Your Future Isn't Doomed | Crossroads Church

I want you all to do me a favor. I want you to go deep real fast. Getting your mind really fast, the worst thing you've ever done or the worst thing that's ever happened to you. You got it? That didn't take very long. All right. Now, I want you to think about the you that you see, the you that you think about when you think about yourself being the most successful. So the future you, the successful achieving you. You got it? You got it? What just took place in your brain was something super powerful, something super, almost unimaginable and honestly, incredibly scientific. What just took place in the region of your brain known as the DMN, which is a default mode network. Now, all the science majors in the room are like, oh my God, like, I know what that is. Oh, it's like brains and stuff. For all those regular people, it's the spot in the brain where your imagination sits. It's a spot in the brain where your future is imagined. Now, the reason I told you to imagine the past because scientists say that in that spot, there are two different networks going on. The first one is imagining the future.

It's picturing you in a different time. And the second one is deciding if it's good. Now, the one thing that determines if you imagine that future as good is your past. It's basically impossible to recall the future and think about the future without recalling the past. Now, why did I just tell you that? What is that? The problem with that is that some of us have a messed up past or we've done some stuff in the past that was messed up. See, the problem with that is if we think about our future in terms of our past, we might actually carry some weight of our past. We might carry some of that heaviness into our future when we think about it. And when we think about our future that way, it puts itself in an identity that is above what Jesus has to say about your future. If you don't remember anything else I say tonight, you need to remember this. Your future is not doomed. There is a guy by the name of Louis Zamperini. Zamperini, can't remember. But he's pretty awesome or at least he was pretty awesome. See, his story is not one that was made up, it's real. He was a 1936 Olympic runner and I mean a beast, right? Set in world records. And so if that wasn't enough,

when he gets done with that, he decides I'm gonna go to World War II. I don't know, that seems like a good idea. So he gets on the thing that goes to World War II and he does the fighting thing. And in the midst of that, he has to get in a plane and fly that plane and his plane crashes. And if that's not bad enough, when his plane crashes, he lands in the ocean where he spends the next 47 days of his very weak life. And by some happenstance of a miracle, he survives. See, he's rescued, but you guys, the story doesn't actually get good yet because in his rescue, he's rescued by the Japanese army and he becomes a prisoner of war. Now, there were three people in that plane. Two people got off the boat and survived the 47 days. And when people ask Lewis like, hey bro, what happened? Like, how did that go for you? How on earth did you survive? He says, a bunch of things, but the one thing that sticks out, he says, the man who died didn't have hope. I did and my other friend did. We had hope. And that sounds really simple. That sounds actually incredibly bizarre.

Hope, could it be? In Jeremiah 29 11, the Bible says, for I know the plans that I have for you. Plans that are good. Plans to give you hope and a future. Now I ask myself, why on earth would the scripture be separated like that? Why would God say and promise hope and a future? See, because a future without hope, you guys, is not actually a future. A future without hope is just the past re-imagined and recycled. It's not actually the future. So I think about that. And we see this through history. We see this throughout biblical history and real history. There's a woman in the Bible and this is a rather popular story, but maybe it's your first time hearing it. I'm gonna tell it my way. Is that all right? Y'all can not talk back. That's great. Here's my way. So there's a girl, let's go call her Carol. Carol finds out early on that she has a blood problem and the Bible calls it an issue of blood. So some people interpret that, that blood is just gushing out of her body in a way we don't actually know where,

She can't control it. Now her past is that of doctor's visits, of constant trying new treatments, spending all her money trying to get the right cure. Her past is honestly all that of insanity. See, she's trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results. And here's what happens next. She gets this bright idea. She's like, you know what? Jesus is coming through my town. I wonder if I touch the hem of his garment, that thread on his outer garment, if I'll be healed. And something wild happens. See, she has hope. She has a radical hope. And this hope that happens when she touches his garment gets morphed into faith. In Hebrews 11 and one, it says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. That means that hope is actually incomplete. That faith is the completion of hope. Why am I telling you that? I'm telling you that because when Jesus healed her, which he did, he said to her, woman, your faith made you whole, not your hope. See, the hope was what she needed to get to Jesus. The hope was what she needed to believe that her past did not define her future and her future was not doomed.

That's true for y'all tonight. See, when she did that, she had the opportunity to look at her future through a faith lens. She didn't have to just look at it through the lens of her past, which is the way that we're wired. She looked at it through a faith lens. And that DMN, that thing that I just told you about, we have two networks, I told you, one that imagines the future, one that decides if it's good. But I think God gave us hope so that we would have a third network. We have a different network that separates us from the rest of the world, you all. See, we have this hope, the Bible says. And now you might be asking yourself, Hannah, where do I put the hope? And I gotta tell you, you cannot just put it in anything because anything is gonna fail you. But if you choose to hope in Jesus, he did something 2,000 years ago that changed the game. He died on a cross, a death that he did not deserve. They put nails in his hands and nails in his feet and they stuck a spear all the way through his side for you and my sins. And when that happened, he died. He did not stay there. When he got buried in a tomb

that his family couldn't even afford, he did not stay there. He decided that on that third day, he was gonna get up and it changed the game forever. It did something for you and for me that we could not do for ourselves. It secured a bright future forever. That's right. See, it made sure that no matter what we've done in our past, no matter however we messed up, no matter who's done something to us in our past that we didn't deserve, he secured a bright future. See, Jesus doesn't make us wonder if our future is gonna be bright. He doesn't make us question, he promises it. Every other religion tries to get at this. Confucius says, you know what? I can know of the way. I can point you to the way to a better life. No, Buddha says, I can point you the way to a better life. And Muhammad says, I can command you a way to a better life. But Jesus says, I am the way to the better life. I am the truth. I am the life. And guess what, you guys? The next time that your past starts talking to you, telling you what you can and can't do in the future, you look at the past and you tell it, I'm seeing through faith lenses now. I'm gonna have a bright future because Jesus secured it.

Thanks, y'all.