We're going to continue talking about Word of Life's Vision.
And this is message number five, and I think we might be over halfway with this one.
We'll see. But we've covered a fair amount of ground.
This morning I want to deal with assignments and mandates,
and then short, intermediate, and long-term vision,
and kind of throw that in the mix, get us thinking about that.
So with that in mind, of course, for the next few Sundays, as you heard in announcements,
we're going to be off this for Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday.
We're not going to be dealing with this.
Then the following Sunday, Igor and Anthony are here.
So it'll be the 14th of April before I get back to this.
So kind of keep that in mind.
If you have your book turned to page 27, that's where we'll be starting this morning.
And I want you to show that chart that's on the handout.
Now, with the book is supposed to come this handout.
If that didn't come with, the guys are going to come back around and get that to you.
I found it after the book was put together.
We'll put it in the next one, the next set.
But I found it afterwards, and it's a good summary.
So I wanted everyone to have it, so you'll have to get it in handout form.
So if you just got a book, put your hand in the air and they'll come by and give you this handout.
But I want you to see that chart.
The chart, you have a handout up there someplace on your computer.
And I want to be able to show that and have you see that.
And also, when you get a chance...
Well, I probably shouldn't bother her with this until she's done.
Let's see if she can find the chart.
Because the chart kind of explains what we've been dealing with to this point.
Remember, every Christian church has the same purpose.
We're all supposed to be doing the same thing.
Where we differ is in our sub-purpose.
Our purpose is what we're supposed to be doing.
Our sub-purpose as a church is how God uses us to do that.
And it's the same thing with us as Christians.
We're all supposed to be doing the same thing.
Promoting and advancing the kingdom of God.
How I do that compared to how someone else does that is going to be different.
That's okay. That's called the body of Christ.
Not everybody's a left hand.
And the left hand works differently than the right.
Or at least it's supposed to.
So that whole concept of how God uses, I said the last time I believe,
I said God custom builds everything.
He doesn't have two the same of anything.
Everything in creation is different.
How He can take a little area on the front of our head
and change it 8 billion times.
Is amazing.
That's just those living right now.
We're not counting all those in history.
So God custom builds everything, including His churches.
We're all supposed to be doing the same thing.
That's our purpose.
How we do it, our sub-purpose, that's unique.
There we go. I knew you'd come through for me.
So now that you've got that up there, I'll give you the next thought.
I want people to be able to text in any questions or whatever they have.
So once this comes down, could you put the phone number back up for a bit
in case they need that.
We talked about core values last Sunday.
General purpose does not change.
As we go into goals, the reason a church is here, the church is here,
the reason Christians are here doesn't change.
It doesn't change from generation to generation.
It stays the same all the way through.
Very unchangeable.
Sub-purpose obviously changes person to person, church to church,
but that too is supposed to be fairly stable.
Core values never change.
And we talked about them last Sunday.
The things that keep us on the...
Let's say it this way today.
The things that keep us on the narrow path, the narrow road, never change.
They won't change next generation.
They didn't change from five generations ago.
They're the same.
The word of God remains the same.
So the core values, which keeps an organization going the right direction,
never change.
We talked about those last Sunday.
Assignments and mandates change.
They're transitional.
They come and go.
You fulfill them and then you go on to a new one.
So they come and go.
And all this works in with the...
Come on, the goals.
Come on, Brian.
Brain kick in.
It's time.
They work in with the goals, which I want to talk about this morning.
But we'll start on page 27.
And this is going to be easy.
Word of life vision.
There's a whole bunch of pages here.
You can all read.
We're definitely not going to go through all this.
I just want to give you the heart of it.
Letter A, vision begins in the heart of one person
and will spread to others from that one.
That is the scriptural way.
You don't find in Scripture God ever looked for a committee
to start something.
He never looked for a group of people.
God looks for one person
and will light the fire in them
and then others who have the same fire
get drawn to that one
and, you know, everything in the Old Testament,
the judges, he never had a committee for a judge.
When he told Gideon to go do his thing,
he looked for Gideon.
He didn't look for five guys.
He looked for Gideon.
When he needed an ark,
he didn't look to the church
or their church of that day to build an ark.
He looked for a man, Noah.
And that's just how God works.
He drops the vision to see what needs to be done.
He drops it in somebody's heart.
Number three there.
Now the person is ready to see how God wants them
to do the purpose,
which becomes their sub-purpose.
The purpose remains the same for all churches.
How we do that becomes the sub-purpose.
We were in St. Cloud this last week.
We had to do some things.
Mary had to go to Hobby Lobby
and it's one of the places that has one.
And we pulled up to the stop sign
or the stop light
and a car pulled up beside us
and they were advertising their church
on their back windshield.
They had a sticker.
We haven't done that yet.
So I don't know what I feel about that.
But they were advertising their church
on their back windshield
from the rear window.
And it was talking about it being a cowboy church.
And I told Mary and said,
see, they go to a cowboy church.
That's cool.
That's their sub-purpose.
That cowboy church is supposed to do the same as us.
Get people saved.
Get people living for God.
Get people discipling other people.
And you know, the whole thing that Jesus
gave to the church to do.
They just do it with horses.
Some churches are motorcycle churches.
That's cool.
I got no problem with that.
We're not one of them.
We don't have that many people who drive by here.
But it's okay.
I mean, it's just not the way God uses us.
To see how God uses you
and what he wants to accomplish
is called the vision under number three there.
Seeing it is vision.
Go to page 28.
What is the vision a word of life?
Well, as we said before, one of our sub-purposes
is to be a full gospel church
because that has kind of gone by the wayside.
I won't say any more than that.
It shouldn't have gone by the wayside, but it has.
So he's asked us to be that.
But in that mix,
letter D,
we are a how-to church.
Another way to say it,
we are to empower people to know how to
live a Christian life
and underline there,
live the Christian life in a victorious,
overcoming manner in a full gospel way.
And then this goes on and explains
all kinds of things.
Jump up to page 38.
And you can read through that
and you're all smart people,
so you'll know what it's saying.
I'm not going to read it to you like we're in first grade.
Jump over to page 38.
Top of the page.
The heart of our vision is to teach, show,
and enable people to know how to live
their Christian life victoriously
in a full gospel fashion.
Part of a full gospel fashion
is found at the bottom of page 38.
The Holy Spirit will always be central
to what we are trying to do.
It's the reason He was given
and it lists not everything,
but a number of things
that He's supposed to be doing
in the church right now.
According to Barna,
of Christians in
the American Christian church,
only one out of four
think the Holy Spirit is actually a real person.
Yeah.
Three out of four Christians
in America do not understand
the Holy Spirit is a person
who does these things.
You say, well, what do the others think?
The greatest majority answered
their poll or their survey
by saying, well, we think the Holy Spirit
is a force, like a power.
Well, if you don't even know He's a person,
chances are to know any of that
and what He's supposed to be doing in your life,
you don't know that either.
The Holy Spirit, I mean,
to me, it's like
He was given for the last days.
That was the purpose.
In the last days,
I will pour out my Spirit.
If any time the church
needs the Holy Spirit,
it's the time we're living in.
It's like, wow.
So it's very central to,
well, how do you live for God?
Well, first of all, you better really get in touch
with the Holy Spirit.
He's here to do all those things,
teach you, lead you, guide you, speak to you,
be your helper, comfort you, on and on and on and on.
We have to have that.
It's a central piece to who we are.
Page number 40.
Word of Life is here to teach,
show and encourage people, them,
how to live this earthly life
in a godly and prosperous manner.
Slide down that page to the next paragraph
that's capitalized,
and I don't know who typed this up,
might have been me,
but I found three errors in there.
To enable someone to know
what God is asking of them
in every area of life,
we must address and have answers
for every question, issue, and subject
that a believer put an R there
that a believer might encounter.
That is crucial to our vision.
You say, how am I going to live forgot?
Well, you're going to have to get some questions answered,
you're going to have to get some understanding,
you're going to have to get some knowledge,
or you're going to go flat on your face.
It's crucial.
We are to have a godly, righteous,
and faith building, life imparting,
answer or answers, however you want to say it,
and solutions or solution for their situation.
So that's all part of it.
That's all I'm going to say about that.
Forrest Gump.
Move over to page 42.
Here's where the heart of where I'm trying to get to this morning.
So purpose is what we're supposed to be doing.
Subpurpose is how we're supposed to be doing it,
which a big part of that is the full gospel realm.
A big part of that is how to.
We dwell on the how to.
I've said this before, I'll say it again.
So many churches that I grew up in one,
so many churches I go to,
they tell us what we're supposed to be doing.
You're supposed to believe God.
You're supposed to give your heart to God.
You're supposed to live for God.
All these things, well, that's what we're supposed to be doing.
How are we supposed to do that?
And I watch all kinds of Christians wandering around.
I've watched this since it started boiling in me in high school.
Watching all kinds of Christians wandering around,
trying to do what they're supposed to be doing
without any understanding of how they're supposed to do it.
You're supposed to believe God.
Well, how do you believe God? What does that look like?
Well, you just believe them.
That's not an answer.
There is a way in Scripture showing what that plays out like.
That was never taught to me growing up.
And I, like I said, I went to church all the time.
I grew up in a Christian home.
Never taught to me.
Believing God to them was kind of like a rolling dice.
We know he can.
He might.
Let's pray and see what happens.
We're believing God.
No, you are not.
Not according to what Scripture says.
Faith is being sure.
It's not rolling dice.
Well, we'll pray and we'll see how it goes
and then that'll be God.
Really?
So the whole concept of
for people to live successful and overcoming lives
they need to know how to do
what they're supposed to do.
That's a huge emphasis for us.
So on page 42, let's jump into assignments and mandates.
Assignments are, there's a whole big definition there
if you want to go to the third one down,
third hyphen, assignments are projects that God gives to us
as a church.
Assignments for you are projects he gives to you
as a person.
And once you're done with the assignment,
well then the assignment's over.
He'll give you a different one.
Like for instance, what we're doing with Jim Isaacson,
that's an assignment.
It's not a command.
Mandates are commands
or official orders.
Thou shalt not lie.
That's a mandate. That's a command.
Assignments are, would you do this for me?
That's how he approached us
with Jim.
And by the way, he's going to be here
the end of the month
is a plan at this point.
And he's going to be sharing,
because I think there's a lot of people here
who've never heard his story
of what happened to him at 15 when he went to hell.
He's going to be sharing that story on the 21st
of next month.
So kind of keep that in mind.
But assignments are projects.
Here, I want you to do this.
Where Mary is gone speaking this morning.
The project of helping get the Red Lake Church
not only a building, but getting them going.
That was an assignment to us.
Now it hasn't ended yet.
We're still involved with that.
We don't know how long.
Maybe that will be the rest of our life,
an assignment.
Some assignments are transitional,
some take longer, so forth.
Mandates are orders and commands.
You're being told,
this is what I want you to do.
Like for instance, the land we're buying next door.
That was not an assignment.
That was a command.
The Father hath need of that land.
Oh, good.
I wonder who's going to do something about it.
Let's not think of what he said.
He said it to us.
We're going to do something about it.
That's a command.
It's not a, you know,
if you do this, I'd appreciate it.
Could you take care of that for me?
No, no, no, it's like I need that.
Get it for me. That's a command.
So they all work differently.
Just kind of separate them in your mind.
And then as we start going through the
opening of the scroll,
we'll talk about that a little more
and kind of interject it.
But that's all you need to know.
Assignments or projects,
mandates are commands.
And there's plenty of pages
here to describe that to you
a little bit more in depth.
Letter C is important
because that's where we're going this morning.
Assignments and commands.
For instance, let's back up to that chart.
You got purpose at the top.
The reason the church exists began
when Jesus started
showing us the pattern
of how he wanted things to change
in the new covenant from the old.
And then the church was introduced
by the disciples, the apostles
and how it was supposed to operate.
Jesus said what was supposed to be done.
Paul said it was supposed to be done.
I mean the apostles, the disciples said
this is what the church is about.
That's what it's supposed to do.
That has never changed.
That is a multi-generational
long-term until Jesus comes back
or the world comes to the close
of this session.
That will never change.
The purpose for
every Christian church remains the same.
Sub-purposes
tend to be long.
Long-golds
goes for
lifetimes or genera...
like ours is supposed to be intergenerational.
The same sub-purposes
is supposed to be picked up by the next generation
we hand the baton on and it goes on.
He made that very clear to us.
But not everything is that way.
You can have short, intermediate
and long-term goals.
Let her see.
So jump over to page 44.
I want to point out a couple of things there
as we begin talking about this.
Again, in Scripture
and this works in with goals,
assignments, mandates, so forth.
In Scripture
number seven,
the gift that a ministry
or a person works under
can be
church's look at it
in two ways.
You can have a program
which is something
somebody felt needs to be done
so they take someone who
it's not really in their heart
but they might be good at it
so they take it and they put them in charge of it
or they take a group of people and put them in charge of it
and say it's your job to take care of this
and make this happen in the church.
That's a program.
And programs can be good for a while
but they usually die.
It's usually like trying to push a chain uphill.
It just doesn't take long
and it just does not want to move well.
And you've got
the three old ladies who comes to women's group
and it's been there for 50 years
and we're not getting rid of it
because three ladies still come.
That's a program.
You look at me surprised like
you want to get rid of the women's group?
If only three old ladies
are coming, yeah, it might be good to do something different.
It's not holy ground in the scripture.
Thou shalt have a women's group.
See, that's where programs take you
into traditions and traditions are religion
and Jesus said your traditions
can make the word of God
of no effect.
In other words, we should be doing something different.
We feel like God's leading us to do something different
but who's going to break it to the three old ladies?
We're going to shut that down
and do something different.
Just saying.
Ministry is something
that God drops and someone's heart
it burns in them.
They have a desire to see it happen.
They are willing to invest
their life into it
to make it happen.
Ministry is something that once
it's burning in them
they're willing to lay their life
down for it.
I have yet to see someone
want to lay their life down for a program.
Case in point.
We're going to do that
on Friday nights.
Friday nights is always
the night I go out to eat with my husband.
We stop at Walmart and pick up a couple of things
for the weekend. Can we find a different
night? That's a
program person talking.
It doesn't mean that much to him.
Let's find a time where it's
convenient for me.
Now, a ministry-minded
person would say, I don't care what night
of the week is, this has to happen.
If Friday is the night, I'm there.
They will readjust their lives,
they'll readjust their schedules, they'll readjust
everything to do what they feel
God asked them to do.
It's huge in the end
of what gets produced.
And that's all that section
there is talking about. So jump over
to page 51.
I wanted that in there because
I wanted to point it out. It's in there, but I wanted to point it out.
Because when he asks us to go
and do something, it costs us
something.
The favorite
feeling of the American church is
convenience.
It has to be convenient or we're
not overly interested.
That's why we get so little
done.
Because it's not convenient.
Let me talk about that a little
more next Sunday.
Page 51.
Accomplishing Word of Life's
Vision. So of the things
we've seen so far, and if you've read
the book now you've got a good
understanding of it because
you wrapped yourself around more.
How do we accomplish all this?
Well, go to page 123.
All this.
Let's talk about all this a little bit.
Go to the end of the book.
This was
given to the
page 124 was given to us
before we ever moved up here.
It was put in print in
2007, page 123
and 124.
Hasn't, we haven't changed anything.
It was reprinted
and I put dates into things
in
2011 when this
book was written.
Expanding the vision which
dealt with the subject from a little
different angle.
Church started in our home
in June 2004.
One year and a half later
the modular became
the church place.
2008 we purchased
the land.
Knew that we had to have a place.
God gave us this
as a really good stepping stone.
2012
we purchased it and moved in
in December of 2012.
Go over to page 124.
Why are we doing all this?
What are we trying to accomplish?
We're actually trying to go somewhere.
The ultimate vision
which always involves building people
this really hasn't
changed much.
And building people, by the way
the building of people is actually
every church is supposed to do that.
It's part of the general purpose.
But it's nice to just throw it in there
and keep reminding ourselves that
this is more about church
more than just church serving
me.
Church is supposed to build people
and families and communities
and states and nations.
Really?
It took you that long to agree to that?
Like...
I gotta keep you awake.
I know I can get boring but
I didn't think this early we were struggling already.
Part of
building people is you have to have
we live in a physical world.
You have to have some form of physical facilities
that you can do the different things
God asks you to do.
Like I said
these were listed in 2007.
Now it's interesting here.
Wellness center.
Now Mary has health matters
and that's part of
we feel in
the church building itself
there needs to be a space
where we can have professionals
chiropractors, doctors
whomever come in
and be able to help people
live healthy and well.
Sick Christians are not
to the glory of God
and they don't accomplish much
other than just survive.
And
there are physical things
we can actually do
to be healthier.
Some things we need to stop
like drinking
monster drinks first thing in the morning
and there's some things we need to do
and that is
part of that.
So if you're going to do it in the church
you have to have a location to be able to do that.
Halfway houses.
Aha!
That's come to pass to a point.
Mentoring and maturity programs
lion's den on Tuesday night
cornwinds the night very much
is dealing in that realm
and when Jim gets here
and he starts doing what he's doing
the mentoring and maturing
in the things of the spirit realm
things he operates in
are going to just shift into high gear there.
School, we always wanted a school here
so that's why kicking in with life wise
it's like no brainer.
And we had a preschool
but the state
has shifted things so dramatically
against the church
having a Christian
school, preschool, anything like that
they are trying really, really, really hard
to make sure the Bible
doesn't get taught in Christian schools.
In fact, that's why we shut ours down
because the county worker basically announced to us
that
you will change what you're teaching
or the state is going to find you.
Or teaching in Bible verses.
That's what I'm talking about.
You're not going to do that.
Now where the state is going and that's a few years back already
and now we know where the state is going.
So I don't know how the school thing will play out
homeschooling associations, things like that maybe.
Substance abuse recovery
you can check that one
that's going to enlarge this fall
it should be this fall
when we get that
outpatient
thing happening at TBO
a couple of three days a week
right in the building
that's going to be taking place.
I don't want to get too sidetracked here.
It will take too much time.
Abuse recovery, that's there.
Daycare, not sure about that.
Preschool, not sure about that.
The multi-purpose area
we're not there.
The auto care ministry
I want to see
in
on the grounds in the building
a
auto shop
where
people who are struggling financially
can keep that
piece of junk running
until they can get
prospered to the point they can buy something decent.
And it
be staffed by
volunteers who are in the church
good mechanics, they throw in
two, three hours a week and
they're there helping each other.
Just don't want to dwell there long.
We don't have that yet.
Handyman repair ministry
boy, we could use that.
We have a little bit of that, but it's not really a ministry at this point.
It's a program.
Somebody needs help.
I say, could you help them?
Okay, I think I can.
And then that's the end of it. Nobody picks it up
and runs with it from there.
But it's very useful.
Regional center and ministry, that you
can check. That's becoming more and more.
Especially our special conferences
or meetings. We have people
starting to come from Wisconsin,
northern Minnesota,
open heavens meetings. We had people from North Dakota,
Wisconsin, and from Bemidji
here.
So that's starting to happen. Busing is happening.
On and on and on. A bunch of these
are already happening.
So we're making progress
toward the long
term goal.
The long term where we're supposed to be getting.
So go back to page 51.
When it says, so how do we do
all of this? Well, that's just kind of a snapshot
there in page 124.
It's simple. We go there first.
It's people who make this happen.
But we have to have goals.
So go down to letter A.
Let's talk about goals. And that's what we're going
to sit on here for a bit this morning.
We need to look at three areas
of goals. Any business runs
this way. Any person who runs
their life in a business fashion runs
this way. Any church
should run with goals.
Goal setting. You have short term,
intermediate term, and long term goals.
The vision, the
purpose, the sub purpose, everything falls
into
those three.
So let's
talk about them. Long term goals, bottom
of the page. As an example
there I said, let's just go with
driving from Minneapolis to
Florida. Long term goal, we're going
to Florida. If you're going to southern Florida
you're talking probably around 1,800 miles from here.
Something in that area.
And we're driving, Walt.
We're not flying. We're
driving. Okay?
This is going to take
a few days to make
this happen unless we kamikaze it.
Like I used to when I was younger and I don't
like doing that anymore.
But as it says there, it's a slow tedious process
to reach the long term goal, especially
if you have children
with.
Because it's such
a long term goal
the famous questions
come up.
You're not to Cambridge yet. Are we
there yet?
You have
made it out of the state.
How much longer is this going
to take?
Adults think
the same way.
You have a
long term goal
after you've been in it
for six months.
Oh, I don't know if this thing is ever going to happen.
Because they don't understand
our life. Habakkuk 2
and 3.
Remember
the example I gave you?
He will show you the end of
the vision.
He will show you what you are
to accomplish in life.
And it's probably going to take most
of your life to get there.
Abraham's main goal
was what?
What was the long term goal
that God gave Abraham?
To become the
father
of many nations.
Jesus was going to come through
Abraham.
The long term big picture
Abraham had one thing he needed to
accomplish on this earth.
Get this thing set up
in covenant with God so Jesus
can show up.
And in the middle of all that
you've got many nations being
birthed this, that and the other.
That if you look at Abraham's life,
that was his lifetime goal.
Took him a long
time over half his life
before he ever had a son.
So he was
looking forward to that.
He came out of the earth, the
Caldees way back from when he
actually had a son. And God called
him out and he said, I'm going to give
you all this land and your descendants
are going to multiply way beyond this.
So there's a long term goal. He's showing
him the end of the vision. You're going
to be the father of many nations. And
then that thing played out over
Abraham's lifetime. But you know
what? The vision God gave Abraham
was a multi
generational
vision.
It's one of the reasons God chose Abraham.
It says
one of the reasons God chose Abraham
is because God knew Abraham
would command his children after
him.
This thing that he was handing to
Abraham had to last
to Jesus.
If the ball gets dropped
we get to start
over.
This was multi generational.
Hundreds of years
Abraham was back in around
2000 B.C.
Hundreds of
years to get to Jesus.
Long term
goal.
So when Abraham died he was not
the father of many nations.
Positionally he was.
But in reality
he had Isaac.
He could have questioned God and said, God
that must not have been you who talked to me.
Oh no, it was God.
We gave you a long term. Here's
what you get started in your lifetime.
Now there's other things along
the way. But long term
is we're going to Florida
we actually have to get there.
It takes a long time
to accomplish it. The more immature
you are the more difficult it is
to hold yourself to task.
We're going to go to Florida.
Be quiet. I don't want
to hear another word out of you.
We're only
in Kentucky.
And I don't know if I can
take this anymore. Honey, can you do
something with our him,
them?
Because the more immature you are
you don't see
progress, you don't understand
progress, you just want to be there.
And as Isaac's Christians
if we're immature
what God asks us to do, we do
it for a week and then it's like
I've done this for a week.
I mean we're not there yet.
It might be most of your lifetime
he's going to have you do this until you get there.
And that's why a lot of
times Christians fail because they've got the lofty
dream and many times it is
God. I've had people say to me
this is what I feel God wants me to accomplish in my lifetime.
Five years later, how are you
doing? I gave up on that.
Why? What just seems
so long?
And I wasn't making any progress.
Well, the long-term goal
is to hold us
focused
where we're supposed to go. Page 52
third paragraph down
intermediate-term
goals is what keeps us on task.
See, here's where we're supposed to
end.
How do we know if we're making
progress? We're focusing on the
end, but what are the tasks?
How are we going to make
progress?
Intermediate-term goals are the ones that
clearly show us if we're making progress,
like on the road trip to Florida.
An intermediate-term goal
is if you have children
chances are you're not driving straight
through.
If you are, God have mercy
on you.
You're going to need it.
You probably are going to go
someplace and spend the night.
So the
first leg of the journey is an
intermediate-term goal.
You're still focused on Florida,
but we're going to get
to XYZ
city. We'll spend the night.
And then the next day
you might
consider
doing something the children
are interested in
to help encourage them
to make the next leg of the journey.
See, I grew up
with hardcore parents. They didn't
consider any entertainment for the kids.
It's like
we're going to southern Texas.
We're going to be there in the morning.
It's like
we're not doing anything.
We're not going to stop.
We're not going to fill gas.
What do you got for me to do?
There's nothing you need to do.
You're just in the back seat.
Come along.
It's like, no,
that long-term
that can be rough.
You might want to stop and see
something along the way. You know the arc?
You could take a little detour and hit
the arc on the way. Or if you want
to see Mammoth Cave, you could make that.
And see, it's all steps.
It's intermediate range.
Here's where we're going.
So how can we tell we're making
progress to get to Florida?
We made it to southern Illinois
where we spent the night.
Don't ask
if we're there yet, because we're not.
But we made it that far.
We made it to Mammoth Cave
and we saw part of the cave
and we spent the night.
It's another
chunk.
It shows us we have movement.
You need those.
Or you get very discouraged.
It's like, we'll never get Florida.
Then there are short-term goals.
These are absolutely
necessity.
They create the movement.
But you can also waste a lot of time on them.
Because you're going to Florida.
You're sitting in the back seat as a child.
You're looking out the window.
The trees are going by really fast.
We should be there by now.
I counted a hundred red Volkswagen's.
Mom told me to.
And I counted a hundred of them.
Are we there yet?
I turned the window down.
Dad's driving really fast because the window just...
Well, now we hit a button.
That's a few years ago we turned it down.
Now we hit a button.
Hopefully Dad didn't lock that up up front.
We can hit the window and the window goes down.
And it's like the window is coming.
The window is coming in the window.
And it's like, boy, we're going really fast.
See, short-term daily things
go by really quick.
And they can deceive us
into thinking,
boy, we're making a lot of progress.
Look at how far we've gone.
I counted a thousand and three of those
mileage posts.
We have to be there. Well, you're over halfway.
You know, it goes by quickly.
Things happen quickly.
And people can feel like,
oh, man, we're making progress.
I am so busy.
Busy is not productive.
Busy is busy.
To be productive
will take you to Florida
or the long-term goal.
Is your busyness today
helping you get
anywhere?
Think about that.
You say, well, what is busyness today?
Well, on a trip, it would be good to have gas in the car.
You're going to be busy.
You're going to have to stop and fill gas a few times.
You're going to have to eat something along the way.
Don't let them drink too much,
especially sugary drinks, because you'll be stopping a lot.
Choose the restroom.
You're busy.
I mean, it's like all this stuff is happening.
Back in our day, we had the big Atlas out.
Someone was supposed to guide you,
and if they took you on the wrong road,
then you were 50 miles off before you realized
we're not on the right road.
And then you're busy getting back to the right road
and all kinds of busyness.
But did you actually
make any progress toward
the intermediate goal?
And are you anywhere closer
to the long-range goal?
Because it's all the activity
of what we do day to day
that eventually
will get us there.
And many times,
churches, Christians get very excited
about, we're busy today,
we're busy tomorrow,
and boy, the next day we're busy.
Okay, so once a month or two or a year
is gone by,
how much closer are we
to where we're supposed to be going?
Are we just busy?
Or are we being productive?
To be productive,
you can't just do anything.
To be busy,
you can do anything.
I mean, you don't have a goal.
You're just busy.
You're just filling your day.
You're busy.
But if you're actually trying to
accomplish something,
you can't do just anything.
In fact, you can't do everything.
You can't do what all the things you want to do.
You have to stay on task
with your daily,
weekly, monthly routine
to reach the next step
of the intermediate range goal.
For instance,
let's go back to Abraham.
Long-term goal, father of many nations.
Intermediate range goal,
and we'll hit this here in a bit,
there are anywares from
15 to 25 years.
20, 25 years.
There's no real definite time.
Short-term goal is
2 to 3 years, maybe a little longer.
Intermediate term goal
can take you 15 years, 20, 25 years.
Long-term goal
can be a lifetime affair.
30, 40, 50 years.
Or intergenerational.
Okay?
So in a short-term goal,
we know what Abraham's long-term goal was.
So let's start there.
Become the father of many nations.
Well, before I can become
a father of anything, I better have a son.
Intermediate term goal is
I'm getting pretty old.
When Abraham was really
conversing with God, he was 75,
which would make Sarah about 65.
God, we don't have a son yet.
Maybe I can make LRE, LEAZER, my hair.
No, no, LEAZER is not going to be your heir.
I'm going to give you a son out of your own.
King James' word uses loins.
I'm going to give you a son.
From that conversation
to Isaac's birth
was how long?
25 years.
That was not a short-term goal.
It was an intermediate-term goal.
Well, where are we going? We're going to be the father of many nations.
We're going to bring
the savior of the world into the world.
That's the long-term goal.
Right up front we need a boy.
We need a son because God promised it.
It took 25 years, intermediate-range goal.
Okay, so what do we do?
Well, the short-term goal is
they didn't know how long that was going to take.
You and Sarah better get busy.
If you know what I mean,
you're going to have to be intimate.
Or you're never going to have a son.
Abraham was 99
when God came to him and said,
okay, don't give up
because next year you'll have your child.
That's when Sarah laughed.
She had so given up on the goal,
it's like, what a joke.
I'm 90 years old
and I'm going to give birth.
We have trouble being intimate.
And we're going to have a son?
Short-term things matter
to accomplish the task.
You have to accomplish the task
if you're going to get to the overall focus,
the goal.
There were things they needed to do
on a daily basis
to accomplish the long-term goal
to get the intermediate-range goal,
which was the son,
and Hagar was not supposed to be one of them.
That was supposed to happen
as a short-term goal.
Hagar, that wasn't God's plan.
That was Sarah's plan
because she gave up on the long-term goal.
She didn't think it was going to happen.
She didn't think the intermediate-term goal
was going to happen.
I'll give you my handmade.
Here's a short-term project.
See if she'll give you a son.
Well,
you know the story.
That one should have never happened.
There is things that have to happen
on a daily,
weekly, monthly basis
that gets us to the 25,
20-year point.
There is things that have to happen
on an hourly basis
that gets us to the next stop
on the way to Florida.
They're all short-term.
But you have to focus
on what you're doing with your short-term
or they can really get in the way
of the big picture,
like Abraham.
Following me?
So jump over to page 53.
It's talking a little bit more
about the goals and the long-term goal,
the end of the vision.
Oh, I talked about most of that.
Let's go to page...
Bottom of page 54,
it gives you those years
I laid out.
Long-term goals can be a lifetime
intermediate.
They can range from 5 to 25, 30 years,
something like that,
uses the Abraham example.
And then if you go to
the short-term goal
on page 56,
number 4,
it'll say from 1 to 2 years in length,
might be up to 3 years in length,
short-term goals are designed
to be very transient.
You don't keep doing them over and over.
If you're going to Florida
and you drove down a certain road,
you don't loop around
and do it again and loop around.
I just love this road.
We're just going to be busy driving this road
for the next 10 days.
You'll never get to Florida.
Short-term goals are you do them,
you move on to the next short-term goal.
You do them, they're over, you move on
to get you to the intermediate goal,
which is we need to get
to such and such a place
by lunchtime or for the night
or whatever. We can't just
keep looping around looking at the houses
in this town.
Well, I like the houses in this town.
I don't care. It's really fun.
It doesn't matter.
If you're going to get to where you're supposed to be
for the night on the way to Florida,
you're going to have to get out
of that town.
Well, I'd like to try a restaurant in that town.
I mean, there's a lot of things to do
in that town. We could be really busy.
Yeah, you could probably be very busy,
but you're not being productive at all
because it's not moving you towards Florida.
Right?
Follow me?
Just because you're busy
and don't have any time left over
doesn't mean you're being productive.
Just because a church has
a thousand and three programs
doesn't mean it's being productive.
Where are you
supposed to be going?
And is our
daily, weekly stuff
taking us there?
Short-term goals can be very transient.
Intermediate-term goals
change, too. Long-term goals don't change
much. They're pretty solid.
So,
bottom of page 56, it says
what other short-term goals
does Word of Life have?
Because this is so transitional,
I just left you a blank page
on the next page, page 57,
that you could just write some things in.
So, let me show you how
you already saw
the big picture of where we're trying to get.
It's on the end of the book.
It's on that page 124.
That's
what we've seen
at this point. You could fill in some details,
but everything's going to kind of hang on that.
So, that's where we're going.
There's other places we're going to see.
It talks about being a
multi-generational
task
to accomplish what God wants totally
accomplished.
So, short-term, right now,
there's a lot of things going on
at the church that are short-term goals.
Anywhere
from zero to, let's say, three years.
Three, four years max.
A lot of things happening.
Now, we've been waiting
for a long time
for these to happen.
It's kind of like Abraham going to spend
25 years, and all of a sudden,
one day, oh, she's pregnant.
Here we go.
We only got a few months.
And you got to get it together.
And you're a 100-year-old man
with a crying baby at night, and she looks at you
and says, go take care of that.
Oh, all of a sudden, everything
really changed fast.
And it's like, we have a short-term goal.
Change the diaper.
We can't wait three years on this one.
This one's really short.
Yeah.
Oh.
So let me give you some idea,
because right now, the pace is picked up
very much so.
Not because we didn't see it coming.
We saw it coming, but all of a sudden,
it's coming. Here we go.
Like, for instance,
Jim is going to be here at the end of the month.
We need to establish his ministry.
And what he's going to be here for,
what he's going to do.
Brian and Terry are going to be here
shortly thereafter, and we need
to establish not only them
as youth pastors, but
their long-range goal
of
ministering to troubled youth,
which they're doing all along the way,
but they have a great big picture they're looking for,
and I'll let them address that and share that.
We're going to be part of that, to establish that.
We need to
close on the land next to us.
That has to be
soon.
The word from the owner
is the mortgage company is finally there.
They're going to get an appraisal,
and then we should be able to close.
So hopefully it's within weeks.
But we need to close on the land.
Well, another short-term goal
is we need parking.
It's people say, how many people come
to your church? It says,
Pennsylvania word Sunday.
If everybody's here
on the same Sunday, we're pretty full.
And you all know we're out of parking.
So the first short-term
goal is we got to do dirt work over there
and increase our parking
ability.
Deal with that.
Little
longer short-term
goal. That first one should hopefully
happen quickly.
Little longer short-term goal
is the offices are still
in the modular at our property
where we started the church.
The offices need to come over here.
Which takes us into a whole
different issue.
We already know that
when everybody's here, we're fairly
full. Okay?
We can spend a whole bunch of money
setting up a building for offices
or should we not be using the money
that way and put up a big building
of where we're going.
Just get the shell up, maybe
and put the offices in there
and start building it out slowly, but
rather than
just focusing on, well, we got to move the offices.
Let's set up the offices.
Let's do that. That building
will be someplace between
five and seven hundred thousand to complete.
We'll do, we actually want to drop five to seven hundred thousand
into an office building
when we're already running out of room.
What if it takes us five years
to pay it off? Now, I want to pay it off right away,
but what if it would take us five years to pay it off?
Well, in five years, we could be in trouble
because we're trying to pay off an office
building and we have a bigger need.
We don't have a place to put the people.
Because as some of these people
come on board and things start
happening in that
realm, we're going to grow quicker.
Short-term goal
within three years. I'm sixty-seven.
And by the time I'm in the seventy area,
I want an assistant...
Lord, I want an assistant pastor
on board who is capable of
long-term me-handing the patan to them.
I don't just want anybody on board.
I don't want a five-year
person on board.
I don't want a two-year person on board.
I want someone who
we can work with.
They have the same heart, they have the same
desire, they have the same vision
and we work together
and slowly just hand the patan on
and they run with it.
And that person has to be of the
next generation.
I don't want to say this
in a derogatory way, but
we are not the future
of the church.
The future of the church is quite a bit younger
than me.
And some of you.
It doesn't mean we are useless.
It doesn't mean we are worthless.
We can contribute a lot yet.
But the focus has to
shift here
at some point.
And the push for that younger realm
well, we need someone
who long-term
can go there
and be younger.
That whole realm.
So I just listed off six, seven things
that need to take place
in the next three years.
You say, well, what if they don't?
It will impede
the progress of the church.
It will impede the progress
of what God is trying to do.
Plus, some of you
are hanging on to your money
to give to your children
who are going to take a lot of trips
to Europe and Hawaii
where you could actually give some of it
here and we get the job done.
Feel how the atmosphere changes
as soon as you bring up money?
Like,
oh, that's the problem.
As soon as they want to do something,
it's going to cost me something.
Oh, ye of little faith.
It'll cost you nothing
if you believe God
for what he wants you to give.
In fact, the laborer
is the first to eat of the harvest.
The harvest that comes in,
you'll get benefit from.
The harvest that has come in
that you're sitting on.
Saying, oh, my children
I'll handle it wisely.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right. Unless they've gone through
some really hard times themselves
and they're really thankful
for what you're giving them.
Woo-hoo!
That's going to be
the wisdom flowing there.
I don't want to be discouraging,
but that I've seen it over
and over and over and over.
So short term,
we got a bunch of things that are on our plate.
You know what? God's going to take care of them
one way or another.
Because he wants
the next thing.
And the next thing.
And the next thing.
And it's going to be awesome.
So I don't want to take any...
There's so many other points there
that I wanted to hit this morning. Don't have time.
I have to hit what we're going to hit
at the end.
So let me say this.
It was kind of
interesting to me this morning
the song's choices,
what Felicia had to say,
the demonic thing, so forth.
Because this is what I felt the Lord
dropped in my heart.
And we'll find out here in a few seconds
if it's true or not.
We're trying to spend most of our time
now talking about the vision
of where to life and where it's going.
But it also applies to persons,
individuals, to families,
to businesses that
all the principles apply.
So we're going to apply it
to persons now. Individual people.
I felt like
the Lord told me he said,
there are people here who are
struggling here and maybe watching online.
Who are struggling with
anything that's
beyond a short-term goal
and they struggle with some of that.
Intermediate, like, what are you going to be doing
15, 20 years from now?
Well, that's like, pfft, I have no clue.
Well, what are you on Earth for?
What's the long-term goal? What are you supposed
to accomplish while you're here taking up space?
No idea.
Well, that's true for a lot of people,
but he pointed out a certain specific group
to me. He said there are
those who want
to plan out there.
They want to see it. They want to
know it, but
they've got demonic blockages
and they just can't see it.
And I said, well, you know, anybody
can say, oh, the devil's making me
trouble. You know, it's like, I said, I want
some specific characteristics.
What are these people struggling with?
So he
gave me three, four of them.
This will describe
whether this applies to you or not.
Whenever you are looking
intermediate
or long-term in your life,
10, 15 years
out, 25,
35 years out,
what are the things that have to be
accomplished to get where you're going? Whenever you
put your mind to that,
it's like a cloud of confusion
will settle on you
that you have
extreme difficulty
thinking about much of anything.
It's like the thoughts
just get rampant
and
swirling in your head.
And it's like this huge confusion
thing settles on you.
So you got confusion, you got
racing thoughts. If you don't get back
off of it, it's difficult to deal
with the day-to-day things.
I mean, even like
what am I going to do
tomorrow and how am I going to accomplish that?
It just gets overwhelming for you because your mind
is so...
the thoughts have gotten so out of control
the confusion is there.
Number two, of course, we know Scripture says confusion
is not of God.
But in that, one of
the reasons you don't reach out
into the future too far
is because these things
happen to you and you can no longer
focus. You can't think
straight. And until you
let go of that and just deal
with, well, we'll deal with today and we'll deal with tomorrow
and next week's
a long ways out, we'll just... that's all
we're going to deal with. And whatever happens in the future
happens in the future. Unless you come back
to that
literally it's like
a confusion, a brain fog settles
on you, you can't think straight
and make decisions well
about today or tomorrow
until you let go of
that and don't even go there.
Then this clears up quite a bit and it's like
okay, this is what we're going to make for supper.
This is what we're going to do tomorrow
to get that job done. But if you
keep pushing out there, it becomes
overwhelming to you.
And he says that's
demonic. That's not
you, that's not you being crazy.
That's not you having a brain
problem. That's demonic
because everything clears up
when you get off of
where am I supposed to go.
That is a handicap,
obviously.
That he wants off of whoever
you are.