Pray Bigger | Crossroads Church

Dang! Let's go! Listen, if you're new, you picked like the best time ever to come to Crossroads. Super Bowl of Preaching is coming up. The journey is going to be amazing. If you're part of Crossroads, by the way, and you're not thinking about who you're going to bring and invite to do the journey with you, you are thinking about it wrong. It will bless them and help them tremendously. They'll thank you for asking them to do it with you. By the way, my name is Kyle. I'm our lead pastor here at Crossroads. Today is the second week of a series we're doing on prayer called Pray Wild Prayers. And we're doing it because most of us pray the opposite of wild prayers. If we pray, we pray timid prayers. Almost like God is this father who doesn't want to be bothered. He's grumpy all the time. He's cheap, you know. Like if you were to ask him for twenty dollars, he would say, ten dollars? What do you need five dollars for? So that's, you'll get it eventually. And that's not who he is. God is a God, if you hear nothing else today, who has wild dreams for your life to blow your imagination out of the water. Last weekend, our senior pastor, Brian Tome, kicked off the series and he talked about how prayer is a pressure. It can shape us and it can reform us. And as one of his examples, he showed a before picture of my teeth before braces right here. And many of you have asked me since, did Brian tell you he was going to do that or ask your permission before he did it? And I just want to put your mind to ease and you to rest assured about the state of our friendship that no, he did not. He's got my phone number, email, those are my offices. He's got Sarah's number, my kid's number, my parent's number. He can carry your pigeons. Lots of ways he could have told me, but he chose not to. And that's actually, that's okay. I'll go with that. In fact, my prayer is that Brian would be inspired by my example of how I was willing to get braces for my gross crooked teeth and that Brian would choose to get braces for his gross crooked pinky. I don't know if they make braces for that, but someone can probably help him. I just, that's my prayer. That's an audacious prayer. That's what we're praying about, talking about today, audacious prayers. By the way, some of you are like, I don't know if I believe this thing. You're talking about prayer, talking to a God. I don't even know if he's real. That's okay. That is okay. My hope is that today you hear about a God that you wish was real, if nothing else, and that you have the audacity to try to see if he is real through prayer. Prayer is basically a taste test that God invites us to. It says this in Psalm 34, verse 8,

Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Prayer is a taste test. And my hope today is, before you leave this experience, that you actually try it today. That's what I'm hoping for. Today's audacious prayers, you might have heard that word said earlier in the experience. Not a word we use very often. The definition of audacity is a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks that might feed out of the box, and it comes to God. But God is a God who promises in his scripture that he has wild dreams for your life. But this is the kicker. They will not happen unless you and I pray audacious prayers. That's what we're going after today. Before you go any farther, let's pray together. God, thank you so much for the truth of your Word. And I'm asking for all of us, whether we believe in you, whether we don't, that today we'd have the audacity to consider that you might just be who you say you are, and we might just be who you say we are too. Amen. Amen. Well, on August 23rd, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave what would be one of the most famous and impactful speeches in human history. To a crowd of 250,000 people, he eight times repeated one four-word phrase, a phrase that's resonated across the globe and across generations in the decades since. Four words. I have a dream. Now, where did Dr. King get the idea of a dream from? Well, it turns out from the God that he followed, a God who gives dreams. Psalm 126.1 says, When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, that's his people, we were like those who dreamed. See, one of the core defining characteristics of people who believe in and follow God is that God's people are driven by dreams. Now, dreams are not goals. Goals are different. Have goals. Goals are great. But a goal is accomplished, able to be accomplished on my own power. With a little more effort, with a little bit breaks my way, I can accomplish a goal. A little stick-to-it-ness, I can get there. A little bit of elbow grease, I can make it happen. That's not a dream. A dream is a long-range vision given by God, and by the way, you can only accomplish it on his power. No matter what resources you have, or connections, or hard work, none of it can make the dream happen. Maybe a dream in your life is that your life would be about more than just consuming crap until you die. Yeah, God has a purpose for you and a plan for you that he might want to change the world for you. Maybe a dream in your life is that our country would one day look the way that Dr. King dreamed that it would look. Maybe for you it's that poverty would be eliminated in your family, or in the areas you are. Maybe it's that broken relationships in your life could be healed. Maybe it's that your body could be healed. What's a dream for you and a dream for me might be different based on our experiences. If you've never seen a marriage go the distance,

for you a wild dream might just be that you stay married. If you've never experienced or seen anybody who's lived with financial stability, getting out of debt might be a wild dream. You know no matter what, on your own effort, you cannot make it happen. Maybe that's your wild dream. But God says he's the God who gives us wild dreams. At its broadest, a God-given wild dream is anything that would make you say, man that would be like heaven on earth. And it connects to prayer because if you go to the seminal teaching on prayer that Jesus ever gave in his life, the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says to pray exactly that way. And depending on your religious background or not having one, you might have heard of this differently. In Protestant areas it's called the Lord's Prayer. Catholics, if you grew up that way, call it the Our Father. Same prayer from the same place, Matthew chapter 6. Jesus says this then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus says if you want to pray in line with me, the way that I'm teaching you to pray, what you pray for is God's kingdom to come here and now. And God's kingdom is basically anywhere where his perfect plan, his perfect will, is actually happening. But again the kicker is Jesus says it won't happen unless you pray. And many of us, I would say most of us, don't actually pray for that. What we pray for is earth on earth and heaven maybe someday. We pray for a little bit better. We pray for the thing that I think breaks God's heart more than anything else. We pray for okay. God if I could just get to the end of the week and it was an okay week. God if I could have an okay weekend that would be pretty okay. God if I could get the end of my life and have an okay amount of money in my retirement so I can go to an okay nursing home and suck down okay oatmeal through an okay straw, what a great life that would be. That's how most of us pray. Most of us are asking God for things in line with that. But if you look at the teaching of Jesus, Jesus never once, never once said pray ordinary prayers to have an okay life. Didn't say that. Now you and I would pray ordinary prayers when there's a set of rules for the ordinary prayers. Maybe nobody taught us, but it's basically how we follow the ordinary prayers. Rule number one of ordinary prayers is don't bother God. You know he's busy. I don't know if you knew this. Universe is pretty big and he runs the whole thing and so you know just keep it quick. Ask one time. We think that's a rule. Number two is don't get too lofty. You know too above your station. Don't ask something crazy. You know ask for like average and then God will be happy with that. He doesn't want to give you extravagant things. Just kind of average things. And then number three is always caveat heavily.

Let him know that it's totally okay if he wants to give you wildly disappointing things instead. This is how I think we think we're supposed to pray. And I know right now this weekend we've got lots of young adults, lots of college students in particular with us because today is the grand relaunch of Crossroads Uptown. Let's go. Happening right now. Amazing to see this space if you've never been there. It's this beautiful, beautiful old Catholic cathedral that's been renovated. Can host thousands of people. So excited about it coming back this weekend. But college students, I'll just tell you, I'm not your friend if I don't shoot you straight. You're in a vulnerable place in your life. You're at this place right between childhood and being a full-blown adult where all of the pressures and all of the stresses start to add up because you realize your life is on you. You gotta wash your clothes, make your meals, pay your bills, do all this stuff. You gotta hit your hit your marks in class. You gotta get that internship. You gotta make sure you're in the right major. All these stresses start to pile up on you. And what can happen in that moment is that you make the most tragic mistake possible. It's that you put an average goal in the wild dream place in your heart. See, for all of us, God made this place in us. It's the wild dream place, the place where He wants to speak in, wants to tell us what we're made for, what He calls us to. But the biggest strategy is you take an average goal, you put it there instead. You decide that your life is going to be about getting a normal job, so you can buy a normal house on a normal street. You decide that your ambition is to just be so numbed out, you don't feel stressed out, and you stay in. And the most tragic part of it is your life becomes utterly harmless. And okay, that's not the dream God has for you. God has wild dreams for your life. God wants to change the world through you. That's what he says. He wants us to pray that way. See, God knows whether we believe him based on how we pray. If you're praying ordinary prayers, what that says to God is you don't really believe I am the God I say I am.

You don't really believe me when I say pray for heaven on earth. You think that's some kind of a metaphor or I don't even know what, but you don't believe me. What tells God whether we believe he is who he says he is, and he has wild dreams for us, is how we pray. Do we pray with audacity? I don't think most of the Christian circles do this. Twenty years ago, back there was a controversy in Christian circles. You probably don't know about it. There was a book written called The Prayers of Jabez. Anybody remember this book coming out? It's a big controversy. The author basically said, we need to pray like this guy, Jabez, from the Old Testament. Now, the Bible barely mentions Jabez. You get one sentence about him and then a one-sentence prayer. This one right here, 1 Chronicles 4.10. Jabez prays, Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm, so that it might not bring me pain. And God granted what he asked. Now, Jabez means pain, like his mom named him pain. Some of your moms are like, I didn't know that was an option. That'd have been a great name for a couple of my kids, actually. And so this prayer is pain praying to have less pain. That's it.

And I think there's a reason why the Bible doesn't mention Jabez ever again, and why no one in the New Testament ever holds him up as this example that we should follow ever again. I think it's because God heard this prayer and he was like, okay, that's it? That's the most you can think of is a less painful life? Don't you know who I am? That's all you wanna ask for from me? See, I think the problem isn't that we pray the prayer of Jabez. I think the problem is that we only pray the prayer of Jabez. We only ask for no pain. And please hear me, I'm first in line for let's have a less painful life. That sounds great. Okay, less pain, awesome. Let's have that. In fact, there are times in my life when having less pain would be amazing, because you just feel underwater. You just feel like you're drowning, and just to get your head above water would be amazing. That's okay. But if that becomes the goal of your life, if that goes on the shelf called wild dream, you've made a tragic mistake and you've missed the call of God in your life. You've missed it. And I have good news.

It gets so much better. He has so much better, bigger plans for you than you can possibly imagine. Maybe you haven't heard what he said before. I'll give you a few examples in scripture, places where he talks about what he wants to do and what he's able to do. Philippians 4.13 says, "'I can do all things through him who strengthens me.'" Luke 1.37 says, "'For nothing will be impossible with God.'" Job 42.2, "'I know that you can do all things "'and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.'" Jeremiah 32.27, "'Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. "'Is anything too hard for me?'' And the answer is, well, no, not at all. Nothing's too hard. But the thing is, he will not, will not deliver wild dreams unless you pray audacious prayer. Won't do it. If you read Jesus' teachings on prayer, beyond the Lord's prayer, which by the way, people use this formula. That's not what it is. It's a framework. It's a teaching about prayer. It's not a formula.

It's not magic words that you recite. But if you go beyond that and you look at his teachings on prayer, again and again and again, you'll see Jesus begging people to pray audacious prayers, begging them. In all four authorized biographies of his life, the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you'll find these teachings. I wanna look at just one of those books, John, three chapters in a row, Jesus tells people, "'Please, please, please pray audaciously.'" John 14, Jesus says, "'Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, "'that the Father may be glorified in the Son. "'If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.'" And apparently the disciples don't do it. They don't get it. Because in that chapter later, he basically says the same thing, John 15. "'If you abide in me and my words abide in you, "'ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.'" And again, they don't get it because he comes back, John 16, "'Truly, truly, I say to you.'" He's like, guys, you gotta make me say it again. And truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give it to you. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full." See, your wild dream doesn't have to be some altruistic, crazy thing that says,

you know, help the poor. That's awesome. Yeah, let's do that. But God wants your joy to be full. When you pursue His, the dreams He has for your life, what you'll find is you become a much more joyful person. You know, Jesus almost exclusively put His disciples in positions where they needed to pray audacious prayers, almost exclusively. He was not the guy who was like, hey, you completed all the training, and now you're ready for the next. He just, like, threw them in the game. There's a time there's 5,000 men, women, and children besides, it's 20,000, 25,000 people with no food, listening to Jesus teach. And Jesus looks at His disciples, and He goes, you feed them. And they're like, we didn't bring any food. How are we going to do that? That's impossible. Well, with God, or with man, it's impossible. With God, me, I'm standing right here. Everything's possible. Luke 10, He sends them out two by two. He says, don't take with you any money. Don't take sandals. Don't take a change of clothes. Get out there, heal people, cast out demons. And they're like, what? Because you know me, nothing's impossible. He puts them in these situations where His dreams for what they're capable of doing vastly exceed what they can think and what they can imagine. I just wonder in your life, is there any place, any dream that seems impossible to you? I find that even the most consistent, faithful prayers have prayers that they're not praying because they're afraid to. Something's keeping them, it seems impossible, or too audacious, or they're just afraid for some reason to pray. In my life, there's a place where I am afraid and I'm praying, and that's because I'm teaching my 15 and a half year old how to drive. It is terrifying. It's the most scary thing I've ever done in my life, and I've been in some crazy situations. I was once on the border of Syria, a few hundred yards from a UN building that ISIS had just taken over and was currently occupying. That was scary. This was way worse, sitting next to him. One of the things you got to teach somebody is what red means. You're like, hey, you see the red light? And that means you stop. That's really, really important. But when it comes to prayer, you and I actually have to unlearn the signs that mean stop in our lives. If you want to pray audaciously, one of the most audacious parts is that you keep praying. See, wild dreamers refuse to stop praying audacious prayers. It's one of the keys. In fact, there'll be moments in your life where you'll turn around and the whole world will feel like it's turned red. Every sign in your life will be like, this is not gonna happen. It's impossible. It's been too long. If it was gonna happen, it would have happened by now. Everything will point to that. And if you want to be faithful in prayer, you have to push through it and pray anyway. This is the story we see in Scripture again,

and again, and again. The father of faith, Abraham, who, by the way, we're reading about right now. We're doing Bible in a year with us at Crossroads in the Crossroads app. Highly recommend it. If you're not doing it, you can listen to the Bible. If you've got 10 minutes on your commute, listen to the Bible in a year. Right now we're digging into the life of Abraham, the father of faith. Crazy story. He's 75 years old, has no kids, and God comes to him and makes this crazy, wild dream. Genesis 12, 2. God says, I'll make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. You know what happened next for Abraham? Nothing. For 10 years, nothing happened. God gives him a dream, nothing happens. So what does Abraham do? Well, if you read the story, this pattern becomes clear in Abraham's life. He has this keystone habit. It emerges in Genesis 12, verse 8. It says, That means he prayed. Again and again, no matter what was going on in his life, when it was going poorly and especially was going well, Abraham still asked God, still prayed audacious prayers for this wild dream of having a family that would fill and bless the earth. What I find really interesting is he did this even when he was successful. I was talking to college students, young people earlier, and it's a vulnerable time in your life when you might be tempted to put the average goal in place of the wild dream. I think just as vulnerable, just as susceptible, is when you are older and successful. I think that that makes you in critical danger of doing the same thing. An average goal in place of a wild dream in your heart. Because things are good. Got a good job and a good house, a good bank account, go on good vacations. And so maybe, just maybe this is good enough is what can happen. What's remarkable about Abraham, in part, is that that happened for him. He was very successful. He hit his goals in business. He made a lot of money, had a lot of livestock. He goes to Egypt. He comes out wealthy. But he doesn't stop. praying audacious prayers. He doesn't give up on the wild dream of God. Ten years on, in fact, what he does is he goes back physically to the place where God gave him the dream, and again he calls on the name of the Lord. It says this in Genesis 13 too. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold, and he journeyed on from the Negev, as far as Bethel, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called on the name of the Lord. This is what he does. This is the rhythm of his life.

He just goes back and he just keeps praying. And at 85 years old, 10 years after it, God responds again and affirms the dream. Genesis 15. And he brought him outside and said, look towards heaven and number the stars, if you're able to number him. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. He believed the Lord. This is the most remarkable thing about Abraham. He believed the Lord. Four words. And they're why he's considered the father of faith. He just believed that God is who he says he is and was gonna do what he said he was gonna do. He'd been waiting for 10 years at 85 years old. He believes God. And guess what happens next? Nothing. For 15 more years. It's not until he's a hundred years old that God delivers on that wild dream. For 15 more years, Abraham perseveres and prays and keeps going after the dream. And you and I have to understand, if we're gonna follow God, if we want to dream the wild dreams, if we want to not just get this settled for the average goal in our life, it's going to be the same thing for us. We're gonna have to ignore all the red in our life that says it's never gonna happen. All the red in our life that says it's way too late. And we're to keep praying. This is the story, not just of Abraham, but every single hero of faith. Joseph in the Old Testament. 17 years old. He gets a God-given wild dream that he's gonna be this ruler in charge of people. And guess what happens next? He gets thrown in prison. Falsely. Sold into slavery. Thrown in prison. Everything's awful in his life. That's at 17 years old. 13 years. His life goes down and down and down and then and then suddenly at the age of 30, God does exactly what he said. And the whole time, Joseph doesn't stop believing, doesn't stop praying the audacious prayers for the vision. Paul in the New Testament,

where we're going to study in the run journey. You might know the story of him blinding light out of the sky. The Damascus Road experience is what we call it. He's knocked to the ground. God gives him this wild dream for his life. Did you know it basically didn't happen for another decade and a half? In fact, in there for eight years he lived alone in a cave, is what we think. Looks like it's real. Looks like God's dream hasn't happened. But Paul perseveres and prays. It's gonna be the same exact thing for you and I. What in your life have you stopped praying for? What wild dream in your life have you given up on? What thing have you thought, if it was gonna happen, it would have happened by now? What have you stopped? What would happen if you had the audacity to start again? The audacity to believe that God is who he said he is. This is how it's always happened. How it's always happened. At Crossroads, we've seen this story play out so many times. This audacity to pray and to keep praying. It's about 20 years ago God gave us a conviction as a church that it was our job to care for the poor and our city. Nowhere in scripture does God ever say it was the government's job. He never says, government, your job is to love and care for the poor. Instead he says, church, followers of me, that's your job. So we had this conviction and that turned into a wild dream of, what if instead of just trying to, you know, marginally just kind of help a little bit with poverty in our city, what if we tried to fundamentally eliminate generational poverty? That's a wild dream. And that wild dream turned into a vision called the CityLink Center, a one-stop shop to help people escape generational poverty. And that was about 2002, 2003. And what happened next is the same as what happened in the Bible. It was met with nothing but nothing. Resistance after resistance, headline after headline, written about what a terrible idea it was.

Two-year court battle that went all the way to the Ohio State Supreme Court. This battle, fundraising that went on. It was just, it was crazy. It was ten years from the dream to when the doors actually opened. And what happened when they opened is that people walked in those doors who they themselves had a wild dream. That maybe one day they could escape the poverty they had always experienced in their family. They had never seen anybody hold down a job. They never seen anybody build up a savings account. They never seen anybody own a home. And this wild dream started to become a reality thanks to the audacious prayers that were prayed on their behalf. If you don't know anything about CityLink Center, I think you'd be encouraged by this. Father, may Your Spirit be thick in this building. Thick. We want people to sense You when we walk in there, and we want people to sense You when they walk in there for a They would smell there's something different about this place. It's not the architecture. It's not the paint There's just something different and we want that to be you Holy Spirit. If you ever did inhabit a building Since the temple we'd love this to be the first one We want you to be in there because people who are following you are in there make this a special place We want to be your hands father say yes to these prayers throughout this entire night Years ago our church prayed a wild prayer we asked God for a place where people in our city could come for real help in a real future a Place built on dignity a place where the church steps in with everything we have City link is located at 800 Bank Street in the West End The organization provides a host of services all under one group to help put clients on a path of lasting growth and hope City link is lifting Cincinnati ins out of poverty through a new program We really focus in on what the client's needs are and we provide them the services and resources To help them see their vision help them get to their goals Today that prayer has a name City link and when you walk inside it does not feel like a program. It feels like a community

Coaches classes childcare training all under one roof built around one idea You do not have to figure out your life alone The miracle is not the building. It's the people inside of it people taking steady steps towards a life God made them for him getting out of prison. I finally got to the halfway house Had to do about six months in there Thankfully, I had a Decent case manager. It's just the same. Why don't you go check out City link? And so as I came in here, I knew I knew I was home When I heard about City link and I first got here I was nervous because I didn't know what to expect You know, I was just very nervous because it was a new environment something new for me So when I first came here they sat with me and said, okay what program you want to do construction Today teach you basic knowledge of your basic tools Things I didn't even know about I've worked on plenty of job sites When I got into the culinary class and the training program itself, yes I really did thought I knew a lot of stuff But there were some things that I was missing out like on the basics though. I didn't just get skills from it I was able to obtain a serve safe So that allows me to be able to be in a kitchen to safely serve the food I have the skills and the knowledge to handle that When you graduate you meet with employers and it was like within that 24 hours I had my license I had a job and I had a car that was a lot of steps closer to being stable The where I work at now at Southern Grace, so I obtained that position from here So it opened up a door for me to where it's like I have a family I feel like I have a job with a family. I'm in my own place Because the city link I got a job because the city link if I didn't have CityLink, I don't know where I would be You know, we don't get to hear that you're important or you know that that people really care about you

Find yourself wondering if am I loved or am I cared about or am I you know, where did it even still be here? and this is a lot of reason why a lot of people they had on suicidal thoughts or They don't want to fight for themselves because they feel like nobody is fighting for them But in reality, it's always somebody fighting for them because God fights for them even when nobody else does They just got to trust and believe that Things will get better Because I never thought in a million years that I'd be sitting here right here being able to tell a little bit of my story I'm not surviving anymore. I'm actually living Man I I love it. I love it. Those stories are incredible. She says never in a million years That's a wild dream that came true through audacious prayer. See audacious prayers Pull wild dreams into reality. That's how it works Audacious prayers, by the way, you know at Crossroads We give a million dollars a year to CityLink one million dollars every year to fund fund them And it's one of the best investments that we make just in the last year in the last year of clients It received an extra four point eight million dollars in new income Thanks to CityLink and the job improvement that they had that's crazy crazy 4.8 X return on our investment if I said I know a stock that That'll give you 4.8x money in 12 months. You'd be like, put all my money in there. That's the investment of CityLink. We're so thankful for their staff, so thankful for their volunteers. If you want to volunteer, check out more. CityLink.org. They serve 7,000 clients so far. Incredible. I'll tell you, because audacious prayers pull wild dreams into reality, you get this encouragement to pray more audacious prayers when you see these things actually happen. One of my new audacious prayers, wild dreams, is that God would increase the number of CityLinks. Right now there's 12 cities looking at CityLink, and what would it mean to have one in their area? I'm praying that all the places where we currently are, Dayton, Columbus, Lexington, we'll all have a CityLink. That every city we go to would have a CityLink. That's a wild dream. There's no way to make that happen right now. Not unless God shows up. It's an audacious prayer, but I've seen it happen again and again and again. Crossroads Uptown. Perfect example. We had to shut down Crossroads Uptown and Code, one of the most painful meetings I've ever led in my life.

We took the 60 core volunteers and sat them in the back of that room on those risers. Maybe you're sitting in those risers right now. Had them there and said, we have to shut this down. It's just not the right time, not the right thing. And before that meeting I was standing in the beautiful auditorium, and my audacious prayer, my wild dream was, God, don't let this be the end. God, may this reopen someday. No resources, no plans, no ability to make that happen, but a dream and a prayer. 12 months ago I was meeting with the 20 student leaders of our college ministry at Crossroads Uptown, and I asked them, what was the wild dream they had for their ministry? And they told me that they had heard stories and rumors of when the place used to be full of people in life, but none of them had ever seen it. It was a dream. And they said, what we dream of is an experience that we can invite our friends into, like something big and awesome that happens regularly. And in that moment I was like, God, they're asking for this thing to reopen. That's what they're asking for. Would you make it happen? That started a new train of audacious prayers, and wouldn't you know it, here we are opening it up. By the way, this is crazy. That meeting was exactly 360 days ago from today. Do you know what 360 is? That's a complete turnaround. See, nowhere on our radar sometimes in our life is that God might want to completely change things. Nowhere on our radar. But God has wild dreams, I'm telling you, that are bigger and better than you can imagine. I've seen it personally in my life. Prayers that I didn't even pray for me. When I was 17 years old, my mom came to me and she said, hey, God's calling you to be a preacher. He told me. I heard it. She ripped the page out of her Bible with a verse about being a preacher. She handed it to me. God's gonna do this in your life. And I was like, no thank you. That's not my dream. And I spent years, sometimes far away from God, pursuing paths that had nothing to do with preaching or being in ministry at all. I got a job in corporate America. I got a degree in design.

I didn't run after it at all. But my mom kept praying, kept praying. And 13 years later, at 30, I stood on this stage and preached my first message. Prayer pulls wild dreams into reality. Now in my life, that's how I pray. I pray wild prayers for my kids. Yes, I want them to have a good house and a good job. And yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff. Fine, fine. But more than that, I want millions of people to know Jesus through them. That's my wild, audacious dream and prayer. And I pray it regularly for them. Regularly. Why? Because I want them to know a God who has bigger dreams and plans for their life than they can possibly imagine, because that's the only God who exists. And if that's not the one you're following, then you're not following the God of the Bible. He is for you. He has great plans for you. And I know you might hear this. You're like, God, this is very different than the religion I grew up in. This does not feel like religion at all. Exactly, because it's not. It's not religion. Religion says that God wants you to pray. And He's like, count the number of prayers. You know, if you do seven Hail Marys or Our Fathers, like that's not quite enough. He wanted eight. Oh, I just missed it. Maybe next time.

No, that's not God. He has plans and He has dreams. And like any relationship, He wants you to talk to Him. He wants to know if you believe that He is who He says He is. But I know for you, the biggest issue and the most audacious thing might not be that. It might be believing that you are who He says you are. That you're loved, that you're chosen, that there's dreams and plans for you. Too audacious. And I get it, man. I get it. But I know He has plans. I know He has dreams for you because He has them for me. I'm no one special. I didn't get straight A's in my spiritual report card growing up. I still don't. But God has wild dreams for my life. And I know He does for you too, if you have the audacity to believe Him. My prayer for you right now in this moment is that you would have the audacity to believe that you are who he says you are. In conversations, no one should ever love me like you do. Sometimes, my bad decisions define my false suspicions. No one should ever love me like you do. While I'm on this road, you take my hand. Somehow you really love who I really am. I push you away, still you won't let go. You grow your roses on my barren soul. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Last night confidence was shaking my wounds,

And my past was saying no. No one could ever love me like you do, yeah. While I'm on this road, you take my hand somehow. You really love who I really am. I push you away, still you won't let go. You'll grow your roses on my buried soul. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? The way I push you through, you had to see. I'm a train wreck, I'm a mess, you see the best and the worst of me. Still, I can't imagine that I've earned your trust. I don't understand where your love comes from. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? To be loved by you. You want to know who you are? You're a daughter of the King. That's who you are.

You want to know who you are? You're a son of the Most High God. That's who you are. And He has wild dreams and plans for your life if you'll lean in and pray audacious, dangerous, risky, bold prayers to Him. Before you run out, I'm going to invite you to do that right now. If all this is is a mental exercise, some interesting thoughts on prayer, then we wasted our time together. Before you run out, try praying. Close your eyes right now. Your audacious prayer might be four words. God, I believe you. Pray that right now. Maybe you don't know what the wild dream is for your life. But if He has one, you'd like to. Tell Him. Maybe you know what the wild dream is. This whole time you've been like, oh man, that's it. Oh man, I haven't prayed for that. I haven't been audacious. We'll start right now. Ask Him. God, thank You for being the God who dreams wild dreams. Thank You for being the God who doesn't let us settle for average goals, but the God who wants to change the world in and through us. You are so good. And God, I'll just say, I believe You are who You say You are. And I believe I am who You say I am.

Amen. If you want prayer from somebody, come up front. Audacious prayers. If you're like me, I hope that you took the reminder that I needed to hear today to start again. And if this is the first time you're about to do an audacious prayer, if you haven't already, man, great job. I want to encourage you to continue and don't get frustrated if it doesn't happen right away, man. We heard about 10 year prayers, 13 year prayers in the making. But you know what both of them had in common? They happened. They happened. And that's just encouraging. And I hope it encourages you, too. Yeah. I hope you heard in this that God loves you. He doesn't just have prayers answered for somebody else, for people in general. He has something good for you. And I know for lots of the conversation I have with people, that could actually be around something physical, but they need to experience God's healing physically in their bodies. We actually have an incredible opportunity coming up, led by a dear friend of mine, a dear friend and mentor to this community. His name is Paul McConaughey. He is traveling to all of our different sites and online, equipping us to both operate and experience the healing that God offers. And so if you go to Crossroads.net slash prayer, there's all the details there, all the dates, all the times at all of our different locations. It'll be February 5th for those of us who are joining in online. But Paul will be leading all of them. So if you have a need or if you just want to experience leaning into more audacious prayers, it's an incredible opportunity to check it out. As always, we'd love to pray for you. We actually, just after the last service, got to pray with some wonderful people who jumped onto a live stream, onto a Zoom call that we have just following this. Because while we love that you're getting to watch service with us, there's maybe just another step past that that you can take.

We'll be answering questions. We'll just be chatting so we can talk a little bit about what's coming up in the life of our church and pray with you. Or we can just connect. There's a Zoom link or a QR code just below and you can click or scan. And we'd love to connect with you in like 90 seconds here. As soon as it takes us to run from here to there, hopefully you'll join us for a few minutes of Hamlet. Hey, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week or in a couple of seconds. That's right.