Dreaming With God | Shawn Bolz | Sojourn Church Carrollton Texas

thank you guys so much wet sit down well I have had a good time in Texas it's been a marathon in the last two days I have some dear dear friends here and my family's here and we came in because of our season of life we had to come in really short just for the event and so I didn't get to spend a lot of any one-on-one time what's really anybody which is unfortunate I rarely would do that we would always schedule something to be able to spend more time but we just moved into our house and my wife leaves for her only ministry trip this year when I get back so I like literally cut back and she leaves and I do daddy duty but I want to just introduce and say hi to my mother-in-law Lisa right back here at least a wave and then my aunt Gina her sister right back there and I just love you guys thanks so much for coming tonight and it's Jimmy there too oh you are I'm sorry then my Uncle Jimmy right there so sorry Jimmy I didn't know you're there but I just love that our family's here well we have a little adventure to go on tonight and I'm excited about this because just coming to southern church these guys are so amazing and so you have an impeccable reputation amongst all of our friends just you're so loved and you've built for so long with so much integrity and credibility and I just believe I mean I love the redesign like I saw you guys redesigned it was already nice before but I love your redesign and I feel like God's redesigning a lot for this church and the D s plans for you and I just felt like I was impressed with there's a plan on how to not just come into the future but to multiply everything that's already happened in such an exponential way and I feel God's really there's a blessing 2018 as like a pivot year for what's coming and I feel like there's new strategies I feel like you guys might have run out of a lot of the old because you're running into a new like there might be a gap between the old and the new but it's God's creating space so that you can dream and think and plan and so I just want to give you guys just a little encouragement as a church because I feel like something is on the horizon and even 2019 and 20 and coming into 2021 as a church there's gonna be such an outpouring of leadership development and of people going out I saw like it going out from here and so he's really preparing you for it even greater work than what you've already been doing and so I'm so encouraged to be here and be able to tell you some good news and for the leaders here I just love you guys and the worship team is always great here this is like such that you guys are blessed like I don't know if you know this it's it takes it takes most places awhile to get there and it's usually after three or four conference sessions not church meetings and they start they're wrong I don't know if it's just that you you just have you carry the place all the time so you're just like we just enter I'm with you when you get up on the platform with your team like well some are like we get the benefit of the fact that that's just where you live seriously like wait I'm like this is I'm in the back room I didn't stay in the worship 10 the whole time here but I'm like we're literally watching we're trying to have a conversation was like this isn't working you know so we just came out we're like forget it this is too good we can't miss this you know most people pay a lot of money to get like Conference worship leaders to come for a special moment and you guys have this in your lifestyle and this is crazy and I mean and I mean that for the whole team not just I mean I know you're helping to lead this but it's the whole team the bass player she rocks she rocks my life where are you where's the bass player what's her name Barbara y'all know Barbara cuz Barbara is like gifted woman that that woman is like she's scary gifted I was like I want to see her cut loose cuz she was so natural just like I could do this with my eyes closed when I'm asleep all day you know like I wanted to hear what she could do outside of that I'm like whoa jazz calm okay I'll just keep encouraging people if I don't stop and it's not prophetic necessarily so I'm a pod we just came out with a new devotional and I wanted to call it a 90-day challenge but my team and my publisher was like let's make a devotional softer it's like not a challenge but it's more like you can hear from God to just take this 90 days of lessons like no I want people to be challenged and go for it but we decided to make it a devotional much softer for you but I want to encourage you like I want 90 days of your time and I want you to go on a journey if you already hear from God or if you don't hear from God regularly in your own life to be impacted to be challenged yes challenged to hear him every day and to do this as a lifestyle and if you're not in that lifestyle or maybe it's you're in a dry season you need the book and so I want to encourage you to get the book yeah we have it on a digital form as well but and you know you could you could hold this one which is nice for a lot of people might like to hold devotional so I have digital stuff too but it's hard to do I don't know maybe your digital person but I want to give this to somebody who's working on a music project that you may have laid down for a while but your reinitiated in this season who is that this is a prophetic word moving back there I'm gonna give it to you the first hand I saw so right back there Brian do want to run it back to her so this is for you and this is going to help you in your music project which is really good that the last thing is you just saw we had the keys in this economy course but we also have God's secret seek or so you don't have to have the physical copy for this to get this you can just go online and get these and what I love about the god secret C course this is a course on words of knowledge and this is for everybody it's not for it like a specialty course for certain people who are gifted this is for all of us and then I'm gonna give you the incentives through this of the theology of why you need words of knowledge in your life because it's a game-changer it's a game-changing gift and it appears over sixty nine times in the Bible and both the Old and New Testament and I excuse me I take you on a journey to where you can have this gift usefully in your life and it will engage you and culture around you so this is a hard physical copy that has the workbook in it if you buy it here you get the workbook too as part of the package for the same price as what you would buy online and then we also have it's a digital code inside that you get and so is there anybody who's leading like a prophetic ministry team or a ministry team that's going after the prophetic does that apply to anybody the woman with the glasses right here think of a blue shirt I'm gonna give this to you and you can watch it as a group you could do as a group assignment or you can do it individually yeah but I think it's it really helps a lot of groups that are going I have groups all over the world going through it that's my only advertisement I was joking on Sam from Hollywood so I'm allowed to have a we literally live in Studio City I'm like you know you have to have advertisements if you live in Studio City it's just part of it I'm just kidding let's pray for just a minute Holy Spirit you've already been here in worship we want to build off that atmosphere and we want to see whatever you want done in this room tonight to happen so we just yield we surrender God we don't want to be normal we don't want this to be the same old time we don't want this to be a nice Sunday night service we came expecting to meet with you and I pray that you would help us to identify things in our life that would be partners if we had just known how to partner them to You Lord talents and gifts and skills and dreams I pray they would help us and Jesus name so I'm a dreamer and I have seen a number of the dreams that God's given me come true and some of that was just me imagining like what would life be like if I just lived my fullness from the time I was young one of the kinds of things I'd like to go after and do and as a matter of fact I've had team members over the years who got healed of not dreaming because they go on you know journey with me and I'd say we're gonna go here and do this and we would we're gonna go here and do this we're gonna go to Los Angeles implanted church no one was doing that you know we go to Los Angeles and planets are these kinds of things and I've dreamed big dreams we're gonna impact Entertainment Street we're gonna do this we're gonna do that and we've done these things throughout the years and my dreams have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger because I'm seeing God in a bigger way and the more you partner with God the more you cooperate with God the more you you believe for outrageous things that there's no way you could do now the problem with dreamers is that a lot of people live on the broken side of dreaming or in the waiting side of dreaming or on the character-building side of dreaming and so we forget how good it gets when you actually fulfill or accomplish the dream and the other thing is that God gives us starter dreams and it becomes a testing ground for our heart just like David had you know a lion and a bear before he had Goliath you know there's their starter dreams even Moses how he had to learn how to deliver people from a land before he could deliver people into a land their starter processes and projects but I want to talk to you guys about just dreams and just God because if he's in street 20 I love the message version I also have a passion translation about this but the message version says God can do beyond what you're hoping for or imagining in your wildest dreams and if you marry that to first Corinthians 2:9 we're basically no eye has seen no ear has heard what God has in store for those who love him and if you marry that to John 10:10 that God wants to give us a life in a life abundantly that's why Jesus came in the first place and if you take those scriptural themes and you think of the God of all the universe who pre-planned your life to be an eternal life in everlasting life and he put inside he's a DNA of things that you would enjoy for eternity not just now and he put inside of you the ability to connect to people on this side of eternity who would help form in you and who you would help form the eternal and the everlasting part of your life and that there's things that we do here that are reflections they're types or prototypes for what we're gonna do forever I mean you're a forever person do you know that if you choose Jesus Christ your forever person if you accept him into your life your forever person and so many of us spend their time not on the everlasting things but on the temporal things we're just trying to get enough just do enough to the American dream or even a lesser form of dream you know I think the American Dream was a great dream for people in 1930s and 40s and 50s because there was such a poverty spirit and an atmosphere of depression that they were just trying to get homes and just get a basic education and just get a basic income and have any stability just rooted stability was the dream and to apply that same dream now would be ridiculous if we're just going for stability it's not enough like there has to be a place where our faith in God where we look at his dream over nations people groups industries and we start to see what he originally wanted in the first place we live in such a quick exchange of information we live in a time period where technology is advancing so quickly we live in a time where there's so much convenience and there's so much jobs that people used to have to do longhand that we get just instantly downloaded to our phones and our smart devices that we have so much more opportunity because we don't have to spend time and energy on so much of what our forefathers had to do even in the church our education is so high because of podcasts because of digital media because you can watch the service online right now you can watch the replay the service anytime you want you could go to Bible School just by watching Bethel just there's so night services are free you know you you can you can get so I mean Joyce Meyers will give you your first two years of Bible school just by listening to a radio program and taking about the 1930s 40s and 50s where you were usually trapped in a church because you were police to be there that's just you know like you were you went to church and that was your whole life that was that was your community you didn't look outside of it you didn't hear teachings from outside of it you might have went to a revival once a year once every five years but you didn't hear anything else but that one perspective and now everything's getting globalized even in the church and that's a good thing and a bad thing but mostly a good thing for the church because we're starting to share common ideas that Jesus came not just to restore but to transform that Jesus looked into the father's heart and he looked into his original intentions and he died that would be restored to the original plan not just to get better plan not just like we'll get him okay until we return plan but he's actually releasing all authority that the father gave Jesus to us to help over industries and to help over societies and to help all over areas of injustice but also areas of creative creativity and technology to bring about the father's original plan that's why Jesus died and raised again to bring about a plan that had been abandoned by humanity and now we get to restore the plan this takes dreamers this takes people who are willing to have risky dreams dreams and art , where people look at you in your family and go are you sure about then they're the weird one of the family they're believing for huge things and other Christians will say this about you especially other Christians will go that's a little too big I think you might have delusions of a grandeur or whatever you know the according the Barna Group Gallup polls about eight out of ten people who claim the name of Christ have very little family resemblance of Christianity intellectual understanding is permeating our generation and so Christianity is not a lifestyle but it's an intellectual choice so when you have that we have current modern-day Christianity is not reflecting exactly what it should reflect we need a shaking but the shaking doesn't have to be just a move of repentance repentance just means change changing to God's original plan not just an immorality but in everything we did a shaking up dreamers who had actually manifest what God intends right now but we have to hear what he intends right now we have to believe that little one we can get that little me can actually come into agreement with God that can actually change and have ripple effects of our whole industries whole you know reform whole church systems I love Romans 12:2 so stop imitating ideas and opinions of culture around you but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think this is that the passion translation version but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total Reformation how you think this will empower you to discern God's will as you live a beautiful life satisfying and perfect in his eyes now I don't know if you saw most recently the movie of Paul I'm so sorry god bless them for making it I love Jim Covey's so I love the crew that made it but he was the most depressed man I've ever seen Paul who talks about joy all the time even Jean James Wan like that's comes from like that Pauline thought even though it's James Rowe but it comes with like considered pure joy when you face trials like he was a happy man agamous goes don't go to Rome you're gonna die he's like I totally going to Rome God sending me to Rome I can't wait you know me like he was a happy he constantly talked about joy and suffering joy and he wants us moving here looking at going poor Paul poor Christians who are dying and the early church was so joy they actually look like they were drunk in the joy that they were in and people were persecuting and killing him and they were like they were having a great day their life was beautiful they were so happy about where they were going kill us or not we're happy because the message of the gospel is good news not bad news that makes you get somber and like the Jesus of Nazareth Jesus it's kind of scary like he makes you just feel like don't have to be really serious right now in trouble I think I'm in trouble if I'm not like Jesus Litton Jesus of Nazareth on patrol no it's a joyful message I look at scriptures like this and then I see how our culture reflects what we think the Bible is and there's a huge gap between those who are supposed to be dreamers who say when we were delivered into our dream we were like those who laughed and dreamed you know we were those who were excited about life were those who could take on the whole world and all the problems because we just were so in touch with her God's heart of joy and there's a gap between where we're at and where were where we're supposed to be and that gap can only be be crossed by those who go on a journey of learning now I said this in the the services for those of you who were here earlier but I'll actually read the statistic this is out from dr. Henry Mason who's a psychologist in a church reformer he says 90% of preachers would rate themselves in the top 10% of communicators in their field according to a poll dated with 3,000 pastors no one laughed except for two people 90% of preachers rate themself in the top 10% of their field there's no other industry that does this only preachers so that means a little preacher you've crossed you know you went by some those little churches I have no judgment it's a bit like the little 70 member Church the average pastored 9 out of 10 pastors is gonna believe he's in the top of his field and he's competing in his own mind going I'm better than Joel Osteen I'm gonna enjoy spire and there's such an elitism in that statement and then and then he wrote this to follow it saying whenever we take on the role of an expert are learning in this society right now this is a psychological study it stunts up to 90% the moment you take the title expert so 90% of church is stunted now I'm not being mean I'm just saying like if you want to grow as a dreamer but you think you're an expert and you're not in a teachable learning mode you're actually not gonna grow you're not gonna fulfill your dreams because you think you're an expert you think already doing it if you're satisfied with where you're at and it's like this is enough and that's that's a scary thought to me because I'm so divinely undone like I'm so in the journey with God that my miracles in miracles I have great miracles happening in my life right now and I'm like this is awesome now I needed another one my prophecies need more words of wisdom or also never ever achieve the prophecies I need counsel from heaven on how to do what he's told me so my my words need words my miracles in miracles I'm not like oh I got this I had a miracle how many of you've had an encounter with God and that was enough you're done has anybody ever seen Jesus here just be honest if you feel like you've seen Jesus raise your hand can you die happy now never see him again or do you go I have to see him again at some point I need to see him again like are you done hum it's cool is that something you check off your list or are you like hungry you're like I saw him and I now I need to see me I mean I everyone I'm at who's seen Jesus if they've had a vision of Jesus or some encounter they're desperate and lovesick they're not like I had enough but when it's an intellectual understanding we get a stunted gross I love the intellectual understanding but if that's it if that's all we have we our growth gets stunted the essence of measure of teachability according to popular psychology in the church this is like fuller seminary these kinds of groups is humility so the measure of teach ability is humility this basic humility isn't putting ourselves against God and saying I am nothing nor is it comparing ourselves to others trying to figure out who knows more spiritual humility says I get to become more and my deep gets to go deeper so we're not saying oh I'm nothing God I'm humble we're saying I am something and I'm somebody but I'm not that much of somebody yet am i deep is gonna go deeper and there's always a deeper place of God God is creating teachable moments have you heard this term teachable moments it was used mostly in education but it was more recently using the last 10 years or so by the Obama administration I know it's a cuss word in Texas I might have just lost half the room I said Obama I love Obama oh no I'm gonna get shot I'm just kidding but but Obama administration to use this teachable moments means that a moment in time where everyone can learn something because either something broke down or something was highlighted or something it was successful and you can like these boy warriors were coming back from with PTSD from war zones and from the military they were creating teachable moments by having one person who'd already expressed a healing or overcoming of PTSD would share with others that had PTSD and they would see their story in him and they'd be able to understand how there could be growth past PTSD and they created teachable moments with military and they called it that in the military we're gonna create teachable moments to show them how they can learn about how to overcome by and sharing these moments with each other so there's both that not negative but the more downside teachable moments where you're learning from negative history and there's also positive teachable moments well tactically we're in a teachable moment in the church because there's such a decline in the Western world in the church and 50% of Christians in America don't go to church anymore I think it Texas is probably 10 percent but you know 50 I'm just kidding it's like so many churches I look around like one there's a church everywhere there's more churches than Walmart so it's amazing but there's there there's a teachable moment because something's broken down and the thing that has broken down isn't just that the fact that there's a religious spirit or that there's a lot of whatever hierarchy or there's a lot of whatever it's not it's not the negative of the church this program the thing that's broken down the most is the fact that we have turned away from being loved based and dream based we're not a community love based like the family isn't the source of revival programs are and we've stopped being dreamers to dream that society can change so the world's not looking to the church to help solve problems anymore like in Martin Luther King's day one of the reasons why he was so fabulous was he was a minister and the church was helping to solve civil rights problems so the church was rising up to the occasion when you saw the black marches that were happening throughout the south there was always a percentage of white Caucasian people who were churched people who were walking with him and marching with them and churches were getting together and having conversations that schools were afraid to have and politics were afraid to have but churches would host forums all around the nation on how we should integrate and what integration looks like and what God's plan over civil rights was but now the church is not having those conversations we're afraid to stand up and we're afraid to have those conversations and so those people who be affected by racism are looking to the church to help solve the problem and we're no longer dreaming over civil rights as a church movement we're ignoring it or we're hiding from it or we're afraid of it instead of inviting leaders from both communities or to all kinds of communities in and having conversations we're avoiding the conversation hoping it goes away and if you look at other issues that's this one breakdown issue if you look at other issues like merits the divorce rate is similar to in the church and outside the church so people are not coming to the church to get their mayor just healed anymore it used to be that you come to church and have you just got God in your life it might help your marriage but people aren't seeing God in their lives helping the marriages of their Christian friends anymore they're seeing their Christian friends get the same divorces that they are and they have the same reasons in the same break downs so they're not trusting the institution of the church to help them but when you have dreamers who are dreaming God's dreams who are at the helm of different programs and churches and different positions and churches but really just in Kingdom we have dreamers in the kingdom coursing what was God's dream over family what is God dreaming over marriages to me the next great revival is gonna look like family people are gonna go what does what does a healthy family look like how do you manage a kid with a TV how do you manage marriages with problems how do you do it and the church will have answers and it won't just be the top ten pop or psychology answers we're gonna have answers because God's gonna be living in us in our churches and we're gonna be managing the issues not just with the top ten list we're gonna be managing with the strategy that comes from relationship with God but it takes streamers a lot of times when we think of dreamers we think of people who dream of possible dreams like you know we've seen in the past like I'm gonna have a healing evangelist a ministry or you know you hear popular statements from people like pastor Bill Johnson who says we're gonna have a cancer-free zone and I feel like God wants to take us past those dreams that Pastor Bill's rooms are bigger than but I'm saying like we'll hear that and we'll go oh I'm just gonna pray for that in my state I'm gonna pray for cancer free zones but God's dream over cancer and our generations to kill it and he wants to use medical science to do it not just the healing power to do it he actually wants to give sons and daughters the ability to pray into science and believe for the full cure of cancer in our generation so when we're talking about dreamers we can't dream little dreams that are just self-absorbed about our revival in our churches and our ministries and our things that we're doing in our families we have to dream the dream of God our culture and society what was God's dream over Texas where are we falling short doesn't matter as much as where we can go I believe that we're on the state of actively looking at being undone so that God can come in the midst of our cry to say give us your dreams give us your desires because ours are not working and we're really excited about what you can do there's prototypes for us and that's why we we sometimes get excited when we hear other things that are working for other people sometimes you hear stories in society of people having breakthrough in business where people haven't breakthrough in entertainment or in education you hear those stories and it's like us to God like I just recently heard a story in California of all places of a Christian school that's curriculum has been so successful in over 20 years they've had eighty percent full college graduation after people graduate the elementary junior in high school I've had 80% full college graduation for over 20 years finally their public school district was like help and it's a big school it's not like a small alternate member school took a big school with over I think 1,200 kids and it's in the Central Coast in Silicon Valley sorry and so the public school district came after them and said can we see what you're doing like we're breaking we're broken can you help us and they sat down with and they said well here's all the stuff that might help you it's not all the curriculum but it's also the culture of our school you don't have to preach Jesus to have this but it is coming from a kingdom Foundation and it started to work so well in their region that they're now their region has promoted them to meet with the education administration of California and they're now adopting this curriculum is primary curriculum in a lot of schools and it could be the primary curriculum very soon those are dreamers and it doesn't have to be grandiose it could just be you know I love some of the most famous kingdom people in history who just you know Rosa Parks who just sat on the bus in the wrong place period because she felt it was right you know it doesn't have to be like I'm going after the whole thing it's just doing what's right in the midst of learning how to identify a dream which is the whole process under itself once you have a dream one of the hardest parts is that there's an incubation period the incubation period kills most dreamers mostly because we're impatient mostly because patience is not the virtue of our culture my brains has a media gratification and mostly also because we don't wait very well we wait very passively instead of instead of actually working are waiting yeah a lot of Christians when they think they're waiting on the Lord it means that they're gonna sit down and just pray I was in the House of Prayer movement for quite a while and and and a good portion of House of Prayer people were waiters but they were the wrong kind of waiters they were like I'm just waiting on the Lord and then there's elements like Mike Bickle who are like I'm waiting on the Lord and I'm doing something about it why I'm waiting like I'm waiting actively not passively I'm waiting of like with effort not waiting without effort you know and a lot of people and they look at that incubation period they think that they're gonna get in a cocoon and nothing's happening but when you look at even of what's happening in a cocoon for an actual butterfly that caterpillar is spending more energy in that time it will ever spend again in its whole life did you know that more energy in that one time of being a caterpillar making its cocoon and being you know in the the incubation stage that we'll ever spending in its life many of us get into waiting and we actually go into passive energy spending instead of active and I'm gonna encourage you if you're a dreamer and you're saying god I don't know what to do in this stage it actually takes more partnership in your faith than less my wife and I were given a word actually were given 47 words believe it or not about one of our destiny things were supposed to do which is to buy a property yeah and the words were all complimentary and it was very it was it was pretty much a road map but without details and so my wife I mean if we live in Los Angeles so my wife is like I'm gonna go look on Zillow you know so she just started the hunt you know she started from you know 200 thousand to 12 million she didn't care I'm gonna know the whole population of real estate and she would show me different things and there were so much so far above what we could ever afford it was like honey this hurts me like you're showing me stuff that like I would never want to look at because I want to look at what we could actually possibly do but we really couldn't do anything because it's LA and a starter trash home as a million dollars you know it's like for real like it's a two bedroom with one bathroom is a million dollars in our area you know so I'm like honey I don't know what we're gonna do but I just know I can't look at it I can't be part of this part of the dreaming with you I'm dreaming for a house but your process and mine are different you're looking at the whole real estate inventory of Los Angeles I don't want to look at the inventory it almost hurts my face to look at the inventory I don't want to know what's not out there what is out there I just want to I wanted to drop from the sky type moment you know and she's like but she's partnering her face and I get one in the past of any mode you know I'm like god I hope you do something cause you've given us these words in July a couple years ago it's a Thursday and the Lord speaks to me internally audibly it was so kind of him and he said it's a Thursday and he says why are you not partnering your full faith and I was like about what and he said about the house it's your listings gonna go off the market on Monday please partner he could have come to me on Tuesday and said you are done I had a house for you but it's done you little twerp and so I called my wife up and she's like I tell I'm so sorry I'm part of my face the way you have and I'm so sorry I've been passed over this promise God has given me a promise for over 20 years about a house in LA and about a property were social Stuart and I haven't partner I'm so sorry honey and I said and also we received a word from Cindy Jacobs that I'd never told you I'm so sorry for not telling you I i bundled that apology she was like that's okay about what you know so I forgot to tell you and so I tell her the word from Cindy Jacobs and as I'm telling her I said this is what she said about a house and and and one of the things that she had said she goes I see a listing and it says Hollywood history has been made here my wife starts laughing and she goes there's a house that just came up a party just came up and it literally says Hollywood history has been made here that's the listing name and everything you're describing in her word is what that the listing describes and she said I saw this listing 30 days ago and what kind of often it came back on we could have actually been pursuing this 30 days ago but she weren't partnering in your faith because we'd had the word three or four months ago I'm like oh and I just asked God in that moment how did I get here because I'm actually a faithful person how did I get here and I just realized like there are so many good things that were happening there's so much synergy but there's also so many disappointing things that hadn't happened and and I felt like you know a lot of times we were prophetic or prophet or those kinds of people your life is a signpost and I knew in this moment my life is a signpost that Hope deferred had made part of my faith from sick but I did have longings for Phillips and we're in our promised land we're in the best season of our lives but in the midst of the best season of our lives what did the children of Israel do when the reporters came back from the Promised Land they all went oh that's really hard it's so it's so populated like it's so how could this be our promise that there's so many people who live there and there's so much stuff happening and they're giant people like we're little and then you have Josh mccoon we're like it's amazing there's oil there's honey this man there's milk everywhere it's beautiful to see these are ours they're beautiful they're like there's people living in those cities oh it doesn't matter they're so beautiful they're ours but there's all these reporters that that they couldn't see what the right lens because of where their faith was because of what wasn't happening for Israel God and I just believe if we're gonna become dreamers we have to allow our lens and how we see and our report of how we're letting our heart live come clean if you're gonna be a dreamer you have to like literally condition yourself to choose differently to renew your mind like the scripture I used earlier to allow your mind to not see what's not happening does that make sense to you you don't look at what's not you don't look at who's not you don't look at what didn't work for you before you know the world that's how they learned well this didn't work this didn't work this didn't work so we won't do that again God a lot of times is like hey all that didn't work now do it again and watch I'm gonna make it work he's so different like we're like I'm trying to learn from my mistakes god I can't do that again he's like no now it's gonna work I wanted to show you it wouldn't work without me and that's hard we're like did you put me up to this feel you're know God's not like that but you feel that way you're like wait a minute like what is all this the hardest thing about a Christian life is that it's a relational life and it's subject to God's interpretation not ours and sometimes he withholds information to train us and teach us his goodness and as a dreamer that's one of the hardest parts of incue bation is that in the incubation when you're incubating something if you're not spending energy becoming something then you atrophy and you actually become the opposite you actually die because when you're in that cocoon stage you either become something or you fade away outwardly it looks like there's no movement at all so no one else can tell if you're growing or not people like their foot they're fine they're good have you ever had someone do that like your best friend is like oh they're great and you're like inside going I'm not great this is really hard I don't have to communicate this I guess I'm the strong one in all my relationships I don't know how to even tell you my needs my friends and family think I'm great I'm not great but by EM wordly you can tell there's something happening and you have to learn how to communicate your needs you have to learn how to communicate where you're at you have to learn how to be honest with yourself so you be honest with others and that's really hard for Christians because we are falsely positive all the time we're hyper positive I'm okay bad things happen your world's falling apart you're like I'm good though I can't tell you how many times is the pastor of Christians would tell me the worst stories and say but I'm all good like you were not all get your life is trashed and you suck and I've been there and I might be there right now but we put a positive spin on everything because we think that that will solve a problem when honesty one vulnerability is what solves problems in the kingdom right assessment solves problems I love Romans 12 where it says true worship you have to offer yourself not too low and not too high but just at the right place you have to have a right assessment to be a living sacrifice to God you have to be able to say this serie is undone and God unless you come in this area I don't know what it's gonna look like long term and this area god this is so strong and I love this and I celebrate this but it feels like there's a weirdness between the gap of this goodness in my life and this hardship in my life what do I do in that gap depend on me relate to me know me and don't pretend this is okay and don't over exalt this just just be and Christians have a hard time with that kind of vulnerability Galatians 5:22 through 24 this is the message version but what happens when we live God's Way he brings gifts into our lives much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard orchard orchard I can't talk things like affection for others exuberance about life serenity we do out but willingness to stick with things oh please Lord let Millennials read this a sense of compassion in the heart and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things in people we find ourselves involved in loyal commitments not needing to force our way in life able to marshal and direct our energies wisely that's the fruit of the Spirit according the message version the passion version is even better I don't have a right here also I agree that can you imagine when you're in that incubation period the fruit of the Spirit is popping up in you when you're not passive but you're actively waiting and you start to know how to how to use your energy you know time is our greatest commodity in our generation not money and all of a sudden you know how to spend your time and people are like I need to spend time with you like I don't have it I am like I have to say no because I know exactly how to marshal my energy in this or people are like hey you want to do this you're like I will do that because I know where I'm at you know or willingness to stick to things I know a friend of mine is a director in Hollywood and he was working in this company there was just a lower hireling in the company and the company went through a financial restructure and went through a hardship and lost some of their contracts and everybody just started jumping ship because it's a good company and so people people were getting good jobs and then they were able to transfer to better jobs because people in the industry need those kinds of quality workers and so my friend he thought the Lord said be loyal stay here and he's like but lord I think I'm gonna demoted pay wise not pay grade and he was just be loyal be loyal the next year give me a year only Christians make these decisions because they're stupid and crazy so he's loyal the whole year and at the end of the year the owner of the company and the CEO come to him and say we need to talk to you he's like yes and they said we know you're not qualified for this but we believe in the way you've been loyal and honoring us will you become the vice president and could you do this and this and this and we just got five contracts for 300 million dollars can you help us he went from like a lower hireling to I mean I think it was like 10 times as pay it was so much more just because of faithfulness and his only explanation for faithfulness is Galatians 5 it was a fruit of the Spirit that came up in and where the Lord said hey will you obey me and just have a tea to stick with things that I put in your life even when they don't make sense and Christians we get a different result and a different opportunity but we have to take a different course and if you're dreamer and I know this went a long way from I love Ephesians 3:20 because wild dreams of your dreamer there's a process to bringing about the dream that you're not in control of and it's really hard for Americans to do that because we're used to being in control of our phones of our marriages of our day timer or planner we're used to being controlled every aspect of our life and when we have to give God real surrender and control we're not always in we're like wait a minute this is too hard my income might have changed for a little while my security might have changed from while I was told as a Christian I'm supposed to have full security all the time and gotta hike I actually don't give you a security blanket all the time URI security is eternal not natural and so I may actually require something of you that's different than your friends and may challenge your relatives sorry let me just skip ahead here the character of teachability has two aspects to it if you're teachable you'll know it one is being a learner in every situation so people are teachable you can feel they're learning they're absorbing they're a sponge have you felt someone who's a total sponge if you're a leader isn't it great like whether it's in a business if you're training somebody if you're an education whatever it is isn't it nice when someone's really learning because you could feel it as a pastor of a church I could feel when people were learning I'm not pastoring anymore as a senior pastor as of two years ago and I now have a lot more time on my hands it's been beautiful but every time that someone was really learning it was my favorite I was like oh I love this it feels so good it's like ah because I'm a learner I'm trying to learn all the time but here's the second thing if you're a learner two aspects to it one is the person's learning in every situation and number two as they can pass on what they're learning so that's how you know you're teachable it's the character of teachability it's characterized by a learning attitude not an expert perspective and it's hard to be around people who aren't teachable they just know something it's really hard to be around them long term especially to be an underling to them it's really hard because eventually if they're not learning they've just learned as much as they can and they become an expert in something so you have to learn from them it's actually afflicting to learn from somebody who's just an expert has stopped learning it happens in the college at world all the time where someone gets their tenure and you're like okay they're just coasting now not that everyone has a tenure is coasting but people are PhDs who are just like teaching here we're just done learning they're just done they're just there they're just existing they're the worst people or how many of you have been around something like that I do like the worst people to be around that's not who you want to be around you want to be around people who are still dreaming and active in their heart and life that the world can still change in whatever industry proverbs 9 7 through 12 it says if you reason with an arrogant cynic who gets slapped in the face I'm had that happen confront bad behavior and you'll get a kick in the shins so don't waste your time on a scoffer cuz all you're gonna get those pains and abuse but if you correct those who care about life that's different they'll love you for it save your breath for the wise and they'll be wiser tell good people what you know and they'll profit from it and skilled living gets its start in the fear of God insight into life knowing the holy God now I want to say this in the context of that Luke 18 says those who have everything will be given and those who have not everything will be taken away when you're a learner you're actually excited because even if something hard comes you're not excited about that but you're excited about how God's gonna kick the enemy in the face with it you're like you were gonna use this for my good and you're gonna get justice for this and so immediately when something bad happens when you're a learner you're like what's gonna happen in my life now but if you're if you're not a learner and you feel like it's you it's a mentality that's what Jesus is talking about Luke 8 it's if you're not a learner then what happens in your heart and your mind is somebody something bad happens and I mean I could see I'm robbed again and I had two people come to my church we were in Hollywood at the time in a building called the al-rayyan and it was hard to get to at times for people on Sundays and I had one woman who come and she always had an issue she always had you know ten things going wrong on her life and she wanted to process it without any opinions giving back she didn't want me to talk to her about it she just wanted to vent and so she came in after the meeting one time and she's telling me I got a flat tire in the way here it was awful like my car's always breaking down I don't have a husband it's so hard I know that God's promised me a husband nothing's happening oh you know and my car my tire gets flattened the guy who you know stopped because in LA we had people who stopped on the side of the road and they help you the guy who stops on the side of the road he's awful and he's smelling his gross that he's perverted and I just can't stand him and I had to like sit there the whole time he changed my tire then I got here I don't even have the gas pass I missed my favorite part of you know church which is worship and I'm like things from the speaker awesome and she just keeps going on and there's nothing I can do and I'm like I need to get away this is really toxic like I need a good way and this family who's newer to us comes over and they're excited about life but he's a producer but they've they've hit a wall like he stopped working for the major company he worked for they've hit a wall financially because he felt like he was making too many of the wrong kinds of movies so he said I give you my career God do whatever you want with it so God was in a process of stripping and then rebuilding so they were in the stripping part so finance it was real hard to the point where dollars were in their account not hundreds you know not thousands of dollars and their family of five so he and his family come over to us with the guy he said hey guess what happened on the way the church it was so cool we got a flat tire and this guy was the guy who came by to fix our flat tire for us because we didn't have a jack from her car we don't know what happened to it and he fixed her flat tire and we all got a word for him we're like this is God like God's gonna use us for good we're gonna minister this guy we got a word for him and he wasn't a Christian he got saved right now I'm worried he came to church with us after that and now we're gonna go home and have lunch we don't know we can't afford lunch and he's broke too so we're gonna go to the park and we're gonna have a picnic and they're telling me right in from the guy and gods like it's gonna be so good cuz look at the day God gave us and this woman's having to listen to all this and those who have everything is given and those who have not everything is taken away when you're a dreamer if you're a have-not dreamer you only dream a little bit but if you're a half dreamer then everything that happens in your life God can use it to work you into a higher place of the dream and every injustice happens this means more multiplication on the dream side and everything that God is doing in your life he makes meaning of which were the only people group that there's a promise to make meaning of everything in her life he will use everything to have meaning for you every every weapon of the enemy that comes to you or against you will be broken and will have to serve you and if for some reason something gets through we don't always understand the mystery of death someone dies in our midst who's a Christian who was believing for big promise their promise is not left empty and void but it's now distributed amongst others to be multiplied they're calling lands on someone else and somebody else gets a double portion they're gonna live out their calling and then they get multiplied to live out more and now we have thousands of years of Christianity where they they were made to or they were left incomplete so only with future generations could their promise be brought into fullness these people who stood in great faith for great dreams didn't get to see the fullness but only in partnership to us and all future generations will they be made complete well I look at that and say they're up in heaven now praying around us believing for us sending heavenly provision to us they're testifying says in Hebrews 12:1 Lord give them more Lord everything that you promised us let them live out and you have like a rain from heaven coming down that's about to be a tipping point for generations it's going to come down and we're gonna see a radical radical radical shift and transformation over the entire world because Jesus's inheritance is at stake dreaming costs everything but man it's worth it and if you dream with God you'll never be left undone or incomplete but you have to wait and you have to learn and you have to go on a journey where you have more than you have not because when you have even you don't have you still feel like you're multiplying and Christianity in America doesn't always feel that way I feel that I feel this attitude Luke 18 more in the third world than I do here many times when I go to places of extreme poverty there's a gratitude and people that I've just shocked by it and I'm embarrassed by there's a gratitude and what God will do they'll take the same principles we have and they'll turn them into weapons in their hands that changes culture and it's our turn it's our turn to help in God's dream to dream it with them and just believe for outrageous outrageous fruit is this cool this is a great way to think so become learners if you feel like you've been an expert in something you might have stopped learning so I want to encourage you to just go you know it's nice that people call me an expert some of you are experts in something but maybe just go back in the journey of saying I I love what I've gained in this but now I can learn more but there's always something else I love I love those kinds of industries where there's somebody who's at the top of their field and then all of a sudden somebody just places them and once that you know I love that I think it's amazing like artificial intelligence right now they thought they had reached her cap an 80s and now we're at the beginning and they're going on and it's crazy what's about to happen even their artificial intelligence or the technology realm when Apple was about to fail and now you know apples at the top of their field and they're making argument of reality which would be part of our lives in the next three years if you're like what's talking minute reality you'll know because they know how to introduce it to the whole society you're already touching a phone that you may not have ever even dreamed would exist thirty years ago and there's things that are advancing right now but if you become the expert you may not learn anymore and if you don't come as a child we did that kids even today if you don't come as a child and go it's all new who knows what God will do today then you might just hold yourself responsible to be more mature than you really are and that's no fun because then you're getting to performance instead of right identity of health if I can offer anything to people it's the fact that I'm childlike and I'm always learning I'm I don't care if I make mistakes because I'm always learning I'm not talking about sin I'm just talking about like I miss in the prophetic all the time I take responsibility move on and like is there a John here there's no John in this entire room in Texas that's weird okay let's move on so I want you to put your hand in your head God give us an expanded capacity of teach ability and give us an expanded capacity to be dreamers help us to dream with you god help us to see what you see help us to believe what you believe and if there's any area that hasn't been partnering in faith help us to partner with full faith helped us to learn

Channel: Sojourn Church Carrollton, TX

Views: 25,967

Rating: 4.8486996 out of 5

Keywords: 2018.04-08 - Seeking Him-Shawn, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, Sojourn Church, Terry Moore, Shawn Bolz

Id: Ba1hCRwyyQM

Length: 51min 58sec (3118 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2018