SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' mighty name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Grace.
SPEAKER_00: And you can be seated.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Revive Church.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Kyle Morris, and I'm lead pastor here and excited that you're joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: We as a church, we are walking through the book of Luke right now.
SPEAKER_00: But uh what we're gonna do today in the next three weeks is we're pausing that book study on Luke in order to take a little bit of time as a church to talk about vision and where God is leading us.
SPEAKER_00: And we do this from time to time, at least once a year we talk about vision, but there are moments where maybe every three to five years we kind of stop what we're doing and we consider where God is leading us corporately as a body.
SPEAKER_00: On one hand, we already have a grand vision from God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesus, before he left this earth, he told his disciples, Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, Jesus actually told his disciples, Hey, I'm sending you my spirit, and when you receive my spirit, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So on one level, we already have our marching orders from Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: We are to build his church, we are to baptize, we are to align our lives to him, and we, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we are to be his witnesses right where we are and anywhere where God takes us.
SPEAKER_00: That is what the church is to be doing until Jesus returns.
SPEAKER_00: Now, with that said, the church is made up of different people with different gifts and passions who are meeting all throughout the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so how we accomplish this grander vision of being a witness to Jesus Christ and making disciples who make disciples actually depends on the spirit of Jesus Christ that inhabits his people within a local church to express that in the way that the Holy Spirit is leading us to follow.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to be very clear.
SPEAKER_00: When I say this is a vision series, this is what we believe God is doing among us and where his spirit is leading us.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 29, 18 says this where there is no vision, the people perish.
SPEAKER_00: God has wired us to have vision for our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Not only in the sense of the church and the gathered group of people who are followers of Jesus, but also he actually has given us a vision for how we are to lead others and how we are to lead ourselves and how we're to lead our families.
SPEAKER_00: We are to lead in order to steward anything that God has entrusted to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as believers in Christ, first and foremost, we all have been entrusted with the greatest news on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question that we should always ask, whether it's for our own selves or for our families or for our neighborhoods, is how is the greatest news ever shaping the vision for my life?
SPEAKER_00: That's not a secondary question.
SPEAKER_00: That is a primary question that helps us as followers of Jesus Christ to keep first things first.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is ultimate, and because the gospel is ultimate, every decision and every aspect of our life should flow out of that place.
SPEAKER_00: How do I use my life?
SPEAKER_00: How do I use my family?
SPEAKER_00: How do I use my job in order to glorify Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: And so when we think about vision as a church, the most important question to ask is what is God doing right now and how is God inviting us to join Him?
SPEAKER_00: God does not need us, He does not need me to accomplish His vision.
SPEAKER_00: God instead He chooses to use us and He allows us to be a part of what He is already doing.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we think about our vision as a church, it should be the prayerful pursuit and the intentional following of Jesus' Spirit as He leads us.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean that we don't make plans, doesn't mean that we just live with a spirit of spontaneity about everything we do.
SPEAKER_00: That's irresponsible.
SPEAKER_00: It means that we keep our plans with an open hand.
SPEAKER_00: And even in the places where we believe that the Spirit is leading, we want to have open hands and open hearts to God, nimble enough to switch directions or shift things if the Spirit is leading.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite verses over the years in vision leadership is Proverbs 16, 9.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you know this verse.
SPEAKER_00: The heart of a man plans his ways, but the Lord establishes his steps.
SPEAKER_00: I've been here at Revived Church for about 18 years.
SPEAKER_00: Recently celebrated my 10-year mark as the lead pastor of this church, and one of the things, thanks.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't do it for applause, but I'll take it.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've been ruminating on a lot over the last few months is how God's vision and what he's allowing us to be a part of here, what he's allowing to unfold before our very eyes in this last decade is way bigger and way better than any of us planned.
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
SPEAKER_00: Only God can get the credit and the glory for the way that he is using this church to accomplish his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not because we're smarter or more creative than we used to be.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why God has used us is because we have committed on waiting on him before we make plans.
SPEAKER_00: We've committed to allowing him to lead us and to join him in where he's already working.
SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 5, which if you haven't read John chapter 5 in a while, what a beautiful chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.
SPEAKER_00: In the rest of John 5, Jesus goes to great lengths to express that he only does what the Father does.
SPEAKER_00: So think about this.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus was on earth and we're watching him do these incredible things, did you know that he was taking his steps and his leadership path from God the Father?
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't functioning on his own, but instead he subjected himself under the Father with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to do the very things that God was leading him to do.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we think about church vision in light of this, the question is, where is God working and how do we join him in the work?
SPEAKER_00: Where is he at work?
SPEAKER_00: Where do we see him working and blessing?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we join him in the work that he's doing?
SPEAKER_00: Now, in order to answer that question, we actually have to go, we gotta go back.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta look at the past before we look at the present where our feet are right now, or even the future of where we believe that God is leading.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not like God just started working through our generation to see his kingdom come in Arvada.
SPEAKER_00: This church is coming up on its 40th birthday.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: 40 years old.
SPEAKER_00: God has been working through this church, preparing people's hearts to receive him and to walk with him.
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the vision of our church over the last almost 40 years, here's what is crystal clear.
SPEAKER_00: This church, revived church, has always been an others-centered church.
SPEAKER_00: It has always been a church with an external focus of loving and serving our community, not just sitting back and waiting for people to walk in our doors, but saying, no, we believe the gospel is expressed when we go out.
SPEAKER_00: And God, in that, has led us to have a particularly soft heart for single moms.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we come alongside a single mom?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we help her life in partnership with God go from just surviving to thriving?
SPEAKER_00: This has always been the case of this church.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the church's early days, the statement that defined this church was this is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
SPEAKER_00: This is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
SPEAKER_00: And this kind of vision, it's taken shape many different ways over the years, but one thing has remained.
SPEAKER_00: We are committed to this community, and we are committed to living out the gospel in such a way that we bring light into darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we look deeply at the past, I think it's important for us to consider that turning points matter.
SPEAKER_00: There are seminal moments in the life of any church that describe decisions that were made that didn't just impact that generation, but actually impacted generations for decades to come.
SPEAKER_00: When you look at the Old Testament, you can't help but see, if you're willing to look, that God actually commanded the people of Israel to memorialize these kinds of decisions, to actually build altars and Ebenezer's as a way of physically reminding his people of where they had been, not just for them to look at, but also for the generations to come.
SPEAKER_00: Why would God do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first and foremost, he wants us to remember his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: God also knows that human beings, without intentional ways to remember, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: We naturally forget.
SPEAKER_00: And so we don't have to remember to forget, but we do have to remember to remember.
SPEAKER_00: In doing so, we're reminded of two very important things.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: When we consider the testimonies of the past, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: When we consider the testimonies of the past, we are filled with faith for the future.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know this, but the Hebrew word for testimony means to repeat or do it again.
SPEAKER_00: Repeat or do it again.
SPEAKER_00: So when we look back at these pivotal moments in our past, we are not only reminded of God's faithfulness back then to that group of people, but we are actually celebrating the fact that we serve a God who will do it again.
SPEAKER_00: It may look different for our generation, but God's faithfulness is unchanging.
SPEAKER_00: That's why when we gather together on Baptism Sundays, how many of your eyes fill with tears?
SPEAKER_00: Like you're you're watching people on this stage whose lives, some of them have been radically transformed.
SPEAKER_00: You're watching children come to the microphone at eight years old and ten years old and profess their faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why our eyes fill with tears is because we are reminded that God is doing it again, that he's repeating his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's so important when we think about vision to consider the past.
SPEAKER_00: When I think about vision, I think about a path, and in many ways, every church has a path that they're walking.
SPEAKER_00: And in the middle of the last probably 10 years, there were moments where we as a leadership team sensed what God was calling us to, and we also sensed that what he was calling us to was greater than our collective potential.
SPEAKER_00: That's actually a good place to be.
SPEAKER_00: If God has you in a place right now, in a job or in your home where you feel like what is needed and what's required of you is greater than what you have, you're in a good spot.
SPEAKER_00: The moment you think that you have what it takes is the moment that you stop needing God.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember in this vision season, I was in my office, and when we were located next to our offices, there was this space in the back of my office that had a shower and a bathroom.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea why it used to be a doctor's office.
SPEAKER_00: Never showered there, but I did go in there and pray.
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like in this moment, that was too much information, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't Ed's like, that wasn't in the notes.
SPEAKER_00: Um I felt like when I was praying one day, the Lord gave me a picture of paver stones.
SPEAKER_00: And he basically said in that moment, he goes, Hey, look, listen, you're wanting me to show you the path that's ahead.
SPEAKER_00: You're wanting me to show you every single stone.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't serve you well, that wouldn't serve the church well, but here's what I'm gonna show you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna invite you to turn around and I'm gonna invite you to look at the past and to see my faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And then, and only then would it make sense, I'm actually gonna invite you to put this paver stone down and step at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a picture of what it means to follow God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means, not just as a church, but in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Following God, did I, oh man.
SPEAKER_00: Following God means that we are faithful with what he puts in our hand.
SPEAKER_00: Not faithful with ten steps forward, just the very thing that he's given us, be faithful with that.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we when we look to the past and we think about vision, we celebrate that God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
SPEAKER_00: We also celebrate the faithfulness of those who have come before us.
SPEAKER_00: We have almost four decades of people who have come before us at Revive, thousands who have prayed, thousands who have served, thousands who have sacrificially given, thousands who have vulnerably testified to the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been here longer than 10 years, I just want you to raise your hand for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the ways that you have served, you have prayed, you have loved, you have given.
SPEAKER_00: You see, thousands of people in little ways and big ways before us have prepared a place for us to be here today to experience the life-changing power of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And even in this room, 38 years from now, many of us we will not be here, but we have this opportunity right now to be a part of the story that God is writing, to be a part of what it means to prepare a place so that 30 years from now, hopefully, the next generation will point back to the faithfulness of God, but also the faithfulness of those who have come before them.
SPEAKER_00: I've spent the last couple months in nostalgia, remembering to remember all that God has done.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning I've tried to kind of bottle that up in a way of giving God glory and hopefully bringing encouragement to you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think about uh vision and pictures and objects.
SPEAKER_00: So there's three objects that I'm gonna use this morning.
SPEAKER_00: One is a rock, one is a canoe, and one is a garden.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna pray and then dive in.
SPEAKER_00: Father, this morning, would you get the glory?
SPEAKER_00: God, there's just nothing as I've thought about the last 10 years.
SPEAKER_00: There's just so many things we didn't plan, so many things we didn't expect, so many things we didn't anticipate, but you are the God who expects, plans, and anticipates everything.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, would you be glorified in our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Would we not walk out this door thinking, wow, Kyle did a really great job of encapsulating 40 years?
SPEAKER_00: Would we walk out this door going, God is so good?
SPEAKER_00: And to him be the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so rocks.
SPEAKER_00: I want to invite you to travel back with me in a time machine to the late 1900s.
SPEAKER_00: At a time, at a time when this church, revived church, was known as Foothills Community Church.
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that, Jen.
SPEAKER_00: Our church at that time, our church at that time was meeting in Moore Middle School.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember that?
SPEAKER_00: The setup and tear down days, they're like, yep.
SPEAKER_00: Before we leased this space, the church met in several locations from Moore Middle School to Pomona to Arvada Center.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there was a summer that Brenda Caker was telling me about where there was uh a reason they had to move out of their space, and so they didn't even know where they would be from week to week.
SPEAKER_00: And so the saying went, if you can find us, you can worship with us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, eventually, this space that we're sitting in today was leased out, and this worship center was formed out of what many of you remember as a United Artist Theater.
SPEAKER_00: So this space we're sitting in was three theaters, and the name of the theater was the Cooper Six Theaters.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, you remember this theater because you had your very first date in this room.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even went for the handhold.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, you, and we appreciate it, stuck your gum under the seats.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before the church moved into this space and while at Moore Middle School, they were made aware of an investment opportunity out west, about eight miles from here in the area that we know today as Whisper Creek.
SPEAKER_00: And at that time, in 1997 to 1998, the only thing that was plentiful out there were prairie dogs.
SPEAKER_00: There's no Whisper Creek, there's no candelas, there's no booming west of the city that is happening right now.
SPEAKER_00: And so a couple hundred people called Foothills Community Church found out about this investment opportunity, and they had the opportunity to buy 90 acres for a million dollars.
SPEAKER_00: And although there was nothing out there, the people believed that God was inviting them to this investment opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Sometime around the purchase of that land, there was a gathering, almost a ceremony that took place on that land on these newly acquired acres.
SPEAKER_00: And on that property, there was a cross that was constructed and put on that property.
SPEAKER_00: And the church gathered around in a circle, and each person that night was asked to bring a rock.
SPEAKER_00: And thanks to Michael Sergeff, our facilities director, in 2020, I went out there when we sold the last piece of land.
SPEAKER_00: Michael went out there and actually found some of those original rocks and brought them back.
SPEAKER_00: And on these rocks, each family was invited to write their name.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a moment, as I've talked to those who were there, where people came and they laid their rocks down.
SPEAKER_00: And while no one had a crystal ball and nobody knew what was going to happen on that property, there was a sense that day that they were consecrating that land for something.
SPEAKER_00: That they were dedicating that land and giving it back to God.
SPEAKER_00: And although there were no concrete plans on what would happen, this was a moment of surrender and sacrifice for this generation.
SPEAKER_00: Now, over the next 10 years, that land became increasingly valuable and actually became a windfall.
SPEAKER_00: It became an asset to the church for us to survive the years like 2008 and other economic downturns where we were able to sell this land and we were able to stay afloat.
SPEAKER_00: All right, fast forward with me to 2016.
SPEAKER_00: My predecessor Steve Harling had moved on from his lead pastor role to run a missions organization, and I was given the opportunity to lead in his place.
SPEAKER_00: And sometime about a few months before I took over as the lead pastor, the largest hospital organization in America knocked on our door.
SPEAKER_00: They made an offer to buy this entire shopping center.
SPEAKER_00: And at that time, we owned about 70% of the center, and then a businessman in New York owned about 30%.
SPEAKER_00: On paper, absolute no-brainer.
SPEAKER_00: The shopping center was old, it was dilapidated, it actually had become a place where businesses went to die.
SPEAKER_00: The parking lot actually was so empty and so underutilized that the Arvada Police Department made their daily parking lot time to meet and to do their paperwork on our campus in their cars.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you a picture.
SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of 2017 on an average day here at what we know today as the bridge in 2017.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you a picture of what this looked like about a year ago.
SPEAKER_00: I was expecting a better response.
SPEAKER_00: If I do, if I do that again, if I do that again, the proper response is, ooh.
SPEAKER_00: Ah.
SPEAKER_00: No, the shopping, if you were here, you know the shopping center was dead, but we serve the God of resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: After praying and fasting and processing the hospital's offer as a church, God led us to do the unthinkable.
SPEAKER_00: We turned down this lucrative offer of money, and even though we had valuable land out in Whisper Creek that we could have built a church on, as we prayed, it was very clear that God had called us to this geographic area to love the people in this proximity.
SPEAKER_00: God was leading us to stay, but we didn't really have a vision.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to pause that moment and I want to transition from the rocks to the canoes.
SPEAKER_00: Because there have been some moments in our church where we might think of them in the time as insignificant, but they actually were God's leading and our following.
SPEAKER_00: Our church is centrally located.
SPEAKER_00: We were already at this time having a significant impact in this community.
SPEAKER_00: But in 2017 and 2018, after we decided not to sell the pro or not to uh sell this property, we actually had some big questions we were asking.
SPEAKER_00: How do we engage a culture that seems to be retreating from the church?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to not just sit back and wait for people to walk into a church service?
SPEAKER_00: If God did bless us with this entire shopping center, how would we use it?
SPEAKER_00: In 2017, our entire staff, we read a book called Canoeing the Mountains.
SPEAKER_00: And we actually did a series called The New Terrain, where for four weeks we had a giant canoe on this stage.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone remember that series?
SPEAKER_00: We read a book called Canoeing the Mountains.
SPEAKER_00: It's written by Todd Bolsinger, who's a seminary professor at Fuller.
SPEAKER_00: And in that book, he presented a metaphor to us that actually shaped the road ahead.
SPEAKER_00: And it's still something that we talk about here at Revive on our team today.
SPEAKER_00: And the metaphor is looking back to the expedition of Lewis and Clark in the early 18th century.
SPEAKER_00: If you know that story, Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to find the Northwest Passage by waterway, by canoe.
SPEAKER_00: And so Lewis and Clark they trained a corps of discovery and they set out by waterway just.
SPEAKER_00: Assuming that they would just canoe their way along until they hit the Pacific Ocean.
SPEAKER_00: And everything was going great until it wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: The plan was great until they realized that you can't actually canoe the Rocky Mountains.
SPEAKER_00: The journey ahead of Lewis and Clark required a new terrain with a new way of navigating.
SPEAKER_00: There was no Northwest Passage, no navigable river, no rav river, no water route.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't prepared for the mountains.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't prepared for hiking.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't prepared for mountain range after mountain range.
SPEAKER_00: And so they had to make a decision in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: Either engage the mountains or retreat back to where they had come from.
SPEAKER_00: They would have to drop the canoes in order to climb the mountains.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis and Clark, they had to quickly transition from being river rats to mountaineers.
SPEAKER_00: They had to drop the canoes in order to carry the climbing ropes.
SPEAKER_00: The metaphor for our church became the lens by which we thought about vision and what God was doing at our church.
SPEAKER_00: We knew that God was calling us to engage a culture, but the things that we did back then in order to reach the culture, they weren't going to get us to where we were reaching the culture moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: And so we started and continued to ask questions of how do we engage a culture that is retreating?
SPEAKER_00: How do we win back the attention of a world that seems disinterested or even mistrusting of God?
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of ways you can do that.
SPEAKER_00: You can study all the trends.
SPEAKER_00: You can draw people to church, look at churches that are growing.
SPEAKER_00: Is it, you know, is it better product on Sunday mornings, more lights, more music, more hipster coffee, maybe some smoke?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's what we should do.
SPEAKER_00: But through this metaphor, God, it felt like he was inviting us to do something different, to do something unexpected, to think about ministry in a new way.
SPEAKER_00: Not something that we could think of, but something that he was dreaming for our church.
SPEAKER_00: So we had these decision points where we decided to stay put here, and we're also trying to listen to God, and we believe God's telling us, hey, not only are you going to stay put here, but you're actually going to find a way to engage the community not just with Sunday morning, but every day of the week.
SPEAKER_00: That brings us to the gardens.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of a pitiful garden, but not bad for how small it is.
SPEAKER_00: Soon after this time, God directed us to a passage that shaped this vision.
SPEAKER_00: It's found in Jeremiah 29.
SPEAKER_00: And this passage actually led us to answering these big questions of how do we engage a culture that is retreating from the church?
SPEAKER_00: What would we do if we own this entire shopping center?
SPEAKER_00: And in this passage, if you're familiar with it, Jeremiah, who was an Old Testament prophet, he's writing to the people of Israel, and the people of Israel, they're in exile in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And God had warned the people of Israel over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: He had sent prophets like Jeremiah and prophets like Ezekiel, he had sent them over and over to say, hey, turn from your evil ways.
SPEAKER_00: Stop worshipping the gods around you.
SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes and your focus on me.
SPEAKER_00: And it was through prophets like Jeremiah where God announced his warning of judgments.
SPEAKER_00: And these warnings unfortunately fell on mostly deaf ears, and eventually the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and carried the Israelites into exile.
SPEAKER_00: He sent them to live in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Now I get it, we're not Israel and we're not living in Babylon, but here is what we have in common.
SPEAKER_00: Israel at this time was the church.
SPEAKER_00: They were the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: And they were not living in their ultimate home.
SPEAKER_00: They were living in a place where they felt out of sorts and out of place.
SPEAKER_00: They were exiles.
SPEAKER_00: We are exiles too.
SPEAKER_00: Not in the same sense as the people of Israel, but in the sense that, hey, this place is not our final home.
SPEAKER_00: And in so many ways we should feel that.
SPEAKER_00: We should long for something more than what we're experiencing right now.
SPEAKER_00: Even if your life right now is A plus, 100% there should be a yearning and a longing for something more.
SPEAKER_00: Because we were made for more than this world and this life.
SPEAKER_00: This is not our final home.
SPEAKER_00: I bumped into this passage from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians today in my, or this week in my one-year reading.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes these words, For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.
SPEAKER_00: For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
SPEAKER_00: Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose, God, who has given us the Spirit as his deposit, guaranteeing us what is to come.
SPEAKER_00: So this body, this place we live, this is not finality.
SPEAKER_00: And so we feel that.
SPEAKER_00: We yearn for something more.
SPEAKER_00: Peter in his letter said, we are exiles, we are foreigners in this land.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's what's cool.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about this later in the series.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Right now, Jesus Christ said, Hey, I'm preparing a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm preparing a final place right now for you.
SPEAKER_00: Until then, we're exiles.
SPEAKER_00: So here you have the nation of Israel, they're living like exiles in this foreign land, and the question that the Israelites have is, how long are we gonna be here?
SPEAKER_00: And until God returns us back to our land, what in the world are we supposed to be doing?
SPEAKER_00: Now, from Babylon, their captive, their captors, there was a vision that they had in place, a vision of assimilation.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the Babylonians had a strategy for how they wanted the people of God to live in their land.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not unlike our world today.
SPEAKER_00: It was called assimilation.
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonians did not treat the Israelites as slaves like the Egyptians did for hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Babylonians invited the Israelites to eat at their tables and to hold their best jobs.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites, they were allowed to act, they were allowed to live like Babylonians as long as they became like them.
SPEAKER_00: We see this strategy unfold in the book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: You know the story of Daniel?
SPEAKER_00: Daniel and his three friends are taken out of Israel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ringing any bells, and they're invited into Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the king's palace, and they're invited in there to sit at his table.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have to eat vegetables like everyone else.
SPEAKER_00: Nebuchadnezzar says, Hey, here, eat my steak.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to change your name.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel, I want to change your name to Belteshazzar.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to become like us.
SPEAKER_00: If you just assimilate to who we are, just lose your identity, your distinctive, just give up yourself and you can have everything that we have.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, we're seeing this in our culture today, even in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Theology and orthodox beliefs that have literally held weight for thousands of years are being abandoned by the church in order to assimilate to the culture.
SPEAKER_00: A culture that more and more is rejecting God and absolute truth and morality.
SPEAKER_00: So that was one of the things that the Israelites could have chosen as exiles.
SPEAKER_00: The next one was a vision of isolation.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites actually had their own strategy.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't to assimilate, it was to isolate themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Stay away from the city.
SPEAKER_00: Stay away from the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: Don't put yourself in a position to be tainted by the evils of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in Jeremiah chapter 28, the chapter before this, there was a false Israelite prophet.
SPEAKER_00: His name was Hananiah.
SPEAKER_00: You can go and read about him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to the people of Israel and basically said this, hey, listen, God's not going to have you here very long, maybe just a couple years.
SPEAKER_00: Just go live in a tent outside of the city.
SPEAKER_00: Just isolate yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: God will get you out of here soon.
SPEAKER_00: Turns out that God actually sounded the alarm on Hananiah being a false prophet, and he was removed from the face of the earth for it.
SPEAKER_00: Isolation for a Christian is not an option.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just want to connect this to some of the things that I hear people saying today.
SPEAKER_00: Like people are just wanting to just bail on our state because politically things are not lining up how we think they should line up.
SPEAKER_00: Show me in the gospel, show me in the Bible where it says to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Like just bail, just bail on the place that God has placed us where we are to be the aroma of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: How in the world can you be the aroma of Christ if you isolate yourself?
SPEAKER_00: And so, isolation, that's not the option.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's nothing about what Jesus taught or the way that he lived that communicated anything other than he was highly invested in the cities and the communities where he was.
SPEAKER_00: So to follow Jesus and to live in love like Jesus right where we are is not to bail.
SPEAKER_00: It's not to just move down to Florida.
SPEAKER_00: And you may move to Florida for other reasons, but we are called to be in the places where God has called us to be the aroma of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's an alternative to the vision of assimilation that the Babylonians were trying to put on the people of Israel and isolation which this Hananiah the prophet tried to put on Israel, and it's a vision of transformation.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 29, 4 through 7.
SPEAKER_00: This is the vision to listen to because this is God's voice.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he said to the people of Israel, living as exiles in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says.
SPEAKER_00: To all those carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: So to everyone, the entire nation in this foreign land, build houses and settle down.
SPEAKER_00: Plant gardens and eat what they produce.
SPEAKER_00: Marry and have sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00: Find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.
SPEAKER_00: Increase in number there, do not decrease.
SPEAKER_00: Also, seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.
SPEAKER_00: Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
SPEAKER_00: God says, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Seek the peace and the prosperity of the city.
SPEAKER_00: Plant gardens.
SPEAKER_00: Like use your influence that I've given you in that place to be my representatives.
SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean for us today?
SPEAKER_00: It means that we are to actually look at the places where God has put us.
SPEAKER_00: Not just from a church perspective, looking into Arvada and Northwest Denver.
SPEAKER_00: I would say, within your home, what is broken?
SPEAKER_00: Within your community, what is broken?
SPEAKER_00: Where you live?
SPEAKER_00: In your workplace, what is broken?
SPEAKER_00: We are actually called to look into those places and to see the brokenness and then answer the question now that I know about that brokenness, what will I do?
SPEAKER_00: What will I do?
SPEAKER_00: What are the areas where we can use our influence and God's anointing to help others?
SPEAKER_00: The word for peace here in the Greek means to bring about whole or complete healing.
SPEAKER_00: It's a rich word.
SPEAKER_00: It communicates this idea of caring for the whole of a person or the whole of a place to invest deeply in order to bring about wholeness wherever we are.
SPEAKER_00: The way we like to think about this is to revive people in places where the in the city where God has placed us.
SPEAKER_00: Now you can imagine the shock of the people of Israel as they heard this instruction from God.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
SPEAKER_00: God, you want us to know these people?
SPEAKER_00: You want us to help fix the dark and broken places here?
SPEAKER_00: You want us to plant gardens here, to make friends here.
SPEAKER_00: You want us to pray for these people.
SPEAKER_00: This passage was an invitation for us as a church to begin thinking about what God might want to do on this patch of dirt here at 80th and Car.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the reality: God works in cities.
SPEAKER_00: He does.
SPEAKER_00: We're reading the book of Acts right now, we're studying it.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're seeing in the book of Acts is God is working in Antioch, and God is working in Philippi, and God is working in Lystra, and God is working in Derby, and God's going to work in Athens and Thessalonica.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this gave us more clarity to follow God's leading, to take the next step to join him in where he's wanting us to work.
SPEAKER_00: And so we began to put these things together of, hey, God's inviting us to drop the canoes, so to speak, to do ministry different, and now he's inviting us to be a kind of stalwart in this community of God's love and his grace.
SPEAKER_00: How do we express that to this community?
SPEAKER_00: How do we, in a sense, live out this vision of transformation?
SPEAKER_00: How do we become the shalom of God in this city?
SPEAKER_00: Now we have that context.
SPEAKER_00: We've got a heart for a community.
SPEAKER_00: We've got the willingness to do ministry in a different way, but we didn't have a clear vision from God on how to do it or what to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And at that time we had no money.
SPEAKER_00: We had valuable land, but we couldn't sell it.
SPEAKER_00: Each time we tried to sell the land out there, we would get to the point of purchase, and the buyer or something within the deal would absolutely fall apart until we got to 2019 and 2020.
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy, to be honest, to look back at 2019 and 2020 and to think about all of the craziness of COVID and to sit there and go, oh my goodness, God did more in the life of our church in those two years than I can even remember.
SPEAKER_00: First, at the beginning of 2020, the other owner of this shopping center who wasn't real happy with us that we had kind of stopped the deal with the hospital because that was going to be a lucrative way from him to get out from underneath what he owned here.
SPEAKER_00: He invited us to a steak dinner, which you just never turned down.
SPEAKER_00: And so a few of our leadership, we went downtown and we met him for a steak, and the steak tasted wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the meal, we're kind of like, okay, you invited us to be here.
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to talk about?
SPEAKER_00: And the owner said to us, hey, I really want to be out of that property at 80th and Carr.
SPEAKER_00: I've been there for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: The church came in and really just killed the shopping center.
SPEAKER_00: And so he said, I'm gonna do a deal with you, and this deal is only good for this year.
SPEAKER_00: If the church can pay me$1.5 million for my portion of the shopping center, which is a huge, huge value for us, then I'll sell it to you this year.
SPEAKER_00: Now the problem was we didn't have any money.
SPEAKER_00: And so we shook hands at the end of that dinner, and I walked out to Stephen's car and we just sat outside in his car for about five minutes, overwhelmed with the reality that this guy had just offered the church a shopping center at an incredibly reduced price, but also a bit grieving because we didn't have any money.
SPEAKER_00: Just a short while later, listen, two weeks before COVID shut down the entire city of Arvada, God sold the property in West Arvada.
SPEAKER_00: And the proceeds were enough not only for us to get out of debt, but to pay for the purchase of this entire center.
SPEAKER_00: Like God was working and looking back, like you can't make this stuff up.
SPEAKER_00: It only gets crazier.
SPEAKER_00: In the spring of 2020, we sensed as a leadership team that God wanted to do something through his church.
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing wrong with the name Foothills Community Church per se, but the name itself did not communicate what God was wanting to do right now.
SPEAKER_00: The name was geographical in mind, right?
SPEAKER_00: You can look out and you can see the foothills, but we believed that God was calling us to change our name.
SPEAKER_00: And the name that we believe he gave us was Revived Church.
SPEAKER_00: The word revive means to resuscitate or to bring back to life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the reason why I believe this was God's idea fully is because 100% of the people that we consulted with about this name change, whether it was a brand new person or whether it was Sneed and Brenda Caker who had been here for 30 years, every single one of them since the Spirit was leading in this direction.
SPEAKER_00: So in the fall of 2020, in the absolute dead of COVID, we announced three things that we believed God was doing.
SPEAKER_00: That we were changing our name from Foothills Community Church to Revive Church.
SPEAKER_00: That God was leading us to purchase this shopping center, and that we were gonna use this shopping center to seek the peace and the prosperity of our Vada.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is where the story gets even crazier.
SPEAKER_00: That week that we were planning to announce it, I'm literally sitting in my office working on the sermon where I'm gonna share this news of what our leadership is sensing the Lord is leading us to do.
SPEAKER_00: And I got a phone call.
SPEAKER_00: And I got a phone call from a person who was actually instrumental in the land purchase 20 years before.
SPEAKER_00: And he told me, he said, Hey, listen, I was praying this morning and I heard about what the church is trying to do in the shopping center.
SPEAKER_00: And I was sitting under this tree where I just sit there and I pray, and the Lord told me that I'm supposed to give the church the 1.5 million to buy the shopping center.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in that moment, if you've ever had a surreal moment, which you have, I don't even know what I said.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he like remained on the phone and I ran across the hall to Stephen Henson.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_00: I blacked out.
SPEAKER_00: But my first thought was, what?
SPEAKER_00: We had sensed the Lord was gonna actually give us this shopping center.
SPEAKER_00: And so when the owner said, Hey, I'll give it to you for 1.5, there was a sense among our leadership of, that's awesome, God, but we thought you were gonna give it to us.
SPEAKER_00: And he did.
SPEAKER_00: Just not in the way that we thought he was gonna give it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what I said back to the person on the phone, but my faith in God that day grew ten sizes.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's another God moment.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah Weschenfelder, are you in here right now?
SPEAKER_00: There's Sarah.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah can attest to this story.
SPEAKER_00: At that time, Sarah was our financial secretary, and before any of this happened with the land sale or anything, Sarah came to me and Steven and said, Hey, as soon as the church gets a million-dollar check in the mail, I'm gonna retire.
SPEAKER_00: Stephen and I were like, sweet, we don't want you to retire, you're good.
SPEAKER_00: Until I got a call from that donor with the 1.5 million about two years, two weeks later, and he said, Hey, there's the thing with my taxes this year.
SPEAKER_00: I need to pay$500,000 this year and a million next year.
SPEAKER_00: And I kid you not, one probably Thursday afternoon, Sarah came into my office with not even a big check, but just a small check from this person for$1 million.
SPEAKER_00: She retired.
SPEAKER_00: And we thank you for your service, Sarah.
SPEAKER_00: God was working in ways that we could have never imagined.
SPEAKER_00: This continued in 2021 with many of you who are in this room.
SPEAKER_00: We started a campaign called For Love's Sake.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you were here for For Love's Sake?
SPEAKER_00: And we had a Sunday morning at the end of a four-week teaching series where we invited you to say, hey, what is God leading me to contribute in order to prepare a place here at Revived Church, both in updating our facilities under this one roof, but also in updating our facilities to launch the bridge to be a place for people to prosper in our community.
SPEAKER_00: And our outlandish hope on that Sunday was that you would show up and that you would walk up and you would bring your offering, and that at the end of the day, how awesome would it be if we had$250,000 of cash to be the seed money for this vision?
SPEAKER_00: On that day, you brought more than$1 million.
SPEAKER_00: Over that campaign, which we would have been so pleased to see$1.5 million, you brought over$2.5.
SPEAKER_00: And so that, in a sense, was the faithfulness of this generation right now to see what God was doing and to join him in the work in preparing a place not just for our children, not just for us, but for the generation to come.
SPEAKER_00: You know that passage in Ephesians 3?
SPEAKER_00: Let me read it if you don't remember.
SPEAKER_00: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.
SPEAKER_00: To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: God brought more than we needed.
SPEAKER_00: He brought the right people at the right time.
SPEAKER_00: I look out.
SPEAKER_00: Cam Kenyon sitting over here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the bridge went from a vision to actually being executed because Cam said, I'm gonna give two years of my life.
SPEAKER_00: God has always provided the right people at the right time.
SPEAKER_00: God provided the right people as they sat out on that land and as they banded together as a small church to purchase that property for a million dollars.
SPEAKER_00: That property, the return to the church, was probably around 13 fold.
SPEAKER_00: They had no idea that that sacrifice would lead to our generation buying the shopping center, renovating it, and filling it with people's people who are committed to seeking the peace and the prosperity of Northwest Denver.
SPEAKER_00: But that's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is the willingness to go before you know.
SPEAKER_00: That's what faith is.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean we go blindly, it doesn't mean we go without prayer, but there are moments in our life where God is inviting us to go before we know.
SPEAKER_00: Before we have all of the I's dotted and the T's crossed.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked a lot about money and land today because it's an important part of our story.
SPEAKER_00: And we've had front row seats for the miraculous ways that God has provided.
SPEAKER_00: But money and land are not the point.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that people are encountering the love of Jesus Christ both in word and in word.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose is actually to see people who are spiritually dead be revived to life.
SPEAKER_00: To see people who are in vulnerable situations given hope.
SPEAKER_00: To see life return to people's eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen that?
SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful when life and hope return to the eyes of someone who is downcast or dejected.
SPEAKER_00: God is doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Next week we're going to hear in our present day.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look down at our feet.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the bridge.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at what's happening in our church, and we are going to celebrate right now, in the present moment, how God is using this place and the faithfulness of his people to change the city.
SPEAKER_00: I kid you not.
SPEAKER_00: As I was writing this message this week, I looked at my phone and I had a text from Jody Mays.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all know many of you know Jody Mays.
SPEAKER_00: Jody was a lead pastor here when this group of people were out on Indiana and they purchased that land.
SPEAKER_00: I honestly have not talked to Jody in a number, probably five years, although we're friends.
SPEAKER_00: And his text read this.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he has no idea that we're doing this vision series, hasn't talked to me in years.
SPEAKER_00: This is just the Holy Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I had a revelation.
SPEAKER_00: There are three seasons in a church's life survival, success, and significance.
SPEAKER_00: My generation experienced survival and success during my time at Foothills over those 15 years.
SPEAKER_00: But you and your generation, you're experiencing significance.
SPEAKER_00: Great job, bro.
SPEAKER_00: I read that and I couldn't help but think the reason we're here in this place of significance is because of the faithfulness of God and those who have sacrificed to have come before us.
SPEAKER_00: We're in this place of significance because God is a faithful God, and there have been people, thousands, who have prayed, who have sacrificed, who have given, who have served in order to prepare a place where we sit today.
SPEAKER_00: And so let us be a people who continue to remember to remember first and foremost the faithfulness of God, but also the faithfulness of those who have prepared a place.
SPEAKER_00: So as the band plays, here's my challenge, and there'll be multiple challenges throughout this series, but I want this to be not just a bunch of information that we walk out of here encouraged because God's doing a lot of incredible things here at Revive, although we should.
SPEAKER_00: But first I want to invite you to remember.
SPEAKER_00: I want to invite you to take some time this week, maybe even at lunch today, and think about who prepared a place for you.
SPEAKER_00: Not just at church, but I want you to think about your life.
SPEAKER_00: Who sacrificed so that you could have what you have?
SPEAKER_00: Who prayed for you before you even knew to pray for yourself?
SPEAKER_00: Who gave you an opportunity that you didn't earn or you didn't achieve?
SPEAKER_00: And as God brings those people to mind, say thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Shoot them a text, phone call, even better, handwrite them a note.
SPEAKER_00: And just say, hey, I was remembering the sacrifice you made for me.
SPEAKER_00: I was remembering that as you helped me go to college and as you put me through school, that you were working three jobs.
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you.
SPEAKER_00: I celebrate and remember your faithfulness in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And second, I want to ask you this question.
SPEAKER_00: Are you and are we collectively willing to prepare a place?
SPEAKER_00: Are we as a church right now, are we willing, as the next generation and the current generation, are we willing to prepare a place?
SPEAKER_00: That might mean something financial.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean choosing to give what's toward what is ahead of the church, the way that the people gave out on that property 30 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean something relational.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean opening your home.
SPEAKER_00: Could mean opening your Tuesday nights, an extra bedroom for someone to stay in.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean something in service.
SPEAKER_00: As we continue to grow as a church, we want to have places that are prepared for more people to come and experience God.
SPEAKER_00: Might mean stepping into an opportunity with next gen or serving as an ally with cross-purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Might be walking with a new Christian in discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean opening your own heart to God.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean responding to the knocking.
SPEAKER_00: Because not every single one of us in this room or online, not every single one of us have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so prepare a place might be the invitation for you to open the door and finally let him in.
SPEAKER_00: To walk with him, to allow him not just to rescue you from sin and death, but actually to inspire you to live a new life.
SPEAKER_00: He wants that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus wants that more than anything, to come in and actually make his home in you.
SPEAKER_00: We invite you to pray for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're here today and maybe you are making that decision, there's not magic words to that.
SPEAKER_00: The only word is surrender.
SPEAKER_00: It's to say, God, I've kept you out for too long.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning I hear you and feel you knocking, and I want to open the door.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that when you open the door and you confess Jesus with your mouth and you believe in your heart, and when you surrender your life to Him, that He saves you and that He walks with you.
SPEAKER_00: God, for the rest of us, as we think through these questions, whether it's celebrating someone who has impacted our life or whether it's thinking about how you're inviting us to prepare a place, I just pray for open hands and open hearts over the next three weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Would we continue to be faithful with what you've put in our hands?
SPEAKER_00: Would we continue to think not only about ourselves, would we think more about those who will come after us?
SPEAKER_00: Would we be the kind of people that the next generation, they look back on our new generation and they say, they thought of us before we even got here?
SPEAKER_00: How cool would that be?
SPEAKER_00: Let us be that.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.