to always work the way you want it but when it does happen it's going to be better than you want because here's let me just end with this here's what happened at the end of that road trip that eight-hour car drive to kansas city that day eventually eventually my son got to see that glorious pool he had a swimsuit on he had his blue life vest on and he got to see those mystical blue waters filled with pea and chlorine but uh but in his eyes this was the dream right this is it he made it he made it and you guys i wish you could have seen the look on his face when we cannonballed into that pool and we did canaan ball i was like after that drive i'm like i'm ready you know i was like i don't care uh and to him though it wasn't merely the pool that that that was bringing the joy in his life i think it was the fact that i was also there with him in other words the very daddy who promised him that pool is now cannonballing into that pool with them and it was the joy of being with other people to celebrate the dream in church i just really believe your heavenly father wants to have the same kind of joyful relationship with you and right now it's kind of stressful because of of dream disease it's you're making it stressful for everyone around you and and god i just i get the sense from his heart that he just wants to affirm you today but he needs you to help him by learning how to pray a simple little prayer a little bit more often and it's this not my will but yours be done not my will but yours be done listen god's got a plan to do all sorts of crazy things with you eternally and some of those things are going to be fulfilled right here on earth when i look back on my life god has done more than i would have expected more than i deserve but at the end of the day he does need our surrender and that's the very foundation of christianity it's that hey all of us are out of sync with god none of us have a predisposition towards christ's likeness and the only way we're going to get it is by surrendering and allowing christ to live in us and through us and if that's something you're interested in but i'm just telling you today is the day to welcome to to welcome christ back into your life and maybe you've been a christian your whole life but you still got that one thing that you just obsess over it's the the first thing you think about in worship and it's the last thing you think about before you go to bed and god is just saying hey loved one i hear you would you lay it down would you lay it down and i really believe that right here and now if you would do that just have a surrender moment that some of you are going to experience that joy that life he wants you to experience so just right now close your eyes and let's just pray god you see the thing that we're dealing with you know the dreams that we have in our hearts the promises that that we're holding on to for our lives promises for joy for peace for healing and lord even if it's not happening in our timeline god we're going to place our faith back into your hands again knowing that that's where the miracle happens in the not my will but yours be done in church if there's people here who have not given your life to christ in a while just pray this after me just say this say dear jesus forgive me renew me and lead me oh and pray this pray this pray not my will but yours be done oh he loves to hear you say that he loves to hear you pray that that prayer of surrender oh the eyes of the lord are just searching throughout this auditorium searching searching hearts heavenly father you see all of us you see all of our lives just take us where we could not go on our own in jesus name we pray if you agree with that prayer say amen a man happy anniversary everybody

Channel: Substance Church

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Id: nTW1a0uEg_M

Length: 42min 9sec (2529 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021