SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road, Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: God wants to have his face shine up.
SPEAKER_01: But anywhere we gotta slow down.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe early in the morning when you get up and get your coffee and to go to that place.
SPEAKER_01: It might be a couch.
SPEAKER_01: It might be a chair.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe try a new translation.
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm doing with the passion.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if every word in that translation is absolutely perfect.
SPEAKER_01: But I know it speaks to me because at the end of the day, it's not the perfection of the word to use.
SPEAKER_01: It's the presence of God coming that really matters.
SPEAKER_00: At the road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 18.
SPEAKER_01: At that time the disciples came to ask Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, he's been preaching the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: He's been healing the sick.
SPEAKER_01: He's been casting out demons, saying the kingdom of heaven has come.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what the disciples ask him.
SPEAKER_01: Who is considered to be the greatest in the heaven's kingdom realm?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the way we are, right?
SPEAKER_01: We tend in our life to always think upmanship.
SPEAKER_01: So even in Jesus' little group, like, who's the top gun in the kingdom with your group?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus had to have been shocked by that.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2 Jesus called a little one, a child, to his side, and he said to them, Learn this well.
SPEAKER_01: Unless you dramatically change your way of thinking and become teachable, and learn about heaven's kingdom realm with the wide-eyed wonder of a child, you will never be able to enter in.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever continually humbles himself to become like this gentle child is the greatest one in heaven's kingdom realm.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Um, a few weeks ago, I was speaking on the baptism of the Spirit, the baptism of fire, the baptism of power in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And in that altar call, in that call forward, some 75 or 80% of you came forward.
SPEAKER_01: There has been increasingly a longing throughout this congregation for an encounter with God.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is encountering his disciples, and he's saying, look, if you want to know the kingdom, if you want to experience the kingdom, if you want to know who's the greatest in the kingdom, look at this child.
SPEAKER_01: What is it about this child that's like the kingdom?
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying, revolutionize your thinking.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to change your whole way of thinking.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to quit, this is crazy, but you've got to quit thinking like an adult.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, you've got to quit thinking like an adult and start thinking like a child.
SPEAKER_01: And when I was meditating on that, I had this.
SPEAKER_01: Does anybody know what the extreme water pillow is?
SPEAKER_01: Raise your hand if you've ever heard of the extreme water pillow.
SPEAKER_01: See, that's the problem.
SPEAKER_01: You don't even know the extreme water pillow.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, a kid raised his hand.
SPEAKER_01: He knows the extreme water.
SPEAKER_01: How many have been up to Eagle Lake before?
SPEAKER_01: The Navigators Ministry, Eagle Lake.
SPEAKER_01: That's another problem.
SPEAKER_01: You guys haven't been to Eagle Lake.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Eagle Lake is this awesome lake where I've caught a ton of trout there too.
SPEAKER_01: But it's a cool lake that kids go to in the summer.
SPEAKER_01: It's a summer camp lake that navigators have been doing for years and years, has all these cabins strung out around it.
SPEAKER_01: And when you go there in the summer, there's this massive pillow that's about the size of this stage, maybe half this stage.
SPEAKER_01: It's huge.
SPEAKER_01: And kids jump on this pillow and it catapults them up about 20 feet higher than that video, the picture you see here.
SPEAKER_01: And they go flying in the air.
SPEAKER_01: And some of them do flips and stuff, and then they just smash themselves into the water.
SPEAKER_01: It's the extreme water pillow.
SPEAKER_01: I've been there fishing because I had special permission.
SPEAKER_01: I don't anymore, but anyway, I used to.
SPEAKER_01: But I'd be sitting there and I'm watching this and I just lose it.
SPEAKER_01: I lose it watching these kids go flying as high as the ceiling in the air and then splatting on the water.
SPEAKER_01: Guess what I've never seen?
SPEAKER_01: I've never seen an adult do it.
SPEAKER_01: I've never watched anybody over 25 do it.
SPEAKER_01: I see kids doing it and they're screaming at the top of their lungs and they can't wait to do it again.
SPEAKER_01: Because listen, there's something about childlike faith, childlike joy, childlike exuberance that we tend to lose after a while, right?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus saying, This is the kingdom, what does it say?
SPEAKER_01: What a great translation.
SPEAKER_01: He says, you're gonna have to dramatically change your way of thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, if you want 2019 to be different than 2018 in a better way, we're gonna have to dramatically change our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: The battle is always between the ears.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus saying, This is the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's like a little kid.
SPEAKER_01: And then he explains what that's like.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I have two grandchildren.
SPEAKER_01: We've had seven kids.
SPEAKER_01: They were all born as babies.
SPEAKER_01: My mom used to say that in a perfect world, you'd birth the baby and you'd have the first few months to enjoy the baby, and then you would hand the child over to someone else.
SPEAKER_01: And then somewhere around six or seven years old, you'd get them back.
SPEAKER_01: And then around nine or ten years old, you'd give them away again.
SPEAKER_01: And then somewhere in the teen years, maybe the first year or two, 12 and 13, you'd get them back.
SPEAKER_01: But then all through high school and college, you wouldn't see them.
SPEAKER_01: And then they would come back perfectly mature and developed.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it doesn't work that way, does it?
SPEAKER_01: So we get these kids, and we're born into these families with kids, and they don't play by the rules.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody notice that?
SPEAKER_01: Kids don't play by the rules, they have a whole nother set of rules.
SPEAKER_01: They don't think.
SPEAKER_01: They don't think, they feel.
SPEAKER_01: And so I wanted to do this morning, in a little bit of time I have left, not a lot, I want us to look at four dramatic changes.
SPEAKER_01: I want to challenge us with four dramatic changes in our thinking in 2019 that we can learn from kids.
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, there's there's 20 that we could learn from kids about their spontaneity, about the unpredictable nature, uh, and the way in which they uh love people, regardless of their race, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
SPEAKER_01: There's so many great things about kids.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to camp on what I see in Scripture as being principles that we can live by that I think Jesus had in mind when he said, dramatically change your thinking.
SPEAKER_01: So, church, here's the rubric: encountering God in 2019 in our lives is going to take some dramatic changes in our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: So let me give you the first.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, be in the moment.
SPEAKER_01: Be in the presence.
SPEAKER_01: Learn presence in 2019.
SPEAKER_01: Kids want to be in our presence.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had a child grab your face and point it toward them?
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't, then you need to get down on the floor a little bit more often and play with these guys.
SPEAKER_01: Because they'll grab your face and they want to make sure you're focused.
SPEAKER_01: One of the worst things you can do with a little kid is be working and tapping away on your phone, you know, when the kids are in the room.
SPEAKER_01: But they want our presence.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that Penny does, one of my grandchildren, is she she grabs me, she comes over to me, and she's really not interested in hearing about my day.
SPEAKER_01: She's really not interested in hearing about how my marriage is going.
SPEAKER_01: She's really not interested in what I had to eat.
SPEAKER_01: She wants to play, and she doesn't want to play alone.
SPEAKER_01: She wants to play with grandpa.
SPEAKER_01: Right, Perkins?
SPEAKER_01: Grandpa and Grandma, we are it's just that way.
SPEAKER_01: They want to play.
SPEAKER_01: And so we do this thing called the, in Christmas, the baby Jesus puzzle.
SPEAKER_01: So it was the baby Jesus puzzle.
SPEAKER_01: So it's this puzzle of about, I don't know, like 25 pieces, really big, and it goes on the floor, of course, because it's it's actually too big for a table.
SPEAKER_01: And we get down there and we just start to play, and it really doesn't matter to her how long it takes.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really matter to her if we're if we're not getting everything lined up.
SPEAKER_01: It does matter to her where the pieces are, and we do find that Rocky, her brother, comes along and he crawls over and sometimes takes pieces with him.
SPEAKER_01: So we have to go and retrieve those.
SPEAKER_01: But but she's sitting there and it's about the puzzle and it's about my presence.
SPEAKER_01: It's about my presence.
SPEAKER_01: If you look at that puzzle as an adult, you go, well, hmm.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure Jesus looked like that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, was there really an angel with little wings sitting on the top of the barn?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, really.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I've been to the Middle East.
SPEAKER_01: I've been to Israel twice.
SPEAKER_01: I've been to Bethlehem three times.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus wasn't born in a barn.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was born in a cave.
SPEAKER_01: This is a stupid puzzle.
SPEAKER_01: There's not hardly any donkeys in the Bethlehem area, and there's a donkey in this this stable.
SPEAKER_01: That that doesn't fit.
SPEAKER_01: Was this a Calvinist?
SPEAKER_01: Or an Armenian who put this puzzle together?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on, dumb puzzle.
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm breaking convictions of my heart about how it really happened for me to join in on that puzzle.
SPEAKER_01: Penny doesn't give a rip to use a theological term.
SPEAKER_01: She wants presence with me.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women.
SPEAKER_01: In 2019, would you start to call out to God in a deeper way, God, I want your presence in my life?
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 27, David says that that he, this one thing he did was that he might gaze at the beauty of the Lord all the days of his life.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says, I seek your face because you told me to seek your face.
SPEAKER_01: And presence and face, same root Hebrew word.
SPEAKER_01: God wants to have his face to shine upon you.
SPEAKER_01: But men and women, we've got to slow down.
SPEAKER_01: We've got to slow down enough.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe early in the morning when you get up to get your coffee and to go to that place.
SPEAKER_01: It might be a couch, it might be a chair, and you open God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe try a new translation this year.
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm doing with the Passion Translation.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if every word in that translation is absolutely perfect.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if Eugene Peterson's mess the message is absolutely perfect, but I know it speaks to me because at the end of the day, it's not the perfection of the words used, it's the presence of God coming that really matters.
SPEAKER_01: And so to open God's word maybe this year and actually study less and wait on God more.
SPEAKER_01: To ask him for his presence.
SPEAKER_01: God, speak to me.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, as I open the word.
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I'm starting in Matthew again.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to just go through the New Testament just to open the word.
SPEAKER_01: And let me just say this: there's a place for studying God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: I love studying God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm speaking of a presence time each day where we open God's Word and we say, God, speak to me from your word.
SPEAKER_01: And to have that journal nearby.
SPEAKER_01: We call it PBJ, prayer Bible journal.
SPEAKER_01: PBJ, not peanut butter and jelly, prayer Bible, and journal.
SPEAKER_01: To open the word and ask God to speak to us.
SPEAKER_01: So presence.
SPEAKER_01: So one thing we learn from kids is they love presence.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, this is what I see as a key part of being like children.
SPEAKER_01: Learn joy in 2019.
SPEAKER_01: Learn joy.
SPEAKER_01: Kids want to have fun.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have a to-do list.
SPEAKER_01: They don't worry about a job.
SPEAKER_01: They don't worry about money.
SPEAKER_01: They don't worry about responsibilities, do they?
SPEAKER_01: Now we wish they would worry a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER_01: But they don't.
SPEAKER_01: God made them that way.
SPEAKER_01: They're full of spontaneous, present joy.
SPEAKER_01: They're full of joy.
SPEAKER_01: We can learn from that.
SPEAKER_01: We could gain a lot of ground, even in our own creativity and our own effectiveness in what we do if we would experience and ask God for more joy in our life.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to Martha, Martha, Martha, you're worried and troubled about so many things.
SPEAKER_01: But Mary has chosen the right thing, and she'll be remembered for that.
SPEAKER_01: And so he was speaking of her being in the presence and Martha making sandwiches that God, Jesus, had never ordered.
SPEAKER_01: And some of us are so worried about our lives that we forget that joy, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control are the fruit of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So one of the ways that we could start 2019 is say, God, would you fill me with your spirit of joy and begin to change, listen, dramatically change our thinking toward joy.
SPEAKER_01: You can do that.
SPEAKER_01: We can do that as a team.
SPEAKER_01: We can do that as a Jesus follower to ask God to fill us with his joy in a fresh, new way.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength.
SPEAKER_01: I'm reminded of the parable of the feast and the wedding.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, everyone was invited.
SPEAKER_01: But who couldn't come?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I've got to milk my cow.
SPEAKER_01: I've got to take care of my wife.
SPEAKER_01: I've got job responsibilities because that was adult thinking.
SPEAKER_01: In our adult thinking, losing the opportunity of the joy of being in the presence of the master, they missed out on the feast.
SPEAKER_01: Kids are fun.
SPEAKER_01: Guess where kids go?
SPEAKER_01: If there's a group of adults in a room, guess who they go toward?
SPEAKER_01: They go toward the funnest, coolest guy in the room or gal in the room.
SPEAKER_01: That's where they go.
SPEAKER_01: They want joy.
SPEAKER_01: They want spontaneity.
SPEAKER_01: They want fun.
SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't it be exciting?
SPEAKER_01: If more and more in our lives we could just put some of the responsibilities that we carry that weigh us down over to the side a little bit this year and ask God for the joy of the Lord that gives us strength.
SPEAKER_01: That joy bubbling up within us through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So we had a plumbing problem.
SPEAKER_01: How many feel like that there's a demon that moves through Christian homes during the holiday season that attacks ovens, stoves, and toilets?
SPEAKER_01: Anyone believe?
SPEAKER_01: There's like a toilet spirit that you need to cast out.
SPEAKER_01: There's like an oven spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that the shower spirit came into our guest room, and we had Zeb Matherly, a guy here in our church.
SPEAKER_01: Zeb's just a great guy, has his own plumbing company.
SPEAKER_01: And so Zeb came out, he fixed it in five minutes.
SPEAKER_01: I really, I have to say, that my adult hat was on, and I felt like an idiot because he went, well, Steve, if you'd have just done this, this, you know.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what was fun.
SPEAKER_01: The reason I share that is Zeb came with joy.
SPEAKER_01: He did his work with joy.
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it took him five, ten minutes to get the job done, and then for the next hour, we we were in the kitchen just laughing our heads off about fun stuff that were that was on our heart.
SPEAKER_01: It was so much fun.
SPEAKER_01: I think Jesus laughed a lot.
SPEAKER_01: He's not as somber as some of the movies that we've watched.
SPEAKER_01: Because I believe joy is such a characteristic of us that are anointed with the Holy Spirit, that Jesus exhibited that.
SPEAKER_01: And he expressed it for the joy.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And so Zeb came to our house and he filled our house with joy as a plumber doing a service to us that was a blessing to us.
SPEAKER_01: As we look at the children's ministry, one of our goals is joy down there.
SPEAKER_01: We want to fill that place with joy.
SPEAKER_01: We want all of our greeters, we want every teacher that comes, you better come full of joy to bless those kids.
SPEAKER_01: Because those kids need joy, those kids expect joy, and it'll be good for you.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, it'll be good for you.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get joy from them.
SPEAKER_01: So that's the second point.
SPEAKER_01: Joy.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, number three.
SPEAKER_01: And this one's gonna, you're some of you are gonna disagree with this.
SPEAKER_01: Kids love to learn.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of school teachers here in this auditorium would say, I don't know about that sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: But let me explain.
SPEAKER_01: In 2019, I think God wants us to be a continual learner and stay in a place of humility.
SPEAKER_01: The reason I say that I think kids are terrific learners is because when we see them not learning, I really do believe that's oftentimes the parents' fault, and that's oftentimes the teacher's fault.
SPEAKER_01: Because I can tell you this.
SPEAKER_01: When I get a when I was a kid, fifth grade was really where, I mean, I was terrible till fifth grade.
SPEAKER_01: I was in so much trouble.
SPEAKER_01: Many of you heard my stories, I won't tell you again.
SPEAKER_01: But in fifth grade, Mrs.
SPEAKER_01: Milton actually, I think she actually liked me.
SPEAKER_01: First teacher who liked me.
SPEAKER_01: I think all the others just promoted me to the next grade to get me out of their class.
SPEAKER_01: She cared.
SPEAKER_01: And she made the courses interesting, and she and she came and she was animated and she brought something there, and suddenly I began to fall in love with learning.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, some of you have lost track of that gift that God gave you to be a continual learner.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to challenge yourself this year, to challenge yourself to learn, to read books, to study, to go after a new hobby, to go after something new.
SPEAKER_01: Because we have amnesia, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: We all kind of have amnesia.
SPEAKER_01: And we start off the year, what is this?
SPEAKER_01: This is the 6th?
SPEAKER_01: January 6th.
SPEAKER_01: So some of you have already been to the gym this week for the first time in a hundred years.
SPEAKER_01: I know, because I'm at Villa and I see them all.
SPEAKER_01: And they're all there, and I know that in about a week they'll all be gone, which is fine.
SPEAKER_01: I don't mind.
SPEAKER_01: Um we'll just give them a week.
SPEAKER_01: Because we get amnesia, we jump in and we listen, you go too strong.
SPEAKER_01: You go too fast, you think you're 20 years younger.
SPEAKER_01: Big mistake.
SPEAKER_01: You're not.
SPEAKER_01: You're fat.
SPEAKER_01: You're out of shape, and you're gonna be so sore you can't even walk the next day.
SPEAKER_01: My son was doing stuff on his legs for baseball starting up, and he was walking like this yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: He's 16.
SPEAKER_01: Well, think about all of us here that are over, I don't know, 28.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, you're gonna be like this for the next week.
SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna quit.
SPEAKER_01: Don't quit.
SPEAKER_01: Well, how do you not quit?
SPEAKER_01: It's how you start.
SPEAKER_01: What do you love to do that you could do every day or every other day that's just a little thing?
SPEAKER_01: Just a little.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you guys love to walk.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you maybe like to run.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of you like to do push-ups.
SPEAKER_01: Start small, start low.
SPEAKER_01: Don't try to do a big deal.
SPEAKER_01: And I know when I when I made some big changes in my life and got into prayer walking, I would just prayer walk for about a half a mile.
SPEAKER_01: And then I got hooked on it, and it grew and grew over time to more and more time.
SPEAKER_01: But the issue is I think what we see in kids, kids usually understand what their limitations are by virtue of their own exhaustion level.
SPEAKER_01: But when they find something they want to do, man, they dig it.
SPEAKER_01: And I even see it with my kids.
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are readers, some of them are a little more athletic, some of them are a little more musical.
SPEAKER_01: So what we do as parents is we're trying to always channel our kids toward their gifting, toward their anointing as best we can.
SPEAKER_01: And men and women, God has anointed and gifted each one of you.
SPEAKER_01: I want to challenge you to be a continual learner this year, to enjoy learning and growing in your walk with God.
SPEAKER_01: On Thursday night, we had a group of people, I think of somewhere between 40 and 50 people came to our house, and we were talking about children's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And there was so much joy in the room.
SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody was fired up, it was exciting.
SPEAKER_01: As we started to dream about what God might want to do in the next year in 2019.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what was the most fascinating thing to me that I did not expect.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody in that room was a learner.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody in the room is a learner.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what the vision was.
SPEAKER_01: The vision is every week, every child at the road would encounter Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Every week, every child in every one of those classes downstairs would encounter Christ.
SPEAKER_01: How do we do it?
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01: We had no idea.
SPEAKER_01: So we began to talk about arts and crafts.
SPEAKER_01: We began to talk about worship.
SPEAKER_01: We began to talk about God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, we know those things are true, and that's been happening since the inception of our church.
SPEAKER_01: All those things are beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: But we're but we're looking at how to be new learners, right?
SPEAKER_01: Men and women.
SPEAKER_01: How might God use you in being available to the presence of the Holy Spirit to be a fresh new learner in 2019?
SPEAKER_01: So learn presence, learn joy, be a continual learner.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, look at verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 5 in our passage.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting verse.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: And if you tenderly care for this little one on my behalf, you are tenderly caring for me.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what's amazing: to serve children in 2019.
SPEAKER_01: To serve children in 2019.
SPEAKER_01: How might we serve Jesus by serving children in 2019?
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, listen up.
SPEAKER_01: I believe God's called us to bring Christ down into that room, lay hands on those kids every week.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Matthew 19.
SPEAKER_01: Very interesting passage.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 19, 13.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples do not want Jesus to lay his hands on the kids or have anything to do with the kids, and listen to what happens next.
SPEAKER_01: Then they brought little children to Jesus so that he would lay his hands on them and bless them and pray for them.
SPEAKER_01: But the disciples scolded those who brought the children, saying, Don't bother him with this now.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus overheard them and said, I want little children to come to me, so never interfere with them when they want to come.
SPEAKER_01: For heaven's kingdom realm is composed of beloved ones like these.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this truth.
SPEAKER_01: No one will enter the kingdom realm of heaven unless he becomes like one of these.
SPEAKER_01: Now here's the question.
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe that every time we lay hands on even a baby and we bless them in the name of Jesus, that they receive a blessing?
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, we have got to become habitual in blessing our kids in this church.
SPEAKER_01: We believe God has called this church to be here a hundred years from now if the Lord tarries.
SPEAKER_01: Our desire is to build and be a part of a kingdom revolution in Colorado Springs that would last for a hundred years if the Lord tarries.
SPEAKER_01: Downstairs right now are the future leaders, the future pastors, the future deacons, the future elders, the future shepherds, and the future men and women of God coming out of this church right down there, and we're going to bless them.
SPEAKER_01: And we've got to make it our highest priority here at this church that the kingdom of God would come to those kids.
SPEAKER_01: And so we have a focus this year, and that focus is encounter.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that encounter starts on Tuesday night when we come together for worship.
SPEAKER_01: It begins right now in our own lives as we go home and we go to that couch or we go to that quiet time area that I was talking about, and we sit down and say, Lord, I'm hungry for you this year.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not satisfied with the past.
SPEAKER_01: I want more.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians 3.10.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians 3.10, Paul says, I'm not satisfied with all the visions I've had, all the dreams I've had, all the encounters I've had.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going after Jesus and his resurrection power.
SPEAKER_01: I want more.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, let's go for more.
SPEAKER_01: Let's not be satisfied with the Christ that we currently know.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go deeper in our relationship with him.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.