My Story Will Go

We are starting a new series about relationships called Uncommon, and I want you as I did, and how many of you enjoyed last week? Wasn't that awesome? I mean, weren't those ribs amazing? Of course, John said his ribs are better, but we'll see about that.

I'm going to tell them to cook me up some, but we just, we packed out this place, man. We didn't even have, we were bringing seats from the sides and everywhere. I guess food kind of does that, doesn't it? People will come out for food, but I want you next week, I really believe that God has something for you and something for the people that you're surrounding, your sphere of influence. So I ask you to, to invite, invite, invite for this new series Uncommon.

We're going to be dealing with love, commitment, communication, conflict, influence, all those things with any kind of relationship, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a marriage, whether it's a dating relationship, whatever that might be, we all need to hear from the Lord of how to deal with people, right? And we want to be good, good to each other and good to the people that surround us, our families and, and God has an encouraging word for us. Also, um, we're in week two of our growth track. We just had our week two this morning. Uh, but next week, if you, if you want to jump on board with our growth track, this is our membership process.

Um, and it's also a way to plug into the church. If you're like, man, this is my church. I want to get involved. Um, we want to carry you through this growth track. I promise you, you're going to, to really, uh, get something out of this.

Uh, next week is Discovery 301. We call it Discovery 301. And if you don't know where you fit in, if you're like, man, I want to get involved, but I don't know where I can get involved. I don't even know much about what I'm able to do in the church. Well, we want to help you with that.

And we have all the resources to be able to do that. So we start dead at 915. You can get here at nine, you know, give you some, get you some coffee. We meet over in the library and, uh, we, we, we start the class approximately a lot, not, we'll run dead on 915. And we're usually over by 10 o'clock.

So, um, and then you can just pop right over into the worship service. Or if you want to, you want to, uh, we can even give you a tour of the place, kind of show you what all our teams do and, and how we make this thing happen on Sunday morning. So, so we welcome you to be a part of our growth track, a real important part of our church. Um, we are in the last week. Uh, it's kind of bittersweet because I'm excited about the next things, but I'm really sad to leave this, this, uh, series.

This is my story. This is my story. And we've been dealing with the story of our lives because we all have a story and we love stories, right? We love books. We love movies.

We like TV shows. We want, all like the story. We like to watch something take place and progress to somewhere. And all of us want a story worth telling. But unfortunately, many of us don't have stories that we want or have stories we don't want to tell.

In fact, we write entire chapters out of our book so that people don't have to hear about those stories. But I want to tell you, your story is no mistake and God is not through with you. Can I get an amen on that? And by the way, it's okay to respond. I'm, I'm cool with that.

I'm cool with that. You know, um, it helps me. So if you got a little amen, just throw it out there if it feels good, right? Amen. Okay.

Um, uh, but God's got a story for you and he's not through with you yet. And one day God wants you, not just me, not just the people around you that are, that serve God, but God wants a story that you can tell, you know, and he's developing your story. So the theme of, uh, the theme sentence we've been kind of using throughout this series is something that Craig Rochelle stated. He said, the decisions you make today determine the stories you tell tomorrow. The decisions you make today, if you want to fill in those blanks today, determine the stories you tell tomorrow.

So we're, we've been taking a journey. We've been taking a journey and learning pieces of our story. Uh, just, just how can we live the best story? And just to recap on that. And by the way, um, we've been working on our website.

I know many of you I've been telling you that we're going to have the media up. We're going to have the media up. We're going to have the media up, but Matt, we're going to have the media up, aren't we? Yeah. Amen.

Okay. We're going to have it. Uh, we're going to get that up. So you could go back and listen to other parts of this. Cause I know a lot of you travel out of town during the week.

We have a very transient area and some of you are in and out for two weeks for work or whatever and come back in. So, um, I know a lot of people are like, I really want to hear this. I had a guy, you know, that hasn't been here for three weeks and he travels a lot and he says, man, I really want to hear your series. Put them up. I said, okay, okay.

Okay. We'll, we'll get them up, but you can go back and, and learn this. But just to give you a recap, uh, uh, the first week we talked about our story starting and being the new year and, and, and, you know, trying to begin a story and, and begin our lives and we're dealing with habits and we're breaking habits. And, and we talked about the small things that lead to greater things that create positive influence in our life. And we looked at the story of Daniel and how he had small habits of praying to God, uh, many times during the day.

He had, he had that routine every day, which led him ultimately to be an influential person in his time. The second week we talked about changing. Sometimes our story changes, right? And we need to change our story at time. We need to redirect our story.

And we talked about some things that we need to stop, right? And we looked at the life of Moses and Moses and how he, he made some instrumental changes in the way he dealt with the Israelites as he was, uh, as he was influencing people and as he was making decisions, he had to, he had to release some things to other people. And there are things in our life that we have to change. It could be bad habits. It could be something that, that, uh, that harms our story, our testimony, things that we have to stop and we have to change.

Last time we talked about my story will remain. And that was a good one because sometimes God calls us to stay right where we are, right? Right where we are. And we looked at the story of Ruth and Naomi and how, and how Ruth decided to remain with Naomi rather than go. The easiest thing would have been to leave her and go somewhere else, right?

But sometimes God calls us to stay. Well, I'm going to reverse that this week. Sometimes God calls us to go. My story will go. So let's dig into this this week.

And to set this up, I want to just kind of, kind of ask you some things. Have you ever gotten the feeling that there's more to your story than where you are? Like you have this thing inside of you or this burden in your heart or something's been pulling at your heartstrings for a long time. And, and you've really felt like, man, where I am right now, it's good and it's okay. And it's comfortable, but there's so much more.

And I've really been getting pushed to go this direction. And, uh, that it could be a, uh, maybe a ministry. It could be a business. It could be just a simple job change, or it could be a location change, or maybe you feel led to, to spend some. Time with these people, or you feel led to do something out of the ordinary, and you've had this thing tugging on your heart for a very, very long time.

Yet, for many of us, reality sets in, right? And we're like, well, where I am, I'm, you know, I'm comfortable. I have the job. I have the money. I have the place I want to always live.

And God's calling us to something completely different. And we become comfortable. And insecurity sets in. And when the insecurity sets in, we don't really trust what God is telling us, or God is leading us. And because of that lack of trust, we remain right where we are.

And we never experience all that God has for us. And perhaps, this is rooted in faith. So, sometimes, the best decision you can make is to go, when it would be easier to stay. Sometimes, the best decision you can make is to go, rather than stay. So, we're going to look at Genesis 12.

So, if you have your Bibles, Genesis 12, we're going to look at the story of Abram. Everybody knows Abraham, but perhaps you don't know Abram, if you're not familiar with it. You're with the story of Abraham. And we're going to see where he goes with this. But to kind of set this up, 15 years ago, I was working in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I was not out of school for terribly long. I've been maybe a few years. I had a comfortable job. I've been promoted two times in just a short period of time. I was really rocking it.

And it was a comfortable place. I just rededicated my life to Christ a few years before. So, I was really excited about Jesus. I was involved in the local church. I was getting, you know, I launched two ministries within the church.

I mean, everything seemed to be going well. But something inside of me was being pulled to something else. And I didn't really know what that thing was. And as I was sitting in my office one day, staring at my computer, doing my normal day work, I heard the voice of God tell me, and some of you probably can relate, you're not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be here.

What? I'm not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be here. And that would begin something. That would set in place a question.

Would I stay or would I go? Would I stay or would I go? Familiar story in Genesis 12, starting with verse 1. The Lord said to Abram, Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to a land that I show you. Now, let me give you some context with what's going on here.

God called Abram out of Ur, of Chaldees. If you know anything about this place, it was an idolatrous place, the worship of many gods, polytheistic. In fact, Abram's family was probably polytheistic to some extent, because the people of that particular era were. And the city actually devoted their worship to the sun god Nanar, or Nanar, or I'm not sure exactly how you, I've heard it pronounced different. I guess if you're British, it's different, and if you're American, it's different, right?

But they worshiped the moon god, and what we know about Abram is he was wealthy. He was very wealthy. He had a lot. He had generations of people that had lived in this land, and they had, I'm sure they had businesses of their own, and they had a lot of friends. And they were comfortable, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't that hard of a life, right?

And I'm sure as he was living in that place, that God was calling him out partly because of the idolatry around him. Like, I'm ready to separate you and do something big in you. In fact, if we really want to go deeper into the study of what's going on around this, we'll learn that if we go back to verse 31 of the chapter beforehand, which is not on your notes, but for another time, you can probably sit down and study it. We learn that Abram's family, in fact, Terah, his father, actually led the family out because in that custom, even that day, your father actually leads you out of the area. And, but somewhere in that mix, God revealed himself to Abram.

God showed himself as the God of all gods, the Lord of all lords, and here I am among all these other gods. Here I am. He had some kind of experience that led him to this point where God was calling him out. And he said, he told him he needed to leave his country. And on the story, if we watch the story, going back to verse 31, once again, we see that they leave, and then they kind of settle down in this area called Haran for about five years.

And then, and then Terah passes away, his father. And then once again, we come back to the scripture, and he says, leave your country, your people, and your father's household. So, he's actually calling him out of his father's household, like away from your family even. Because the family began the journey, they settled down, they probably liked the area. It was comfortable, it was a nice city, you know, we started our businesses all over again.

And we can settle down here, and I'm sure Abram was thinking, wow, I can really do this. So, is God really calling me to this land of the Canaanites, this land flowing with milk and honey, or whatever they called it back in that day? Is he really calling me to this? Because I'm quite comfortable. Why did God call Abram out of that?

Because he did, he had a destiny for him. He had a story for him. He had something greater for him than what he was currently experiencing. Yeah, it was okay. But he had so much more, he was pulling him to something else.

So, number one, to step toward your destiny, you have to step away from your security. If you really want to do what the Lord's called you to do, if you really want to, like, enter into a whole new level of life in Christ and life in God, you've got to step away from the secure things, your security. Abram left his home. He left his family. He left everything.

He left his traditions. He left all the material comforts of his life, and he set out. And have you ever had those people that kind of pray to God, and they ask, you know, God, you know, they do something bad maybe, you know, like they drink too much, or they're in a situation that they can't be, you know, they've got to get a court date or something like that. If God, God, if you just, Lord, I promise, if you get me through this, right, I promise I will serve you all the days of my life. And, you know, and a lot of times we don't know what that means, and I'll get to that in a second, but a lot of times we don't know what God, everything that God has for us.

He doesn't show us all the details of life. He just calls us to do it, right? He just calls us to do it and trust Him. And we can lean on Him through all of our situations. This applies to many areas.

Abram didn't know exactly what was going to happen in the future. In fact, he was 75 years old. They were both 75 years old. They couldn't bear any children. They didn't...

I don't know where to go, but God is getting ready to do something amazing in their ministry as He calls them to do this thing. Maybe this applies in many areas of life. Maybe it is a ministry. Maybe it's something simple like just giving. I need to trust God with this and He can prove me faithful.

Or maybe it's just investing time. Or maybe it's just being obedient in the small things, just trusting Him as you go. But He has many promises laid out for us. Many promises laid out for us. In fact, He said this to Abram.

He said, I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be blessed. I will bless those who bless you. Isn't that something?

I will curse those who curse you. And all the people of the earth will be blessed through you. Wow! What promises! Now getting back to the promise thing, the people who kind of pray, they go, oh God, if you just get me through this, I promise you, I will serve you all the days of our life.

What usually happens with those people? God gets them through it, and what do they do? They go back to the very same things, right? Which is why we say, we're not changed by the promises we make to God. That just doesn't happen.

We're not changed by the promises we make to God. We're changed by believing God's promises to us. We believe that God will follow through. He has a promise for every one of our circumstances. Do you know that?

We can open up the Bible, and we can, and He has promises for everything. Whether you're dealing with fear, whether you're dealing with money, whether you're dealing with hate, whether you're, you know, whatever it might be. You have an enemy against you, you're going through life situations, you lose a loved one. Whatever the circumstance is, God has placed a promise in front of you so that you can grab hold of, you can hold on to that promise. Now, He doesn't give us everything, does He?

Those promises. Because why? You can't handle the whole story all at once. It's like Jack Nicholson says in A Few Good Men. Right, Peter?

One of your favorite movies. You can't handle the truth. And God's telling us that. You can't handle the truth. The truth, you can't handle the truth.

So, I'm giving you pieces. I'm giving you promises. Trust in my promises. And this is, so number two, step. To step towards your destiny, you have to step into God's promises.

You have to lean into God's promises. I like how Ed Young says that you gotta, you gotta become comfortably uncomfortable. Comfortably uncomfortable. Yeah, stepping into these things and trusting God is hard, but that's why we call it faith. Trust in Him no matter what.

Our circumstances, no what, where we are. Comfortably uncomfortable. Let me just give you a few examples. I remember I was, you know, when I was starting this church. And sometimes I grow, I get the habit of doing it anyway.

Lord, if you just grow this church. If you just make it the most influential. And I start throwing out like I did, you know, like the example of the Lord. If you just, if you just, if you just, I'll give my life to church planting. I will give my entire life to it.

Whatever, whatever it takes, Lord, I'll do it. I do it. But Lord, just make it successful. Do what you do. And I promise you, I'll get, I'll, I'll, I'll give my life to this.

But instead, I've started changing my, my prayer. And I say, I do this, Lord. I do this, Lord, because I trust your promises. I trust you because I love you. That's why I do this, because I love you.

You have called me to this. And, and, and not only that, you love me. I do this because you love me. I, I sacrifice because you have loved me. And you have given everything to me.

You gave your son for me. So I give this to you. Yeah, Lord, I still give my life to church planting. Yeah, I, I will give everything. And I, some, and I pray that this ministry is the most influential ministry that ever hit Virginia Beach.

And I believe it will be by the power of God, because we are a power of God church. We believe in his power. We believe that we are going to be a church that is in, that will, that will change our community here starting. We're still in the beginning phases of this. And we've already seen so many things happen.

We can't believe how far we've come. It's amazing what God does. But we do this because he first loved us. That's why we do what we do, what we do, changing our views. And, and sometimes those things don't turn out the way we want them to, right?

Even if we take steps forward, we don't, we think that we're going to get here and we're going to get there and we're going to do this and do that. And it just doesn't quite, or somebody's going to respond this way. Somebody shared a story with me one time, a young lady who, who ministers to Muslims. She was walking through an airport and she saw a Muslim woman there. And she says, you know, God just kind of laid it on my heart.

And I know it was God. He called me. He says, I need to go. And she said, I need to go and talk to this, this Muslim woman. And I need to share Jesus with her.

I, and, and she just couldn't get away with it. She walked by a woman like a couple of times and she said, I just got to do this. So she walks up to the woman and she starts sharing Jesus with him. A woman just reacted so angrily. It was like, what are you doing to get away from me?

I don't believe this stuff. Don't you see who I am? And it just killed her. It's like, whoa, you know, I didn't expect that. I mean, God, you told me to do it.

You know, God, you, you led me to share the gospel with this person. You know, but sometimes it doesn't always work out the way we think it should. But we don't know what that did that day. When you share that message with somebody, even if they're hostile to it. If God calls you to something, it's better to go than to stay.

So what did Abram do? So Abram left as the Lord had told him. So Abram left as the Lord told him. Imagine if Abram didn't go. Imagine if Abram decided to stay.

Imagine he have never, he just said, hey, I'm comfortable here. I've got everything I ever want. My family, my friends are around me. You know, God doesn't, doesn't really need me. You know, he could pick somebody else.

He's God, right? I mean, he can replace me. But imagine he had never gone. We would have never seen his story unfold. That his wife would bear a child.

An impossible thing. And have a son named Isaac, who would ultimately have Jacob. Who would, who would bear a son named Joseph. Who would rule the Egyptian kingdom. And build a great Israelite nation.

Which ultimately Moses would lead out of bondage. And then Israel was birthed. And through Israel, King David would rise into rule. And through David's lineage ultimately would come Jesus Christ. And through Jesus Christ, the church is birthed.

And through him, hope. Through him, love. Hope for a world. Love for a people. Through him, he would give his life.

So that not only Israel, but all could come to the knowledge of him. What if he hadn't gone? What if he had stayed? You can't imagine. Imagine the blessings that will take place if you obey.

You can't imagine the blessings that will come if you obey and what you miss out on if you stay. So, let me get practical for a minute. We're going to ask the same question as we do every week. Pull out your notes again. And this first question is, what story does God want you to tell?

What does God want you to want? What is that story worth telling that God wants you to tell? Whatever your situation may be. Maybe it's to start a ministry. Maybe it's to be a better father or mother, a better family person.

Maybe it's your spiritual life. Maybe it's something completely different. Whatever that is. And then the second question is, what step of faith do I need to take? What step of faith do I need to take?

Maybe it's to go public with your faith. Maybe you're a closet Christian. Maybe it's time to, you know, step out and start sharing, hey, I'm a Jesus follower, you know? Maybe it's, maybe it's, it is a job. Maybe it is a ministry.

Maybe, maybe it's just, just to start something new. But it all starts with small, small steps. And continuing my story, the first thing I had to do when I heard this voice of the Lord tell me I wasn't supposed to be there, I had to decide what was next. Because I knew where God was calling me. He was calling me into ministry.

I knew He was calling me into a preaching, teaching ministry. I knew He was doing that. But what would be the first step to take? I could be, I could, my head could explode if I even knew that I would be starting Salt Church one day. I wouldn't know what to do.

I'd be like, whoa, whoa, God, you know? Because I can't handle the truth, right? I can't handle it all. But I knew that He, my next step, small steps would be to, to begin looking for a seminary to join the School of Divinity. And I applied for many different places.

And somehow I landed in Virginia Beach at Regent University. I met my wife here. We remained here through several ministries and on. And the rest is history. What if I had decided not to take that first step?

What if I had decided not to, to even, even pursue ministry? Amen, brother. And many of you have that same thought. You'd be like, you're like, wow, a Salt Church was the best thing that ever happened to you. And I hear your stories.

I hear your stories. Wow, if it wasn't for Salt Church, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't have even gone here. God has a plan for it all. Amen.

And it starts with small steps. So what's your first step? What's your first step? If it is ministry, maybe it's, maybe I need to go to school. Or maybe I need to launch a small ministry within my church just, just to get, get a start.

Or something, something familiar to where I want to go. Maybe, maybe if, if, if God's calling you to change your job, maybe, maybe fill out some applications. I mean, God's not going to drop it in your lap, is he? Take, take small steps towards things that, that, that, and trust God. Lean into his promises.

To, to go towards your destiny, you have to lean into his promises. Trust his promises as you go. When we started Salt Church, I had nothing. You know, many of you are going, oh gosh, she's going to tell the story again. But I've got to tell you over and over again, so you get this.

You get this. With just a couple of families and a bunch of 20-somethings, sitting in a living room. We said, we're going to do this, right? What do we do first? Well, let's just get together and, and, and see what happens, right?

Start talking about this. And then the next thing, you know, you know, let's just rent that little workout center around the corner. This lady's offering us to rent. And let's set up a couple of speakers, right? Nick.

And, and plug in an old monologue system and run a bunch of chords all over the place. And start playing music and having, having services, right? And we did that. That was the next step. Maybe the next, and then a few weeks later.

Maybe we should get a screen for our lyrics, you know? We added that on. And then just through our period of time, we just kind of developed things and things happened and people started coming in. And then, and then we're like, wow. I remember the first week we had people.

We were like, wow, we have people. That's amazing. We don't have just the worship band and, and our, and our work, you know, and the people who were in our house. They're like, wow, we have people. And they started showing up and then, and then like, hey, we have people now.

Maybe we should start thinking about, you know, like giving them some material or giving them some outreach. So we started doing outreach and, you know, it just started developing. You know, let's do outreach. Let's do things like that. And then it just, it just took, it took root.

And now we are where we are and we're continuing to walk that path. Wow. Now we, now we're growing. Now we've got new things. Now we got a sound system.

Now we got all this. Now let's start thinking about systems. Let's think about that. You know, we're, we're, you know, as, as we develop, God gives us more. But the reason he gives us more is because he entrusts us with the small things and we lean into his promises, trusting him in faith.

So what is God calling you to go to do? Maybe a, maybe a small group. Maybe he's calling you to start a small group. Maybe you've been thinking about this for a while. And now's the time to start a small group.

Maybe it's, it's to write a book. Maybe you've been called to write a book or, or maybe take a missions trip. Maybe it's, maybe it's time to take a missions trip or, or maybe God's called you to adopt a child or foster a child. Maybe that's something that's been on your heart for a while. Or maybe you came to church and you looked across the room and you said, oh my goodness, who's that girl, right?

And maybe you need to start wearing a little bit of deodorant, combing your hair and walk over and ask her out. Because marriage is the next thing on your list, right? Maybe that's your thing. Whatever that is, we need to go. But why don't we go?

Fear, insecurity, failure, ridicule, all the things that make us terribly insecure. That, that, and that's Satan's plan. He wants to make you feel that way. So as you walk out of this church and you, and you, and you've been, something's been pulling at your heart, you know, I need to talk to that next door neighbor, invite them to church next time, but I'm afraid I'll lose them as a friend. Yeah.

Trust God. I need to talk to that person in this coffee shop across or around the way. God's been leading me to do that. You need to trust God. God's called me to start this, this, this ministry.

And I don't know. I don't have, I don't have the money for it. I don't have people for it. I don't even know how to begin. Well, well, trust God.

Start the first things. Begin the conversation. He may birth a church in you. May birth a huge ministry in you. There are Billy Graham's probably in this room right now that we haven't discovered because you've been too insecure to step out.

Whatever that is. Jesus was a carpenter. He stepped out, right? Was blinded on the road to Damascus. A tent maker and a Pharisee.

A man that never walked the earth besides Jesus and planted many churches and led many, many people to Christ. Because we're here today because of him. Because he made that choice to go rather than to stay in our mind. To take steps towards something. But you've got to trust God.

Let's pray. Father, there are people right in this room right now that need, that needed that word from you, God, something to spur them on to the next thing, God, to give them the motivation, to give them the drive to begin to step towards their destiny, to step towards the things that you have in store for them. As they settle for the comfortable things, God, begin to pull their hearts towards the things of you that you have much more in store for them, that there is life beyond the life they were currently experiencing. If you're here today and you need prayer over that right now, lift your hand. Just say, I've got something on my heart.

There's hands going up right now. I've got something on my heart. I'm ready to go. There's 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12. I want to pray for you.

Dear Father, in the name of Jesus, give them the boldness and the strength to step forward and take a hold of the thing that you've called them to do. Lord, give them that. In the name of Jesus, for some of you, there's a different story, a story that hasn't started yet. I want us to take this time very seriously, very seriously, because people are getting ready to make a decision that's going to change everything. It's going to change your entire life.

Maybe you're here and your heart's been drawn and maybe you've heard the worship and you've heard the word and you're like, You know, maybe it's time for me to step out in faith and give my life to Christ. Maybe it's time for me to have a relationship with Christ, to step out and give my heart to Him, to start my story today. Your call to go is to step into Him and His destiny. That's you today with all heads bowed and all eyes closed. Jesus, if you would just raise your hand, because I want to pray for you.

If you'd raise your hand. Over here. Two, three, four, five, six. Hands going up. Hands going up.

Any more? Anybody else? Anybody else? Pray this with me. Pray this with me.

Jesus, I received the blood that was shed so that I could have access to you, God the Father, through Jesus Christ, through your Son. He gave His life on the cross. He died and He rose again so that I can have life in you. So today I give my life. I commit fully to you.

I am yours, Lord. I give it all to you. Praise you, Jesus. I walk with you from here forward. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Can we give a hand clap for those who gave their life to Christ today? Hallelujah. We thank you, Jesus.

We thank you, Jesus.