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Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And whether today is your first time tuning in or if you're a regular listener, we're really excited that you're here. Well, today Pastor Rick is continuing his series called Discover your destiny. So get ready to explore the practical steps to grow in all areas of your life, spirit, mind, body, relationships, and even your career. So stick with us as we uncover God's incredible plan for your future. And now let's join Rick for the final part of a message called the Life God blesses.

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The Bible says we don't look at troubles that we can see right now. Instead, we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For troubles we see will soon be over, but the unseen joys to come will last forever. Faith is seeing, believing what you cannot see. And it says here, we look forward to what we have not yet seen. You see, the things you see right now are temporary. Everything you see is not gonna last. It's what you don't see that's gonna last forever. So he says, what are you gonna focus on? The temporary or the eternal? I realize that short term thinking is what our culture teaches. And I realize the decade of destiny is a counterculture move. For me to get you to think 10 years is highly unusual. Cause most people don't even think a year or a month in advance. They're only thinking from day to day. So I realize this is against our culture to think about what am I gonna do in the next 10 years. But you can't see it. But you trust God. We look at what we have not yet seen. The troubles we see will soon be over. But the unseen joys will last forever. So what does this mean? It means that whether you are blessed or whether you are stressed in the next 10 years will be completely dependent upon what you choose to focus on. If you focus on your problems, you're stressed. If you focus on God's potential and power, you're blessed. If you focus on your troubles, you're stressed. If you focus on God's truth, you're blessed. If you focus on your circumstance, you're stressed. If you focus on Christ control, you're blessed. It's all what you have your eyes on. Blessed or stressed. The Bible says this by Noah. Noah's belief in God, this is faith that caused him to see what he couldn't see. Noah's belief in God was in direct contrast to the disbelief of the rest of the world. See, this is a counterculture move to believe in what you cannot see. His belief in God was in direct contrast to the disbelief of the rest of the world. How was he able to believe? The Bible says he heard God. Noah heard God. You say, well, I don't hear God. How do you hear God? Listen, you hear God by getting near God. You need to write that down. You hear God. I hear God by getting near God. You can't hear God from a distance. You can't hear God if you got the TV or the radio on. You can't hear God if you've always got iPhone plugs in your ears. You can't hear God. If you're listening to everything else in life. The Bible says, be still and know that I am God. That means sit down and shut up. It means get alone with God and be quiet and read the Bible a little bit and talk to him in prayer and say, God, is there anything you want to say to me? You can't hear God unless you're near to God. Now, the Bible calls being near to God walking with God. It's a phrase that you find in the Bible. Adam walked with God, Enoch walked with God, Noah walked with God. Not physically. It means they were near to God. Near to God. Notice this verse. The Bible says, Noah, Genesis 6, 9, third part of it. Noah walked with God. Now, walking implies three things. Follow me on this. Walking with somebody. When you walk with somebody implies affiliation. It applies agreement and it implies alignment. What do you mean by that? First, when you walk with somebody, it implies affiliation, means I'm not ashamed to be seen with this person. Are you embarrassed by being seen with Jesus? Are you embarrassed that people might know you're a believer, that you're a Christian? Are you embarrassed by your relationship to Jesus Christ? You can't walk with God unless you're affiliated. You're associated. You have a relationship with God. And not only do you have to have affiliation, you have to have in the same thing, alignment. That means you're walking in the same direction at the same pace. You can't walk one way and your partner walk another way. Some of you have tried to walk with somebody who they walk slower than you do or faster. And you're in a mall and you're walking and like every 10 steps, you have to slow down and wait for them to catch up. Don't look at them right now. Because some of you, you married a person like that, okay? And the person you married either walks too fast or too slow for you. And you find yourself, you have to be at the same pace and headed the same direction. If you're gonna walk with God in the next 10 years. You gotta walk at the same pace. Not fast, not slower than God, and you gotta walk in the same direction. You got affiliation. You gotta have alignment. You gotta have agreement. The Bible says in Amos 3, 3. Can two people walk together if they don't agree? The answer is no. No, they can't. How do I know if I'm walking with God? How do I know that? Same three things. I'm in agreement with God, I'm in alignment with God, and I'm not ashamed to be affiliated with God. Oh, and there's one other thing. How do you know if you're walking with God? You'll be out of step with the world? Because the world's walking the opposite direction at a different pace, you'll be out of step with the world. What's the result of walking with God? What's the result of walking with God the next 10 years? Let me tell you what it is. You have no fear. You fear nothing when you walk with God. It takes all the fear out of your life. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, nothing, not a zip, because you are with me. You lose your fear when God is near. If you're afraid for your finances, you're not walking with God. If you're afraid for your marriage, you're not walking with God. If you're afraid for your career, you're not walking with God. When you walk with God, you have zero fear. You lose your fear when God is near. Noah was totally unafraid. Everybody in the world's going the opposite direction. He doesn't care. He walked with God. He's not afraid. Many of you have been living in fear for the entire year. God brought you here today so he could say this to you. Stop being afraid. I don't want the next decade to be a decade of fear. I want it to be a decade of faith for you. Last decade, there were a lot of fears in your life. Don't carry those fears into this decade. This should be a no fear decade. I'm not afraid anymore. How do you lose your fear When God is near. And when God is near, then you can hear. And when God is near and you can hear, there is no fear, no room for fear. Perfect love is living here. The Bible says perfect love casts out all fear in your heart. You're either gonna have love in your heart, you're gonna have fear in your heart. When you bring love in the front door, Fear goes out the back door. When you bring fear in the front door, love goes out the back door. Love and fear cannot operate in the same heart at the same time. Now, where do you get the perfect love? Well, not from anybody on earth, because nobody on earth can love you perfectly. Nobody can love you perfectly. But the Bible says God is love. The only reason you can love is because God is love, and God loves you perfectly. And when you invite God into your heart in Jesus Christ, it knocks the fear out. Every time you start to get afraid in the next 10 years, you say, perfect love come into my heart. Perfect love fill my heart because it takes out the fear. Love is the opposite of fear. And when you love God and you love your neighbor as yourself, your life will be filled with love. Now, there's a third antidote that we find in Noah's life, and that is the antidote to tempting shortcuts. Number three. I must do exactly as God tells me to do. I must do exactly as God tells me to do. This is the third key to making it to the finish line. You can have all those nine steps we talked about last week, how to get to your goal. But if you don't do this, you're gonna give up too soon. God will tell you exactly what to do, and then you don't take any shortcuts. You see, Noah didn't just hear the word of God. He heeded the word of God. Verse 9. I love this. It says, noah always tried to conduct his affairs according to God's will. Do you do that? Do you try to conduct all your affairs according to God's will? Do you say, lord, what do you want me to do today? What do you want me to do in this interview? What do you want me to do with this sale? What do you want me to do with the next hour? He always tried to conduct his affairs according to God's will. Now, what if God asked you to build a battleship? He's not going to, but let's say he did. You'd probably have some questions. I can think of at least four. First, I would ask, what's a flood? Because in those days, the Bible says at the beginning of time, it had never rained on the earth up to this point. Genesis chapter 2 says that God watered the earth from up within. You know, we know there's water under the ground, and he watered it up from within, almost like a dew that condenses on the ground in the morning. It had never rained. That's one of the reasons we know that after the Flood, the atmosphere changed. We know that simply from fossils, that Earth had a tropical climate for a long, long time. And you can find tropical fossils on the top of some mountains that are now covered with snow. You can also find seashells, which obviously we know where those came from, too. But the fact is, it was a tropical environment. By the way, we know that's why people lived longer. When you read in the Old Testament, they lived for hundreds of years, which helped perpetuate the human race when it was just starting off pretty small. Obviously, there was a reason for that. After the flood, something changed in the canopy, in the environment, in the atmosphere, and people didn't live as long. Evidently, more of the sun's rays were getting through or whatever. We don't really know. But the fact is, the Bible said it had never rained. So when God says it's gonna flood and it's gonna rain, not only did Noah not see it, he couldn't imagine it. It had never been done. It's an incredible thing. The second thing I'd ask is, how do you build an ark? How do you build a battleship? And remember, in those days, there was no Home Depot to get lumber from. I mean, you can't be like Evan Almighty and have the trucks pull up and deliver the lumber. You've got to go out and cut the timber down. That's why it took decades and decades and decades to build this ship. I'm going to ask the question, how do I get it to water? Because Noah lives hundreds of miles to the nearest ocean. By the way, when the flood came, the Bible says it not only rained, it rained for 40 days solid. But it also says God opened up the springs and the wells under the Earth. And long after the rain stopped, the flood kept rising because of the waters underneath. That we know the subterranean waters might ask the question, God, how do you intend to round up all these animals? Now, really, I don't have a problem with this. If you believe God can create a universe, God is omnipotent. He can do anything. So he could just snap his finger if he wanted to. It doesn't really matter to me how he did it, because if you believe God can create the universe, God can do anything he wants to. Now, it's amazing that Noah did not argue, he did not complain with his assignment. He just goes, whatever you say, Lord, I'm gonna do it exactly like you do it. Noah's faith is incredible because the request is incredible. It's unbelievable. It's ridiculously out of human imagination. And yet the Bible says this. Genesis 6:22, Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. This verse is actually quoted twice. It's also in chapter seven, verse five, two times. It tells us Noah did everything exactly as God commanded him. Now, what does that have to do with your life in the next 10 years? God blesses people who do what he says, even when it doesn't make sense. God blesses people who obey him when it doesn't make human sense. God blesses me when I do what he tells me to do, when I follow his instructions, even when I don't understand it. If you could understand everything God does and why he does it, you'd be God. But you're not. So you're not going to. You don't have the brain capacity to understand what God does. It would be like an ant trying to understand the Internet. So a lot of life is just okay, you say so? Doesn't make sense to me. In fact, it seems stupid. In fact, all the cultures go in the opposite way. But I'm gonna do what but you tell me to do in your word, so I'm gonna follow you. Now, this is so important because faith is obeying when I don't understand it. At this stage in your journey in the next 10 years, let me tell you when you're gonna have the most difficult time. The next month isn't gonna be hard for you. Well, it could be, but nothing like it's gonna be. Because in the middle of the years, it is in the middle of your life that you have the test that determines how you're gonna end life. Most people think, well, if I wanna end well, I have to start. Well, no, you really don't. You can actually have a lot of false starts early on in life. You can mess up the early years of your life. You could really just really mess it up and have a bunch of false starts and still end well. Where the real test of where you're gonna end up is, is in the middle years when you are discouraged, to give up on your dreams, when you are tempted to take shortcuts, to take the easy way out, to skim a little, to fudge a little, to do the easy thing, to skim, to cut corners and to say, lord, I know this is what you want me to do, and I think I can do it faster if you let me do it my way instead of your way. That's the tempting shortcuts. God told Abraham and Sarah, you're gonna have a baby that will be the father of a great nation. And at 80 years of age, Sarah still didn't have a baby. And now she's going, hmm, shortcut. So she says to her husband, why don't you take my handmaiden, Hagar, and have a baby through her? God says, shortcut, not my plan. It happens all the time. You'll be tempted to take shortcuts in the next 10 years. Ethical, moral, financial, spiritual, relational. Shortcuts. Don't do it. Don't do it. You do it exactly the way God tells you to do it. Hebrews 11. 7. Noah obeyed God and built a large boat to save his family. Now, the fourth antidote is to the fourth trap you're gonna face in the next 10 years. And that is discouraging delays. Because when God gives you a dream, it never, never, never happens immediately. Because God wants to work on you during the delay. We talked a little bit about that last week. Now, if anybody had the right to be discouraged over delays, it was Noah. Do you know how long it took him to build the Ark? 120 years. Do you think you could sustain motivation on a project that took you 120 years? I doubt it. Do you think you could go 120 years without a single word of encouragement except from God? I doubt it. This man models persistence, determination, endurance. He is an amazing thing. And so the fourth antidote is, I must refuse to give up on the dream God gives me. I must refuse to give up on the dream God gives me. You just keep on going, whether you feel like it or not. You don't give up in the middle. You gotta sustain it over the long haul. It is in the middle of your life that determines the end, whether you end successfully or not. Now, again, I told you this earlier, your decade of destiny. What I'm doing with you and our entire church is really a counterculture move. Because nothing in our society teaches you to think ahead. Everything in our society teaches you live for today. And if it feels good, do it. And don't worry about tomorrow or next month or next year or anything like that. Don't even plan for it. To get you to think 10 years ahead is a counterculture move. Would you write this down? Everything takes longer than I think. Isn't that the truth? Everything takes longer than I think. So if you're gonna be different 10 years from now, you better start on it now. You gotta start on it now before you get to the end of the decade. Everything takes longer than we think. Now, I'm sure Noah, in that 120 years and got discouraged, was tempted to give up. I'm sure he faced loneliness. I'm sure he faced fatigue going after his dream. You will face loneliness, and you will face fatigue going after the dream God gives you. Count on it. You will face loneliness and fatigue going after the dream God gives you, but you just keep on going. And the reason Noah kept on going is faith in God. Look at this next verse. Hebrews 11:7. In the living Bible, Noah trusted God. When he heard God's warning about the future, Noah believed him. It's faith. Even though there was no sign of a flood. Now, for 42,001 days, Noah has only one goal. Fulfill my destiny. Do what God made me to do. I'm sure in many days, as Noah's building the ark, he's thinking, this is not the life I signed up for. This is not the life I signed up for. Little did he know he was gonna save the world. And I bet many days he didn't feel like working. And he'd come home at night tired, and Mrs. Noe would say, how was work, honey? Same place, same thing. But he never gave up. You may feel like giving up right now, and we haven't even started. You may already feel like giving up. You say just life is tough. And. And I think God brought you here this weekend so he could say to you, don't, don't. Don't give up. God is in control. And the final of your chapter, final chapter of your life, you haven't read yet. Now, God's already written it, but you haven't read it. And you need to not give up. The Bible says this. Look here on the screen. Well, let's read this verse aloud. Let us not get tired of doing what is right. For after a while, we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't get discouraged and give up the most difficult part of that verse, the after a while part. After a while, we will reach our goal. We will fulfill our destiny. We will accomplish our dream. It's after a while. Now, did you know that the ark is a symbol of salvation in the Bible? Just like Noah's family was saved by being in the ark, they were saved from destruction. You are saved from destruction by being in Christ. Christ is the ark. How was Noah saved? The same way you and I are. We're saved. Some people think the people before Jesus were saved by works, and then after Jesus, they're saved by grace. No. No, Everybody who's ever been saved by God has been saved the same way by faith in God's grace. The word Grace. The first time it's mentioned in the Bible is in Noah's life. The word righteous, the first time it's mentioned is in Noah's life. And Noah lived by faith. Look at these next two verses. The Bible says by faith, Noah. By his faith, Noah showed the world was wrong. Everybody said, we're going this way. But the whole world was wrong. The crowd is often wrong. The majority is often not right. By his faith, Noah showed that the world was wrong. And. And he became one of those who are made right with God through faith. And the next verse. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. We are saved by our faith in God's grace. Friend, this is the only way you're ever gonna be saved. It's the only way you're ever gonna get to heaven. You must put your faith in God's grace. And you need to do it today. Now the Bible tells us in 2 Chronicles 16, 9, God is looking for people to bless. God is looking for people to use. He's looking down. Anybody I can bless in the next decade? It says the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth that he may show himself strong in the behalf of those whose hearts are perfect toward him, are leaning toward him. God is looking for people to use and to bless. I want you to be one of those people. I want our church to be filled with blessable, usable people in the next 10 years. But to do that, to fulfill your destiny, you must do what Noah did. Let's bow our heads. Father, I know that in our broken culture today you're looking for men and women who will choose to be like Noah. May our family, our church family, be filled with people of faith like Noah. Now you pray in your heart. Say this. Dear God, I want to be the kind of person like Noah who brings a smile to your face. I want my faith to be strong to the finish line. I don't want to fall into any of these traps in the next decade. Forgive me for all the times I've worried about what other people think. Give me the courage to dare to be different so I can fulfill your destiny for my life. I want to listen to your voice, not the voices of doubt. I want to get near you so I can hear your Jesus. In this next decade, I want to do exactly what you tell me to do, even when it doesn't make sense to me. I want to trust you when I'm tired, when I'm discouraged. Help me to be like Noah and never give up. If you've Never invited Jesus Christ into your life. Say Jesus Christ, I know I can never save myself. I need to put my faith in your grace like Noah did. I'm asking you to forgive me because of what Jesus did on the cross. And I want to open my life to you. In your name I pray. Amen.