What's up, President?
My name is Keith, and again, excited to be here, excited to be going through this series,
kind of checking out what all this is about when we talk about breaking history and what
that means for our lives.
But first I have to say, go Cougs, right?
Yeah.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Exciting.
Exciting stuff.
Hey, when I was a kid, you might have been a little bit like me.
I had these thoughts about who I wanted to be when I grew up.
Like I had these thoughts about who I wanted to, like kind of what I wanted to accomplish
or kind of the vocation.
I don't know if you were like that.
Is there any of you who would be willing to share, what are some maybe some crazy things
that you wanted to be when you were little, when you grew up, that you kind of articulated
to maybe parents or friends?
What are some things that you, you said this is participation time.
Just shout it out.
What are some things?
What?
Okay.
Nice.
What else?
A spy.
Uh-huh.
Yes.
It's a theme.
A spy.
A spy.
Nice.
Dinosaur.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Wow.
Dinosaur.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, that's very informative.
I'm going to change a little bit of what I'm going to say today.
I'm just kidding.
No, it was crazy to think like, what is it when we were kids?
Like, what was it that we thought, this is what I'll be, I could be anything?
And this is what has captured my heart.
This is what it's all about.
So I have kids now.
And it's so interesting to hear and to get to walk with them, like asking those questions,
what do you want to be?
Or to have, especially my seven-year-old, tell me these kind of things like, here's what
I want to be.
And he's kind of had, has this running list of, of things that he wants to be.
For a while, one of the things that he was really captured by was, was sanitation engineering.
So, you know, it comes by our house once a week, and he was like, dad, I really want
to be a garbage man.
And I was like, okay, I don't understand what you're saying.
You want to start a company that really connects to some of the significant needs of the people
around you, right?
The things that are in it, you know, you have to make sure that these are essentials to
life.
And you want to start a company that meets those needs.
No, dad, I want to drive the truck, you know?
And, and so, no, so what you want to mean is, you want to be able to oversee a fleet of
people and lead, you know, no, dad, I really just want to dump the trash into the truck.
And I was like, okay, yeah, whatever you want to do, let's, let's, let's make that happen,
you know?
And so it's, it's progressed from this, from this way or that way.
I grew up around Houston, and, and I always grew up wanting to be an astronaut.
And there's this movie, a really old movie called Space Camp.
I don't know if you ever heard of Space Camp, you know, where they just go to camp, but
then they end up like in space, you know, they end up having to do this thing.
It's, you know, I thought as a kid, that's probably what's going to happen if I go to
Space Camp.
It's just guaranteed.
That's how I go to space, but grew up near the Space Center and there's this, all the
stuff that captured our hearts.
And along the way, some stuff happened, right?
You begin to have, okay, I can do this and I can't do that.
And I think that there's a recurring theme that happens in our life.
Let's go back to an old movie.
This might, you might be like three or four years old when this movie came out, the movie
The Matrix.
Have you ever heard of The Matrix?
Yes.
You know, this whole thing, you know, and it had all these moments in it that kind of
crystallized.
And The Matrix, when they had this review of it before it kind of went out to theaters,
it was really criticized because it was so esoteric.
It was so something that really didn't connect to a lot of people's thoughts and, and they
thought it was just going to be this kind of sci-fi movie that wasn't going to land.
And it began to be a huge hit.
And when we begin to think about this storyline, we have this guy, this kind of, this guy named
Neo, you know, Mr. Anderson, you know, who is very, just a normal kind of shady guy who's
living in this, in this world.
And then all of a sudden there's this introduction to something that was beyond his normal shady
hacker stuff that he gets introduced to this future that he has, right?
And he gets introduced to this inner ability that he might have.
And so all of a sudden people are communicating to him and saying, Hey, you don't have to
just be this normal shady guy.
There's actually a possibility that there's an alternative identity in your life.
There's an alternative future for you because you are the one Neo, you know.
And so this is this moment where he's intersected with this idea.
And I think that there is, there's something that happens in us as we begin to see this
that we think, you know.
There could be this idea that I'm more than just the storyline of, you know, from a very
young age when I grew up and say, I can do this, I can't do that, and it narrows down.
And we kind of get to the place, you know, as you leave college, as you get into your
first career or something like that, that you begin to say, Okay, now I'm finally understanding
myself and I'm understanding kind of the parameters of who I am.
But there's still this thing that's in us that I think says, But what if all of that
was shattered and I had this thing, this opportunity to be who I really wanted to be?
Who would that be?
And I think that there's this inner thing for us.
There's this idea that there's something that is intended to be more.
And from this, you know, high idea of this like carpe diem, you know, to the Yolo dog,
you know, all this kind of this idea from this whole kind of this viewpoint of our world
that we have to take charge of this, that there's a future out there that awaits us.
And I think that this is something that we're kind of drawn to.
What does our future look like?
And so we're talking about breaking history so that we might be able to understand our
future.
And what I want you to know is that I think that you are here in a crossroads in your life
and many people are stuck.
They have an idea about who they want to be, but they don't know how to get there.
And what I want to share with you today is an interesting viewpoint.
And for those of you who might be interested in seeing how Jesus helps someone clarify
their future in light of their past, I think the Bible has something to say to you today.
So I want to get into this and I want to let this encounter with Jesus help clarify how
we live towards our future and how it begins now and how it begins to affect our present.
And so if you ever had thought of the question, what does God want me to be?
And answering the question, who can I be?
We're going to get into this idea.
And it's going to be in this connection with Jesus that we see in the Gospel of John.
So this whole series, we've been walking through this book called the Gospel of John.
This Gospel of John was the last story of Jesus.
There's four different stories of Jesus in our Bible that are written that have kind
of these different viewpoints of who Jesus is.
And this was the last one written.
And we've been walking through seeing Jesus interact, model, display how he's interacting
with people that are imperfect.
And so if you're imperfect, this is a helpful thing for us to understand.
How does the creator of the universe in human flesh interact with people who are imperfect?
And here what we begin to see is this is the very last story of the last book written about
Jesus.
And so this story is something I'm fascinated by this because if you read through the Gospel
of John, he comes to the conclusion and he begins to say, and this was the story of written
about Jesus.
And then all of a sudden he breaks into another story and it was almost as like he's finishing
this out and he comes to this place and he says, I have to include this.
I must get to this story.
This is incomplete without this revelation of how Jesus responds back to who Peter is.
And so we're going to get into this.
And I think it's fascinating for us to look into seeing Jesus interact with a guy named
Peter.
And it's also fascinating because we have a kayak up here.
All right.
So those two things, let's get into this.
Let me give you a little bit of background with Jesus and Peter.
See, Peter was one of the guys who Jesus called to be his disciple, his follower.
He called 12 guys to follow him to spend three and a half years with him on the road doing
Jesus kind of stuff.
And so they went around and they followed Jesus and they learned and they saw Jesus interact.
And ultimately they get to this place.
Jesus was the whole time telling him, I'm here to die.
I'm here to take and set up a scenario that gets myself killed.
And they couldn't believe that because that's kind of a crazy idea that you would set up
your life to get it killed in a certain form and fashion because that's your point to be
here on earth.
But he says this over and over.
Now this comes to a point where this happens, where all that Jesus has said was going to
happen is going to happen.
And it begins to be this moment where Jesus is taken.
And all of a sudden Jesus, who is wildly popular, becomes wildly unpopular as he's put on trial.
When he's put on trial, there's direct threat to Jesus and the people who Jesus surrounded
himself by.
Peter is a guy who says, Jesus, I will never leave you.
And though everyone else may leave you, my faith in you is so strong.
And Jesus says to him, Peter, you're going to deny me three times.
And Peter says, there's no way that that's going to happen.
So then we fast forward the events.
And indeed Peter, in one evening, denies Jesus three different times exactly like Jesus predicted
and it crushes Peter.
It says he wept bitterly.
I don't know if you've ever wept bitterly, but that's one of those things where it's
not that cute crying, it's not that composure crying, it's that, oh, that's really awkward
for both of us crying, you know?
This is Peter.
And now what we begin to see is all that Jesus had said was coming true.
Everything that Jesus had said kind of said, this is going to be what I do.
It is coming true.
And the guy who was at the head of the table, the guy who had the most to lose, the guy
who had the most future and Jesus is pouring into him, all of a sudden, he's the guy who
denied the guy who was raised from the dead, the guy who overcame death, the most powerful,
most significant story in humanity.
This guy was one of the closest to that story, denied that story, denied that relationship.
And all of a sudden, where does Peter find himself?
On a boat.
And so we're going to look at that, John 21.
This is the last chapter of the book of John.
John says, I've got to include this so that you understand how Jesus connects with imperfect
people.
It says this in verse one.
After Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the sea of Tiberius, and he revealed
himself in this way, Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin, Nathaniel of Cana of Galilee, the
sons of Zebedee, and two others from those disciples were together.
Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing.
They said to him, we'll go with you.
They went out, got into the boat, but that night caught nothing.
By the way, if you look through the scriptures, the disciples never catch a fish without Jesus'
help.
I just think that that's interesting.
Just as that day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore, yet the disciples did not know
that it was Jesus.
Jesus said to them, children, do you have any fish?
And they answered him, no.
Just like always, you know, and so he said to them, cast your nets on the right side
of the boat, and you'll find some.
So they cast it.
And now they were not able to haul it in because of the quantity of fish.
That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, it's the Lord.
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment for he was stripped
for work and he threw himself into the sea.
I think this is incredibly interesting.
Most people say, I'm going swimming.
Let me take off clothes.
Peter says, let me put on some clothes, I'm getting in the water.
And here's what I wonder, see, for those of you Bible people, you may recall that Jesus,
that Peter had walked on water once before.
Maybe he thought, let's try this again.
I'll put on my clothes and see if I can just scamper across.
It's a mirror 100 yards away and he did not.
In fact, some scholars think that the boat beat him to shore.
So we'll see here in a minute.
So just as the day was, sorry, when the other disciples came in the boat dragging the net
full of fish for they were not far from land about 100 yards off.
When they got on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place with fish laid out on it and
bread.
Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish that you have just caught.
So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore full of large fish, 153 of them.
And although there was many, the net was not torn.
Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast.
Now none of the disciples dare to ask him, who are you?
They knew that it was the Lord.
Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them and so with the fish.
And this was now the third time that Jesus revealed to the disciples after he was raised
from the dead.
After they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you
love me more than these?
He said to them to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
He said to him, feed my lambs.
And he said to him the second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
And he said to them to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
He said to him, tend my sheep.
And he asked him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
Peter was grieved because he had said to him the third time, do you love me?
And he said to him, Lord, you know everything.
You know that I love you and Jesus said, feed my sheep.
Truly truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever
you wanted.
But when you were old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and
carry you to where you do not want to go.
He said this to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.
And after saying this to him, he said, follow me.
This is a profound thing.
When he in John said, hold it, the story that you must understand about who Jesus is and
how he connects to perfect people, our imperfect people is not complete without this story.
For you and I today, we need to understand this story desperately.
We need to understand what it is that Jesus does.
And I want you to kind of pull back because John is desperately trying to create a connection
here.
And if we look really close into this, we begin to understand the connection that is
being, that is being kind of communicated.
See John is saying this.
He's pulling together some things.
The first thing that we see, if you look into scripture, you see this idea.
He includes the detail of a charcoal fire.
Now that is not by accident.
You see these guys, every single word is included to reveal something about who Jesus is, to
reveal something about who God is.
And in this moment, charcoal fire, the only other illusion to that charcoal fire is the
same thing that night when Peter denies Jesus, it mentions there that he did so over a charcoal
fire.
And John is trying to say Jesus is doing something very specific here.
He's making him breakfast, but he's doing it in the same fashion that Peter denied Jesus.
Now he's bringing these things, he's connecting these two moments together.
The other thing is that Jesus asked Peter three times.
Do you see this?
So he said, you will deny me three times, Jesus, Peter in fact does deny Jesus three
times.
Then Jesus asked him three times.
Now Jesus is not hard of hearing.
Jesus is not very difficult to understand if he was real listening.
He's not trying to beat Peter over the head just saying, oh, do you really mean it this
time?
What Jesus is trying to do is here, connect these two things together.
And John's doing this best to be able to communicate and say, in this moment, what Jesus is doing
is the same thing that we see Jesus doing time after time.
What he's doing, he's going back to the past.
He's connecting that moment of shame.
He's saying, here's the thing, to be able to reveal this shame, to be able to, I'm sorry,
to be able to heal this shame, we've got to reveal the shame.
We've got to go back to the moment.
There's not going to be any gloss over putaways, tuck under the rug kind of stuff that's going
on here.
If there's a moment of shame, we've got to deal with that.
And he knows that Peter is dealing with this.
And so he's connecting these things.
You need to say out loud, as many times as you said, the whole thing that I deny you,
because Peter, it's not that you need forgiveness in this.
You need to hear it.
There needs to be a moment where we look each other eye to eye and say, grace covers everything.
See, Jesus didn't need this, but he knew Peter did.
Jesus is outing the shame that when left in the shadows can wreak havoc.
And so we go back to two weeks ago when we talked about this, we talked about this moment
where if we don't go back to the moments of shame, if we don't out them, if we don't
put lights on them, if we keep them in the shadows, keep them hidden, keep them where
we don't discuss them, they will never, ever be healed.
We'll always have lies that everything is built on in our lives and we'll never have
freedom from these things.
But Jesus goes back and see our future is waiting upon us to deal with our past.
And this is what Jesus does.
He addresses the past, but he turns the focus to his future.
And for us, we've got to address the past.
We cannot just gloss this over.
We need to identify the lies that we have believed and we need to replace them with the truths.
And for some of you, this is having conversations with people.
This is having moments of apology.
This is writing down some stuff that, but your future is waiting for you to deal with
your past.
Your future is waiting for you to get the courage to see the lies and allow God's grace
to cover them.
This is this idea that I want you to get.
Breaking history requires us to make a shift from focusing on our past to focusing on our
future.
This is a truth.
And here's the thing.
When we begin to say, how do we overcome this?
Jesus shows us how to do this.
He goes back and what he comments on is two things that I want us to get.
He comments on his purpose and he gives a picture of his future.
Now the picture of his future is going to be an interesting one because he tells him
how he's going to die.
In this moment, we've got to understand that this is intricately connected to his shame.
And so what Jesus does is he brings him to a point of saying, here's the thing, Peter,
you've got to shift from this to this.
You've been living in this past, you've been living in this stuff, but we need to see something
move from our attention and our focus being on the past and what you've done in the shame
and reliving that because don't you relive it over and over.
And so we ignore it or we relive it and both of those things stuff it instead of saving
it, instead of dealing with it, instead of understanding how we move past it.
And Jesus says, this is what it looks like.
See, Paul understood this.
Paul was a guy who was a murderer, who was a, not only a murderer, but if we were to
put, you know, there's some stuff going on in Syria right now, we're having these guys
that are creating a lot of havoc in their country by organizing these killings.
Now, as the world looks upon that with horror, this is the same sort of thing that Paul did.
Paul organized killings of Christians.
Now think about shamefulness in our lives and so we might have had these moments where
we said that thing about that person and it got outed.
We might have that thing where we took advantage of someone where we stole, where we, we had
all these moments of shame in our lives, but Paul is a organized killer and what Paul does
is say, grace covers everything, that we have to understand how Jesus deals with this.
And for this, Paul in Philippians three writes this, and I want us to look at this.
It says this, forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead.
I press on to the goal, towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Jesus Christ.
This is a key thing you need to understand.
Paul and Peter are seeing Jesus take and reveal the future and not live in the past.
And so for us, when we begin to think about how our future awaits us, we need to understand
that that is part of what it means to deal with our past, to transform our focus from
our past to our future.
See what happens, focusing on our past puts us into the trajectory of reacting, of coping,
of dealing with our issues.
And I talk to so many people who are hamstrung, are stuck by what it is in their past, and
they don't want to take risks.
They don't want to go on adventures in their lives, and we'll talk about that more next
week, but we, they're stuck in these moments, they're stuck in these places where ultimately
they are just kind of going back in this cycle and they can't ever get past this.
And so they're always coping with their issues, they're always reacting with their issues.
Focusing on our future puts us in the trajectory of love, of hope, of constant reliance upon
the provision of Jesus.
It's a completely different thing.
It's a little bit like riding a bike, wherever you look, I love riding my motorcycle.
One of the things I learned in motorcycle safety class was that you will naturally go wherever
your face is turned, wherever your eyes are focused, you will naturally go that way.
And so they say, you know, you look around, but if you look at one place too often, naturally
your bike is going to lean, you're going to drift towards that way.
It's the same thing with your life.
You look at some place very often in your life, you're going to drift that way.
You have an option.
You can drift towards the reliving of your past or the hope in your future.
And it's whatever you look at more in your life.
You see, Peter had an opportunity to say, display how significant he was and he blew
it.
But here's what Jesus does, he does with that gracefully.
And what we begin to see is Peter becomes the foremost leader of the church.
See Jesus says, I am going to build my church upon you who denied me three times in my moment
of greatest need.
You need to get this Jesus.
I need you to understand Jesus because it destroys your religious understanding of Jesus.
And it destroys your understanding of religious Christianity that says this, basically, you
just have to work it out.
You have to be good.
You have to make sure that you have all your ducks in your row and you're a moral person.
And if you're a moral person, then that's good.
The Bible is full of wretched sinners and Jesus uses them to transform a culture.
And so I hope that you understand that you are a wretched sinner and I hope that you understand
that about yourself and that you're not going to just try harder and white knuckle yourself
to a better way of life, but you were to say, Jesus transforms everything.
And when Jesus deals gracefully with us, this is what changed transforms Peter.
He said, there's no way I'll ever do that again because I got met shame with grace, not shame
with condemnation.
This is this amazing thing.
And so Jesus breaks Peter's history by revealing and saying, hey, you have a future.
Let me tell you about your calling.
Let me tell you about this.
So we see Peter, he goes on to be this fearless communicator.
So he goes into these places that are radically smarter than him, right?
He goes into these councils and he proclaims Jesus.
And these people are like, what happened to you?
You are this fisherman that evidently could not catch any fish without supernatural help.
You know, you are this guy who denied Jesus.
You're not the guy who I thought that would be the leader of this.
And all of a sudden you are standing and addressing everybody and telling them that they killed
Jesus.
How did this happen?
When grace covers us, it gives us a calling and it gives us a trajectory to our future.
And I want you to get this because this is a big deal.
In fact, when Jesus says over to Peter, feed my lambs, he's calling out who he is.
He's giving him a calling for his life.
And then later on he says, you will.
And he gives us this future tense and this sunk into Peter's life.
Let's look at what Peter said about this.
This was a huge deal to him later in life when Peter's talking to other people about
what they need to be doing.
Let's look at that same language.
First Peter, chapter five, verse two, it says this, shepherd the flock of God that is among
you.
This is Peter writing to people that are his followers.
That is shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not only to
calm compulsion, but willingly as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly,
not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.
When Jesus said, feed my sheep, he gave a calling on Peter's life.
The grace that covered that shame compelled him to live towards his future.
When we begin to see Peter interacting with his future, it's that same moment.
He's saying, this is what this is all about.
He's actively saying, this is the future that I'm creating, the one that Jesus prescribed
to me when he gave me grace in my place of shame.
And so we see Jesus or we see Peter living this out.
That's a long way from denying him three times.
The grace propels us to live differently.
Jesus says, just because you're fat, you're past, your future is not lost.
And some of you need to hear that this morning.
Some of you need to hear that today.
Some of you need to hear that just because of your past, your future is not lost.
We go through our lives saying, okay, I can't be that, you know, I'm not smart enough to
be the astronaut, the garbage truck driver might still be on the table, you know, but
we're all still trying to figure this out.
But at some point there's this idea that God has called you to something.
And just like he did to Peter, God has a calling on every single one of you in every single
part of our life.
And I need you to understand that following Jesus isn't just about the place that you're
going to end up heaven or hell.
Isn't it just about the people you're going to do life with your community?
Isn't it about just the world view that you have in Christianity?
God has invited you to something bigger so that you don't have to look at your career
as your only hope, as your friends as your only hope, as your accomplishments as your
only hope.
So you have a creator who has called you for his purposes and you can either run towards
those or you can run away from those.
But here's the thing, just because you're past, God doesn't remove his being able to
use you.
It is always us who remove ourselves from carrying out our calling.
This means that there is something that you have been created for, something that connects
you deeply to a sense of purpose created within you that is currently right now, today, available
to you.
This is your calling.
And Jesus does this, he says, this is what you're going to do.
So to Peter, he said, feed my sheep.
And here's what it is.
A calling is something that God has uniquely equipped you to do that makes a difference
in the world by revealing who God is and what his desires are for every human.
Did you get that?
This is something that God has uniquely equipped you to do.
So every single one of you here today, he said to Peter, feed my sheep.
And so he spent the rest of his life saying, this is my purpose, this is what I'm going
to do.
Ultimately, in each of us, there's a way that God, our Creator, has put within us to uniquely
affect the world around us by revealing who God is and connecting that to his desires for
every person around us.
I know that that might seem big, but I want us to explore that because this is important.
See, there's a difference.
Sometimes we begin to kind of fuse it together as we begin to think that our calling is synonymous
with our vocation and what you do.
So right now, maybe most of you, your vocation, what you are currently spending the most time
of your doing is being a student, right, but that is not the end goal for your life.
Your parents would agree with me on that.
So the end goal for your life is to then have something that creates some sort of vocation
in your life.
And that might be something that you get paid to do, you know?
But this is something that you're called to live out.
And so a vocation is something that you use to earn money.
And there are times where you're calling what you do to influence the world for Jesus and
your vocation collide.
And I hope that there's a lot of those things, but that's not necessarily the case.
But oftentimes what happens is we have to have money.
And so that begins to kind of rule over this idea of being called.
And so what happens is we think what we do to earn money is really the calling upon our
life.
And then what we'll do is we'll just kind of orient that around being a moral person.
And what that does is that head straight for boredom town.
That basically goes into this idea that we have to have all of the things that need to
be a part of satisfying the deepest part of our soul, be included in our vocation.
And I want you to know that that's not the case.
I want you to know that that's not necessarily how God created you, that when we begin to
think through this.
Now there's some people who God's called to be an organizer or spiritual authority over
a body of people, a body of believers, and that's what we call going into ministry or
working for the church as a vocation.
And sometimes there's some overlap in that, but that's not all of you.
That's not going to be all of you.
I hope that that's going to be a significant amount of you, that some of you are going
to do that because we want to start churches across the Northwest and that requires people
who say, I want to leverage my life to have a vocation that is my calling in terms of
being able to work for the church.
I think that that is a noble thing.
I want to call that out in some of you, but some of you are going to be accountants.
Some of you are going to be engineers.
Some of you are going to be artists.
Very few of you are going to be musicians, but there's going to be all these things
that you do.
You're going to get into business, right?
How is it that you begin to say, I have a calling and I have a vocation and where those
intersect, that's great, but where they don't, that doesn't mean that I automatically assume
that my vocation is my calling because what that does is it really takes and puts a lot
of pressure on that vocation to do all the things that God has called us to do and often
times that is not the case because you are called.
There's something in you that you're called to make a difference.
See, sometimes it's really hard for us to get this and for us to understand this.
And when we begin this semester, I took all of our staff, we have a significant size staff
and we took them all to a place a couple of hours from here and kind of had a retreat.
This retreat didn't have cell service or internet, so it was a terrific retreat, you know.
And so what we did is we spent most of our time helping us figure out who we are and
what God is calling us to be so that we can live in this calling.
You might say, oh, you guys work for a church.
That doesn't mean that we understand what this is.
And so about 20 hours we were walking through this stuff and asking them to distill all
of this information from tests, from conversations, from other people speaking into their lives,
into a single word.
I wanted them to understand what is it that God's calling you to do that is, I have to
do this.
This is what God has uniquely created in me to do, to make a difference, to help people
to glorify God and understand how he's calling out their lives.
And it was a powerful moment as at the end our staff got together and they're saying
these words back to us.
They're saying this is who I think that God is calling me to be, that this is who I am.
And so words like caring, captivating, truth-telling, mine is I begin to say, what is it that God
has uniquely called me to do in this time, in this place?
He's given me a passion for it, he's given me the skills to do, but it's innovating.
And so God is saying, Keith, you've got to innovate.
This is who you are.
If you don't do this, you're working outside of what I've called you to be.
Now whether my job does that or not, that's secondary.
But this is how God has called me in the body of Christ to be a part of this.
And so what is it that is calling?
So for Peter, he said, feed my sheep.
So what is that?
So I'm fleshing out in my head.
What does that mean?
What does this look like?
How is it that I need to be orienting my life around this?
And so as we begin to have these conversations, there's a sense with some people in our staff
was like, oh, I need to get busy doing this word.
Maybe I've been distracted by all kinds of other things.
I haven't been doing what I've been called to do.
See, Peter had to understand this.
Here's a quote from a guy named Gerald Bershert.
It says this, perhaps it's sufficient to conclude at this point that whatever one has to say
here about Peter, it is clear that Jesus had a task for him, just like Jesus has a task
for you and for me, but not for the Peter of the pre-resurrection.
It was the Peter who needed to be sifted by the penetrating questioning of Jesus in order
to do the work of the risen Lord and to be reinstated after his devastating fall.
God and Jesus do not bless human beings, you need to hear this, primarily to provide them
with status, but to carry out the divine purposes in the world.
Thus, mission is inseparably linked to the calling and the blessing of God.
You need to understand what God is calling you to do, because the way that God oriances
blessing and his provision in your life is going to be connected to that.
Not because you deserve something, but it's connected to the mission that God has called
you on, because God has called each and every one of you to something.
And you need to be reminded of that over and over.
And we get these blinders on, God, I don't think that you could use me because I'm too
young and because I don't have enough skill, because I don't have these talents, because
I'm not like him or her or whatever, but God is calling you to live on this mission.
And let me tell you this, this is something that is crucial for you to understand, because
if not, boredom awaits you, and I believe there's many of you, and the rest of your
life is trying to figure out stuff to temporary fill that.
So I'm going to try out this hobby, I'm going to get into this thing, and you've seen the
people that get full force into these hobbies, and they dominate, and here's what's coming
for you.
If you don't understand that, model trains, model trains are coming for you.
When I begin to think about this, like these hobbies, that when we begin to pull back and
say what's the meaning of life, what's the purpose of me being here, that if you don't
have something, you are called to have a purpose, and that purpose, when it is not God oriented,
it becomes about stuff that ultimately doesn't matter to the world, and God has called you
to say you can make an eternal difference in the world.
You can do something in people's lives that will transform their lives, or model trains.
And if you love model trains, I welcome your furious emails.
So this is just, it could be anything, right?
We replace all of these things because we get bored, because we don't understand that
God has called us to do something.
Not only does God call Peter to do something in his present, but he begins to define what
his future is going to look like.
What did Peter do in the moment of shame?
He denied Jesus to save his skin.
He denied Jesus when it got tough, because he was scared that he might get killed.
He might get something that is beaten, or something that had some sort of physical harm.
And so what did Jesus do?
The most positive, amazing portrait of his future was how Peter was going to die, because
where did the shame live?
Jesus calls it out.
You were a coward.
You ran when you should have stayed.
So let me tell you your future, Peter.
Let me give you a picture of this.
You will be crucified.
He's giving him a picture of this, and John says, I want you to get really, I want to
be really clear.
This is the way that you're to die, and this is what he says to Peter.
The most compelling thing I can tell you about your future is that you will never run away
from being my representative again in your life, that you will stand in that moment where
you are threatened.
Guys, don't you want to hear that?
If someone said to you something about your character and said, here's your future, you
will run into the battle when other people run away.
You will stand strong when other people falter.
There's something in all of us, but I think especially I want to call out to you guys
that says, yes, put me in.
I want to be the guy not that runs away, but runs to.
Jesus painted a picture of his future and says, here's where you're going.
And what do we see out of Peter?
Just a few weeks, months later, a radically different human being.
Each and every one of you here, God's calling you to be a radically different human being
than maybe your past has said that you could be.
He says, here's the portrait of the future.
This is what it looks like.
I want you to be those kind of people that begin to dream big dreams, that begin to say,
what do I have to offer God?
A couple of weeks ago, I was connected to this story, this story of a guy who was sitting
and having a moment and someone asked him, what?
And he called it a B-hag, a big, hairy, audacious goal.
What is that thing that if God didn't do this or provide this that you couldn't accomplish
it?
What is that thing that God is calling you to do or to engage in that if he didn't have
his help orienting that, that you would absolutely fail?
And he began to pray about it and he thought, you know what?
I know speakers.
I know electronic.
I know audio gear.
I think God's calling me to start a company that is oriented around, and their mission
statement is this, that they're in Proverbs, that they are wanting to have goodwill among
humans and among God, that they want favor among people and among God.
And I want to start a radically different company.
And so he's sitting there and he said, I know what I need to do.
I know that thing.
I need to start a speaker company.
And so he contacted this guy that he thought was one of the best speaker designers in the
world and said, what if we did this?
What if we got together and started this?
And it was just this radically different thing.
If we built high quality speakers, all of this stuff, and so they got together, they
merged this and he began to create a company that was a completely different context than
anything else.
They innovated.
They were out front and he was doing this all as a part of something that God had called
him to do.
And he said, you can affect the world by getting into these conversations.
Right here, hanging from these towers is the product of sitting in a small group.
They're called Dan Lee speakers.
Tom Dan Lee designs them.
A guy named Mike Heddon was sitting there in that small group saying, God, what is it
that you're calling me to do that won't succeed without your help?
They're not only in Resonate Church.
You go to Beasley Coliseum, Dan Lee speakers, because someone said, God, I want to listen
to what you're calling me to do.
I want to make history.
And these speakers are becoming the most significant speakers in the country for large venues.
If you go to different, you go to Turner, Turner Field in Atlanta, their whole thing
is these speakers.
If you go to these major things, even in our arena, like I said, our basketball arena,
we're beginning to take over because their technology is better.
God is blessing this.
Here's what I believe.
It's not just a good business model.
The guy's not just equipped to do this, like God has called, but there's something happening.
And I think the same thing is happening with Resonate Church, that we're not hip here
with geniuses, but God is blessing this.
You realize we have four of the things just like this.
This is not just about you.
God is expanding this, and we're hoping to begin to have these things over and over.
And I want to call you into something bigger than yourself.
Not just with Resonate Church, but begin to ask some questions.
And so what now?
Some things I want to ask you.
Number one, what is Jesus calling you to?
What is Jesus calling you to?
Could you think about that?
Could you process that?
Because you're going to keep doing the loop in your past, and you're going to keep having
confusion in your present until you understand this question.
And it might take you a couple of years, but what if you begin to daily pray, God, show
me what you're calling me?
It puts a perspective in who you ask to date you.
It puts a perspective in who you allow to date you.
It puts a perspective on what major you should do.
It puts a perspective on what intern you should do, what friends you should have.
All of a sudden, life gets really clear.
Mike Haddon was called to start a speaker company, which means he was called to quit
his former job, which means that he was called to maybe move to a different place, begin
to operate, begin to leverage these relationships.
It provided clarity.
And I want to ask you this second question.
If God had complete access to your life, what do you think that looks like in 10 years?
If you gave God your future, what would that look like 10 years from now?
You might not be able to think 10 weeks from now, but what happens is when you establish,
what is God calling me to?
You see, my life, the most significant changes have happened when I've walked across the
campus.
When I've walked across two different campuses, God has spoken to me and said, here's where
I want you to go.
This is what I want you to do, and all the next steps in my life were laid out.
So I'm on my 10th year being here in Pullman, and here's why, because I believe that God
has called me to connect with college students, and here's the exciting thing in my life.
I believe that you are the most influential group of people in the world, and I believe
the police is the best collegiate environment in the nation, and I want to be right here.
I don't want to be anywhere else.
I love this place because I feel like from here, the future can change.
That's my calling.
It might not be yours.
Find out what does that look like.
So I have a 10-year idea of what's going to happen.
What's God calling you to?
I've got to break history, to make history, and my desire is that you make history because
you are people who understand the calling, and that you get it.
So we're going to take communion, and maybe this connects you to the sacrifice of Jesus
Christ in your life, and what Jesus did to reconcile.
We're going to have the band come up here, but I want you to process this.
We're going to sing some songs, and I want us to be able to have this moment.
We ask the question, what are you calling me to?
How do I cover my past with grace so I can focus on the future?
Let me pray for us.
God, help me to be able to see my future the way that you see the future.
Lord, I pray for this group of people that you would help them to see their future as
well.
Lord, that you would help us to have clarity.
Lord, that you would help us to, in these moments as we sing, to be drawn to the fact
that you have called us to do something.
Maybe we are clueless to what that means, or I pray that we would have the guts, that
we would have the courage to begin to pursue that, to ask that question.
What is it that God has called me to do?
What are you calling me to do, God, that will require you to be present for it to succeed,
that you must accomplish for it to work?
God, I pray over this group of people, I pray that there would be history makers in this
room because they have broken history in their past, in your holy name, amen.
