Proverbs 29:18

Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. (ESV) > > Where there is no revelation the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. (NKJV) > > When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild, but whoever obeys the law is joyful. (NLT)

As one year closes and another begins, will you carry your past as a chain—or surrender it to the God who holds your future?

Happiness, Expectations, and the End of the Year

My name is Garrett Marks, and I was very blessed to be given the opportunity to teach today. The last sermon of the year is one to be cherished by any teaching pastor, and there's a spiritual weightiness—even a holy pressure—to teaching the final message of the year. As I spent time with the Lord, I kept coming back to this verse in Proverbs, a book of wisdom.

Many of us look forward to next year with eager anticipation. We've also spent the last week looking back over the previous 364 days, grading them: were our expectations met or not? We greet one another with "Happy New Year," but happiness is really a balance of expectations versus reality. If our expectations exceeded the reality of the year, we feel it wasn't a great year. Some of us are coming out of a hard year—we've lost loved ones, lost a job, faced tough transitions and difficult news, and now we must learn to live in a new reality. Others got the job, the school, or the grades we hoped for.

Two Hard Questions About Our Resolutions

As your pastor this morning, I have a hard time encouraging us to make New Year's resolutions, and here's why: most resolutions are about me. They're very you-centric, and as someone who wants to be gospel-centric, I just don't see the gospel in them. The top resolutions are always spend less, save more, lose weight—in my case it would be gain weight, which is why I got married two months ago. Give my wife Grace a hard time; I'm working on it.

So let me ask two hard questions. First: if all of our New Year's resolutions for 2017 had come true, would they have affected anybody but ourselves? Second, going deeper to a spiritual level: if all of our prayers prayed in 2017 had been answered, how many lives would have been changed besides our own? Think about that throughout the day.

If we want a godly vision for the future—to live in the future and hope that God promises every one of His people who are called by His name to serve as ambassadors—then we need to start this year with a gospel-centric mindset. My dream and vision for this next year is that the Spirit would be poured out in magnificent ways we've never seen before, individually and corporately, and that it would overflow into Escondido, San Marcos, and all of North County—that we would see revival, people coming back to God, repenting of their sins, and believing the good news.

Divine Guidance Versus Running Wild

That's what brought me to Proverbs 29:18. We don't want to run wild; we want divine guidance throughout 2018. And I can tell you with confidence this morning that God is not finished with you. How do I know He still has a plan, a purpose, a calling, and a vision for your life? Because you are still here. God is still giving you the breath of life.

So here is our first point: a man without a vision is a man without a future, and a man without a future will always return to his past. I speak for both men and women here. Specifically, without a godly vision and a future, you will default back to your past. At the end of the year we all look back at the mistakes we made and the broken pieces we carry. God made us so that we always remember our past, especially our sins. The question is: will we let that past hold us back, or will we put our irreversible past into the hands of a God who can transform it and use it to shape our character to match our calling?

If you don't believe in Him, you don't have this future and hope, and your past will be a chain holding you back, an unbearable weight on your shoulders. But thank God we serve the One who says:

Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

If your past is condemning you, saying you're not worthy of the future God has in store—the destiny and calling He has on your life—give it to a God who says, "Throw that burden on me. I want to shape it and use it to make your character match the calling I've given you." As a church our mission is to live life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus Christ. And individually, God has a special calling for each one of you. He knows the hairs on your head; He knows your future and holds your past. He has gone before you to prepare a way and to prepare good works for you.

Daniel: A Man Who Leaned on the Lord

When I think of a man heavily burdened who leaned on the Lord no matter his circumstances, I think of Daniel. As a young man, Daniel was born in Jerusalem when the king of Babylon besieged the city and deported the smartest young men to serve in the king's court. Daniel was one of them, along with his three friends—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. From the day they were torn from their families to live in a new country under new laws, these four friends decided they would follow the Lord at any cost.

Nobody could find any fault in Daniel. God blessed him with knowledge, skill, and understanding, and he was raised up as a high governing official, as were his three friends. People didn't like that, so they tried to find fault—and the only fault they could find was their devotion to God. May that be said of each of us this next year. Daniel was so devoted that the only way his enemies could try to kill him was by legislating a law that allowed prayer only to the king. Daniel kept praying to Yahweh, so they threw him into the lions' den—but God closed the mouths of the lions, because He wasn't finished using Daniel.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego also received a death sentence for refusing to bow to a golden image. Standing out in a crowd of thousands, they told the king they would not bow, because God wasn't done using them, and they trusted He would save them—and even if He didn't, they would serve only the one true God, Yahweh. God met them in the fiery furnace. These were men of courage, boldness, and vision.

A Man of Vision Is a Man of Prayer

That brings us to point two: a man with a vision is a man of prayer. We see this in Daniel 9:

In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus... I, Daniel, perceived in the books... that according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet... namely seventy years... Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, "O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled..."

He continues in verse 18:

"O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name."

And the answer came:

While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin... the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice... saying, "O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding... for you are greatly loved. Therefore consider the word and understand the vision."

Daniel prayed because he read the Bible. Spending time in the Word, he saw in Jeremiah 29 that Jerusalem would lie desolate for seventy years, and he perceived it pointed to his own circumstances. So he prayed for God to restore His people. It's the never-ending story: God lets His people wander, the world takes them captive, and He saves them—and Daniel prayed for that saving to come as soon as possible.

Daniel knew that prayer is the unseen driving force of divine revelation and vision. Without prayer, a Christian is like a body trying to live without oxygen, or a car trying to run without gasoline. As Andrew Murray says, the coming revival must begin with a revival of prayer—both corporately as a church and individually in your home and your private room. I pray this year would be a revival of prayer here at Cross Connection. We give out prayer cards because praying for one another is part of our culture, and we see God do amazing work through them. May we expand that even more.

Keep On Praying When the Answer Is Delayed

Many of us would love Daniel's immediate answer. But some of you have been praying a long time. Your pastoral staff reads those prayer cards weekly, and we have some of them memorized—we know the names, the healing you're asking for, the hurts you carry. Maybe you keep praying and still see no answer. My word to you is: keep on praying.

Turn to Daniel 10. Daniel is again praying, deeply saddened, fasting and mourning for three full weeks, and an angel comes to him:

"Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me... Now I have come to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come."

Why was this prayer delayed? Not because God delayed the answer—I believe He hears us immediately. Sometimes prayers are delayed because of unseen forces in another realm where angels and demons contend, and we must live in the midst of that. So we must keep praying. I pray we would not be the church that quits praying on the twentieth day.

Years ago I went on a missions trip to Costa Rica, inviting people to a gospel meeting and worship service in Spanish. Walking through an impoverished town where three generations lived under one roof, we met a family. The middle son had been in a wheelchair for eleven years—a tree branch had fallen on his head while he worked as a tree trimmer, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. His mother, the grandmother of the family, had been praying for his healing for eleven years. We anointed him with oil, laid hands on him, and prayed—and we saw him healed before our eyes.

As amazing as the healing was, more amazing was the grandmother's story. For eleven years she hadn't simply prayed that he would be healed—she had prayed specifically that he would be healed on his birthday. And the day we happened to walk by was his birthday. You can call it coincidence; I call it God answering prayer. I pray we wouldn't be the church that stops praying at the tenth year. As long as God gives us breath, we are to be talking with Him.

Don't Treat Prayer Like a Spare Tire

Point three: don't treat prayer like your spare tire. A spare tire sits unused until an emergency—a flat, a crisis on the road. Many of us neglect our spare until disaster strikes. I pray we would not be a church that pulls prayer out only in times of crisis. We should be a church continually and consistently praying, especially if we want a godly vision for the future and to live in the future and hope of Jeremiah 29:11.

Perhaps prayer isn't easy for you. My advice is: pray until you pray. Keep on praying. I find that men especially have a hard time with it, thinking it isn't masculine enough or it's awkward. So look at the prayer I prayed at the start of the service, Psalm 25:4–6, written by King David—a man who slew lions and bears with his bare hands, killed Goliath, and had a song sung of him that "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." A manly man—and yet a man of intimate prayer and relationship with God. If Daniel and David could do it, so can we. Men, let's be men of prayer this next year.

Reflecting the Light, Saturated for the Squeeze

This past week my wife and I drove to Zion National Park. On I-15 just before Las Vegas, you can see the Ivanpah solar power plant—three towers with glowing white tops surrounded by thousands of mirrors that track the sun and direct its rays to boilers that produce energy. It got me thinking: if we as Christians are called to be the light of the world, are we doing a good job reflecting that light? Are we spending time with Christ so we reflect Him—or is our mirror pointed at the world, reflecting the world back to the world so we blend in? Part of being a Christian is that we stick out, because God has set us aside as ambassadors He works through to reach a dark place.

We are also like sponges. Whoever we spend time around, whatever we spend time doing, soaks into us—we become like the people we're with. So what comes out of us when we're squeezed by the pressures of life? If we've been saturated in the presence of God, He comes out. If not, what comes out is cursing, bitterness, and grumbling. We are promised pressures as believers, but we are also promised a great future and hope.

My greatest desire this next year isn't that we accomplish our resolutions, but that we would realize God is not finished with us. Daniel would have read Jeremiah 29:11 beforehand:

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.

We have this future and hope, yet we let the past weigh us down and keep us from the calling, destiny, and purpose God created for us. In Acts 13 it says that David, after he had served God's purpose in his own generation, fell asleep. I pray God would not take any one of us until He has accomplished everything He planned for us to reach our generation for the lost.

There are people out there who don't yet know Christ—people you are the most equipped to reach, more than I am, more than Pastor Miles, Pastor Mark, Pastor Jason, or Pastor Nick. God has built relationships you have that we don't, so you can be the light of Christ to them. I pray we would be those people in 2018—men and women excited to see God move, excited to be used by Him as ambassadors for Christ, with a godly vision and the knowledge that we have a future and a hope.

Some of us went through hard times this past year—losing loved ones like losing a limb, having to relearn how to live, how to write, how to walk. I pray our closeness to God would only be beginning this next year, that we would be a people who spend much time with our Savior, listening to Him, praying with Him, and working for Him.

Closing Invitation

As the worship team comes forward, I want to give you an opportunity. If you've never put your faith and hope in Christ, and the weight of your past is too much to move forward, you can put that into the arms of a Savior who can hold it and form it to match your calling. That is what He loves to do—He shapes our past regrets and brokenness into the character that matches our calling, shaping us to reach this next generation, with all our experiences included and crucial to that work. After this song, I'll lead us in a prayer to give our future and our past to a Savior who can handle it.