Open Doors Week 2
We're in week number 2 of a series called open doors. It's really about dreaming, the future that God wants for you. John so eloquently described the battle that we all face day after day and we talked last week about the secret to overcoming that is having the spirit of God is power alive in us. Not something, we do better, not some better discipline. Not, not something that we practice not even calling. Ourself Christian. The solution is found in the spirit of God being in Us Alive inside of us. Today, I want to continue the second half of that. We talked about 12 things and a cover. The first six. I want you to see in Colossians 3:10 in. This is in your route 4th and wall. If you are joining us online on Facebook, sounds like our online platform is down today, but the good news is starting with this series will be podcasting our Sunday morning sermons. So if you miss some part of this teaching and you want to be able to go back and catch the audio portion of it, we're going to begin podcasting these as an opportunity to catch the sermon as well to Colossians. 3:10 his put on your new nature. That is that nature of the spirit of God alive in you and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. I noticed that this is a an active presence, not something that accomplishes one time and you're done. It's not like a ha. I have arrived or it happened to me and I became a Believer and I'm good to go. This is become. Like him more and more. The nature of God being revealed in Us by the very power, that is deposited in US. We started all of this by talking about the fact that we're on a spiritual growth campaign for the next 40 days that we're going to spend our time looking at how do we grow seasonally and in internally, it's a spiritual growth campaign, is this concentrated 40-day boost to your life that we commit to doing together, using utilizing multiple learning styles to equipment, energize us for the future. So the idea is to come back to may be something. We started at the beginning of the year, with your one word, God's not finished with that. Inside of you yet. We're going to put some fresh energy into this. In the fourth quarter of this year, at Chief, God might do some amazing stuff inside of us. Are you might need a spiritual growth campaign? Because you have never understood God's dream for your life. How many of you feel like, I just never really understood God's dream for my life that you have to be bashful about that. That it is not uncommon and I want you to know the enemy will do anything to thwart you from really Understanding God's dream for your life, but it could be that maybe you had a dream, where you felt like, you had God's green For That season of your life and somebody else's decisions in your life, have impacted your dream. Anybody have that happen. Maybe somebody left you or abandoned you or damaged, you or hurt you, or put you in a spot where all of a sudden you had this crystal-clear dream and now it's not so clear clear as mud. Not sure where you're going or how you going to get there or maybe you just got into a place where you're at a new age and a new stage and the dream is stale, and it's not what it was and you're beginning to sense. Maybe God wants to do something different. How many of you would fall into that category? You feel like maybe you're just had a new stage and a new age and you need a fresh dream, any of those. Wonderful. I'm so glad you're here because in this series, this is exactly what we're going to talk about. This is why it's so important and it's all comes out of his patients 3:20. I love with the message, translation captures it this way. God can do anything, you know, far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams. It doesn't do this by pushing us around but by working within us that is that renewing that we looked at in Colossians, his Spirit deeply and gently within us and that is the connection. We're going to try and find it. Is in this, 40-day spiritual growth campaign. So I want to go over the 12 reasons that I must know, God's dream for my life. I gave you six of them last week, and you're going to have to participate with me because it's not nearly as much fun. When I do this all by myself. Okay. So the first six of those, if you missed them last week, you can go back to our website and you can look at last week's message and get the first six of these. But I'm going to go through these real quick. Say number one. God, give me the capacity to dream. Say, number two, without your dream. I'm dying. Say number three, everything starts with a dream. Number 4. Dreams show what God wants to do through me. See number 5, my dreams to find me and see number 6. All right. A Dream cheats Me growing. Number seven is where we're going to get to today. Say number seven. Alright, a dream focuses my energy by now. You've probably discovered that you cannot do everything. Anybody discover that, right? Right. Sometimes we painfully discover that you just can't do it all. Hopefully you've learned that not everything is worth doing. What is the biggest challenge? Is that? I think we faces are so many things for us to do it. So he would appear to be good. Things can be destructive. Things cannot be the things God wants you to be doing. So how do we focus on the things that God wants us to do and learning to say? Know how many of you need to learn to say? No. Let's practice. Saying no turn to your neighbor and say no Terry wives, do not say that to your husband. That's not a good thing to do. But we do have to learn how to say no. It's not the best thing for me, baby. A good thing, but you got the best thing for me. So, there are some things that are important, but God, doesn't expect you to do everything, and I don't expect you to do everything and you shouldn't expect of yourself to do everything. You need to learn to be able to say no, because God doesn't expect you to do everything. We have to realize that life is a selection of what is a better things to do. Not just a good things to do, with the better things to do and selection is the name of the game prior to prioritization of what really matters versus what doesn't want to know, what counts? And what doesn't count. It's a no, you were dream in your life. Is built around the things that are not part of the dream for your life. So for example, living a dream of being famous is not worth one second of your life because it's bleeding. So many people chase after that minute of being a hero. And the next minute, being a zero. They just don't recognize that being famous, is, not the deal. You know, in one moment, you're on the cover of a magazine and the next, it's in the trash. It's just not worth trying to chase that chasing after trophies. Dumb, let me give you a perfect example. I spent a decade at Dow Corning Corporation, a Fortune 50 Corporation. Wonderful place to be. And they had this cool award for the top and marketers and Oil Company of markers effect. We had a whole floor of marketing people and they would say to us the top 10, get a Steuben piece of glass. When you guys aren't really excited about that stupid and piece of glass and I collected several of them as one of the top 10 marketers. I guess what I think. I think. They're wrapped in a box in my crawl, space, I think. Maybe two of them, one of them. One of my kids may have broken off. These things are like two $3,000 worth of this little Priceless piece of glass. Bitter. Utterly meaningless later. What? Why do we Chase those things? Those Awards, those trophies, those recognitions? You see that's not a big enough dream. You need a dream that goes beyond here and into eternity. Because a dream will focus your energy. Bible says in 1st Corinthians chapter 9, verse 26, so I run straight to the goal with a purpose in every step. Paul says, I fight to win. I'm not just Shadow Boxing or playing around.
Number 8, say number eight. Number eight, a dream stretches. My faith. This is so critical. Because faith is, what pleases God. You have to decide. What does God look like in your life. How does he show up? How does he manifest himself in your life and a dream stretches? It's by faith? Because you have to trust God, that the dream is bigger than what you could do, any of your own ability, which is why Jesus said in Matthew 9:29, according to your faith, let it be done to you. Spicy God, do I have the face to step out into a board Bowl? Dream number 9, say number nine, number nine, a dream cheap be going in tough times.
Dream will be what energizes you. Because if you don't have a dream, you're going to flame out you're going to burn out. Just when things don't work immediately and they don't work immediately. You'll find your dream has a delay. Every dream has delays. There is no dream. That is instantly fulfilled. This is going to take years of your life, but you have a dream. We have to develop an ability and this motivation is what keeps you from giving up. You guys have heard me say this before many times. Did I wanted to give up as a pastor? And it's usually on Monday morning for me. I call it PMS. Post message syndrome.
I wake up on Monday Monday morning and go. That was a terrible message. That didn't help anybody. God surely. He could have done a better job than that. Got that was not nearly as funny as I thought it was in my head.
And you know what keeps me going. It's a dream that God has given me.
Did you dream that? God has put in me that you would be whole. And when I say that what I mean, is relationally, spiritually, physically or financially you would walk in all the blessing that God has for your life. And when I get to see that being fulfilled in front of me, I just liked my fire. Are all at different stages and on different pages in different places of that, by age by circumstance of Life, by circumstances by our faith, but I get to watch this go from unbelieving, to questioning to believing to believing and beginning to serve, beginning to serve and seeing that blossman. And somebody goes. Oh my gosh. I love it. When God does this. It shows up for me. For example, when people say I can't wait for Sunday to get here. I just Sundays the highlight of my week. I just can't. Wait. I walk away energized. I walk away enthused. I learn something that God is revealing to me. God is moving, and I see that I watch. God work all around in my life. That just likes my fire. That's what I'm wired for. Not for marketing awards that some corporation, which is all good and well, for somebody else. Not for me.
It's a dream. That won't let go of me. It's someone Monday morning rolls around and I have PMS. I start to think back on God. You just so many good things and what he gets really bad. I go back to that hotel room or God said, I want you to preach. How do you walk away from that? You can't walk away from God audibly speaking to you.
It's always a result of all of this dream that I have. I am going to push you to become the woman or the man that God knows you to be instinctively.
Paul said, I'm not what I could be, but it's not too late. I want to start striving for that goal. It's never too late. No matter what your age, no matter what your stage, if you are still breathing. It's not done with you. It's a dream. Keeps you going in tough times. That was the problem that Joe faced. When he lost everything a joke, chapter 6 of captured this way. What strengths do I have left that? I can go on. Hoping what goal do I have that? I would want to prolong my life. To that deep dark place. Where you just said. I don't have a dream anymore. Does that make sense?
Anybody, thank you. Thank you. You see it's not paying that makes people give up. It's pain without a purpose that makes people give up. This was studied all through the Holocaust. Auschwitz death camps people that survived that they went back and looked at why some people survived and some people didn't survive and it's winter. Hope left. The people begin to die. When you stop dreaming your dead.
The dream keeps me going even when it's tough. Number 10, say number 10 a great dream, inspires others to dream. One of the reasons we're doing this, is I want you to be an inspiration to others and I can tell you from personal experience. It is so cool. When you inspire somebody else. It's such a great feeling. You get a chance to encourage somebody. Experience the joy of being an inspiration for people. I want our church to be a church. That experience is Joy. Inspiring other places and other churches. Proverbs 11:27. It says, if your ghouls are good, you will be respected. Because if you have self-centered goals, you're not going to be respected. But if you have on the selfish goals Godly goals, Big Dreams, great dreams, you'll make a difference in people's lives. You want to help people, you want the world to be a better place. John talked about it. So eloquently. It's so easy to get focused on ourselves. When our goal really is I'm here to help somebody else. You'll be respected for having a great dream. Number 11, say number 11. My self-discipline will be rewarded in heaven. May not realize this, not only of the dreams that you have here, good for here on Earth. But you're going to be rewarded in heaven for the character that you developed and the discipline in the intensity that you go after your dream. So, it's not like we do it here and we're done. Best transfers into heaven. 1st Corinthians, 9:25. All athletes for disciplining their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away. But we do it for an eternal prize. and the number 12, say number 12, so I finally
Well, reasons your dreams need to be compelling god-given dreams. Our gift of the Holy Spirit. God's. Holy spirit gives the ability to dream. Cesaro theme verse for this whole spiritual growth campaign. This is when Peter the Apostle Peter preached on the very first day of the first church service in Jerusalem years when he said he was predicting the future, he was prophesying. This is what God says in Acts chapter 2. This is what I'll do with the last day of God says, I will pour out my spirit on everyone, your sons and daughters will Proclaim my message. Your young men will see visions and your old man will have dreams. Yes, even on my servants both men and women. I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will Proclaim my message. This is your gift from the Holy Spirit. It is what brings Revival in the church Revival to a nation is what brings Revival to a world.
You know, I can't get past.
A passage and second chronicles. And you're probably all familiar with 2nd Chronicles 7:14. It says, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, I will hear their prayers from heaven. We use that lots of times surrounding the flagpole at the beginning of every year and lots of times, those verses are used. But you might make a note in your 4th and wall to go back and look at this. It's not on the screen. It's not in your outline. but it says, I met you took the words of God. I'm a send a pandemic. Among my people to get their attention. And then you get to verse 14. And if my people do we, we skip 13 and love 14, right? I just can't help in the midst of this. Two years of pandemic, feel. Nobody's turned into God for the solution to a pandemic that he says, I'm a send plagues among you. To get your attention when I feel like you wandering you will go. Well, that's not very nice of God to do that. Has anybody told you it's his world? You know, I'll do what I want with my world. Right? God says I'm a send a plague among you to get your attention and bring you back to me and I just can't help but think we still haven't gotten there yet. and if we will, Will begin to see this first where people will begin to build dreams and see what God has in store for them. Revival will begin to happen. And I don't think there's a better time in the last hundred years since the pandemic of 1918 for us to have this opportunity. It takes a group of people are so attuned to the Holy Spirit, listening to the dream and start dreaming again.
Do you see what? I want to tell you. If you're getting serious about your spiritual growth? First of all, I want you to expect a lot of joy. Because when God's people turn to him and begin to dream, he begins to do miraculous things and when you see Miracles, you're going to celebrate. Somebody asked me why. No, somebody else asked me. Why? Here's why, because Revelation chapter 3 verse 8, says this way. I know your Deeds. I have placed before you an open door, that no one can shut. God has a door for you to walk through in this dream. Your dream. For such a time as this and no one can shut it. That's a new opportunity. And in the coming weeks. We're going to look at. How do I know? My dream is from God? How do I know? I'm not just making this up. How do I know? How do I know? It's not the taco? Talkative.
How do I know it's not? My mother telling me what my dream is? I don't know. It's not something I saw or heard yesterday. How do I know? It's God, we're going to talk about that in this series. And next week. I'm going to talk about how do I live. Dreams? Despite past poor decisions. How many of you have a past? How do I live God's dreams? Despite poor decisions in my past. Let's pray.
God, what a wonderful God. You are.
literally, Everything we have comes from you. And we wouldn't have anything if it weren't for you.
We have life. We have are. We have breath. We have water, we have food. We have family. We have Minds. We have the ability to dream, and we are an army of dreamers. The Bible says, young and old will dream. God. I pray that the young people in this church dream great dreams. Lord, I pray that many middle-aged people in this church dream, great dreams. God, I pray for those people who are facing retirement that they would dream great dreams. And may those who are elderly people in our church dream dreams.
Got if we're alive, you're not finished with us yet.
Would you Lord make our church and embarrassment to the devil? Would you make our lives an inspiration to others and forgive us for small, Petty, grieving, and complaining thinking? Help us to see the future. You have for us. Fact that we're still alive means you're not done. And I pray that the days ahead will be the greatest days of bridges church. That the months and years ahead will be the greatest months and years of our family. Lord, we pray for each other. In the spiritual growth campaign that we would dream dreams, see, visions and grow.
Lord, would you help us? To be humble and to serve you. I pray in Jesus name. Amen. So here's how I want to finish today. It's a little bit different than those of you who are joining us online. This may feel a little bit awkward cuz it's going to get quiet for a minute. But but you had 12 things, 12, very important things to look over. I don't want you to Miss out on what God has. I don't want the busyness of today and the busyness of the lunch schedule, and what you got going on for this afternoon. If all of the sweets for candy and Halloween in the plans, and I want that to get in the way. That's why I want to just give you a moment of silence here.
Will you can just listen for where God wants to speak to you about your dream? So any would you or come back to a fusions 320 on our screen? And we're going to just put a little background music on and I just want to give you the opportunity to get a loan with the Lord and say God speak to me about the dream you have for me.
Lord. We have a little phrase at our church.
The long believed become.
It all are welcome here.
And it's hard for the displays regardless of our status stage issues would feel loved and welcomed. That we would present such compelling evidence of your work in us, that others would want to believe in you as well that you are alive and active today. As you were in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
And that we would did become because of this renewing of your spirit. In US begins to change our very nature of every character. The things that were once held. Dear. You pushed aside in the things that are on your heart, become our priority.
So let us see what those things are in our quiet time alone with you.
even if it's just, Five minutes a day.
Alone with the creator of the universe. That we would yearn for more of the Impressions, the feelings to sense, the words, the visions that you would impart to us.
God, thank you for loving me so much that you're not done with us.
Continue to speak to us until we gather again next week. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.