Your Next Move | Sunday April 19

Your past may be real, but it does not get the final word. We lean into a powerful, practical message about “the next move” and why one obedience-filled step can outweigh a long list of regrets.

We start with the tension most of us live in: mistakes that keep replaying and fear that keeps us stuck. Then we open Acts 18 and walk with Paul from Athens to Corinth, where conflict closes one space but God opens another opportunity right next door. That picture becomes a framework for daily decision-making, spiritual growth, and Christian leadership: the next step might not be far away, and it might be available right now.

From there, we talk honestly about sacrifice, purpose, and the hidden cost behind anything meaningful. You’ll also hear stories that make the theme concrete, including a dramatic reminder that a simple welcome, a handshake, and a sincere “I see you” can interrupt despair and change a life. We connect personal obedience to bigger outcomes, including community transformation and the kind of public faith moments that lead to baptism and renewed hope.

We close with three direct Bible questions about how short life is, what happens at the end, and what it means to be saved, followed by a clear invitation to choose Jesus without letting shame hold you back. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a next step, and leave a review with the move you’re choosing to make next.

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Transcript

Welcome And Opening Prayer

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, this is Jamie Bridges, and thank you so much for joining us for this week's podcast. All of our services are inspired and built straight from the Bible. Let's get into this week's message recorded at Life Community Church.

The Pastor With No Job

Your Next Move Matters Most

The Cost Of Obedience

God Equips What He Calls

Acts 18 The Door Next Door

When God Redirects Your Focus

A Handshake That Changed Everything

Learning To See People Again

A Vision Bigger Than Buildings

SPEAKER_01 0:16

But for the lives of everyone around us, for the lives that are here today in all different facets of life, stages of life, challenges of life, victories in life. But we thank you for this time. And Holy Spirit, I ask you right now that you would speak to every life that's here through my words. But it may not be my words, but you just use my words. The psalmist said that you would use my tongue as the pen of a ready writer. That you would etch truth and transformation upon the hearts of the people that are here today. That that they there would be something that maybe one thing that they would catch for their lives and carry it forth into their lives in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You know, in talking about Pastor Jamie having the day off, I was telling the story about when I was pastoring up in Iowa and um I was out in the out in the foyer, the like we call well, after the service, and just you know, thanking people and shaking hands and doing all that. And and this boy comes up to him about nine or ten years old, and he says, So what do you do for work? I said, Well, I pastor this church and everything. He says, So you don't have a job? I said, Where's your mom and dad? I'll never forget that. He was very, you know, he was very serious. You mean you don't have a job? Get away from me, kid. I want to I want to talk to you today about how close our next move is. And we we were in the series and the short series that we did on state of the church. I want to tie it in with that, but I also the reason I want to speak from this today is because starting next week, we're gonna be in a series out of Paul's letters to the Corinthians, and I want to kind of because this is a kind of an entrance into what Paul, how Paul began to um uh impact the Corinthian churches, the Corinthian people in Corinth. And so um I want to talk to you about the the power of how close, the power and the impact of your next move being very close, because your next move matters more than your last mistake. It really does. And sometimes our last mistake keeps us from stepping over into our next move. Because we get so focused on our mistakes. Okay? And if I ask for people to raise their hands if you ever made a mistake, I'm sure probably every hand should go up, especially if you're a husband. Your wife will remind you of the mistakes that you made. But we do. It's just life. It's doing life, right? We there's things that there's times we hit it right on, there's times that we miss it, you know? And you know, we have to acknowledge that. But the thing about it is what happens is sometimes we camp out in those mistakes. And just realizing that it was an incident, right? It's not where you're supposed to live your life. It's an incident that you learn from. You know, is what one of the things that I tell, especially when I'm working with young church planners, one of the things I tell them, I said, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I can tell you what not to do. The Holy Spirit is the one that's supposed to tell you what to do. I can tell you what not to do because I've been there done that, and it didn't work out. Okay? And so we need to understand the significance of our next move. Listen, this one courageous, obedience-centered next move can compound far beyond the cost of staying in a place of complacency, disappointment, discouragement, or fear about where you're at. I love this quote of Henry David Thoreau. He said, The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. How much sacrifice are you willing to make to go to where you need to go or to do what you need to do? Sometimes the reason people stay where they're at is because they don't want to make the sacrifices. I have uh individuals many, many times through the years saying, I would love to do what you do. I say, great. You want to make you want to make the sacrifices I made? Because we can talk about that because that's a reality. Doing what you do, many times people see the public element of it, but they don't see the you know, the wizard of oz behind the curtain element, the back side of the story, which is where the sacrifices are made. The times that I had I've been away from my family for weeks. You know, waking up in a hotel room and you've been gone so much you wake up in a hotel room and you go, now what city am I in? I've had that happen. Or you're sitting in an airport thinking you're gonna go somewhere. You're not going anywhere. Anyone ever been there? You know? I was just recently up in Detroit, ministering up in Detroit, and I thought I could walk there quicker than I'm flying there today. But it's part of the sacrifice that you make, and that's just trivial compared to other things. But what are we willing to sacrifice for the things that we want in our lives? Because that's what it's gonna take. We want life to be easy. How many of you like it when life is easy? And that's good. I'm not against easy. Jesus said this narrow and difficult is the way that leads the life. Easy is many times can lead you off task, off purpose. So it's not always wanting the easy life. But I've also learned that the challenges that many times is on the path of where we need to go, he'll equip you for the challenge. If you're willing to be open to that and to be as astute to that, attentive to that. He'll equip you for the challenge. Parenting is a challenge, right? I raised four daughters, you can't scare me. And I didn't know how to do it. But God equipped me for that. And sometimes all you have to do is be willing to step through the door of obedience, and God will equip you for what it's doing. You may not know. I can remember when I was pastoring up in South Dakota. I probably told this story, probably beat this horse too long, but anyway, I shouldn't use that analogy. Well, I prayed for years. Five, at least five years. Lord, send me south, send me south, send me south. And he sent me to South Dakota. Not wasn't what I had in mind. But while I was there, and uh that's a whole story, we'll go with no one, but while I was there, there was a door that opened for me to go into the state where the huge state mental hospital there where the lockdown wards criminally insane were there, all of that. And the Lord opened a door for me to go in there and minister in the lockdown wards. And so I just stepped through that door. Little, I had no clue. I was clueless of what I was going to be dealing with. Completely clueless. I can tell you some stories of some pretty crazy stuff that went on, man. And I was uh but the thing about it was I was obedient to step through that door, and when I did, the Lord equipped me for every incident that came. And I I can tell you this: there were things that happened certain days that if I knew that was gonna happen, I wouldn't have gone in. So sometimes the Lord says, I just need you to do this, and then you do it, and he's like, now I'll equip you for it. Okay. Do you all find Acts chapter 18? I'm gonna read, I'm gonna get to a verse, I'm gonna read the first seven verses. I'll give you a little bit of backstory on this out of chapter 17. Paul had just been in this place called Areopagus, or it's called Mars Hill and other places. It was this center for philosophy and stoicism and all of this pontification and all these things. And Paul had been there, and he comes to Athens in that area, and and he's he's walking around looking at everything, and he sees all the paganism and everything that's going on, and he finds this one one idol and everything that says to an unknown God. And so he says, Hey guys, guess guess what? This unknown God, this guy that you don't know, I know who he is, and I can tell you who he is. And he starts preaching Jesus to. So he does all that, and he says, and uh Acts chapter 18, verse 1, he said, after this, after all that, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. That's about a 50-mile journey. Just shy, just around 50 miles. So I live in O'Fallon, Missouri. Don't hold that against me, okay? Not from Illinois. I'm from And so that's that's not quite, but close to 50 miles from here. So it's like walking from here to my house. Okay? Walking from here to my house in sandals, not crocs. So Paul leaves there, he says he goes to Corinth, and there he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius, who was a ruler at that time, had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome because he felt like the Jews were causing too much trouble. They were like confronting with, you know, about the things in the whole Roman culture and things that were ungodly, and they were, you know, confronting all of those things, and he said these guys are too much problems. Let's kick them all out. It's kind of like, you know, you ever been somewhere and you're trying to bring a light to a place and people don't like that light, and they're like where to have the light lead than be in the light. Okay. And so Paul went and stayed with Priscilla and Aquila because they uh he was a temp maker as they were. Paul was a temp maker and he stayed with them and worked with them. And every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. And when Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching and testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. But when they opposed Paul, they became abusive. Sometimes the most challenging people that we deal with is the religious people. They became abusive. So he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, Your blood be on your own heads, I'm innocent of it. From now on, I'll go to the Gentiles. Verse 7. I read all that to get to this. Verse 7. Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Tedes Justice, a worshiper of God. So when it seemed like this was this door was closing, Paul was like, he wasn't, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, now I gotta leave. No. The next door that opened that God opened for him was what? Right next door. Maybe the next thing for your life or what the move that you need to make isn't way off. It may not be a distance or a challenge or a time. Maybe it's right now, maybe it's right here. Maybe it's today. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not as far away as you thought it was. Maybe it's it's it's not, well, I'll wait till next week or next month or next year. Maybe it's right now. Maybe what you need to do, what God's saying is it's right now, right next to you. It's closer than you think. And what I've discovered is that sometimes we can be doing something that's good, but God says my next move for you is I I need you to stop this and do this. That's even sometimes more challenging. I can I can remember back in the 90s, um, the latter part of the 90s, I was doing a lot of ministry in Brazil. And things were just kind of, I was doing, you know, regional and different regions. I was doing leadership development and pastors' conferences, and and we were having some really significant results with what was going on to the point where uh I really felt like we needed to purchase property and open a training center. And so uh the trip I was on, we had identified, we had found this property, we had started communication and negotiation on buying this property, which would facilitate people staying there, living there on site. I had a friend of mine that was from Brazil that I mentored, and he was going to be my on-site person to you know oversee all of this. I would be flying in and out of Brazil, all this. And so we had all this negotiation, all of this going on. Amazing things are happening. I'm flying back from Brazil, I'm on the airplane, and all of a sudden I hear the what I felt like it was the voice of God. And he said, This, what does it profit a pastor to gain the whole world and lose his city? And I was like, And I knew what the Lord was saying. I'd put so much focus on what was going on in Brazil that I had taken my focus off of the community that I was in. And I knew what I had to do. So when I got back, I contacted my friend Brazil, and I said, We're shutting everything down, stop the negotiation, we're not gonna do this. I said I have to make some changes because my next move is this. So for the next three years, what I focused on was impacting the city that I was in. And what I learned from that is we weren't the biggest church in town, but we were the most influential church in town. And that's what God wants to do. We were the ones that the city came to, we were the ones that or organizations and agencies came to. What was that? Because I needed to make a move. I needed just to leave that, leave that door and step through this door. And we began to see so many things happen, so many lives changed. We literally began to change the environment of that community. Not because of me, but because of what God wanted to do and just the lives of people. You don't know how significant just one small act of kindness can transform somebody's life. Maybe it's just one word. Maybe it's a hello. It's like Pastor Jamie said a couple weeks ago. It's like, how are you doing? And stay there to find out. I've told the story, I'm gonna tell it again. Again, back when I was in Iowa, there was uh that's when we had Wednesday night church. Remember that? Sunday morning, Sunday night. Well, we didn't do Sunday night, Sunday morning, Wednesday night church. So it's Wednesday night. And all of a sudden this individual walks in, and I mean he's a big dude, long, greasy hair, beard, worn leather jacket, tattered, chains, pretty grubby. He smelled. And he walks in and sits in the front row. And I won't go into all of it, but it ended up his name was Big Mike. Big Mike. And he was quite the individual. Ver very colorful story. But anyway, um, Big Mike sits there and and after the service, he simply comes over to me and and um used some pretty colorful language about how he says here's the th here's the deal. He said, I've been to almost every church in this town, and um and every one of those churches have asked me to leave. They didn't like the way I looked. And he said, But I've had nothing but people shake my hand and welcome me and talk to me tonight in this church. And he says, Here's here's what you don't know, preacher. He said, I made a decision that if I'm not accepted by this church tonight, I'm gonna go home and shoot myself. Because he was in such a place of despair and hurting. He was having some physical things that he was dealing with. And he was very, you know, just in this place of depression. And because just because somebody shook his hand. Just because somebody said, Hey, thanks for being here. I changed his life. I changed his life. And so when I talk about what's your next move, sometimes your next move is just about being nice to the person sitting next to you. Being cool with the person sitting next to you. Saying hello to them. I recognize you, I see you. For somebody to be seen sometimes is an amazing thing because so many people have lived their lives and it seems like they they're not even visible to people. People don't care. People don't yeah, I'm not even worthy or valued. In a I see you. I I've maybe shared about this before, but I you know, I started noticing going into to Walmart and the greeters and would be there, and how many people would walk right by them like they weren't even there. Me included. And and it's like I felt like the Lord arrested me one day, and he said, Did you see that person? I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said, Did you see that person? And so what I did is I I made a point, and I still do it today. If there's I walk in, I will stop and talk to them. And I was like, Tell me your story. Tell me your story. And one day there was a lady that was there, and I stopped. I said, Tell me your story. Here's her story, I won't go into all of it. But but she was working three jobs. Walmart was one of them. Because her husband had passed away, they had no life insurance, they had no retirement, they had, and she's like probably well into her 70s, and she's working three jobs. I thought, oh man, can I pray for you? And she was like, Oh, absolutely. It's like somebody recognized me. Somebody cared. My gosh, people we don't know, we don't understand. I think sometimes the impact of that, I don't want to beleaguer that point, but I want I want to I want to share something with you. I came across these two pictures. And I I'm sure we throw that first. This is Melbourne Australia. This one has Good Friday. Seven hundred and fifty people were being baptized. This isn't Australia. That's the same Good Friday. Over a thousand people were being baptized. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing you gotta understand. In fact, they're probably two of the most liberal cities in Australia. And here we have thousand people getting baptized. And the stories that are probably behind that. And I I have to believe that the stories that maybe some of those people were being baptized because they may want someone from the house right next door. Some report city is the most liberal city in the United States. I'm just taking a step of obedience and seeing the impact of that night. So when I think about us, life community church, and I think about you know the big dream, and I think about what's before us and everything, I don't I don't always get enamored with the land issue. What is it? It's a tool. It really is a tool. But what it's gonna do is help us to facilitate to bring a level of influence into a region that causes outcomes like this. It's just being obedient to what God is. It's like Pastor Jamie has said all the time, put everything on the table. He says, I don't know. I don't know. You're like me, you like to know? You like to know certain things? I'm like, if we're gonna take a trip, I'm on the map already, I know where all to stop, I know where all this. But here's what I found in my life, in this adventure with Jesus. I find myself in a lot of places like I don't know. I don't know how to do that, Lord. But I trust that if I obey you, that's more than enough to do what I need to do. So you can view life as a journey. It's a journey, it's just moving from one place to another. Or you can view this life as a pilgrimage. What's a pilgrimage? It's moving from one place to another with a sacred intention. And that's how I see what we're doing. We're just moving from one place to another for a sacred intention. It's not moving, it's just not a journey. The things that God used that we see through the Bible, one man, Abraham, becomes a nation. One young teenage girl, her womb brings salvation to the world. One thing. I think about this. I took a few fishermen, tax collector, a carpenter, and an anti-government radical, and changed the world. How many fishermen we got in here? I'm not gonna ask for tax collectors. How about carpenters? How many carpenters do we got? I pretend I'm a carpenter. I have all the tools to prove it. And I'm not gonna ask for anti-government radicals either. Yeah. I had a few hands of the left, so I just wanted to threw that one out. And we think about that, and we think, well, how could what what could God do with that group? He changed the world with that group. Never never let yourself get into the place where you think I'm just this and God can't use me. Yes, he can. Yes, he can. All you have to be doing is willing to make the next move. To take the next step. It's a book of great answers, isn't it? Has answers for life in here. Answers for your circumstance and your situations and your challenges. It's also a great book of questions. You know there's over three thousand questions in this book to question us about what we're doing, how we're living, what we're seeing. I want to give you three of those questions. I want you to answer these three questions. The first one comes out of James chapter 4, and James basically asks, he says, What is life? It's but a vapor. It seems like it's here and then it's gone. And the older you get, the more real that scripture, you know, kind of becomes. Life seems short, right? Like yesterday, I was a 10-year-old boy mowing lawns. Today I'm a great grandpa. That's how quick. That's the it makes us think about the expediencies of life. That way, it can't always just take life for granted. Even you know, talking to young people, just think about one day, tomorrow, you will be me. Whoa! Should have seen those looks. Tomorrow you'll be gray with a beard. No, that's tomorrow, man.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

That's how quick it happened.

Three Questions That Demand An Answer

Make The Move Today

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Life is but a vapor. It's here, it's gone. What are we going to do with this life? That's why I'm so adamant about it. I never spend time, I invest time. Years ago, I quit spending time. It's where I've had to say no to things. And as I get older, I get better at saying no. Why? Because life is vapor, and there are things that I believe God has set my course to do. And I gotta be investing my time and not spending it. Because sometimes the things want to take me away from being able to say yes to you. And I, when you ask me, could you show me? Could you help me? I want to be able to say yes. Another great question comes out of 1 Peter chapter 4. Peter asks this question. He says, What will the end be to those who don't believe? What will the end be? What will your end be? Well, there's only one of two answers to that. Sorry to say. Well, not maybe not sorry to say. One answer is, I'm going to spend eternity with God. The other answer is, I'm going to spend eternity separate from God, disconnected from God. You choose. It's your choice. But you have to answer that question. See, I don't want to answer that question. Sorry, you have to answer it. What will your end be? What will your end be? Do you have a certainty, a conviction, an immovable, unshakable conviction that I'm going to spend eternity with God? Because you can. I've really, to be honest with you, I've never met somebody, I've met a few, I take that back, that have said, I want to spend eternity in hell on that. They don't know what they're talking about. But the reality of it is everyone wants to spend eternity with God. Then we come over into Acts chapter 16. It's that whole incident with Paul and Silas who were in jail and the whole miracle of ankshake, and the jailer, you know, take it anything. The jailer says this, he says, What must I do to be saved? Paul says you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's one of the things that we do discover life. It's one of the things that we really talk a lot about because we don't want to just take for granted that someone that's here, that's coming, that's sitting, maybe even sitting here this morning, has done that. And so I'm proposing to you this morning that maybe today, and the reason that I felt like the Lord wanted me to talk about this is for you. And today's a day that you need to just take that step to know, to say yes. I want to know for sure. I want that, I want that certainty in my life. Because this is really what this is all about, isn't it? Yeah, we have great music, but it's more than that. We have a great environment, but it's more than that. It's about you knowing for sure that your life is gonna be spent eternally with Jesus. That's what it's about. Amen. And here's I'm gonna say this at the end. Don't let your last mistake keep you from making this move. Because I've had untold people say, but you don't know what I've done. You know what? I spent five years in prisons, not living there. Probably should have been there, but watching God transform the lives of individuals who were going to spend the rest of their life in that prison. Because they were in with life without parole. Watching him transform their lives. I don't think anyone here has done anything as heinous as some of these individuals, but yet God forgave them, saved them, and give them a new life. That's what he wants to do for you. What's your next move? Don't wait, don't put it off. Make a decision today. Tell all distractions and excuses goodbye. Today I'm making a decision. So, Jesus, I thank you right now that today, as I prayed in the beginning, Holy Spirit, I pray that you can go into the depth of the hearts of the people that are here, far greater than I could even contemplate. But I pray today that if there's someone here that says, yeah, that's that's me, I need to make that move. I pray that they do it today. Maybe they need to talk with someone, maybe they just need to make that decision in their life. But I pray today that whoever needs to make that decision makes that decision and takes the step in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. God bless you.