This sermon emphasizes the importance of believers trusting in God and entering into a deep, personal relationship with Him. It highlights the need to move beyond fear and embrace the inheritance and victory that God has prepared for His children. The speaker encourages the church to focus on being in love with a living God, fighting in His strength, and stepping into the fullness of their calling.

Thank you, thank you. You don't get many standing ovations as a pastor. I taught at a church in Boulder once and it was really challenging. And I think God really came and moved in the message. And everybody stood up afterwards and they drove me to the airport and put me on an airplane. Thank you, God. That's really sweet and wonderful. What a great time of worship tonight too. And how nice it is to come together with believers and worship the living God. It just makes me feel so at home, you know. We got to sing a song tonight that was one of the most moving songs in my early release to Christ. When we used to come to that part, I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon the cross. It would just make me weep. Because the one thing God's assured me of over the years is my understanding of my worthlessness. My understanding of how apart from Him I don't have anything. And when I come to these things and people are so kind to me. And they're so kind to our family. And they're praying for our family and they're supporting us in every possible way. It just makes me want to just sing that in my mind over and over and over and over again. That we were so lost and now we're found. And there's a new hope and a new opportunity. And a great chance to bring a message of a living God. And a hope and a joy to every family and every community that will open their door and their heart to the message. And sometimes you come to a place and the message is very hard to receive. And sometimes you come to a place and you know that the seed of that message has been planted and watered year after year. Generation after generation. This is such a place. The seed of a living God was planted here by better men and women than I will ever be in my whole life. And you can feel it in this place. You can watch the little kids dance. Right? Thanks sweetheart for dancing for us tonight. I met people on the weekend that came to church for the very first time. They walked into the sanctuary and one of them came to me and said that the moment that they walked in here, they knew that something special was going on here because they felt a presence here that they hadn't felt before in their lives. And we have an opportunity to tell them that that presence is a living Christ. Right? That this is God. It's not the lights. And it's not the seats. And it's not all of the fancy gear. It's a living Christ that's here with you. And I'm so grateful to come back and to be able to speak one more time. And I hope I get a chance to come back and be with you again. I wanted to just say thank you all for your kindness to us. We feel your prayers. And we're going to go back to Phoenix enriched to face the things that God has asked us to do. Janet and I and the kids. And know that we're closer to the King by having been closer to you. Does that make sense? Why don't we say a word of thanks to him to start too. Father, we've had a time of worship. And Lord, I would just pray that worship would continue. That we would continue to worship you. That our minds and our hearts would be turned to you. That we would be convicted by the great presence of your spirit in this place. King of kings. Lord of lords. Light of the world. The head of the host of heaven. The one who provides. The one who sanctifies. The one that makes new. The one who heals. Your mighty names all brought together to celebrate one name above all names. The Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. We lift up the sun in this place, Father. Because we know you've had such great pride in him. And you've lifted him to be the name above all names. And if we spoke of nothing tonight, except him, we would bring great joy to you. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for keeping your promise that you would be with us where two or more are gathered in your name. And we are gathered in your name. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ. And your promise is there I will be amongst you. And we claim that promise in the name that it was given him. We ask that you would walk up and down these aisles. And that the Holy Spirit would come to this place in greater measure. In greater worship. In greater celebration of you. And that we would be changed people here tonight, Father. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your glory. And thank you for this wonderful congregation, Lord. Bless them in all they do. Bless them in the work. Bless them with courage and strength. Bless the leaders, Lord. The deacons and the elders. Bless the new. Bless the young. Bless the old. Father, bless Dean. Give him extra strength. Give him rest. Give him courage. Give him greater direction. A greater joy. Walk through him, Father. May we lift him up in prayer constantly. Be with us tonight. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. I've been friends with Dean a long time. And we did laugh an awful lot in the restaurant today. And it was nice to be there. Irking the staff. And making a general nuisance of ourselves. And to be back together with him again. Because we've missed each other a lot. And it's good to be with you. And I tell you that I know in my heart of hearts for knowing him for so long that God has sent you a good pastor. And a good man. And that the love of Christ flows in him. And that I'm just so grateful that he has you. And you have him. And I'd just like to pray a special blessing on him tonight when we close. If that would be okay. It would be good to do. I wanted to take us on a journey. One of the things that we did when we worked our way through No Slaves in this Kingdom. Which is a book that's taken about five years for us to put together. Was to try to gain a better understanding of the journey that God's got his people on. Constantly. The journey that God's got his people on. And I think this is one of the things that we really have to be confident about right now. We talked on the weekend about how the world is changing. And how we sense things changing in our church. And in what we consider to be our religious beliefs and ideas. The pressure that's falling on the community. The different things that we're dealing with now that some of us haven't really dealt with before. Or certainly not on the scale that we're dealing with them now. And one of the things that's been so interesting to me about trying to understand God. In the best way that I possibly can. So that I might be able to move with him in greater strength. And this is the entire direction that I would like to go in in teaching tonight. Is that we would do everything that we could to set an objective. And that objective would be literally as believers. Setting our sights on climbing onto the lap of a living God. Climbing onto the lap of a living God. Somebody asked me. I got asked to go out and speak to a men's ministry last year. And they asked me what would be the primary objective as a believer. That I would be able to lead with them in the discussion for the weekend. And this is a men's ministry, right? And I told them that the primary objective of teaching that night would be. Climbing onto the lap of a living God. And I thought that they didn't think I was serious. Until after an hour and 45 minutes of teaching people about climbing onto the lap of a living God. That a number of the men that were in the men's ministry actually gave up. Fighting against me in the objective. Because we have so many different objectives as Christians. You know, we're constantly being asked to set objectives. We come into church and we go through different kinds of series and different kinds of Bible studies. And we get different kinds of objectives. And I'd like to call them micro or small objectives. Where God's got one primary objective for us as believers. And that is to trust in Him. And enter into relationship with Him. And to climb into His lap as believers. See, that's hard to assimilate. Especially if we've struggled historically with regard to different religious ideas. About who God is and how He sees us and how He judges us. And this is why I think the book of the Exodus. The story surrounding the first five books of the Bible. And bridging us into the book of Joshua. Are so important for us and so foundational for us as believers. Because all through this process. That God's moving these people that seem so far away and so distant to us. We've got one primary thing that He's trying to do to the children of Israel. He's trying to assist them to come out of an understanding personally. Of themselves as slaves. And into a freedom and relationship with the living God. He wants His children to be with Him. He refers constantly to the children of Israel as the children of Israel. The children of Israel means literally the children of a God that wins. The children of a God who prevails. Israel means God prevails. You are, I am the child of the God who wins. Right? And it's interesting because I think a lot of us go through our lives. Me included. Acting like we are children of a God who loses. Children of an absent minded God. Children of a God with multiple personality disorder. Right? Because we come into these stories. And we bring whatever filter of life experience that we've had into the story with us. So if we've been raised by a deeply religious person. That's convinced us in some way shape or form that God is angry at us. And wants to punish us for all of the foolish things that we've done in our life. Then we worship an angry God. And if anybody's had to live in a house with an angry person. You know that you don't have freedom to climb up onto the lap of an angry person. Do you? And if you do climb up onto the lap of an angry person. You do it at great risk. In the hope that they meet you. In the good place. And not in the angry place. Isn't it right? For every person in the room that knows what it's like to walk around somebody on eggshells. We have described what most of us can typify or use as a general statement about our uneasiness. In being in love with a living God. Who has prepared a way for us to come in to victory with Him. We are literally walking around Him on eggshells. In the hopes that we have not offended Him. Or brought injury to Him. Or done something foolish in His sight. Something unforgivable. Something that He will be angry about. Something that He will crush us for. We have a certainty in Scripture. And that is that the wrath. All of the anger of God. For all of the places where all of us. Past, present and future have missed the mark. Has been poured out on the Christ. And that's why He is the name above all names. Is because He endured that level of wrath. So that all of us could be free people. Free people. Free. Free. Free. Free in Christ. Free to worship. Free to live. And free to climb into His lap. And this is why I believed with all of my heart. That this book was so important. That we would be able to say. That God had made a way for us in the wilderness. By releasing us from the pain of the world. If you think about Egypt as being a barrier. That nobody could penetrate. In which we were held captive. And one moment in time. Those that were trapped in Egypt. Gained an understanding that they were truly slaves. And truly in difficulty. This is one of the great things about being a believer. Is that if you recognize your own place of slavery. To something. To anything. And it takes you less than 400 years. You're doing well. Right? You're doing well. Because this is the heritage that God's given us. He's trying to say to us. Kids. What I'll do. Is I'll make a place of provision for you. And that place of provision will be a fortress. And the fortress will feed you in a season when there's famine. Let me just review the story quickly. The children of Israel wind up going into the stronghold of Egypt. Because there's a famine in their own land. God makes a way for them. To come into a place of provision. And the place of provision. Has been established for them. So that they can get through 7 years of famine. 5 years left by the time they get there. Okay? They stay 393 more years than they were supposed to. Okay? Have you ever had a guest like that in your house? Somebody that comes because you've made a provision for them. And there you are. Nodding off on the couch at 1.30. And you've got to be at work in 4 hours. And all they want to do is still talk to you for those last 5 precious moments. We have a joke in ministry. Some come out only with prayer and fasting. Anyway. It's a good Bible joke. You'll get it later. Okay. So we've got this place that's been made provision for us. And it's a stronghold. And the children of Israel find refuge there. But it also turns into their place of slavery. Okay? Let's talk about this corporately. As a church family. What happens when the building that we're in turns into a stronghold that we get trapped in? That we don't know anymore how to use the very provision that God's given us to do something in ministry. What happens when a doctrinal idea. Meaning an idea that we formed as a group of believers becomes something that is a stronghold for us in a season. But at some point in time, it becomes a trap for us that we cannot escape from. See, this is what's happened in most of the Western church. The Western church has gained a hold of a series of ideas over the course of the last 200 years in particular. That have made a fortress of the church. And the church has become very efficient in doing many, many, many things. But for some reason, the efficiency becomes a place that the church has trouble escaping from. Because the moment that I rely upon my own strength to escape from something that's more powerful than I am, then I will be trapped by it and smothered by it. Do you ever wonder why in scripture there is an assurance for us in the New Testament that says, that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. It means that when we find ourselves corporately as a church being bound by something, that we call upon Christ and Christ comes to set us free. It's interesting though, because this is a hard thing for us to do. Let's use the story of the children of Israel again before we go out into the desert. They cry out for help and they're being enslaved by the most mechanized and efficient army in the history of the world at that time. And so God sends an even larger army to liberate his children. No, he sends an old man with a stick. Right? He sends an old man with a stick. Oh, good news. Aaron's with him. His estranged Jewish brother. These two will surely be able to destroy the largest army in the history of the world and deliver the children of Israel from bondage. Does it make any sense? Does it make any sense? It makes no sense. It makes no sense whatsoever. And as the story continues, it makes less sense and less sense and less sense. The children of Israel, through a series of miracles, find a breach in the thing in the wilderness and they come to a mountaintop experience in which God delivers a series of commandments to them to bring them into right relationship with him in the desert. But while he's doing it, after one of the greatest miracles in the history of the world, the parting of the Red Sea in which the children of Israel see a living God and they go through the waters and watch their enemies being destroyed before their very eyes, Moses disappears for too many days and the children of Israel fear that he's dead. So they do the only logical thing they can. They build a golden calf and throw a party. Does it sound familiar? Does it sound familiar? It does. Yes, Caleb's with me. Yes, Caleb. Yes, it does. But this is the problem. Let's talk about the individual relationship because we can talk about the corporate relationship over and over and over again and it doesn't hit close enough to home for there to be real life change so that the corporate relationship can change because God comes into the corporate relationship and affects it one person at a time. One person at a time. Even in the story of the golden calf, which by the way leads you to the lamest excuse in all of the Bible, Aaron trying to explain why he built the golden calf. Well, all these people came and gave me jewelry, came close to the fire and poof, it just popped out. Right? We wind up in this situation constantly where we're trying to understand something corporate by not taking a piece of personal responsibility about how God moves through us as individuals and what we are capable of doing in the strength of a living God. An old man with a stick and his estranged brother can be used in a way to liberate 600,000 men from slavery if he trusts in a relationship with a living God. And what you see through the progression of this story is this huge failure turns into a wandering time. Forty years. A whole generation going around and around and around and around and around in circles. Do you ever feel this way in your spiritual life? Honestly? Do you ever feel like you're just going around and around and around and around in circles? And you're looking and you're hoping and you're praying that something new, something miraculous, something incredible, something will be revealed as you go around and around and around and around and around. You want to be in a relationship with a living God. You want to come into a place of inheritance. And you come to the edge of it sometimes. And this, in the story of the exodus, is the Jordan River. The Jordan River symbolizes so many things for us scripturally. But the children of Israel go around and around and around and around and around until they come into contact once with Moses, with the Jordan River, and they're so afraid to come into their place of inheritance that they turn around against it and their generation is lost because they are afraid to come into their inheritance. See, this is interesting for me. And it's one of the things that I think as a church family we have to understand about who God is. We believe with all of our hearts as believers. We believe with all of our hearts as believers that we have been delivered from something, right? Isn't this one of the qualifications for us as a believer, that we have been delivered from something? We have been delivered from sin and death, right? We've been delivered from sin and death into the hand of a living God, a wonderful, powerful, incredible, majestic, living God who loves us. But for many of us, we spend too much time going around in circles looking back at what we've been delivered from but not focusing on what we've been delivered to. We are not people simply delivered from something. We are people delivered to something. We are delivered to something. We are delivered to a right to sit on the lap of the one who created the entire universe. Anybody been on God's lap today? If we are not taking the invitation to come in to here, to sitting on the lap of the king, then we are still either here or here. We're either still in bondage to the things of the world or we are circling, wondering where we are. See, it's interesting because most of the conversation that goes on from the children of Israel encircling in the desert revolves around a desire to return to Egypt. When you read through the Bible account and this is one of the things I would encourage you to do, in particular the 14th chapter of the book of the Exodus because that chapter shows you the power of a living God in being able to split open the Red Sea and have the children of Israel walk through it. But on the other side of the Red Sea when they encounter their very first problem, what they do is grumble and complain. They say amazing things like, What? There were no graves in Egypt, Moses? That you should bring us out here into the desert to die? It's better with a Jewish accent. It just is. Right? They sit with one another and say, The cucumbers in Egypt, they were this big and now we're starving to death eating these little pieces of bread. Moses, you're insane! They're all busy following a man who's following God and not busy following God themselves. They're too afraid to embrace the pure relationship with the living God and so they look to somebody else who has a living relationship with God and they thrust all of their anger and all of their frustration and all of their grumbling upon Him instead of taking on a personal responsibility to develop a pure living relationship with a God who loves them and who wants to bring them into a place of inheritance. This is the target for us as believers. It's a promise and it's already been given to us. The question is, will we go? Will we go? Will we go across the Jordan River? Will we go into the real fight? There's some small fights out here but this is the real fight right here. This is the territory. This is what God wants His children working in and especially in these days. The darkness is encroaching upon the church. Are there any Lord of the Rings fans here? In the third movie of the Lord of the Rings we see a plot that's hatched by this great evil force in the land of Mordor that's set completely against all of the things of righteousness and good. It's a story written by a Christian man who loved the Lord with all of his heart and as the darkness grows it focuses all of its attention on destroying the liberty and the freedom of men and having them move in fear in everything that they do. It is the age that we live in right now. It's where we live. A great darkness is bearing down on the church. The communities that we live in hate us and are separated from us. The darkness reigns in the back alleys and main streets of almost every major city in this country. People are tired and afraid and broken and homeless and hopeless and most of the church is afraid to come in to its inheritance and to fight in the strength of the living God because most of us only know how to fight in our own strength and not in His. We have got to embrace the position of sitting on the lap of God so that we can fight in a greater strength than the one that we already know. And if you are an intercessor or if you hear the voice of God or you are an evangelist or a pastor or you've been called with words of knowledge or you worship with all of your heart or you've seen healing in seasons and you've seen the miracles of God, this is the season for you to go to the next level, to the next thing that God is waiting for you. And if we've never seen any of it, if we're afraid to go into this homeless ministry that Dean was talking about just before I came up, does it scare you to go to meet a family that lives on the street and has no hope? What do you tell them? You see, if I'm afraid of losing everything, I have nothing to say to somebody who already has. If I'm afraid of losing everything, I have nothing to say to somebody who has. If I'm afraid of losing my own life, I have nothing to say to somebody who is losing theirs. This is real. It's a real fight. And we are the children of the God who wins. We are the children of the God who wins. Our God prevails. Our God is full of love and mercy and justice and might and glory and honor and victory. We win. We win. We win. We need to accept our place here. And I believe more than anything else what God's shown me in the five days that we've been blessed to be here with the church family, God is doing something remarkable here. With your church family. He's doing something remarkable here in this place. He wants this to be one of those places on the front line of the new kingdom that gets it. That it's not about programs and it's not about buildings and it's not about efficiencies and it's not about shows and it's not about movies and it's not about how comfortable the chairs are and it's not about being seeker-friendly. It's not about any of that. That first and foremost it's about being in love with a living God and trusting Him to bring us into a place where we are no longer afraid to live and to face the challenges of a real relationship with that living God. Not afraid to live and not afraid to die. Not afraid of poverty and not afraid to be wealthy. Not afraid to sing. Not afraid to worship. Not afraid to dance. Right? Not afraid to dance. If ever there was a church that I've ever been in that could do this and do this with joy and watch the miracles unfold one after the other, it's this church. It's this church. And if ever there was a man that I loved with all of my heart that would be willing to teach every person in this place how to die and not be afraid doing it, it would be him. It would be Dean. He is not afraid to die. And for every person in this room tonight that still is, I would just ask that you would watch him as Jesus moves in his life and that we would embrace this opportunity to go on this journey with one another. I see a picture, and I will not labor you with it, but every time I pray with him or with leaders in this church, I see the same picture over and over and over again. A light comes down in the center of my vision, and it goes out like a ring, and it eclipses the darkness around it, and it fades away, and there's new darkness. And then another light comes, and it goes out with greater strength, and then another light and another light and another light until the rings follow one another with such amazing persistence that the darkness no longer has any place to be. That is what God wants to do with this church. That's who you are. Does that sound weird? It's a little weird, but it's just the kind of thing that God would do. And I wanted to just pray with you tonight and thank you for talking about going through the desert and invite every single person that feels a commission or a pushback or a butterfly or anything moving on them tonight to come and share with me, to share with Dean, to share with the leaders in the church so that we can pray together and move together and watch him do what he's been planning to do here for decades and decades and decades. Hey, Dean, would it be too weird to just have you and Pam come up so we could pray with you? Would you come too? Would it be okay? Let me ask you a question. You want to go down there? Okay, Jen. If you feel like one of the greatest things in the whole world to do right now would be to put your hands on these two guys, why don't you come too and pray with us together? You are so good. Light of the world, you came down into darkness. Open my eyes like this. Father God, thank you. Thank you for all those that didn't rise but can pray with us in their seats. We are free people in Christ tonight, Father. We are free to sit in as much as we are free to run. And we are free to pray. And we are free to do it wherever we're called to. Thank you. Thank you for our freedom in Christ, Lord. Thank you for this group of people that felt compelled to come and place their hands upon my brother and my sister, who you love so very much and who you have equipped decade upon decade to carry an incredible message of hope and light, a real message of a living God on the building of an authentic Christian community that meets the needs of the widow and the orphan, that seeks out the foreigner and brings comfort and aid to the lost, that makes family where no family has been, that invites the lonely to participate in family, that teaches to give, teaches to share, teaches to open, teaches to love, Father. May the love and the joy and the peace of the kingdom of God flow upon my brother, too. May it flow upon my sister, Pam, and upon their children. And as we pray for the light of the kingdom to come, to strengthen them and guide them, I pray the blessing of Joshua upon him in this day, Lord. That you would anoint him not to spin in circles for a generation in a desert, but that you would open his eyes to the parting of the Jordan River, Lord. And that he would lead an army of the willing across that space and face the darkness and the light and the joy of coming into an inheritance that will bring with it the greatest battle and the greatest victory that the kingdom has ever seen in this territory before. Bless him with strength. Bless him with victory. Bless him with rest, with peace and with joy and wholeness in his life. And a man that will love his daughter as much as he loves Pam. And girls that will love those two boys of his as much as Pam loves him, Lord. Bless him. And may this time of prayer flow through him and out to every person who's called to intercede, to pastor, to worship, to evangelize, to speak the knowledge of the things of God. To teach, to lead, to sing and to dance on behalf of the King of Kings. May the blessing flow from him to a congregation that will at this moment be putting on the full armor of God. In our midst here tonight, Lord, there are those who have come to seek healing and we pray in the center of this assembly that the shadow of this community would heal in the name of Jesus Christ. We pray shadows that heal upon this place. And for all of those who came tonight to be refreshed, we pray the blessing of rain in this building. That the light and the water of a living God would fall down upon this place and refresh and bring new thoughts and new hopes and new joy and new strength to a generation that's come to the edge of the Jordan and said yes tonight. Yes, yes. The Lord says, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he turn his face towards you and be gracious to you. And may he bring me his perfect peace in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. How's about we hang out now? God bless you all. Thank you.