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Well, River Valley, we have started the weekend out great with Friday night and Saturday morning with youth convention. Apple Valley campus was packed with students. Matter of fact, I think they have a picture they could throw up of the students that were worshiping. Yeah, it's behind me. I mean, this place was packed. You should be excited about that. I'm just saying. And all the campuses converged on Apple Valley, and I was here worshiping with them, and they were just leading and leaning in to what God was doing. I was just overwhelmed. And we said when we started this church, we would risk anything to reach the next generation. And so grateful that we could invest in youth convention and just for them to be able to have that time together. And I just wanna say, this weekend, we asked the guest speaker, Noah Herron, to stick around. So he came and ministered to our teenagers this weekend. We said, come on, you gotta stay for the weekend and stay here if you. It was hard to get him. He has a booming church in Nashville. Started it just over two years ago. They're now having four services a weekend running 2,000 people. God's doing something special in Nashville. So come on, River Valley. Welcome with me, Noah Herron, as he brings the word at River Valley Church this weekend. We love having you. Thanks for ministry to our team.
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Come on. If you love Jesus, can you give him praise? Come on. If you love Jesus, can we give him our best praise? Amazing. Amazing. You can be seated. Turn to the person next to you. Say, I'm glad I'm sitting next to you in church. Come on, tell your second choice. Say, I like you, too. Hey, it is such an honor to be at River Valley this weekend. And I just want to say this. Something you need to know about me is I love Jesus. I love church, and my favorite basketball player is Steve, Steph Curry. And I'm telling you this for a reason. I love Steph Curry. He. He has changed the game of basketball. We have a high school basketball coach in our church. And he said, no, I don't think you understand what Steph Curry has done for the next generation of basketball players. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, his amount of three pointers that he shoots, the way that he spaces the floor, it's changed the way that. That high school basketball players play basketball. And as I was thinking about River Valley Church, I don't know if you realize this. Maybe you're new to River Valley. Maybe you've been coming for a long time, and you just don't know the perception of River Valley Church. This is a church that has changed the game for other churches, for church plants like ours, for people who are aspiring to reach a city, to reach neighborhoods. And you are not a part of a cool church. You are a part of a move of God at River Valley. And I just wanna say thank you. It is an honor to be here. I look up to your pastors so much. Pastor Rob and Becca, can we honor our pastors for their leadership, for their sacrifice? I wanna be like you guys when I grow up. So thank you. You might not know this, but your church sowed into our church when we started to get us off the ground, and. And we're just over two years old. As Pastor Rob said, your generosity has made a massive impact. In two years, we have seen 1,313 people give their life to Christ in Jesus name. And so thank you for being a part of Wade Church. If you're ever in Nashville, Tennessee, for the weekends, come visit River Valley Southeast location would just be honored to have you. And so if you have your Bible, go ahead and turn to Genesis, chapter six. That's where we're gonna be this weekend. And as you turn, statistics say that you'll listen to me longer if I show you some photos of my family. So I'm gonna do that really quick. My name's Noah. The coolest thing about me is that I gave my life to Jesus when I was 21 years old in my college apartment through a YouTube video. And the second coolest thing about me is I am married to Maddy Herron. And this is my wife, Maddie. We're about to celebrate seven years of marriage. She is the most, like, Jesus person that I have ever met. And she's also from Alabama. And so when she talks, her accent sounds like it should come with the side of mashed potatoes and gravy. And I love it. We have three kids. We have a son. His name's Lion. Proverbs 28:1 says that the wicked flee at the first sign of trouble, but the righteous are bold like a lion. We have a daughter named Mila. This is Mila. And she can have whatever she wants. She knows it. And six months ago, we welcomed our newest addition. This is Navy. This is baby Navy. And so we're really blessed. I love being a boy, dad. My boy is my best friend. But there is something about being a girl, dad. And I remember sitting in the hospital room holding baby Mila for the first time. And my left hand and my right hand was on Facebook Marketplace, looking up rottweiler breeders. I was Like, I gotta protect this little angel. But I love talking about Jesus, and he changed my life. And I believe that no matter where you're at today, he could change your life. And so this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at my favorite scripture in the Bible. And today, as you listen, as you lean in, you can say, amen. You can say hallelujah. You can say, preach a white boy. You can take notes. And if you hear something you don't like, you can just email me@loganivervalley.com Love you, man. Okay. This is my favorite scripture in the Bible. Are you ready for this? Genesis, chapter six, verse eight. Legitimately, my favorite scripture in the Bible. Genesis, chapter six, verse 8. It says this. But Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah. My name's Noah. That was a word for me. That's really in there. We're gonna skip 10 verses ahead. Verse 18 is where we're actually gonna be. Verse 18, it says this, but I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark. You and your sons and your wife and your son's wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal, and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them. This is my favorite part, verse 22. Noah did everything just as God commanded him to do. I cannot think of a better statement to be said of a person than that statement right there. They did everything that God asked them to do for us to get to the end of our life, for us to be nearing the end where we're gonna enter glory with the Lord. We're gonna go to heaven to be with Jesus. I can't think of a better thing for my kids to say, for my wife to say, for my grandkids to say than that right there. They did everything God asked them to do. That's what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about this idea of building the boat. The title of my sermon is Build the Boat. Will you say that with me? Ready? One, two, three. Build the boat. Jesus, we love you. We worship you. Thank you for what you're doing at River Valley. We are so grateful to be a part of an only God story that you're writing. We pray that Today you would speak to us through your word that when we leave here we would not be able to say that we had an encounter with a speaker or a worship team, or even a great volunteer team. But God, we had an encounter with the one true God. That's our prayer. We love you. In Jesus name everyone said amen. Amen. When my wife and I started dating, I realized very quickly that I wanted to marry her. And so I would get really nervous when I was around her to do things that you needed to do in order to get married. Like say I love you. Right? I remember I wanted to tell her that I loved her for the first time. But every time I would go to say it, I would get nervous. There was one time I walked into the living room at her parents house, we were watching a movie and I had every intention to tell her that I loved her. And I walked in with confidence. I said, maddie, I gotta tell you something. She said, okay, what's up? I said, you parents are out of toilet paper in the bathroom. Because I was so nervous. Couple months later, myself, Maddie and about eight of our friends, we took a trip to Hawaii for five days. And I thought, what better place to tell the woman of my dreams that I love her for the first time than in Hawaii. I'm picturing me surfing up on a surfboard, coconuts in my hands, you know, Elvis Presley in the background. And what actually happened is we got to Hawaii. It was the second morning there. I was sleeping on a pull out couch with my buddy Andrew. At about five o' clock in the morning, we hear the sliding glass door to the Airbnb open up. I jump out of bed. I think maybe we're being robbed. I don't know what's going on. And I go to the back of the Airbnb and I see Maddie walking towards the ocean at 5am My wife is not a morning person, okay? So I take off running after her. I'm like, hey, wake up. What's going on? Are you sleepwalking? She says, no, no, no, no. I think I just had some bad fish at dinner last night. I need some fresh air. And it was like I heard the audible voice of the Lord say, this is your time. And so we started walking down the beach and it was just magical. The sun's rising, the colors in the sky. It was like a movie. And we got to the end of this little stretch of beach and I turned her to face me. I grabbed her by both hands, squeezed her hands. I looked into her beautiful blue eyes and I said, maddie, I love you. I just felt like, man, I nailed that. She looked back at me and stared at my kind of average eyes. And she said, no, I think I'm going to throw up. And she ran to the bushes. Welcome to my life. Four weeks later, I would get down on one knee, ask her to be my wife. She would say yes. There would be a photo taken of the engagement moment. The company that I bought the wedding ring from saw the photo on social media, reached out and said, we'd like to make you an offer for the rights of that photo. We would like to put it on 220 billboards around the country to advertise our jewelry. And I'm just going to tell you right now, we needed a coffee table. And so we said, yes. I'm telling you this story because if you saw the billboard photo, you would never know about the beach in Hawaii story. If you saw the picture, you would never know about the valleys that our relationship took before we got to that picture. And I think sometimes when we read familiar stories in the Bible, we just skip to how it's gonna end. I think the story that we are most guilty of doing this in is the story of Noah. It's this cute little story. It's a story we read to our kids. It's like God spoke to Noah, put two of every living animal on that boat. Thank God that he remembered the dogs. There are other animals we kind of wish he would have forgotten. And it's this cute little story. But if you really look beneath the surface at the story of Noah, what you see is a difficult story. In fact, I think it's one of the most difficult stories in the entire Bible. Most scholars believe that Noah built the boat for somewhere around 120 years. Can you imagine doing anything for 120 years? I'm just going to be real honest with you. I cannot. I've had the same New Year's resolution for seven years in a row every January. I say, all right, I'm getting ripped. This is my year. And for the first 10 days of every year, I'm doing it. I'm lifting weights, I'm eating grass. You know, I'm skipping Chick Fil A. I'm doing all the things I need to do to get ripped. And then around day 11, I'm back in the drive through. I'm back skipping the workout. Why? Because starting things is easy. Finishing things is hard. As a Christian, what we've got to understand is starting things is easy, but finishing things is biblical. You're absolutely called to start. You're absolutely called to start the family. You're absolutely called to start the business. You're absolutely called to do that thing that God's asked you to do, but you're also called to finish. Well, Noah built this boat for 120 years. The only way that's possible is if the goal of your life is faithfulness. See, God's measurement of success is simply faithfulness. I came across this article in the New York Times recently. It was about Gen Z entering the workforce. I'm kind of on the oldest end of Gen Z and it caught my attention and I read the article and it said that the average Gen Z adult is gonna hold 14 different full time jobs by the age of 30. And the point of the article was not to say that that was good or that was bad. The point of the article was to simply say that unlike any other time in human history, we as humans are looking for the next best opportunity. If we can find something that leads to more money, we'll take it. If it leads to a better reputation, we'll take it. If it leads to more notoriety, we will take that opportunity. And on the one hand I get it. But on the other hand, as a follower of Jesus, we've gotta be really, really careful because we serve a God who does not give opportunities. He gives assignments. And there's a big difference between an opportunity and an assignment. An opportunity will bring your name fame, but an assignment will bring God's name fame. An opportunity might put more money in your bank account, but your assignment will put more people into heaven. An opportunity might be something that's full of hype for a season, but your assignment will give your life purpose for your entire life. And I came to tell somebody at River Valley Church this weekend that that today is not the day to give up your God given assignment for a man made opportunity. Because one day we're gonna get to heaven and we're not gonna hear well done my good and rich servant. Well good, my good. My good and famous servant. Well done, my good. And you've got a lot of TikTok followers. Servant, we are gonna hear well done my good and faithful servant. Faithfulness is the goal for followers of Jesus. Faithfulness. It reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures, Galatians, chapter 6, verse 9. Don't grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time you'll reap a harvest if you don't give up. The reason I love that scripture is it's only asks one thing of us and it's don't quit. The rest of the results, the rest of the pressure is all on God. It's all up to God. It's a promise that he's going to bring the harvest. We just don't quit. When I was five years old, my parents, they signed me up for my first organized sporting event. It was T ball. And my coach, he couldn't see the athletic promise in me that I could see. And so he put me in right field. And I don't know if you've been to a five year old T ball game recently, but not many people hit the ball to right field. And so after the first game, no one had hit the ball to me. I was complaining to my mom and I was telling her, you should have signed me up for soccer or hockey or something that's more fun than baseball. And my mom was like, hey, well, we can do that another time. You're going to finish what you started now. Game two. I was back in on baseball because they started giving out free snow cones to all the players. So I was re engaged with baseball. Get to the fifth game, the final game of the season. There was a guy gets up to the plate and he really ripped one. And by ripped one, I mean it rolled into right field. It barely made it into right field. And everybody looks to right field and there was no right fielder because in the middle of the fourth inning, the right fielder had walked around the fence and was standing in the snow cone line. True story. And so my mom, my mom is a scrapbooker. Do we have any scrapbookers in the room? My mom is a scrapbooker. And so she was showing the photos of the baseball season to my wife and she was telling that story. And everybody's laughing. And all of a sudden I felt the Holy Spirit say, how often are you that same right fielder? I put you in a place, I give you an assignment, I give you a position, and you believe it was from me. When it's time to start, you're excited about what I've asked you to do when it's time to start, and then the results don't match your expectations and you move right before the very thing you've been praying for happens. What if the word of the Lord for you today is not to do something new or to quit what you've been doing? What if the word of the Lord for you today at River Valley Church is that you don't need a position change, you just need a perspective change? God, if you haven't told Me to move. I'm gonna keep building the boat you've called me to build. God, if you haven't said to do something different, I'm gonna do the very last thing you told me to do. Because faithfulness pleases you. Faithfulness pleases you. I want to finish. I want to finish. Well, my wife, she says I'm a little dramatic. I would agree. And I think that if Netflix would let me pitch them on a show about Noah, it would be a hit. Okay, so I just want to share really quickly my idea for the pilot episode, and then we'll land the plane. Okay, here's the idea. It's that Noah is in the living room with his wife, and he says this. Hey, babe, quit my job today. His wife's like, oh, why'd you do that? I'm gonna build a boat. God told me to. Okay, is it gonna be a fishing boat? Is that how we're gonna pay the electric bill? Are we gonna catch fish? Are we gonna sell fish? Is it gonna be. Is it going to be a fishing boat, Noah? No, think more Carnival Cruise Ship. All the married people. Let's just imagine that. That went great. It's an easy combo, no problem. What about year 10? How is that combo, Noah? You know those dinner parties we used to get invited to with the neighbors, with the tea and the crumpets? Now it's British. It's a British Netflix show. We just made it. You know those parties we. They don't invite us anymore, Noah, because everybody thinks we're crazy. Because for the last 10 years, we've done the same thing every day with no result. And Noah's just gotta keep building the boat. What about year 20? Year 30? Year 40? You know what I don't see? I mean, I've read it so many times, and I can't find anywhere that shows that people were celebrating Noah's faithfulness. There was no one tagging him in Instagram photos. There were no news outlets that were covering what he was doing, which says to me that if I need people to notice me being faithful, I probably am not going to end faithful. But if I know that it's the Lord that I'm doing it for, then I've got a shot. You're 60, you're 70, you're 80, you're 90. Can you imagine what would have happened if he had quit year 100? If he had given up year 110? I think for me, the biggest threat to me being faithful is honestly looking at the boats that God's building. In my neighbor's life, if I'm honest. Sometimes I get distracted. I look at this boat and I look at that boat, and I'm like, wow, those are really big boats. Mine's not like that. And I keep reminding myself, man, success is not me compared to you. Success is simply me compared to what has God asked me to build? What has God asked me to do? What has God instructed me to pour my life at? Maybe you're here and you're like, maybe it's your first time at a church. And first of all, you should come back and hear Pastor Rob. He's better. But second of all, maybe you're sitting there and you're thinking, is this guy about to sell me a boat? What is he talking about? What we're talking about is what has God called you to do, the purpose of your life, what has he uniquely wired you to? And there's lots of boats that are represented in this room. This is what I know. There's. Every single person has at least one boat God's called them to build. And the boat's bigger than you think, because God doesn't build mediocre boats. God builds boats that only he can get the credit for. That's what he does. And so maybe you're here, and maybe the boat that God's calling you to build is the boat of your marriage. Maybe it was easy to build that boat on year seven, where I'm at. But somewhere along the way, the date night stopped. Somewhere along the way, you stopped praying together like you used to. Somewhere along the way, you just put the hammer to the side. And maybe God brought you to River Valley this weekend just to hear, hey, it's time to start going on date night again with your spouse. It's time to start praying again with your spouse. It's time to start doing the little stuff that you did at the beginning, because that's a boat worth building. Maybe you're here, and the boat God's calling you to build is the boat of your singleness. You know, during worship, you worship the Lord. You love the worship team. Man, the worship team is so good. You love the worship team at River Valley, your location. But every single time that bridge starts playing, you throw up your hands in worship. It's always the left hand because you want everyone to know that there is space on this finger right here. You worship the Lord, but you're also available. And you think about being in a relationship, if you're honest more than you think about Jesus and maybe the boat. God's calling you to build is the boat of your singleness, of saying, hey, I've got extra time to devote to the Lord. I've got extra money to devote to the Lord. I'm going to devote to my singleness, to falling more in love with Jesus than any other thing. Maybe the boat that God's calling you to build is the boat of River Valley Church. Maybe you've been coming. Maybe you, you like the teaching, you like the team. You like how your family's finding community. You like the worship, and you've been coming for some time. Maybe it's time to go from attending to building, from enjoying to participating, saying, hey, hey, my campus pastor, where do you need me to serve? How can I help what God is doing? How can I be a part of this move of God? How can I serve in the parking lot? How can I serve with the kids? How can I serve on the worship team? Maybe it's to go from attending to tithing to saying, hey, I want not just my time to build God's house. I want my treasure to build God's house. What's the boat God's calling you to build? One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein. He said this. He said, it's not that I'm smarter than most. I just tend to stick with problems a little longer than the person beside me. I love that quote because it's exactly what Jesus did for us. He stuck with a problem longer than anyone else was willing to stick with. The Bible says, while we were sinners, Christ died for us. It means that he saw us in our lowest moment, our worst place. Before we knew how to act, before we knew how to behave, before we knew the lyrics to our favorite worship songs, before we had a Bible with our name engraved on it. When we were at our lowest point, Jesus Christ looked at us and said, I love them so much, I'm gonna die for the ch that they'll love me back. He's stuck with a problem, which means as a follower of Jesus, we get to stick with problems longer than the people beside us. We get to stick with building the boat that God's called us to build. In closing, I want to just share a brief story of a boat that means a lot to my family. I have a little sister. Her name is Carson. She is six years younger than me, and when she was 13 years old, she went on a missions trip to Nicaragua. And I really love missions trips. I love that your church sends students on missions trips. It's absolutely amazing. I was getting to Hear a little bit earlier about how the students of River Valley get to go on missions trips. How life changing, how formative that is. It was that way for my little sister. Thirteen years old, goes to Nicaragua. While she's there, she feels like God told her, the boat you're going to build with your life is to be a missionary to Nicaragua. God didn't use the word boat. It just makes sense with my sermon. And so she comes back, she teaches herself Spanish on YouTube. University. The next summer, at 14 years old, she led her first missions trip, 60 adults to Nicaragua. She did all of the translating at 14 years old. The next summer, at 15, she led her first one. And she did most of the teaching. Unbelievable. When my parents talk about our family, they spend about 15 minutes introducing her, and they're like, and our son, he lives on Broadway. I'm like, say it's for church, you know, she's amazing. Part of her story is she gets to the end of high school, junior, senior year, and she hears about this college in Georgia called Emanuel College, how they have this amazing missions program. And she feels like God is saying, this is the next part of your chapter. You're gonna build this boat. You're gonna go get equipped to be a missionary, and then you're gonna go to Nicaragua. And so she tells my parents, and my parents are so excited. They get on their laptop, they look up Emanuel College. They find out that it costs $40,000 a year to go to Emmanuel College. And my parents are blessed. But there's been seasons when we would walk by the ponds and the ducks would throw bread at us. Do you know what I'm saying? And so my parents looked at my little sister and they said, carson, we believe God can do this. And if God provides the money, you can go. If not, we'll have to do something else. And my little sister, she's like, oh, God's got me. No worries. Fast forward. End of her senior year, not a single dollar of scholarship money had come in. My parents sit her down. It's April, senior year. Sit her down. They say, carson, this must not be the Lord. We gotta talk about another option. We gotta talk about plan B. My little sister, she pushes her spaghetti to the center of the dinner table. And she says, my entire life, you've told me that faith doesn't need a plan B. She said, now you're telling me something different. My parents looked at each other, they were like, do we ground her? My little sister said, can I please be excused from the dinner table? She walked upstairs My parents tell the story. They could hear my little sister weeping in her room, just crying. After about five minutes of her weeping, they said she stopped crying and she started singing that song. Waymaker, Waymaker, Miracle worker Light in the dark My God, that is who you are. She just started singing it and singing it. My parents are downstairs. They start singing it the next day. It was a Saturday, college visitation day. You go to the school, you meet the professors, you see the dorm, you sign up for classes. My parents were like, should we take her? We don't know. We don't want to get her hopes up. What are we doing? They take her, they spend three hours. They sign up for the classes, they see the dorms. They're about to leave. My parents, they don't feel right. College student comes up to my sister and says, is your name Carson? She says, yeah, that's me. Someone's been looking for you all day. Will you follow me? My little sister, she follows this girl with my dad. And 10 minutes later, they find themselves sitting in the president of Emanuel College's office. They're making small talk. He finally says, carson, this is going to sound crazy, but last night at around dinner time, We got a call from one of our donors at the school, this very generous man. He said that he was on a date with his wife and the Holy Spirit interrupted his dinner and told them that they were supposed to give 4 years full ride tuition towards the school. Catch this. For a Spanish speaking missionary. He pulled out a clipboard. He said, There's 420 incoming students. You are the only incoming freshman that marked that you want to be a full time missionary to a Spanish speaking country. He said, would you like to come to Emanuel College for free? My little sister looked at my dad and said, I told you, this is what I know about the God we serve. When you pick up the hammer to build the boat that God's called you to build, it's not you who does the heavy lifting, it's the Lord who does the heavy lifting. Exodus 14:14 says, you don't have to fight the battle, you just have to be still. Romans 8:31 says, if God is for me, who can be against me? If you feel too broken, too dirty, like your past has disqualified you. 2nd Corinthians 5:21. He who knew no sin became sin so that you and I could become right with God. God wants to build a boat through your life. Not so that people will say that you're great, but so that people will say that he's great. He's great. Will you build the boat? Will you stand with me? I'd love to pray. If you're here, if you're watching every location, we just stretch your hands. Love to pray over you right now. God, I thank you for the boats that are represented in this room. I thank you for the families, for the vocations, for the callings. God, we pray that you would build things through our life that only you can get the credit for. That people would come to know you because of these boats. That salvations would come because of these boats. God, that opportunities would come because of these boats. God, that more glory for you on earth would come because of these boats. I pray for courage, God. I pray for faithfulness. I pray that you would be our strength, God. That when we feel weak, we would lean on you. When we feel like we're not enough, we would be dependent on you, God, that you would be our rock. Our ever present time of. Our ever present help in time of need, God. That you would be our source, God. And we promise to give you the glory forever. Every single thing that you do. In Jesus name. Everybody said amen and amen. And amen. Come on. Can we give him praise?