- This weekend we're gonna talk about putting it together again
when it's all falling apart, 'cause the truth is we live in a world where things fall apart. It's called a fallen world
and so things fall apart in this world. We also have a God who's in the business of putting things back together again, both here on this earth and
all the way into eternity, both of those things are true. Yes, things fall apart, and
yes, God's in the business of putting things back together again. So we're gonna talk about what do you do when it's all falling apart? And if it's not all falling
apart for you right now just wait a little while and it will be, so you're gonna need
this message pretty soon 'cause it just happens in life, and the truth of the matter
is if it's not happening for you right now you have a friend, you have somebody in your
family that needs this message, you need to listen to it
and pass it along to them since God's put you in a place of strength where you can share it with somebody else. When you think about what
it means to fall apart, there's lots of things
that fall apart in life. A couple of verses at
the top of your outline, sometimes we're the ones
that are falling apart, it's happening inside of
us, you're falling apart, no one else may even know about it, but you'd say, yeah, I am
falling apart right now. The Bible talks about that. Psalm 119:107 in The
Message paraphrase it says, everything's falling apart on me, God; put me together again with Your Word. God's promises, God's word has the power to put us together again. Sometimes we're falling apart, sometimes, sometimes our relationships
are falling apart. The Bible says in the
Book of Luke 1:17 that God will bring fathers and
children together again. I have no doubt that
there's some dads here who your relationship
with one of your kids, it's falling apart, you'd
like to put it together again, all kinds of relationships fall apart. Marriages fall apart, moms and daughters and sons fall apart,
friendships fall apart. God wants to put those
relationships back together again, he has the power to do that. Sometimes it's just stuff
that falls apart in our lives, like a business that
falls apart or a ministry that falls apart, or
sometimes it's very practical, very real, you find yourself in the midst of a natural disaster
where because of a fire or a flood literally
the house that you had, it's falling apart, or
the city that you were in, it has fallen apart. That's what happened to
my wife Chaundel and I. Many years ago we had a flood
destroy a town that we were in and it all fell apart,
and God gave us a promise during that time that we've
held onto in the years since for all kinds of falling apart situations. It's the next verse in your outline, the Bible says, Nehemiah 2:20, the God of Heaven will help us succeed. We, His servants, will start rebuilding, and what is it for you? For them it was a wall, in Nehemiah's day they had to rebuild the
wall around the city. What is it for you that needs
to be rebuilt in your life? I wanna tell you a little bit of the story of what happened to us 'cause it's really what I'm gonna talk
about today is based on, and it's not just my story,
it's also Chaundel's story, she happens to be here,
so if you don't mind I'd like to bring her
out for just a minute to help tell this story. (applause) Hello beautiful. (laughs) - On February 20th, 1986 a
levee broke near our home which at the time was in
Marysville, California up above Sacramento, North of Sacramento. I cleaned house all day to prepare for our women's ministry meeting that was gonna be at our house that night, and Tom being the wonderful
husband that he is said, let's go to some fine
dining establishment. - Carl's Junior, yeah. (laughter) Totally fine. - And figure, you know, so that
we can keep the house clean. So we did go to Carl's
Juniors and we should've known that it was, something was
up when it was pretty empty. I was busy taking care of our son Ryan that was 16 months old at the time, and Tom said, shh, shh, listen. And we overheard on somebody else's radio that the levee had broken
and that our whole area was being evacuated, and
they said oh you don't need to worry, we don't, you know? And I said we live there. And so you know, I wanted
to go right back home, but there was a bridge
between us and our home, and so we couldn't. And my first thought was
oh well we need to tell the women that we're
not having the meeting, and Tom said, they'll figure it out. (laughter) - So literally all we
had left were the clothe on our back and the car we were driving, and we, we drove our Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry. I mean that was us, the
song is about, about us. (laughter) - And it doesn't apply, the
levee was very, very wet. (laughter) But anyway, we turned the other direction and went to a church member's home and asked if we could spend the night and we ended up staying a week. Then we would anxiously watch the news for a glimpse or maybe, you
know, hoping or dreading for a glimpse of our neighborhood, and sure enough in a couple of days we found on the front page of the paper was a picture of our
home which we figured out was our next door neighbor's, and the water was to the roof line. - So I was, I was digitizing
some old VCR tapes. Remember VCR? A couple, a couple months back, and found some news footage
that people had sent us, so here's a couple of
clips up on the screen of what happened. - [Chaundel] The water was
to nine feet at our home, the air pockets kept it off the ceiling so we got to save the
ceilings and the roof, but we made lots of trips in by boat trying to wade in waters
that was very cold, you know, above our waist,
to try and pull out things like computers and salvage what we could. And then they began to pump the water out so we had to, the first
job was to, you know, get all the junk that was
ruined out of our house and our street looked like a war zone, there were literally 20 foot high piles in front of everybody's house of all the destroyed
possessions and stuff. And then we had to gut the house and take everything out
of it and then rebuild. It was hard time, it was a hard time. I had a home based bookkeeping service and Tom, our church was also involved because it was half a mile from our house and the buildings were destroyed so we couldn't meet in them anymore, and so every area of
our life was affected. It was a huge financial
loss because we didn't have flood insurance, we
didn't know that you had to have separate flood insurance and nobody around us had that. My first grief was the
fact that we weren't home when it happened so we
weren't able to gather any irreplaceable things. Tom was really wise and
comforting and he said, we were all together
which was really important and that he wouldn't have
allowed me to take time to pack anyway because even
then I was not a fast packer. (laughter) And the thing was that we
had our precious baby boy and he was much more important
than his baby pictures. - So we started to
rebuild, church and home, in our home it was months
and months and months we were out and rebuilding,
and finally when we got some subfloor down and had
water at least in the bathtub we moved back in. - People were surprised that our church continued to meet, well
how could you have a church without a building. - Saddleback has, that's for
sure, that's how we grew. - We already knew the
example of Saddleback and we go, this is not a
problem, we can do this. And we began to meet with together with a fairly small group
of people and in homes and then in our local community college and it was a precious time, it was a very, very difficult time. Several other of our members
had damage to their homes and but we joined together
and that verse that Tom read, the God of heaven will give us success, we his servants will start rebuilding, was just an amazing verse for us. And a year later we bought
property for the church near the freeway and built
a new worship center, and it was, it was an exciting time even though it was a
really, really hard time. What did we learn through all this? God taught us so, so much. That's why Tom wrote the book. (laughter) (applause) - You know, I've been
thinking for 30 years about how do you put
it back together again, and it's not just a
house, I'm a young pastor, just five years, and I'm
trying to lead this church and how they put their
lives back together again. I started to study the Book of Nehemiah because I knew he'd had to put
a wall back together again, I thought maybe there's
some lessons there, and those lessons I taught them
and myself at the same time were invaluable, and I've
learned in the years since that it's not just a house
you have to put back together again, the same truths from Nehemiah fit if you're trying to put a
relationship together again or a business together again
or a life back together again. So we're gonna share about
this for the next few minutes, I can't possibly pack all
that I've thought about this the last 30 years or
I've been writing on this for two and a half years into one message, but I think I can give us an overview that can give you some hope. And because we can't do
it all in one message Chaundel and I really want you to be able to study this in your small groups, because we know if you study
it for seven weeks together and talk about it some
real change can happen. So we have bought books
so that our small groups can study this and
they're available for you on the patio afterwards. Unfortunately, more groups
are taking advantage of this than we thought so if when you go out you can make sure you just
take the number you need for each couple in your group
and leave as many as you can for other people, that
would be a great thing. But really the heart behind it is that you study this together so
that God can talk to you together about how you
can put it together again. I wanna give you a start on
this, where does this begin? And I think the starting
place, before we say anything else is to say that
putting it together again does not mean it's gonna
look just like it was, it's never gonna be just like it was, it's not rewinding and
pretending it never happened. When we had to put our
house together again it still took all the time and energy and there were still some
things that were messed up, but our house was put together again, and when you put anything together again you have to realize this is
not a matter of pretending it didn't happen, the
thing that fell apart, this is a matter of going on from there to realize God has something new to do, God has something fresh
to do in your life. It means when you put a
relationship together again sometimes it means that the
other person will say no, I don't wanna put it together again. Even in that circumstance God
can put you together again, he wants to do some things in your life. So wherever you are in this
God wants to do some work, but you have to start
with where it starts. So let's start there, how do you start? And I gotta say, I have a heart for this I think more than anything
in this process of rebuilding or putting it together again in our lives is this place that you
start, because I know so many times I've talked to people whose things have fallen
apart in their lives and they know they maybe need to restart, maybe it's a relationship, a
marriage, it's falling apart, and you're still together, but
you're not talking anymore, it's been falling apart for years and you've tried this
and you've tried that, and here comes a guy like me saying hey, why don't you try again? And you're thinking in
your mind I'd like to, I just don't have it in me. I mean I'm just worn out, I can't put it, I know I should, I know it's a great idea, I know other people have, I
just don't have the emotional or spiritual strength or
energy to do it right now. So where do you start
when you feel that way 'cause that's how most of us feel, when something has fallen
apart it wears you out physically and emotionally. Where do you start in order to begin to get the strength to rebuild? Nehemiah surprised me on this one. When I started reading what he did the first thing that he
did was not the first thing that I expected him to do. I expected him to dive
right in and get going, that's not where he started. The most important lesson
I learned from Nehemiah is in the next verse in your outline, Nehemiah Chapter one
verses three and four. They said to me, the wall of
Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire. When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, and I fasted, and I prayed to the God of Heaven. So that's where you start. When you don't have the strength to start you do those three things,
you mourn, you fast, and you pray, because out of that God can give the strength to begin. Let's take a closer look at each of those. First, mourning. Mourning is expressing your hurt to God, it's just taking the time
to say God, this hurts, God this is tearing me apart inside. Listen to why this is so important. Unless you mourn what you've lost you cannot look to the future because you'll get stuck in your hurt, that's all you'll be able to see. Unless you mourn what you've lost you cannot look to the future because you'll get caught
up in only your hurt. That's why it's so important to mourn. It's also important to mourn
because if you don't mourn you can't get God's comfort, and you need God's comfort and God's strength. Jesus taught us this, Jesus
taught us in Matthew 5:4, blessed are those who mourn
for they will be comforted. You want comfort from God? You gotta take the time to mourn. Now there's a lot I could say about this, maybe the most important thing
I could say about this is I'm the last person to be
talking to you about this 'cause I'm not very good at mourning, a lot of reasons, but two
of 'em are I'm American and I'm a man, those are two big reasons why I'm not very good at mourning. Our culture is not good at mourning and I particularly know
I'm not very good at this, I've had to learn a lot about it, I've got a lot more to learn. So we need some models for mourning and I'm not it, but I'll tell
you where you can find 'em, you can find 'em throughout
the Old Testament. In the Old Testament
there are these models for how to mourn that surprise us, that are different than we would do it, that are Godly ways to mourn, all the way from Abraham
mourning the death of his wife Sarah all the way to Mordecai mourning the loss potentially
of an entire nation, all through the Old Testament, and when you read them and how they mourn you find out they mourn
different than we do. When I mourn I wanna mourn
too fast and too clean, what I really wanna do
is just get back to work until the feeling goes away, right? But the feeling doesn't go away. When you read the Old Testament
they took time to mourn, it was days, it was weeks, it was months, it was often years, it
takes time to mourn. And also, it wasn't
pretty when they mourned, I mean they let everybody
know how they felt. A lot of us when we
mourn it's just internal, nobody else can know about it. We think that's strong, we
think that is spiritual, but it's not. The truth of the matter is the
models of the Old Testament teach us let other people know
what you're going through. No, it's not pretty, but it is healing. Unless you mourn what you've lost you're not gonna be able
to see past your hurt. So that's where you start, you mourn. Second thing you do that
Nehemiah teaches us is you fast. I mourned and I fasted. Mourning is expressing your hurt to God, fasting is focusing your heart on God. You start to focus your heart on him, you give time to focus your heart. Now let me just say at the beginning, it may not be a food fast that you do. A lot of you, you eat fast
food so you don't need a food fast, you need something different, you need something for time in your life. In fact, for many of us we
need an entertainment fast, 'cause that's taking a chunk of our time that could be given
instead to just thinking, focusing on God. Some of us just need to turn off the radio or the podcast in the
car for a couple of weeks and just use that time just
to let God speak to you. God can speak in the
quietness, God can speak in that time of focus. It's making space to sense
that God is with you. That's what happens in fast. It's making space to
focus your heart on God. Joel 2:12 talks about it and says, turn to me with all your heart, God says. With fasting, with
weeping, and with mourning. When you take the time to do
that and it does take time, when you take the time
to do that God will often first, meet you there, comfort you there, strengthen you there,
but then out of that time he will begin to give you a direction. You can't force it, it doesn't
happen as quickly as you want but he begins to give the next
step that you're gonna take, and that's how you begin,
you mourn and you fast. In the early church they
were fasting one day and they got some direction,
Acts 13, verse two. While they were worshiping
the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set
apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I've called them to. Saul is later named
Paul, Barnabas and Saul, their missionary journeys
changed the world, absolutely changed the
world, and out of this time of fasting God will often give a direction that will change the direction, the trajectory of your life. That's the power of taking
some time to focus on God. So God's giving you some direction, then you need to do the third
thing and that is praying, praying is asking for help from God, saying God I'm not
gonna do this on my own, you're giving me direction,
I'm not gonna run off on my own now and do this,
I need your strength. The most powerful one
word prayer I believe is the word help, that
is a powerful prayer. Because it expresses, I
can't do this on my own, God I need your strength. It's all through the
Bible, Psalm 28, verse one is one of the places. Lord, my Rock, I call out to You for help. When our home and church were destroyed and I'm having to figure
out how do I lead my family, how do I lead this church,
I had a choice to make, was I gonna lean on my strength or was I gonna lean on God's strength. Now I know as a pastor
I talk about leaning on God's strength, but
talking about it and doing it are two different things. Whose strength was I gonna really lean on? Was I gonna lean on God's strength enough to ask for his help and also
ask for other people's help? Was I gonna lean on God's strength enough to admit my weaknesses and where I needed God's help and other people's help? That's leaning on God's
strength, was I gonna do that? I had to like just a couple
of weeks before this flood I talked in a sermon about
a guy named Gordon Bushnell, and it came back to me as
I was struggling with this. This was a guy who many years ago decided that there needed to be a
highway, 200 mile highway between Fargo and Duluth,
and the government wouldn't build it, so he decided
I'm gonna build it myself. So he goes out and with
just a number two shovel and a wheelbarrow and an
old John Deere tractor he starts to build this highway. So when I saw the news story on him he'd been working on this for 20 years and he'd built nine miles of the highway, only 191 to go, and
he's like 70 years old, I don't think he's gonna make it, right? And there's something
in us that wants to say, I wanna be that kind of guy. I mean he did it, he,
nobody else would do it and he did it all by himself. But I wanna remind you that all by himself all he got was nine
miles, he didn't finish all that could've been
done through his life because he did it all by himself. God wants to do such
great things in your life. How do I know, some of
you, you look at your life and you go, I have built my nine miles and you're pretty proud of that nine miles and it's a good nine
miles, but I'm telling you with God's help, with God's strength you can't imagine what he
wants to do in your life, you can't imagine what he
wants to rebuild in your life. That's what happens with the power of God. There's a prayer I pray for
myself and I pray for you, it's the next verse in your
outline, Ephesians 1:19. I pray that you will begin to understand, I pray that you will begin to understand how incredibly great His power is to help those who believe him. He's got power for your life,
he's got help for your life that you cannot imagine,
so that's how you start, you mourn, you fast, you pray, out of that you begin
to get some direction and you get started in that direction, and then you hit the next place. If you're gonna rebuild
you gotta figure out how am I gonna keep going, how
am I gonna keep going in this because any rebuilding,
a relationship or a house or a business, whatever
it is, it's a project, it's a big project, it's
gonna take a lot of time, and you're gonna need energy,
you're gonna need strength to make it through. Where do you find the
energy to keep going? There's a lot of places you
find energy to keep going in life, but as I was walking
through what Nehemiah did to keep energy I found a couple surprises, there was a couple surprising places that you can keep energy
going as you're rebuilding. Let me share with you a
couple things that Nehemiah teaches us, number one, you
take time to say thank you. You wanna keep energy up in life? You take time to say thank you, because great energy flows into your life when you encourage, when you
say thank you to other people. Great energy flows into your life when you say thank you to God. The apostle Paul who had a lot of energy and really changed the world, he was very, very fond
of saying thank you, it was one of the habits of his life. Romans 1:8 he writes to the book, the church in Roman, he
says, first I want to say that I thank my God through
Jesus Christ for all of you, because people everywhere in the world are talking about your faith. So at first I gotta
say that's true of you, Saddleback Church, people
everywhere in the world are talking about your faith, and those of you who have gone
around the world know this, if you haven't, when
you go around the world, you see other churches, they
talk about Saddleback Church, and they talk about your changed lives and they talk about you trusting God to do things that no one else could do. They talk about the fact
that you've become unselfish and you care about the community and you care about the world. They're talking about your faith. When you see that happening
you thank God for that and then you thank the person for that. Paul does this again with the Ephesians. In Ephesians 1:16 he says, I couldn't stop thank God for you - every time I prayed, I'd think of you and I would give thanks. So notice what Paul's doing here, he is telling them that
he thanked God for them and in that he's also thanking them. The thanks goes both to them
and to God at the same time, that's not a bad way to do it. Yes, you should thank God
for other people in prayer, but why not tell 'em? You think well they'll get prideful. They need the encouragement,
let me just tell you. Why not tell 'em that you
are thankful for them? So who do you need to write a
note of thanks to right now? Who do you need to write a
text of thanks to right now? And you wanna know what
really gives great energy, what really is a game changer on this one? When you are feeling unappreciated, when you feel like nobody's thanking me, and some of you are
feeling that way right now, when you feel that way you think, if I'm feeling like nobody appreciates me, guess what, there's probably somebody else who's feeling like
nobody's appreciating them, and I'm instead of having a pity party which is easy to do when you're
feeling underappreciated, instead of that I'm gonna
find somebody else to thank. I've done this many, many,
many times in my life, that's because I felt
unappreciated many times. Haven't we all? I mean what's wrong with us? We don't get a sense of
appreciation every single minute sometimes we feel like, how
come they didn't thank me? That's just our human pride. We're gonna feel that way sometimes. So when you feel that way
you find somebody else to appreciate, and when
you appreciate them God's gonna pour new
energy into your life, you lift somebody else up. So you choose to appreciate,
you choose to say thank you, and then you do a second
thing, you choose to celebrate. Choose to celebrate God and who he is, choose to celebrate all that
God's put into your life. We get this idea sometimes
that we're gonna rebuild something, we're gonna put
something together again and we get so intense
about it that we think I'm gonna celebrate
when the project's done, and I'm saying to you celebrate
all the way along the way 'cause you need the energy
all the way along the way, don't wait till it's done to celebrate, celebrate every day. Because in some ways
spiritually we're like a battery that's being drained and some of you, you're Energizer Bunnies, I know, you can keep on going and going and going, but even you, you're
gonna run out of energy, it might take a year, but
you're gonna run out of energy. Celebration, celebrating God and who he is and celebrating all the things
he's put into our lives, that's what gives you
the strength and energy to keep on going on. We celebrate lots of things and we should, everything that God's made,
everything that we enjoy in life we should celebrate,
but one of the things to remember is that at the
center of all celebration is worship, because
everything you celebrate, if you're celebrating your
family, God made your family, celebrating your health,
God gave you your health, celebrating some victory at work, God gave you the idea, God gave
you the strength to do that, so at the center of all
celebration is worship. The Bible says in Psalm 106, verse one, we will celebrate and praise you Lord, you are good to us, your love never fails. I love those phrases, you are good to us. Your love never fails. You can celebrate that no matter what. I don't care what you faced this week, those are things that you can celebrate. Probably the most familiar
verse in the Book of Nehemiah is about celebration. Have you heard this verse? Nehemiah Chapter eight, verse 10 says the joy of the Lord is your strength. That one's worth treading together, would you read it with me? The joy of the Lord is your strength. You want the strength
you need to keep going? Joy is your strength. Joy gives strength. Now I want you to know
this really carefully, it's the joy of the Lord
that gives you strength. It's not the joy of you
that gives you strength, so this is not you trying
to manufacture joy somehow. I gotta have more joy so
I can have more strength, no, this is you receiving his gift of joy. The gift of the fact that
he loves you no matter what, the gift of the fact that he
wants to pour his grace on you, the gift of the fact that he
has a purpose and plan for you, you receive the gift of his joy and that's where the strength comes from. Look at this next verse,
it's a verse about how they celebrated in
the days of Nehemiah when they were rebuilding this wall. Nehemiah 8:12 says, so the
people went away to eat and drink at a festive meal,
to share gifts of food, and to celebrate with great joy because it was Super Bowl Sunday. No, no, that's not what
it says, sorry, sorry. Because they had heard God's
words and understood them. Now I'm saying we should
celebrate Super Bowl Sunday, we should also celebrate
hearing God's words and understanding them. Pastor Buddy talked about this last week, that when you hear God's word and it makes a difference in your life, that
is always worth celebrating. We should celebrate everything,
you should celebrate at a ball game, you should
celebrate at a baptism, everything should be celebrated. But I've noticed something
and you've probably noticed this too, we tend to reserve our biggest celebrations
sometimes for the smallest things, and our smallest celebrations
for the biggest things. So yeah, we should
celebrate at a ball game, somebody makes a great
catch, that was awesome. But we talk about that for days, right? Somebody's baptized, oh that was cool, and then we just walk away
and sort of forget it. Why don't we celebrate that just as much? 'Cause the baptism, that changed life is gonna last longer
than that great catch, no doubt about it. So day after the ball game,
somebody made a great catch, you're standing talking
to some people at work, did you see the game yesterday? It was awesome, the catch that guy made, I'll never forget it, it was unbelievable. The day after the baptism,
why don't we do that? You're standing with some
friends at work and you say, did you see that baptism yesterday? It was awesome, I just
couldn't believe it, God could change that guy's life? I couldn't believe that he could do it, I'll never forget it. Why don't we celebrate
the big things more? The things that are really gonna last. Celebrate it all because
out of this celebration comes a strength that we
need to keep on keeping on. Out of appreciation, out of celebration. Now one last thing to
talk about and that is, how does it last? I know a lot of people
who've done the hard work to rebuild a relationship only
to see it fall apart again just a few years later. What happened? Why didn't it last? Or I know people who've
rebuilt a business, put their all into it,
and then all of a sudden it falls apart again. Or people who've rebuilt a faith, they've rebuilt to the point
of trusting God in a new way, building new habits into their life, but they run into a wall and
all of a sudden their lives are apart from the Lord again. What in the world happens
that it doesn't last? Write this down with me. For anything to last it
must be dedicated to God. For something to last it
must be dedicated to God. I'm talking about things
lasting, really lasting through this life and lasting
all the way into eternity, and the key is dedication. Now dedication is not determination, determination is how you do it, the focus, the energy that you do it with, dedication is who you do it for. It's dedicated to God. We're gonna be watching a lot of us the Olympics over these
next couple of weeks and we're gonna see a lot
of determined athletes, they're all determined,
you couldn't make it to the Olympics without being
determined to get there. But those athletes, they're all dedicated to different things, some of
them are dedicated to the team, some of them are dedicated to themselves, some of them are dedicated to the money they might be able to
make after the Olympics, some of them are
dedicated to their family, some of them are dedicated to God, they're dedicated to different things. Those who have dedicated it to God what God does in their
lives at the Olympics it's gonna last in ways
that it's not gonna last for anybody else. Paul actually talks
about this in the Bible, they had the Olympics back
then and he talks about this, it's the next verse in your outline. First Corinthians 9:25. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a
crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown
that will last forever. So dedication is why you do what you do. If you do it for yourself
then you're dedicated to yourself, if you do it for
God you're dedicated to God. And the reason things often don't last is we did it for ourselves,
we didn't dedicate it to God. I rebuilt this marriage
because of my pride and I had to prove I could do it, or because of my hurt
and I wanted to get away from that hurt, but we really
didn't dedicate it to God. So how do you do this? How do you dedicate it to God? It's almost as if you have
this ceremony in your mind where you bring whatever
it is in your life that you want to last and you say God, here it is, open hands,
I'm dedicating it to you. You might wanna do that right
now, maybe with your marriage, maybe you've done that 100 times, maybe you've never done that,
but right now in your mind, God I dedicate my marriage to you. It's for you, not for me. It's for your glory,
it's to show the world what your love is like,
it's to show the world how you can work in two sinful people to cause us to somehow come together and be able to get along with each other, and not only that, maybe make
a difference in this world with each other. I dedicate it to you,
I rededicate it to you. Maybe it's your family,
I dedicate it to you, maybe it's your business,
have you ever done that? Have you ever said God, I
dedicate my business to you, it's yours, it's not mine. It changes everything,
you're living with open hands before him rather than closed hands. God I dedicate myself to you,
I dedicate my heart to you. Look at what we learn
from the Book of Nehemiah as they dedicated the wall
after they had built it. The Bible says in Nehemiah 12:30, the priests and the Levites
first dedicated themselves, and then the people,
the gates, and the wall. That's an important lesson. If I'm gonna dedicate anything to God I gotta first dedicate myself to God, that's where it begins. So if you've ever done
that, if you haven't you can right now. You can say Jesus Christ
I dedicate my life to you. I dedicate myself to you. I give my heart and life to you. Now here's the good news. You don't have to become a perfect person to dedicate yourself to him,
he offered himself for you, he gave himself on the
cross so that you can dedicate your life back to him. He gave himself to you so that
you can give in dedication your life back to him. He's already given the gift, so right now you just say Jesus
Christ, I give my heart, I give my life back to you. That's something you do at the beginning and then that's something
you do as a follower of Jesus Christ every day of your life. Romans 12:1 is probably the
strongest verse about this in all the Bible, it
says, so then, my friends, because of God's great
mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a
living sacrifice to God, dedicated to His service
and pleasing to Him. This is the true worship
that you should offer. I gotta do that every
day 'cause my dedication happens to leak out the back
door of my heart sometimes, and maybe yours too, so
it's a daily dedication, I dedicate it to you God. Now hold on to that outline,
'cause I got something I want you to write on the
bottom in just a minute. As we come to the end of
this I wanna just take a look at an honest question, and
that is why rebuild at all? I mean why not just
give up and start over, wouldn't it be easier? The reason you rebuild, the
reason you put it together again is because of the value
of what you're rebuilding. As I was writing this
book I did some study on the Sistine Chapel, I wanted to study the great art restoration
projects in history and the Sistine Chapel is
probably one of the greatest that was done, and so I studied how long did it take originally to paint and then how long did it take to restore. The painting, Michelangelo, a few others, they didn't do it all at once, but in the times that they did it it was about 12 years to
paint the Sistine Chapel. When you take a look at how
long it took to restore it, it took 14 years to restore. So it took longer to
rebuild than to paint it in the first place, so why
not just take some white paint and just paint over the Sistine Chapel and just paint something new. Wouldn't it take less time? The reason you don't do that is because the Sistine Chapel is invaluable, you can't reproduce it, you
can't remake it, it's priceless. So why do you rebuild, why
do you put it together again? Because you're more priceless to God than a Sistine Chapel, your
marriage is more priceless to God than a Sistine Chapel. What God wants to do in your
life as you build your business that is more priceless to God
than anything on this earth, that's why we rebuild,
because of the value of what God has put into our lives, and what he wants to do in our lives. Let me just say, I know as
we talk about rebuilding that there's some things,
some realities we gotta face. I know if you think about
rebuilding a relationship, maybe it's with one of your
kids, maybe it's in a marriage, I know that the other
person might reject you if you say I wanna rebuild,
I know they may say no. But I also know, having
been a pastor for decades I also know how many marriages,
how many relationships have just slipped into
silence and nothingness just because no one
had the courage to say, could we rebuild this? I know how many marriages could be saved if just one person had the
faith, the courage to say, could we work to rebuild this? And yeah, it takes faith,
yeah it takes courage, but God wants it to work. I also know even if that
other person says no God's gonna do some things in your life because of your willingness to begin again that's gonna bless some
other people's lives, it's gonna help some other people's lives. I know that the business
you wanna rebuild, that the ministry you wanna rebuild it's not gonna look just
like it looked before, but I also know God's got
something he wants to do as you rebuild that's gonna
bless not only your business, but also bless the world
with what God's done in your heart and your life. Chaundel and I, it might've been easier for us to just leave that destroyed house, and it was a small church,
maybe they could find another pastor, we could've
just gone to another community and found another church
and begun to pastor there, I'm so glad we didn't, I'm
so glad we took the time to put it together again,
because we're different people than we would've been, God
built our hearts, our faith. I'm a different man than I would've been, God taught me some things about
leadership and about family and about ministry and about faith that I would've never learned in my life. Truth of the matter is if you're gonna put it together again, if
you're gonna take that step in life there's something
you're gonna have to face, let's just be honest about it, you're gonna have to face your fear. 'Cause it's scary to
step out and even begin to dream again, you've
let go of the dream, you're satisfied with the no dream life, I'll just be a no dream person, no, God can't do this, or
even if he could do this, I'm not gonna put myself there, I don't wanna go through that again. And even me just talking about
this, it's scary for you, I understand that, I understand that. But I want you to know something, in fact would you write this
on the bottom of your outline. God has the answer for all my fears. God has the answer for all my fears. He knows your fears, he
knows what you're gonna face, he knows what's gonna
happen, and before it happens he has the answer, he's
gonna meet you there. When you step out in
faith despite your fear God can do some amazing things. Now I'm not a prophet, I
don't have a crystal ball, I cannot promise you what will happen as you start to rebuild,
but I can promise you that nothing will happen
unless someone takes a step of faith to say let's rebuild. I can promise you that
God will meet you there and even though I don't
know what will happen, something will happen that
will bring glory to him and that will bring into your heart a sense of God's doing
something that only he could do. I want that in my life,
I want that in your life. I have a feeling that
right now some of you there's a step of faith that
you need to take in your life so let's pray about it,
let's talk to him about it. Would you pray with me? And let me just first say, some of you, you're not at the step of faith step yet, you just need to start,
you don't have any energy, you don't even know if you can rebuild. Well just start with mourning
and fasting and praying, just come to God right
now and say God it hurts. He'll hear ya, just start there. Some of you, you're at the
place where you need to step out in faith, ask God for strength to do what you can't do on your own, to have that conversation,
to take that first step, to make that first decision, to trust him. And for all of us, we need
to dedicate it to God. So right now just in your
mind have that dedication ceremony again and say God,
I'm bringing myself to you, I dedicate my life to you. And I'm bringing all the other stuff, whatever first comes to your mind, whether it's family or
business or dreams or future, God I dedicate it to you. Because you're worthy, you're
worthy of all my dedication. You're where it's all going,
you're where it's all headed, you're what it's all about so I celebrate that I can dedicate it to you, in Jesus name, amen, amen. - Thanks for checking out
this message on YouTube. My name is Jay and I'm
Saddleback's Online Campus Pastor and I would love to invite you
to join our online community. There are three ways you
can take a next step. First, learn more about
belonging to our church family by completing Class 101 online. Second, don't do life alone anymore, by getting into an online only small group that meets on platforms like Skype, or learn more about hosting a group with your friends in your home. Third, join our global Facebook community to connect with others
with the online community and be more engaged in the day to day. To take any of those next steps
visit saddleback.com/online or email online@saddleback.com. Hope to hear from you soon.
