Forrest: Good morning.
Forrest: If I haven't met you, I'm Forrest Coleman, Lee Pastor here.
Forrest: And welcome to our new home.
Forrest: Woo! Gosh, I am so excited.
Forrest: I'm so excited.
Forrest: This is such an amazing moment.
Forrest: This is so cool to be in here right now in this new space.
Forrest: Um, you guys know that uh I'm not one to worship a building, but what I do know is that this space we're in right now, it proves the faithfulness of God.
Forrest: It proves the faithfulness of the Lord to his people, and that we're getting to walk in a miracle with the Lord.
Forrest: I I I remember not too long ago, the fall of 2021, as we were looking at this space and getting prepared to start meeting at the movie theater, and I was talking with a friend of mine.
Forrest: We were having a conversation about like, could we possibly move into this building?
Forrest: Could that even possibly work for us to get to be here?
Forrest: And we were talking about the cost, and my friend just said, just ask for it.
Forrest: Just ask for it, which led to a series of conversations with our church planning partners and individuals to ask for them to match the fundraising of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the Lord did it.
Forrest: The Lord did it.
Forrest: And today this is a this is a picture.
Forrest: This is a a picture, a 3D miracle is what we're walking in right now.
Forrest: I I I I went to the movie theater this week.
Forrest: I couldn't stay away.
Forrest: And uh I I went to to get some 3D glasses, which they did not have, obviously.
Forrest: Um, and uh these are from the internet.
Forrest: Now I'm not just trying to look cool here on stage in our new building, we're putting some shades on.
Forrest: These are that one of the lenses is red, one of the lenses is blue.
Forrest: And what the function is of these 3D glasses is that when you go to a movie or you're looking at a picture and it's a 2D image, but you put these glasses on, and all of a sudden the 2D image it jumps off of the screen, it jumps off of the page, and all of a sudden something that is in 2D, you finally and you can see it in three dimensions, and it's real to you in a very same way.
Forrest: Uh stepping in to this place in faith, it's a 3D expression of the miracle of God.
Forrest: See, because I know this, that when you're walking in obedience and walking under God's instruction and his direction, sometimes, sometimes, you don't even realize that you're in the miracle.
Forrest: You don't even realize that as you're serving others and you're following the Lord and you're trying to live your life and a life of purity and of love and of care and compassion for others and serve the Lord that in the midst of that, God is doing something that you may not even see.
Forrest: See, there are many times we're only seeing in 2D.
Forrest: And in so many ways, for so many people, this this book right here, the the Bible, for so many people, they just think that this is just a 2D piece of ancient literature that has no relevance to their life at all.
Forrest: But what we know is it is the living, powerful, active word of God, and the source of so much strength, of absolute truth, and ultimately where we access and see clearly and it comes to life the miracles of God.
Forrest: Um like I said earlier, if you're in the in the room today, you're a family, you're a friend.
Forrest: There's a lot of different folks in the room today.
Forrest: I'm excited to get to hang out and see you.
Forrest: One of those friends is my friend Evan.
Forrest: He's somewhere in the room right now.
Forrest: Evan, you wave to people?
Forrest: Where are you at?
Forrest: He's somewhere.
Forrest: There he is.
Forrest: Over here.
Forrest: Here he is.
Forrest: This is Evan.
Forrest: Evan's my my friend for many years and uh drove this morning from Charleston to be with us today for friends and family yesterday.
Forrest: And I remember now three years ago, maybe a little bit more than that, and telling Evan and telling others that we were coming to Kentucky to plant the work of multiply church.
Forrest: And back then, Evan, you believed.
Forrest: So much so that Evan, among others, are some of the first people to sow seeds of faith financially into this that you know what knew one day would come to fruition, but we didn't know it then.
Forrest: But look what we're getting to walk in.
Forrest: I wonder too uh today.
Forrest: Well, I know um uh our architect company, Jonathan Hill's in the house.
Forrest: Jonathan, you waved everybody's bebbins here.
Forrest: There he is back here.
Forrest: He's hiding.
Forrest: I wonder, I wonder when they were doing the plans for this building, if they realized that they were a part of implementing a miracle.
Forrest: If they realized what was gonna happen.
Forrest: When I sat at the dinner table with Maxine, who's over here, raise your hand.
Forrest: There she is.
Forrest: Talking about the future work of Multiply Church and the people who are gonna be reached and the seeds of faith for them to join in belief alongside.
Forrest: What I'm what I'm saying is that you always you don't always get to see the full picture in 3D, but the faith gets you the access for us right now as friends and family in this place right now as an active display of the faithfulness of God.
Forrest: And the miracle in the midst of all of this is that we're stepping into this space today completely debt-free, completely debt-free.
Forrest: Our church is not even two years old yet.
Forrest: We've not even had our second birthday, and we're moving into a permanent space debt-free, so then we can be that much more generous here in our community and beyond.
Forrest: The Lord has given us this miracle so that we can serve and love people for the sake of the gospel.
Forrest: And we've seen a miracle before our eyes.
Forrest: And you, many of you, I all I know is last Sunday when it was negative below and we were unloading the trailer of the movie theater, I wasn't thinking about being in the midst of the miracle, but seven days later, we're here right now.
Forrest: And today I want to share a story with you from the scripture that is kind of in the same way where in the midst of it, you didn't really know and don't really know all that God is doing, and it's kind of like a 2D picture, but but the story is the story of Esther in the Old Testament.
Forrest: If you were around at the end of this last year, we went through the book of Nehemiah leading up into Christmas.
Forrest: It talked about the Jewish people when they had been uh taken over and captive by uh by the empire of Babylon, and they had been exiled into slavery, into servanthood.
Forrest: And we walked through the passage of scripture and then through the book of Nehemiah as he led the people of God back to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, the temple was rebuilt, and they were in the midst of a miracle.
Forrest: And the very next book tells about a young lady named Esther who is still stuck back in captivity in Babylon.
Forrest: See, this book that is the book of Esther and the story of her life.
Forrest: It's the only book in the Bible that doesn't ever speak the name of God.
Forrest: Never one time.
Forrest: It's just a story.
Forrest: But he's working in the background the whole time.
Forrest: I'll kind of put it to you like this.
Forrest: If uh many of you drove from your driveway to here this morning, um, could anybody in here tell me how many green cars you passed from here to the church today?
Forrest: Probably nobody.
Forrest: But if I had been standing next to your window as you were in the driveway, and if I knocked on the window and said, Hey, I want you to count how many green cars between here and the, and you would you would be able to see, you would you would get here and you know however many it was that you passed because you were paying attention to it, you were looking for it.
Forrest: And the writer of the book of Esther is using this amazing narrative device that by not naming and not putting the name of God into the story, he's forcing us and asking for us to look for where God is in between the lines.
Forrest: And really, this the story of Esther, it really could be a Netflix mini-series.
Forrest: Because the story is crazy, it's full of deception, morally questionable people, murder, impending genocide.
Forrest: It really could be uh uh a story or a show.
Forrest: And I want to introduce some of the people in the story to you, and then we're gonna walk through this narrative, and we'll be walking through the narrative over the next three weeks leading up to our grand opening.
Forrest: Um, are y'all cool if I teach some Bible this morning?
Forrest: Y'all good to roll with me?
Forrest: So here are the people in this story.
Forrest: You have Esther, who is an orphaned Jewish girl, probably in her early teens, as she's courageous.
Forrest: She's filled with bravery, and ultimately she becomes a beauty queen and then the queen of a nation.
Forrest: You've got King Xerxes, the next person, an evil king.
Forrest: An evil king that at the time in the Empire of Babylon, his his reign, it went all the way from, if you think of the globe, it his reign and the empire expanded all the way from India to Ethiopia and Africa.
Forrest: Was all under his control.
Forrest: He had thousands of wives.
Forrest: And now this wasn't why this wasn't like a bachelorette kind of TV show with uh king.
Forrest: No, the thousands of wives that he had is probably more akin to human trafficking that we know about today.
Forrest: Trafficking and collecting all of these young girls, just devastating a generation, probably of 12 to 14-year-olds.
Forrest: The next person in the story is Queen Vashni, who opposes the wicked king, Xerxes, and ultimately for it, she loses her role as queen and probably loses her life as well.
Forrest: Then we have Mordecai.
Forrest: Mordecai is Esther's good older cousin who adopted her and protected her and is her keeper through the whole narrative.
Forrest: And then we have the villain Haman, who is a Nazi-level villain, who asked the king ultimately to eradicate, to kill all of the Jews in genocide.
Forrest: So, we'll jump into the story.
Forrest: Esther 1-1.
Forrest: We're introduced to the evil King Xerxes, and he's throwing a banquet.
Forrest: And in 1-1, these events happen in the days of King Xerxes, who reigned over 127 provinces stretching from India to Ethiopia.
Forrest: And then we start this narrative and this story with the king throwing this wild banquet.
Forrest: So in verse 4, the celebration lasted 180 days.
Forrest: A tremendous display of opulent wealth and of his empire, of pomp and splendor of his majesty.
Forrest: It's this amazing show of wealth with golden cups, with royal wine, that they poured as much as men wanted.
Forrest: So this crazy, wild, 180-day drunken party.
Forrest: And then enters Queen Ashney.
Forrest: In verse 11, the king orders bring Queen Vashni to him with the royal crown on her head.
Forrest: Some scholars think that's the only thing he was asking for her to come in.
Forrest: He wanted the nobles and all the other men to gaze on her beauty, for she was a very beautiful woman.
Forrest: But when they conveyed the king's order to Queen Vashni, she refused to come.
Forrest: And this made the king furious, and he was burned, and he burned with anger.
Forrest: See, the king and his nobles, they they couldn't deal with this uh this response from Vashni and this women's empowerment to tell the king no.
Forrest: And they wouldn't stand for it, they wouldn't allow it.
Forrest: And so uh they said that if it would be allowed that this happened, that in verse 17, women everywhere will begin to despise their husbands when they learn that Queen Vashni has refused to hear before the king.
Forrest: They couldn't deal with that women's empowerment, they couldn't have all the wives in the land starting to despise their husbands.
Forrest: And then his advisor suggested that they banish Queen Vashni, which means she was likely killed.
Forrest: King Xerxes, after his wife, his queen, is banished, probably executed.
Forrest: After he calms down, he wants a new wife.
Forrest: And in verse chapter 2, verse 2, so his personal attendance suggested, let us search the empire to find beautiful young virgins to bring for the king.
Forrest: And the officials, they searched all the providences for beautiful young women to replace Queen Vashni.
Forrest: And as they're doing that, we then are introduced to Mordecai, the man Mordecai.
Forrest: And in verse 7, this man had a very beautiful and lovely young cousin, Hadassah, who's also called Esther.
Forrest: When her father and mother died, Mordecai adopted her into his family and raised her as his own daughter.
Forrest: And there was a plan put in place that they would go and search the entire providences for young, beautiful girls, and that they would have ultimately a beauty contest.
Forrest: There was a year in the making.
Forrest: And Queen Esther was a part of this beauty contest, this orphan girl.
Forrest: And ultimately what happens is that the king chooses her to become queen and to replace Queen Vashni.
Forrest: But in the midst of it, again, remember, she's an orphaned Jewish girl, the wrong side of the tracks.
Forrest: Verse 10.
Forrest: Esther had not told anyone of her nationality and family background because Mordecai had directed her not to do so.
Forrest: And in verse 17, the king loved Esther more than any of the other young women.
Forrest: So he was so delighted with her that he set a royal crown on her head and declared her queen instead of Queen Vashni.
Forrest: Then there's a crazy plot twist.
Forrest: This is like episode two in the miniseries.
Forrest: Mordecai happened to overhear at the city gates that there were some men who were planning to assassinate King Xerxes in verse 22.
Forrest: But Mordecai heard about the plot and gave the information to Queen Esther.
Forrest: She then told the king about it and gave Mordecai credit for the report.
Forrest: He did this to help Esther, and it's going to come in handy later.
Forrest: There's a plot to murder, to kill the king, to assassinate him.
Forrest: Mordecai hears about it.
Forrest: And Mordecai himself, even being a Jew, gives the information to Esther, so she's the one who can come to the king and tell him about this, and she gives Mordecai credit.
Forrest: And then enters the villain of the story, Haman.
Forrest: Haman, he's a noble over all no nobles.
Forrest: He's a powerful official, and he hated the Jews because of their race and religion.
Forrest: And he uses his power in chapter 3, verse 8.
Forrest: Then Haman approached King Xerxes and said, There's a certain race of people scattered through all the providences of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else.
Forrest: Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king.
Forrest: So it is not in the king's interest to let them live.
Forrest: He wants a mass genocide.
Forrest: He wants to eradicate God's people in a foreign land.
Forrest: And so this evil villain, Haman, and the king in this drunken meeting, devise a plan that over the next year that all the Jews in the empire would be killed.
Forrest: And this edict goes out, and people begin to hear about that.
Forrest: And Mordecai, he goes to Esther and asks her to go to the king to reverse the order.
Forrest: And then he drops this truth bomb of a question on her.
Forrest: At first, when he asked Esther to go to the king, she gave a bunch of excuses.
Forrest: I can't go talk to the king.
Forrest: I can't ask him for anything.
Forrest: I can't even go into his presence.
Forrest: He has to ask me to come.
Forrest: He's got thousands of wives.
Forrest: I don't even get to see my husband.
Forrest: For me to even go in and to ask to speak to the king, I could be killed.
Forrest: And then Mordecai says this and asks this question in verse 14, chapter 4.
Forrest: If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place.
Forrest: But you and your relatives will die.
Forrest: And then this question, listen, who knows?
Forrest: If perhaps you were made queen for such a time as this.
Forrest: Now we're gonna go through the rest of the story in the next couple of weeks, but spoiler alert, her people are saved.
Forrest: And we see the actions of Esther, and it inspires us today for us as a people of God and the mood that we're a part of right now, and inspires us in the same way that she was in a few ways that Esther acted and enacted a plan and walked with her God in boldness, in bravery, and in blessing.
Forrest: See, in boldness.
Forrest: See, we we collectively, we need to boldly act on behalf of others.
Forrest: Like Esther ultimately does.
Forrest: See, a few weeks ago, we were still back in the movie theater and we talked about how we the scripture tells us that we should fight the good fight of faith.
Forrest: That for you and for me, that we should be stepping into a boldness, that we would be able to stand and proclaim the truth of God's word, that we in boldness would not shrink back, but instead not just act boldly on our own behalf, for our own wealth, for our own success, for our own future, but that we would work and that we would move and that we would be bold on behalf of others, especially those that cannot speak for themselves, that cannot help themselves, who are, as Jesus would call, the oppressed, the poor, the ones that are lost, and we get to boldly stand for them as Esther did.
Forrest: And she stole, she stood not just in a boldness, but also she was incredibly brave.
Forrest: I told you last week about some teenagers who've been coming to multiply for a while, and they've already been serving this morning.
Forrest: Some of them are coming on their own without their parents, without their folks.
Forrest: They're coming and being a part of multiply and they're serving.
Forrest: And I don't know about you, but I think that's very brave.
Forrest: I don't know about you, but when I was a teenager, I don't know about you, but when I was a teenager, I was getting dragged to church by my parents, and I didn't even want to be there.
Forrest: Okay, sometimes I want to be there, but most of the time I didn't want to be there.
Forrest: And imagine right now, these teenagers in our church right now, and they are coming without all that support.
Forrest: Bonus and bravery.
Forrest: To be here, not just to be here and just to receive, but to actively serve.
Forrest: To care for children, my kids, your kids.
Forrest: Now they're in a small group.
Forrest: Now, now a few weeks ago, Sarah got baptized.
Forrest: Shout out, Sarah.
Forrest: It's that's bravery in action.
Forrest: Think about that the next time that you want to stay in bed on Sundays.
Forrest: Think about that next time when you think, man, I don't want to serve a church.
Forrest: Those kids are crazy.
Forrest: I don't have time for that.
Forrest: What do you want me to come early?
Forrest: I'm already in here early enough.
Forrest: I don't have time for all that.
Forrest: Think about them stepping out.
Forrest: I remember a conversation back in 2020 with one of my coaches, Lee Webb and friends.
Forrest: I love him dearly.
Forrest: And I was talking to Lee about the plan of us coming and moving to Kentucky and to Frankfurt to plant, multiply church, and COVID was raging.
Forrest: I remember 2020.
Forrest: A lot of things were up in the air.
Forrest: We were taught, this is around the fall of 2020.
Forrest: We're talking about COVID and all things are going on.
Forrest: And I'll never forget, Lee said, This is a perfect time to plant a church.
Forrest: I'm like, oh yeah, right.
Forrest: Well, the world's upside down.
Forrest: The Lord's telling us to go and plant.
Forrest: Here we are.
Forrest: We ever all of it everywhere we go, shut down.
Forrest: But yeah, this is a great time.
Forrest: To start and plan a church, right?
Forrest: Yeah, Lee.
Forrest: But maybe he was right.
Forrest: Maybe he was right.
Forrest: And I don't know about you, but 2024 is already off to kind of a crazy start.
Forrest: So as you think about the bravery that we need, the bravery that we need during adversity.
Forrest: That we would continue to walk with God, invite him, follow him into our lives.
Forrest: And in doing so, when we do that, we're then going to walk in blessing.
Forrest: And that we collectively, as a church, have seen God move and has seen God provide so many times that we should believe for the blessing.
Forrest: We should believe for the blessing.
Forrest: You know, it's likely that our greatest blessing is on the other side of our fear.
Forrest: It's likely that your greatest blessing for your household and your children and future children is on the other side of whatever that fear is, that Satan, the enemy, who wants to oppose you and tear you down and keep you held back and not walking in God's way and his plan and keep you arrested by fear that's most likely on the other side of that wall, that's where the blessing of God is gonna come.
Forrest: When you face it, when you overcome it, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Forrest: Not for ourselves, but outside the walls here.
Forrest: Can you imagine now?
Forrest: Can you imagine?
Forrest: How many people whose lives are gonna be saved in this place?
Forrest: They're gonna move from death to life.
Forrest: Their eternal destination is gonna move to eternity with God in heaven.
Forrest: And we're we're here.
Forrest: We're here, and we're gonna help Frankfurt flourish.
Forrest: We're gonna help Frankfurt flourish in a lot of different ways.
Forrest: And we've already had a good start.
Forrest: But you know what?
Forrest: Nothing compares to the boldness and the bravery of our King Jesus.
Forrest: The fact that 2,000 years ago, that he, with a broken humanity, put on flesh, came down here fully God, fully man, and he didn't just stay there, but then had a ministry of three years and knew what was coming.
Forrest: That one day he was going to be beaten and he was going to be scourged and his flesh ripped apart, and he was gonna be nailed to a cross, and that he was going to die so that nobody else, nobody else who would believe in him would ever die, would never face a death, but instead the last breath on earth would be their first breath in heaven if they would believe in him and his work on the cross, and it was Jesus that he was hanging there, broken and bloody, that his voice rang out and said, It is finished.
Forrest: And we get to walk in the finished work of the cross of our King Jesus right now, right here, 2024, for not just ourselves, but for other people.
Forrest: So this is what I'm saying to you, church.
Forrest: Listen to me, listen to me, listen to me.
Forrest: This is what I'm saying.
Forrest: Buckle up.
Forrest: Because we just won the last season.
Forrest: The last season, the movie theater, the sticky floors, the setup and tear, all that, all that, we won.
Forrest: We got the championship.
Forrest: We won that season, but guess what?
Forrest: Today starts a new season.
Forrest: Today starts spring practice and summer conditioning.
Forrest: And the next season is starting, and so what I'm saying is is for all of us, begin to get to work.
Forrest: You're in the room today because you're a family or friend.
Forrest: For those in the room that are already a part, it's time.
Forrest: The next season's begun.
Forrest: If you're new in the room, join us.
Forrest: Follow the Lord, be a part.
Forrest: I just imagine now all the good that we're gonna get to multiply out of this place.
Forrest: This building, it's not a shrine, it's a forward operating base, it's a deployment center for us to be able to come alongside and fuel the fire and partner and love and care for those who are outside of these walls, and we as believers come together to worship, encourage one another, to lift up God's name, to help each other's wounds, to build each other up, to then go out and love some more.
Forrest: We've gotten to partner with some pretty amazing people over the last few years.
Forrest: And it's right alongside the fact that somewhere in this building, because we wrote scriptures and prayers all over the walls.
Forrest: I don't know where it is, but underneath this paint, for any of you who saw it, this whole room, this floor, there's still someone right here.
Forrest: There's scriptures and there's there's there's prayers written all over this building, kids' area, all over the place.
Forrest: And somewhere here, I don't know where it is anymore, but it says in big letters dream big and pray bigger.
Forrest: And I remember when we said that back in the movie theater, and somebody wrote it on the wall here somewhere.
Forrest: I don't know where it is, but it's here somewhere that we would be a people of action, that we'd be a people of prayer, that we would believe and dream big for what God has for us, but then we would pray for his power and his might to complete it.
Forrest: We've got to partner with so many amazing people.
Forrest: And I I want to, if you don't already know, introduce you to one of my friends who's been such an encouraging partner to me.
Forrest: It's my friend Coach uh Felton Huggins, who's the head coach of KSU football.
Forrest: And he's gonna come up right now.
Forrest: Can y'all give it up for Coach Huggins as he comes?
Forrest: This man has been a friend.
Forrest: He has been a picture, he's been a picture of what God's gonna do in and through this city.
Forrest: We're gonna continue to partner with brilliant minds like him.
Forrest: He's in his going into his second season at K-State.
Forrest: What I know about him, he loves those players.
Forrest: Someone here today.
Forrest: He loves them and he loves Jesus and he follows the Lord, and he's opened the door wide for us to be able to come alongside and partner with you for the work that you're doing, the good that you're doing here in our town.
Forrest: And I'm so grateful for it.
Forrest: I'm so grateful for it.
Forrest: And I and I just think about what the future can be as we continue to partner and we continue to push forward.
Forrest: And so I want to take a moment here now with my wife Emily to pray not over all the things that have happened before, but for the future with his work in ministry and life for other partners in our community, and I would like for all of us to join in this prayer together.
Forrest: And so, what I'm gonna ask you to do, and this may be a little bit uncomfortable for you, but that's fine because nobody's looking at you, is here in a second, I'm gonna put my hand on coach and we're gonna pray for him.
Forrest: I'm gonna ask for you to extend one of your hands towards coach as we pray together, as a church body right now, to pray over his life and ministry.
Forrest: And after I'm done praying this uh this prayer over coach, then we're gonna go party.
Forrest: We're gonna be dismissed after this prayer, and then we're gonna go out here, and there's okay, there's there's cupcakes and uh and there's things for us.
Forrest: We're gonna party, we're gonna have a good time.
Forrest: I can't wait for it.
Forrest: But before that, would you extend your hand forward as we pray right now?
Forrest: Father, we thank you, God, for today.
Forrest: We thank you, God, for this moment among friends and family.
Forrest: God, I thank you, Father, for this man who's right here on stage, this coach who has dedicated his life to others, to young people, to men in need of care and mentorship.
Forrest: Father, I know Lord, he he cares about them winning the battles, not just on the field, but in life.
Forrest: Father, I pray right now over him.
Forrest: I present him to you right now, Father.
Forrest: That Lord, you would continue to use him for your glory.
Forrest: God, you would continue to utilize his giftings, that you would continue, God, to work through him.
Forrest: That God, you would continue to help him, Father, to swing the door open wide.
Forrest: For the people of our community of Frankfurt to love and care for those that are under his stead and under his leadership.
Forrest: Father, I pray over him, God, in the face of adversity, so many challenges.
Forrest: God, you have called him here to this place.
Forrest: We know it.
Forrest: You spoke it to him, you spoke it through others.
Forrest: So, Father, Lord, in that confirmation, God, we pray, Lord, that you would complete your work.
Forrest: God, we thank you for this partnership.
Forrest: We thank you for this friendship.
Forrest: God, we pray for your blessing in the future.
Forrest: God, I pray favor right now over this coach and over the university and over our city, over leaders and our community, God, that our hearts would be bent and turned towards you and the good that you want to see accomplished here on this earth.
Forrest: That God, we would see lives transformed and changed, directions that would be changed, motivations that would be changed, and that Father, you would get all the glory, and you get it all today.
Forrest: So we love you, we praise you, we thank you, and we pray this prayer in the mighty name of King Jesus.
Forrest: Everybody said amen and amen and amen and amen.
Forrest: Love you all so much.
Forrest: Thank y'all for being here today.
Forrest: Let's go out, let's party.