Courage | Part 6

I I this last week, my my son goes, hey, dad. We haven't hung out in a while. Let's go do something. There I go. Let's go to a movie, which seems kinda counterproductive to hanging out, but still we did.

And so if we go to this movie, we did it on a Monday afternoon, a 01:40. And it's been a movie. It's been out for a while. Don't know how much longer it'll be in the theater. So, you know, that's a great time to go. You can show up five seconds before

the movie and have plenty of seats to choose from. We walk in, there was actually surprisingly more people in there than I thought. There was already four people sitting in there. And but it was a weird combination where they sat. Two people were sitting in, like, the second row of the flat part down on the bottom. That is weird. Usually, only sit there when it's full, but they chose that. And then the other two people were way up in the back. So the whole middle of the theater was ours. So we grabbed my favorite spot is the first row in the stadium where you can put your feet on the rails. And then I need to sit on this chair closest to the exit because I have the bladder of a small peanut. So I wanna be able to get back before they finish a sentence. So it's like you gotta go quick. So I sit there. I'm all comfortable. Movie starts. Previews are going. And then as we're sitting there,

all of a sudden, near the end of the previews, some, you know, late comer walks in, and this guy walks in and he has those the cardboard

kind of trays that's don't even know why they're they're flimsy. They're not very good. Full of popcorn and a Pepsi, a big one, so it doesn't look stabilized at all. And he walks in kinda like this, and then he stops,

and he's down on the bottom. But since I'm in that first chair, it's only a couple steps. So he's right there standing. And you ever get that moment where, like, if you're watching TV and someone's standing in a while, it just starts to sit down, do something. This is bothering me.

So right there, I'm like, is he gonna move? Because they stand there for a while, and you think he's waiting like he probably came with one of the four people, and he needs to know there. But he was there awkwardly too long. It doesn't take that long to go, it's not those two.

It's not those two, and I knew he wasn't with us, so what is going on? So I'm getting a little distracted. I'm like, man, I hope this guy just does something soon. Then he starts moving again, I go, good. And he comes over to the stairs and he walks starts walking up the stairs, but he doesn't go like you normally walk upstairs. He goes this way.

Sideways. He's walking sideways, and it's the weirdest thing as he's doing it's like a crab walk or something. But and he's not near the back part. He does it near the front part. So here's my chair. He's like

and then he's standing right there, like like, awkwardly. Like, if I stuck my elbow, I'm hitting him. And I mean, he's just right there. And I and and, you know, I'm an outgoing person. I'm a bit of a close talker at times. So I have pretty close in boundaries.

Danger close is pretty close for me. And this was beyond danger close. This was like friendly fire. This was like, hey. This guy needs to back away. This is bothering me. And he's just standing there.

His his Pepsi and Mountain of popcorn was shaking right over the top of me. And I'm like sitting there with my feet out. And as he stands there, I realized, oh, he's not moving on. Maybe he wants to sit in this row. So I do the thing you do when a movie's on. You don't wanna talk. You just you know the signals. You put your feet down and guys you're like

and then you look back like, Here you go. Come on in. And I sit there and he doesn't do anything. So it was this awkward. I was about to say, okay. Do you want to sit here? And right before I said that, he moved on. He left. So I was like, good.

And then as I sit there and the movie is now starting. So I'm like, good. I don't wanna be distracted. I mean, I come to a 01:40 in the afternoon of a movie, so you don't get distracted by stupid things like this. And then right as the movie starts, next thing you know, it's like a a a a a earthquake struck

and hit the back of my chair. I'm like, what is this? A rodeo? I gotta hold on for eight seconds. You know? And I and I realized he only went one row up. And then he goes, I'm gonna sit right behind this guy.

The entire theater. You can't just take two more steps and just do one more seat. I was with my son and his friend, and we split up. We we went every other seat even though we were together because we want both armrests. Seriously, he sits right there. And when he sits down, he doesn't care. He's just like

I felt like he was like Rocky Balboa, and I was the side of the beef. It's like it keeps going on and on and on. And it was to the point where I I did that casual, like where you just kind of peripheral look back, so you're kinda letting him know, I know what you're doing. Please stop.

He doesn't stop. He just keeps adjusting and doing all that. So I'm starting to get started. Man, I gotta watch this movie. The movie actually started now. And then and then it's time to calm down. So I'm like, that's good. And then the real problem again.

I have never heard someone eat popcorn louder in my entire life. I swear to you, I thought, I literally, the way it sounded, I thought he was taking it and leaning over into my ear. And I

go, it's coming from everywhere. This guy eats popcorn and surround sound, and it's better than the Dolby Digital they have on the screen. What is happening? And that wasn't even the worst part. The the crunching, like chewing on his cow cuts going. Then he starts drinking the soda,

and the soda, he makes the big, but he keeps moving the straw. So it makes that. So in my ear, in stereophonic sense,

It's like, ah. It's it's it's driving me insane. It it it is it's it's just horrible. It's like this demonic symphony behind me. And and and the movie's going now. And and and I am like, man, I'm about to equalize this guy if he doesn't stop doing this.

And I'm sitting there going and and and I couldn't understand what to do. I was like, should I move? Should I do this? And then I finally just had to make a decision. What's going on around me, behind me, is distracting me from what's in front of me. And I came for what's in front of me.

So I just had to decide in my heart. I said in one of those moments that I had to resolve, I'm gonna let it go and ignore and just do what I came to do.

And I knew I could do this because I spent all these years as a pitcher. And if you pitch at baseball, you gotta get used to it. You get a lot of ambiance. They're not even just behind you. They're right in front of you. You see people in the stands yelling at you and heckling you and saying stuff like, I've seen better arms on a clock. And you're like, dad, really? I'm trying to pitch.

And you're my coach. Why are you doing that? Well, throw better. You know? And so it's like you I I knew how to shut that out. So but the second I just decided, I was able to get on with what I came to do. And that's really what we wanna unpackage today in this last part of our series called courage.

We've been unpackaging what does it mean to have courage, to really have a courageous faith. And what we've been looking at is is is is this idea that courage is is a condition of the heart, not your circumstances.

Because if you're waiting for your circumstances to make it not scary to do what you need to do, to go where God's called you to do, it's never gonna happen. Because if it's if you're not scared, it's not

there you go. You've been listening. And and and so we've been unpacking these these today's the sixth one. We've been looking at these six conditions of the heart that allow us to have a courageous faith, to really experience what God wanted us to experience in life because we're going where he's asked us to go. And and as we've been looking at it, we've been looking through the story of Nehemiah.

And today is the final aspect if we are gonna endure, if we're gonna have courage, we need to be able to learn to focus on what's ahead, on what we came for, what God's called us, and be able to get past the distractions. In other words, today's big idea is this. The sixth condition of courage is a resolute soul.

We have to have a resolute soul. Just because we decide to follow God, it doesn't get easy. It actually gets harder. And and what do I mean by a resolute soul? I got the definition here of it. It's right up there. Is to be firmly resolved or determined, fixed upon a single purpose with one spirit.

And that if I am ever gonna courageously follow God, we think it's done. I did the courage. I stepped out. I trusted him. And then you think it's all downhill from here. No. It's not. There's gonna be attack. There's gonna be things. There's gonna be distractions.

There's gonna be the crunching and the slurping and the and the kicking and and all of these things are gonna come your way. And you have got to resolve to say, I'm gonna keep focusing on what god put in front of me and not get distracted by anything else.

And that's exactly what happens in the story of Nehemiah. That's what we've been looking at. The story of Nehemiah who is this this this man who's a cup bearer to the king in Persia that felt moved by god to be a part of his plan to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem.

And that was really ultimately, it was more than just a wall. The beauty on the other side was it was for god's people. It was for god's glory, and it actually links in now. We have the whole story. It was a part of the redemptive story of Jesus coming.

And so he got to be a part of this plan. And and he he came and showed up, and the people had been there for generations and could not get these walls rebuilt. And what they needed was some courage, and they did it. And where we left off last week was they had started to rebuild the wall.

Well, now we're gonna see what happens as they start to rebuild the wall, and we're gonna see two and a half chapters of attack. And that's what's gonna happen to you and me. And and if you don't know this, when you step out to courageously trust God,

a lot of us don't realize there will be an a counter attack. There'll be there'll be an enemy. There'll be things that happen in your life. They're gonna wanna stop you from doing it. Matter of stop you before you ever really start, to be honest. But we're learning like what what GI Joe said, you'll know. And knowings

hey. Another nerdy group. Good. Yeah. Saturday night didn't know who GI Joe was, I guess, but you guys do.

So here we are in Nehemiah. And what we're gonna see here is I'm gonna look at a few verses out of chapter four, chapter five, chapter six because it's interesting. These three chapters, there is a different kind of attack that comes in each chapter.

And I'm just gonna kinda look at a little bit of it. And and the reality is it's kinda weird how these attacks that come, these three waves,

they're pretty much how it happens all the time. Happen to them. Happens to people. It happens to us personally, and it's usually in the same order too. It usually happens just like this. If you're gonna try to have courage, this is what's gonna come at you, and we need to be prepared for it. Know what, why it came at us, and what the what the answer is, what we need to respond to. So we're in chapter four. The people started building the wall in the last chapter. We looked at it last week. And then it says here in chapter four verse one, Sanballat was very angry when he learned that we were rebuilding the wall.

He flew into a rage and mocked the Jews in front of his friends and the Samarian army officers. What does this bunch of poor, feeble Jews think they're doing? Do they think they could build a wall in a single day by just offering a few sacrifices?

So this attack starts from mocking. He goes, do they actually think they can make something of stones of from a rubbish heap and charred ones at that? See, what happens is first form of attack is external opposition.

The first form of attack is an external opposition is gonna come your way. If you step out to courageously go where god, things are gonna get janky from the outside in.

It's the kind of thing like, hey, I'm gonna make a financial commitment. I'm gonna make a pledge to our new building And all of a sudden work is gonna get weird.

And you're gonna go, man, don't know if I'm gonna have a job. I don't know what's gonna happen. Maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe I should pull back. It always happens. It always does.

It happened we we started this whole courage campaign to build the walls we need to build to keep pointing people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. And the second we started this campaign, a lightning strike too close to the building fried our sound system.

We've been here for five years. There's lightning here all the time. And now this is the time? It cost, fortunately, it was only a few thousand dollars to get it repaired, not $100.00

like we feared but that's a distraction. That's the thing that that that kind of can can come your way and it's going to happen to you too. If you're going to trust the lord and you're going to follow him especially what we've been asking you to trust him with, a financial pledge to our building. Don't be surprised.

When when when things start to happen. Actually, you should be more freaked out when nothing happens. If your life is like, man, I have never had any opposition. It's been so easy. There's a good chance because you're you're you're you're you're not going where god wants you to go.

Like my dad always said, the enemy never attacks a non strategic position. If you think you're in a war and there's no attack, you're probably in a place that doesn't matter. So

that's what starts to happen. And then you go down to verse six. First, it was just these physical, like these these mocking threats. But verse six, says, at last the wall was completed to half its height. So they said they can never do it. Now they're half done. It says, for the people had worked with enthusiasm.

But when Sandal, Tobiah, and the Arab Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashudites heard that the work was going ahead that all the gaps in the Wall Of Jerusalem were being repaired, they were furious. Now they're getting angry. They they all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem and throw us into confusion.

Look what he says. We prayed to our god and guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves. If you skip over to verse seventeen eighteen, it says, the people of Judah who were building the wall, then it says, the laborers carried on the work with one hand supporting their load and one hand holding a weapon.

All the builders had a sword belted to their side and the trumpeter stayed with me to sound the army. You notice that he goes, all the people kept building. They were building. Only they they did the work in one end, but they had a a weapon in their other hand. And that's what they chose to do.

And then if you go down into verse 23, it says, during this time, of us, not I, nor my relatives, nor my servants, nor the guards who were with me, even took our clothes off. They probably smelled really good. We carried our weapons with us at all times even when we went for water. You see what they did?

See see this attack from the outside, if you're gonna have courage, this this this external opposition, the goal is to discourage you, to discourage us. In a church wide setting, things happen to try to stop. The enemy doesn't want you to even start. And then if you start, they amp the threats.

But look what the response was. What did they do? They fought against it, but how did they do it? That's the key ingredient for us to learn. If you're gonna have courage and go where God wants you to do and make any kind of commitment, we have to learn that we have to build and battle at the same time.

You can't ignore the problems,

but you also can't just drop what God's asked you to do to do nothing but fight the problem. That's the number one issue I see. Whenever someone makes a commitment, we do a campaign like this. We got all this money pledged. And the second you make a pledge, all of a sudden, things are gonna get janky, and you're gonna go, hey. You know what? Maybe I can't do this. And you're gonna come, I gotta stop this pledge because I got this problem, so I'm gonna go over and deal with this. I wanna come back to it. I wanna come back to it, but I'm gonna leave it alone for now. We wanna stop building and just go battle only.

You realize that is the enemy winning too because all he wants to do is take you out of the fight, take you out of the building. Fight me so you won't do that.

That's why so often when people say, I'm going to serve, and then your schedule gets weird. Hey, you know what? I love serving. I want to do it, but my schedule got weird. So, I gotta I gotta quit for a while. I I I'll come back. Because that's not the right attitude

If we are going to be courageous followers of Christ, we're going to have to learn how to build and battle at the same time. You got to battle those attacks but keep moving forward. That's the key to the external opposition that's going to come at you in your life.

Well, when that doesn't work, we go into chapter five. And chapter five is interesting because the second form of attack is internal conflict.

Internal conflict will happen and the goal of that is to divide you.

Even in your life in a church, let's divide the church. Let's get them fighting with each other so they're not gonna go about what they're doing. And what's happening what's happening in chapter five is is what we'll see is can go read the whole thing. I'm gonna read a couple verses is You had some people, some leaders and some some different people in this community that had more resource than others.

What's going on is as they're building this wall, everyone's working hard, but some of these people with more resource were not actually using their resource. They're holding back. They wanted the advantage of the wall being built, but they didn't want to pour into it. They didn't want to put their money into it, so to speak. They didn't want to, and so what was happening is

a lot of the poor people, they had a hard time getting food anyways, and they're trying to build, battle, and do this at the same time. So so they're taking advantage of this situation, and they're living and keeping their resource. They're gonna live in the city. They wanna be a part of the community, but not do anything. And these the people that were struggling financially were having to sell their children as into slavery

to support themselves.

Nehemiah realized this is a problem because when Nehemiah came, he brought some resource with him that wasn't just to build the wall. He knew that before he got there, that's why the Jews could never get the wall built either. They were poor and struggling, most of them, and so they had already sold their children into slavery to get food.

When he came, he used the resource and had been redeeming and purchasing them back. He goes, now because you guys won't engage in what we're supposed to be doing, You won't put your money where your mouth is. Since you won't do it, some of the other people are suffering.

And so they're starting to have an internal fight. And the answer is what Nehemiah did. You have to confront that. Or as I like to put it, some throat punching needs to happen and and and but it's in a loving way because look what Nehemiah does. He he gets a meeting together

and he says to him in verse eight, at the meeting I said that we're doing all we can to redeem our Jewish relatives who have had to sell themselves to pagan foreigners, but you are selling them back into slavery again. How often must we redeem them? And he goes and they had nothing to say in their defense.

But then he goes, then I press further. What you were doing is not right. You should not walk in the fear of our god in order to avoid being mocked by the enemy nations. He says, should you not walk in the fear of god rather than into to be mocked?

He goes, what he said is the real problem is you want to be a part of this but you're afraid of putting your resource into this. In other words, you're more afraid of what you might lose or not get than you are of god himself.

And you realize that's the one thing that's going to make us not have a resolute soul the quickest. We're never going to have the courage to go where god wants to go is if we start to think we're smarter than god.

If we start to go, I can't do that, god, because then I wouldn't, and you fill in the blank. Or I can't do that because I have to. And he says, the key is you need to fear god more than anything else. And fear of god, it doesn't mean this terrifying overbearing,

but it does mean a healthy awe and it does mean a little bit scared. It really does. Sometimes, we're so flippant with our relationship with god that we don't understand that he is god of the universe and

he created you and he made you and he asks you to do some things. And he goes, you should be more concerned with what he thinks about a situation than what anyone else thinks, even yourself. I should trust him and be more afraid in the sense of I want to know that where I'm going is where he wants me to go.

That's what he calls them out on. He goes, you're holding back because you don't really fear God. You don't really care. And so he confronted it and he challenged them and in verse 12, they replied,

we will give back everything and demand nothing more from the people. We will do as you say but then look what he says, then I called the priest and made the nobles and officials swear to do what they had promised. He actually made the priest come in and do a like a pledge.

They had to they had to swear because you know why? Nehemiah knew something about people. We will say stuff with our good intentions. We will act out of our realities. So up front, you're right. We're not gonna do that anymore. We love it. We're in. Okay. You really mean that? Make a pledge.

Then make a pledge because that's where I gotta know that you're really in because I know right now you mean it, but then you're gonna go back and get scared again and you're gonna wanna give up. So he made them pledge. Why do you think I'm asking you to make a pledge to our building campaign?

That's not out of the ordinary. It's saying, hey, before god, I'm committing to this and I'm making it real. I'm going to be real with this. So that's the second thing is because because the internal conflict is meant to divide us.

It's meant to divide you and your life. It's funny. Have you ever tried to make a good commitment commitment to the lord, you and your spouse, and next thing you know, you start fighting about stupid things? Sometimes things you haven't thought about in years. Ain't that weird? You know what I call this internal conflict the attempt is? It reminds me of family vacations.

That's really what it is. Why do you go on a family vacation? Because you love pain? No. You know why? I love my family. I know that the purpose of us have family. So we pick a destination.

The destination is part of the fun, but it's not the real purpose. The purpose is for us to go create memories and have time together and go experience something that's awesome. So we wanna go.

Same thing with a church. We're supposed to go on a family vacation together. We're a family and god wants us to go to a destination. The destination is important but it's not the whole thing. The important thing is for us to go together and be the family.

And so you want to do it, and you have all these great intentions. Right? You plan all out. Everyone's excited. Even your kids are excited. Everyone is pumped until you turn the car on and start going.

And then the second you go, in no time, it's like, touching me. Leave me alone. He's touching me. Quit touching me. And that's just your wife.

And and and and then the kids start like, when are we gonna get there? When are we gonna be there? Blah blah blah. And next thing you know, everyone's fighting. And then the kids are so bad, You're like, I don't know how long the pillow wall is gonna survive. You know, the pillow wall only protects for so long and you're like, we gotta get here and it's just crazy and I know, guys, some of you, I know I'm not alone. Some of you have thought the exact same thing I've thought. As you're going this trip, in the back of your mind, you thought, you know what we should do? We should send the kids to a camp.

My wife can go to the beach, and I'll go to the mountains. And then after that week or two, we'll come back together, and everyone will have their own slideshow presentation and talk about what a wonderful family vacation we all had apart from each other. And the reality is that's what many of us do as church. You

want to come go on your own family vacation on your own. And then when I say, hey, guys, let's all get in the car together. And I need us all to go on this trip. I need everyone who's a part of this church to pledge to this building because this is where God has asked us to go. I need you to have courage and do something.

What is scary for you? I didn't say it has to be a minimum amount. Just everybody needs to do something. A lot's like, I don't want to do that. That's not a church. I don't like going to churches to do that. I like to have my own little family vacation. The problem is that's how the enemy wins. Internal conflict

and it's going to happen. Expect it because as GI Joe said, knowing's half the battle And when that doesn't work, it leads to the the last one.

Chapter six. And this is the, in many ways, the the hardest, harshest one. And and it's it's this idea that personal attacks are gonna come straight at you. You know, the external attack is just to generalize why do you have these problems. The internal strives we're fighting, you have this internal it's meant to divide.

We gotta confront. But this last one is it's gonna get personal. You're going to get attacked straight at you. It's it's going to come right at you. Kinda like if you ever really really love somebody and try to help them, I bet everyone in this in this room has at least one story of a person that you gave your all

to love and help somebody and somehow, if you ask them today, that person thinks you're Satan incarnate.

They've written those nebulous tweets and stuff that didn't say your name but you know they were talking about you. You've had those moments they don't trust. They just they just don't believe it. It somehow got personal. Well, in this story, it gets really personal and what the enemy realized was still true is,

if you can take out a leader, you can usually stop a movement. So, it gets intensely personal after Nehemiah. Says in chapter six, Sambout, Tobiah, Geshem, the Arab, and the rest of our enemies found out that I had finished rebuilding the wall and that no gaps remained. So they get the wall pretty much done.

Though we had not yet set up the doors in the gate, see they were started threats. Halfway done, internal conflict. Now they're pretty much almost done and the enemy's getting desperate. So so Sambalat and Geshem sent a message asking me to meet them at one of the villages in the Plain Of Ono. That's an interesting name.

It's got a good point. If someone invites you to meet them at the Plain Of Ono, you need to say, oh, no. There you go. You're with me now. You gotta say oh no. There, look what he says. He goes, but I realized they were plotting to harm me.

So I replied by sending this message to them. I'm engaged in a great work so I can't come. Why should I stop working to come and meet with you? So he realized this is just a plan to distract me. You're gonna try to stop me and harm me or get me. I I don't need to meet with you. I'm not coming down off the wall.

I am not gonna stop what I'm doing to go be distracted in a in a battle with you. And then some of that's a good valuable lesson. If people will personally attack you when you're following god, you can't get off the wall and go defend your honor every single time because that's a distraction. I've learned that the hard way because my dad didn't give me a lot of

he taught me leadership without ever calling it leadership. Always say, son, a man does this. A man had no idea what he was telling me. A man was he just leadership. But he never tried to give me advice as a pastor.

But one day he goes, son, can I give you advice on being a pastor? I'm like, what? You never say it. He goes, yeah, I know. But I know one thing. I know you, and I know any kind of leadership. I know that one thing will kill you. I go, what? He goes, if you are going to make it in as a leader,

you've got to understand that if people don't like your peaches, they don't got to shake your tree. I was like, what? And he goes, people are gonna make it personal. They're gonna try to attack you personally. And and here's the problem.

You are a people person. You like people and that's good. That's gonna help you make it. And if someone says something about you, if it's true, I'm not saying that you ignore all truth. Have accountability. If someone says something, you you you can learn from people. Even critics can say something valuable to you. God spoke to a guy through a donkey in the Bible. He said, and he goes, so anyways, he goes, but here's the deal, don't let it distract you. If you know what they're saying is not true

and you know that that's not where you're going, you can't stop and try to go win everyone of them over. In other words, you can't go to the Plains Of Ono. Because it gets even uglier when he won't go.

When he won't go, it gets uglier because if you read the rest of the the passage, it goes on that they try four times to get him to come And then finally, after the fourth time, they send a letter. It's called an open letter. You guys have read those on social media. An open letter to this, an open letter to that. Well, back then, this where they get it from. An open letter was if you were an

official like Sandball and stuff, you would write a letter and you'd put your seal on it. That meant nobody better break that seal. Well, if you didn't seal it, it was an open letter. And the people who carried the letter through the towns take it, that says you had every right to just read it. So basically, they wanted to send a letter to Nehemiah,

but they let everyone read along the way. It says, I am concerned

that you are actually building this wall. We've heard that you're building this wall because you plan on rebelling against the king of Persia and you're going to set yourself up as king of Jerusalem and you're just using the people basically to build your own defense system so you could do a rebellion and it's all about you and they wanted everyone to read it.

Cruel, Nehemiah didn't fall for it. He just kept going and if you look into verse fifteen and sixteen, it says this, so on October 2, the wall was finished. Just fifty two days after we started. Think about that. Generations had not been able to get this wall done.

He shows up and says, guys, god wants us to do this. This is god's plan but I need you. Let's have courage. And this time, they chose courage and they endured through all these attacks.

And it only took them fifty two days in the end of it. Think about it. One hundred years couldn't get it done and when they finally just decided to have courage, they did it in fifty two days

because you realize that most of the time when a church gets up there and we're growing and things are going great and I'm like, hey, we need to build this big building. It's $17,000,000. We're like, ugh. You realize the size of our church?

The only reason the church is always like, oh, we gotta do this again. We gotta ask again. We gotta this again. It's because not everyone chooses to have courage. I'm telling you, I'll take my glasses off. Look you right in the eyes. If everyone who comes to this church that says, this is my church and I'm a Christian,

has the courage to make a pledge and then has a resolute soul. I 100% believe we already have $17,000,000 in this church. I think we could build this building without even getting a loan.

It wouldn't be that hard

but it means everyone. You know, what's my 10 going to matter? Well, you could get three, four thousand people together. It adds up fast. The problem is not god. The problem is us having the courage to do what he said to do. Fifty two days and you know what happens when you do that? Look what it says next.

It says, when our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.

It goes back to the realized these feeble Jews couldn't do it alone. But when they had the courage to just do what God asked them to do and do their part, fifty two days later it was done. And everyone around was shocked and now they're scared. Now they're frightened and now they're afraid because they're like, their God must be real. Their God did that. It was to declare God's glory. What we're doing out here, same thing. Guys, the world should be afraid of us. We don't have to circle the wagons and go, what's wrong with the world? I'm so scared for my kids. Let's just have the courage to do what God said to do, and people will go, how did they do that?

How did those guys do that? How did that happen? Because we have the courage to trust God and keep in mind moving towards what's in front of us and quit getting distracted by all the noises around us. Too many Christians let the noises around us stop us from what's god's put in front of us.

And if we have the courage, we will see the exact same thing because that's how god works. He wants to use his people to declare his glory in a way that makes people scratch their heads.

And I I actually used to pray that for this church. When I came into plan, go, god, want this church to be a place that people look from the outside and go, how did those guys do that? Which sounds so noble and great until you go to pastors conferences and they look and go, how are you guys doing that? And then I feel insulted.

And then I gotta deal with my own issue of like, wait, wait, I actually prayed for that. Shouldn't I want them to wonder how I did that? Now I'm mad. I'm like, god, give me the credit. Why aren't they looking at me and saying, of course, look what a great leader he is, you know, or whatever. I actually prefer when people go, how is that happening?

Simply because we chose courage. That's it. And there's beauty on the other side of that courage. Because this building is not about the what, it's about the who. It's about the who.

Is you. This building is sitting here because only a couple 100 people had courage and most of you are here now because of their courage. Who's gonna be there? Because of yours. There's something beautiful. But the only way we're gonna ever get there is you gotta realize

that the number one pitfall to courage is false expectations. We think once I have courage, it's gonna be easy. I trusted God now. Everything's gonna be easy.

We think that Nehemiah's story goes like this. In chapter three, let's go build a wall. Then it jumps right to chapter six verse 15. Fifty two days later, we're done. Wow. That was great. What's next? We forget there's three chapters of attack and stuff that takes resolute souls to keep going.

And the only way we're gonna get past that common pitfall is to look to Jesus. Because he is the ultimate example of courageous love.

He is. I mean, I told you guys about how I've had to get into competitive walking because of all my injuries which is is boring but the way I've been able to do this and and and do this is I've been watching a Vietnam War documentary.

So I'll sit there and walk and just keep watching these things. Walk for hours just watching it. And it was interesting that this this last one I watched this week was a guy shared and it showed his backstory, that he was a marine. He was he was had got a a navy cross, three bronze stars, highly decorated.

And there he grew up in a military family. He actually did the ROTC, and then when he was off in college, he actually trained a platoon of men, and they would constantly train in the reserves. And he was already a captain,

and and and the reason he never got deployed was he was so intelligent. He was a road scholar. They got sent to Oxford. So the marine says, as long as you keep training in your reserves with your men, you're not gonna get deployed.

You can just keep going to school. But while he was in Oxford, he had come to the conclusion that looking at it, even though he was a military minded guy, that this war was a stupid war.

And he felt like America shouldn't be in this war. It's the wrong war. It's a messed up world. It's a messed up war. It's not done righteously. A lot of horrible things are happening. It's just a total disaster.

But yet he wrote a letter to his parents to explain that he he rejected his scholarship one semester and chose to go active duty, and he was getting shipped to Vietnam. So he knew the war was bad. And he had every right to not go, but he goes, but I felt a responsibility. And I showed a picture of his men.

He goes, here's 40 men I had trained. And I had the background, I had experience, and they were getting shipped over there. They didn't have a road scholarship to keep them out. So he goes, I chose to go to Vietnam for one purpose, to try to bring as many of those men back. He went into a messed up, broken situation

and put his life on the line simply to try to bring some men who were his friends home. That sounds crazy, but not when you look at Jesus

because that's what Jesus did for you and me. Jesus sat on the throne in heaven and saw our messed up broken world. And he could have stayed there and declared his power. He could have declared justice. He could have declared you know, he could have stopped the problems.

He had no reason to to become a man and come into this world except for one reason, and that was he came here into a broken world to do what? To bring his friends home.

He wanted to come for you and for me and everyone in his room to say, there's only one way to get out of this mess. There's only one way. You follow me, and he threw his life down for you. Died so we could go home. That's the whole point of the gospel.

We don't come to church to try to to try to prove our love to god so he'll love us. We come here to learn of his love so we can go live out that love. We don't live out that love for it. We live it out from it.

And he had this courageous love that he went to the cross and he died for you and me. And then what he said is that you can count the cost of following me. I died so you can live. But here's what I'm asking you to do. Count the cost. And then what did he say next? Pick up your cross. That doesn't sound pleasant.

If you're gonna follow Jesus, you've got to pick up a cross. But there's something beautiful on the other side of that. And if you refuse to pick up the cross, you're never gonna see it. You're gonna miss it. And you're gonna keep doing Christianity light where Jesus is just your mister Rogers.

Will you win? Won't change. You're gonna be my neighbor. Let's just go have some fun. Matter of fact, that's why he believe he he challenged us to take this thing called communion.

He said, do this in remembrance of me. He broke bread the night before he died. So this is my body broken for you. He then took the wine. So this is my blood spilled for you. And then he says, do this remembers me. Why? Why do we need to remember the sacrifice?

Because when we have to count the cost and pick up our cross and trust him, we have got to remember the courageous love he had. And when you see that, you go, why wouldn't I trust him? If he would throw himself on the cross for me, why wouldn't I pick up a cross for him?

And so what I wanna do is I just wanna end here. Just take communion. I'm running right now. We're ending really quick because I wanna leave some time because right after, we're gonna do something really cool. We're gonna get to start building our building right now if you have the courage to do it.

So Jesus did. He took he took this bread Cause he wanted us to know that I sacrificed for you. You can trust me. I love you this much. He said, this is my body broken for you. Take and eat.

He then took the cup and said, this is my blood spilled for you, for the forgiveness of your sins. He said, this is my courageous love poured out for you. Take and drink.

But like he said, he said, do this in remembrance of me. This is not some ceremony that makes us closer to god. It's a reminder that if he's willing to do that, am I willing to count the cost? And have the courage to pick up the cross he's asked me to do and run out there and be a part of his plan.

Well, we as Rock Point have an opportunity to do that together. We need to start building this building. But you know what? We're not in chapter six yet. We're in chapter three. Are we ready to go do it?

And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pray here. And I'm gonna give you an opportunity to go outside here. I wanna show you a picture of our model. It's the model. That's and and on that model, you could see that there's this spot right by the entrance to the new building where there's gonna be another cross.

And every phase of the way, when we build something, we've led with the cross. Before we had this building, we had a wood cross out here. I told you guys about it. And we put it right where that metal cross is now. And the people that built this building,

by trusting God courageously, we sat around with this wood and said, what could be there? And now we're here. Well, now we need to do it again. So we know exactly where that is. It's right back here. And we've put the wood cross out there again. Right where that one's gonna be.

But here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna build the first wall right now. Is that we have a bunch of these bricks. These are gonna be on the wall behind that cross. And what we're gonna have an opportunity is if you're willing, if you've already made a pledge or you're gonna make a pledge,

I'm gonna invite you to go out there, grab one of these bricks. And on the backside only, this is the flat side, not this side, this side. Not this side, this side. Okay? I'm gonna invite you to write the names of your family and then at least one other name. The name of someone that doesn't know Jesus.

That you're going to be praying for that they know Jesus. Because that's why we're building the wall.

Those walls are going up so walls in people's hearts can come down. We did that with this building too. You can look over here. There's two little spots on the wall. There's a magnet covering. Those are slits in the wall. And when we built this building, we had people write on a card. People they're praying for, and we put their names in that wall.

Thousands of names are in that wall. I personally have met five families who their whole family now knows Christ that they were in that wall first. Met a new one last night. They came up after and said, my whole family is one of them also. Sixth one. It's happened. It 'll happen again.

And then we're going to go out here. You're going to write it. You're going to stack it at the foot of the cross. And this we're going to put these bricks on that wall. And that's the first wall.

And you're going to be able to walk into this church. Look at that cross and right behind it. See the bricks. We're gonna be Nehemiah and the people of God. And it's gonna change the world. Ain't that awesome? Now let me just tell you something. Some of you are like, hey, I'm telling you.

You're making a pledge if you do this. And I'm gonna challenge you to have a resolute soul. Don't miss out on it. Because I know some of you are scared. You don't know how you can do it. But like I said, this whole series, if you're not scared, it's not.

Father god, I thank you lord and I pray as we go out there that you just give us a moment. Let this act us us building basically starting the first wall of this building. We do this because it's about you and not us lord.

So, I pray that every person that walks out there says, lord, I'm making this this commitment. I'm to do this and and then lord, we will continue to pray for our families but we will pray for that name that we write down.

That we will pray that somehow you will open the door that somehow we will be able to point them to you by loving them the way you loved us. So, lord, I just thank you for this moment to talk about courage.

But lord, as we move forward, give us a resolute soul to stay courageously following you, father. I just pray this in the mighty, mighty, mighty name of Jesus. Amen.