Your Faith Can Grow!

Well, good morning and welcome to church today. It's good to see you, I'm glad to be here. Hope you are too. My name's René, I'm one of the pastors here. And I wanna welcome you whether you're live in the auditorium or joining us via video over in the venue service. And we've got more and more people every single week joining us on Facebook Live as well. So it's just great to have these available in all kinds of different ways. And I just feel like one more time, we've gotta give it up to the volunteers and the staff who make that possible, the camera operators, those are all volunteers. So let's thank them.

It's great to have all of that. We actually have more people joining us now via all of these different internet ministries, whether it's Facebook Live or watching the podcasts or watching it on our website, than we even have live in the weekends. And they're from all over the place. I ran into somebody after the first service visiting from London and she watches our podcasts over there as well. So it's just very exciting.

Now in this series, Small Faith Big God, we've been seeing how all through the Bible, God works through people who have very small faith. We've seen that with Gideon, we've seen it with Elijah, we've seen it with Peter, we've seen it with Moses. And this is so important because a lot of people think, I cannot be a Christ follower because I have doubts, I've got questions, I've got weaknesses, and somehow you imagine that disqualifies you. But actually it makes you exactly like every single person that God starts with in the Bible.

But here's the thing, God starts with us in that place of very, very, very small faith, full of doubts and weaknesses and anxieties. But God doesn't want you to stay in that place of small faith for the rest of your life. He wants your small faith to grow. Now you might say, well, if God starts with me when I've got small, tiny faith full of doubts and weaknesses, why should my faith grow? Because he's working with me anyway, right, the way I am.

Well, I want you to imagine something right now. Just imagine what your life would be like if you had absolute confidence, and I mean absolute confidence, that God exists and that that God is a personal God who knows your name and who has promised to you never to leave you and never to forsake you and to provide for all your needs no matter what. Just imagine if you had that kind of faith, the kind of faith where when everything's going wrong, when the wheels are falling off, when tragedies are happening, you would say to yourself, I know that I have no control over these circumstances, but I'm absolutely confident that God is with me through this and he is going to see me through.

Imagine what it would feel to have that kind of faith every single day of your life. Imagine having the kind of faith where when you get tempted, you would look at the temptation to go, now I know I do not have the power of my own strength to resist that temptation. I have proved that 100 times, but I'm absolutely confident that God will enable me today to totally resist that temptation. Imagine having that kind of confidence every day of your life.

Imagine when everything's going well for you, the health is good, the kids are fine, the money, no problem there. Imagine not worrying about the other shoe dropping, not worrying about the value of your portfolio, not worrying about the real estate bubble popping or getting bigger or smaller, but looking at all those things saying, hey, I'm grateful when things go well, but my trust is not in any of those things because I know how quickly those things can change. So I absolutely trust in the one thing that never changes and that is my God who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Imagine living life without fear and without anxiety and with total trust in God.

Now, some of you are excited about that, but some of you, the other, the half of you who did not applaud just then are sitting there going, I don't think it's possible to live life like that. Well, let me ask you to imagine something else. I want you to picture in your mind's eye someone that you have probably known in your life with that kind of faith. Maybe it was a grandparent or maybe it was a pastor you once knew. You know who it was for me? It was my mom. Maybe it was your mom.

And we go through tough times when I was a little kid. I mean like no food, no money kind of tough times. And my mom would always respond to it with the line that she always said, which was, the Lord will provide in her Swiss accent. The Lord will provide. And when I was a young teenager, that would get me so angry. And I would try to give my mother a reality check. Did you ever do this to your parents when you were young, right? I'd say, mom, you don't know anything, right? I'd say, mom, look at the facts. We are broke. You are a widow. You are not even a citizen of this country yet. That means you cannot get a real job. You just gotta kinda get paid under the table watching people's kids after school and before school. That is not enough money to pay our bills. We are in big trouble.

Like I was trying to get my mom to feel the fear that I was feeling. I don't know why I was trying to damage her faith, but that was my agenda for some reason. And mom was unflappable. She would look at me and she would say, René, salaam v'il provite. And you go get the job, you know? I wish I had that kind of faith, honestly. Well, guess what? That's where God wants to take you. And that's where God wants to take me.

Now, it's a journey, you know, kinda two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, three steps back, but you can get there step by step. And this morning, we're going to look at the step by step journey of a man who in the Bible really is the icon of what we're talking about here today. A man in the Bible who went from very small faith, like he didn't even know who God was, but one step at a time, he got to a point of total trust. And I know it can happen for you too.

My own mother was raised by atheist parents, so she was an atheist too. Then that slowly morphed into agnosticism. Then a tiny little step of faith in Christ. And that quickly grew after my father died and she went through some troubling times into a total trust in God. It happened for her, it happened for Abraham, and I know it can happen for you too. So grab your message notes that are in your bulletins. They look like this. And let's look at four faith lessons in the life of Abraham.

If you feel right now like you're on the threshold of the next step in your spiritual growth, the next step, there's some huge challenge, your opportunity in front of you, but you're feeling trepidation about taking that step, you are going to be inspired by Abraham's story. One night, the Bible says God takes Abraham and asks him to look at the night sky. And he says, Abraham, one day, your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And they'll outnumber the sands on the seashore. But you've got to take the first step of faith to get there.

And he asks Abraham to do something amazing. In Genesis, he says, "Go from your country, from your people, and from your father's household to the land I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation. And I will bless you. I'll make your name great. And you will be a blessing." Abraham was blessed to be a blessing. And that's the same kind of journey that you and I are on. And Abraham starts this journey.

Now, we don't have to, this takes many chapters in the book of Genesis. And in a little half hour sermon, we don't have time to really dig into every detail. So what I'm going to do happily for me, there's a book of the Bible where the story of Abraham is condensed. It's in Hebrews chapter 11. And the author of the Hebrews just gives highlights of Abraham's life in Hebrews 11, verses eight through 12. And then verse 17. Four times he says, "By faith Abraham took the next step." By faith Abraham, by faith Abraham, by faith Abraham. And those four steps are the outline of the message today.

The four steps of faith that take us closer to that beautiful point of trust in God, where we all would long to be. So jot these down because I think the author of the Hebrews is saying these are the steps that we all have to take in our life of faith. Number one, by faith Abraham stepped out. He stepped out. He took the first step. Hebrews chapter 11, verse eight, it says, "By faith Abraham, when called by God to a place that he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though," what? He didn't know where he was going.

Now, I want you to really understand what was happening here. Because Abraham lived 4,000 years ago. In other words, as far as we are from the time of Christ, 2,000 years, that's how far Christ was from the time of Abraham. So this is a long time ago. And really, human civilization is just starting in the time of Abraham. And one of the first cities ever in human history was the city that Abraham lived in. God is calling him to leave this city. It's a city called Ur.

You are Ur. And Ur, I want to give you some historical background. It was the sister city of a city named Um. No, that's not true. But all the rest of this is true. I want to see if you were listening. Ur was an amazing place. I want to show you something. This massive ziggurat, that's what these buildings are called. This still survives. That's how good this construction was. This survives from Abraham's day. This construction is 4,000 years old. And in the city of Ur, they had these ziggurats. They were sort of like ancient skyscrapers. In Abraham's day, there were eight more levels to this. And these were all throughout the city. There were canals. There were roadways. It was a spectacular city.

And the city of Ur was a center of innovation in these days on many, many levels. Thomas Cahill, who's a great historian, writes this. He says, "This period in Sumer, Sumer was the nation and Ur was the capital city of Sumer. This period in Sumer saw an explosion of technological creativity on a scale that wouldn't be matched until the 19th and 20th centuries of our era." Watch this now. It witnessed the invention of, listen to this list, wheeled transport, sailing ships, metallurgy, fired pottery, written language, engraving mass production of bricks, the arch, the vault, the dome, the first legal system, the first lawyers, for which we will hold them responsible forever, the first large commercial breweries. There's gotta be a connection to the lawyers somehow here. The 12-month calendar, the 24-hour, 60-minute division of time geometry, and it all appeared, as it were, within weeks of each other. I mean, talk about innovation. It all started back here in Abraham City, when Abraham was alive, right around that time.

And they weren't just brilliant. They knew how to have fun too. Here's a massive mosaic that they found. This has got scenes of everyday life in Ur from Abraham's day. They're having fun. They're listening to music. They're hanging out. This was a nice place. And it was a lavish, rich, wealthy place. I wanna show you something. They discovered a tomb at Ur in the 1930s. And when archeologists opened it, they realized it had not been touched for 4,000 years. And it was the burial place of a woman. And I wanna show you, she was wearing this amazing golden headdress. This is what these people wore. This is the kind of amazing luxury and just dripping wealth that the people of Ur enjoyed.

And then God says, "All right, I want you to leave all of that, and I want you to go someplace into the wild." And I wanna show you how a citizen of Ur described the wild men who lived outside of Ur. Remember, this is 4,000 years ago. So there's still people on Earth living like cavemen outside the boundaries of a city like this. This is from a cuneiform tablet from around Abraham's time describing the savage man outside Ur, buffeted by wind and rain. He knows not prayers, eats uncooked meat, has no house in his life, is not brought to burial when he dies. These are the kind of people living outside the city. It's a description of cavemen, almost wild animals. So you're getting a picture of what Abraham was being asked to leave.

It helps you appreciate this verse, doesn't it? God's saying, "Abraham, I know you're comfortable, but I want you to change the world." And this is what he says to you and me sometimes, isn't it? I know you're comfortable. I know things are going fine for you right now, but I want you to take the next step into the unknown because I've got an adventure for you. And some of you, you've been thinking about that next step, whether it's a next step of faith in Christ or next step into some kind of a ministry or you walk past some of the booths in the Connect Expo today and you went, "Wow, there's a ministry to the homeless," or there's a ministry to people or hospital bound, I've been thinking about doing that. I'll wait till next year's Connect Expo, right? How do you take that first step into something new?

Jot this down. Think first step, not whole journey. It says he didn't know where he was going. Abraham didn't know the whole journey. He just knew the next step. Most of the time when we're called to do something new, if you're like me, we go, "God, I want you to show me everything that's going to happen, all the problems there might be, and then I'll consider whether or not I want to take this step of faith." But that never happens. You never see the whole thing laid out before you. You just gotta go, "Well, am I willing to be along for the ride with all the ups and downs?"

Let me just make this very personal. It's the fall, right? And this is the time of year I often think about how I wound up here at Twin Lakes Church, because it was October that I started here 24 years ago, and I'll never forget how afraid I was of taking the position of senior pastor here. You might say, "Why were you so afraid?" Let me just show you a rather embarrassing photograph that explains everything. I know, this is the day I started here at Twin Lakes Church, and I'm next to Pastor Roy Kraft, who had been here for half a century, for 50 years. Look at him, he's just dripping with elegance and warm wisdom. And now look at me, that smile of frozen terror that's on my face. What am I getting into, right? I was an inexperienced 32-year-old, so intimidated.

Honestly, it was months while I considered whether or not to take the gracious offer of the position. I tied myself in knots trying to see the future before I took one step. And you know what changed my mind? My wife, Lori. She said, "René, don't look at the troubles. Don't imagine the troubles ahead. Look at God." And she said, she really did say this, she said, "Plus, our kids are little. If you're a miserable failure, they'll never remember." That made me feel good, honestly. So she said, "Just take the next step and shave off that mustache." That's the next step for you.

But this is how life works, right? You never get all your questions answered before the first step of faith. And I've experienced this many times. I'll never forget when we were starting the 2020 vision four or five years ago. I was so hesitant to just leap out in faith. I wanted success to be assured before I took a first step. But that never happens. So like Abraham, by faith, you've gotta step out. And then number two, by faith, he stayed on. You step out and then you stay on, you endure. Look at the next verse, Hebrews 11, nine. By faith, he made his home. His home. Said, "I'm not just a tourist here, I'm here for the duration." In the promised land.

I love this description. A stranger in a foreign land. He lived in tents. He went from er to tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Now this part can be way harder than step one. It really can be. I'll never forget after I finally took the first step and arrived at Twin Lakes Church. The criticism mounted. I have two file folders that are thick that I've kept of letters like this one. So you gotta imagine just stacks of these. But this one, for some reason it's my favorite. Dear Pastor Schlepfer, it's been a long time since our church has had a competent shepherd to guide us. Now that you're here, it appears he wants us to continue to suffer for a season. Yours in Christ, a sister.

You know, since then my wife has apologized. Recognized her handwriting. No, that's not true. But that's, this is how it always is. Listen, it's exciting to take the first steps, right? Yay, we're starting something. Then the criticism comes up. Then the obstacles come your way. And that's when you feel like quitting. And maybe you felt that in a ministry. Maybe you felt that in your marriage. I want you to put this verse in its literary context. Remember these verses are all from a book of the Bible called what? Hebrews. And that was written to the very first Hebrew Christians. Jewish Christians, 2,000 years ago. And what's happening historically is the readers of this epistle were thinking of quitting on their faith. They were like, we've had it. We're being persecuted by the Romans. Some of our own countrymen hate us. And we signed up to see the Messiah establish the kingdom of God on earth. And we are seeing nothing. We're hiding in caves and holes in the ground. We just want to quit.

And the writer of the Hebrews is using Abraham as an example to say, but that's how it always is with faith. You step out and then you stay on when things get tough. How do you stay on? 'Cause maybe you're there right now. How do you stay on? Well, how did Abraham do it? It says he was looking forward. All the way forward to the city God would build. The point is think end result, not current struggles. You got to remind yourself sometimes life is a movie, not a still photograph. It's going somewhere. This is just one frame of the movie. Even if all you can think of is heaven, sometimes that's all you know for sure is ahead for you. But you know what? That's enough to remind you the present struggles, your present struggles will end. Look ahead.

So by faith, Abraham steps out. And then by faith, he stays on for decades in this new frontier surrounded by these barbarians, right? And what happens? Well, things go from bad to really bad to impossible. Decades later, he is now wealthy, but the promised baby is still not there. So my descendants are gonna be as numerous as the stars in the sky. I still haven't had one kid. Abraham's now 99. And his wife Sarah is 89. How did he handle it? Well, he struggled a lot. And that's number three, by faith he struggled through. This is so important because you may have an idealized view of Abraham, like we've been talking about in this series, an idealized view of these saints in the Bible. You may think like every day for decades, Abraham was having his quiet time saying, "Lord, no matter how long it takes, I simply trust your promise." Let me tell you that is false.

At this point in his life, he still struggled with faith a lot. In fact, one night he basically tells God in prayer, "you know what, I'm giving up. I quit because you still haven't come through for me." And God tenderly says, "Abraham, look at the stars tonight. Remember my promise." And after that amazing conversation with God, Abraham never faltered? No, he keeps making mistakes, bad mistakes. He puts his own wife repeatedly in danger to save his own skin. He lies to the Pharaoh, he lies to a king. He makes all kinds of mistakes. Most famously he says, "God, you apparently are still not sending a son despite your promises, so I'm just gonna make a son through my wife's maid, Hagar, gets Hagar pregnant." Very bad idea. This has caused so much conflict, conflict we still see today.

But you know what, amazingly to me, God is so patient and so tender with Abraham through all of the struggle. Instead of saying, "You know what, forget it, I gotta find somebody else more patient than you." He's gracious. And finally along comes the baby. And Sarah miraculously gets pregnant. Now, by this point, Abraham and Sarah were almost a century old, and when God says, "You're going to expect a child," the Bible says Sarah laughs out loud. She laughs at God. And that's not because she thought it was funny, that's because she was totally skeptical. As somebody said, "We know Sarah didn't believe God when God said you're pregnant because she laughed. Any other 90-year-old woman who really believed that would have cried, that's for sure." Miraculously she conceives she has the child, and guess what she names him? Isaac, which means laughter. And Sarah says, "Yeah, I named him Laughter, because God sure made me laugh."

Are you hearing this? After all their struggles, after all their mess ups, God brings them laughter. And God's such a gracious God, after all of your struggles, and all of your skepticism, and all of your mess ups, what God wants to still do in your life is he wants to bring laughter into your life. He's still tender with you. God still puts his hand on your shoulders, and he says, "Stop looking at your mistakes and your problems, look at the stars. Oh, I've still got great plans for you." And finally, finally Abraham gets to this point. Next verse, Hebrews 11, 11. "By faith Abraham, even though he was past age and Sarah herself was barren, was able to become a father, because he considered him faithful, who had made the promise." And I want you to circle that line, he considered him faithful. Did he consider himself faithful? No, he wasn't faithful, he knew he wasn't faithful. You need more than faith in yourself, because you're not always faithful. He considered him faithful.

The lesson, trust in God's ability, not my ability. If you are struggling in your faith right now, and I struggle with my faith sometimes, you gotta go, it's not about whether or not I will be perfect and never make mistakes, it's about God's ability. In fact, flip your notes over for just a second. I wanna show you something. Tim Keller is a pastor in Manhattan, who's probably the most influential pastor in America right now, I quote him a lot. "Yet surprisingly, he struggles with a fear of failure." And he keeps a little card in his wallet that he wrote with these words, and he takes it out and reads it often. It says, "Why am I afraid of failure? Do I live by my performance or on the basis of Christ's power? Have I gotten this far on my efforts or by the grace of God? What will I lose through failure anyway? I still have God's love, his kindness, and if I do fail here, he will only use it to prepare me for something greater. My worthiness is not based on my success. Jesus is my security, and as a result, I don't have to worry about failure. I'm free from fear, and that is where God wants to take you and wants to take me."

In fact, flip your notes back over, and look at the next verse, Hebrews 11, 12. It says, "And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as countless as the sand on the seashore." Man, I love so many things about this verse, but especially the phrase, "And he as good as dead," because you may feel as good as dead. Maybe something in your life did die, maybe your marriage died, or maybe a dream died, and now you feel like my life is as good as over. That's how Abraham felt, but it's not over. In fact, I believe God brought some of you here to this room today just to hear this, because you've told yourself recently, it's just as, I'm as good as dead, it's not over. Abraham was 99, you're not too old. There's not too much water under the bridge. From you, from your one life, ripple effects can spring forth that affect generations, just like in the life of Abraham.

You say, "I don't know what you're talking about, René, that happened then, not now." We're living in an example of this right now, this building we're living in right now. Did you know that this church was dead? Did you know that? This church was actually closed for nine years. It was dead in the 1920s. Dead, no future. But 11 people pried the doors open and began to take steps of faith. And I don't know about you, maybe like me, you had a lot of trepidation about that step of faith stepping into our 2020 Vision Initiative. But what happened? We all, in a once dead church, took another little step of faith. And what ripple effects are we already seeing?

You know last year, the new school building that we built right here on campus was open, and one in India. They both opened just last year. Our school now has record enrollment, 310 students. The school in India now has even more kids in their brand new school than we have in ours. Ripple effects that go out for generations. And you may not even know the latest ripple effect. Just this last month, we opened the newly refurbished preschool building next door to where we are right now, completely redone from just top to bottom. And we were able to expand our daily preschool into this building, and this is a ripple effect of 2020 Vision. We are getting these kids in here. We're gonna have more outreach to the community. Generations will be impacted, like stars in the sky, like sands on the seashore, all from a church that was literally once dead. Dead.

But we had to start taking these steps of faith, and we couldn't imagine what God was going to produce. And this is how it can work in your life too. So don't give up, don't quit. Keep struggling through. And then there's one final phase that Abraham gets to, number four, by faith he simply trusted. Finally, Abraham gets to the point that I see in my mom's life now, where he simply trusted God. Skipping to verse 17 of Hebrews 11, it says, "And by faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice." Now put on the brakes and stop right there. Because what is that all about? There are probably more questions asked about this story than any other story in the whole Bible.

But it's so important to understand why this is there because it sets the stage for the whole rest of the Bible. This is, whenever you find a story in the Bible confusing, you gotta ask, what's its role in the narrative? What is this story there for? Here's why the story's in the Bible. In that day, this is 4,000 years ago, out in the wild, child sacrifice was very common. Archaeologists now know the tribes all around this region practiced child sacrifice. And they know it because of the bones they have found at all of these altars from that era. So Abraham, in his culture, would not have been surprised to hear that a God wants him to sacrifice a child. This is almost what people expected then. It's just bizarre to our ears and it should be.

But I want you to understand how God turns that idea on its head. This whole thing is a living illustration because God stops him. God says, "No, do not do that ever again! Because I provide the sacrifice myself, and I'm against that practice." And God provides a ram. And this leads to the point of the whole rest of the Bible. God is showing that sacrifice is provided, not by humans for God, but by God for humans. I love that every single song Trent shows in our worship set leading up to this is about that wonderful sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Do you get what this means? Only God can bridge the gap between us and God. Only God can fill the emptiness that we feel. Even today, so many people think religion is trying to pay off God. If I only sacrifice enough to God, then I'm going to win his favor. But God says, "No, I provide the sacrifice." You simply trust the ultimate example of this, of course, Jesus Christ on the cross, who came to be the sacrifice for our sins once for all. We don't earn it. God's saying, "Just revel in that. Take joy in that." And he says, "Then I will grow your small faith into something world changing, because you'll think, 'If God did that for me, then he is not going to leave me bereft of support.'

So look at this, Abraham starts with stepping out, and then he stays on, and he struggles through, and he gets the point of simple trust. And here's the thing, this pattern doesn't just happen one time in our lives. This happens over and over and over again. This is the shape of progress when it comes to going from small faith to faith that really has learned through all of life to trust in God. But as we wrap this up, I just want to address a question, because some of you are going, "Well, here's the thing that Abraham had that I don't have. Abraham actually had God stepping into his life, going, 'Look at the stars. Don't be discouraged. That would be awesome. How do I hear God's voice today? How does God encourage me and grow my faith today?'"

That is an excellent question. Flip your notes over to the next page where you see, how does God grow my faith today? There's five ways. I see these happen again and again and again. Pastor Ed Meijer Andy Stanley got a focus group together of people that he knew who had enormous faith. And he said, "How did you get here?" And on a whiteboard, he started writing down their answers, and he realized all the answers fit into one of these five categories. So here's what I'm saying. If you want to grow in your faith, if you want to get to that point of absolute confidence and assurance and trust in God, the more intentionally you plug these things into your life, the more likely it is going to be that you grow. You see what I'm saying? Don't be like, "Well, I sure would love to grow spiritually," and then kind of like, "God, just kind of do it to me, zap me," when you intentionally plug these things into your life, then you're going to be encouraged. You're gonna hear God's voice. You're going to keep moving forward in faith.

What are these five things? Jot them down quickly, and then I want to show you how we're gonna supply these for you this fall. First, practical teaching, practical Bible teaching. And you are going to get these in a new series. We start in two weeks called Richer Life. We're going through seven passages in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus says, "Here is how to enjoy the abundant life." And the next comes positive relationships, positive relationships that encourage you. And everybody talks about how in the Facebook era, actual face-to-face relationships are on the decline, and this is why, as part of the Richer Life series this fall, we're starting up again small groups. Sign-up sheets out there by the flagpoles outside. I encourage you, plug in. These small groups are gonna tie into the sermon series. They're super user-friendly. If you've never been in a small group before, I think you're gonna really love these. Give it a try.

Then people who have strong faith talk about private disciplines. They talk about getting up every morning and reading the Bible, and every day praying. And maybe you're like, "I understood those first two things, but this one kind of freaks me out because I don't know how to pray for myself. I don't know what to read in the Bible if I did get up every day." Well, this is why, starting next weekend, we're gonna have available to you a daily devotional book that I wrote called Richer Life to plug into this sermon series. We're gonna start to make that available to you. Every day it's got a scripture, a daily devotional thought, a prayer prompt, and often a little service project suggestion. Those are available starting next weekend. We're gonna have audiobooks of these, Kindle versions of these available.

The fourth one is personal service, personal service. People go, "You know what? All those things grew me, but I really grew in leaps and bounds when I signed up for the mission trip." Or, "When I signed up to teach kindergartners or junior high." That's what really grew my faith. You know why? Because that's when you learn to pray. Because you look out the window as you see San Francisco receding and you're on your way to Africa, and you go, "Oh, God, help. I'm in way over my head." And that's why we have things like the Connect Expo today. Look for ways to plug in. You're gonna see generosity projects all throughout this fall series.

And lastly, people talk about pivotal challenges. A pivotal challenge in life that stretches you. You often find God there. You know, I'm excited about launching the next phase of 2020 Vision. And it's interesting, having been through one phase already in this next phase, Lord willing, we will finally build this idea that's been gestating since 1971 from Pastor Kraft's mind and build a college ministry building out there by Cabrillo College. But you know what I'm really excited about? Is I'm excited about how this is going to continue to grow your faith. I was talking to somebody just this last week who said, "What really has grown my faith over the last four years has been committing to support this 2020 Vision idea." Honestly, God is way more interested in building up your faith than he even is in building a building. And this is what challenges do to us.

And by the way, if you want more information about that 2020 Vision idea, our next info meeting is right after this service. Over there in the new building, we're gonna have snacks. It'll just be an hour. I'd be happy to answer your questions. You can look at the plans. Now, look at these five things. This is not, these are not things you do so you get a gold star from God. If I do those daily devotions every day, God's gonna like you. He already likes you. What I'm saying is when you keep intentionally plugging these things into your life, when you get in environments where these things are valued and offered and leveraged, then it is going to be more likely than not that you are going to be encouraged in your walk and you are going to grow.

So why not work these things into your life with intention? The bottom line to this message is this. Some of you are already in a small group. Some of you are already serving. Some of you are already Christians. But some of you maybe are not at those spots yet. Whatever it is for you, take the next step. And when you step over that line, even you don't know everything that's ahead, there is no way you can imagine how God is gonna grow your faith and where God is going to take you into your promised land. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

Heavenly Father, we are here today in a full room full of people who need to take the next step. And I don't know what that is for all of us, but probably the individuals that are here know. Some may wanna pray, God, I know my next step of faith is to sign up for a group or connect with a ministry and serve, but I'm a little nervous about that. So help me take that step this day. And there may be some people here who need to take that big step of faith where they say, Lord, I'm taking a step into trusting you as my savior. Never done that before. And today is the day I step across that line. Right now, I'm telling you, I trust in you as my Lord Jesus. And like Abraham, I don't know much about where this is gonna take me, but I wanna take the first step to go on this journey with you, God. I thank you for this opportunity. And I thank you, God, for how this church is gonna grow over these next couple of months this fall. In Jesus' name, amen.