God Can Revive Dead Dreams - RUN Journey | Crossroads Students

Hey everybody, and welcome back to Real Encounters. We are here all the way in Tarsus, which this is a fun little place because Tarsus is a place known for its intellectual vigor, for its trade, for its economics, but it's really known because it's old. It's super old. It's super old. Parker, what's the oldest thing you own? I think the oldest thing I own is one of my guitars. It's like 25 years old, which is ancient. So old. 25 years. It's vintage. That's vintage. That's nice. It's not a big deal. That's nice. Well, the oldest thing I own is my earwax. It's been with me since I was a baby. What? All the way in there. Why do you not clean it? What do you mean? I do clean it, but I'm just saying it's growing up with me. Eww. Brother, eww. It doesn't matter because this place is special because it's Paul's hometown. In fact, we are standing in front of the hometown water fountain. Yeah, so this is a Roman well. This is how the Romans would have built them. And this one was here when Paul was here.

And so there's a good chance that Paul is like a boy or a teenager or a young man would have come here to get a drink of water in this very spot we're standing on these stones. It's crazy that he's here. Like he was in his place. It's nice. And we know that God used everything he learned here to grow him and make him change the world. So Parker, you're ready to go on an adventure. I'm so ready. Again. I'm ready to see Tarsus. He's going to connect the dots about how Tarsus and Paul's hometown really teaches us all about how Christianity spread and what God can do through even our failures and mistakes. So you got to get out of here. Let's go. I'm ready. Like Shep said, Tarsus is old. This city is almost 9,000 years old. But back in Paul's day, this place was a powerhouse of education and ideas. This is a place where people came if they wanted to make a name for themselves. Think of this as like a modern day Boston where there's students everywhere. There's ideas. There's people that are grinding and climbing to the top and it's a place where ideas collided. And this is where Paul grew up. This is his hometown. We are standing on a Roman road. The Romans inhabited the city and this was a Roman colony and they would build these roads that connected everything to Rome. And they still are here today. And this exact street is a street that Paul would have walked down on his way to study with his books.

He wasn't playing Fortnite or whatever it was back in the day. He was actually a nerd. But he would have been here in this place. If you remember, Paul was living that life. He was chasing this dream. He was doing really well. He was thriving and he was on his way to the top until he met Jesus and had an encounter with him on his way to a city called Damascus. And he's there and his life is completely flipped upside down. And his old dreams of chasing that are dead and they're gone. And he's left feeling kind of stuck. And so he kind of goes away from the spotlight and he's hidden for 8 to 10 years. He comes back home here to Tarsus. You ever felt like maybe your dreams got crushed? Maybe you didn't get picked for that team. Maybe that friend group you had moved on without you. Maybe you thought following Jesus was going to be this amazing adventure and you're sitting around waiting. Maybe there's that thing that you've been wanting for a long time and you're wondering, is God ever going to actually do that for me? That's where Paul was. He was in this place feeling like a failure. He doesn't even belong at home. He's waiting. He's back in the family business of making tents. And he's wondering, is God going to do anything in my life? Paul's old dreams had to die for something new to grow. So God wasn't done with Paul. Even though it seemed like he had lost all hope that he was a failure, that he had missed the mark, God was still using him and reshaping his story and his time here to rewrite a new one.

God said, I'm not done with you. I'm just rewriting your story here in Tarsus. So Paul goes on. And what's beautiful is that all of his training that he got, all of his background he received in Tarsus as a kid and even back here, God used it. God took his passions and his desires and the things he was really good at and used it for greater impact. Instead of debating people to crush them, Paul would persuade people to follow Jesus. Instead of kicking people out of a city, he would draw them closer and invite them into a community. Instead of protecting his religion, he would protect the gospel, even the tent making. God would use the tent making as a way for him to fund his ministry and to be in marketplaces where he could meet people and talk to people about the gospel. God used even the smallest parts of Paul's story, even the parts that felt like a failure to reshape and use them for greater impact. Paul would go on later to speak on these massive stages and he would be in synagogues and he'd be in marketplaces, even standing before kings. And I know for me, when I'm growing up in high school, I know it felt like there was one path for my life. There was one way that God wanted me to go. And if I miss that boat, if I make a mistake, then I'm going to miss it. And Tarsus is this huge reminder for me and for all of us that God will use all of it. We might have this dream that we're chasing and everyone else is chasing. But if we fail, if we mess up, whatever it is, if we hand those things over to God, he will do something and use every piece of it. He doesn't waste any of it. And that's good news for me. It was so cool, so awesome that you got to stand in a space and a place where Paul actually walked in his youth. And I'm even excited to have you back here with me

because we are again standing in a space where Paul would have actually walked on his way out of Tarsus, headed west. We are at a Roman road that connects to what's called the Cilician Gates. And it just means that this was the way out of the east and headed west. It's where Paul walked, taking Christianity all over the world. The work that God did in Tarsus, he was about to use for the big stage, really. Yeah, Tarsus reminds me that God will use even the ugliest and most unassuming parts of our story for good. If we let him, if we're up for it, he will take the parts that are broken and nasty that we wanna forget and he'll use them to actually build into us for what's next. Yeah, and that's good news because it means that God was really just preparing Paul. And if perhaps you're in a space where you feel like, man, I'm just waiting on God. I don't know what he's doing. I don't really feel him. I don't sense him, or I don't even know him. Then maybe God's just waiting to prepare you to revive you and take you to the next level. That's good news. Paul's next step is right here. He didn't let his failure define him.

He didn't stay stuck in that. He didn't let it like take him down. He learned, he trained, he offered it up to God and God called him on another journey. So he packed a bag and left home again and walked down this exact road to a city in Greece called Philippi. And so we're leaving Turkey. We're going to Greece, we're going to Philippi and we'll hear how Paul got in a little bit of trouble and spread the good news there.