Remember Before You Forget - Louie Giglio

We're journeying through the book of Joshua, and I really want to encourage you again. If you miss a gathering, go back online and pick it up because this collection builds layer on layer on layer, and you can't just drop in this week and not be around next week and drop in three weeks from now and then miss a couple of weeks and drop back in. You really need to let the story build. Joshua, we talked about last week, is a history book, and it does have some boilerplate history things in it. We're talking about one of those today, but trust me, the Holy Spirit will mind something powerfully spiritual out of every one of those historical moments, and He's doing that for us again today. We're in the promised land. If you haven't gotten there with us already, we've crossed the Jordan by the miracle power of God, and now we're in the promised land. There's still work to be done, cities to be conquered, land to be possessed, but we're in the promised land. What's the first thing we're going to do in the promised land? That's where we are today, in Joshua chapter four, if you have your copy of scripture, and we're really coming around this idea of building a monument to remember the faithfulness of God. Let me just read for us what happens after all of these people cross over the Jordan. It says, when the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, I want to read the whole chapter here, so let's just jump in together. Choose 12 men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you, and put them down at the place where you stay tonight. Now again, I'm saying this layer on layer, but I feel empathy for somebody who missed last week. Before the people crossed the Jordan, the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant of God into the river. When their feet touched the waters, the water rolled back.

They carried the Ark, the presence, the glory, the holiness of God into the middle of the river, and they stood there until all of Israel passed by. And so now everyone has passed by, but the priest and the Ark are still in the middle of the river. The water's still backed up. He says, go right where they're standing, and pick up 12 stones, and carry them over with you, and put them down at the place where you stay tonight. So Joshua called together the 12 men that he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, go over before the Ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, so we're talking about boulders here, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. So there's going to be 12 of these stones to serve as a sign among you in the future. Can you say those words with me? In the future. Let's all say it together. I want to remind people and everybody if you're online, in the future. Let's say it again. In the future. It's interesting that we just got in, we're sort of closing the door on the last chapter of life, and a lot of us need to do that. We're believing that God has a new chapter for us in our lives, and God's speaking that over us today. In the future. In other words, I want you to get these 12 stones, but they're about the future. And that's what God is saying to us today. I'm speaking to you right now in real time, but it's about the future. It's about your future, and I want to speak that over you in God's name today. God has future in your story. In the future, when your children ask you what do these stones mean, tell them that

the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off, the it being the ark. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. In other words, we're grafted into these people of Israel, so these stones are still a memorial for us today. So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan. I'm reading a little fast because we're kind of recapping here again. According to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua, and they carried them over with them to their camp where they put them down, Joshua set up the 12 stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priest who carried the ark of the covenant had stood, and they are there to this day. When Joshua was being written, these stones were still there. Now the priest who carried the ark remained standing in the middle of the Jordan until the Lord had commanded Joshua was done by the people, just as Moses had directed Joshua. The people hurried over. Now remember, there were like three million of these people, so there's a lot of hurrying going on here. And as soon as all of them had crossed the ark of the Lord and the priest came to the other side while the people watched. And then it talks about how… these half-tribes came over as well. That just means that some of the tribes of Israel, their land was apportioned on the east side of the Jordan, but the fighting men were coming over to help fight and possess the promised land. That day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel. Verse 15, then the Lord said to Joshua, command the priest carrying the ark of the covenant law to come up out of the Jordan. So, verse 17, hello, Joshua commanded the priest, come up out of the Jordan. Don't you love that? And the priest came up out of the river carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord. No sooner had they set their feet on the dry ground than the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and ran at flood stage as before.

On the 10th day of the first month, the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal. Now you're like, well, who cares about Gilgal? Well, you're going to love Gilgal in just a minute. On the eastern border of Jericho, we know about that. It's got a big wall around it. And Joshua was set up at Gilgal, the 12 stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, can you say these three words with me? In the future, when your descendants ask their parents, what did these stones mean? Tell them, Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground for the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this, we're going to come back to this, so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful. Amen. And so that you might always fear the Lord your God. Amen. What is that all about? That's all about God understanding the power source for us being able to possess what he has promised us. And the power source isn't our might. The power source is our memory. Jericho's waiting. AI is waiting. We're going to see in a few weeks 31 kings have to fall down. There is a lot of possessing to be done. But before we do anything, I want you to pick up 12 stones and we're going to pile them up here at Gilgal where we're going to camp tonight. And they're going to be a memorial forever to the people of God. The first observation in this text for me that I want us to see today is that God wants us to start by remembering. You think he wants to start by doing, start by getting busy, start by fighting, start by building, start by planning. No. I want you to start by remembering. Take 12 stones, bring them to the camp. I'm going to stack them up. There's going to be a memorial there for the generations to come. In other words, I want you to remember before you forget. Let's take a short poll. Has God ever done anything significant in your life that you would sort of attribute maybe not to A-level miracle, you're not ready to go that far, but it definitely was not like a human normal occurrence what happened in your story. Anybody? Keep them up just for a moment. Cumberland, please, just keep them up for a second. If you're online, please hold it up, tell your neighbor. Okay, just want you to look around the room for a minute. Okay, so God for a lot of us has done something that is pretty close to being miraculous. And God said don't forget that. Before you forget, remember, God knew that amnesia was the nemesis of his people

possessing the promise. And he knows today that spiritual amnesia is your nemesis for experiencing the fullness that he's promised you. And so what he's saying to us today is, hey, the river's flowing again. In other words, there's no going back. It's at flood stage. And so if you kind of look around and see Jericho and go, oh, man, Jericho's fortified. Let's go back to where we came from. That's not an option anymore. And you're going to need in that moment to remember. In other words, I want you to stack stones before you see walls fall. A strong memory is better than a strong army. And God wants you today to remember. Second observation, to remember what? To remember not what you have done, but to remember what God has done. These 12 stones were not a monument to something that the Israelites had done, to what even Joshua had done or Moses had done. These stones were a remembrance of what God had done. We put our toes in the water and the river backed up and we crossed on dry ground and we are never going to forget it. Man, you would like to say, well, I wouldn't forget it if I saw a river back up and I crossed on dry ground, but man, how quickly we forget. These guys had something to stack up. They had the Red Sea parting, put that rock down. They had manna every morning for 40 years, stack that rock up. That's pretty great room service right there. They had quail in the evening for 40 years. There was a time where they had no water and God said to Moses, touch that rock with your staff and he did and water came out of this rock,

water sufficient for millions of people. They stacked that rock up. They said, remember the cloud every day, stack that rock up, the pillar of fire every night, stack that rock up. Remember when Moses went up on the mountain and came down and his face was shining, stack that rock up. Remember when we were fighting in battle and when Moses would hold his arms up, we would prevail, stack that rock up. God has brought us to the edge of the water. They had a lot to stack up to remember God, but he knew the tendency was that they were gonna see the first adversary and forget. The first hurdle they were gonna fold. Even when God delivered them, and you can read this in Exodus chapter 13, it says when he delivered them, he didn't lead them by the way of the Philistines. Now what does that mean? It means there was a direct short route to the promised land coming out of Egypt, it was just a few days journey to the promised land, but to get there, they had to go through the land of the Philistines, like Goliath's people, okay? And he said, I know given that you've been making bricks all these years, that if you go into a challenging environment like that, you might fold right away. So I'm not gonna lead you the short way,

I'm gonna lead you the desert road, the long route. Now some of you are like, oh man, I hate this, I hate that whole principle, I hate that idea, I just want God to get me there as fast as possible. God knows sometimes getting you there as fast as possible is putting you in a situation that's gonna take you under. And so he leads you the long route so he can build you and build into you the confidence that God is going to come through for you. So he takes them out into the desert route, and he didn't plan on them being out there 40 years, but he did plan on them being out there long enough to see the miracle power of God. And as it turns out, when they stacked up rocks at Gilgal, it wasn't just that the water rolled back, they had a lot of rocks to stack up at Gilgal. But you know what, every single rock was a hardship. And we're gonna get to it in just a second asking like what rocks do you and I have to stack up today, but can I just tip my hand a little bit? Your whole pile of rocks is gonna be hardship. Because when you start remembering what God has done, you're not gonna remember, you remember that time that we were just living large and the kids were, you know, act insane and we both got simultaneous bonuses at work and we went on a Disney cruise, remember that, how awesome God was in all of that? We didn't have to wait at the buffet line for like five minutes. Anytime we were on that whole trip, we didn't get sunburned,

we saw Mickey, put the rock down kids, this is God. This is God. No, you don't have hardly any rocks in your memorial of remembrance, of ease. All your rocks are of hardship where if God hadn't come through, you wouldn't have come through. And they had a story to tell that God did it. The third observation I want us to see here is that eventually this is gonna shift out of Gilgal and into our story right now. We are a part of Gilgal, that is a part of my story and your story by faith in Christ. This is all of our story, but we're not just looking back at history, we're living history. And God's wanting to pose the question today, so what about you? What's in your? stack today. And even maybe a more important question, is there anything your kids are going to ask about? This just so stood out to me in verse 6. In the future, there are those words again. In the future, when your children ask you, what did these stones mean? Here's what I want you to tell them, or here's what you're going to tell them. It really is begging the question today, is there going to be a point in our lives where the people who come behind us, whether they're our biological children, our spiritual children, or people in our family, is there going to be a time in our lives where the people who come behind us look at our life and so marvel at what God has done, they ask, what are these stones? And we have the opportunity to say, oh my goodness, let me tell you, this stack is the stack of the faithfulness of God in our family. Do you

have a stack? Are you building a stack? And are you building the kind of life that your children are going to look at some point and go, mom, dad, explain to me all of this? Or is your life so normal and so ordinary, so like everybody else in the neighborhood, that your kids are never going to inquire of you what has happened here? And God is saying, I want you to live a life that is extraordinary, that is filled with purpose and destiny and significance. I want you to know that you are not on earth to be ordinary, but you are on earth to cross over into the promises of Almighty God of an abundant life of meaning and purpose and eternity and value such that it intrigues your kids. What are these stones about? And then you get to tell them the story of God's faithfulness in your life. If you're a family in this place today, and your dream for your life and your kids doesn't require a miracle of God, then you're dreaming too small today. God has more for you. And I'll just speak out into this gathering, because I know there are a lot of people in this gathering. I'm not trying to get in your story and try to act like I understand where you're coming from. But there are people all across the spectrum in this gathering, people in my demographic, people all the way down to Gen Z, down to Gen A. And I understand, I read stuff. I don't know if it's true or not, but I read what people say about the emerging generations that, you know, there are not a lot of them in relationships. A lot of them aren't tracking to want to date somebody. A lot of them aren't really seeing marriage and marriage seem to be being delayed in a lot of ways in these new emerging generations. And maybe you're sitting there today going, I don't even have any kids. I don't know if I'm going to have any kids. I haven't been on a date in the last little while. So I'm not really worried about what my kids are going to ask in future generations. I want to speak to you today. God's got a future for you wherever you are. And I don't know what the rest of the generation's thinking, but it's most likely in God's plan that you're going to meet somebody. You're going to meet somebody who's fallen in love with Jesus, just like you have. And you're going to join your lives together. You're going to commit your lives to each other. You're going to make a covenant in marriage to build a family

and a future. God's still got a plan and a future for you, by the way. I don't know what's going on all around, but God still got plans and He's still got a future. And He wants you to believe that. And He wants you to be confident in what He can do. And He wants you to be confident in a day that your legacy and your family and your children have an opportunity for you to tell them about the faithfulness of God in your life. Stack of stones. What's in your stack today? I was talking last week about 2008 when we planted this church with a team of people. And what a powerful boulder that is in Shelley and I's stack of stones. And you might think, man, that was all the way back to 2008, Louis. You still got that in your stack? And I'm like, oh yeah, we still have 2008 in our stack. For 18 years, that stone's been in our pile. Let me tell you about it again, how God was faithful in our lives. But you know what? We don't just have 12 stones in our stack. We're standing on Pebble Beach in our stack. You've got stones as far as you can see of ways that God has come through and done what only God can do. I think the fourth thing I want to lift up for us is that God wasn't just looking for a marker, a stack of stones. He wanted people who had been marked for him. Chapter five shifts gears if you've got your text. And if you come down to verse two, the little header there says, the circumcision and Passover at Gilgal. I'm sure somebody's got that highlighted. It says, at the time, the Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again. So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites at this place. And I'll let you look in the footnotes

to see what that means. It's quite graphic. Can you notice this with me real quick? The Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites. Again, what does verse three say? So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites. Don't you want a life like that? That is just one verse between God speaking and you doing it? It's not like he said it in verse three and then you did it like seven books later in chapter nine. God said it, he did it. God led him, he followed. God instructed, he obeyed. And so now all the Israelites are getting circumcised. Now, short story of this is, is that they were circumcised before, but once they went into the wilderness, none of the men were circumcised in the wilderness. Now, all the men of fighting age who were in the wilderness, God said to them, because of disobedience, you're not going into the promised land. And they died in the wilderness. But all of their descendants who are now alive and going into the promised land have not been circumcised. And circumcision in this day was a physical sign that these people belong to God. Among all the other people of the earth

and all of their gods that they follow, we are God's people and we follow the one true God. And circumcision was outward symbol of the fact that these people were called by God to be his people. So now we've got circumcision happening all over the place. And it says down at the end, if you come down to verse eight, and after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remain where they were in camp until they were healed. Now, I don't know, it's probably a two to three week process. And then the Lord said to Joshua, today I've rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. So the place has been called Gilgal to this day. What God is saying is, I wanna cut off the wilderness of sin. And I wanna usher you in to the promised land. It's time to cut off the past and to believe God for the future. And this carries over into the New Testament. In the New Testament, some of the strict Jewish people tried to carry on circumcision. And they even tried to bring it into the gospel once Jesus was dead, buried and raised from the dead. And they tried to add to Jesus died, oh, and you have to be circumcised because remember Moses and remember Joshua. So we gotta be circumcised to be of true faith.

And Paul in the New Testament came against this like big time. He's like, no, no, no, don't come in here with all that external business because what's happening to us is not a circumcision of the flesh. What's happening to us is a circumcision of the spirit, of the heart. When the Holy Spirit comes to us, when we put our faith in Jesus and are born again, he cuts away the old life and he ushers us in to the new life. He cuts away the old man and ushers us into the new man in Jesus Christ. He said, put off what was and put on what is now in Jesus Christ. It's a new circumcision. I'm telling you, we are it. We are the new circumcision that Paul talks about in Philippians chapter three. We're the ones who have said, God, take the flint knife to the old me, the old man, the old way, the old thinking, the old habits, the old desires. Take those away and give me a new heart, new mind, new me, new desires, new vision. It's not just a marker, it's saying God I want you to mark me. It's not just a stack of stones that I can point to, it's a heart that has been made new in you. This is what God is calling us to today.

And the way he did that is so beautiful to me. All this kind of coming together, let me just read verse 9 and 10, it says, And then the Lord said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. That was what the circumcision was a symbol of. So the place has been called Gilgal to this day. Now if you look down in your footnotes, Gilgal means to roll or to roll away. So the place where they camped and put up the stack of stones was called roll away. Why did they call it roll away? Because God had rolled the waters back and then brought them back to roll the old away and to usher in a brand new day. So on the evening of the 14th day of the month, while camped at Gilgal, roll away, camp roll away, on the plains of Jericho, they could see the fortified city. The Israelites celebrated Passover. So we still haven't fought a battle, amen? We just stacked up stones. And now we're having Passover. Well, and we got circumcised in between there. And now we're celebrating the Passover. We're celebrating what God has done. We're celebrating salvation. We're looking forward to the ultimate Messiah, who is Jesus. We're looking forward to this moment where our sins are covered for all time's sake. And the day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land, unleavened bread and roasted grain. The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land. There was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate the produce of Canaan. Now we're going to come to this in a bit, but that day room service ended, and it was time for them to eat, enjoy, plant, till, tend, shepherd, harvest the crops of the land. And this is what God wants for you. He wants to ask you today, do you remember anything I've done for you?

We'll start there. Let's start with that today. Before we look at any challenges, let's start with that. Do you want to be marked by me as a person that belongs to God in this world? Looks different, sounds different, acts different, talks different, thinks different, believes different, gives different? Great. Let's do that. Now let's remember the Passover. And when we remember the Passover, what we're remembering is, hello, that Christ gave His life for us. He took on our sin, died in our place, was buried in our tomb. But on the third day, Gilgal happened when the angel came and said, call this place at the garden, roll away, because I'm going to roll the stone away today. And that's the first thing you're going to do at Gilgal, roll away. The first thing you're going to do is celebrate Passover, and Passover is going to be about Jesus paying for the sins of the world and rolling the stone away. Man, don't you — somebody wanted to almost clap for that. I'm with you, man. I'm with you, totally. I mean, don't you love how this story is so woven together through all of God's Word? The night of His death, Jesus celebrated what? Passover. And when He celebrated Passover, what did He say to His followers? Do this in — in what? In remembrance. Stack stones here. And I'm telling you, the greatest stone in any of our stack, the hinge stone, if you will, the anchor stone of any of our stack is the saving work of Jesus Christ. It's in my stack today.

That's not ancient news. That's not when I was 11 years old in a thing. That's not way back in my history. No, one of the stones in my stack is Jesus Christ gave His life for me, and the stone was rolled away. And I'll never forget it. I will remember it all the days of my life. You can read on your own 2 Peter 1, 1 through 15, but it's a powerful story about Him saying to His followers before His death, I want to keep reminding you of these things. What things? The fact that you're not dead. this, but you're this. You're not the old man, but you're the new man. You're not back in the wilderness. You're in the promised land. And I want to keep reminding you, and I want you to remember. I'm going to keep reminding you, and I want you to remember. I'm going to keep reminding you, and I want you to remember. Can I just tell you that preaching at its core is not inventive, and it's not entertaining. Preaching at its core is not meant to be inventive or really even to be entertaining. But that's what you got to have to get people to come to church these days. Not in this church, but a lot of churches. You got to be, you got to come with something I haven't heard before. You got to put a spin on it that I've never thought about. You got to say it in a way that I've never heard it before. You got to keep my attention, man. You got to somehow make it interesting. And I'm just saying today, I'm all about that. As a communicator, you don't want to be boring. You don't want to be dull, because we're preaching the greatest story ever told. But it's not our job to come into moments like these and be inventive or entertaining. It is primarily our job, and preaching and teaching is primarily about reminding. You're like, man, it must be a tough job being a preacher, because you got to do this, you know, every Sunday, and you basically got this for your whole lifetime, and you're telling one story over and over and over and over and over

and over again. It's like, yep. But it's the only story that brings dead people to life. It's the only story that can set people free. And what we want to celebrate in moments like this is, do you remember? Do you remember who you are? Do you remember whose you are? Do you remember what he's done for you? Do you remember what he's given you? Do you remember what he's promised you? Do you remember the way he has delivered you, saved you, brought you through? Do you remember God? Do you remember your purpose? Do you remember his plans, or have you suffered spiritual amnesia, and now you're overwhelmed with Jericho? The last takeaway is simply that. Why did God do all this? Why did he roll the water back? Why did he dry the riverbed? Why did he lead them to cross over? Why did the ark stay in the river? Why did they build up a monument of 12 stones? What was the purpose of it all? Well, it says at the end of chapter 4 what the purpose of it all is. He said to them, in the future, verse 21, in the future, when your descendants ask their parents, what do these stones mean, tell them. We know what he wants us to tell them. He said it several times. And look at verse 24. He did this so that. So that means why. Why did he do this? Two reasons. So that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful. And so that you might always fear the Lord your God. Now the first part of that happened, chapter 5. Now when the Amorite kings west of the Jordan, all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until they had crossed over, their hearts melted in fear. And they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites. So A was accomplished. All the peoples of the earth knew that the hand of the Lord was powerful. But B, we're wondering about that one today. So that you might always fear the Lord your God. In other words, that you would have such an encounter with God that you would be in awe of him. And when you come to Jericho and you're coming to Jericho and the walls are fortified and heavily defended and intimidating, that you in that moment will fear God more than Jericho. And you will move forward in faith that extinguishes fear because you already feared God. You weren't afraid of what man could do to you or what man could take from you because you already had a healthy dose of the fear of God. This stone is in a place where I can see it every day. I'm sure the Israeli Antiquities Commission

isn't really thrilled that I brought it home from Israel, but it was in a riverbed and there were thousands of them. We were in the Valley of Allah where David took down Goliath. Water may flow in this riverbed sometimes of the year, but the time that I've been there, no water's flowing. It's just rocks like this as far as you can see. And when we were there, a lot of us together, we went down into that riverbed, Shelly and me, and we picked up stones. And we paused right there in that moment. Not our Valley of Allah, we didn't take down Goliath, but we stood in that valley and remembered God's faithfulness, remembered that He's the one who fights our battles. Remember that this is how we fight our battles. We fight them on our knees, we fight them in faith, we fight them in prayer, we fight them in praise. That's how we fight our battles and God has come through for us. And I picked up this stone and brought it back and put it down in a place where I see it every single day. Every morning I see this rock. And it just reminds me, David, when he went into the valley, he was not afraid of the giant because he was filled with the fear of God. God wants to work in your life in such a way that the people around you go, what in the world, God is alive and He's powerful. He wants to work in this church in such a way that people in this city would say,

not Passion City Church is alive and powerful, but God is alive and powerful in Passion City Church. He wants that for every church in our city, every Bible-believing, Spirit-filled, Jesus-exalting church in this city. God wants to move through them in such a way that the city would wake up and say, oh my word, God is mighty in power. But He also wants to move in such a way that you would be moved. And the next time the story comes, the opposition comes, the challenge comes, you'd be like, man, put the rocks on the mic, put the rocks of my life on the mic and let the rocks cry out. You say, what am I supposed to do with that? Well, I would encourage you to start stacking stones if you haven't already. You're like, how would I do that? Well, A, you might wanna have a family meeting. Get the whole family around the table and say, hey, family, we're gonna stack stones of the way God's been faithful in our lives. Anybody wanna stack one? What's one that you guys wanna put in? And I don't know, maybe one of your kids would say, well, you remember when we went through this hard season and we all didn't think it was gonna work out, but yet it did and a miracle happened and let's put that stack in.

Remember when dad lost his job and he kept telling his kids, I'm doing my best. I've gone to every interview, I've put in every application, but so far it's not working out. And remember that time that we all came and we prayed together and said, God, we're just asking you one more time, would you do a miracle? And remember the people from Chicago called and dad got that job. Okay, can I put that rock on? Absolutely, let's put that rock on our stack. Remember when grandma passed away and we were all right there by her bed the day before she died. And in her last few breaths that she had, she said to us, looked right in our eyes and said, don't worry about me. I'm good and I'm gonna be good. I want you to go and live for Jesus. And remember when we walked out of her room and we felt like God had been in that place with us. Yeah, stack it on. And when we come to the place that we haven't yet seen God move, we let the rocks get on the mic and we let them tell again of the faithfulness of God. And we believe. This is the story and it's a story for you. It's interesting in chapter five,

talking about that circumcision and the generation that died in the wilderness. It says in that chapter in one place that the sons were gonna be able to step into what was meant for the fathers. In other words, a lot of the fathers died in the wilderness. but their sons now are going into the promised land. And I have a word today. It's been on my heart this morning for the men of this house. Don't cash in and hope that maybe your kids can step into what God had for you. Don't say it's too late for me. I don't really know if I can fully live and possess the land, but I hope my kids will someday step up and live and possess the land. I wanna tell you today, God's plan is still for the future in your life. And he's saying to you today, no, you step in and possess the land, take the land for your family, and then you pass that down to your children and down to their children. Don't give up, dad, on his vision for you. Just hoping that your kids in middle school today, your kids in students later today, your kids in passion kids today, well, they seem to be getting it. It's still time for you to get it.

Still time for you to get it. Scott Harrison came and spoke to our team. I'm closing with this this week. He's an incredible friend, an amazing leader, and a visionary. He's probably been the leading voice for clean water in our generation. Brought clean water to countless millions, hundreds of millions of people around the earth. He leads an organization called Charity Water. If you don't know about it, you should check it out. There's still 700 million people on earth who are drinking polluted water every single day. It's a solvable problem. He was sharing with our team about being in Uganda when a new well had been dug. These teams come in, they search for water sources underground. They had found one near this village where women and children had been walking four, six, eight hours a day to get dirty water every single day of their lives. They found a water source on underground. They brought this phenomenal drilling rig in, started drilling down into the ground. Not too long before they hit an aquifer and a geyser of clean water was shooting up into the air, just right outside this village. And people were losing their minds. People were running around yelling and screaming

and dancing and rejoicing and shouting and kneeling. And just pandemonium had broken out. But he noticed, God said, a lady to the side who was weeping. And he looked at her and he's like, I don't know, why would she be weeping? There's water coming up out of the ground. And so he went to her and he said, ma'am, I don't understand. Why are you weeping when there's a geyser coming up out of the ground? And she said, I'm weeping because it dawned on me just now that this water has been under our feet our entire lives. And it made me think, I wonder if you realize today that right under your feet right now in Christ is living abundance. And somebody in this gathering, you're still walking four hours, six hours, eight hours to get dirty water when there is an aquifer called Jesus right under your feet waiting for you in faith to drill down into his promised land for your life. Stack stones or start today by tapping into what Christ has done for you. I know I'm so grateful for a stack of stones, but I'm more grateful to be standing on Pebble Beach to be able to just know today that Shelly and I can just scoop up a handful of rocks. They're like falling over the sides. It's like, oh, that time and that time

and that day and that day. And you know, they're all hardship. They're all losing a parent. They're all walking a parent through cancer. They're all being at a graveside. They're all seeing friends crash and burn. They're all hardship, every pebble, but they're all stories of the faithfulness of God so that when we wanna go back or are tempted to be afraid, we first let the rocks cry out. Thank you, Lord. Praise you, God. you