← River Valley Church
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Wow. Like, I'm looking at the last couple weeks, I've never had a vision message with two parts in it, and this is the first one. And I've never lived in our state that has had all this happen. But I'm saying, God, we're gonna continue on. I was thinking about the sermon I did during COVID when I said, charlie, Mike, continue mission. We still continue mission. You know, we still continue and move the church forward. And part of this is the vision. Now, as we get into this, I do wanna say this, that we're ending our 21 days of prayer and fasting. And I wanted everyone to hear this at all of our campuses. And I wanted to do this separate from what I did during offering. I just called an extra prayer meeting. So the worship night is at almost every one of our campus. I think Lakeville's coming to Apple Valley and Maple Grove's going to Crosstown. Is that right? Yeah. And so otherwise the campuses have it. It's at 6 o', clock, 6 o' clock Sunday night, this Sunday night. And I'm calling a prayer meeting at five. So at five we're having a prayer meeting. Six o', clock, we're having worship. You can come for just worship, but we'd really like you to pray. We want you to pray for our state. We want you to pray for the chaos stand. We want you to pray for our church. We wanna pray, Lord, that you'd speak to us. So I want you to come early to pray. I want you to come ready with the theme of speak. Lord, we're listening. We're listening to whatever you have to say to us. And then we're coming, ready to worship. Now, can I just say this? The prayer time, five to six will be more intercessory prayer. There may be a heaviness there that is an intercessor's burden. Okay? Because you're literally pleading on behalf of others. And sometimes you take on an intercessor's burden. I'm asking, though, that at six o' clock you don't have to like, you know, like, try to change or something. But I'm asking supernaturally there'd be a breakthrough that we're gonna worship. And here's something God showed me in Joshua, chapter five. Joshua's there and he sees this guy show up. It's an angel of the Lord. He has a sword in his hand. Joshua's in a battle and he's like, are you on our side or their side? And the angel of the Lord says, no. Like, no, like, that's not a yes. Like it wasn't a yes. No. And he said, no, I represent God, all right? He said, I represent the army of the Lord and I have come. And then you know what Joshua did? He says, he fell on his face. He worshiped. And then he says, what does my Lord wanna say? And I thought, is this not appropriate for Sunday night? We're doing, like, Joshua in the midst of all the chaos, what are we gonna do? We're gonna fall on our face, we're gonna pray, we're gonna worship, and we're actually gonna live out our theme. He literally was like, living out the theme. Speak, Lord. What do you have to say for me? So that's what we're gonna do with our prayer meeting. So let me just pray real quick for the service and then. Vision. Vision. All right, Lord, I just pray that that prayer time would be anointed. We'd come hungry, we'd come desperate, we'd intercede, we'd storm heaven so that we could see things change on earth. And then God, I'm praying in the worship time there'd be a lifting of the heaviness because we're in your presence. And I pray, Holy Spirit, you're gonna minister to everyone differently because that's what you do. And so one moment in your presence can change it. And that's what we're praying for and believing for. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. I'm praying that we have standing room only. We have to put the chairs out and we all stand in here. But we'll see. But be with us for that. So part two. Vision, message. Speak, Lord. We're listening. Speak, Lord. First Samuel three. I talked about that, that Samuel heard the voice. He thought it was Eli, but it wasn't. It was actually the Lord. And he goes, speak, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. That's where we get this. I use Isaiah 55. Three, give ear and come to me. Listen that you may live. And I talked about a few things in the vision. I'm gonna just review a couple things here and then get into the new stuff. I said that we wanna grow by a thousand people. We believe Minnesota needs salvation. We need to see people getting saved. And we believe our church grow. We wanna see 1000 water baptism 400 first timers go on a global team that will leave our country and go on a global team and see what God's doing in this big world. Because there's great need. I said, I'd love to see us approve 40 of the 500 missionaries. I'd love to see our kingdom builders get to 15 million. I talked about us launching Global 33, that there were 10 cities that we're gonna focus on. And we launched that with rope holders night. And for those of you that weren't there, go ahead and put that. Matter of fact, fill the whole screen with the. Take away my picture. Put. Put the whole screen of those cities up there. So the campuses. Is that possible to do? I think it's behind me. All right. You can see the different cities, 10 different cities where we're focusing on and we're saying, God, we wanna send teams there that will have training centers, maybe campuses, but then they will go out into the world from there. So it's gonna be multiplication from there. That's part of our vision. I love that we get to do that. We talked about prophetic prayer at the end of our service that we believe our prayer teams are gonna hear from the Lord and there's gonna be things that we're gonna call out. There's people that have this need, this need, this need that may be on the screen. It may be read by your campus pastor, but we believe the Lord is gonna speak to us. Specific breakthrough moments. I was talking with a friend this week and he was telling me about the most incredible specific God broke in story. And I'm gonna use that illustration in. In God of the Whisper, like when I do that sermon. But I was like, yes, the Lord can direct somebody's steps right up to you. And we are believing that God can have prophetic words for us. And then there's one thing I didn't announce, and I wanna say this. We're have a couple of Selah services. What does that mean? A couple times during the year, we're gonna have services that will have a shorter sermon. We'll have worship in the front, shorter sermon. And then there'll be a time of response, a time of waiting on the Lord. Each campus will do this individually. It won't be on video. It'll be at that campus responding to it. But we'll have a couple of those type of services throughout this year that'll be a little different than what we normally do. We'll let you know in advance so that you're not like. And I just invited my first time coworker. Thank you. All right. It was soaking in his presence. All right. But let me tell you something. One moment in the presence of God changes everything. I can't tell you how many people are like, what did I feel when I was at church? What did I feel? Power of the Holy Spirit. All right, so John 10:27 continued where I left off last week. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. This is Jesus. He's saying, you should know his voice. He knows his sheep. You should hear his voice, and you would follow Him. This is discipleship, and we need to hear his voice. That's why we're so into this. We've got to hear his voice. And there's interesting things about listening that I wanna point out. Here's the thing that's hard about hearing the voice of God or hearing the voice of anyone else. Listening is an active construction. It's not reception. Okay. Does that make sense? Do you think, like, listening is going in my ear and I'm just receiving it? No, no, no. Your brain is actually constructing what you're hearing. Isn't that interesting? Your brain doesn't sound like a microphone. It actually predicts the meaning of what somebody's saying to you. It actually edits what you hear. It actually fills in the gaps, corrects grammar. It even invents sounds that weren't even spoken. Can you understand why it's so important for us to learn how to hear God? Our own brain, when we hear things, is like. And even the statement that I just said, some of you heard it differently. That's hard to believe, but that's what happens. That's how two people can hear the exact same thing. And then they say something different when they leave. That's how the game of telephone works so well. Cause you say here's. And then they pass it around. And by the time it gets to the 30th person, it's nothing like what started because it's processing and doing this. So it's very important that we learn how to hear God. Another thing, you can listen faster than anyone can speak. Like, right now, I could probably do about 160 words a minute. All right? That's about it. But you do 125 to 160. I'm gonna put myself at the top end of the range. All right, so 160. But. But I was preaching the south one time. This guy said, you're a good preacher, but you sure talk fast. So average listening, 400 to 600 words. 400 to 600. 160. All right, here's what's happening. Your brain's going, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And it's starting to grab things, to do things, and it's and it's this extra mental space. If you don't discipline your mind, you miss what's being said. That's why taking notes, taking notes, using your phone, doing that, it's helping you to focus on, on what's being said. You should have a notebook or a journal with you when you're in the presence of God. In your quiet time, you should have your phone or something to keep track of because it's gonna help you stay focused. It helps you use up that extra space. Here's another thing that's interesting about listening. You hear your name even in a crowded room. There's something that your brain is constantly scanning. It's scanning for selective things it wants to hear. Is that not amazing? Now here's the thing. What you value determines what you hear. You come to church and you don't value the word of God. You don't value this preaching. You don't value. You don't hear it. The person leaves, they go, that was incredible. And you go, I didn't get anything out of that. You didn't value it. You didn't value it. What you value deter. Cause your brain is saying, what do we value? What do we value? I wanna hear that. I wanna hear that. I wanna hear that. Some of you say, I heard the criticism and this, oh, yeah, Then say, what am I valuing? Like it's what you value. Emotion determines what you hear more than volume. That's why emotionally charged speech, you're like, you remember that because your brain goes, oh, that's important, and puts it in there as a higher thing. I mean, before rational processing even kicks in, the emotion starts to turn. That's how, what's happening in Minnesota right now, we have people that are processing and they're processing emotion. They have a selective bias to what they want to hear. And they. And these things are going on. And then you're wondering, how in the world does this happen? I was talking to a bunch of pastors this week. I was at a gathering with 60 of the largest churches in America and we were talking about. We feel like we're pastoring two congregations based on whatever algorithm is speaking to them. Some of us need to deprogram our algorithm. Talk to a 12 year old, they'll help you. You. Silence increases comprehension. This is fascinating to me. As we're talking about Speak, Lord. Silence increases comprehension more than repetition. If you say it over and over and over again, you think that's better, but it's, say it. Be quiet, let it reinforce. It's stronger in remembering. That's why the scriptures pair hearing and waiting together. So Psalm 37, 7, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. There's something about just waiting and being in those silent moments that God reinforces what he's saying. Some of us rush off after service so fast, and the number one thing we could do is sit in silence where we are, come to the altar area and pray, and let that moment that seal what God's been speaking to us. It's so important. Most people remember the tone longer than the content. Again, you can't even remember what they said, but you remember how you felt. Listening fatigue is real. The longer something goes, the more you lose empathy. That's very real. Did you know that discernment collapses when you're in listening fatigue? Your discernment just starts going down. Here's another thing. We are neurologically biased to hear what confirms us. The brain rewards agreement with dopamine. Disagreement triggers a stress response. So right now, again, as we're looking at our state, lots of stress going on, the brain says, oh, I like that. Oh, dopamine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you think. And then anything that is outside is like, oh, no, that's stress. And so you've got these things going on constantly. And we're wired this way. Confirmation feels like clarity because it just told you what you wanted to hear. You're like, yes, that's exactly right. Listening should cost us some comfort. Like, we should do what he says. Like, when we hear Jesus voice, he doesn't just say, you're doing a great job, everything's fine. I feel like when I go to pray and I say, lord, was there anything I did today that you didn't like? And then he does, and then I hear those uncomfortable things and then he corrects me, that's part of what happens. And I don't want to go to my time in prayer with God and have a bias that says, my sheep hear my voice and knowing, and they follow me. God, I want to hear you. I want to hear the good things. I want to do my own thing. No, I want to follow him and come into alignment with whatever he's doing. We spend about 45 to 55% of our time listening. More than any other communication thing. 96% of people that were surveyed said they're a good listener. That's not true. That is just not true. That's not true. I saw a thing the other day and it said, my wife asked me, did you hear anything? I just said? And he said, I thought that was a weird way to start a conversation. You know, Like, I'm. Like, Becca's. Like, you did. That's you. You know? Okay. What's crazy, too, you think the higher you go up in Management, you'd be a better listener. But they said the higher you go up in Management, usually you become a worse listener. It's important that we listen. Listening matters more than we realize, and it's harder than we admit. Of all the senses, it's the hardest one. Because it's the most subjective. It's the most subjective. If I touch this, that's hard. If you touched it, you'd say that. You would say, oh, that's really soft. That's not subjective. If you were to smell a rose, you wouldn't say, oh, that stinks. We'd say, oh, that's beautiful. Like, you understand. You may not be able to smell it, but people don't smell a rose and go, ugh, what is that? Okay, so the other sense is touch, touch, again, all these senses. But hearing is so subjective. That's why we better get this right. We better learn how to hear our shepherd's voice. That's why the Bible takes listening so seriously, because it knows this about us, that our listening. We can be prone to bias. We can be. It's like, you need to listen. You need to hear. Like in Matthew 11:15, Jesus says, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Jesus says this seven times, eight times. In the book of Revelation, it says, that's seven, seven times. It's like, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. This biblical phrase is Jesus calling people to deep spiritual understanding and listening. It's not just a casual, oh, I didn't get that first part. It's a deep spiritual understanding. Jesus is telling us, if you have ears to hear, I want you to grasp the deeper meaning and the implications of my teachings. I. I want you to really understand what I'm saying. And he's really saying it's even going beyond your ears, that it's going to the ears of your heart. The ears of your heart, or ear of your heart, if you just want one for your heart. All right, but what does that mean? So I looked it up. The ears of the heart. It's the spiritual listening that you bring to Jesus. It's listening with faith. It's listening with attentiveness. It's listening with openness. I mean, just as I opened up this time of talking about the food program, I was in prayer. Listening. And God's like, here's what you're gonna do. Here's what you're gonna do. And you're gonna love in all directions. And you're gonna feed everybody. And I gotta be honest with you, I thought, okay, there's a couple groups in there that'll be really easy to feed. Really? Really? I like those. That'll be easy. Wasn't that I didn't like anybody, but I was like, these ones are easy. These are hard. And it's. I had to be open. You have to be open to whatever God is telling you to do and your whole being. With your mind, with your will, with your emotions. And we talked about this, that God's gonna speak to us through his word, through His Son, by His spirit, through creation, through spiritual gifts. These prophetic words and words of knowledge which we're gonna do a sermon on through his messengers. But here's the thing. If he speaks, God has something important to say. Now, I'm gonna date myself here because I just realized the older I get, the more, like, people are. Like, I wasn't even alive when that happened. You know, I just try to say, but if you're old enough to remember this. I remember those commercials, like, they gotta pray, going, da, da, da, da, da. And there's two guys standing there, and. And they're like, well, my broker says this. And he's like, oh, what does your broker say? And he goes, well, my broker's E.F. hutton. And then the parade stops. How many are old enough to remember that? Right there. Okay. You're the old. Come on, join the 50 plus club. No. All right. The commercial was like, hey, E.F. hutton has something to say. Everybody wants. And everything stopped. Everything stopped. If E.F. hutton's speaking, you better listen. Okay, that was a commercial. But here's what I wanna say. If God is speaking to us today, we better listen. Cause God's speaking to us and he's saying things like this. He's showing us who he is. When I looked at where God speaks and what he does when he speaks to us, he's saying, here's who I am. I wanna listen to that. He says, here's my will and my purpose for your life. I wanna hear that. I wanna listen. I wanna stop. Because I wanna know what he intends to do. I wanna know how my story fits into his story. God speaks to us and gives direction and guidance. We have a great story of that. We're actually gonna do it this summer. We're gonna preach from the Book of Jonah, where actually. Cause Come on. There's another one. Speak, Lord, I'm listening. And then it's like, I'm not listening anymore. And then, yes, I am listening. You got my attention, Lord. Speak. All right, so, like, God's given direction and guidance. I wanna hear what he has to say. He gives correction and warning. Okay? He's like, that's not the way we're gonna walk this in our family. Or warning. That's not we're gonna do. In Acts, the end of Acts. We see this with the Apostle Paul. He's like, the Lord told me last night, we're all gonna be safe from. I want direction. When the Lord speaks, I wanna be listening. He gives promise and assurance, and he gives mercy and judgment. When God speaks, there's something to it. John 10:27. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. And you gotta understand, shepherds don't drive sheep, like, from the back with a whip. They lead them with their voice. I just have a small little video clip. When we were on Global Team Turkey, we were going through the seven Churches revelation, and we're at one of the churches, we're there visiting the historic ruins, and all of a sudden the shepherd goes by. And then the sheep came by. And I grabbed my camera, you know, and I take a look at this video. I mean, those sheep were running by, and I was just. And you can't hear my commentary on there. But I'm like, cue the sheep. You know, the shepherd just went by, you know, and I was like, how amazing. I just. I literally was like, the sheep are following his voice, and he's up there, you know, like, bam. And he's saying, you know, just saying different things and talking. And all the sheep are, like, going right behind them. In line, man. If God's speaking, I want to be right in line. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. I know them. It's present tense. It's ongoing. I know them. There's a personal relationship here. Speak, Lord. We're listening. Following implies discipleship. It means we're growing and being shaped into his image. And there are some things that hurt when we're shaped into his image, but that's hearing his voice and following him. So I believe this. I believe God isn't looking for louder faith, but I think he's looking for truer listening. Truer listening. So as we get ready to close out this time, I want to lead us in a prayer that we'd be truer listeners. Truer listeners. I thank God for the loud praise. I think we should always have. We. We should come into his presence with praise. It should be loud. I think there's something we celebrate and we come in and praise and that praise time. The upbeat music is not just a filler or waiting for you to come in the room. That's literally for you to, like, get the world off. You get into his presence, understand what it's about, change gears from whatever you've been going through that you're going into his presence. And then we get more intimate with our slower worship and things that. I love our song speak, Lord. I love that. Love that. But I believe God isn't looking for us to get louder. We have plenty of loud. That's good. But I believe he's saying, I need truer listeners. I need truer listeners. And when they hear what I want them to do and they hear what I'm saying, they'll know the steps they're supposed to take. It's gonna lead to that action that we talked about about. So, Lord, I just pray right now that you would speak. We're your sheep. We're your sheep. And we're. We're. We're saying, speak to us. We want to hear your voice so clear that we wouldn't wander off. We want to hear your voice so clear that we'll know how to love in all directions. We want to hear you so clear that we're convicted and we're changing into your image that we would take time in your presence. We wouldn't just think about rushing away when we hear things, when we experience things. We would take time in that silence to let you speak and solidify what you're speaking. Speak, Lord. Speak, Lord. Speak, Lord. We're listening. Speak, Lord. We're listening. May we be better listeners. In Jesus name I pray. Amen and amen.