Ora Más Grande

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- My name is Kyle.

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I'm our lead pastor here at Crossroads.

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Today is the second week of a series

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we're doing on prayer called Pray Wild Prayers.

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And we're doing it because most of us pray

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the opposite of wild prayers.

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If we pray, we pray timid prayers,

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almost like God is this father

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who doesn't want to be bothered.

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He's grumpy all the time.

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He's cheap, you know, like if you were to ask him

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for $20, he would say, "$10? What do you need $5 for?"

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That's you'll get it eventually.

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And that's not who He is.

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God is a God, If you hear nothing else today,

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who has wild dreams for your life

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that blow your imagination out of the water.

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Last weekend, our Senior Pastor Brian Tome

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kicked off the series and he talked about

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how prayer is a pressure.

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It can shape us and it can reform us.

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And as one of his examples, he showed

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a before picture of my teeth, before braces right here.

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And many of you have asked me since,

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did Brian tell you he was going to do that

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or ask your permission before he did it?

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And I just want to put your mind to ease

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and you to rest assured about the state of our friendship,

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that no, he did not.

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He's got my phone number, email, knows where my office is.

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He's got Sarah's number and my kid's number,

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my parents number, carrier pigeons.

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Lots of ways he could have told me, but he chose not to.

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And that's actually, that's okay. I'm good with that.

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In fact, my prayer is that Brian would be inspired

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by my example of how I was willing to get braces

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for my gross crooked teeth, and that Brian

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would choose to get braces for his gross crooked pinky.

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I don't know if they make braces for that,

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but someone can probably help him.

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That's my prayer. That's an audacious prayer.

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That's what we're praying about, talking about today,

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audacious prayers.

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By the way, some of you are like,

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I don't know if I believe this thing

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you're talking about prayer, talking to a God.

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I don't even know if He's real. That's okay. That is okay.

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My hope is that today you hear about a God

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that you wish was real, if nothing else,

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and that you have the audacity

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to try to see if He is real through prayer.

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Prayer is basically a taste test that God invites us to.

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It says this in Psalm 34:8:

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O taste and see that the Lord is good!

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Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

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Prayer is a taste test, and my hope today

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is before you leave this experience

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that you actually try it today. That's what I'm hoping for.

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Today is audacious prayers.

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You might have heard that word said earlier in the experience.

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Not a word we use very often.

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The definition of audacity is a willingness

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to take surprisingly bold risks.

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That might be out of the box when it comes to God,

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but God is a God who promises in His Scripture

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that He has wild dreams for your life.

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But, this is the kicker, they will not happen

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unless you and I pray audacious prayers.

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That's what we're going after today.

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Before we go any further, let's pray together.

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God, thank You so much for the truth of Your Word.

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And I'm asking for all of us, whether we believe in You,

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whether we don't, that today we'd have the audacity

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to consider that You might just be who You say You are,

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and we might just be who You say we are, too. Amen. Amen.

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Well, on August 23, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Gave what would be one of the most famous

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and impactful speeches in human history.

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To a crowd of 250,000 people, he 8 times repeated

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one four-word phrase, a phrase that's resonated

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across the globe and across

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generations in the decades since.

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Four words: I have a dream.

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Where did Dr. King get the idea of a dream from?

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Well, it turns out from the God that He followed,

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a God who gives dreams.

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Psalm 126:1 says: When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

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that's His people, we were like those who dreamed.

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See one of the core defining characteristics

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of people who believe in and follow God

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is that God's people are driven by dreams.

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Now, dreams are not goals. Goals are different.

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Have goals. Goals are great.

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But a goal is accomplished,

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able to be accomplished on my own power,

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with a little more effort, a little bit breaks my way,

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I can accomplish a goal, a little stick-to-it-iveness

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I can get there, a little bit of elbow grease,

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I can make it happen. That's not a dream.

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A dream is a long range vision given by God.

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And by the way, you can only accomplish it on His power.

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No matter what resources you have or connections

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or hard work, none of it can make the dream happen.

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Maybe a dream in your life is that your life would be

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about more than just consuming crap until you die.

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Yeah, God has a purpose for you and a plan for you

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that He might want to change the world for you.

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Maybe a dream in your life is that our country

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would one day look the way that Dr. King

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dreamed that it would look.

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Maybe for you, it's that poverty would be eliminated

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in your family or in the areas you are.

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Maybe it's that broken relationships

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in your life could be healed.

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Maybe it's that your body could be healed.

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What's a dream for you and a dream for me

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might be different based on our experiences.

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If you've never seen a marriage go the distance,

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for you a wild dream might just be that you stay married.

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If you've never experienced or seen anybody

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who's lived with financial stability,

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getting out of debt might be a wild dream.

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You know, no matter what on your own effort,

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you cannot make it happen.

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Maybe that's your wild dream, but God says

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He's the God who gives us wild dreams.

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At its broadest, a God given wild dream

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is anything that would make you say,

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"Man, that would be like heaven on earth."

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And it connects to prayer, because if you go to

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the seminal teaching on prayer that Jesus

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ever gave in his life, the Lord's Prayer,

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Jesus says to pray exactly that way.

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And depending on your religious background

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or not having one, you might have heard of this differently.

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In Protestant areas, it's called the Lord's Prayer.

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Catholics, if you grew up that way, call it the Our Father.

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Same prayer from the same place, Matthew chapter six

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Jesus says: This, then, is how you should pray:

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Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name,

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Your kingdom come, Your will be done,

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on earth as it is in heaven.

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Jesus says, if you want to pray in line with Me,

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the way that I'm teaching you to pray,

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what you pray for is God's kingdom to come here and now.

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And God's kingdom is basically anywhere

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where His perfect plan, His perfect

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will, is actually happening.

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But again, the kicker is Jesus says it won't happen

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unless you pray.

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And many of us, I would say most of us,

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don't actually pray for that.

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Well, we pray for is earth on earth,

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and heaven maybe someday.

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We pray for a little bit better.

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We pray for the thing that I think breaks God's heart

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more than anything else. We pray for okay.

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God, if I could just get to the end of the week

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and it was an okay week.

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God, if I could have an okay weekend, I'd be pretty okay.

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God, if I could get the end of my life

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and have an okay amount of money in my retirement

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so I can go to an okay nursing home and suck down,

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okay oatmeal through an okay straw,

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what a great life that would be.

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That's how most of us pray.

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Most of us are asking God for things in line with that.

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But if you look at the teachings of Jesus,

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Jesus never once, never once said,

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pray ordinary prayers to have an okay life.

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Didn't say that.

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Now you and I would pray ordinary prayers

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when there's a set of rules to the ordinary prayers.

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Maybe nobody taught us, but it's basically

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how we follow the ordinary prayers.

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Rule number one of ordinary prayers is don't bother God.

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You know He's busy. I don't know if you knew this.

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The universe is pretty big and He runs the whole thing.

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And so, you know, keep it quick. Ask one time.

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We think that's a rule.

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Number two is don't get too lofty,

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you know too above your station.

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Don't ask something crazy.

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You know, ask for like, average,

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and then God will be happy with that.

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He doesn't want to give you extravagant things,

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just kind of average things.

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And then number three is always caveat heavily.

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Let Him know that it's totally okay if He wants

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to give you wildly disappointing things instead.

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This is how I think we think we're supposed to pray.

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And I know right now, this weekend,

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we've got lots of young adults, lots of college students

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in particular with us, because today is

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the grand relaunch of Crossroads Uptown.

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Let's Go! Happening right now.

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Amazing to see this space, if you've never been there,

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it's this beautiful, beautiful old Catholic cathedral

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that's been renovated, can host thousands of people.

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So excited about it coming back this weekend.

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But college students, I'll just tell you,

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I'm not your friend if I don't shoot you straight.

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You're in a vulnerable place in your life.

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You're at this place right between childhood

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and being a full blown adult, where all of the pressures

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and all of the stresses start to add up

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because you realize your life is on you.

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You gotta wash your clothes, make your meals,

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pay your bills, do all this stuff.

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You gotta hit your hit your marks in class.

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You got to get that internship.

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You gotta make sure you're in the right major.

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All these stresses start to pile up on you.

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And what can happen in that moment is that

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you make the most tragic mistake possible.

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It's that you put an average goal

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in the wild dream place in your heart.

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See, for all of us, God made this place in us.

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It's the wild dream place.

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The place where He wants to speak in,

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wants to tell us what we're made for,

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what He calls us to.

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But the biggest tragedy is you take an average goal

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and you put it there instead.

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You decide that your life is going to be about

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getting a normal job so you can buy

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a normal house on normal street.

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You decide that your ambition is to just be so numbed out

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you don't feel stressed out and you stay in.

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And the most tragic part of it is your life

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becomes utterly harmless and okay.

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That's not the dream God has for you.

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God has wild dreams for your life.

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God wants to change the world through you.

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That's what He says. He wants us to pray that way.

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See God knows whether we believe Him based on how we pray.

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If you're praying ordinary prayers, what that says to God

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is, "You don't really believe I am the God I say I am.

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You don't really believe me when I say pray for heaven on earth.

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You think that's some kind of a metaphor

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or I don't even know what. But you don't believe me."

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What tells God whether we believe He is who He says He is

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and He has wild dreams for us, is how we pray.

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Do we pray with audacity?

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I don't think most of the Christian circles do this.

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20 years ago, in fact, there was a controversy

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in Christian circles. You probably don't know about it.

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There was a book written called The Prayers of Jabez.

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Anybody remember this book coming out?

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It's big controversy.

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The author basically said we need to pray

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like this guy Jabez, from the Old Testament.

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Now the Bible barely mentions Jabez.

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You get one sentence about him and then a one sentence prayer.

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This one right here, 1Chronicles 4:10.

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Jabez prays, "Oh, that You would bless me

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and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me,

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and that You would keep me from harm

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so that it might not bring me pain!"

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And God granted what he asked.

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Now Jabez means pain. Like, his mom named him pain.

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Some of your moms are like, "I didn't know that was an option.

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That'd been a great name for a couple of my kids, actually."

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And so this prayer is Pain praying to have less pain.

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That's it.

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And I think there's a reason why the Bible

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doesn't mention Jabez ever again,

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and why no one in the New Testament ever holds him up

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as this example that we should follow ever again.

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I think it's because God heard this prayer

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and He was like, "Okay, that's it?

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That's the most you can think of is a less painful life?

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Don't you know who I am?

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That's all you want to ask for from Me?"

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See, I think the problem isn't

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that we pray the prayer of Jabez.

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I think the problem is that we only pray the prayer of Jabez.

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We only ask for no pain.

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And please hear me, I'm first in line for

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let's have a less painful life. That sounds great.

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Okay. Less pain. Awesome. Let's have that.

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In fact, there are times in my life

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when having less pain would be amazing

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because you just feel underwater.

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You just feel like you're drowning.

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And just to get your head above water would be amazing.

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That's okay. But if that becomes the goal of your life,

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if that goes on the shelf called Wild Dream,

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you've made a tragic mistake

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and you've missed the call of God in your life.

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You've missed it.

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And I have good news. It gets so much better.

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He has so much better, bigger plans for you

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than you can possibly imagine.

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Maybe you haven't heard what He's said before.

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I'll give you a few examples in Scripture,

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places where He talks about what He wants to do

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and what He's able to do.

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Philippians 4:13 says: I can do all things

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through Him who strengthens me.

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Luke 1:37 says: For nothing will be impossible with God.

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Job 40:22: I know that you can do all things,

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and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

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Jeremiah 32:27: Behold, I am the Lord,

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the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?

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And the answer is, well, no, not at all. Nothing's too hard.

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But the thing is, He will not,

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will not deliver wild dreams unless you pray

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audacious prayer, won't do it.

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If you read Jesus's teachings on prayer

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beyond the Lord's Prayer, which, by the way,

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people use this like this formula.

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That's that's not what it is.

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It's a framework. It's a teaching about prayer.

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It's not a formula. It's not magic words that you recite.

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But if you go beyond that and you look at

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His teachings on prayer again and again and again,

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you'll see Jesus begging people to pray audacious prayers,

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begging them in all four authorized biographies

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of his life, the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

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you'll find these teachings.

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I want to look at just one of those books, John.

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Three chapters in a row Jesus tells people,

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please, please, please pray audaciously.

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John 14 Jesus says: Whatever you ask in My Name,

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this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

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If you ask Me anything in My Name, I will do it.

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And apparently the disciples don't do it.

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They don't get it. They don't understand.

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Because in a chapter later He basically says the same thing.

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John 15: If you abide in Me and My Words abide in you,

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ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

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And again, they don't get it because He comes back,

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John 16: Truly, truly, I say to you.

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He's like, guys, you made me say it again.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask

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of the Father in My Name, He will give it to you.

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Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

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See your wild dream doesn't have to be

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some altruistic, crazy thing that's, you know,

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help the poor. That's awesome. Yeah, let's do that.

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But God wants your joy to be full.

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When you pursue the dreams He has for your life,

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what you'll find is you become a much more joyful person.

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You know, Jesus almost exclusively put His disciples

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in positions where they needed to pray

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audacious prayers, almost exclusively.

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He was not the guy who was like, "Hey,

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you completed all the training

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and now you're ready for the next."

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He just like threw them in the game.

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There's a time there's 5000 men,

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women and children besides, 20-25,000 people

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with no food listening to Jesus teach.

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And Jesus looks at His disciples and He goes,

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"You feed them."

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And they're like, "We didn't bring any food.

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How are we going to do that? That's impossible."

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It's like, well, God or -- "With man, it's impossible.

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With God, Me, I'm standing right here, everything's possible."

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Luke 10 He sends them out two by two.

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He says, "Don't take with you any money.

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Don't take sandals. Don't take a change of clothes.

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Get out there, heal people, cast out demons."

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And they're like, "What?"

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"Because you know Me, nothing's impossible."

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He puts them in these situations where His dreams

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for what they're capable of doing vastly exceed

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what they can think and what they can imagine.

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I just wonder in your life, is there any place,

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any dream that seems impossible to you?

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I find that even the most consistent, faithful prayers

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have prayers that they're not praying

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because they're afraid to. Something's keeping them.

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It seems impossible or too audacious,

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or there's just afraid for some reason to pray.

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In my life, there's a place where I am afraid

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and I'm praying, and that's because

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I'm teaching my 15.5 year old how to drive.

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It is terrifying.

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It's the most scary thing I've ever done in my life,

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and I've been in some crazy situations.

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I was once in the border of Syria,

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a few hundred yards from a UN building

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that ISIS had just taken over and was currently occupying.

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That was scary. This was way worse sitting next to him.

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One of the things you got to teach somebody

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is what red means. Like, "Hey, you see the red light?

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And that means you stop.

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That's really, really important."

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But when it comes to prayer, you and I actually

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have to unlearn the signs that mean stop in our lives.

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If you want to pray audaciously,

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one of the most audacious parts is that you keep praying.

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See, wild dreamers refuse to stop praying audacious prayers.

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It's one of the keys.

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In fact, there'll be moments in your life

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where you'll turn around and the whole world

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will feel like it's turned red.

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Every sign in your life will be like,

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"This is not going to happen. It's impossible.

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It's been too long. If it was going to happen,

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it would have happened by now."

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Everything will point to that.

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And if you want to be faithful in prayer,

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you have to push through it and pray anyway.

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This is the story we see in

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Scripture, again and again and again.

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The father of faith, Abraham, who, by the way,

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we're reading about right now,

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if you're doing Bible in a year with us at Crossroads

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in the Crossroads App. Highly recommended it.

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If you're not doing it, you can listen to the Bible.

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If you've got ten minutes on your commute,

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listen to the Bible in a year.

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Right now we're digging into the life of Abraham,

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the father of faith. Crazy story.

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He's 75 years old, has no kids, and God comes to him

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and makes this crazy, wild dream.

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Genesis 12:2 God says: "I'll make you a great nation,

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and I will bless you and make your name great,

00:18:02

so that you will be a blessing.

00:18:04

You know what happened next for Abraham? Nothing.

00:18:08

For ten years, nothing happened.

00:18:12

God gives him a dream. Nothing happens.

00:18:15

So what does Abraham do?

00:18:16

Well, if you read the story, this pattern

00:18:18

becomes clear in Abraham's life.

00:18:20

He has this keystone habit.

00:18:22

It emerges in Genesis 12:8, it says:

00:18:25

From there he moved to the hill country

00:18:26

on the east of Bethel, and there he built

00:18:28

an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

00:18:33

That means he prayed.

00:18:35

Again and again, no matter what was going on in his life,

00:18:38

when it was going poorly, and especially

00:18:39

when it was going well, Abraham still asked God,

00:18:43

still prayed audacious prayers for this wild dream

00:18:46

of having a family that would fill and bless the earth.

00:18:49

What I find really interesting is he did this

00:18:51

even when he was successful.

00:18:53

I was talking to a college students, young people earlier,

00:18:55

and it's a vulnerable time in your life

00:18:57

when you might be tempted to put the average goal

00:18:59

in place of the wild dream.

00:19:00

I think just as vulnerable, just as susceptible,

00:19:03

is when you are older and successful.

00:19:06

I think that that makes you an in critical danger

00:19:08

of doing the same thing.

00:19:10

An average goal in place of a wild dream in your heart

00:19:13

because things are good.

00:19:14

Got a good job and a good house

00:19:15

and a good bank account, going on good vacations.

00:19:18

And so maybe, just maybe, this is

00:19:20

good enough is what can happen.

00:19:23

What's remarkable about Abraham, in part,

00:19:25

is that that happened for him.

00:19:26

He was very successful.

00:19:28

He hit his goals in business.

00:19:29

He made a lot of money. He had a lot of livestock.

00:19:31

He goes to Egypt, he comes out wealthy,

00:19:33

but he doesn't stop praying audacious prayers.

00:19:37

He doesn't give up on the wild dream of God, ten years on.

00:19:41

In fact, what he does is he goes back physically

00:19:44

to the place where God gave him the dream.

00:19:46

And again he calls on the name of the Lord.

00:19:50

It says this in Genesis 13:2:

00:19:52

Now Abraham was very rich in livestock,

00:19:54

and silver, and in gold.

00:19:56

And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel,

00:19:59

to the place where he had made an altar at the first.

00:20:01

And there Abraham called on the name of the Lord.

00:20:06

This is what he does. This is the rhythm of his life.

00:20:09

He just goes back and he just keeps praying.

00:20:12

And at 85 years old, ten years after it,

00:20:14

God responds again and affirms the dream.

00:20:18

Genesis 15: And He brought him outside and said,

00:20:21

"Look toward heaven, and number the stars,

00:20:23

if you're able to number them."

00:20:25

Then He said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

00:20:28

And he believed the Lord,

00:20:31

and he counted it to him as righteousness.

00:20:33

He believed the Lord.

00:20:35

This is the most remarkable thing about Abraham,

00:20:38

he believed the Lord, four words,

00:20:43

and they're why he's considered the father of faith.

00:20:45

He just believed that God is who He says He is

00:20:47

and was going to do what He said He was going to do.

00:20:49

He's been waiting for ten years, 85 years old.

00:20:51

He believes God. And guess what happens next?

00:20:56

Nothing, for 15 more years.

00:21:01

It's not until he's 100 years old

00:21:03

that God delivers on that wild dream.

00:21:05

For 15 more years, Abraham perseveres and prays

00:21:09

and keeps going after the dream.

00:21:11

And you and I have to understand,

00:21:12

if we're going to follow God,

00:21:14

if we want to dream the wild dreams,

00:21:16

if we want to not just get just settle for

00:21:18

the average goal in our life,

00:21:19

it's going to be the same thing for us.

00:21:21

We have to ignore all the red in our life

00:21:22

that says it's never going to happen,

00:21:24

all the red in our life that says it's way too late

00:21:27

and we're to keep praying.

00:21:28

This is the story not just of Abraham,

00:21:30

but every single hero of faith.

00:21:31

Joseph in the Old Testament, 17 years old,

00:21:34

he gets a God given wild dream that he's going to be

00:21:37

this ruler in charge of people.

00:21:40

And guess what happens next?

00:21:41

He gets thrown in prison, falsely,

00:21:44

sold into slavery, thrown in prison.

00:21:45

Everything's awful in his life, that's 17 years old.

00:21:48

13 years his life goes down and down and down and down.

00:21:51

And then suddenly, at the age of 30,

00:21:53

God does exactly what He said.

00:21:55

The whole time Joseph doesn't stop believing,

00:21:57

doesn't stop praying the

00:21:59

audacious prayers for the vision.

00:22:00

Paul in the New Testament,

00:22:02

where we're going to study in the Run Journey.

00:22:04

You might know the story of him,

00:22:05

blinding light out of the sky.

00:22:06

The Damascus Road experience is what we call it.

00:22:09

He's knocked to the ground.

00:22:10

God gives him this wild dream for his life.

00:22:12

Did you know it basically didn't happen

00:22:14

for another decade and a half?

00:22:16

In fact, in there, for eight years,

00:22:18

he lived alone in a cave is what we think.

00:22:21

Looks like, feels like God's dream hasn't happened.

00:22:23

But Paul perseveres and prays.

00:22:26

It's going to be the same exact thing for you and I.

00:22:29

What in your life have you stopped praying for?

00:22:32

What wild dream in your life have you given up on?

00:22:34

What thing have you thought if it was going to happen,

00:22:36

it would have happened by now?

00:22:37

What have you stopped?

00:22:39

What would happen if you had the audacity to start again.

00:22:42

The audacity to believe that God is who He said He is?

00:22:46

This is how it's always happened.

00:22:47

How it's always happened.

00:22:49

At Crossroads we've seen this story play out so many times,

00:22:52

this audacity to pray and to keep praying.

00:22:55

It was about 20 years ago, God gave us

00:22:56

a conviction as a church that it was our job

00:22:59

to care for the poor in our city.

00:23:02

Nowhere in Scripture does God ever say

00:23:03

it was the government's job.

00:23:05

Never says, "Government, your job is to love

00:23:06

and care for the poor."

00:23:08

Instead, He says, "Church,

00:23:09

followers of me, that's your job."

00:23:11

So we had this conviction and that turned into

00:23:13

a wild dream of what if instead of just trying

00:23:15

to marginally just kind of help a little bit

00:23:17

with poverty in our city, what if we tried

00:23:20

to fundamentally eliminate generational poverty?"

00:23:23

That's a wild dream.

00:23:24

And that wild dream turned into a vision

00:23:26

called the Citylink Center, a one stop shop

00:23:28

to help people escape generational poverty.

00:23:31

And that was about 2002, 2003.

00:23:35

And what happened next is the same

00:23:36

as what happened in the Bible.

00:23:37

It was met with nothing but nothing.

00:23:40

Resistance after resistance, headline after headline

00:23:43

written about what a terrible idea it was.

00:23:45

Two year court battle that went all the way

00:23:47

to the Ohio State Supreme Court.

00:23:49

This battle, fundraising that went on, it was just crazy.

00:23:52

It was ten years from the dream

00:23:55

to when the doors actually opened.

00:23:58

What happened when they opened is that

00:24:00

people walked in those doors who they themselves

00:24:02

had a wild dream that maybe one day they could escape

00:24:05

the poverty they had always experienced in their family.

00:24:08

They had never seen anybody hold down a job.

00:24:10

They had never seen anybody build up a savings account.

00:24:12

They've never seen anybody own a home.

00:24:14

And this wild dream started to become a reality

00:24:17

thanks to the audacious prayers

00:24:18

that were prayed on their behalf.

00:24:21

If you don't know anything about Citylink Center,

00:24:23

I think you'll be encouraged by this.

00:24:26

- Father, may Your Spirit be thick in this building, thick.

00:24:30

We want people to sense You when we walk in there,

00:24:33

and we want people to sense You

00:24:34

when they walk in there forever, they would smell

00:24:36

there's something different about this place.

00:24:39

It's not the architecture. It's not the paint.

00:24:41

There's just something different.

00:24:43

And we want that to be You.

00:24:44

Holy Spirit, if you ever did inhabit a building

00:24:48

since the temple, we'd love this to be the first one.

00:24:52

We want you to be in there because

00:24:54

people who are following You are in there.

00:24:56

Make this a special place.

00:24:58

We want to be your hands, Father.

00:25:00

Say yes to these prayers throughout this entire night.

00:25:04

- Years ago, our church prayed a wild prayer.

00:25:07

We asked God for a place where people in our city

00:25:09

could come for real help and a real future.

00:25:13

A place built on dignity.

00:25:15

A place where the church steps in with everything we have.

00:25:19

- Citylink is located at 800 Bank Street in the West End.

00:25:22

The organization provides a host of services,

00:25:24

all under one roof, to help put clients

00:25:26

on a path of lasting growth and hope.

00:25:29

- Citylink is lifting Cincinnati out of poverty

00:25:32

through a new program.

00:25:34

- We really focus in on what the client's needs are,

00:25:37

and we provide them the services and resources

00:25:40

to help them see their vision, help them get to their goals.

00:25:46

- Today that prayer has a name: Citylink.

00:25:51

And when you walk inside, it does not feel like a program.

00:25:54

It feels like a community.

00:25:56

Coaches, classes, childcare, training, all under one roof,

00:26:00

built around one idea:

00:26:02

You do not have to figure out your life alone.

00:26:06

The miracle is not the building,

00:26:08

it's the people inside of it.

00:26:10

People taking steady steps

00:26:11

towards a life God made them for.

00:26:14

- After getting out of prison

00:26:15

I finally got to the halfway house.

00:26:19

I'd do about six months in there.

00:26:22

Thankfully, I had a decent case manager.

00:26:26

She says, "Hey, why don't you go check out Citylink?"

00:26:29

And as soon as I came in here, I knew, I knew I was home.

00:26:35

- When I heard about Citylink and I first got here,

00:26:38

I was nervous because I didn't know what to expect.

00:26:41

You know, I was just very nervous because

00:26:43

it was a new environment, something new for me.

00:26:45

- So when I first came here, they sat with me

00:26:49

and said, "Okay, what program do you want to do?"

00:26:52

Construction. They teach you basic knowledge,

00:26:56

your basic tools, things I didn't even know about.

00:27:01

I've worked on plenty of job sites.

00:27:03

- When I got into the culinary class

00:27:05

and the training program itself.

00:27:07

Yes, I really did, thought I knew a lot of stuff,

00:27:09

but there were some things that I was missing out,

00:27:11

like on the basics.

00:27:13

So I didn't just get skills from it.

00:27:14

I was able to obtain a Servsafe.

00:27:16

So that allows me to be able to be in the kitchen

00:27:18

to safely serve the food.

00:27:20

I have the skills and the knowledge to handle that.

00:27:25

- When you graduate, you meet with employers

00:27:28

and it was like within that 24 hours I had my license,

00:27:33

I had a job, and I had a car.

00:27:35

That was a lot of steps closer to being stable.

00:27:42

- Where I work at now at Southern Grace.

00:27:44

So I obtained that position from here.

00:27:46

So it opened up a door for me to where it's like

00:27:50

I have a family, like I feel like I have a job with a family.

00:27:53

- I'm in my own place because of Citylink.

00:27:57

I got a job because of Citylink.

00:27:59

If I didn't have Citylink, I don't know where I would be.

00:28:03

- You know, you don't get to hear that you're important

00:28:05

or, you know, that people really care about you.

00:28:08

You find yourself wondering if am I loved

00:28:10

or am I cared about or am I, you know,

00:28:12

where did it even still be here?

00:28:14

And this is a lot of reason why a lot of people,

00:28:16

they had those suicidal thoughts,

00:28:18

or they don't want to fight for themselves

00:28:21

because they feel like nobody is fighting for them.

00:28:23

But in reality, it's always somebody fighting for them

00:28:26

because God fights for them, even when nobody else does.

00:28:30

You just got to trust and believe

00:28:32

that things will get better.

00:28:34

Because I never thought in a million years

00:28:36

that I'd be sitting here, right here,

00:28:37

being able to tell a little bit of my story.

00:28:39

I'm not surviving anymore. I'm actually living.

00:28:49

- Man, I love it. I love it.

00:28:52

Those stories are incredible.

00:28:54

She says never in a million years.

00:28:55

That's a wild dream that came true through audacious prayer.

00:28:58

See, audacious prayers pull wild dreams into reality.

00:29:05

That's how it works. Audacious prayers.

00:29:08

By the way, you know at Crossroads,

00:29:10

we give $1 million a year to Citylink.

00:29:12

$1 million every year to fund them.

00:29:16

And it's one of the best investments that we make.

00:29:18

Just in the last year, the last year of clients,

00:29:21

it received an extra $4.8 million in new income

00:29:26

thanks to Citylink and the job improvement they had.

00:29:29

That's crazy. Crazy. 4.8x return on our investment.

00:29:34

If I said I know a stock that'll give you 4.8x money

00:29:38

in 12 months, you'd be like, "Put all my money in there."

00:29:40

That's the investment of Citylink.

00:29:42

We're so thankful for their staff,

00:29:43

so thankful for their volunteers.

00:29:45

If you want to volunteer, check out more Citylink.org.

00:29:48

They served 7000 clients so far. Incredible.

00:29:51

I'll tell you, because audacious prayers

00:29:53

pull wild dreams into reality, you get this

00:29:56

encouragement to pray more audacious prayers,

00:30:00

when you see these things actually happen.

00:30:03

One of my new audacious prayers, Wild Dreams,

00:30:06

is that God would increase the number of Citylinks.

00:30:08

Right now there's 12 cities looking at Citylink,

00:30:11

and what would it mean to have one in their area?

00:30:13

I'm praying that all the places where we currently are:

00:30:15

Dayton, Columbus, Lexington, will all have a Citylink,

00:30:17

that every city would go to, would have a Citylink.

00:30:19

That's a wild dream.

00:30:20

There's no way to make that happen right now,

00:30:22

not unless God shows up.

00:30:24

It's an audacious prayer, but I've seen it happen

00:30:26

again and again and again.

00:30:28

Crossroads Uptown, perfect example.

00:30:31

We had to shut down Crossroads Uptown in COVID,

00:30:33

one of the most painful meetings I've ever led in my life.

00:30:36

We took the 60 core volunteers

00:30:37

and sat them in the back of that room on those risers.

00:30:40

Maybe you're sitting in those risers right now.

00:30:42

Had them there and said, "We have to shut this down.

00:30:44

It's just not the right time, not the right thing."

00:30:46

And before that meeting, I was standing

00:30:48

in the beautiful auditorium and my audacious prayer,

00:30:51

my wild dream was, "God, don't let this be the end.

00:30:54

God may this reopen someday."

00:30:57

No resources, no plans, no ability to make that happen.

00:31:00

But a dream and a prayer.

00:31:03

12 months ago, I was meeting with the 20 student leaders

00:31:06

of our college ministry at Crossroads Uptown.

00:31:09

And I asked them what was the wild dream

00:31:11

they had for their ministry.

00:31:12

And they told me that they had heard stories

00:31:15

and rumors of when the place used to be full of people

00:31:18

and life, but none of them had ever seen it.

00:31:20

It was a dream.

00:31:22

And they said, what we dream of is an experience

00:31:24

that we can invite our friends into.

00:31:26

Like something big and awesome that happens regularly.

00:31:29

And in that moment I was like,"

00:31:30

God, they're asking for this thing to reopen.

00:31:32

That's what they're asking for.

00:31:33

Would you make it happen?"

00:31:34

That started a new train of audacious prayers,

00:31:36

and wouldn't you know it, here we are opening it up.

00:31:38

By the way, this is crazy.

00:31:40

That meeting was exactly 360 days ago from today.

00:31:46

Do you know what 360 is?

00:31:47

That's a complete turnaround.

00:31:49

See, nowhere on our radar sometimes in our life

00:31:52

is that God might want to completely change things.

00:31:54

Nowhere in our radar.

00:31:55

But God has wild dreams, I'm telling you,

00:31:57

that are bigger and better than you could imagine.

00:31:59

I've seen it personally in my life.

00:32:01

Prayers that I didn't even pray for me.

00:32:03

When I was 17 years old, my mom came to me

00:32:04

and she said, "Hey, God's calling you to be a preacher.

00:32:07

He told me. I heard it."

00:32:08

She ripped a page out of her Bible

00:32:10

with a verse about being a preacher.

00:32:11

She handed it to me, "God's going to do this in your life."

00:32:14

And I was like, "No, thank you, that's not my dream."

00:32:17

And I spent years, sometimes far away from God,

00:32:20

pursuing paths that had nothing to do with preaching

00:32:22

or being in ministry at all.

00:32:24

I got a job in corporate America.

00:32:26

I got a degree in design.

00:32:27

I didn't run after it at all,

00:32:28

but my mom kept praying, kept praying.

00:32:31

And 13 years later, at 30, I stood on this stage

00:32:35

and preached my first message.

00:32:37

Prayer pulls wild dreams into reality.

00:32:44

Now in my life, that's bred, that's how I pray.

00:32:47

I pray wild prayers for my kids.

00:32:49

Yes, I want them to have a good house and a good job.

00:32:51

And oh yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff. Fine, fine.

00:32:53

But more than that, I want millions of people

00:32:55

to know Jesus through them.

00:32:56

That's my wild, audacious dream and prayer.

00:32:59

And I pray it regularly for them. Regularly.

00:33:01

Why? Because I want them to know a God

00:33:04

who has bigger dreams and plans for their life

00:33:06

than they can possibly imagine because

00:33:08

that's the only God who exists.

00:33:10

And if that's not the one you're following,

00:33:11

then you're not following the God of the Bible.

00:33:14

He is for you. He has great plans for you.

00:33:16

And I know you might hear this and you're like,

00:33:18

"Kyle, this is very different than the religion I grew up in.

00:33:21

This does not feel like religion at all."

00:33:22

Exactly. Because it's not. It's not religion.

00:33:26

Religion says that God wants you to pray,

00:33:27

and He's like, count the number of prayers.

00:33:29

You know, if you if you do seven Hail Marys

00:33:31

or Our Fathers, like, that's not quite enough.

00:33:33

He wanted eight. Oh, just missed it. Maybe next time.

00:33:37

No, that's not God. He has plans and He has dreams.

00:33:40

And like any relationship, He wants you to talk to Him.

00:33:44

He wants to know if you believe that He is who He says He is.

00:33:49

But I know for you, the biggest issue

00:33:51

and the most audacious thing might not be that.

00:33:54

It might be believing that you are who He says you are

00:34:00

That you're loved, that you're chosen,

00:34:04

that there's dreams and plans for you. Ah, too audacious.

00:34:09

And I get it, man, I get it.

00:34:12

But I know He has plans, I know He has dreams for you

00:34:15

because he has them for me.

00:34:17

I'm no one special.

00:34:19

I didn't get straight A's

00:34:20

on my spiritual report card growing up. I still don't.

00:34:24

But God has wild dreams for my life

00:34:26

and I know He does for you too

00:34:28

if you'll have the audacity to believe Him.

00:34:33

My prayer for you right now, in this moment,

00:34:36

is that you would have the audacity

00:34:38

to believe that you are who He says you are.

00:38:16

- You want to know who you are?

00:38:18

You're a daughter of the king. That's who you are.

00:38:21

You want to know who you are?

00:38:23

You're a son of the Most High God. That's who you are.

00:38:26

And He has wild dreams and plans for your life,

00:38:29

if you'll lean in and pray

00:38:34

audacious, dangerous, risky, bold prayers.

00:38:36

Before you run out, I want to invite you to do that right now.

00:38:41

If all this is is a mental exercise,

00:38:43

some interesting thoughts on prayer,

00:38:45

then we wasted our time together.

00:38:47

Before you run out, try praying.

00:38:49

Close your eyes right now.

00:38:52

Your audacious prayer might be four words:

00:38:56

God, I believe You. Pray that right now.

00:39:06

Maybe you don't know what the wild dream is for your life,

00:39:10

but if He has one you'd like to. Tell Him.

00:39:14

Maybe you know what the wild dream is,

00:39:22

this whole time you've been like, "Oh, man, that's it.

00:39:26

Oh, man, I haven't -- I haven't prayed for that.

00:39:29

I haven't been audacious." Well start right now, ask Him.

00:39:38

God, thank You for being the God who dreams wild dreams.

00:39:43

Thank You for being the God

00:39:44

who doesn't let us settle for average goals,

00:39:46

but the God who wants to change the world in and through us.

00:39:49

You are so good, and God, I'll just say

00:39:52

I believe You are who You say You are,

00:39:55

and I believe I am who You say I am. Amen.

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