THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE BOLD | Erwin McManus - MOSAIC

[Music] i woke up today just so excited about life excited about the future excited about all the possibilities and one of the reasons for that is is that one of the things that i've discovered in my life is that that there's a lot of things i know how to do have you figured that out there are things you know how to do there are things that other people may not know how to do that you know how to do that look really hard but they're easy for you and sometimes we step into those spaces and we reaffirm how awesome we are look i did that but every once in a while you get a challenge so big that you know it's bigger than you in fact you know you are destined for failure i'm in one of those moments i'm in one of those moments in my life where i stepped into something that i know is bigger than me i'm facing a challenge that i know is impossible for me in fact i know that unless god shows up in my life i'm going to be a public failure drowning in humiliation it's one of the most exciting moments in my life it's because it's in those moments that you realize that we have the capacity to affect change that somehow in the most extraordinary ways humans are designed to create futures and that's what i really want to focus on today because you may not really understand how the future happens and and maybe you you have a more superstitious view of the future and we add god language to our superstitions we go you know the future just happens or the future is just in god's hands or the future is in god's control and i don't have any control over that that must have been what god wanted to have happened but i want you to realize that you're designed by god to create futures and even if you're here and you don't believe in god think about this just for a moment of all the species on the planet we're the only species that can affect the future no matter how much you love and admire animals porpoises cannot change the reality of their contacts whether whether you love horses or porcupines they can never make a choice that creates a different future so if we're just a more advanced expression of all the species on this planet how in the world is it possible how did it happen that humans can actually create futures and in fact not only can we create a future for ourselves but we create a future that impacts everyone else it not only impacts humanity it impacts every other species on this planet the entire planet is dependent on the choices we make the fish that swim in the ocean and the birds that fly in the air and all the creatures that walk on the ground are at the mercy of the choices we make and yet sometimes we act as if the future is so mysterious and uncertain and outside of our realm of impact but i want you to understand that right now someone's creating a future that you will live in and someone's impacting the future that you will have to step into and so the question really isn't can humans create futures the question is what kind of future will you create so what i want you to see with me today the future belongs to the bold the future belongs to women and men who have the courage to create what they could only imagine and i'll say this a thousand times over again the future awaits those with the courage to create it so i want us to go back to these words from solomon in ecclesiastes chapter 11. because solomon this is this brilliant ability to connect the thoughts to take us to that place that intersection in the present from which the future is created and i want to take you to a passage of scripture that can be easily overlooked or misunderstood or not understood at all because even though the the principles that sullivan gives us are timeless his metaphors and images are time-dated so sometimes what he says can seem disconnected from our reality ecclesiastes chapter 11 beginning in verse 1. solomon writes these words ship your grain across the sea after many days you will receive a return invest in seven ventures yes in eight you do not know what disaster make upon the land if clouds are full of water they pour rain on the earth whether a tree falls to the north or to the south in the place where it falls there it will lie whoever watches the wind will not plant whoever looks at the clouds will not reap now i know just reading that has made everything clear to you you already know i get it i see this you don't even need to expand on this but i want you to see that in these images solomon's actually giving us insight to the choices we need to make to create the future we long for and you have within you the capacity to affect the future to create a future the question is not whether you're capable of it you're designed for it the question is whether you will step into it and find the resolve the courage the faith to create what only god could imagine so he begins by saying ship your grain across the sea after many days you will receive a return well obviously all of us have that experience all the time we're always putting our grain on ships and setting it overseas and so we know right away with the implications of this and and what even makes it a little more confusing if it's not already a little obscure is that these same hebrew words can be translated very differently they can actually be translated cast your bread upon the waters and after a season they will give you a return and so maybe you can see the connection between put your grain on the ship and send it to sea and cast your bread upon the waters but a more clear translation simply translates like this be generous and someday you will be rewarded and so what i want to begin with is what psalm is actually saying what he's saying to us is the future belongs to the bold so you need to do as much good as you can so you're designed in such a way that everything you have is now a stewardship in your life so why does he use this metaphor well because he's telling us that what we have the grains we have we need to in a sense put it on a ship and send it to sea now remember their understanding of the sea was different than ours we can fly across the world now you can be in london overnight you can be in sydney in just a bit more time you can go to tokyo or to india and cross every ocean there's no ocean on this planet we cannot cross in a day's time virtually but in the time of solomon if you put your grain on a ship and you sent it out to sea that ship would go past the horizon and you would never know if that ship would return there were places where the ships would go where men had never ventured there were even mythologies of of sea monsters and dragons that that inhabited the waters and and they thought that the volatility of the sea was more than most could overcome i said you need to take the chance of taking what you have and sending it so far away to do good that you have no guarantee of return so what he's actually telling us is that we need to have a generous spirit and in fact every interpretation of this particular passage for the first thousand plus years was that solomon is saying we need to learn to be generous with what we have so however it was translated they always understood that god was trying to create a culture of generosity or in fact a race of generosity humanity not a color but a human race that took from what we had it did not think it was all for us but knew it was a stewardship to us to do more he says that after many days here's the phrase after many days not after a couple of days but after many days in other words we don't know how many days it could be so many days those days during the weeks and those days during the months of those days during the years and maybe even those days might turn into lifetimes but after many days you'll receive a return you need to live your life knowing that when you choose to live a life of generosity that you're actually creating momentum in the universe and then it will return to you good last week and i when i whenever i say last week i mean any time in the past because i have no sense of chronology everyone who knows me knows it's true even aaron has said to me dad i'm 29 when you talk about me you act like i'm 12. that's because it just happened last week so last week and i actually think it might have been last week but that's how i remember it there was a man who came here was it last week joe it was last week like i said it was last week and i was outside and this man came up and he might have been my age he might have been around 60 years old and and he and he flew in from houston to come to mosaic he said my life has been impacted by the podcast by the the culture the teaching of mosaic it's changed my life and i and i consider myself a part of this community even though i live in houston he said i've been in the petroleum business all my life and i have a vision i i want to put mosaics live stream and podcasts on every all-rigger in the world because i know how isolated and alone the women and men who work on those rigs are and i know how disconnected they are so i have a vision to put what is happening here on every oral rigor on the planet i just want permission i just want to make sure it's okay we're like go for it and i thought he's going to maybe ask for funding he goes so here and he hands me a check which i do not recommend hand it to pastor joe do not hand it to me but he handed me a check for ten thousand dollars he said by the way i'm a part of this community so this is my tithe and it's the first of many to come this is amazing see we've been putting our grains on ships and sending it out to sea we have been taking what god has been doing in us and doing for us and we've been giving it away to the world and we never thought we'd get it back we didn't know where it was going what how it would impact we just knew that if we did good it would cause more good to happen across the world [Applause] but i want you to know solomon was right because he says after many days you may receive a return and over and over again i've seen us pour into people and send things out whether it's malawi or bangladesh or india and we have a team that's going to puerto rico because they've been devastated by a natural disaster there's been so little relief and we have people in our community for puerto ricans we're going to go and do something because we're going to put our grain on the ship and send it out to sea and we can't do it thinking oh this is we're going to get back that's an investment now investments are not wrong they're not bad but when you're investing it's not the same as generosity generosity is a commitment to send it on the ship past the horizon saying to god i'm good doing good with no expectation of return because i believe in this principle that you've created the universe that when i do good it causes good to return after many days you may receive a return so let me ask you are you doing as much good as you can see i hear people all the time say well it's not making a difference i hear people critique what other people do all the time well they don't have the right strategy or i remember when the red campaign came out i remember when bono was trying to do so much good dealing with poverty everyone was just critiquing his plan and critiquing a strategy and saying how it doesn't work and you know what i find the people who critique what other people are doing are usually doing nothing and so let's just say up front we can't solve every problem we we we may not be able to impact all the problems in the world but just because you can't fix everything doesn't mean you shouldn't do something so what's the good you're doing right now are you committed in your life to do the most good you can and as a community i remember when we made the hard decisions of of investing so much of our resources in our live stream in our podcast thinking it's so much money so much work so much effort and you know what drives me crazy you get complaints all the time we do the live stream for free we do the podcast for free and we get people saying well you know the sound isn't great well you know you could really improve the quality of the picture well you know sometimes we don't have the podcast they go where's the podcast i get emails i get twitter updates where's the podcast i've had the podcast in three weeks what's going on people i've gotten emails people angry with me going it's free we put our grain on a ship send it across the sea you've been consuming what we've been giving so stop complaining that's just a side note [Applause] are you doing as much good as you can maybe we can't do all the good that needs to be done but we can do some of the good and then he goes on to say invest in seven ventures yes and eight you do not know what disaster may come upon your land i love that that's so optimistic you do not know what disaster may came upon the land before i explain what he means let's just pause there for a minute he doesn't say you do not know if disaster will come upon your land he says you don't know when or what disaster will come about in other words do you want a little more certainty about the future some of you here are paralyzed i just i just get nervous i i just i'm paralyzed because the future's so uncertain i need some certainty here's some certainty disaster's coming do you feel better now that you know you don't know what kind of disaster but it's coming so invested in seven ventures yes innate i i think it's amazing that solomon is giving us a principle that's used all the time now in investment banking if any of you have actually started thinking through your retirement i know a lot of you are only like 12. so you're not really thinking that through yet but but you know when you turn 15 some of you and you start thinking about retirement and planning for the future if you have a portfolio they will tell you you need to diversify your investments and the shrewdest investments are the ones that are not connected to the same economic dynamics and so you may have one investment that does well when real estate is doing well one that does is affected completely by real estate you may have one that's affected by certain aspects of the economy and others that are not affected by that aspect of the economy you diversify your portfolio and that idea did not come from wall street that idea came from solomon thousands and thousands of years ago god gave him the wisdom to invest in multiple ventures in seven yes even eight in other words as many as you can you do not know what disaster may come upon your land so take as much ground as you can you want to know who the future belongs to it belongs to the bold because they take all the ground they can they're not putting all their eggs in one basket they're not hoping the one thing they're doing is enough and there's some of you here you're playing life so safe you're living only one life at a time what a waste of a life you can live multiple lives at one time you don't have to just be good at one thing you can be good at a lot of things you can be a great husband and a great father by the way you can be a great employee and a great employer you can be great at making money and great at having relationships you don't have to say well i just have to pick one over the other you make sure you diversify your human portfolio because you didn't never know what disaster may come and i started thinking about how when we were thinking through mosaic and our future strategies one of the wisest most insightful people i i know said to me hey you might want to start with one at a time just start one campus and really build that and then do another one and so we decided to start multiple and it's been exciting we don't even know how to make hollywood work so we opened up south pasadena because the rialto theater was available but it wasn't available until we asked for it and then because we started the real so we thought let's go ahead and start santa monica and venice beach let's just go in that direction too [Applause] and then while we're doing santa monica and venice beach one of our campus pastors here emerson the wadden decided it was the right time and so we sent him to mexico city because we're going to invest in seven ventures we're not even getting started yet maybe hey so we have hollywood and south pass and santa monica and mexico city and who knows maybe it's tokyo or paris or whoever else adis who knows where we're going but we're going to invest in multiple ventures but you know what really struck me when it says invest in seven ventures yes and eight and he says take as much ground as you can it struck me that it's not really even for us about the campuses see because it's been a great month it's been a crazy month we're taking on the impossible we sent that email to the owner of the rialto theater he should not been interested in selling but suddenly he decided okay i'll sell to you guys and so he says yeah also and it's going for millions and millions of dollars and okay we're gonna buy it and then it occurred to me if he'll sell how can we buy something in south pacific and not buy this so we i sent an email to the owner of this property in new in new york to jamie lafraken and i said hey jamie would you be willing to sell us his property he responded in two or three minutes and said he gave me a lot to chew on um can you afford it before i do all the due diligence can you afford it and i had a moment i started thinking about my income i can't afford it i started thinking about your income all right well they can't afford it so i i i said yes because we're not supposed to make decisions based on our income and our capacity and our ability because we we have a secret weapon it's god and god can't afford it in fact it's more like a tip for god so i thought we need to take as much ground as we can but here's the beautiful thing this ground is only going to happen if we take the right ground see god's most passionate venture is the human heart i realize oh we're we're investing not just in seven maybe eight we're investing in thousands upon thousands because every one of you whose life we pour into every single one of you that we invest in you are our venture you are our future you are what we're banking on [Applause] we don't even understand all the resources that are available because god places them inside of people i started thinking about how how crazy it is that that we didn't we don't even know all the people that god has waiting to step in see we sent a ship a long time ago with grain and it went across the horizon and we forgot all about it but they didn't forget i think this is a moment where god is calling out all the ground we've taken across the world i think there are people right now who don't actually even believe in god much less jesus who are going who have spent their life accumulating massive wealth millions if not billions and god is about to take them into a place they never expected to go and they're going to have a life-changing encounter with jesus it's going to change their life and they thought they were accumulating all that wealth for themselves they could buy one more house or one more plane or one more building or one more this but god was actually letting him accumulate all that well so that one day they would become his capital building program because he placed in them the future that they didn't even see yet but on a personal level are you taking all the ground you can are you sitting back and letting other people do the hard work of your life see i have you been satisfied have you justified in your mind while i'm doing the best i can see if you're doing the best you can you're still not living the life you're created to live you're supposed to be doing better than you can you're supposed to be living a life that can only be explained by the presence and power of jesus in your life i don't want to live a life that's the best i can do i don't want to take all the ground i can take i want to live my life in such a way that i know i've taken ground that was impossible for me to take so that i become proof of god and then he goes on and says if clouds are full of water they pour rain on earth i know it's so obvious it's self-explanatory of of course like solomon tell me something i don't know if clouds are full of water they pour rain on the earth what does this have to do with anything solomon see what solomon is doing is he's destroying our superstitious relationship to the future see i think a lot of us think ranges comes some of us still believe in magic look the rain is coming you don't understand that solving understood that the rain only comes because the cloud is full of water and in fact my understanding is that there is more moisture in the atmosphere than there is in the ocean but there are clouds that never bring rain if you're from seattle you only know clouds are being rained and if you're from l.a you're wondering what's the cloud but i do know that there are some clouds that do not have within them the capacity and the right formula to produce rain so you're supposed to produce rain your life does produce rain and you may be wondering where did the rain come from and the rain you produce is the result of the water that you carry and those who create the future understand that if you want something to come out of you you have to get it into you that only what you have in you comes out of you see it's what you contain that you rain and there's some of you who would never say you know rain only comes from clouds with water but you would say something like this how did i get here how did this happen to me i never thought this would be my life have you ever used language that's so passive it's almost like your life happened to you see that's you thinking that clouds rain without water let me tell you how your life happened you chose him you wonder how you got to where you are right now you walked there you want to know what kind of world you're creating it's a world that reflects the world you're creating within you see i hear people complain all the time about all the violence in the world and and all the injustice in the world and and all the racism in the world and and all the the greed in the world but but we don't do anything to change what's going on because the change that has to happen out there can only begin in here and so if you're filled with bitterness and jealousy and greed and anger all you will produce is acid rain and you will scorch everything you touch if the clouds are full of water what what are you full of what are you raining on the earth or are you just one of those pretty clouds against a blue sky that actually produces no rain at all so i decided i'm going to be full of rain in fact i feel it i'm i have density and by the way an interesting side note the word in the bible glory it actually means density like a cloud full of water ready to reign see i i think god is looking for men and women who allow themselves to be full of what god wants to reign on humanity and the scriptures tell us that god reigns on the righteous and the unrighteous so if it's inside of you it will rain on everyone whether they believe in god or not whether they agree with you or not see there's some of you you're just empty clouds right now or just passing acid and rain into the world and you don't realize what's going on inside of you it's because you're filled with bitterness and anger and and fear and guilt and shame and jealousy and greed and and it leaves you fragile and broken see those those human characteristics do not make you strong they make you feel strong but they leave you shattered and broken you don't know what you want to know what makes you strong love makes you strong see hope makes you resilient courage makes you unstoppable faith transforms your life what are you full of right now i just i just i'm going to be full of faith i'm going to reign on you faith right now can you feel it there's some of you you came in here filled with despair and hopelessness i'm just like i'm going to be so full of hope i have more than i can carry for myself i'm going to pour it into your life so many of us we just want to be little clouds see clouds never fulfill their greatest capacity the greatest function the greatest intention if they just hold the water to themselves that water is supposed to be a gift to the earth see you know how you know you're full of love it's because you keep bringing love on other people the way you know you're full of hope is you keep bringing hope to other people the way you know that you're full of compassion and kindness is that you keep giving compassion and kindness of the people the way you know that your heart is full of generosity is that you keep giving more than you take because you're a cloud full of water you can't help but reign you cannot contain it i think god is looking for people who'll be full of courage and faith and full of grace and compassion full of generosity so they can reign on this earth that's dying in a barren land and then solomon says when whether a tree follows to the south or to the north in the place where it falls there it will lie drop the mic all right we should probably just skip that one because everyone gets that one i mean have you ever just i mean this happens so many times right you get up you go get coffee you go sit down get a little you know americano go get them or and you just start thinking right reflecting on the big issues of life and then you think to yourself hmm when a tree falls to the north or to the south either where it falls that's where it lies it explains everything explains everything in life in fact tomorrow when you go to work and and someone seems a little distressed or your boss asks you something that you don't have an answer for or if you're married and your wife says why'd you do that or what were you thinking you just you just look at them if tree falls to the north or to the south where it falls that's where it lies and you just walk away like it's so obvious they wouldn't dare ask for an explanation thank you solomon for telling me something not only that i already know but i didn't need to know it before you remind me of it because where trees fall have no effect on my life well unless of course i decide to leave a mark in the world and i want to be a part of creating the future see what solomon is actually saying is trees don't fall in a direction by accident they fall where they've been designed to break and fall see in my brief career as a lumberjack you laugh it's true it was brief and uh they had to teach me how to cut that tree so it wouldn't fall on the trucks they'd teach me how to cut that tree so it wouldn't fall on me that teach me how to cut that tree so they would not be life threatening to all the other lumberjacks who were cutting down trees see when you're skilled at this you know how to cut away at the tree and it falls exactly in the direction that you decide see some of you your life is not going in the direction you wanted it to go you don't know how you got here you don't know how this happened to you you don't know how this became your life and the fact that you don't know means you can't fix it the tree of your life it fell in a certain direction because of the choices you've made in your life it's lying where it is because that's where you chose for it to fall and here's that i think that the tragedy of it all is that you may not have been understood that as you're cutting and cutting and choosing and choosing and deciding and deciding and acting and acting and living and living that you were actually deciding which direction that tree would fall there's some of you here that everything you say is i want to live a life that reflects god i want to live a life that god created me to live but you keep making choices that cause a tree to fall in the other direction stop acting like it's god's fault that he's not coming through stop acting like god has let you down your tree is falling south because you've made choices that make your tree go south if you wanna if you want your tree to go north you're gonna have to start making new choices in your life see the people who change the world the people who create the future the ones who are bold enough to create the future they decide where they will leave their mark and you need to decide where you're going to leave your mark what do you want to be remembered for what kind of impact are you going to make in the world when i was thinking about this i thought about the word epitaph so i thought i wonder if the word epitaph has some really significant meaning in its etymology so i looked it up and it means over the ground nothing significant it's just the marker over the ground where your life lays last that says a brief statement of which direction your tree fell i've been to too many funerals in my life where the entire ceremony was lying about the person who died so that they could be well remembered i don't want to be that person i don't want to be the person you have to make things up about and you have to cover things up about so that the people in the room can feel good about the life i didn't live how will you be remembered where will your tree fall it's going to fall where you choose in the place where it falls there it will lie don't become angry with god if your life goes in a direction you never wanted because it was direction you chose he's trying to strip away all the superstition all the mythology all the magic in our thinking i cannot tell you how many times i hear people use language like we know it's just god's will i must it's just what god wanted i would go no you're not listening then you hear god go don't chop there it's going to fall in the wrong direction some of you your tree is falling in the wrong direction and it's going backwards and you'll be trapped in your past rather than forward and creating your future and i am so grateful for a god who can bring such a powerful wind they can change the course of where my tree is falling and set it straight again [Applause] i was at this event this weekend and someone asked me what i thought was a strange question they said erwin you know of all the things you've done in your life what do you want to be remembered for and i looked at and i said is it a trick question because no no what do you want to be i said i want to be remembered for bringing as many people to the god who loves them to a life-changing relationship with jesus what do you mean what do i want to be remembered for i want to do a lot of things i mean i i love so many things but i want to be remembered for one particular marxist i've already decided what mark i want to make in the world my mark is the cross my mark is jesus my mark is the church my mark is what jesus died for and rose from the dead for and it wasn't an easy decision to make because i think there's something inside of us all that wants us to sort of make our mark i see my goal in life isn't for people to remember my mark my goal life is for people to never forget the mark that jesus made and there's some of us here we keep trying to make our own march individually personally so that we can be remembered have you ever heard that phrase i think it's kind of epic you live as long as the last person who remembers you lives such a great line right i was like no what about what about what about if when they all like die then i stopped existing and then i had this thought oh i'm already in the mind of god god will never forget me if i live as long as i am remembered then i have eternity ahead of me because god will never forget me i want you to know something when you decide to make your mark living a life defined by him when you allow his life to become your life your mark will last for eternity and then he says whoever watches the wind will not plant and whoever looks at the cloud will not reap and i know in a room full of farmers and agricultural specialists this is so obvious but for those of us who didn't grow up on the farm like my wife kim for those of us who thought that vegetables came from cans who can't understand how tomatoes are actually fruit see what solomon is saying see there are some people who never plant because they just keep looking at the wind they they go you know it's too windy today so i'm not going to plant seeds not a good day to get to work oh it's not windy enough the the the sun will scorch the seeds and it won't spread them out properly it's not the right day to get to work because then others they look at the clouds and so they never reap they they have a harvest and and that harvest has an expiration date if you don't reap the harvest at the right time it rots and spoils and becomes worthless he said there's some instead of reaping they look at the clouds and they say it's going to rain today can't reap oh it's there's there are no clouds too hot today can't reap there's some people who keep looking at the wind so they never sow and they keep looking at the clouds so they never reap they keep looking for every excuse from living the life that god created in the live so stop looking for excuses and waiting for the perfect time see he's saying what you need to do is stop looking at the wind and stop looking at the clouds and look at the opportunity right in front of you there's some of you who just keep waiting for that break waiting for your life to take that turn you keep waiting for that opportune moment there's a moment you're going to be all in you're going to really give yourself there's that moment when you finally get that opportunity you're waiting for you're going to really sacrifice that's when you'll be determined that's where you're going to pay the price that's when you'd be courageous but that moment's ever going to come you just keep looking at the wind and looking at the clouds and just waiting around using everything as an excuse to live a lesser life than god created you to live and and it's the same way with god it's amazing how many people you know one day one day i'm gonna cross that line of faith and trust jesus with everything just not not today you know one day one day i'm i'm going to take this faith and it's going to be more than just talk it's going to be action it's going to be walk but not today one day i'm going to trust jesus with every aspect of my life i'm gonna trust jesus my relationships i'm not gonna be afraid of being alone because i'm gonna trust god he's gonna be the right person into my life i'm not one day i'm gonna trust god with my money you know not today but one day i'm gonna believe that god is more generous than i could ever be but not today one day i'm gonna say just i'm gonna stop drifting around living my life with no intention or purpose one day i'm gonna actually take on god's calling in my life but not today that some of you just keep looking at the wind and looking at the clouds and but solomon is saying stop looking for excuses and waiting for the perfect time and get in the game and act and be bold because the future belongs to the bold i just want to close with this thought i have a friend who i've known for a few years and he's young he's only 31. [Music] i met his family in a far off country small little out of the way place when he was in his 20s he started a company and he's had an idea how to serve people and it did well but his life was just so full of pain and tragedy more pain than a human being deserves to experience in 30 years of life trying to live a life that honors god and be faithful to live a life where his character reflects jesus and you think that those would sort of insulate you from horrific pain and disappointment but they don't [Music] and honestly there are times i don't know how he's hung in there i don't know how he didn't become bitter or angry just walk away from his faith but he just never did and last week he sent a note saying hey i've sold my part in the company i started in he doesn't even live here he doesn't even go to mosaic he's connected to us through the live stream and podcasts and he's a part of our our global community where we've been sending grain on ships into the sea and he said hey i'd like to give a gift to the church because i heard you guys going to buy property and i just want to be a part of this and said i'm not right i'm going to give 400 000 i mean he's only 31. one day he'll be able to do more but um you know as an underachieving millennial who starts a company that surpasses a billion dollars of worth people speak so badly about your generation you guys they don't even know what's coming they don't know what's coming [Applause] so when i heard that he wanted to give that kind of gift i gave him a call i thought i should call him and i said hey why don't you come down to la and we just spent some time together and he goes when i said how about monday he was okay and so he flew down to have dinner on monday and i said hey have you ever seen the coast of santa monica malibu because i've never seen the ocean over here so we drove over to santa monica and drove up to malibu and we had lunch together and he was going to catch a flight that night as we spent the day together he said you know my greatest fear is is not being a good steward of the money that god has entrusted me with every dollar i give it has to have significance it has to go to the right place and so when i give this kind of money to mosaic it's because i believe in what god is doing here i believe in you guys so beautiful and as happens sometimes when the night was over he decided not to give four hundred thousand dollars he decided to give five hundred thousand dollars and um and he looked at me and he said hey i said how old were you and he said 31 i thought [Music] wow what are you going to be able to do when you grow up [Music] and he looked at me goes i'm going to take a little time off like six months and then next year i'm going to start another company he said the next company is going to be bigger than this one because it has to be because i have to be able to do more good in the world now what would happen if we stopped looking at the wind and stopped looking at the clouds and just finally said god how much could you do with me so there's some of you you've been you've been thinking too little of god because you've been thinking too little of yourself there's some of you here you're 23 24 25 27 28 29 there's some of you here you don't even know it we're not investing in you for today we're investing in you because 10 15 20 years from now you're going to be positioned to make such a huge difference in the world and i want to make sure you never forget you never forget that the future belongs to the poet god created you to create so stop running from your responsibility stop running from the privilege god has given you inside of you is where the future begins that's why it's so important to get jesus inside of you because when you connect to the god who's the source of everything good and beautiful and true now all that is good and beautiful and true dwells within you and you are a cloud filled with that beauty and that goodness and that wonder and there's some of you here right now what you need to do in this moment not one day today this day this morning is cross the line of faith and give your life to jesus to receive his forgiveness to receive his life in you would you just bow your head to me just for a moment just close your eyes if you're here in this moment and you're ready to cross the line of faith and give your life to jesus i want to lead you in a simple prayer just one sentence jesus i give you my life that's it it's not everything you and god need to talk about it's the beginning of the conversation but if you will give jesus your life he will put his life in you right now you will belong to him he will never leave you or abandon you new life new beginning new futures will happen right now right now just whisper this prayer jesus i give you my life right now just just whisper this prayer to him jesus i give you my life jesus i give you my life if this is your prayer right now this is your moment if this is your today this is the moment your future begins anew if this is your prayer i want to pray for you i want you right now just to hold your hand up high and say yes i just prayed this prayer jesus i give you my life if that's you right now just hold up your hand high i want to see you wherever you are beautiful anyone else beautiful anyone else right now beautiful anyone else jesus i give you my life right now i just hold it up high i want to see you wonderful so god anyone else right now beautiful jesus i give you my life i see you in the back you guys over there anyone else right now jesus i give you my life beautiful father i thank you for the women and men in this room who've opened up their life to you who've crossed the line of faith and said jesus i give you my life i pray that right now you just wrap them up in your love let them know they belong to you this is the beginning of new things the beginning of new things i thank you father for their new life in jesus and we pray in your name amen can we just thank god for all those who respond to him even now so

Channel: Mosaic

Views: 11,412

Rating: 4.9206347 out of 5

Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

Id: rxZX_4IaIrE

Length: 49min 19sec (2959 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021