Go Up & Possess It

At a certain point, God wants His people to move into the blessing that He has before them. That's exactly where we're at in Deuteronomy chapter one this morning. Open with us and follow along. We bless you for that and bless our time in Your Word, we pray in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.

How many of you would say today that God is so good? Praise the Lord! It's pretty good. Good morning and welcome. While you are standing, if you would take out your Bibles this morning. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of our ushers will bring you one. We are in the Old Testament of the Bible, which is the first two-thirds of the Bible, and we are in the fifth book, the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 1 is where we will be today.

Surprise, surprise! Thank you again to all of you who prayed for and supported the Walk for Life. Of course, we are defending champs for many, many years, so we're grateful for that. Thank you.

Deuteronomy chapter 1, today we're going to begin reading at verse 19. We finally made it out of verses 16 through 18. Verse 19: "So we departed," Moses writes, "from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw on the way to the mountains of the Amorites, as the Lord our God had commanded us. And then we came to Kadesh Barnea, and I said to you, 'You have come to the mountains of the Ammonites, which the Lord our God is giving us. Look, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up and possess it, as the Lord God of your fathers has spoken to you. Do not fear or be discouraged.'"

Father, as we stand here this morning, there are many things that are on our minds and in the news around us that can cause us to be afraid and discouraged. I pray, God, that we would rejoice today in Your goodness, Lord.

Certainly, we should use wisdom when we hear some of the things that are going on. Maybe that means we give air high fives or whatever it may be. But God, we are grateful that You are so good to us. We want to praise You this morning for Your goodness, just as we sang.

Lord, I pray that You would speak to us by Your Word and by Your Spirit as we are gathered together in the fellowship of the body of Christ. I pray that You would encourage and strengthen our hearts. Teach us and help us to see in what ways this passage of Scripture applies to us today. We pray this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, "Amen." You may be seated.

Three and a half years ago, I was asked by a friend of mine who pastors a church north of here, or did pastor a church north of here in Santa Barbara. I was asked to come up at that time to Calvary Chapel Santa Barbara to do an evaluation of the staff and the leadership team there at the church. Over the course of a few months leading up to that, my friend, Pastor David Guzik, who some of you may know, had shared with me some frustrations he had.

I'm sure it will be a surprise to you that sometimes pastors get frustrated about things in the church they are pastoring. As he shared his frustrations, I offered to come up and do an evaluation of their leadership team and some of the structures. He said, "Yeah, that'd be great. Why don't you do that?"

So, I put together a survey for the church and had their staff go through it. Pastor Mark and I went through tons and tons of responses from their staff. Then we decided that Mark and I would go up and interview some of the staff and put together a report for David and the leadership team of the church.

We put all this together and went up there. In September of 2016, Mark and I arrived and were sitting down with David in his office, talking. My wife was there as well. As we were discussing the church, David looked at me and said, "Myles, why don't you just move up to Santa Barbara and take over?"

The church and pastor are with me, and I do all the stuff. Don't worry, I'm not leaving. I know people freaked out when I said this sort of stuff, but I'm still here. This was three and a half years ago.

He said that to me, and maybe you've never been to Santa Barbara, but it's kind of like paradise. I know it's hard to beat Escondido, really. Since Andrea and I first got married, we spent our first anniversary in Santa Barbara, and we've gone up pretty much every year since. We have friends in Ventura County and Santa Barbara County, and Pastor David and his wife, Inga, are really good friends of ours. We go up there from time to time, and we have some really sweet hookups to stay at some nice places. We've always kind of liked the area.

Many times, as we would be driving into Santa Barbara, if you've ever taken the 101 up through there, it's just beautiful as you're coming in. We've often dreamt out loud about the possibility of moving to Santa Barbara and thought about what it might be like to serve the church there.

So now I'm sitting in David's office, and there's kind of this casual offer. There's a part of me that's like, "Wow, that could be interesting." Then the offer became a little bit more formal just a short time later. After we had given this report to the staff and the elders, and I had met with their elder team at the church, I got a call one afternoon in late 2016 from the head elder on their elder team. He said, "Listen, Miles, we've been reviewing all your stuff, and Pastor David has decided that he's going to hand the church off to someone else. Your name is on that list, and we're wondering if you would be willing to let us put your name in as a candidate to take over this church."

To say that I was a little bit conflicted would be an understatement. It got a little bit more complicated right after that. Many of you know my wife is a nurse in the intensive care unit. She was at a training seminar up in LA and happened to sit next to a group of nurses from Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. They got to talking, and one of them was the nurse manager from the ICU. The lady said, "Well, if you ever move to Santa Barbara, why don't you call me? I'll give you a job."

So it was like, "Oh my gosh, why did that have to happen?" For several weeks through the holidays in 2016, I really wrestled with what to do for a lot of reasons.

It seemed like a really easy decision. We could move to Santa Barbara; we really liked that area. Escondido is pretty awesome, and we have really good friends up there. I could work with someone who's a good friend but also a very good mentor. In the Christian world, David Guzik is quite well-known, so that could be kind of fun. Moving to a larger church seemed appealing, and there were a lot of things that just seemed like a yes. I had often thought that if that opportunity ever came, I probably would say yes.

However, I found myself really conflicted because I just didn't feel like I could say yes. There are a number of reasons why I felt this way, but one of them is pertinent to the text we are in today and to where we are at. We are thinking about these things through the book of Deuteronomy. If you've been with us over the last several weeks as we've started this new book, and if you've been paying attention, then you know that in this section of Deuteronomy, Moses, the leader of the nation of Israel at that time—some thirty-four hundred years ago—is taking some time to remind the entire nation of Israel of their recent history.

He reminds them that they had been brought out of bondage and slavery in Egypt by God, ultimately through the plagues He brought upon Egypt. After leaving Egypt, Moses had said they would take a three-day journey into the wilderness to worship God. They came to a place known as Mount Sinai, or in this passage, it's referred to as Mount Horeb, sometimes called the mountain of God. They spent two years there, and then after those two years, they began their journey to the Promised Land. What should have been an eleven-day journey turned out to be a little longer than that.

Now, when Moses is giving this message, it is actually forty years after they first came to Mount Sinai. He is sharing with the people of Israel, just before they enter the Promised Land, a little bit about their journeys over the last thirty-eight to forty years. The question arises: why is Moses sharing this bit of history with them? There are probably many reasons, but three of them instantly come to mind. For one, there were a lot of people listening to Moses when he gave this history who weren't around to see and experience all the things he was recounting.

For the last 38 years, Moses is going to describe a lot of the people he is talking to who just weren't there in the midst of it. They hadn't been born yet, or they were too young to remember. Not only were there many people who had not experienced the things Moses is sharing about, but Moses understood a really important truth: a shared history, an understanding of a shared history, causes people to be joined together as a people. That is what makes a people a people—the shared common experience of history.

Another reason is that knowing where they had come from and the things they had gone through would help them to better understand where they were going and have some wisdom about how to get there. This is why Moses is sharing all of this now.

With this in mind, I want to share a little bit about our recent history here at Cross Connection Church. I think this is important because there are many of you seated here this morning who haven't been a part of what God has been doing over the last 10 or 15 years. In fact, I was looking through our records, and in the last six years at Cross Connection Church, we have received more than a thousand cards from people indicating that they are new here. So, there are a lot of people who have come through here. Many of you have only been here for the last three or four years, which means there are many things that God has been doing here that you just don't know about.

Sometimes, it's good to remember a little bit about history because when we have a shared history, it unites us together as the people of God doing the work of God. It also helps us to understand a little bit about our identity and where I believe God is leading us and directing us.

Now, in the text we will be going into next week and in the following weeks, Moses is reminding Israel of their departure from Mount Sinai 38 years prior to the events happening here. He is reminding them of their journey, which should have been an eleven-day journey to a place called Kadesh Barnea. Kadesh Barnea is in the southern part of the nation of Israel today, in what we call the Negev Desert. Kadesh Barnea was kind of like the border region or the border town of the Promised Land, similar to how one might imagine San Diego and Tijuana.

In a little border town, 38 years prior to this event, Moses had brought the entire nation of Israel on an eleven-day journey to that place. They were prepared to go into the Promised Land; they were at the border of blessing. When they arrived, Moses and the people decided to send spies into the land to search it out and see what it would be like. They reached a pivotal moment in their history where they had to move out from where they had been and into the blessing that God had prepared for them.

Point number one on your outline: God's people are almost never staying in one place. If you receive our weekly email that I sent out, I talked a little bit about this very thing last week. If you don't receive that and would like to, you can just go to our website, lifeinconnection.com/subscribe, and you'll receive that weekly email. Alternatively, you can visit lifeinconnection.com/weekly; both links go to the same place.

God's people are almost never staying in one place, and this is clear throughout Scripture. It starts in the very first chapter of the Bible, the book of Genesis. When God created humanity, He gave man and woman a command that was pretty simple: be fruitful and multiply, which apparently we have done pretty well. However, there was another part of that command: fill the earth and subdue it. This idea of filling the earth implies moving out and continuing to explore all that God had made.

We see this theme of God's people not staying in one place beginning in Genesis and continuing through various stories in the Bible. For example, when God met with Abraham, as recorded in Genesis chapter 12, His command to Abraham was to move out from where he was—where things felt secure and comfortable—and to move into a blessing. God is constantly doing this. It was true for Abraham, and then for Abraham's grandson, Jacob. We also see this with Jacob's descendants, particularly Joseph, who ended up venturing down to Egypt in a rather circuitous way. Eventually, the whole of the people of Israel ended up in Egypt, and then they came out of Egypt with Moses and into the Promised Land with Joshua. This theme runs through the entire story arc of the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, we see that God's people are almost never staying in one place. This is also true in the New Testament. It was evident in the life of Jesus. He was born in Bethlehem, then went with his family down into Egypt. After that, he returned to what we call Galilee and Nazareth. From Galilee and Nazareth, he moved down into Jerusalem in Judea, traveled through Samaria, and went up into modern Lebanon. Jesus's ministry was all about being on the move.

When Jesus commissioned his church and his disciples, he said to go into all the world. We see this reflected in the story of the Book of Acts and the history of the church over the last 2,000 years. God's people are almost never staying in one place; they are constantly on the move. God is always on the move. I think that's one of the reasons we find in the texts of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy that God had a tent. He is always on the move, and His expectation is that His people would be ready to move with Him wherever He is calling them to go.

After discussing this, you may wonder, "Why, Miles, when the opportunity came, did you not move to Santa Barbara when that door opened?" Let's look at the text again. In Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 19, Moses is reminding the people of Israel of their journeys. He says, "So we departed from where we were at Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, and we went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw on the way to the mountains, the mountains of the Amorite, as the Lord our God had commanded us." Then they came to Kadesh Barnea, that border town at the edge of blessing. Moses said to them, "You have come to the mountains of the Amorite, which the Lord our God is giving to us. Look, behold, see it! The Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up and possess it, as the Lord God of your fathers has spoken to you. Do not fear or be discouraged."

You should underline those words in your Bible: "Do not fear and be discouraged." Have you ever been discouraged before? It's a rhetorical question; we've all been in a place of discouragement. Have you ever found yourself feeling a little fearful that you wouldn't arrive at the destination you hoped to reach or that you planned to arrive at? Maybe you got partway through that degree program and had to leave, or perhaps you were working...

It can be really hard to launch a business, and sometimes it just doesn't take off. Whatever the reason may be, we often find ourselves in situations where we thought we would be further along than we actually are. Do you realize that this feeling is what leads many people to what we commonly refer to as a midlife crisis? They reach their forties and think, "I'm not where I thought I would be," and they become devastated because they expected to have achieved more, and perhaps faster.

I remember sitting in David Guzik's office in September of 2016 when he suggested that I come up and help him pastor this church. A year prior to that, I was very discouraged in ministry—probably the most discouraged I had ever been up to that point. I felt disheartened about my work here at Cross Connection because I was fearful that the moves and changes we had made in previous years had not worked out as we had intended. Many of you who have been here through that time will remember some of those changes.

Compounding my discouragement, I was listening to a pastor who has a podcast and is also a researcher with an organization called LifeWay Research. They study thousands of churches and conduct research with thousands of pastors. On his podcast, he mentioned that their research found the most fruitful years of ministry for most senior pastors are years five and seven. When he said that, I was about halfway through year seven, which had been the hardest year of ministry for me, second only to year five.

As I listened, I reflected on year five while navigating the challenges of year seven. In year five, I came to a difficult realization about what God was doing here and where we were headed. I understood that to move forward, we would have to let a couple of staff members go—two pastors who had been on staff here at the church for twenty years. That is a very hard decision to make. Many of you may never have experienced the reality of having to let people go. When I say "let people go," I mean laying someone off or firing them. For those of you who have experienced it, you know it is very, very difficult—unless your name is Mark Childers or Rhonda Benedictus.

Rhonda Benedictus is my dad. We were standing at my son's baseball game yesterday, and I asked my dad how many people he would say he has fired over the years. He was in the construction industry for 50 years, and he said, "Oh, hundreds, like it's no big deal." He mentioned that you're good at it when you fire your own son; he fired my brother a couple of times—three times, in fact. That's why I never went to work for him. I wanted to stay out of the family business; I didn't need that kind of rejection.

It's really hard to do those sorts of things. When I realized during that period of time that this was what needed to happen, I was really conflicted. I didn't know exactly what to do. I talked with our elder board and wrestled with the decision about how to proceed. One of the things I often do when I'm wrestling with a difficult decision is go away by myself for a morning or a whole day. I spend some time just thinking, praying, and reading through the Scriptures.

I took my Bible one Thursday morning in August, prior to that day, and I remember it very clearly. I went over to Double Peak Park above Cal State San Marcos, which has a great overview of all of North County. I was sitting up there on a bench, and I opened my Bible. I was reading through Ezekiel; I had just started Ezekiel. I opened to Ezekiel chapter one and read through it, but I felt like nothing. Maybe you've had that experience where you're trying to seek wisdom in the Scriptures, and it feels like nothing. I read Ezekiel 2 and then Ezekiel 3, but still nothing.

Then I got to a very strange passage in Ezekiel chapter 4. I read this: Ezekiel 4, verse 9. God is speaking to Ezekiel the Prophet, 2,500 years ago, and He says to him, "Now go and get some wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet and Emmer wheat. Mix them together and put them into a storage jar. Use them to make bread for yourself during the three hundred ninety days that you're going to be lying on your side."

A little background: Ezekiel was told by God to lie on his side for 390 days and to bake this bread—Ezekiel bread. The prophets were weird. God instructed him to ration this out to himself, eight ounces of food for each day, and to eat it at set times. He was also to measure out a jar of water for each day and drink it at set times while preparing and eating this food.

As you would bake barley cakes while the people are watching, they are going to see this. This is the weird part; that's already strange, but the weirder part is that first of all, you bake it on a fire using dried human poop as the fuel. Yeah, that's in there. Then you eat the bread. I was reading this at Double Peak Park when the Lord said, "This is how Israel will eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands to which I will banish them."

Then, in verse 14, Ezekiel says, "Hold on, Lord." I said, "O Sovereign Lord, must I be defiled by using human dung?" That's like the nice biblical way of saying, "Wait a minute! What? You want me to cook my bread over dried human dung? I've never done something like that. I've never defiled myself before. From the time I was a child, I haven't eaten an animal that died or was sick or any of these things, so please don't make me do that."

In verse 15, God says, "Okay, then." The Lord said, "Fine, that's okay. You may bake your bread with cow dung instead." I read that and had this strong sense—it was not an audible voice, but a voice in my head said this: "It doesn't matter how you bake it; it's a crappy situation." I'm telling you, that's exactly what I thought, and I closed my Bible and left the mountaintop.

It's a challenging situation; that's how God speaks to me, just by the way. So that was year five. In year seven, a couple of years later, we had a person who had been a part of our women's ministry, a leader in our women's ministry. She left because she was upset about some things. Then we had another staff member, whom we had helped launch a school, get upset about some things and leave the staff.

We had a worship leader who was upset because we didn't hire him, and he left the church upset. During that period, we had an associate pastor, who I thought would be with us for a long time, leave the church. Right after that, we had a board member and elder who got upset about some things, and he left the church as well. We had about 150 people leave the church that year.

Then I listened to that podcast. The fifth and seventh years were the most fruitful years of ministry, I think, if by fruit you...

Seeing lots of people leave was very discouraging. That was in the middle of 2015, specifically September 2015. Then, in September 2016, I was sitting in David's office when he asked, "How'd you like to move up here and pastor this church?"

The journey to the Promised Land is not without its terrible wilderness. Everywhere you go is hard; it just is what it is. It's challenging. My wife is in the midst of finishing her master's degree in nursing to become a nurse practitioner. Not a day goes by that she doesn't ask, "Why am I doing this? This is so terribly hard." I tell her that everything like this is hard. If it weren't, there would be a lot of nurse practitioners, and there are not.

So, the journey to the Promised Land is indeed fraught with challenges, and we see that in the passage. We departed from Horeb, as stated in verse 19, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness. You all saw it; you were there. You went through that terrible wilderness.

As I mentioned, we will see in Deuteronomy chapter 1 that when they reached Kadesh Barnea, the people came to Moses and said, "Moses, let's send spies into the land." Moses thought that was a great idea, so they sent one spy from every tribe. There are twelve tribes, so there were twelve spies sent into the Promised Land. All the people waited in Kadesh Barnea for 40 days while the spies searched out the land.

When the spies returned, they brought back a huge bunch of grapes that had to be carried between two people to show everyone the fruit of the land. They reported that the land was wonderful, a land flowing with milk and honey, and a great place for them. They encouraged the people to look at and taste the fruit of the land. However, ten of the twelve spies said, "There are giants in the land, and they are too big for us." This is exactly what we read in Numbers chapter 13. They said, "We were in our own eyes like grasshoppers before them, and they will destroy us."

This discouraged the heart of the people. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, said, "No, we need to go up. God has told us to go up and possess the land." This was 38 years before this passage, but they had a vision, a clearer picture of what the land looked like. It is a land that flows with milk.

Honey, it's fruitful to live now. No person steps out to go on a venture of starting something new or taking over something, like I did when I became the pastor of this church in 2008, without a picture in their mind of what they anticipate, expect, or think will happen. You have a vision of what you assume is going to happen and what you're going to do.

When I became the pastor of this church in 2008, I had a vision. The church that I took over wasn't really this church; it is this church, but it's not this church. If you've been here through that period of time, you know what I'm talking about. When I took over this church in 2008, the previous four years had seen a very steep decline. I had this vision of what I believed God wanted to do.

I remember being in a meeting with the rest of the leadership team here at the church in 2005, three years before I took over. There was a conversation at that time because we were seeing a lot of people leave the church, and there were hardly any younger people here in their 20s. We were in this meeting for about three hours, and I was the only person in my 20s; I was 25 at the time. As they talked about all these different ideas, finally someone turned to me and said, "Myles, why do you think, at 25, you know what you think?" I said, "Well, listen, you're not going to like my answer, but if I wasn't a part of the leadership team here, I wouldn't attend this church." That kind of freaked some people out, but the church was in decline.

When I took it over, I had a vision of what I believed God wanted us to do. At the time, the church was called Calvary Chapel of Escondido. We changed the name to Cross Connection Church in 2012, not because we don't hold the same beliefs as Calvary Chapel—we do—but we believed God was calling us to do something a little bit different. Those kinds of changes are very challenging and difficult, but I had a vision of what I believed God intended for us to do.

Now, the challenge with visionaries—people who have a picture of where they want to go—is that a visionary often sees a vision as if they're standing on a mountaintop above the clouds. We have a picture we can post up there. When you're standing on a mountaintop above the clouds, you can see clearly other mountaintops, but there's something really important you don't see: everything under the clouds, in the fog, in the valley. This is my problem. I have a tendency to see everything above the clouds. That's where we're going; we can see the mountaintop off in the distance. However, I don't see all the stuff in the valley, and I think that's probably a good thing because if you saw everything in the valley...

You'd never move forward. You wouldn't. In this passage, where are the children of Israel? They're on a mountaintop looking into the land. Unfortunately, there was a group of spies that came back and told them all of the things in the fog, all the things that could kill them. As a result, they were discouraged.

Visionaries don't often see the valleys or the challenges. After I became the pastor of the church in 2008, what I thought would happen so quickly and move forward so fast did not unfold that way. There are a lot of valleys and difficulties in the fog. In September of 2015, after five years, I was very discouraged. When David said to me in 2016, a year later, "How about you move up here and take over this church?" I told him that if he had said that to me a year ago, I would have said yes on the spot.

This is one of the reasons why it's very wise not to make big decisions when you're discouraged. A little bit of wisdom: take note of that. Many people have made unwise decisions when they're fearful or discouraged, like all the people who sold all their stock last week. That was a bad idea; it's not wise when everybody sells. So, don't make big decisions when you're discouraged.

I told David that if he had asked me a year ago, I would have probably said yes immediately. We read in Deuteronomy 1, verse 20: "You have come to the mountains; behold, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up and possess it. Do not be afraid or discouraged."

In 2002, I was 22 years old. It was August of 2002, and I had the strong impression, which is kind of crazy, that God had called me to pastor this church. In 2003, I began teaching the Saturday night service here, going through the book of Joshua. There are a few of you, as I look out here this morning, who were a part of that Bible study in the book of Joshua.

While we were going through the book of Joshua, which we will eventually get to—because it's right after the book of Deuteronomy, but it could be like a decade from now, so hold on—Joshua is the one who takes the children of Israel into the Promised Land. We got to Joshua chapter 13 in 2003, and as we were going through it, Joshua is old and getting ready to do exactly what Moses is doing in this passage. He's preparing for someone else to carry on.

The leadership says to the people of Israel, "There remains much land to be possessed." I remember thinking, when I was going through Joshua in 2003, that there is so much more that God wants to do here with this church in North County. There remains so much more land to be possessed.

Five years later, God called me to take over this church in 2008. In 2016, after a lot of wilderness wandering and battling some real challenges in the process, I decided to remain here because there remains so much land to be possessed. There is so much more God wants to do with us as a church. He wants to do great things, exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or think.

As part of that, I had this friend with whom I did youth ministry years ago. We would see each other at camps from time to time. One day, while I was married and mowing my parents' lawn, I realized that this guy lived in the same neighborhood as my parents. He drove past, and I looked into it, asking, "What are you doing here?" He replied, "I live here." I asked him probably three or four times why he didn't come up and work with me. Finally, one day, he said yes. He probably regrets that decision, but he came here in 2013, and his first day of work was April 1st—probably the most foolish thing he ever did. He came here because we both had a vision of what we believed God wanted to do at this church.

Point number three on your outline: God desires that His people would move away from the border and into blessing. He wants us to move into what He has called each of us individually and as a church to embrace.

So, why did you come to this church? Maybe you would say, "A friend invited me," or "I drove by it a whole bunch of times." Perhaps someone left a little bag with a DVD and a flyer on your doorstep, or you found it through Google or online somewhere. However, that's really not the reason. You are here because God called you here. That's how I read the situation.

Scriptures say that God brought you here to be a part of the work He is doing at this church. I believe God has a purpose for us at this church. For some of you who have been to church before, you may realize that this one is a little bit different. We do things a little bit differently here on purpose. There is a reason we do things differently, and I ask for a little grace as I explain this.

I thought about different ways to express this, but it just didn't come out quite right. Here at Cross-Connection Church, we do things a little bit differently because we don't just mess around. We are not interested in playing around. I think there are a lot of people in our culture—people you work with, people who live next door to you, and even people in your family—who have given up on church because they are tired of churches that just mess around. You should invite them to come here because we do things a little bit differently. For example, we had Queen play during one of our services, which is probably the only time you will ever hear Queen at church.

I believe that is why we are seeing what we are seeing here at this church. I shared that we are not to be fearful or discouraged, but let me explain how pastors can get discouraged. We started making a whole bunch of changes here because the church needed to change. Everything that is alive changes; the only things that do not change are rocks and dead things—things that are inanimate.

From 2007 to 2011, the church was growing, but in 2011, we started implementing all these changes. Every year from 2011 to 2018, the church saw a decrease in average attendance every single week. If you are the pastor of that church, implementing all those changes, you can easily become discouraged. Throughout all of it, I kept saying, "But God wants us to keep moving forward."

In 2019, we saw positive growth for the first time. In 2018, we were up by eight and a half percent in people attending the church on a weekly basis, which is why we have seen some growth—except for today, as everyone is scared about the coronavirus.

We're seeing people start to come to the church every week. We welcome new people to join us, and some of you are here for the first time in the last six weeks. God is doing something here.

Now, there's a problem. I'm sure you've noticed that this isn't exactly a purpose-built facility for a church; it's a strip mall. This pad of ground that we're on was supposed to be an In-N-Out Burger. I'm not kidding you. We have the plans in Mark's office that show an In-N-Out Burger right here, complete with a cash register and double-doubles. There were people in Escondido, back in about 1994 when this place was built, who were upset because they were looking forward to having an In-N-Out Burger.

Now, we have a church here instead. However, we have the reality that it gets a little cramped. Some services last week, particularly the second and third services, were completely packed. It's a little bit harder to find a spot. God is growing the church, and more people are coming, which is a wonderful thing. But it brings us to a point where we have to move forward. If we don't, we have a problem.

Point number four on your line: they died in the wilderness who do not move forward into blessing. Over the course of the last few years, as many as eight churches have closed their doors in Escondido and San Marcos. Why? We could probably come up with dozens of reasons, but one of them is that the church had a hard time moving forward to reach the people of this community.

Within ten miles of this building, there are nearly a million people. Research done by the Southern Baptist Convention shows that only 9.3 percent of the million people living within ten miles of this building are connected to a church. That means there are approximately 800,000 people who have no connection to a church within ten miles of this location. The church needs to reach the culture—not just our church, but North Coast Church, Emmanuel Faith Church, Maranatha Chapel, Valley Baptist, and Grace Point Church in Valley Center, as well as Mission Hills Church. We need to reach people in our culture, but many of those individuals have checked out and given up on church because a lot of churches are...

Just playing church and not speaking to the realities of culture is a challenge we face. That's what we're trying to address. As we move into the book of Deuteronomy, I believe that God wants to speak to that reality for us. However, there are some things we need to do first.

I would ask you to pray with us. This Thursday night, we have a time of worship and prayer here at the church. It will be a great opportunity for you to come and pray with us as we worship the Lord. Pray that God would do exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or think. Pray that the leadership of this church will have wisdom, understanding, and knowledge as we look at the data we constantly receive about our culture. We need to interpret these things correctly to know how to reach the people here.

I am no expert on how to reach the people in North County. We have tried every possible approach, but maybe you have an idea, or the Lord will direct us and give us wisdom. I would also ask that you pray because, for the last ten years, we have been actively seeking God's guidance on whether He wants us to move from this facility to somewhere else. If so, show us where, or provide us with a significant financial blessing or a piece of land. It is very hard to grow here at this facility.

I believe we have used this facility wisely, as best as we can. We have three services on Sunday, but we are praying about and considering adding a fourth service on Sunday mornings. Some weekends, it may seem like we don't need that, but then the following weekend, we have nowhere to park people. We are contemplating adding a fourth service at 12:30 around Easter, and I think that may be what the Lord would have us do. I could be wrong, and maybe we will try it.

It seems that now, with the coronavirus, many people are scared to go to church, and we have to conduct everything live on the Internet. I have no idea how it will all work out, but we will figure it out. We do believe that God wants us to do more with what we have here. We have the ability to reach people around the world through online access and the content we are producing, including the podcasts. We have many other ideas about discipleship and online initiatives, but a lot of that requires finances. I believe we are using our resources wisely.

We have finances, but we could use more to reach more people. Maybe the Lord has gifted you, and you'd like to help the church in that respect. We would welcome it. More than anything, we need you to pray. As we pray about potentially adding a service this year, maybe within the next six weeks, we need more people to help. If we had a fourth service, we would need more people for the tech ministries, more security personnel, more ushers and greeters, and a lot more people for children's ministry. We also need help with hospitality.

If you're a part of the church and you're not plugged in, you need to plug in. This is not a spectator sport; it's time to serve. I've been serving at this church since I was 11. That's a long time now, though not as long as some of you. I know it feels long, so I'm asking you, if you're not serving, to serve. You can do something really easy for us. We have a website: serve.lifeinconnection.com. If you go there, you can do this right now. You can take out your phone and go to serve.lifeinconnection.com. All I need is your name and your email address, and we'll be in touch with you.

We need people for children's ministry, cleanup crews, and hospitality. We need your help so that we can reach more people in this community. There are people coming here every single week, and sometimes they drive right by because they can't find a parking space. They may come into the sanctuary and think, "I don't really know where to sit," or they might not find a greeter to say hello and hand them a bulletin.

We need your help because there remains much more land to be possessed. We need you to plug in and use the gifts, talents, and abilities that God has given you to do the work of the ministry. I'm not the only one doing it; we have an incredible crew of people here, and they want you on the team too. There are too many of you whom I don't know, and I don't know you because you're not plugged in. We want you to plug in.

So yes, I'm kind of pushing on it a little bit. If I don't see some emails coming through from people who signed up on that website, I'm going to push on it a whole bunch more next week. So don't disappoint me; you don't want to see me angry. Would you stand?

As we close in prayer, I want to share a story about a remarkable man named Wally Williams. He is 97 years old and comes here to serve on Sundays. If Wally can serve at his age, we should feel compelled to do the same.

God, I pray that you would bless this church exceedingly, abundantly, above all we can ask or think. We want to reach the people in our community. Some of those people are related to us. For some of the individuals standing here right now, their kids used to go to church, but they no longer attend. Their kids say they are not interested in church because they think church is dumb. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dumb churches out there.

Lord, we don’t want to be one of those. We want to reach our community. So, God, would you give us wisdom and grace to do just that? Give us a passion to reach people because our culture is in a devastating place. It needs a work of your Spirit and your Word in a significant way.

It seems like our culture is out of order and functioning on borrowed wisdom that doesn’t make any sense. I pray that you would help us to reach the culture and to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer—changing the culture and affecting it. Once upon a time, the culture was completely directed by the church, but today the church is just a quiet voice in the corner.

I pray, God, that you would help us to speak up. I pray this in Jesus' name.