Your Doubts are Welcome-DO NOT USE

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- Hi, Andy. Hi, Eric.

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- Today is about the question that you just answered.

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What if it were safe, really safe

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to ask God anything?

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What if there were no rules or boundaries?

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What if all of it was fair game?

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What we saw was, for most of us, we'd ask Him

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about something difficult in our lives,

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about a pain point,

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about something that troubles us.

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And today we're going to dive head first

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into those sorts of questions.

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How do you wrestle with them?

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What is okay to ask God and what's not?

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Are there boundaries and are there answers?

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We're also going to wade smack dab into the tension,

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the tension between the hardship of life,

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between the painful moments and the beautiful ones,

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the tension between the questions and the answers.

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Like, the next thing we're going to do right now

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is to sing a song about

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the opposite end of the spectrum, the good.

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It's a song written by Crossroads Music,

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and it's based on a verse from James 1:17.

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It says every good and perfect gift is from above,

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coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,

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who does not change like shifting shadows.

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You may not be ready to sing it.

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That's okay. That's okay.

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Wherever you are, we're just glad you're here.

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We started Crossroads to be a church where it's safe.

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It's safe to bring your real questions,

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it's safe to make jokes,

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it's safe to just be the real, authentic you.

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Wherever you are today, we're glad you're here.

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Would you stand up with us?

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- God, that's our prayer to You.

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We want to follow You.

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We want to know You better.

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I pray that we would know You more in this space

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and in this day to day. We love you, God. Amen.

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You guys brought the heat today.

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My name is Avery. I'm so happy you're here.

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Go ahead and say hi to the person next to you

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and grab a seat.

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- Yes. Hey, can we say thank you to the band one more time?

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Man, it's so good, so good.

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Whether you're in the room

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or whether you're watching online,

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so glad that you are with us.

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And just want to let you know the band

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is actually recording an album this coming Friday.

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If you're within driving distance,

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make sure you're here at 7 p.m.

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Hey, my name is Andy.

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I lead our Crossroads Anywhere community,

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which is, well, our community that's anywhere

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but one of our physical locations,

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one of our physical buildings.

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So we've got people all over the globe

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who are just as much a part of this community

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as the folks that are right here with me

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or in our other buildings.

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And this is Anywhere Weekend where we get

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to celebrate and actually bring

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all of those folks to Cincinnati

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for a really, really special weekend.

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It's going to be awesome. I cannot, cannot wait.

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But this movement, like, these real friendships,

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relationships, spiritual growth, transformation,

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healed marriages, freedom from addiction,

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like, this real life stuff that God is doing

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is made possible because people are generous

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and people are faithful.

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So I just want to give you a heads up.

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I know church and money can be a little funny,

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but it doesn't need to be.

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There's actually this thing that God tells us

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just to test Him.

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And there aren't that many places in the Bible

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where God says, "Hey, why don't you just go ahead

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and test Me and see how that goes?"

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This is one of the only spots where God says,

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"Hey, if you trust Me with your finances,

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see how I show up, see how I show up

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in your relationships, in your family,

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in your health, see how I show up."

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We don't know what exactly it's going to be,

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but God says in Malachi 3:10 that we can test Him in this.

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So we just kind of took God at His Word on that

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and we said, we're going to try something

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called the Tithe Test.

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It's 90 days, 90 days where you can say,

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"God, I'm going to trust You with 10% of what I have.

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And if I don't feel like You've shown up

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at the end of that, I'll get my money back."

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If you have questions about what it means

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to give to a church or, man, you just want

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to jump on board or check out the Tithe Test,

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you can do that at crossroads.net/TitheTest

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or crossroads.net/give.

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Now, I am so thankful for our community

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that is -- that really spans every continent

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and spans the entire globe.

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We have people coming into Cincinnati from,

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I think six different countries,

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from the Philippines to the UK to Japan

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to India and 20 some states.

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And they're here because people are faithful.

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And I don't want to just talk about Crossroads Anywhere.

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I want you to actually get to hear

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from some of our community members.

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These are some friends of mine, Andre and Fritz.

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- Hey, Crossroads, I want to introduce you

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to some friends of mine.

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These are Fritzi and Andre and, hey,

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where are you guys? Tell us where you're at.

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- We're in Metro Manila in the Philippines.

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- Andre and Fritzi, they are part of

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our Crossroads family,

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part of our Anywhere community,

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even half a world away.

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While they've been a part of our church for years,

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they're actually getting to visit

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for the very first time in person

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for Anywhere Weekend.

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I want a chance to get to hear from you guys

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about your experience being a part of Crossroads,

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even while, well, you've never been there

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in person, but are absolutely 1,000,000%

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a part of this church family.

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- So we're both originally born in the Philippines.

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We really grew up here.

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And basically we found Crossroads during the pandemic.

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- It's something that we were drawn into the

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we run, we go, we laugh,

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and there's just such a match of values.

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- Yeah, yeah, this this online church

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isn't just about just listening to the preacher.

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This one is like, "Hey, we're really serious

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about trying to build a community here."

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We have like a community that doesn't go away.

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For me, one of the big things, of course,

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is our small group, it's just really just community,

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a bunch of people stumbling after following Jesus.

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And we have our chat group, and we pray for each other.

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- The bottom line is we grow,

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gets us into building our relationship with God

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more firm and stronger.

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- Tell me a little bit about your all's decision

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to, like, not just participate,

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but to, like, engage and invest in Crossroads?

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- We would tithe to who was our local

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or our home church, basically.

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And since we felt that Crossroads was our home church,

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that naturally we would just try to find

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a way to just do that.

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- When was the moment where it clicked for you

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that Crossroads was your local church,

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even though it was thousands of miles away?

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- I think when you start feeding from that church,

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that's where you grow. So we're -- it's our home.

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So we give back to our home.

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We love you being crazy generous.

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We've been getting from God so much more,

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something that we don't really merit.

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But, you know, He gives it anyway.

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It's not ours. None of it is ours.

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- That's amazing. Wow.

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And thanks for sharing their story with us.

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- So good, so good.

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- Absolutely incredible. I love, you know,

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we're talking about questions today,

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right, that's the theme today.

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And Crossroads Anywhere was started nine years ago.

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- Crazy. - Right?

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- I think so. I wasn't here and you were here.

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- Yeah, I was here. I don't know.

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I'm getting too old to remember.

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It was about nine, you know, to four, I don't know.

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But it was started with this question. Right?

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And the question was kind of simple,

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but also had never been asked before

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in the church context, which was,

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what if we made a church?

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Could it be possible to create a church

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in which our friends who live far away

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could be a full part of it with us?

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And that was kind of the idea behind Anywhere?

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And then to hear their stories is just, like,

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it's mind blowing. It's amazing.

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- Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard when you don't see it.

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If you're online, you don't see everybody else,

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if you're in a building, you don't see everybody else.

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But the reality is we have a church

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that spans the globe,

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that is in different time zones

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where people are encountering God

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and are a part of our church family, and I love it.

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I heard -- I'm not a big stat guy, because I --

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But I heard some cool ones, like, I heard

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that just last month there was 50,000 people,

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that not just that, like, clicked and watched

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for like a second and a half, like, we so often do.

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50,000 people that watched, like, the whole message,

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like, that are like actually a part of our church

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last month, just alone.

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- It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.

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- The Crossroads Anywhere App, there's some --

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There's just such cool stuff.

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There was 2.5 million prayers prayed

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just this year in the app. 2.5 million prayers.

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That's wild.

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I don't know where else this kind of thing is happening.

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- No.

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- Something like 450,000 journal entries,

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people like processing the Bible together

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with their community, 450,000 of those.

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It's so, so good.

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And again, I'm not like a -- I'm not a stat guy.

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- Those stats though are people. - Right.

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- I mean, I think that's the incredible thing, right?

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You hear 2.5 million prayers prayed

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and you're like I don't even --

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I can't count that high personally.

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I don't know how many that is.

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Seems like it's a lot, but those are people.

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So give us a few more stories of some

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of the amazing things you're seeing

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in people in the community.

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- Yeah, I don't want to take up your whole time here,

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but I'll say this just some, some examples.

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So, like, some friends, Mark and Carmina,

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who are a part of our Crossroads Anywhere family

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and they're both kind of serial entrepreneurs.

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They're developing everything from

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wearable safety tech for women

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in the developing world to microfinancing

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for women in under-resourced areas.

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Carmina and Mark, they travel

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to a different country every three months.

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And so I was chatting with them

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and they said almost verbatim,

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"We would not be able to have a church

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if it wasn't for Crossroads Anywhere."

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I just I love that that your church

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can follow you wherever you go,

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whether that's abroad for work

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or whether you live in the Philippines

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like Andre and Fritzi, I just love the picture.

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And it's not just --

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It's not just online relationships, right?

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It's not just like a Facebook friend.

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It's deeper than that.

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It's like substantive.

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A story that I love, this was actually last year

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at Anywhere Weekend.

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So almost this exact date last year

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there was two women who came to Anywhere Weekend.

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One lived way out west and one lived on the East coast.

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Like, about as far apart as you can be

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and still be in the same country.

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And they've been in a group together

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with Crossroads for like four years.

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The first time they met in person, like,

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the first time they, like, gave each other a hug

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was about 15 minutes before Jill,

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the woman on the East Coast,

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baptized Pru from the West coast.

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So good, like these are real friendships,

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real growth, transformation.

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- You can clap for that. That's amazing. Come on.

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- Clap worthy.

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Unbelievable. Wow. That's incredible.

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Hey, listen. Listen, everybody.

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This is why I wanted Andy to be up here this weekend.

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We launched Crossroads Anywhere nine years ago.

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Like I said, the idea was just,

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could we create a place that we could invite

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all of our friends, all of our family to

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to be a full part of this church with us,

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to hear the message of Jesus

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in a language that we can understand,

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just like someone invited us in

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and it's happened.

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And so I just want to give you a gentle push.

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Do you know that your friends and your neighbors,

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no matter where they live,

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can be part of this church with you?

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Do you know that your friends and your family

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who live far away can hear the message of Jesus

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in a language they can understand?

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All you have to do is share it with them.

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That's it.

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And you have a way for us to do that, right?

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- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

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If you think about it, like, the whole story

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of our faith, the whole story of Christianity

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is people sharing the Good News of Jesus

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with their friends, with their family members.

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And that spreads across the globe.

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And we're seeing that happen just with our church.

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So if you are watching online

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and maybe you're like, "Hey, I'd like to

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not just watch a service,

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I'd like to be a part of a community."

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Do me a favor, just text Anywhere to 301301.

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We've been texting a lot this service,

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just text anywhere to 301301.

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And if you're in one of our physical locations

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and you've got a loved one, you've got a coworker

00:29:46

that wasn't that annoying. I'm just kidding.

00:29:47

You've got, like, people that you love

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and care about that don't live

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within driving distance of this site,

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they can be a part of the same movement.

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They can be a part of the same family.

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They can be a part of the same church

00:29:57

that you're a part of.

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And that's just really cool.

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- It's amazing.

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- Text them and tell them

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to text Anywhere to 301301

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and we'll send them some cool stuff

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and get them kind of oriented on what it means

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to belong to a church that spans the globe.

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- Awesome. Hey, let's thank Andy

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and the amazing Anywhere team. - Thanks, guys.

00:30:14

- You gotta move if you want to grow.

00:30:16

That's true physically and spiritually.

00:30:18

This summer we're looking at six important moves

00:30:21

you can make to experience God more fully.

00:30:24

And today we're hearing from Kyle about

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the goodness of God from the book of James.

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- Well, hey, we are in this series

00:30:39

Navigating a Life of Faith.

00:30:41

By the way, if you've been gone on vacation,

00:30:43

you missed some amazing weeks,

00:30:45

I highly encourage you to catch up on them

00:30:47

in the Crossroads app.

00:30:48

We heard from Joel last weekend

00:30:50

with a student takeover weekend. It was awesome.

00:30:52

Paco before that, Chuck before that.

00:30:54

Go back and catch up on the series.

00:30:57

Now, navigating implies something.

00:31:00

It implies that you know where you're going

00:31:03

and you're course correcting the whole way

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in order to arrive at your intended destination.

00:31:09

That's what navigation means.

00:31:11

And I say that for my own benefit,

00:31:13

because I am navigationally challenged.

00:31:15

Very, very much so, horrible.

00:31:18

One day I was in California recently.

00:31:20

I was driving around and I don't know

00:31:21

if you've ever been to California,

00:31:23

but the road layout is basically spaghetti.

00:31:26

Like, it's just there's so many lanes,

00:31:29

like, 18 lanes and they turn and they twist

00:31:31

and they go over and they go under.

00:31:33

And I'm trying to get to my destination.

00:31:35

I'm in my car, I'm driving,

00:31:36

and I've got the maps pulled up, right?

00:31:38

And on the maps I'm focused on one thing,

00:31:41

the blue line, and I'm just trying to follow it.

00:31:44

And I kept missing and I kept getting turned around.

00:31:46

I was getting so frustrated.

00:31:47

And so I called my wife.

00:31:49

And husbands, you know that moment where

00:31:51

you call your wife or you reach out

00:31:53

and what you want is just some sympathy.

00:31:56

You want to hear that you,

00:31:58

even though things aren't going well for you,

00:31:59

you're a competent adult

00:32:01

and she believes in you and she's for you.

00:32:03

And it's probably Google Maps' fault, not yours, right?

00:32:07

That is not what she said to me when I complained.

00:32:10

She said, "Kyle, have you ever looked

00:32:13

at the giant green square that tells you

00:32:16

where to go in the corner?

00:32:17

Stop looking at the blue line."

00:32:19

And I was, like, "I was not actually aware

00:32:21

there was a green square.

00:32:22

What are you -- what are you talking about?"

00:32:25

And this is the moment that I realize

00:32:27

in the world there are two kinds of people.

00:32:29

There are blue spaghetti people

00:32:31

and there are green box people.

00:32:33

That is it. You are one or the other.

00:32:35

Let me hear from my blue spaghetti people.

00:32:38

Anybody a blue spaghetti person?

00:32:39

You're just locked on that thing, right?

00:32:41

You're just focused on it and you're just, like,

00:32:43

just laser beamed in, but you don't actually know

00:32:46

any of the road names or what direction to turn in.

00:32:48

It's very difficult.

00:32:49

Others of us were the green box people.

00:32:51

We get locked into the green box and we're in it.

00:32:54

But the problem that we have as green box people

00:32:56

is that we have no idea what 1000 feet is, right?

00:33:01

You know, you actually have a theme song

00:33:02

if you're a green box person. Check this out.

00:33:08

- Dear Apple Maps, I don't know what a 1000 feet is.

00:33:19

- Isn't that guy great? Spectacular. Amazing.

00:33:26

Here's the point, to navigate well on roads

00:33:29

it turns out that you actually need both.

00:33:32

You need to know where you're going.

00:33:34

You need to follow the roads and the lines

00:33:36

and the curves, and you need the wayfinding,

00:33:38

the points and the signs.

00:33:39

Both of those things add up to good navigation

00:33:43

in the physical world.

00:33:45

Well, the spiritual world is very similar.

00:33:47

Do you know that there's actually two things

00:33:49

you need to pay attention to if you want

00:33:51

to navigate yourself to a life of faith,

00:33:53

which, by the way, that destination,

00:33:56

I don't know what you imagine it to be,

00:33:57

but in the Bible it promises that

00:33:59

that life of faith is dynamic and vibrant,

00:34:02

that there's a source of belonging and purpose

00:34:05

and love that you get when you actually arrive

00:34:08

at the destination.

00:34:09

It says there's two questions

00:34:11

you need to hold on to to get there,

00:34:13

two key ones if you want to arrive.

00:34:15

The first is: God, where are You in the bad?

00:34:19

When life is hard, when it's disappointing,

00:34:22

when it's painful, when things didn't go

00:34:24

the way that I expected, when I prayed

00:34:26

and I didn't get the answer that I wanted?

00:34:28

Everything from the annoying everyday stuff

00:34:30

to the tragic stuff.

00:34:31

That's the first one.

00:34:33

The second one is like it, but the exact opposite.

00:34:36

God, where are You in the good?

00:34:38

Everything from the amazing little things

00:34:40

that happen in the day,

00:34:42

you find a dollar on the sidewalk, amazing.

00:34:44

All the way up to the big things.

00:34:45

You got the job. She said yes to marry you.

00:34:48

God, where are You in those?

00:34:50

And what I find is that all of us we have a default.

00:34:53

Just like the blue spaghetti people

00:34:54

or the green box people, we are,

00:34:56

generally speaking, defaulting to one of these two things.

00:34:59

We're a focus on the bad person,

00:35:01

or we're a focus on the good person.

00:35:03

There's not a better advantage starting spot,

00:35:05

by the way.

00:35:06

Each of them have their advantages.

00:35:08

Each of them has their downsides.

00:35:10

If you're default to the bad,

00:35:12

you're prone to skip past the good.

00:35:15

And what that means is that at best,

00:35:18

you'll develop an intellectual connection to God.

00:35:21

You might eventually see Him as something like

00:35:23

a distant king or distant ruler,

00:35:25

but you will always struggle

00:35:27

to embrace Him as a loving father.

00:35:29

That part will just never make sense,

00:35:30

because you're focused on the bad

00:35:32

and not seeing any of the good.

00:35:34

On the other hand, if your default mode

00:35:36

is the good, you'll have another problem,

00:35:39

you'll silver line everything.

00:35:40

Get out your silver pen

00:35:41

and just kind of outline every situation.

00:35:43

You'll ignore all of the bad

00:35:45

and what that'll lead to, while in the moment

00:35:47

you might have a good faith, you might have

00:35:49

something that feels like a close connection.

00:35:51

When life gets hard, and it will,

00:35:54

you'll find that faith is very, very fragile.

00:35:58

See the way forward if you want to arrive

00:36:00

at the destination is to embrace the tension

00:36:03

of holding both at the same time.

00:36:07

My hope, my prayer is today in this service

00:36:09

that you take a step in that direction.

00:36:11

Before we go any further, let me pray for us.

00:36:13

God, thank You so much for You.

00:36:16

Thank You for being a God who invites questions.

00:36:18

Thank You for being a God who even offers

00:36:21

something called a life of faith,

00:36:22

who offers purpose.

00:36:23

And I'm asking for me and everyone in here

00:36:25

that we take a step closer to You today. Amen.

00:36:30

Now, like I said, today is about questions.

00:36:32

Question asking, by the way, is a skill.

00:36:34

And the skill has a name, it's called curiosity.

00:36:37

And researchers have figured out that

00:36:39

you hit your peak skill level as a curiosity person

00:36:43

at the age of four. No joke.

00:36:47

That's when you're primed to be the most curious

00:36:49

in your whole life.

00:36:51

And I'll say, as a parent, my experience backs this up.

00:36:55

I remember when my son Ben was four.

00:36:58

He just started shouting from the bathroom.

00:37:01

He goes, "Daddy, daddy, daddy, come here quick.

00:37:03

You got to see this. You got to see this."

00:37:04

And I was like, "Oh no. Did the toilet blow up

00:37:06

and there was water flooding everywhere?

00:37:08

What's going on, buddy?"

00:37:09

He goes, "Daddy, look at my poop.

00:37:13

It's green. Daddy. Why is it green?"

00:37:17

And I was like, wow, I looked at it

00:37:18

and was, like, it was --

00:37:19

It was like the Hulk took a dump in my toilet.

00:37:23

Like it was green green.

00:37:25

Here's a picture of it right here. Check it out.

00:37:27

Just kidding. I'm just kidding.

00:37:31

Some of you -- Some of you were like,

00:37:33

"It's Crossroads, I really thought

00:37:35

you were going to show a picture of it."

00:37:37

No, we have taste. We have restraint.

00:37:40

Plus, I couldn't find the picture, so.

00:37:44

Four years old, now at four years old,

00:37:47

the thing is, kids don't know what's okay to ask, right?

00:37:50

They just don't know. There's no filter set.

00:37:53

My other son, Eli, when he was four,

00:37:55

he had his shirt off.

00:37:56

And he walked up to me one day and he goes,

00:37:58

"Hey, dad, why do boys have these?"

00:37:59

I was like, "I don't have a good answer, son. I don't."

00:38:03

You're not supposed to ask these things.

00:38:06

That's not okay. Not safe. Right?

00:38:09

But kids don't know. They have no filter.

00:38:12

No one's taught them to be embarrassed yet.

00:38:14

No one's taught them that asking a question

00:38:16

could make them appear foolish or not smart

00:38:19

or behind or not spiritual enough.

00:38:22

No one's taught them that yet.

00:38:23

See, as we age, as we grow, it changes.

00:38:27

My son Ben, he just turned 14 the other day.

00:38:30

And I'll tell you, Ben still asks me questions,

00:38:32

but not like the ones he used to.

00:38:34

The questions he asks me now are things like why?

00:38:36

You know, it's like every time I ask him

00:38:38

to do anything, it's like he's afraid

00:38:40

I'm in the FBI and he's being investigated.

00:38:43

You know? It's like, "Ben, I need you to clean your room."

00:38:46

"Why? Why would I -- Why would I do that?"

00:38:48

Like, so suspicious, it's amazing.

00:38:49

Not as cute as when they're four.

00:38:52

All of us, by the way, we have this transition in life.

00:38:54

We go from asking unfiltered questions

00:38:57

to eventually asking filtered ones.

00:38:59

We stop asking, in general, which is tragic.

00:39:04

You know, one of the keys to success in life

00:39:06

is actually the ability to remain curious,

00:39:08

to keep asking questions.

00:39:10

One of the greatest business gurus

00:39:12

of the 20th century, maybe the greatest,

00:39:14

was a guy named Peter Drucker.

00:39:15

He was able to consult across industries

00:39:18

and talk to CEOs and different nations

00:39:20

and just a variety of nonprofit world,

00:39:22

the corporate world, everybody

00:39:23

he was able to relate to.

00:39:25

And one time an interviewer asked him, they said,

00:39:27

"Peter, how were you able to do that?

00:39:29

How do you have the intellect to understand,

00:39:32

to relate to all these different people?"

00:39:34

And his answer was, "I ask questions."

00:39:39

See, if you drop questions, you will find

00:39:42

yourself less successful in life.

00:39:45

The trick of it is to somehow retain

00:39:48

that child-like quality to become like a child.

00:39:52

There was another researcher named Warren Berger.

00:39:54

He wrote a book about this,

00:39:56

about question asking, and he said this:

00:40:19

Neotenous, by the way, not a new bad guy in X-Men,

00:40:21

not, if you thought that.

00:40:22

That's what I thought at first.

00:40:24

It means to retain child like qualities

00:40:27

even into adulthood.

00:40:29

You must become like a child.

00:40:31

Which sounds very familiar to something

00:40:33

that Jesus taught in Matthew 18.

00:40:35

There was a time where the disciples were debating

00:40:37

about who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

00:40:40

Who's the best, Jesus? Who's the greatest?

00:40:42

And what he did is He took a child,

00:40:44

brought him into the middle of the circle,

00:40:46

and said this:

00:40:59

The greatest become like a child.

00:41:01

Now, parents, we know something about kids, right?

00:41:03

I mean, let's all say it together

00:41:04

at the same exact time, complete the sentence:

00:41:06

Kids are kind of stupid. Is that right?

00:41:11

Nobody -- I thought we had a deal

00:41:13

we were all going to say at the same time.

00:41:14

Now I feel like I'm the bad guy

00:41:16

because I had to say it out loud,

00:41:18

Now, relax, I don't mean like

00:41:19

from an identity standpoint Children are loved by God.

00:41:21

All that stuff. Yes, yes, yes.

00:41:22

And my kids, multiple of them

00:41:25

shoved crayons up their noses. Okay?

00:41:27

So not the height of intellect.

00:41:30

And so it's worth asking when Jesus says

00:41:32

become like a child, does He mean become more naive?

00:41:36

Does He mean become more simple minded?

00:41:38

Does He mean in order to have faith

00:41:40

you've got to somehow uncheck your adult brain

00:41:43

and then just put it over on the side,

00:41:45

and then you can have a great time in faith world?

00:41:48

Is that what He means? No.

00:41:50

What He means is have the humility

00:41:53

to ask your real, genuine questions.

00:41:58

Jesus actually invites questioning.

00:42:00

In Matthew 7:7 He said:

00:42:16

Now that's an amazing promise, isn't it?

00:42:18

He says if you ask, He will answer.

00:42:21

If you seek Him, you will find Him.

00:42:24

Asking questions, by the way, that's called seeking God.

00:42:27

It's going after Him.

00:42:28

At Crossroads, one of the labels that we've worn

00:42:30

for a while, and I'll say proudly,

00:42:32

is that we are a seeker church.

00:42:34

That's term that's used to mean people who

00:42:35

aren't yet sure that Jesus is who He says He is,

00:42:38

but are seeking, are asking, are questioning.

00:42:41

And a lot of times in Christian circles

00:42:42

it's used as a derogatory term,

00:42:44

like we're dumbing things down

00:42:46

or we're not giving the real truth

00:42:48

or anything like that,

00:42:49

but this is who we are at our core.

00:42:51

Why? Well, because it turns out that seeking God

00:42:54

is not a phase that you go through

00:42:56

and you complete.

00:42:58

Seeking God is the foundation of faith.

00:43:01

In fact, if you want to kill your faith,

00:43:03

the surest way to do it is to stop seeking God.

00:43:05

Stop asking questions.

00:43:07

Decide you've got it all figured out.

00:43:09

That's the surest way to kill your faith.

00:43:11

Seeking is a thing we're all supposed

00:43:13

to be doing the entire time.

00:43:16

There's a Psalm, and I think it's Psalm 27.

00:43:18

David, who was one of the kind of chief people

00:43:22

in the Old Testament of the Bible,

00:43:23

David, who defeated Goliath.

00:43:25

He said that there's only one thing

00:43:26

that he wants from God, only one thing

00:43:29

that he desires: to dwell in the house of the Lord

00:43:32

and to inquire in His temple forever.

00:43:35

He literally goes, "The only thing I want

00:43:37

more than anything else is to just

00:43:39

ask God questions forever and always."

00:43:42

This is the foundation of faith.

00:43:44

Always has been, always will be.

00:43:47

I just wonder about you, where you are

00:43:49

in your seeking journey today.

00:43:51

Have you stopped asking God questions?

00:43:54

Have you had a moment where things got difficult?

00:43:56

Maybe you started to ask

00:43:58

and maybe you didn't sense an answer

00:43:59

and so you stopped.

00:44:00

Have you decided that you've got it all figured out?

00:44:03

If so, today restart seeking.

00:44:05

If there's a gap between you and God,

00:44:07

if you feel distance between you and God,

00:44:09

I'm telling you, this could be why:

00:44:11

you're not asking. You're not seeking.

00:44:13

He says if you seek, you will find.

00:44:16

Here's the thing though,

00:44:18

you cannot seek God safely.

00:44:22

It's impossible. It's not an option.

00:44:24

You cannot seek Him safely at all.

00:44:26

The only way is to ask

00:44:28

your real, dangerous, unfiltered questions.

00:44:31

Now, I wanted to put this on a slide

00:44:33

to make it more memorable for you guys,

00:44:34

because I think that helps with memory,

00:44:36

like if you can see the words.

00:44:37

And so I asked the guys to type this in

00:44:40

on the slide: seeking is asking dangerous,

00:44:42

honest, real, noble, unfiltered

00:44:43

and sometimes emotionally charged questions,

00:44:45

not the sanitized, safe, unsatisfying crap.

00:44:47

Otherwise, you'll just get sanitized,

00:44:48

safe, and unsatisfying answers.

00:44:50

They told me it looked terrible on a slide.

00:44:52

And I said, This is America. Let's try anyway.

00:44:55

So this is it. This is the slide.

00:44:58

And I'm not quite tall enough to have that as a slide.

00:45:02

So we simplified it to: Seeking isn't safe.

00:45:05

That's kind of point I want you to take home.

00:45:07

Seeking is not safe. Cannot be safe.

00:45:09

Now to be clear, there actually are

00:45:11

two different ways to seek.

00:45:14

There is a safe, easy way

00:45:16

and there is a difficult, hard way, an unsafe way.

00:45:19

Two ways to seek.

00:45:20

You know, a few verses after Jesus was saying

00:45:24

ask and seek, He said this, Matthew 7:13, He says:

00:45:41

There's two ways to go after God.

00:45:43

There's two ways to explore.

00:45:44

There's a hard way and there's an easy way.

00:45:46

Two ways to seek.

00:45:47

Now, the first way to seek God, the easy way.

00:45:51

I'll call this the textbook method.

00:45:53

Now, the textbook method of seeking says that

00:45:55

God has a list of formal answers to memorize.

00:45:58

He's just, if you can just find the right list

00:46:00

out of all the lists, which are many, by the way,

00:46:02

there are 45,000 different denominations.

00:46:04

There are 2.6 new denominations being born

00:46:07

every single day.

00:46:08

So finding the right list of answers

00:46:10

is somewhat difficult, but imagine you can.

00:46:12

The idea is that if you find that right list

00:46:13

of answers, you mentally assent to them

00:46:15

and you just never lead them.

00:46:16

You just kind of hold on the rest of your life.

00:46:19

The problem is, the Bible doesn't turn out

00:46:23

to have an annotated list of all of the answers

00:46:26

to all of the questions.

00:46:27

The Bible is not a list of answers.

00:46:29

What it turns out to be is a list of hundreds

00:46:32

and hundreds of stories of people,

00:46:35

their antidotes and their hopes and their fears

00:46:37

and their pain points and their mistakes

00:46:39

and their successes and everything in between.

00:46:41

The good moments in life and the terrible moments in life

00:46:44

all put together, hundreds of people

00:46:46

over thousands of years, people who most often

00:46:48

don't get the answer right at all,

00:46:50

but whom God seems to love anyway.

00:46:53

And so why do people pick the textbook method?

00:46:56

Because it's safe and it's easy.

00:46:58

You just pick your list and you stick to it.

00:47:01

But another problem with this method

00:47:02

is that if you choose the textbook method,

00:47:05

you'll find the textbook God.

00:47:07

He'll be neat. He'll be orderly.

00:47:10

He'll fit into your box.

00:47:11

He'll never disappoint you.

00:47:13

He'll never do anything unexpected.

00:47:15

You'll be able to answer every question

00:47:17

on every test about Him,

00:47:18

but He will be wildly impersonal

00:47:21

and therefore very difficult for you to love.

00:47:24

This is the textbook God.

00:47:25

If you feel distance between you and God,

00:47:27

again, friend, I just want to gently ask you,

00:47:29

is it because you've sought God the textbook way?

00:47:32

Is it because years ago someone said,

00:47:35

"This is the list of the right answers.

00:47:36

Believe this, never question it"?

00:47:39

If so, I want to invite you into

00:47:40

the other method of seeking God

00:47:42

called the unsafe, unfiltered method of seeking.

00:47:46

And this is the way that every person in the Bible

00:47:48

who's ever actually found God has sought Him.

00:47:52

Unsafe.

00:47:54

Here's a list of facts about my wife, Sarah.

00:47:56

Sarah is an introvert. That's number one.

00:47:58

Sarah also loves her people, two,

00:48:01

and her alone time, three.

00:48:03

Sarah also loves to run and hike, that's four and five.

00:48:08

She's an amazing mom, that's six.

00:48:10

And she's wicked smart.

00:48:12

Notice there was no -- There's no comma there,

00:48:14

wasn't wicked comma smart. Okay?

00:48:16

It was wicked smart, just in case she's watching.

00:48:19

I love you, wicked smart. Very smart person. Okay?

00:48:22

Now that is a list of facts about Sarah.

00:48:26

Let me ask you a question: Do you know Sarah now?

00:48:31

No, you don't know Sarah.

00:48:33

You know some facts about Sarah.

00:48:34

But knowing somebody is different

00:48:37

than knowing facts about them.

00:48:39

To truly know somebody, you spend tons of time with them,

00:48:42

and you ask them questions,

00:48:43

and you give them vulnerable answers.

00:48:44

And it's a two way street, and it goes back and forth.

00:48:47

And you don't suppress emotions.

00:48:49

You don't squash things down.

00:48:51

That's how you actually get to know someone.

00:48:54

The problem is, a lot of us have bought

00:48:56

into this religious lie that says that

00:48:57

there are certain topics that are off limits with God,

00:49:00

there are certain questions you can't ask Him,

00:49:02

that He would get upset with you

00:49:03

if you were to express disappointment or anger

00:49:06

or frustration or anything like that.

00:49:08

And it's a tragedy because it's not at all

00:49:10

what it says in the Bible.

00:49:12

In fact, in the Bible we see tons of examples

00:49:15

of the exact opposite, people who aren't safe at all,

00:49:18

who ask God real questions,

00:49:20

even sometimes offensive questions.

00:49:23

David, who I mentioned earlier,

00:49:25

of David and Goliath fame.

00:49:26

He wrote another Psalm, Psalm 13,

00:49:28

at a low point in his life where it seemed like

00:49:31

nothing was going right, nothing was breaking his way,

00:49:34

everything was set against him,

00:49:36

and he wrote this prayer to God.

00:49:38

This is Psalm 13:1. He says:

00:49:47

David actually levels accusations at God.

00:49:50

God, you're hiding from me.

00:49:51

God, you're forgetting me.

00:49:53

And God doesn't hurl insults back at him.

00:49:56

God doesn't say, "how dare you, David?"

00:49:59

God doesn't put him in his place.

00:50:01

Instead, God leans in and loves him and talks to him.

00:50:05

In fact, David gets the title that is

00:50:07

the best title any humans ever got outside of Jesus.

00:50:11

It is a man after my own heart.

00:50:15

That's what God says about David.

00:50:17

And He'll say the same thing about you.

00:50:19

Earlier in the service,

00:50:20

we did that text in a moment, right?

00:50:22

If you could ask God anything,

00:50:24

what would you ask Him?

00:50:25

And I'd say 99% of those were questions

00:50:28

about the pain points in our life,

00:50:29

about the things we've experienced disappointment,

00:50:32

where we're currently experiencing difficulty

00:50:34

or have these big, painful questions.

00:50:37

And I just want you to know

00:50:38

God welcomes every one of them.

00:50:40

There wasn't a single one of those questions

00:50:42

God saw and thought, "Man, I shouldn't have asked that."

00:50:45

I think God's the loving Father who says,

00:50:47

"Thank you. Thank you for approaching me

00:50:49

like a child who's willing to ask their Father

00:50:52

what's really on their mind."

00:50:54

That's what He says.

00:50:56

And I just want you to know I'm with you in that.

00:50:59

I didn't have my phone with me.

00:51:01

I don't have anywhere to put it.

00:51:03

But if I had texted in,

00:51:04

here's what I would have texted in.

00:51:06

I would have said, "God, why did my dad have a stroke?

00:51:09

And will he ever get better?"

00:51:11

It was two weeks ago, I was in a meeting

00:51:13

at Crossroads, work meeting.

00:51:15

Was looking at the calendar for 2025,

00:51:17

all the amazing events that we want to plan,

00:51:19

all the ministry that we wanted to do.

00:51:21

It's about ten in the morning,

00:51:22

10:30, something like that, and my phone rings

00:51:25

and it's my older sister.

00:51:26

She does not usually call at 10:30 on Tuesdays,

00:51:29

so I ignored it, silenced it.

00:51:30

I'll get to her later.

00:51:31

And then about 30 seconds later,

00:51:33

my younger brother called and that's when I thought

00:51:35

something might be wrong.

00:51:37

So I pick up the phone and answer.

00:51:38

And he said, "Hey, dad, right now is having a stroke.

00:51:42

He's in the garage, the ambulance is on the way.

00:51:44

Pray, and we need to go."

00:51:47

And so I packed everything up

00:51:48

and I ran to the airport.

00:51:50

By the way, I put a prayer in the Crossroads app,

00:51:52

and I know there were so many of you

00:51:54

who prayed for my family and for my dad,

00:51:56

and I just want to say thank you for that.

00:51:58

It means the world to me.

00:51:59

And we did see God show up.

00:52:01

We saw amazing things happen to him.

00:52:03

When it started, he was paralyzed on his right side.

00:52:07

And we spent days in the hospital

00:52:08

working and figuring out what's going on.

00:52:11

And he's made a lot of progress,

00:52:13

and there's still a long way to go.

00:52:15

He's suffering from something

00:52:16

called conduction aphasia where the words

00:52:19

and the ideas don't quite connect in his mind.

00:52:22

He struggles to understand words and to express himself.

00:52:25

He's in therapy and getting better.

00:52:26

But that's my question:

00:52:28

God, will my dad ever be the same?

00:52:31

Again, I just want you to know if you're --

00:52:33

If all you need to hear today is that

00:52:34

it's okay to ask God what you really want to know,

00:52:38

what's really on your mind,

00:52:40

just take it home with you because it is.

00:52:42

There's nothing He wants more than to hear

00:52:44

what you're actually thinking.

00:52:46

It doesn't make you unfaithful. It doesn't make you bad.

00:52:49

It doesn't make you dumb. It doesn't make you stupid.

00:52:51

It just means you're human and you're willing to admit it.

00:52:55

It's okay.

00:52:56

But I also want you to know if tha all you do

00:52:59

is focus on the bad, if the only thing you ever do

00:53:02

is ask God, why did X, Y, and Z bad thing happen,

00:53:06

you're prone to convert to a different religion.

00:53:10

It's what I think is the fastest growing

00:53:12

faith in the world. It's called cynicism.

00:53:16

It's not my idea, by the way,

00:53:17

that that's the fastest growing.

00:53:18

I'll get into that in a second.

00:53:20

And it's been around for a long time.

00:53:22

It actually goes back to a Greek word

00:53:24

from a long, long time ago.

00:53:26

The Greek word is kynikos.

00:53:27

And what it literally means is dog like.

00:53:30

Now, not like your cute dog.

00:53:31

You know, you've got your fuzzy cute dog or whatever.

00:53:34

Not your cute dog, like a wild dog.

00:53:36

It is the dog eat dog mentality or worldview

00:53:41

that says that everything is meaningless.

00:53:44

It says expect disappointment because it's probably coming.

00:53:48

So one of its central religious ideas is that

00:53:51

if something good happens, it's either because

00:53:53

of your own effort or just random chance and random luck.

00:53:57

There's nothing else behind it or to it,

00:53:59

and it is growing.

00:54:02

I did a Google search about this

00:54:03

and just compared one way to look at it,

00:54:05

which is basically how often is the word used.

00:54:08

And Google lets you do these searches.

00:54:10

And I searched for cynicism, which is on the rise,

00:54:13

and then Christianity as a contrast.

00:54:16

And you can see it's on the decline.

00:54:18

Cynicism is growing.

00:54:19

More and more researchers are picking up on this,

00:54:22

by the way.

00:54:23

It's across not just in America,

00:54:25

it's across the entire world.

00:54:26

And what they're discovering is that

00:54:28

cynicism will destroy you.

00:54:29

A lot of research has been done.

00:54:31

There's one guy who wrote an article

00:54:33

in the Harvard Business Review recently,

00:54:35

and he said this:

00:54:53

And this author, he's not alone.

00:54:55

I found other research and other studies

00:54:56

that said cynical people are more likely

00:54:58

to get dementia, cancer, make less money,

00:55:01

have a more difficult time forming

00:55:03

and maintaining romantic relationships.

00:55:06

In other words, if cynicism were a product,

00:55:08

none of us would buy it.

00:55:09

We'd be like, "Why in the world would I ever want that?"

00:55:11

And yet it's on the rise.

00:55:14

So the question is why?

00:55:17

And the answer that sociologists are pointing to

00:55:19

is an effect that they call the cynical genius illusion.

00:55:23

And it's this belief that somehow

00:55:26

has crept into our brains that says

00:55:28

the safest, wisest thing to do as a human

00:55:31

is to protect against disappointment

00:55:33

by expecting the worst at all times.

00:55:37

We actually think that that's wise, but it's not.

00:55:42

Another researcher, a woman out of

00:55:44

a university in the Netherlands

00:55:46

did some research on this, just kind of going,

00:55:48

like, well, this is what most people think,

00:55:49

which they do, is it true? She wrote this:

00:56:12

Do worse.

00:56:13

Cynicism is the allure of the day,

00:56:15

and it will kill you.

00:56:18

It will take your life.

00:56:20

See, God says, "Yes, yes, yes.

00:56:21

Ask Me where the bad comes from,

00:56:23

but please, please, please don't forget

00:56:25

to ask Me about the good.

00:56:26

Don't forget to ask Me about the good."

00:56:29

There's this weird thing that we humans do, right?

00:56:31

When bad things happen,

00:56:33

we immediately go to the higher power.

00:56:35

"God, where were you?"

00:56:37

We don't tend to attribute it to our choices

00:56:40

or random chance.

00:56:41

But when good things happen, we do the opposite.

00:56:44

We never go, "Oh, this must be God."

00:56:46

Instead we go, "Oh, this must be random luck,

00:56:48

or maybe I'm just great at stuff."

00:56:50

And what God's asking is to say,

00:56:52

"Hey, please hold the tension of both.

00:56:55

Yes, let's talk about the bad.

00:56:56

But please, can we also talk about the good?

00:56:58

Can we ask this question too?"

00:57:00

Because God proposes that He's not just a distant king.

00:57:04

He's not just a sovereign power working His plan.

00:57:06

He's a loving Father who wants

00:57:08

to give you good, good gifts. Good gifts.

00:57:13

James 1:17 says:

00:57:29

Every good and perfect gift.

00:57:31

Parents, if you want a pro-tip,

00:57:33

teach this verse to your kids.

00:57:35

Make it the first ones that they've ever heard.

00:57:38

Sarah and I did this years ago.

00:57:39

We taught it to our kids and just said,

00:57:41

"Hey, guys, everything you have that's good,

00:57:44

everything is actually from God, do you know that?"

00:57:46

And it's something we reinforce with them all the time.

00:57:49

We said it again last night, "Hey, guys.

00:57:51

What's something good?

00:57:52

Was it the ice cream cone you had today?

00:57:54

Do you know that wasn't random?

00:57:55

That's a gift from God. Was it good?

00:57:58

The vacation that you got to have, was that good?

00:58:00

Well, then it's a gift from God."

00:58:02

See, there are good things in your life,

00:58:04

if you're willing to ask, where are they,

00:58:06

you'll find yourself lifted above

00:58:08

the noise of cynicism, pulled out

00:58:10

of its gravitational orbit up to higher places

00:58:13

where you can see and find the life

00:58:15

that God has for you.

00:58:17

I'll say it right now, I'm in this tension.

00:58:19

I'm sad about my dad. I'm asking God questions.

00:58:22

Why did this happen? Is he ever going to be okay?

00:58:24

Where were You in this? All those sorts of things.

00:58:26

And I'm looking at the good and saying,

00:58:28

"God, where did this come from?

00:58:30

Was was this you?"

00:58:32

And there's good in my life at the same exact time.

00:58:35

One of the goods, my dad had his stroke

00:58:38

in an attic workout room in his house,

00:58:40

up 18 stairs, huge staircase.

00:58:44

His right side got paralyzed, but somehow

00:58:47

he was able to make it down 18 stairs

00:58:50

without falling, crawl across the garage,

00:58:53

and yell for my mom, who happened to be

00:58:56

in the one room of the house

00:58:57

that you could actually hear him in that spot.

00:58:59

And he was able to get help right away.

00:59:01

That's good, that's good.

00:59:03

And I'm able to say, "God, thank you for that good.

00:59:05

I don't believe that was random.

00:59:07

I don't believe that was chance.

00:59:08

I don't believe that was luck.

00:59:09

I don't believe that's because

00:59:11

their architect built the house in a certain way.

00:59:13

I believe that's because You're a loving Father

00:59:15

who has good things even in the midst of the pain."

00:59:19

Another moment that's good,

00:59:20

another moment that was really, really good.

00:59:23

With my son, you know, obviously I'm in a spot

00:59:25

where father/son stuff is particularly tender

00:59:28

with me right now.

00:59:29

I got to have an amazing moment with my son

00:59:31

who loves baseball, who made

00:59:33

the Little League All Star Team as a catcher.

00:59:35

I got to throw out the first pitch at the Reds game

00:59:37

to my son and have him catch it. It was good.

00:59:42

And miraculously, I threw a strike.

00:59:44

I don't know how that happened.

00:59:46

That's God is good.

00:59:48

So good.

00:59:49

Another one.

00:59:50

My boys are going to camp next week,

00:59:53

middle school camp at Crossroads.

00:59:55

Can't wait for it. They are so excited.

00:59:57

That's good.

00:59:59

When they get in the car

01:00:00

and they ask to put on their music,

01:00:02

do you know what they want to play?

01:00:03

Worship music. Why?

01:00:05

Because of the impact of Crossroads students on them.

01:00:08

That's good. That's not random.

01:00:10

That's not an accident.

01:00:11

That's a good Father who loves me.

01:00:14

And so even in the midst of it, I'm saying to God,

01:00:16

"God, You are good and I just want to say thanks."

01:00:18

I want to hold on to the tension of both of them.

01:00:20

And I'm telling you, your temptation

01:00:22

is going to be to let go of one,

01:00:24

because there are times,

01:00:25

if you wade into the tension

01:00:26

of holding on to the questions without the answers,

01:00:29

of the good and the bad at the same time,

01:00:31

of the beauty and the pain,

01:00:32

you'll find that sometimes

01:00:33

it wants to pull your arms apart.

01:00:35

But when you hold this posture,

01:00:37

you're holding the posture of the Cross.

01:00:41

You know the Cross was the best good

01:00:43

to ever happen?

01:00:44

It was the time where humanity was redeemed,

01:00:47

where all of the sin, all of the mistakes,

01:00:49

all of everything can get washed away

01:00:51

for anyone who believes.

01:00:52

And it's the worst bad that's ever happened.

01:00:55

The most innocent man

01:00:57

in the history of the universe brutally murdered,

01:00:59

the most unjust moment in the history of the world.

01:01:02

It is the bad, and it is the good at the same time.

01:01:05

In the challenge of faith,

01:01:06

if you want to navigate yourself

01:01:08

to the life of faith, you must embrace

01:01:11

and hold on to both of them.

01:01:14

We started by sending in a lot of questions

01:01:17

about painful things going on.

01:01:20

God, where are You? God, where were You?

01:01:23

And we're going to end by doing the opposite.

01:01:25

I'm going to challenge you.

01:01:27

Get back out your phone

01:01:29

and we're going to do this song.

01:01:31

The song based on James 1:17 that says

01:01:34

everything that's good comes from You.

01:01:38

And as this song plays, I want you to text

01:01:40

that same exact number,

01:01:43

text something good in your life.

01:01:45

It might be something very small.

01:01:47

Maybe you love Arby's

01:01:48

and you had an Arby's sandwich. Great.

01:01:50

Say God, thanks for Arby's.

01:01:52

Maybe you got a job this week.

01:01:54

Say God, thanks for my job.

01:01:55

Maybe it's -- maybe it's your spouse.

01:01:57

Maybe it's your kids.

01:01:58

Maybe it's your neighbor, your friend,

01:01:59

your roommate, I don't know what it is,

01:02:01

but text it in and say, "God, thank you."

01:02:04

And as soon as you send that in,

01:02:06

I want you to think of something else good,

01:02:08

anything good in your life.

01:02:09

And I want you to send that one in too.

01:02:11

And then one after that, and one after that,

01:02:14

the entire time this song plays.

01:02:16

Let's stand up, let's sing, and let's text together.

01:07:15

- Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.

01:07:17

Wherever you find yourself,

01:07:18

we'd love to connect with you personally

01:07:20

and pray for you.

01:07:21

You can email one of us directly

01:07:22

Andy.Reider@crossroads.net

01:07:24

or Rachel.Ryder@crossroads.net.

01:07:26

We'd love to chat with you.

01:07:27

You can even just go to the website

01:07:28

and hit the chat button.

01:07:30

And we'd love to pray for you,

01:07:31

process with you, and connect with you there.

01:07:33

- Yeah, we really mean it when we say that

01:07:35

this is so much more than just content to watch.

01:07:38

And I'm just going to say there are thousands

01:07:41

and thousands more people who watch Crossroads

01:07:43

than who actually engage.

01:07:44

And so if you're one of them,

01:07:46

I just want you to know, we actually --

01:07:48

We really want to know you.

01:07:49

- Whether you're near one of our physical buildings

01:07:51

or there's an Anywhere Community

01:07:52

gathering in your local city,

01:07:53

or you're watching online by yourself,

01:07:55

hey, there are so many ways to grow

01:07:57

and to grow with others.

01:07:59

And to make that easier for you, we actually

01:08:01

have a tool specifically for Anywhere Community

01:08:03

spread out all over the globe called the Anywhere Home.

01:08:06

It's kind of the hub and the meeting space

01:08:08

for our community, even as we're spread out

01:08:10

across time zones and even continents.

01:08:12

- Yeah, it is so sweet.

01:08:13

It is a space designed specifically for people

01:08:15

who don't live near a building.

01:08:17

So we have people in all different countries

01:08:19

and continents who actually know each other

01:08:21

and are friends.

01:08:22

It's a place for us to dive deeper

01:08:24

into weekly teachings together,

01:08:25

join groups online, pray for people,

01:08:27

post prayer requests when you need stuff.

01:08:29

And it's the best place to stay in the know

01:08:31

for everything that's happening in our community.

01:08:33

We post funny would you rather questions

01:08:35

and everything in between.

01:08:36

- It really is one of the best ways

01:08:38

to consistently engage with us

01:08:39

and the whole Anywhere family, no matter where you are.

01:08:42

You just go to the app store,

01:08:43

download the Mighty Networks app,

01:08:45

search for Anywhere Home and you're in.

01:08:47

- As always, thank you for joining us

01:08:49

and we'll see you again next week.

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