Welcome my friend Eric Luber as he comes up tonight to share with us Eric, come. Bless us tonight. Tonight, we're continuing to talk about chasing the lion. That's pursuing the dreams that God has given us.
Not just any dreams, but these dreams are dreams that are really too big for us. They're dreams that we cannot accomplish on our own. We have to have God's hope to accomplish these dreams. They're not God dreams if I can do them on my own, or you can do them on your own.
They're God dreams when they're big enough. We look at them and go, oh my, I'm not throwing stuff out there. How many of you all had dreams of being something when you were a kid? People, maybe you'd dream about being a guitar player, or a great guitar player, or a cowboy, or there's a lot of things we could dream about.
Can I tell you something? When I was a kid, I dreamed about being a horse jockey. Those of you who know anything about horse racing know the horse jockeys are small, right? Well, by the time I was 10 years old, I was five, two, and over 130 pounds.
My horse jockey dream was gone. And so, I had to kind of let it go. Now, the thing is, those aren't the dreams that we're talking about here. That's a dream about me.
That's not a dream that God has. That's not what he's given. How do we measure dreams? How do we measure them?
How do we know if it's a God dream, or if it's just my dream? I think it, what's the focus? Is it on me? Is it temporary?
Or is it eternal? God dreams always focus in eternal. The dreams we're talking about are dreams that link with other dreams become a part of something much bigger that God is doing. It's bigger than, you know, if your dream is to be rich, if your dream is to own a Ferrari, I might challenge you that your dream is about you.
If your dream is about owning a great big house, and that's all your dream is, that dream is probably about you. Now, if you want the great big house to, you know, minister to un-wet pregnant mothers who are in need, then I would say that's a means to an end. If you run into the house, if God drops the house in your lap, while you're serving him, there's nothing wrong with that. I still haven't figured out the Ferrari.
I guess if God gives you the Ferrari on the way to the dream, or while you're pursuing that dream, then praise God. But I don't think owning a Ferrari is your dream. It isn't, it isn't a God dream. I don't think, and Pastor and I talk about this, we couldn't find a way that it was, if that's the dream, it's not from God.
So if it's a God dream, it's not gonna be selfish. I wanna look at the main scripture tonight that we're jumping out of, 2 Samuel 23, verse eight. These are the names of David's mighty men. Joshua, Baha'is of F.
So heck of my night was chief of the three. He raised his spear against 800 men, whom he killed in one encounter. 800 men, he killed one shot, one time. He went out to battle and fought 800.
I wonder who counted, who counted the men? Have you all seen the Lord of the Rings? And Legolas and Eragorn, not Eragorn, I can't think of this. Gimli, they're fighting and they're counting.
How many, they're having a competition about how many men they've killed. And is that what they were doing? I don't have 800, how many do you have? I don't have 200.
Somebody counted. This is almost like superhero, isn't it? I mean, he kills 800 men. That is insane.
Can you imagine having a man like this at your side? What army would you fear? There's two of us, come on. We'll mow you down.
What army couldn't you defeat? I don't think there's any of them. Now, the question that came to my mind was Josh's dream to kill a bunch of people at once. Do you think that was his goal as a little boy?
I want to see how many men I can kill one time. His dream that he had here was to be a part of something bigger. His dream was to serve his commander and his king. And in this instance, that meant he had to kill 800 men.
And now we have record of him here doing something that awesome. Sometimes in fulfilling our dream, we help someone else. And you know what? We've probably been helped by someone who has been fulfilling their dreams.
Sometimes when we're working in the midst of fulfilling that dream, you know, we get lost sometimes. We feel like we're wandering sometimes. But sometimes we just need to keep moving, keep doing what God has told us to do last time he spoke to us. Because people will try to kill our dream.
Whatever God puts in your heart, you can just bet on it that the world out there is trying to kill it. They want it to die. The devil wants it to die. You're destroying his kingdom.
People try to kill it. The dream seems too big. I can't accomplish that. God's simply asking you to take a step in faith.
It may be that you look at it and say it's too complicated. Or it would take so long to happen. It just wouldn't be worth it. What about Moses?
You know, he tries to free the 40 years of age. He tries to free the Israelites on his own. He flees the country. 40 years he's shepherd, he has a shepherd in the wilderness.
And after 40 years, the Lord speaks to him and says, I want you to go back and free my people. I wonder why God had to speak to him from a burning bush. And giving signs, I can just see him. I already tried that, Lord.
It didn't happen last time. It's not going to happen this time. But God was insistent. And he says, I am going with you.
That's the difference. 40 years he waited. That's a long time. That's a long time.
How about David? David was anointed king as a young man, probably a teenager. And yet it wasn't until after he was 35 years old that he actually was crowned king. And then for seven years, he only rang over the Southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin.
How about Jesus? 30 years Jesus walked this earth to get to the three years of ministry, the three years that were about why he came. I think we can take time. In a Mark Batterson, the guy who writes this book says, I am not convinced that the true date of death is listed on our death certificates.
Sadly, many people die long before their heart stops beating. We start dying the day we stop dreaming. Ironically, we start living the day we discover a dream worth dying for. That's what David's mighty men found in David, a cause worth living for and a dream worth dying for.
When we let the world, life, or other people stop us from following God's dream, that's when we really die. We're living paycheck to paycheck, punching the clock, putting in our time. We lose heart. There's nothing in that.
Is that good enough for you? Is that what you want to do? Just exist? I don't want to just exist.
I want to serve the Lord. I want to do what he put me on this earth for. What is worth living for? David's mighty men were zealous for seeing God's promise fulfilled in David, seeing his enemies subdued and subjected to him.
It's what drove them when things got tough. It's what helped them accomplish these insurmountable things that we would be looking at. Somebody other men as the time goes on. Nobody thought they could accomplish these things, but they did, because they were committed to David and God was with them.
What are you living for? What's the dream God's put in your heart? Or have you died? Has that dream died in your heart?
And just you're just existing. When we come passionate about the things that God is passionate about and sacrifice to follow those dreams, we can create ripples in a kingdom that can last forever. There is no greater joy than living the dream that God has for us. And there is no greater pain than not living the dream that God has for us.
I have seen people who knew God called them to serve him and they let life get in the way. And they're punching the clock. Life has very little meaning. I don't want to live that way.
I don't want to see any of you live that way. That's why I pass where it doesn't either. That's why we're doing this series. We want to ignite that passion back in your heart again.
Think about the Apostle Paul. Here is a man who became so passionate about the things of God that he sacrificed in a huge way to follow those dreams. And he created ripples in the kingdom that are still being felt today, the New Testament. He wrote most of it.
He preached the gospel throughout the known world at that time. And he even had influence over some of the other apostles. I'll get to that in a minute. Right now, I want to look at 2 Corinthians, chapter 11, starting with verse 21 and the second half of that.
What anyone else dares to boast about? I'm speaking as a fool. I also dare to boast about. Are they Hebrews?
So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham's descendants?
So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I'm out of my mind to talk like this. I am more.
I have worked much harder. Been in prison more frequently. Been flogged more severely and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews 40 lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night in the day in the open sea.
I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger in the rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from the Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea, in danger from false brothers. That's why he sacrificed. But he also created ripples that no one else has impacted the Christian faith, such as Paul did, except Jesus.
Nobody has. He impacted it in a huge way. We still live off of his teaching. Paul endured all these things into the world eyes.
He seems as a losing, as a failure, as a loser. But God used him to spread the gospel throughout the known world and write most of the New Testament. And as I said just a minute ago, he even had influence on the 12. Again, 2 Peter, chapter 3, verses 15 and 16.
Peter says, bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with wisdom that God gives him. He writes the same way in all of his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some hard things to understand which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do other scriptures for their own destruction. Here he is, one of his own contemporaries, one of the 12, saying Paul wrote scripture.
Last week, sermon was about overcoming our fears and dreaming again. This week's sermon is about having the courage to make those dreams a reality. What dream is God putting your heart? Do you remember what the dream was?
Life has a way of stealing them away. Life has a way of deadening them, taking it away. It isn't going to happen. There's not enough time.
I'm too busy. Let the series bring them to life again and help you choose to follow your dreams. What is that dream that God's putting your heart? You know, as I've been reflecting on this as I was preparing to teach here, I realize that the seeds for the dream that God's putting my heart were planted by my mother.
My mother loves to talk about the Bible and she would spend hours talking to me about the Bible and about things that God taught. And one of the things we talked about a lot was how God has called his people to help others. Not just people in need, or poor people, I guess I should say, but anybody who has a need. People who have money have needs sometimes.
If you accidentally left your lights on and it doesn't happen so much anymore, but in your battery drains, I think you need some help. No matter how much or how little money you have. And I was one of those guys that had the cheap cars that, well, I would buy them for about $300 to $500 and put $100 or $200 in them and drive them for six months and then go get another one. And so I carried jumper cables.
I had to. Something probably was gonna die. So I would give people jumps. One of my favorite things, my family's favorite things to do was in the wintertime, when it would snow, we would run to the neighbor's house and see if we could dig out their driveway and their sidewalks before they could catch us and pay us for it.
Now it got to the point where they knew who was doing it so they would send money over to us. But it was about helping others. We had a habitat house that was being built for a family that severely needed it. My family was there on day one when the first shovel went in the ground and we turned aside.
Let me tell you, there were 75 people that showed up that morning. By noon, we had a six-inch trench around the whole thing and it was my family and a couple of other people that were left. And when we left at about 7, 38 o'clock that night, we had a footer around the whole thing that was ready to be poured. We did that because we believe that we were to serve.
And that's been part of the dream that God's given me. Part of the dream is to stand up for those that are oppressed, for those that are down-troad. And you'll find that in scripture from beginning to end. The Lord Himself says He stands up for those.
And that's been deep in me. And I think the Lord forgive me a mother that taught me these things. She didn't know, she didn't have a son. I got to teach him this, I got to teach him this.
But it was just daily life as she was talking to me, as she was living out her dream of being a mother and homeschooling her children that she did this, accomplished this. That's the seeds of my dream. I have a dream that I believe is pretty large. And to me, it seems insurmountable.
But I believe that dream will happen here, part of it anyway. And I'm excited that it's happening here, and I really hope it stays here. But anyway, I'm not just saying that. I'm having fun.
You got to come by the thrift store. I'm having fun, OK? I miss Jackie tremendously. But the Lord has called me here.
So what do you need to do to see your dream become reality? Do you need to make a phone call? Do you need to take a class or set a deadline that you need to get this done by then? Sometimes we have to wait on the Lord.
That's a tough thing. But are we actively waiting or have we just kicked back in the lazy boy and gotten lethargic? Active waiting means we do what we can or waiting for him to open the door. He can get us to move.
Can I tell you that in the past, I have tried to make the dream that God has put in my heart. I've tried to make it happen. And I gave up. And then the Lord reignited that dream and that fire.
And I continued to press on, even though I wasn't sure it was going to happen. And it continues to drive me. I continue to seek. I continue to chase it, not because I can.
I can tell you this. I know me well enough that it isn't going to happen because of me. It's going to happen because he chooses to do it through me. Sometimes the path to the dream seems to be going in the wrong direction.
A couple of years ago, as Pastor Mark said, I was pastoring a church not far from here. And everything seemed to be going well. And it wasn't underneath the surface. And as things started to come apart, we got to solidify but the finances went there.
And then I had a heart-rending day here at the Jefferson Street campus. And when I was told that they were going to close the church down and they needed me to resign. It seemed like I was going the wrong way from the dream the guy was calling me to. But then he planted me in my family in this church.
And he put me in a place that I never would have gone. If he put a list in front of me with 50 things and had managing a thrift store on there, I probably would have chosen all 49 other things before I got the thrift store. I'm just being honest with you. I mean, I've cleaned toilets faster.
Did it for five years. But I would have chosen almost any of the rest of them. But I want to tell you, when God puts us where he wants us, you'll have fun. You will be accomplishing your dream.
You will be right where you're calling it. You can ask my wife. I'm much happier at the thrift store than I ever was as a pastor. I can hear her name in the back there.
Sometimes when we get to the dream, it doesn't look like we thought it was going to. Sometimes it's dressed in overalls and it looks like work. Sometimes it's going to take a bit of effort for us. Oh, you know what?
We have to be ready. We have to be committed to the dream. We have to have enough passion. When it looks like work, we throw on the overalls.
We throw on the boots and say, I'm going in. You will have more fun. You will enjoy yourself. Maybe that's not supposed to be the focus.
I want to tell you, God is joy. God is love. And he wants us to enjoy ourselves. Now there'll be some tough times.
There'll be times that we don't enjoy in the dream. But we push on. What about you? Are you continuing to pursue your dream that God has given you or have you let it die?
I know I've asked it a couple of times today. But I just feel like it. I want to ask this. What is the dream?
Do you even remember? Then let's push on. Let's pursue it. Today the Father is calling us to renew the passion that He has placed in our heart.
He is asking us to chase the lion. Will you follow Him? Will I follow Him? Are we ready to follow Him?
Are we ready to pursue the dream? The things that only He can accomplish through us. Now is the time. Now is the time.
Today is the day to revive those. This evening, if you want to seek God for the dream that's put in your heart. I'm going to ask Dan to come and play. And he's going to lead us in a song.
And you can come and pray. Just open your heart. If you need to refocus on the dream. If you've been focused on the wrong dream, now is the time.
Let's get that dream alive and burning in our hearts. Let's seek the Lord, OK? Father, we just opened our hearts today today. And Father, I pray for the men and women around this altar.
That Father, you'd refresh the dream within us. We're the enemies trying to let us try to rob that or take it from us. Refresh us. Well, we've let out ourselves to get busy.
And Father, let us now hear it. Father, where our dreams has been on the temporal on the Ferrari. Let it get on the eternal. Father, those things that really matter and change.
So Father, speak to us tonight. Let us rightly dream. Let us lay aside what we need to lay aside to focus on what should drive and direct our hearts in Jesus' name. In Jesus' name.
In Jesus' name. This last April where an A&I took some time, and we were down in Florida. And I contacted a friend of mine that hadn't seen in probably 15, 20 years I knew lived down there. And I got a hold of him just to have a chance to have time for dinner.
And we went out. He grew up here in the church the same way I did. He was one of my best friends growing up. And I like to just take in a separate direction and see each other in a long time.
And we got together and met for dinner, and I walk in, and here's this guy known for years and years and years. He's looking tan and fit in good shape. And I'm looking pale and fat and kind of wore out. And there's a part of you, when you're standing in that situation, you go, I'm a little jealous.
You're down here where it's warm every day, and where the weather's good, and doing what you want to do, and not worrying about much. But here's the difference for me. When I was a boy growing up here, what happened in this church in my life was so impactful. It was so powerful in my life that it changed the direction of my life.
In the process of that, I began to fall in love with this church, and what this church can do, and what it can mean. I began to fall in love with this community, and the thought of us being able to touch this community, and impact and for eternity. And that began to burn in my heart, where the temptation to go do other things became smaller and smaller and smaller. See, my dream comes right down to our vision and our mission.
I mean, think about this. To compel every person in Central Illinois to seriously consider the claims of Christ. Eternity changing, giving the Holy Spirit. Now listen, we're not going to do that by putting on a radio program or a TV program.
For that to happen, there has to be an army of people rise up in this fellowship who are maturing the Word of God, who know how to pray, who know how to be led by the Holy Spirit, who aren't swayed by every doctrine that comes down, the pike that the enemy would sidetrack us on, and who are able to live, led by the Spirit, everywhere they go, every day of their life. There has to be a growing army of people who live contrary to this world and live committed to the cause of Christ, every place they go, who see themselves as on duty. That's why we sit and we say, as we come into this new year, we're going to make a re-emphasis. We're going to raise the ante on discipleship.
We're going to put our chips stronger and stronger into this area of taking whoever will come, who will level up around, and getting in the Word of God so we can be formed by the Word of God. That's why we're challenging you to read the Word of God. To study the Word of God. That we can be formed and shaped by the Word of God.
That God can raise up an army of men and women, unshaken by the circumstances of the day, unmoved by the temptations of this world. That focus on the eternal goal. We can't do that. I can't do that on my own.
God has to do that. God has to make that happen. We move towards it in every way we can. But we have to start with a small group of things.
And our visions, we see this place filled on Wednesday night with people coming saying, I want to grow deeper and deeper in the things of God. I want to know more. I want to understand more. I want to be used more than I've ever, ever been used before.
When I think about the future for us, I think about the multitude of ministries that have to rise up for that to happen. This doesn't happen based on one ministry. This happens because you get vision for ministries, and you begin to do them. You begin to enter into them.
And we begin to be used. This happens because small group leaders rise up, they'll care for people, minister to people, lead those people into places of ministry, where we can impact our community with the gospel. I think of things like our special needs programs. And I've got to say that we would offer the best support to families who have special needs children of any place they could find in Central Illinois.
Now, I'm telling you, the dream for me doesn't stop there. We could do that on our organizationally. We could do that on our own. We could put our organization together and offer great ministry and do things that really be kind to families and really take care of them.
My dream for that goes deeper is that we pray for these kids and we start seeing some of them healed. That we can't do on our own. That only God can do. But we've got to pray that in, I believe in that.
We've got to raise up ministries in our church where people will be passionate and committed. We'll buy into that vision and say, I want to make a difference in teenagers like, we're working right now on what we want to do for a youth center and how we want to build that youth center and what we want that to look like. And I just sit here and tell you right now, we don't have the money for it, penny of it. But I felt like God six months ago said, start moving towards it.
You do what you can do, I'll do what I can do. That's the essence of God's dream source. We move towards it. We lay hands on a sick little child, a troubled little child.
And we have no power for them to be healed. We just have obedience to lay hands on them and pray for them and trust God. If that's week one, nothing happens, then next week, guess what we do? We pray again.
And if it's the next week, we pray again. And we keep praying and believing and hoping, trusting, having faith in God that he's going to move in somebody's life and change them forever. But we have to, I just want to challenge you, capture the dream. When I think about missions and supporting ministries around the world that do the same thing, I just think about Hope Thrift Center and the opportunity that we have to be invested in missions, just by giving our junk.
Amen? Giving stuff we're not using anymore. That becomes valuable to somebody else, that we transfer into money to help kids around the world. There's just so many things that little places where we can get involved and we can do things.
And I think about life to the full. I remember the day I got into the auditorium back on Jefferson Street and everybody was talking about vision and what vision needed to be. And I said, well, maybe I need to understand how I walk up and down those miles and trying to come up with some clever words to express what I wanted us to be about. And I tried this and that and nothing seemed to fit for me.
And finally, I just remember, I could take it right where I was in the auditorium, I just felt like Spirit of Lord said to me, I have already said what your vision needs to be and what you're already connected with. You want people to have life to the full. That's what my son came for, to help people have life to the full. To help their homes get healthier, to help their emotions get healthier, to help them walk in the peace of God and the security of God and find the purpose of God and walk in the wholeness of the family of God and have the Holy Spirit so active and alive in their life that they walk in the self-control, the Spirit of God so that they walk in the health of God.
That's what we're all about. We can't do that though, God has to do that through us. We can offer things, but then we need God to move. And I want to challenge you, I want to challenge you to start to pray about God, where do I fit in this dream?
What's my part of it? Is it going out to place and feeding people every Tuesday night? Is that my part of it? God, then let me joyfully go.
Is that being a small group leader than God? Let me lead with excellence. Is that being a Sunday school teacher for four-year-olds? Then God, let me pour your word into their life.
Is that singing in the choir? Then God, let me sing under your anointing with such power and authority that your spirit falls on this place and touches people's lives. And certainly God, it's for me to go out wherever I'm at and let your light shine through me to others. Amen?
Father, in Jesus' name, let your dreams come. Just people out there, Lord, you want to use that? The rescue, their eternities. There's people out there, Father, you want us to help them have fullness of life.
There's people out there, Father, we believe you want to heal. You want to set them free. There's people with addictions that you want to deliver them from those addictions. They're trapped and shipwrecked right now.
The Father, you have a divine destiny for them. And with the right vision and the right dream, that can happen. So Father, I pray we would not be resistant to anybody else's dream. But we would dive in and follow the leading of your spirit and know the things you would have us.
Don't let us dream for that which is not gold. Let us dream only for that which lasts for eternity. And Lord, we know you'll bless us along the way and we're thankful for your blessing along the way. But never let that be the dream.
Let your vision and your purpose always be the dream in the middle of everything we do. So Father, whatever it is, rekindle a dream, restore a dream, birth a dream in us. Show us where we're to connect with a dream. Show us what we're to do and let us begin to be used to be to you in greater and greater measure.
Let us be prepared and ready to go in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen. Make sure, Eric, before you go, you and Lisa come over here and stand right here in the middle of it, will you? I'm going to do one last thing before we go.
Some of you guys gather around Eric and some of you guys gather around Lisa. And let's just pray for them right now. Do you believe prayer changes things? Just take a minute and pray what you believe God's telling you to pray for them right now.
Father in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. Father, we stand here together and I pray you bless their marriage. I pray they grow closer and closer together with greater and greater sensitivity to understanding each other. Father, every day, I pray you bless them with their children.
Their children's hearts would be stronger and stronger for your will and their children would know the vision and purpose you have for their lives. I pray for their places of ministry right now, Father, that they would flourish in them and you give them fresh ideas and fresh thoughts and Father favor to do the work of the ministry and to accomplish your will. I pray that your giftings in them would rise up in new measure. And that Father as your giftings rise up in them, that Father their humility would grow in you.
That Father wouldn't be about us. We wouldn't be puffed up in the giftings, but Father we would be humble in the giftings that you have for them. You can walk in your health, give them health and strength and blessing and anointing. And Father use them for your glory.
We pray in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen. God bless you. I love all of you.
Go on the name of the Lord tonight. Let's change the world.