Hope Church LV Sermons
Big Journey Update
Proverbs chapter three, the writer of Proverbs says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." For the last couple of weekends we have together as a church family been examining the principle of trust. Specifically we have been examining the principle of trusting in God. When we began a couple of weekends ago looking at this principle we looked at a definition of the word trust as it applies to Scripture the way the Bible uses this word. I want to put that definition back up on the screen one more time. Look at the definition of trust it means to depend with confidence on the character, ability, strength, and truth of God for what? I'm sorry I didn't hear you? Everything in my life. To depend with confidence on the character, the ability, the strength, the truth of God for everything, not just the big things, not just the little things, but everything. For the last couple of weeks we've even talked about it in particular in the arena of finances. We've talked about trusting God specifically when it comes to our resources. A lot walked through a very difficult 2009 and for that reason the issue of resources and finances is causing people a lot of worrying, a lot of stress, and so we looked at the biblical principles of how you and I could demonstrate trust. We could have confident dependence in the truth, character, strength, and ability of God when it comes to our resources and you remember last weekend. Based on the text of Scripture that we read in the book of Malachi we laid down a 60-day trust challenge. I hope you've been thinking and praying about that this week and that 60-day trust challenge we said I am to trust God with everything in my life by honoring Him with what He has given to me and He promises to always satisfy me with enough. It's interesting when you preach and teach God's Word on a consistent basis to a church family like this the response that you get. Sometimes you get lots of response, sometimes you don't get very much response at all, sometimes the response is positive and sometimes it's not, right? I mean you get all kinds of response and this week I have gotten so much response from so many of you, mostly via email, but some even talking to me out in the lobby, but a lot of emails people sharing with me things that God's doing in your life and this arena of trusting God specifically when it comes to resources and one of the stories that I received this week was so powerful that I wanted to share it with you tonight. So I want you to turn your eyes towards the screen and listen to this email that I received this week. To your Pastor Vance, I am a single mom of two boys. While going through my divorce in 2003, I lost everything. My home, my cars, and my credit was destroyed. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time with no income whatsoever. My mom bought a home and took me and the boys in. I started babysitting here and there to help her make ends meet and was living on $584 and $200 in food stamps per month, so trust me, I know what it means to live on very little and how scary it can be to give any money away, let alone a tithe. I started trusting God more and more with my finances and over the years God has given me so much wisdom and guidance on how to budget, spend, save, and has even gotten me completely out of debt. To me giving is so much more than just numbers on paper. I see money differently now. I see myself more as an accountant for God. That money which comes my way is his money. When I tithe and save and pay bills, I don't feel any kind of pressure or frustration or disappointment whatsoever. I have seen time and time again that God's economy is not our economy. Like I said before, I am a single mom with two boys. I don't know where my children's father is nor do I receive any kind of support from him whatsoever. My budget is literally week by week. Here is one story that I praise God for all the time. My boys needed a new winter wardrobe and my resources were small this season. Coincidentally the week I plan on their shopping trip, I received a 30% off coupon for a local department store, so we went there just to pick up one or two things to get them by for the time being. When we arrived, all of the boys clothing was 40% off. In addition to my 30% off coupon, I was able to buy both my boys their entire winter wardrobe and even had some money to spare. Then to top it all off, the only thing I had left to buy was my older son a pair of shoes. Wouldn't you know it? When I got done checking out, the cashier gave me a $30 store coupon to use on anything in the store and the perfect shoes for him just so happened to be 30 bucks. Some may say, well that was just a coincidence, but not to me. What God said to me in that moment is, I am your children's father and I will provide for them. I cannot even begin to express the reality of God's presence in my life and how much he means to me. Had I not learned how to hold on loosely to everything that comes my way, I wouldn't see God the way I do. I don't see money as my money or things as my things. They are God's. He is mine and I am his and all the beautiful things he has surrounded my life with. I truly see his gifts. When I see them I smile and thank him and fall even deeper in love with him. I am absolutely convinced that people who do not surrender their finances to God are missing out on a very important part of God's character. He doesn't need our money. He wants our heart. I know without one doubt that God really means it when he says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I think it tickles him pink to do these really amazing things for us. Things that we will miss out on if we continue to hold on to our money as if it's ours. Had I not come to know God in his ways by giving him complete control of my finances, I would have missed out on a very real, very present reality of God in my life. All of God's best, your sister in Christ. Amen. What an amazing testimony for amen. Praise the Lord. I share that with you because I want to encourage you. As you seek God over this sixty days, you're going to be able to give some testimony like that of what God does to reveal himself to you in unique and powerful ways. But as we've talked about this principle over the last couple of weekends, I wanted to remind us tonight that this principle is not just for us as individuals. You see, it's true for us as a church family. As a family of faith, we have been invited on a journey to trust God, to trust him for everything as a church. As a matter of fact, one of the values that unites us here at Hope is this reality of trusting God. One of our core values is the value of God's dependence. And we say it this way at Hope. We say, apart from him, we can do what? Nothing. Through him, we can do all things. Let me tell you what that is. It's trust. How did we define trust? Confident dependence on the character, ability, strength and truth of God. As a church family, we are to walk together in dependence on God. Because apart from him, we can do what? Nothing. That's what John says in John 15 5. Look what Jesus said. Look at it on the screen. Jesus said, I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do what? Nothing. You know, the problem is we don't think that's what it says. We think it says, apart from me, you can't do big things. But that's not what he said. He said, you can do nothing. Here's what that means. We are desperate for God. We're desperate for God individually. We must learn to live trusting God as individuals, but also we must trust God as a church family. As a church family, we've been invited on the journey. It really began nine years ago. Nine years ago, really in the month of February, we had our first Bible study in January, nine years ago. A few of us were arriving here on the field in Las Vegas, believing that God had brought us here to join in his activity of launching a new church in this valley, but not just a church. A church that had a heart for the nations, a church that recognized its place in God's kingdom and sought to join in God's activity in Las Vegas, the West, and the world. And it's a journey that last January we took a significant step on, didn't we? Last January, we relocated here into Silverado High School and we began to take a significant next step on this journey that God's invited us into as a church. And I just want you to know tonight, as we've walked in dependence, trusting God, hear me. God is faithful. Amen? God is faithful. And so tonight, our service is going to be just a little bit different. Okay? If you're visiting with us, normally at Hope, we're preaching through either a topic and we're dealing with text subscriptions, or most of the time we're preaching through books of the Bible. Matter of fact, next weekend, we're going to start a series in Matthew chapter 5. We're going to study Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount. The greatest sermon ever preached was preached by Jesus Christ. And starting next weekend, we're going to spend about a year and a half studying through a sermon Jesus preached in one afternoon. He had a lot to say. So that's normally who we are at Hope, but this weekend is different. This weekend, I felt a leading of the Lord, our team, our pastoral team, our staff team, really felt led of the Lord this weekend to share with you some of the things that God is doing in our midst and to give you an update on what God's really been doing over the last 12 months, specifically leading up to the last 60 days or so. You know what happened a year ago? A year ago, last weekend, we moved from our building over on Pebble to Silverado High School. We knew that it was a short-term solution for us, but God had blessed us and we could no longer fit inside the building we were in in Pebble, over on Pebble, and we needed the place where we could provide space to reach people and grow, and we took a significant step of faith. What do we do? We trusted God, and we stepped out together, and we came to Silverado High School, and we began to hold our services here, and God has blessed us over the past year in a miraculous way in spite of our circumstances. The circumstances of the last 12 months should dictate a church that simply just hangs on to survive. For the last 12 months, we've seen some some tough things happen in our culture here in Las Vegas, specifically in our church. We lost about 350 people who called hope their home, who lost their homes and their jobs, and left Las Vegas. That's happened in the last 12 months, about 350 people that regularly were a part of our church family are gone. We also, in the last 12 months, lost $700,000 worth of resources that we thought was going to be there because of the economy and the way it affected so many of us. And so the circumstances said for the last 12 months as a church family, man, we should have just been hanging on. We were in a temporary place, we had to set up and take down, people were leaving Las Vegas, our budget was decreasing by almost a three-quarters of a million dollars, and yet in the middle of that, let me share with you some of the things God has done in the last 12 months. The last 12 months, we've added over 300 people back to our regular weekend attendance. We've seen over 250 people this year trust Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Amen. Praise the Lord for that. A hundred over 120 of those people have followed Jesus and believers baptism and become a regular part of this church family. And we give God the praise that you've seen it on the screens as we've baptized throughout the year. Sometimes whole families, sometimes fathers getting to baptize their kids, sometimes people being saved out of the addictions of this city and yet God's doing amazing things in people's lives. We've also in the last 12 months had the privilege of launching two brand new churches, one of them here in Las Vegas, a Filipino church called the Great I Am Fellowship that meets over our building on Pebble. Also we had the privilege of launching a church in Tucson, Arizona that had their first public worship service in October. Now they're running about 100 people every weekend. They've already baptized about 35 people that have come to know Christ. They're about to baptize again. They've got 10 more people awaiting baptism that have trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. In addition to that in the last year, we've sent out a hundred volunteers on short-term mission teams. The countries like Zambia, South Africa, Egypt, Thailand, Laos and many more. We also got to commission our first career missionaries right out of our church overseas. People that came to Christ right here and are now serving the Lord in Honduras, training pastors and missionaries and church planters reaching into six countries there for the first time. We got to commission Bill and Sandy Stephen are out of our church and what a joy to see that happen. So here's what I want you to understand. This year we trusted God and God took our loaves and fishes and multiplied them and did more with them than we ever dreamed possible. And we praise God for that. Listen, I'm not saying these are things we did. I'm saying these are things God did through us as we trusted Him. But then the next step was for us to begin to make a long-term plan. Obviously Silverado High School is not forever. We can't meet here forever. This is not a place we can we can have our worship services indefinitely. We're here on a year-by-year contract and we're good until June and we're just praying that the Lord renews it then and we get to come back for another year. Amen? Amen. You better say amen. We hope you're praying about that. It keeps me praying I promise. But we took a significant step in the long term. We asked you to prayerfully consider back last May making a financial investment in God's activity through hope towards the purchase of land and construction of a permanent campus. Remember we called it a launching pad for God's activity through our church and everything in our circumstances said this is the wrong time to do it didn't it? I mean the worst economy in 50 years in America and yet for three years we've been falling a building over at Home Pebble and God just kept saying wait wait wait and then we finally got the freedom from the Lord to take this step and begin to pursue a campus and it happens in the middle of the worst economy in 50 years and everything said man you're crazy but we just kept trusting God. We had experts tell us that in this economy the best case scenario would be if you could see a three million dollar pledge towards a project like this. We didn't just see a three million dollar pledge. You remember last May we pledged to get over 4.2 million dollars towards campus but then you'd say well how are we doing? I mean we're we're about eight months into that campaign right now. It's been a tough economy. How are we doing? Well let me tell you how we're doing. Year to date we should have received one point just a little over 1.4 million dollars if we were on target with the way people had pledged but this has been a difficult year as you know so where are we? Well here's where we are. To date we've received 1.675 million dollars meaning that we're running almost a quarter of a million dollars ahead of where we thought we'd be right now. How'd that happen? That's only God right? I mean it's been a tough economy and yet God has provided. The next step for us was to obtain and close on a piece of land. Remember last year we stood before he and said we don't know where the land's gonna be. We've got two options. There's a third option. God may bring up something we don't know about yet and we've over the last several months just continued to to process and to pray and to examine and we have now a signed agreement to purchase 15 acres of land on Cactus Avenue between Maryland and Amigo that will close by the end of March. It's a little map on the screen kind of give you an idea of where this land is. It's just over here on Cactus. If you go south out of here if you go out of the parking lot and make a right on Spencer and just take that down to Cactus the land will be between Maryland and Amigo there on Cactus and so we've signed an agreement on 15 acres supposed to close in the next 45 to 60 days. Let me tell you what God's done. Land values on Cactus are currently depending on who you talked and we've talked to a lot of people between 300 and 500 thousand dollars per acre is what the land values are estimated to be. Now I know values in Las Vegas right now are all over the map so it's hard to say but best we can obtain information land values over there between three and five hundred thousand dollars an acre. So there was a time when we set out together on this big journey that we thought it might take all of our resources through the first campaign simply to buy land because if you do the math even at three hundred thousand dollars an acre then the land would have cost us four point five million dollars. Well through a relationship that God's given us with a very kingdom-hearted ministry that owns a large piece of land there that's looking to build a Christian school they agreed to sell us 15 acres of that land for one point five million dollars and we praise the Lord for that. So then the next step we'll be closing on that land very soon the next step is to obtain financing right and that's the easy part isn't it in this economy I mean banks are just lending money like crazy right now no problem borrowing money today. Well really there were two things that needed to happen for us to be able to obtain financing. One of them was we needed to sell our building over on Pebble. The other thing that needed to happen for us to obtain financing was we needed to strengthen our financial picture. Now I'll be honest with you those two things appeared to be mountains that only God could move in light of this current economy. But can I just share with you tonight that he is a mountain moving God amen. Let me tell you what's happened in the last 60 days. First of all a couple of months ago we had a church in Boulder City that approached us it was the first Baptist Church of Boulder City to church that was struggling it was a church that had basically come down to just the pastor and his wife and they had a relationship with some of the people in our church they knew some of our staff team and they approached us because of our heart for church planting and kingdom expansion and they said if you will simply help us cover the bills that we have outstanding we will donate our facility to your ministry. It's a facility that's in Boulder City it sits on three quarters of an acre of land it's a 12,000 square foot building has a worship center that only it seats about 200 250 people but about I don't know about 30 days ago I guess we finished that process and they have donated their facility to us we just had it appraised and it was worth 1.2 million dollars. Now let me tell you what that did for us. Number one it strengthened our financial picture we went from a church that had a building that we were in debt on to being a church that had a 1.2 million dollar asset on our books free and clear. The second thing that it did is it opened up for us the potential for ministry in Boulder City we are praying through what that's going to look like we don't know yet to be honest with you we weren't pursuing that God dropped that in our lap and so we're praying through what that's going to look like but but there are a few options we may plant a church there with that facility in Boulder City it's a it's a it's a facility that needs some work it's it needs some work on the exterior we're going to be taking mission teams out there over the next year and fixing it up a little bit and telling the community that we love them want to serve them and we may plant a church there another option is we've considered with our teaching team opening a live preaching a second campus there in Boulder City where we would have live teachers live worship and it'd be a second campus of our church that we would be able to operate there in Boulder City wrapping our arms around that city of 15,000 people who live there but again only the Lord could have put a one million dollar asset on our books right at the time that we're trying to secure financing from lending institutions that was a total gift of the Lord the second thing that happened is we needed to sell our building over on pebble and our church building on pebble obviously is a limited use facility in Las Vegas it's a church there aren't that many churches here and to find a church in this economy that can afford to step out and purchase a facility is not an easy task and so we didn't really even know if that was even possible and we prayed about it we contacted some real estate people and got some counsel from them we had some real estate people tell us that that they would not even list the facility for more than about 1.8 million dollars in this economy if you really want to sell it and move it they said that's probably the best you'd be able to do we had it appraised the facility appraises for 2.9 million dollars and we the day we got the call from the real estate personnel telling us hey if you would want to list it here's what I'd list it for if you want to be sure and move it the very day we got the phone call someone walked in the doors of our office it was an Ethiopian church that is under the umbrella the Christian missionary alliance they walked in to pastor Jay our executive pastor's office sat down and said they believe the Lord had led them there and they wanted to know if they could purchase our church building we'd not listed our building we'd not set our building was for sale the building had not been marketed anywhere they walked in our doors and we have negotiated terms we will sign a purchase and sale agreement on Monday to sell our facility for 2.25 million dollars now I'll tell you this we need you to affirm that next weekend all right according to our bylaws we have to let you know seven days out we need to firm that next weekend but I take it by what you just did you're affirming that but we'll do it again officially but but isn't it just like God in 60 days we've gone from a church should we close on the sale of this building we've gone from a church in the next second over the last 60 days from being 1.6 million dollars in debt on a facility with a little over a million dollars in the bank to a church that is completely debt free with over three million dollars in cash and assets on our books only the Lord Jesus Christ could have done that for us and now we have three parties interested in financing our project we have two letters of interest from two different banks sitting on pastor Jay's desk right now and so the thing that we thought was going to be the most difficult part of the process in the last 60 days God has done unbelievable miracles to make it possible for us to take the next steps let me tell you what that means man we're moving the ball is rolling down the hill now we're moving towards our new campus but we're literally moving let me give you some dates in the next 30 days we will begin to transition out of our current facility over on pebble we will be relocating our offices and all of our ministries through the week to the viewpoint office park which is if you go out to Eastern and turn left just before you get to windmill on the left is the viewpoint office part we have entered an agreement with them for approximately 12,000 square 13,000 square feet of space that will allow us to be able to have all of our offices and all of the ministries that we currently do in our building over on pebble we can do at this viewpoint office part it's class a office space if you're familiar with a real estate environment just to give you another small miracle of the Lord we're leasing that space for about a dollar a foot modified gross and that's just another way God has just provided for us and it sits right on Eastern Avenue and it's just a couple of minutes from this facility here so again the Lord every step of the way is providing so we're gonna be moving we may need some help carrying some boxes all right we're gonna be relocating all of our stuff there we'll still be having our weekend services here but we'll be moving all of our weekday ministries and offices and all of our refuge and that type thing over to this facility on Eastern by the end of February we will have engaged architects engineers and contractors by May we will be presenting you with plans and drawings and and a master plan and design for our future facility and prayerfully by the end of this summer we will be breaking ground on our future home as hope Baptist Church now what is our response to God's activity let me tell you what our response is to keep trusting him you know for several years we were in the building over on pebble and we had no you know we would joke and say our plan is too to a seat that was the only choice we had we were so full in some of those services but God just kept saying wait wait wait wait and you see when you see it from God's perspective God had it all laid out didn't he God knew exactly what he was doing God knew exactly how he wanted to do it and if we'll just trust him we've talked about over the last two weekends trusting him with our finances and another way we demonstrate our trust in God is through prayer I want to put a verse on the screen it's Colossians chapter 4 verse 2 look what it says devote yourselves to prayer keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving I'm asking you over this 60 days that we've set aside for this trust challenge to also make it a 60 days of very intense and intentional prayer Paul reminds us of three things here about prayer and I want to just give them to you quickly and then we're gonna pray together as a church family number one Paul tells us that we should pray faithfully did you hear him he said devote yourselves to prayer that's an imperative means it's a command meaning that you and I should continuously be in a spirit of prayer as you leave tonight you're gonna get a little flyer that looks like this a little handout on the front it has a lot of the information that I've shared with you tonight on the back it has the three maps that you've seen up on the screen tonight so that if you wanted to go by and see some of these things you can go by and look at these places but I'm we're giving you this to give you information but we're also giving you this to use it over these 60 days as a prayer guide to take these things before the Lord and continue to pray we want to continue to trust him through prayer so devote yourself we should pray faithfully secondly Paul says we should pray trusting God to answer hear what he said devote yourselves to prayer keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving do you hear that phrase keeping alert in it it's the idea of of being watchful being on the lookout yes I'm praying but I'm praying with expectancy I'm watching for God to work I'm watching for God through the prayers of his people to answer and to respond so we're to pray trusting God to answer remember what we said trust is to depend with confidence that's the way we're to pray and then thirdly Paul says we should pray with the spirit of thanksgiving devote yourselves to prayer keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving what does that mean here's what it means man as we pray over these next 60 days very intently about these things we should be thankful for what God has already done amen I hope tonight what you heard me share with you has blessed your heart about God's activity in the life of our church man God's done some things remember when we had the big journey last year we set those weeks and I made this statement man we want God to so do this that all we can say is man God did it listen the things that have happened in the last 60 days always say is God did that God did that so we want to thank him for what he's done but we also want to thank him for what he's going to do we want to be thankful in advance for what God is going to provide and so let's continue with the spirit of prayer so what I want us to do right now is I want you to just bow with me and we're going to have a time of praying together as a church family you may want to huddle with your family or your friends that you're here with tonight we're going to go to the Lord in prayer as a church family and we're going to take some of these things before the Lord so you just bow with me right there and I'm going to kind of guide you through a prayer time and I want you to be praying you can pray there in your seat you can pray silently in your heart listen you can pray out loud if you want to that's all right we're just going to be praying so I'm going to lead us in a time of prayer and I want you to be praying there in your heart so I'm going to open us then I'm going to call out a series of things that I want you to be praying for so let me lead his father we open this time of prayer right now as a church family and God we come before you intentionally Lord we come before you expectantly and God we come before you extremely grateful Lord you say in your word cast all of your cares upon me because I care about you so Lord is your people tonight we come before you to pray I'm going to ask you first of all tonight with a spirit of thanksgiving to thank God for this year at Silverado High School thank God for the 200 plus people that have trusted Christ the hundred people that have volunteered on mission teams thank God for all the volunteers that set up and take down every week thank him for the churches that have been planted for the lives that have been changed thank him for this school that opens their doors to us just thank you I want you to pray for God to continue to give us favor here before this school that the faculty administration teaching staff the parents the students that God would continue to grant us favor that the Lord would keep this door open listen it's a door that the Lord opened and we're asking him to keep it open pray for God to bless this school pray for God to continue to use this ministry in this school to see lives changed may we be able to say next year man there's been another two or three hundred people come to Christ we had the largest Eastern Christmas Eve services we've ever had since we've been in this facility listen it's not about numbers but let and those two services we saw a lot of people come to know Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior I want you to pray for the financial provision for us to build a permanent campus pray that God would provide those of us that have made commitments and pledges and promises make me the Lord continue to provide supernaturally that we can give thank him for the way he's already provided out of this year economic crisis for us to be ahead on this campaign is a miracle of the Lord Jesus thank him I want you to pray towards the closing on the property that we are purchasing thank God for this kingdom-hearted ministry that owns the 70 acres over there that's selling us the 15 I wish I had time to tell you the back story of how we got connected total God thing thank God for his faithfulness ask God to let us bring that to closing should that be his will and thank him for providing us that property at that incredible price and ask God to bless the ministry of that Christian school that's seeking to start over there that could become our next-door neighbors ask God to continue to give us wisdom as we pursue financing thank him for the donation of that facility in Boulder City thank him for what it did to prepare us in our process but thank him for the open door to ministry there ask God to give us wisdom about church planting or starting a campus or however God wants us to use that facility thank God for the Ethiopian church that walked in our doors and said we want to buy your facility I wish you could hear them describe how they see it as God's activity that the Lord has provided that building right there for them and we're able to turn around and sell it to them in such a way that they're going to get a facility with over six hundred thousand dollars in equity already in the building pray for God to lead us to the right plan for financing our project pray for God to lead us give us wisdom pray for the transition to the temporary space for our offices and our ministries that happened during the week pray for God to continue to give us a spirit of flexibility as we continue to just move around this desert valley pray for God to lead us as we engage architects engineers and contractors it's our prayer that at the end of this process we not only have a facility but through the relationships with architects engineers and contractors we're able to take the Lord Jesus Christ to people that might have never met him before pray for God to help us expeditiously move through this process so that we can have those plans and drawings by May and ask God to give us favor with Clark County as we walk through the process of permitting and ask God to like he did for David and Joseph in the Old Testament to give us favor in the eyes of the leaders that will stand before and open doors Lord tonight we love you and we stand in awe of you [Music] [Music] (gentle music)