Ezra 1:1–4 ESV

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”

The Power of the Pen

Intro

I love a good negotiation. How many of you enjoy a good negotiation?

Before working at the church I would negotiate Government contracts. We would come together as a team; Project Managers, Product Team Leaders, Engineers and Subcontracts Managers. We would go through the process of fact finding and asking detailed questions to get us to a negotiated agreement.

Whenever I would have to negotiate a personal purchase I enjoyed bringing in the years of experience into my negotiations. One example was when I negotiated a car for my wife.

At the time, we were newly weds and I wasn’t quite able to roll a new car off the lot, but I was looking for a quality used car. I remember my wife knew exactly what she wanted, and I was buying her this car as a graduation present for graduating from SDSU with her under graduate degree. When we finally found the car, I knew that this was it. So my first conversation with the guy ended with him telling me, you need to pick a new car. The payment you want doesn’t match the car you want.

That was like the worst thing this man could tell me. I was out for blood at that point. For the next two weeks, I started negotiations. I realized that part of the negotiation wasn’t just negotiating the product, but it’s negotiating the person. If you are taking notes, write that down.

I’m kidding. I’m not.

Anyway.

After two weeks of emails, texts, calls, back and forth… I spoke with the manager of the dealership. I knew that the longer this car stayed on the lot, the better my chances. I went down on a Friday night with Joanna. Things were getting heated with the manager. It was then that I played my strongest hand...

I wrote down my name and number on the paper and I told him this, “Call me on Monday morning when you are ready to wrap up this negotiation and give me the car at this price. This is my car, and it’s not selling this weekend. When you’re done playing games, give me a call and I’ll come pick up the car.

Monday morning, as sure as my second cup of coffee in the morning, the salesman called my office and said, “Mr. Herrera, come pick up your car.”

Something changed when I took the moment to write it down.

Transition

Now, I say all of that because here in our text, we see that not only did King Cyrus issue a proclamation, but he took the time to write it down.

Text

At the time of our text, the Jews were exiles who had been conquered by Babylon, who was then conquered by Persia. Babylon ruled over this once great nation, and destroyed Jerusalem. As weird as this sounds, God allowed for their captivity to happen because they had turned their hearts away from God.

Now the Jews were living in captivity, but because they are God’s chosen people, he would raise up another great people, the Persians, and use them to judge and conquer Babylon.

Now that the Persians were in charge, God was touching the heart of their King, Cyrus. Cyrus knew that the power and the authority that he had obtained, belonged to God. He had an ear inclined to God and would be used by God to allow the Jews to start returning to Jerusalem.

They were called the exiles.

Now, here is what I want you to get. When Cyrus issued the proclamation, he took the time to write it down. There was a shift that occured when Cyrus not only spoke it, but he took the time to write it down.

Let’s pause, and think about this together.

God Writes What Is Important

Genesis through Deuteronomy records pivotal events, not just for God’s people who would become Jews, but also for humanity. God needed for this to be recorded so he led Moses up to the Mountain, hid him in a cleft of a rock, and then as his glory passed through the mountain, God revealed to Moses creation. Moses then wrote this down, because it was important to God.

Moses would go up to Mt. Sinai, and would meet with God face to face. It was there that God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and the very finger of God would write the 10 Commandments down on two tablets of stone. God wrote them down because they were important.

I think about the New Testament, and how Luke wrote not only his gospel, but the Book of Acts. He wrote them down to relay a message to Theophilus about who Jesus was and the birth of the church. He needed to write it down because it was important.

Every book that we have in our hands was written down and given from one person to the next, from one generation to the next, until it was received in your hands. It was written down, because it is important to God.

Application 1

Lighthouse, this is why when you come to church, and especially when you show up to pray, don’t come empty handed unless you want to leave empty handed.

You need to come with a pen, and you need to come with paper, because you are saying God whisper to me the things that are important to you. I’m not just going to hear you, but I am going to listen to you. I am going to write down what I hear you saying to me because it is important.

When you write down what God is saying to you, you are prioritizing his word in your life.

Make what is important to God, important to you.

God Invites Us Into the Process of Writing

Habakkuk 2:2 ESV

And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

When I think about this verse, it’s clear to me that vision has a pace. The Lord tells Habakkuk, don’t just see the vision, but write the vision down. Don’t just write it down, but make it plain.

“Where there is no vision, people perish...”

Practically speaking, people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them then the people who don’t. I don’t look to the Bible as a self help book, because it is not that, but time and time again, psychology will confirm what has always been known to God.

You may be wondering, how am I invited into the process of writing?

2 Corinthians 3:2 (NLT)

Your lives are a letter written in our hearts; everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you.

Paul is saying to the church, your life is a living letter that others are reading. God is writing your story, but you have a say in the matter.

God invites you into the marvelous work that he is doing in your life. When you accept that invitation, your life is a story that is read by others.

Of course, you can write your own story. You can chose to have him not be the author of your life, and go at it alone.

But He is the author of the best selling book of all time! The Bible, is the most printed and read book in the history of all books. This author wants to write your story. So that your story can be read by others, who are having their story written. And then, their story will be read.

God is Writing Our Story

I believe that God is not only writing your stories, but he is also writing the story of Lighthouse Church. I promised that I would share with you some of the details of our story.

We were really close to leasing out a building in San Marcos that had previously belonged to another church. We were so far along in that deal that we began to pick out the carpet, the paint and the chairs. Everything looked good to go, until the deal fell through. It fell through after we had signed contracts on our side, and mailed in a deposit.

A couple of weeks after that deal was dead I was still moping around, questioning God. I remember informing God that he had a problem. This is HIS church. So if HIS church is homeless, that’s HIS problem.

Out of nowhere I was told about a building in Vista that could be up for rent for Sunday services. My wife and I were intrigued at the possibility, but it was in Vista. We were in San Marcos and we felt like that’s where we needed to be. Nonetheless we came. We toured this building, and we sat down with some of their leaders to discuss a potential lease.

My first question was, could we do some remodeling or improvements to get this place to work for our use.

One of the men quickly replied, “why don’t you just by it?”

To which I responded, “I didn’t know it was for sale.”

I was informed that several years ago this property had appraised for 1.6 million. I did the quick math in my head and let them know that we didn’t have the cash in the bank to make a deal like that happen.

Once again this gentlemen said, well what can you afford? make us an offer?

At that point in time, I let them know I needed our CFO and our Broker in on this transaction.

When I came back at our next meeting, they began to see what I saw. We didn’t talk numbers, but we began to get a better idea of what we might be able to do in a potential purchase. We all saw the upside in buying this building that was in a part of Vista that is in the process of being revamped.

The broker went ahead and left the negotiations up to me and Selah.

So I called the person taking the lead, and offered him $400,000 to buy this property. That was based on our borrowing power. Yes, it sounds like a low offer, but our cash on hand supported this number.

This is what we could do. But from this point forward, God was going to drive.

The church came back and said that they didn’t want to let the opportunity to bless a church pass them by, and they offered us the building for $900,000. Keep in mind they were sitting on a $1.6 million appraisal. They would carry back a second on the property for whatever we could not finance.

When I ran this number back to our team, we were still stuck trying to get our financing in place. We got a verbal agreement from an Investment Group to back us for $500,000, and that would leave the church to carry $400,000.

I called back and offered $750,000 to buy the building. Now at first, they thought that Pastor Josh was haggling like he was at the swap meet. But the truth is, that $500,000 loan was going to be at 5% interest, so by the time we pay that loan off, the interest puts us all the way up to the $900,000 purchase price that was on the table.

The church went back to discuss our offer, and they came back with the following:

$900,000 purchase price

They would carry the financing on the entire deal, meaning we didn’t need an Investor, because they would be the investor.

They also said, you’re going to need all your cash for the remodel, so no down payment.

Finally, they said, we don’t think interest is biblical, so we are giving you a 0% interest rate.

Don’t you tell me God can’t do it!

Today I am sharing this story, because it is a miracle. These things don’t just happen, and yet it happened for us.

Conclusion

When we enter into this renovation, I believe that Lighthouse Church is going to become a house of miracles. I am believing that what began as a miracle, will end as a miracle. If you need God to do something in your life, in your marriage, in your family, I am going to give you a chance to respond.

Today, these banners are going up. Right after our service, Sam is going to mount these banners up for us. But before he does that, I am going to give each family, and each person to write on the back of these banners.

What prayer do you need answered?

I am believing that whatever you need answered, God is going to do it. It’s going to happen at some point in the middle of our build out.

And listen, when the build out is over, we are going to open up these banners, and we are going to celebrate every answered prayer!

We are going to celebrate every mountain moved.

We are going to celebrate every healed body.

We are going to celebrate every marriage restored.

This will be a house of miracles.