Day 7 dealing with trials

Copy Video URL

Well, hello all my wonderful Facebook friends. I hope we're coming to you right now and I'm going to just ramble here for a minute or two, see if we can get some people to come on and actually send me a message letting me know that you're there so I can say hi to you. That would be great. We have been having a lot of fun doing these things, but there's also obviously a serious component to what we've been trying to do for the last six nights. This is the seventh night and we'll culminate this series tonight, having to do with dealing with fear with navigating tough times and learning lessons from going through trials.

I'll kind of go through in a moment where we've been over the last several nights to give you kind of an update on where we've been and encourage you to go back, by the way, in this feed. If you scroll down or go to our video area on our public page, you'll see all the previous videos. There's about six or seven of them that deal with this topic and deal with what's going on in our culture right now with the coronavirus. In fact, we just got news today. Many of you know that I am here in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Apparently the governor today is issuing an order that starts at midnight tonight that the entire state will kind of be like on a lockdown or a quarantine where the only thing they're encouraging people to leave the house for would be for medical issues or for groceries. And I completely understand that. Hopefully if we do this for a short time, we'll be able to flatten the curve on this virus and be able to move on and get back to normal. My prayer and the reason I'm doing all of this is that we as the body of Christ don't miss the lesson God is trying to teach us in the midst of all of this. I believe in many ways God is kind of calling a time out to the body of Christ and trying to get our attention and focus on people, people that don't know him, people that he's crazy about, that he wants us to reach out toward and to share the great news about his son Jesus.

And I don't know about what you may be doing in your church, but I'm so proud of my church, the road at Chapel Hills and my pastor Steve Holt. We're really, really finding some creative ways to reach out to our people and our entire staff, all of our elders. We're putting phone calls out there and calling all of the people in our church and seeing if we can help them reach out to them, certainly pray for them. So we're really excited about some of the things that we're doing and they really seem to be working. So let me kind of go back for just a moment and talk about where we've been.

We started a number of nights ago and I told you that in 2008, God gave me a word and the word was my people, meaning you and I, are not prepared. And I believe that is still true today. I believe that many of us who call ourselves followers of Christ are not deeply rooted enough in our relationship with Jesus to be prepared for the tough stuff that is going to come against us. I also believe that this current challenge that we're going through right now may only be just a precursor of a lot of other things that are going to come. If you read the Bible closely, you know that there's some incredible things that could be coming down the pike here in the end times.

So we need to really make sure that we have our priorities in order as we move forward. And what I've been doing is sharing with you the experience I had back 10 years ago when Cindy was hospitalized with what they called H1N1 double pneumonia, which is probably, by the way, H1N1 is still around today. And probably more people are dying from that today, even than this new flu, although the new flu is catching up. But we almost lost her. And in that six month period of time, God taught me six principles that I've been sharing with you over these past nights.

Principle number one is in the midst of your struggle. And this is the challenge for those of you who are watching this. On a scale of one to 10, how are you doing in believing and expecting? Are you believing and are you expecting God to show up in the midst of your struggle? The second principle we talked about was do you have a thankful heart?

Again, on a scale of one to 10, even though you are in a struggle right now and there are things that are really causing you to be anxious and fearful, do you have a thankful heart? And I think I shared with you the story about driving to the hospital that day and God asked me to rehearse all the things that I was thankful for. It's almost impossible, guys. In fact, it is impossible to speak the things that you're thankful for and to whine at the same time. And I discovered that and it changed my whole focus so that I've started focusing on the positive side of the ledger.

Lord, thank you so much for these things that you're doing. And it caused me to lessen the anxiety about the things that were on the negative side of the ledger. So on a scale of one to 10, in the midst of your struggle, do you have a thankful heart? The third one was are you letting go? And we talked about that a couple of nights ago.

Are you letting go? Are you getting out of the way? Even though you may not be able to control what's going on right now, there is also an anxiousness that wells up inside of us for that very reason that I'm not in control. And so what God impressed upon me is, Vince, you need to let it go. You need to step back and let me come into those circumstances.

And on a scale of one to 10, how are you doing in that area? Are you letting go? Are you are you getting out of the way? Are you asking God to take control? Or are you trying to manipulate and do things on your own, even though it's often futile?

The fourth area was have you come to the end of yourself? Do you have the right perspective about who you are and where you begin and end and where God takes over? And the whole idea here, again, is humility. Do I understand that when I am empty of Vince is when God fills the vacuum and he takes over. But if I if I'm dealing with pride, if I'm dealing with my own sense of wanting to manipulate everything, God's not going to be there.

God is wanting us to to let go and let him come in. And our job, by the way, is just to show up, show up and get out of the way and let God have his way and let him go through our life the way he intends. And then the fifth area, have you asked God to show you your lesson? And I think I I shared a bit about that last night, about the whole idea of asking God, Lord, in the midst of this struggle, what are you trying to teach me? And I mentioned this last night that I believe this is a question that the entire body of Christ needs to be asking right now.

Lord, in the midst of this, what are you teaching us? Lord, this would be my prayer. Don't let this be another 9 11. And I don't mean that in the destructive sense and certainly all the bad things that happened. I mean, in the sense that the church lost an incredible opportunity to reach out and minister because right after 9 11, people were really, really struggling.

They wanted to find answers and church attendance went through the roof. And then as we study what happened about six months later, the attendance numbers went back down below pre 9 11. Well, what does that suggest? It suggests that people were searching. They went looking for something and they never found it.

And I don't know about you guys, but I don't think as a church, we should be very proud of that. I think we're supposed to be the place that people can come to and get the answers they really need. And that is about Jesus. So I pray that not only will we learn lessons going through this, but as a church collective that we will learn from this as well. And then the final thing that we talked about is are you watching for the simple?

You remember I talked about how I was really wanting to see more of God's miracles and how he very tenderly taught me that the miracles are found in the small things, the simple things, not the sensational things. His word to me was you'll you'll you'll see my miracles when you quit looking for me in the sensational. You'll find me in the simple. And those are people that are all around us. Circumstances are around us that we otherwise would never notice.

If we are really have our spiritual ears tuned, we're going to see God working around us. And I don't know about you, but I want to participate in that. So in all of this, I'm leaving with you those six areas for you to evaluate. How are you doing in those areas in your own life? And my encouragement to you is if you're getting some low scores on some of those work on it, pray God will help you work through all of these things.

But at the end of the day, I promised you at the very beginning and I tease you along the way that I was going to conclude this with what I have discovered is the secret to life. And I'm going to share that with you now. And please pay attention that what I'm about to share with you, but this is very, very important. This is going to what is going to be what is going to enable you to really be able to go through any struggle in your life. So in order to demonstrate this, I'm going to have to use my hands.

And I want to I want to tell you up front, this is not a magic trick. OK, so you're going to have to pay really close attention. The secret to life. Here we go. There they are.

Yeah. What's that? My circumstances. They're right there. They're pressing right in on my face.

They won't go away. I'm popping pills at night trying to get to sleep, but they're defining who I am as a man. I don't know what your circumstances are. It could be something represented by that wedding ring. It could be what you're going through right now in this moment.

What you're going through right now in this whole pandemic situation and the fear that you're that you're dealing with. It could be another broken relationship. It could be financial issues. It could be a relational issue in your family. It could be physical.

Any number of things. They're right there. Now, watch this. Where's God? Oh, oh, he's out there.

God's out there. Pastor talks about God every Sunday. I know about God. But now, now, guys, what's happening right now? God's out there.

But what lens am I looking through to see God? Hear me. I'm looking at God through the lens of my circumstances. If I'm having a tough time and my circumstances are kind of hard, what do you think? You think God might look a little fuzzy?

You bet. A woman came to me at about the three-month mark of when Cindy was in the hospital. Things were very, very tense. I was very scared. And she said this to me, and I've never forgotten it.

She said, Vince, I want you to imagine that you're lying in bed at night. And of course, we know God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. And as you're lying in bed, God is hovering right above your body. His face is pressed upon your face, and he's looking at you while you're sleeping.

And he can't wait for you to wake up so he can say, good morning, Vince. When she shared that with me, I thought, wow, that's kind of cool. In fact, the next day, I got up. And the very first thing I did, because I was really broken, guys. I was really broken.

And I was desperate to experience God. And I woke up and I said, good morning, Lord. I want to say good morning to you today, Lord. And I want to go out today, and I want to go out the way you want me to go out. I want to go out following you.

I want to go where you're going to go today. Let's you and I go and have some fun. But I choose to put you in front. Someone once said, if God's your co-pilot, you might want to change seats. Well, God has been my co-pilot a lot of times, and he's been following me around.

But in this case, I knew what I was supposed to do. And I've got to be honest with you. Most every morning now when I wake up, that's what I do. I say good morning, Lord. I'm so grateful for this day.

I don't know what's going to happen today. But I choose to go out and look for the positive things that you're doing. I want to be involved with building your kingdom. And let's you and I go and have some fun. And I choose to put him first.

Now, back to my illustration. My circumstances, God. Okay, now watch what I'm about to do. This is the secret to life. Here we go.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. I'm watching you guys. And I can tell some of you guys didn't get that. So I'm going to do it one more time. Here we go.

Here we go. My circumstances and God. Wow. You're supposed to say wow. All right, now get this, guys.

Come on. Did my circumstances go away? No. But what lens am I looking through now? I'm looking through the lens of Jesus.

I'm finally able, as I put him here, to see my circumstances the way he sees them. And do you think they might look a little different? You bet. There's a couple of things that are happening here, guys. First of all, those same circumstances can't get to me without first going through him.

Will he let some of them through? You bet. But you can be assured if you put God here that whatever he lets through, he intends. He'll use it for his purposes. He'll use it for his glory.

He'll use it to build your character. But the secret to life, guys, is simply putting God between you and your circumstances. Now, if you're watching this broadcast right now and you consider yourself a follower of Christ, if I have to teach you how to do that, then as a church in America, we have failed. Listen, guys, there's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is when you and I don't know any better.

Stupidity is when we know better and we don't do it anyway. And unfortunately for many of us believers, it's not ignorance. I know how to put God there. It's not rocket science, guys. It's spending time alone with God, reading the Word, praying, praying for God.

You're praying, praising him every single day. Okay, that's the only way you're going to put God where he needs to be so that when you're working your life out, God is always the first place you go. You read the Bible that morning. You're getting the right input into your life. You're hanging out with the right people.

You're studying. You're praying. If you're married, you're doing devotions with your wife and with your family. That's the only way that's going to happen. Now I want to close with kind of an illustration about something that happened in my own life that I'm not very proud of that kind of illustrates what I'm suggesting to you.

And this happened to me probably eight or nine years ago. I was praying and asking the Lord a question. The tagline for on-target ministries, listen, is becoming the man God intended. That's kind of the tagline for our ministry. We're trying to help men become the man God intended.

When we work with couples, we work with pastors, it's the same thing. Helping people become all that God intended for them. And so one day I was praying and I simply asked the Lord, I said, Lord, am I becoming the man you intended? And I know I heard him say no. And again, that had to be God.

That wouldn't have been me. Okay. But my sense was he wasn't saying it in an angry or he wasn't bitter about it in any way. He was saying it in a very kind way. He was saying things like, Vince, I love you.

I'm crazy about you. And I've got so much more for you. But I'm proud of what you're already doing, but I'm calling you to another level. And please hear this, guys. None of us have arrived.

Like Paul says, I haven't arrived. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal, the mark, the target. That's my light verse, by the way. And that's where the ministry name came from. So God was saying, I'm calling you to another level, but I've given you a platform.

Now, listen, I've given you a platform, Vince, from which to share the life and love of my son, Jesus, with other people. And you, sir, are not taking that responsibility seriously enough. Whoa. I want to tell you something, guys. I've shared that with a lot of pastors and leaders, and they've looked at me and said, you know what?

I'm ashamed to say it, but I think God could probably say the same thing to me. I'm not sure I'm taking my responsibility seriously enough. And dear one, please hear me. Do not think for a moment that my platform, just because it might be literally on a platform in front of hundreds and maybe thousands of people, is any different than your platform. God is not trying to talk about different levels of platforms.

Every one of us has a platform. Your platform might be in your living room with your wife and your two little boys, or it might be at work with the people you work with. We all have a platform. The question is, are we taking that responsibility seriously enough? And this is what he said.

If you're going to share the life and love of my son, Jesus, with other people, then you need to know my heart. And you, Vance, are not spending enough time with me to really know me at the depth that you need to know me to be able to do that. And at that time, I would venture to say I was probably spending a half an hour to 40 minutes every single day reading the Word, praying a little bit, reading some devotions. But after he impressed that upon me, I made a commitment. And in fact, I went and told my men's group.

I said, from now on, guys, I want you to hold me accountable for this, but I'm making a commitment today that from now on, I'm getting up every morning at five o'clock and I'm spending from five till eight o'clock every morning, three hours every day, reading the Word, praying and praising God. If anybody would have told me that I was going to make a commitment like that even months prior to this, I would have said, there's no way. There's no way. But I made a commitment. Now, I got to be honest with you.

This has been years now. I do this almost every day. I do not do it every day, but I do spend a minimum of at least two, sometimes three and maybe even four, now that we're sequestered, hours every day, reading the Word, praying, praising God, praying with my wife. And I want to tell you something, guys. It has changed my life.

You cannot out give God with your time or your money. It's not possible. The more time you give to God, the more he will bless you, the more he will work through your life. But you've got to commit to giving time to God every single day. That is the only way you're going to guarantee that God is here where he's supposed to be.

And if you will do that, you will begin to see a change in your life that you never thought possible. So here's my prayer for you. My prayer is that you will take these several teachings over these days seriously, that you will make a commitment right now to spend more time with God. But there's also people that might be watching this, and maybe you don't even know God. Maybe you've never made a decision to ask the Lord into your heart.

Listen, guys, if you're watching this broadcast and you've never done that, you've heard about it, heard other people talk about it. What does it mean to be born again? All that kind of stuff. Listen, this is so simple. Jesus never intended it to be complicated.

The greatest gift in the universe is made available to you and me by simply from a little boy or a little girl's heart saying, Lord, you know what? I'm struggling right now, but I just I think I'm hearing what Vince is saying. And I've never given you a try. And I want to surrender. I want to surrender today to you, Lord.

I want to ask you, Jesus, to come into my heart and to be my Lord and my Savior, not just my Savior. I want you to be Lord of my life. I want you to take over. If you would say that simple prayer, maybe you already have, I promise you God will honor that. He will come into your life.

But then from that point on, you need to get serious about growing in the things of the Lord. And that gets us right back to what I'm talking about. Putting God first, reading the word, praying and praying him every single day. Let me pray for you, Lord, for those who have perhaps just made a first time decision. I pray that even in these moments after this broadcast and certainly in the hours and days that follow, that you very quickly let them sense your presence in their life.

Give them the evidence, Lord, that you love them, that you're there for them and help them to make a commitment, Lord, to grow, to get into your word, to learn about you, to get or hang out with other Christians and get involved in a community of believers in a church. Lord, help them to grow so that you can begin to advance your kingdom through these precious lives. And for those that have been watching this series and are working through some of the things that we've been talking about, I just pray, Lord, that you'd seal the deal with them right now. That the commitments that they've made on these different areas where they may be scoring low, that you'd help them raise that score, Lord. Help them to believe and expect you to come.

Help them to let go of themselves. Help them to learn the lessons they need to learn. Help them to take all the struggles in their life like Hezekiah and lay them out before you and give them to you. And Lord, minister them in a powerful way. I also pray a protection over each and every one on the sound of my voice, a protection from the virus that is going on in our world right now.

But Lord, also a protection from the virus of darkness that the enemy is trying to perpetrate upon us. That you would protect them, Lord, and help them to see you in the midst of all of this. And we give you all the glory and honor and praise, Lord, for what you're about to do in Jesus' precious name. And all God's kids said, Amen. Just a final announcement, guys.

Tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock, I announced this last night. I'm going to continue these broadcasts, but I'm going to be doing it kind of a little bit off the cuff. I'm thinking about maybe doing them three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 7 a.m. And that would be mountain time.

But tomorrow I'm going to be doing one that I really felt prompted to do based on an article that I wrote in a TargetPoint series back about a year ago. The title of the article is The Great Danger of Our Day, dot, dot, dot, uninformed opinions. And I want to talk to you about that tomorrow. I'm not particularly motivated in any way, but our country is on a very dangerous trajectory of honoring feelings and emotions over facts and truth. And if we stay on that course, we're headed we're headed for disaster.

And I think as followers of Christ, we have a responsibility to do something about this. And certainly how we behave about this is very, very important. And I want to give you some practical ideas about how to do that. I know it won't be a very long session, but I want to begin tomorrow morning and then next week we'll unpack some other ideas that I have on my mind for you. But until then, I pray you have a good night and may God richly bless you.

And until tomorrow, bye bye for now. Thank you.