How God Uses Your Movement to Bring Heaven to Earth | Crossroads Church

Has life ever gone completely different than you planned? Maybe you've been betrayed. Maybe you've wondered why God would allow something to happen. Maybe you've asked yourself, can God still do something good? My story. My name is Meeko. So glad you're tuning in with us today from the Bando app. We're continuing our origin story series looking at the ordinary people in the Bible who are tagged as people of extraordinary faith. Not because they were extraordinary, but because they simply chose to trust God. Our lead pastor Kyle Ranson is taking us into the story of Joseph. Joseph's life took a turn after turn that he never could have planned. He was betrayed by his own family, falsely accused, thrown into prison, forgotten. And yet, in every season, through every season, God was quietly working behind the scenes. One of my favorite things about Joseph's story is that what others meant for evil, God used for good. If you've ever wondered whether God can redeem your story, this message is for you. Zero from Kyle. Humanity is formed from dust. In the beginning, there is possibility, purpose, and relationship. Then things fall apart. But God rebuilds and enlists humanity in the work of restoration. The Bible is full of people who eventually become known for things like faith and courage, wisdom, and sacrifice. We call them heroes of the faith. But none of them started there. The story God tells is about him meeting ordinary people in ordinary places and inviting them into something extraordinary. Today's origin story is about Joseph, a betrayed brother who became a visionary provider. Well, hey, everybody.

Welcome to Crossroads. My name is Kyle. I'm fresh back from a trip to go Puerto Rico. One of our go trips where we send ordinary people to go make an impact. It was awesome. A family trip. Went with my daughter. Looks like I didn't even change my shirt. But you all changed a lot while I was gone. A lot of things change. My whole life I was told if you want to be healthy, you need to eat lettuce. And I get back and everyone's like, don't eat the lettuce. Like eat chocolate cake, fried food. Anything's better than lettuce right now. I'm like, praise God. I don't know how that happened, but I've been praying for this moment when those were all better choices. What a world we live in. This trip we went on, go Puerto Rico. We send people all over the world at Crossroads. People who want to go and make an impact. Like I mentioned, this was a family trip. Got to go with my daughter. And on this trip, our volunteer trip leader, Mike Hillenmayer, amazing guy. Every morning and night he started saying this thing to us as a group. He would say, hey, today, why don't you do it for the plot? Do it for the plot. What he meant was you're going to have a choice today to do something that's outside your comfort zone, something that pushes you,

something that might be embarrassing or hard or scary or something like that. And he said, do it for the plot. In other words, do the thing that's going to lead to the better story. Good stories aren't. Remember that time when we did the same thing we always do? Remember that time we did the thing that we felt totally comfortable with? That's not a good story. I think all of us want to live a life that lives the best story possible, a life of extraordinary impact. In this series, that's what we're looking at. These origin stories, these people, ordinary people who lived an extraordinary life of extraordinary impact. Now, how do you do that? I'd say there's actually two recipes out there. Recipe one is the popular recipe, the pop culture recipe, the one that we digest in comic books and in movies. And its basic formula goes like this. It says that extraordinary impact happens when an ordinary person discovers that they actually have extraordinary power. So in the comic books, it's when Spider-Man gets bit by the spider, he discovers his fingers stick to walls. Oh my gosh. And he can shoot webs out of his hands. In the movies, it's the moment where Harry Potter discovers he's actually a wizard. Hagrid shows up and says, you're a wizard, Harry. And he's like, wow. It's when Luke Skywalker discovers he's a Jedi and can move rocks around. And when Rey does the same exact thing, same story. Sorry, don't know why we needed a second one. But it's that moment.

Right? Ordinary person discovers extraordinary powers. But the second proposal for how an ordinary person makes an extraordinary impact is actually very different. It's from the Bible. And the Bible lists all these people that we're looking at in this series and in a chapter, Hebrews chapter 11, it's known as the hall of faith. It's almost like the hall of fame of these people who made these extraordinary impacts. And if you go through this list, it's a varied group of people. I mean, there's rich people and there's poor people and there's young people and there's old people and there's men and there's women, all kinds of different people, but they all share one thing in common. And it's actually not that they discovered that they have extraordinary power. It's not that they discover they have extraordinary smarts or extraordinary charisma or anything else like that. In fact, this is a list of people who would never make the cover of Forbes magazine. They don't have the list of traits that add up to a leader. If you go through the list, you'll see a shepherd, a boat builder, a wandering nomad, a stay-at-home mom, and a prostitute. That's not the list of people who you go like, this is kind of, they got the thing, they got what it takes, no. What they all share in common though,

is that they are all ordinary people who chose extraordinary faith. See, this is the first lesson, the origin of extraordinary impact is ordinary people choosing extraordinary faith. I think this is part of why the Bible has transited cultures and time periods and technological revolutions and actual revolutions and why 2000 years after Jesus walked the earth, it's still today the most important, impactful book that we have. It's because it's not a book full of perfect people who discovered they have power. It's a book full of ordinary people, underdogs, antiheroes, who make an important choice, who choose extraordinary faith. It's not a series that we're in, origin stories. It's really a series about how to supercharge the growth of your faith. And I don't know if growing your faith is the idea that excites you. Like I understand we're in church and if I walked up to you, it was like, do you want to grow your faith? You'd be like, you're a pastor. So yes, of course I do. But at Crossroads, we're not really interested in like what's the right answer and start to say it's okay if that idea doesn't excite you. In fact, if it doesn't, that makes you normal

with a normal understanding of what faith is. I think faith is one of the most misunderstood concepts out there. We tend to think of faith as like a belief that I hold in my head. You know, if I could check the right 10 boxes on the quiz, have the right beliefs, then that's the right faith. When we think of faithful people, we probably think of people who were like, stay inside the line kind of people. But that's not really how the Bible describes faith. Well, what is faith? Last week, Chuck Mingo kicked off this series and he did an awesome job. Talked about Gideon. If you missed it, go back and watch it in the Crossroads app or on a website or on YouTube. And he referenced this verse where Hebrews 11, this hall of faith chapter, starts by giving a definition of faith. It says this, Hebrews 11 one. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. That word assurance means confidence. And the word conviction most accurately means evidence. And so what the Bible is saying is that faith is actually confidence based on the evidence. I think people who are anti-faith, they tend to think that faith is like this, you know, shut your eyes, turn off your brain

and just dream of stuff. It's like this fairytale living kind of thing. No, not at all. We heard this in Hayden's story that we just heard. He had followed this sort of scientific path that made this claim against faith. And it's just not true. I'll say my faith is based on the evidence. The confidence that I have in God is based on what I have seen him do in my life, in creation, as I studied science, all of those things. Because it gives you a confidence to go out and to move and to act. Now, how would you know if somebody actually has confidence in something? My wife, Sarah and I, we've been renovating our house for going on eight years now. Thank you very much. Almost done, so not really, still a lot to do there. In the process of renovating our house, we've taken out three load-bearing walls. And when I say we, I mean we, okay? I mean we. Because the first one, I had a contractor come out and I was like, how much to take out the wall? He was like, ah, $15,000. And I was like, wow. And then I watched a five-minute YouTube video, went on Menard's website, figured I could buy the wood for 80 bucks,

did it myself, okay? And it's fine, relax, we hired a structural engineer, I built it right, it's fine. Building, by the way, taking out a load-bearing wall and putting in supports, it's not complicated. I can teach you to do it in five minutes, not hard. Process is very simple. You remove your drywall, picture at the top. Before you cut out your studs, you build, picture in the middle, a temporary supporting wall. Because you need something to bear the weight while you're putting in your load-bearing beam. That's the bottom picture. All of this is very easy. But there's one step in the process that proves whether you have confidence in your work or not. And it's the very last thing you do. The very last thing you do is you take out your temporary supporting wall. And that's when you discover if your house falls down or not. And so you can say, I have confidence I did this right. But what you say doesn't mean jack until you cut out those studs. This is the same with faith. You can say that you have confidence in God as a provider, doesn't mean jack until you actually follow what he says to do with your finances. Do you cut out the supports in your life? Do you cut out you controlling everything? You can say that you have faith in the concept of grace.

Doesn't mean jack until you go to the person that you feel deserves none and you give it to them anyway. You can say that you have faith that what you're meant to do with your life is to serve people. Clearly, Jesus says this. But it doesn't mean jack until you bend your life to actually do it. See, faith is not what you believe in your head. It's not about your head. It's about your hands and about your feet. It's about where you do and where you go. Says this in James 2, 18. Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds. It's about what you do and where you go. If you go through the list of faithful people in Hebrews chapter 11, it doesn't describe the things they thought about in their head. Doesn't describe that. It describes in these really profound, spicy, action-oriented words, what they actually did. It ends this way, Hebrews 11, 32. What more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, and were made strong out of weakness,

became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Faith is action. Faith is taking ground. Faith is taking risks. Faith is getting uncomfortable. It's what you do. My hope and my prayer for you today is that you are bothered to action. I've actually been praying this for you. And I just wanna say, if you're in the spot in particular where you're like, man, my faith kind of feels flatlined. It kind of feels like me and God, we're just kind of going through the motions. I've been coming here for a while. I've been around faith my whole life and never kind of clicked in. It's kind of like a thing. I need a spark. Or maybe you're in a spot where you're like, my faith is strong, but I want more. Awesome. Either way, I want you to agree with what I'm about to pray for you right now. God, I'm asking that you would bother me to action. I'm asking that you would bother us to not just believe something in our minds, but to do something with our hands and with our feet, to go out and to serve in your name, to partner with you in bringing your kingdom to earth as it is in heaven.

Amen. Today, like you heard in that video earlier, we're talking about Joseph. Joseph is a character very near and dear to my heart because my middle name is literally Joseph, Kyle Joseph Ranson. And then Joseph is the family name handed down through generation after generation of Ranson man. So my dad's name was Joseph. His dad's middle name was Joseph. His dad's name was Joseph, on and on and on and on, back and back and back and back. And so when my oldest son was born, I had an important choice to make. Which name do I hand to him? Kyle or Joseph? They wanna do both, one or the other. And I thought about it and I came to the conclusion, it cannot be Kyle. Why? Because the world should only have so many Kyles. We're not really known for being productive members of society. We're not really doctors or lawyers, you know, we don't really run nations or anything. We're just here for a good time, really. And so you want a few of us, but you don't want a lot of us, you know, we're like the millennial Chad.

That's what we are. And so I decided to hand down Joseph to my oldest son. And Joseph is like the opposite of Kyle. You know, when you think of Joseph, you think of a leader, you think of somebody who's been through a lot. but he's strong and someone who's stable, someone who makes good decisions, someone who you can depend on. And the reason traces all the way back to the first Joseph that we know about. It's actually one of the oldest ancient names in the world. Joseph traces back to the fourth generation of the family of faith. You got Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, aka Israel, and then Joseph, quick flyover of his life, kind of what he did, what that was remarkable about him. So he's the youngest of 12 brothers. He's born to Jacob and he's kind of his dad's favorite in no small part because he trash talks his brothers to his dad. Here's how his story starts in Genesis 37. Joseph being 17 years old, was pastoring the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors.

But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to them. Now, after this, Joseph has a dream, a couple of dreams actually, in which all of his brothers and his mom and dad bow down to him. And Joseph decides the way to repair the relationship with his brothers is to tell them about the dreams. It goes poorly. So poorly that they actually throw him in a pit, sell him into slavery. Now here at the lowest moment of his life, he's 17 year old, sold into slavery, is actually where it looks like the pop culture version of how to have an impactful life starts to begin, where he discovers that he has extraordinary powers. Because he goes and works for a guy named Potiphar and Potiphar puts him in charge of a little thing. And that thing goes amazingly well. And she puts him in charge of a little bit more and that goes amazingly well. And eventually Joseph is running Potiphar's household. And Joseph has like the Warren Buffett economical touch. Like everything he does turns to gold. Every decision he makes gets exponential returns. And so Potiphar's flourishing. All of his work is flourishing. His household's flourishing. It's going amazing.

Joseph discovers this incredible power. Then everything goes south. Potiphar's wife wants to have sex with him. He runs away. There's this whole thing that happens. He gets thrown into prison. But again, in prison, he discovers another extraordinary power. He can interpret dreams. Pharaoh's cupbearer and Pharaoh's baker are in prison. They have these dreams. No one can interpret them. Joseph does. Exactly what he says is gonna happen, happens. Couple of years pass and Pharaoh himself, king of all Egypt has a dream. He dreams of these seven fat cows that eat these seven skinny cows. He dreamed of seven stalks of wheat and these seven stalks of wheat that bend and they break. And no one can interpret. No one can tell him what these dreams mean. And they remember there's this guy, Joseph, in the prison and they pull him out of prison. He interprets the dreams correctly. And Pharaoh says he's so impressed, he puts him in charge of everything in the kingdom of Egypt. And again, the Warren Buffett touch plays out. And so Joseph is doing tax reform. Joseph's doing economic reform and the nation prospers.

They not only survive the famine, they grow wealthier through the famine. And Joseph saves all of Egypt, the most powerful nation on the earth at the time and his entire family. And oh, by the way, Joseph is in prison in a slave for 13 years, from 17 to 30. And that entire time he stays faithful to God. Incredible, incredible things about this guy. Here's the wild part. None of those are mentioned in Hebrews 11 as the reason that Joseph is in the hall of faith. None of them are called out as things that you and I are meant to emulate. Well, what is? Hebrews 11, 22. By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. That's the thing. That's the remarkable part about his life. Direction, what to do when I die instructions. Okay, so what did he say? Well, that answer is in Genesis chapter 50. Joseph said to his brothers, I'm about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore, that he promised to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, the promised land.

Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear saying, God will surely visit you and you shall carry up my bones from here. See the remarkable part about Joseph, the thing that led him to have a life of extraordinary impact, it was not. It was not the dream interpretation. It was not the economic touch. The thing that's extraordinary about his faith is this right here. That Joseph was led, compelled by a vision beyond his life, a vision of the promised land, a promise that was sworn to his family four generations before him and in which they had seen no progress happen. Nothing had happened. In fact, it had gone poorly and seemed to be going the opposite direction. They were further away from the promised land than they ever had been at this moment. And Joseph says, I'm convinced based on the evidence of what I've seen God do in my life, that God will be faithful to get us to the promised land. In fact, I'm so convinced of this, I want you to take my bones there when we go. Now, I don't think Joseph knew this, but it would take 359 more years before his descendants left Egypt on the way to the promised land. And it would take 40 more years past that

for them to actually arrive. Crazy, that kind of faith. See, the massive faith lesson in the life of Joseph that's applicable to ordinary people like you and me is that our faith grows when our present work is driven by a future vision. Now, future vision is this promised land that God says is coming, that he's bringing to the defining trait of Joseph's extraordinary life, that somehow he was able to work. Not for a little bit of time, by the way. He was 30 when he was put in charge of Egypt. The Bible says he died when he was 110 years old. So for 80 years, he worked in Egypt with his eyes fixed on this future vision of the promised land. Everything he did was about pushing towards that reality. And Hebrews 11 actually says, this is the common thing that runs through all heroes of the faith. All of them had this vision beyond their life, working for something that they might never see with their own eyes. Hebrews 11, 13 says, they all, all of them died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeting them from afar. Like they're looking over the horizon, past their life, and they see this coming promised land.

And they are determined to keep walking and working towards it. Having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. He's prepared a city. Now that city is the coming kingdom of God. In the Bible, there's two promised land moments. There's the Old Testament promised land moment, where the people of God, the nation of Israel, literally walk into a literal promised land on the earth. And then there's a second promised land moment, the coming of the kingdom of God, the someday thing that has yet to happen. It's the city that God is preparing. Now there's a popular notion that I hear, and I even hear many Christians utter this notion, the idea that, you know, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Things are bad and they're getting worse. And for some reason, the older you get, the more you seem to say this, everything's bad. And the next generation, they're bad. You know, they're awful. I remember as a millennial, people would look at us like, you're the worst, I can't believe you guys. And I'm like, I'll never have that attitude. Then Gen Z came along and I was like, those guys kind of suck, you know?

And so for some reason, we just have this idea that like the next generation is somehow worse, that things are getting worse. Well, friends, if you believe in Jesus, that's the most anti-Jesus belief you can hold. They're not getting worse. Jesus says he's bringing his kingdom here to earth. The Lord's prayer, pray that you, Father, that your will be done, that your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. And the reason for that is because this is the arc of the story of what God is creating. There is a city coming for us. And it's actually coming to us. Revelation 21, two through three describes the arrival of this city. The author of it, John, says this, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people. He will dwell with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. See the first time the people of God enter the promised land, they left here and went there. The second time the people of God will enter the promised land, it leaves there and comes here.

It's wild. You've got to wrap your mind around it because it changes everything. You know, when you rent a Vrbo, they make you sign an agreement not to trash the house, right? Security deposit. Why do they do that? Because without it, you and I would treat it like it's not ours, because it's not ours, right? And they know this, because when you believe you're only in a place for a temporary short amount of time, and you're not the owner of it, you're not the steward of it, you tend to treat it poorly. But when you believe it's your house, when you believe it's your job to prepare to inherit the earth — what the Bible says we will do, by the way — you treat things very, very differently. Friends, this earth is our house. This earth is where God's going to come and crash his kingdom in one day. And what we get to do is to have a faith like Joseph that says, I believe, based on the evidence that I've seen, that this is the trajectory of what God's doing, and therefore I will work and I will spend my life working to see this kingdom come. Even if, by the way, I don't see it in the here and now and in this life. Even if, like all the heroes of the faith, I just greet it from afar at the very end of my life. One of the greatest living theologians in T. Wright, he described this reality this way. He said, What we do in the present — by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself — will last in the God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day we leave it all behind together, as the hymn so mistakenly puts it. They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom.

See, the job of every faith-filled person is to build for the coming of God's kingdom, even if it happens long after we die. This has been the crossroads vision for years. It's why we go do things like serve people in faraway places. It's why we tackle problems that many people are unwilling to tackle because they seem so big and seem impossible. In fact, many of the organizations that we partner with have this vision. When we encounter somebody with a vision that's so big it seems impossible, it's so big it might take longer than our lifetime, that's when we're like, hey, we should talk. That's when we say, hey, maybe we should work together. The work we've been doing, as an example, on the other side of the world, in India, in Nepal, for going on two decades, to end the sex slave industry over there, to end the rape for profit industry. That's what we're aiming for. Not to make a dent, not to help a little bit. We're trying to see it ended. And what we've said as a church is we will keep working towards it until that happens. Now, let's be honest. Will you and I see the end of that? I mean, maybe. God can do whatever he wants to. Certainly, God says in his word over and over again, I'm able to do immeasurably more than you can ask, think, or imagine. I believe that. I'm praying for that. That'd be awesome. And, yeah, we might not see it. Does that mean it's not worth working towards? No. No, not at all. Not at all. You can either go with the tide of God, the kingdom of heaven coming here, or you can work against it. Personally, me, I'd rather work with it.

This is all of our partners, but not just India and Nepal. This is the CityLink Center that we started in Cincinnati that I hope goes to more cities. We're working on that. It's this idea of what it would look like to see every family in generational poverty raised out of it. We've been working on this for going on two decades. Has it happened yet? No. Have we made progress? Yes. Is it likely to finish by the time you and I die? Probably not. Does it mean it's not worth working for? Go Puerto Rico, we partnered with an organization called Hunger. Amazing organization. They've been working hard. They've got incredible leadership, and they've tripled their work in the last year or two. They're now restoring six to seven houses per year of people in poverty who have no hope and no help. But their goal is to see all of it happen across all of Puerto Rico. Six to seven houses per year. Does it mean we can finish that by the time that they die? No. Doesn't mean it's not worth working for. Because you can work with the tide of God or you can work against the tide of God. We want to work with the tide of God. Now this year, actually, is the 20th anniversary of the first ever GO Trip that we ever did to Mama Lodi, South Africa. And six, we took 300 regular people $2,000 in donations. It's a big deal. who fundraised their own money to go over to help open the AIDS hospice that we paid for out of our pockets,

from people who trusted God with our income, and go over there and open up that AIDS hospice. We planted gardens and we built houses and we built in the kids over there. It was an amazing experience. I was actually on that trip. This is my shirt from that trip, by the way. Still fits, 20 years later, how about that? Oh six, Mama Lodi. And I'll tell you, man, it was an amazing experience to get to go over there. That's me and Sarah on the trip, by the way, 20 years ago. I don't have that shirt anymore. That one disappeared. It was an amazing, amazing thing to 20 years later, get to go to go Puerto Rico with my daughter. And I'd love to tell you a little bit about that trip, but I figured rather than hear from me, you might rather hear from her. So please welcome Gracie to the stage. Thank you. Gracie, by the way, she failed to ask me what time church starts when she volunteered to do this. And so it was a little earlier than she thought it might be. So glad that you're here. Okay, tell us about what we did and who we did it for. Okay, so our group had like 25 people in it and we split up to do two different houses. I was working for somebody Maria and she was an older woman in her 80s

who didn't have any family or friends. And so her kitchen was just destroyed. And then like all of her paint was peeling and there was cockroaches and it's just not safe to live in. Yeah, that's right. And what did we finish for her in the week? Did we finish her kitchen? No, we did not finish her kitchen. Okay, do you think it was worth doing anyway? Yes. Well, why? Because like you have to start somewhere and then I know there is gonna be more people coming and then they're gonna finish it. Okay, part of the cool part, by the way, this house, just so you all understand, Gracie is being very kind. The living conditions would shock you. I've been all over the world and I've seen poverty in all kinds of different forms. This was the worst living conditions I've ever seen. No running water, no one to help her, old food on the floor. She had a dog. It would do its business all around the house. It was really hard. You see us wearing masks in that video. That's because the smell of the house was so overpowering. We had to wear them so that we could just stay inside and actually do the work.

We saw lots of cockroaches. Spiders, how big were the spiders? Like the size of my hand. Okay, and did you like that? No. No, okay. Did you did the work anyway? One of the other cool parts is that we got to stay in the neighborhood. The house that we stayed in was about five doors down from Maria. And so we got to know and see the neighborhood itself really, really well. How many Marias do you think there are in Puerto Rico? Probably thousands. Thousands. And so we kind of helped one. Yeah. Do you think it's worth it though to help Maria? Yeah. Okay, why? Because like you have to start somewhere and then like those thousands could turn into hundreds, hundreds could turn into tens and then soon there are like no Marias left. It's amazing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now I know that as adults, we can listen to Gracie, a child, talking about this and we're like, oh, that's so sweet. You're so naive. You think you can make a difference. Oh, that's good. Right? I get it. Do you know that the God you serve says that you can't enter his kingdom unless you have the faith of a child? Unless you take the same attitude and you say, hey, I know it seems impossible, but I serve a God who does the impossible. Unless you take the attitude of, I know it might not happen in my lifetime, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. God says you cannot enter my kingdom. This is what faith looks like. To say it's worth it to work towards it anyway. Okay, now, so tell us about the trip. How did the trip change you? Well, like before I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go serve, it'll be fun. And then like after I was like, I wanna serve people. Yeah. It kind of became like a mission, right?

Yeah. Incredible. Okay, last question for you. There are probably some other families in here and maybe they didn't even know that we do family go trips. There's some other people who are thinking about going on a go trip, maybe as a family or maybe not even as a family. What would you say to them? I'd say you should definitely go. It's so great, and you get to spend time with your family, and you get to help people. Okay, awesome. Thank you! Bye! Now, you should know, I didn't tell her to say any of that. We didn't practice. She was like, I was like, hey, do you want to be on stage with me this weekend? She was like, sure. She was like, what do you want me to do? I said, I'm going to ask you some questions. She goes, what are they? I said, we'll talk about it when we're up there. By the way, if you do want to sign up as a family, if you do, or maybe just on your own, GoTrip signups are open this weekend. They weren't supposed to be open, but I said, hey, can we open them up just in case some people want to take a step? Because, again, faith is not what I think about up in my head. It's about what I actually do. And so I wanted to make sure that you have the opportunity to sign up for a trip. You can go to Crossroads.net and look at all the different trips to all the different parts of the world. Love, love, love you to take advantage of that and to go do it. Love for you to do that. The time is now.

The time now for today is also the time for the World Cup final, by the way. We haven't talked about that yet, probably should. World Cup final today. Who's rooting for Spain? Okay. Yamal, amazing player. Who's rooting for Argentina? I'm rooting for Argentina for one reason, Messi. It's because Messi is a short king like myself and we got to stick together. That's why. Want to see him win? We'll see. Now, when you watch the game today, you're going to see a lot of people wearing jerseys all over the stadium. In fact, people in the stands and people on the field, everyone will be wearing a jersey. But at the end of the game, there'll be two kinds of people. People whose jersey is still clean and people whose jersey is dirty. People who stayed in the stands and watched and cheered and people who actually got in the game and made a difference. Friends, do you know that if you believe in Jesus, you have a jersey? Do you know this? Galatians 3.26 says, You're wearing a jersey. When we send people on go trips for the last 20 years, you get a trip shirt. It's your jersey. And the goal is for it to not come back clean. The goal is to get it dirty, to have paint and stains and sweat all over it because you worked and because you mattered. Gracie was actually mad at Sarah because Sarah washed her go trip shirt as soon as we got back. And she was like, now it's going to be clean. And she was so bummed. She was excited when it came out and it had paint on it still. She's like, good, that's what it's supposed to be dirty.

By the way, you should thank Sarah for washing that shirt. It smelled like death ate egg salad and farted. It was terrible. You could have smelled it through the screen, I promise. It was really bad. But she gets it, man. Your jersey is not supposed to stay clean. The goal of life is not to go through it and live an ordinary story. The goal of life is to do the things, to exercise extraordinary faith by doing things that other people aren't willing to do, by living a life that other people find crazy. That's the whole point of it, to get your jersey dirty. And when you do, by the way, that's what will grow you. That's what will give you the confidence because you'll go out and you'll see what God did. It'll give you the confidence to come back and to keep on doing it. You watched my daughter right there. She's come back changed. Why? Because she went out and she grew. Her faith is now stronger. Your faith will not grow from a seat. It won't. You can come to church. You can watch church all you want. Hope you do. It's important. Please keep coming. Please keep watching. Please keep bringing friends with you. It's where you can get inspired to go have faith, to go do stuff. And my hope and my prayer for you is that you have the courage to follow in the path of Joseph, that you have the confidence to step out and say, I believe that God is bringing his kingdom.

And I'm determined to be part of that story. I'm determined to get my jersey dirty and to get in the fight. Told you my hope and my prayer is that you'd be bothered to action today. I don't know what that action is. For all of us, it's something different. I mean, that's the amazing part about God. There's not a one-size-fits-all call. You have a unique call in your life. You have a place that God's inviting you to step out into. I don't know what it is, but God does. And God's not stingy with sharing with you. If you ask what it is, he'll tell you. He'll tell you. So before you run out, I want you to just close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to ask God if there's any place of faith He wants you to step into. Is there a place He wants you to go? Maybe it is going on a go trip. If it is, why don't you commit to God right now that before the day is out, you'll go to the website and you'll at least look at the trips. Commit that. Maybe for you, it's stepping into a place of serving. Maybe there's somebody, a Maria, in your own neighborhood who's come to your mind as we're telling that story, somebody who has no help. Commit to step in and help. Maybe for you, it's something from the run journey that we did a few months ago. Maybe there's something in that journey that God prompted you with, a race He had for you, and you were inspired in the moment, but life has come in and you haven't taken the step yet. Well friends, I just want to read this verse over you. It says,

God, I'm thankful that you invite us into a life of impact. You could have just invited us to be fans who cheer other people on, but you invited us into the game. Give us the courage to step in, God. I pray for more jerseys that get dirty. I pray for more families who are willing to get sent. I pray for more people who are willing to step into the gap and to go to the uncomfortable place and to push and to work and to sweat and to see your kingdom come, God. That's why we're here. We believe in your promise. Amen. God has put him in front of you today. Whatever that next step is, take it. And if this message encouraged you, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a videogram or write to us at prison at crossroads.net. Our team reads every letter. We love to walk alongside you. Till next time, keep pursuing Jesus. Keep opening His word. Keep saying yes, one day at a time. See you soon.