Dreaming Again: Faith That Requires God
Tribe
2026-04-26

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

----
Welcome to Tribe's podcast. Hey, we just wanna say thank you for making this message a part of your week. Our prayer is that these messages will inspire you to make the name of Jesus famous in your life and to the uttermost bounds of the earth. If you're ever in Jackson Hole, we'd love for you to visit our Tribe fam in person. To learn more about us, you can find us online or at Facebook by searching tribejh.com.

Welcome to Tribe's podcast. Hey, we just wanna say thank you for making this message a part of your week. Our prayer is that these messages will inspire you to make the name of Jesus famous in your life and to the uttermost bounds of the earth. If you're ever in Jackson Hole, we'd love for you to visit our tribe fam in person. To learn more about us, you can find us online or at Facebook by searching tribejh.com.

If you guys haven't been with us before, the way we do these things is by a conversation. It's not just gonna be me here on stage talking, but if you guys have questions, comments, or connections, throw those out. We've got a mic in the room, Greta's running that around. I'm sure you guys would be able to hear each other's voices just as you were able to hear mine before my mic was on. But we do have a bunch of families tuning in on the livestream, including Brian and Lissa, and they would love to get to hear your contributions.

If you were taking notes today, the title of today's message is Dreaming Again. And I like that little subtitle, Faith That Requires God, if you wanna throw that in there. When Brian asked me to speak as they were gone, I just always am like, hey, is there a particular direction you want me to go? Is there something like you want me to build on for a series? And he said, no.

But, he was like, I know you guys were just out of town, maybe it's something from your trip that the Lord was whispering to you, and that's what it's gonna end up being. And so, my wife and I just got back literally a week ago today from a ten day trip in The Dominican Republic. She works for a nonprofit called Young Life, which is a Christian ministry that does after school mentorship programs for middle schoolers and high schoolers, and it was partially a work trip down there to get to serve the Young Life community and the Young Life staff down there in the Dominican Republic. So we got to spend a bunch of time working, like spicing up the camp that they had. We were repainting light poles and doing all of these things, and then we got to spend time, we kind of broke into these three groups that went to different major cities there in the center of the Dominican Republic.

We went to this one called La Vega, and there's a ton of Catholic history there, so it was really cool to get to go travel around with the different staff. And one of the big things that stuck out to me is as we were getting to do life with them, just the way that they do ministry in a country that's so different from ours, right? And it was really cool because the Young Life format was pretty much the same, right? Imagine like we took the way that Brian and Lissa do service and just did the exact same style of stuff, exact same routine, but scaled it for basically a third world country. And so it was cool because there was familiarity to it, but the way that they did things was super different.

So if you wanna throw up that first photo, we got to go, and part of the history that we got to do this was taken at kind of the top of the city, highest point of the city, and there's a big Catholic worship center up there, one of the oldest on the island, which was super, super cool. And then, as you can see, these are a bunch of our tour guides. These are all Young Life staffers or volunteers, and there were a ton of volunteers there that are a part of this organization and that are a part of digging in deep, and not just in a like, oh, I show up every once in a while thing, but as basically staff people that just don't get paid. Like, that's how involved their volunteers are. And I wanna single out this guy right here.

His name is Alex, but nobody calls him Alex. He introduced himself as Poppy Poppy, and that like, that already gives you a pretty good idea of what his personality is. I assumed Papi Papi was a high schooler because the way he like definitely carried himself like a high school boy. I came to find out he was 27. But Papi Papi was one of those guys where, again, like I said, you get this vibe from him, you're like, okay, this guy's like here, and he's kinda probably like, just here to hang out with the kids, like, he's, they definitely have him on the team because like, he's good with kids and that's about as far as it goes.

Like, he hangs out great with the high schoolers and middle schoolers, but maybe isn't the guy who like runs the Bible study. And over the few days that we got to spend with them, I was very I was proven very wrong, which was awesome. It was so cool. You can go to the next one. Part of what we got to do, and this was Papi Papi's idea, I'm gonna say that name a lot, which is so fun.

Papi Papi wanted us to go to this sports complex that they have there that's got a bunch of open basketball courts, these places that all these high schoolers and middle schoolers go to after school just to play, that also happens to house a couple professional sports complexes in the area, and he was like, I wanna go do a prayer walk there. That's one of the things we were gonna get to do with them. So we walked across a busy highway, which if you don't know, there is basically no traffic laws in the Dominican Republic. And so it was great because it's like what would probably equate to like, I don't know, five lanes, like big highway that has no lanes. And there's two Dominican guys that just walk out and like just kinda hold their hands up as like all of us white people run across the street.

It was a great sight, you got a lot of weird looks from a lot of drivers, there's a lot of people on mopeds there, everybody was very confused. But we get over there and we start praying over this space, and about halfway through this prayer tour, we get into this basketball stadium. And this is the home for their professional basketball team for the city, and it happens to host any time they do national team tryouts or anything like that for their country. That all happens here in this stadium. It seats a few thousand people.

It's a big stadium, and we think about stadiums here in The US, it's pretty small, but big nonetheless. And one of the big things that stuck out to me when we walked into this space was Papi Papi starts talking, Papi Papi speaks zero English, so this is all coming through a translator. And he said that it is his dream that it's not necessarily a organizational thing, but that he has the dream since the first time he walked into this place of packing this place out with a bunch of high school kids and doing a multi city joint Young Life Club, which is just awesome. And it hit me when we were talking there and then later on in the trip as we were debriefing that, that a lot of us, especially in The US, don't have big dreams like that when it comes to faith stuff. Because the first thing that my and many other people's brains jumped to when he said things like that was, what are the logistics?

Right, like how are you gonna feed 3,000 high schoolers? Like how are you even gonna get permission to host something like that in here? Like what are the games you're gonna play? How do you like, are we gonna run sound? Like all these things, it's like is it gonna get too hot in here?

What time of year do you have to do it? And so often that those complexities in logistics are the first thing that come into our brains, which isn't always a bad thing, right, like we need some survival mechanisms. But that a lot of times that can be the enemy's way of stopping us short of dreaming big dreams for the gospel. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today, is what does it mean to dream, and what does it mean to live in such a way and to act in such a way that if God doesn't show up, you're kinda hosed. You've got no other option.

The problem is that, well, we've got a few problems. Things like we don't, a lot of us don't pray super bold prayers, right, because bold prayers are scary. Or some of us that aren't in ministry are like, well, that's for the ministry people, right? And that's this is totally gonna be a not for the ministry, this is for everybody else sermon. For those in full time ministry, you'll definitely get stuff out of this too.

But we just say, oh, that's that's for those people. Or we don't take risks that require faith. The Western church has always wrestled with this problem of reducing Christianity to being a good person, staying comfortable, and avoiding sin, and maybe tithing to your church. We've built safe lives, which means we've built lives that function perfectly fine whether God shows up or not, and that is not the way that faith is supposed to work. I'll say that again because I have it in bold because it hit me.

We've built safe lives, which means we've built lives that function perfectly fine whether God shows up or not. And this can be in everything from our parenting to our relationships with our coworkers, to how we talk to our spouses, and to how we act out and walk out our calling that we have from God. But like I said, when we dive into scripture, that's absolutely not the kind of life that God calls us into. We see it all over scripture that God calls people into scary, big, doesn't make sense kind of lives. And that's what is so awesome about our faith.

So if you guys have your bibles with you this morning, we're gonna open to Nehemiah chapter two. And we're gonna read verses one through eight. Slip your hand up when you got it, and Greta will bring the mic around. Chris Bates. Nice.

Early the following spring in the month of Nisan, during the twentieth year of king Artaxi's reign, I was serving the king his wine. I had never before appeared sad in his presence. So the king asked me, why are you looking so sad? You don't look sick to me. You must be deeply troubled.

Then I was terrified, but I replied, long live the king. How can I be sad? For the city where my ancestors are buried is in ruins, and the gates have been destroyed by fire. The king asked, well, how can I help you? With a prayer to the god in heaven, I replied, if it pleased the king and if you are pleased with me, your servant, send me to Judah to rebuild the city where my ancestors are buried.

The king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked, how long will you be gone? And when will you return? After I told him how long I would be gone, the king agreed to my request. I also said to the king, if it please the king, let me have letters to address the governors and the the of the province west of the Euphrates River, instructing them to let me travel safely through their territories on my way to Judah. And please give me letters, addressed to Asaph, the manager of the king's forest, instructing him to give me timber.

I will need it to make beams for the gates of the temple fortress for the city walls and for a house for myself. And the king granted him those granted those requests because the gracious hand of God was on me.

Love it. Thank you. What sticks out to you guys in this passage? What are you guys seeing here? There's no right or wrong directions or answers, but just what sticks out to you?

And again, we'll have the mic around, so slip your hand up.

Not only did he build the temple, but he built himself a house.

Mhmm. Yeah. What else?

He seemed to be outside of what he felt like the king wanted. He was kind of on his own journey.

Yeah. Which I mean, he even says he's terrified, right? Like, it was a bad deal to show up in front of the king looking sad, period. Like, you could get killed just for like having a bad attitude in the king's court, because the king always needed to feel happy. And so he's like, hey, like, why are you sad?

And he's like, terrified. And then he asks him to do some pretty crazy stuff. What else?

The the fact that this is a firsthand account based on how we phrased the part of the scripture we're reading here is pretty interesting where we're getting that from Nehemiah's perspective and that being, you know, an interesting aspect of some of the scripture that we read. Just knowing that it came from his experience to, you know, carried forward in time to us.

Yeah. Yeah. We're getting his, like, real in the moment, like, how he's actually feeling about these things.

Yeah. He dreamed the dream. He talked to the king. Yeah. He went through that.

And while we're reading it, you know, posthumously here, where he was going through that moment and had that dream and had to bring it forth and didn't know how that was gonna go, whether he was gonna lose his head or

Yeah.

I don't know how much worse he can get, but, but, you know, how bold it was to to have had that conviction and that that divine tension to be feeling that desire to restore his people unto God and bring it forth to this I mean, my understanding is this was a secular reign. Mhmm. Of the it was a Babylonian?

This they weren't Babylonian, but the for context historical context, the Babylonian Empire had basically completely wiped out Jerusalem, exiled all the Jews, and then now some of the Jews were allowed to come back into their city. And walls don't matter as much for us in these days, but those days, if you didn't have a wall around your city, were kinda hosed. Like you were out in the open, you were gonna get destroyed a lot. And so walls meant safety and identity and a home and a place. And you've got this, it is a secular nation, but that Nehemiah is under, but it's also like, they're not pals with Jerusalem.

Like, this takes the level of terrifiedness that Nehemiah's feeling up a notch because it's not just like, hey, there's this tiny little town that I'd like to help rebuild. It's like, no, this was a major world power at one point and I wanna help rebuild it. And it could definitely be a potential enemy to this king, right? It's like to ask for not just like, hey, can I have something? Because any time you ask something of the king, it was a chance of being beheaded.

But crank it up a notch of like, hey, I'm also gonna take your lumber and build up an enemy city, and is that okay? And by the grace of God, he says yes.

Something that stuck out to me was when the king said, like, what do you request? He first prays to God and then asks the king. So just taking a piece for, like, us Mhmm. Asking the Lord first, like, when you are dreaming these dreams, like, hey, is this actually, like, your dream, or is this my dream? And so since he's asking, like, the Lord, is this actually what you would have for me?

But then also at the end of the passage, he gives credit to god. Mhmm. And says, like, the king granted these things to me according to the good hand of my god that's upon me. So, just like with this, like, always checking in, is this my dream? Is this the lord's dream that he's given me or like, what what is it?

Because I feel like sometimes we can also like think it's a god dream and then it's like definitely not what he wants for us just because of circumstances. So, anyways, I just thought that was really important, that it wasn't just Nehemiah's dream, but it was the dream that God had given him.

Yeah. Yeah, and I'll clarify that because, that it doesn't turn into a self help talk of like, just chase your dreams and set up smart goals. The four things that I have written down of ways to identify whether or not it's a God dream or not or if it's your own is it has to require faith. Like it has be big enough to require faith in God. It has to impact others.

It should glorify God, and it should cost you something. Those are kind of my Can fast? Yep, absolutely. A God dream will require faith, it will impact others, It always glorifies God. And it should cost you something.

We see that with Nehemiah, right, like it requires faith to step out. It is gonna impact the entire Jewish people at the time, like in Jerusalem. It's for sure gonna glorify God, like restoring the holy city is a big deal, And it's gonna cost him something. It's a risk to ask for these things, and later on it ends up costing him because he's spending time away from his home, right? Like, this place is his home and he's an exiled Jew, so he relates to these people, but it is not, like Jerusalem isn't his home.

And so for him to leave everything that he knows and move to a new place, build his house there, costs something. Faith mean? Yeah, I think it's those kind of things of like, if I can just logistics be like, well this makes good business sense and this is the like, of course it would make sense, like think about the basketball stadium and it's like, well if we got X amount of kids in here and it made us X amount of dollars in donor money, then it would benefit the young life x amount or something like that. Like if it makes, if it just makes sense on paper always, I think it's the first time we should start asking like, is me? This because the way that the world works is opposite of the way that God works.

Right? Like, I'll put it into personal terms of like, the the job that I have right now is a job that has totally been a gift from God. I'm a personal trainer right now and I don't have any certifications. I didn't go to school for this stuff. And yet, within the first week of what was supposed to be an internship, my boss was like, something's different and we're gonna give you a job.

Because it required faith of like, God was like, you need to step into this and you have no business doing this on your own. And those, I think that's what it means to require faith. Does that make sense? Cool. Anything else from the passage?

You guys are pulling gold. I love it.

I just had a question. Yeah. King Artaxerxes, is he the one that, like, was the king with Esther or no? No. No, he wasn't.

I don't think so.

Don't know why. That sounded familiar. That's who?

I think you're right. I think that's what it is, yeah. I think one of the big things that's stuck out to me and like looking at the whole book of Nehemiah is it's one of the few times we get to see, and I mean it's crazy that an entire book of the Bible is built around him, but he's just a regular dude. Right, like he's got a job, his job is to be the guy who tests the king's wine to make sure it's not poisoned. Like, that's his job.

And he's just a guy, he's not a pastor, he's never listed as a prophet or anything, he's just a guy who has a job that in the first chapter of Nehemiah, like, hears that the people of Jerusalem are broken and the walls are broken, and his heart breaks, and he feels moved by what God is calling him to. He's just a guy who cares about what God cares about. And as you guys have pointed out so well, he acted on the dream and God provided along the way. It wasn't just a, hey, I've gotta figure all these things out first and then I can talk to the king about it. He's like, he just, he goes and does it.

And also, have to look at the setup of what got him to this point that he could even ask the king or be in the presence of the king. He lived for years and years in the service of the king, and I'm sure many times he was thinking, what am I doing here? Why am I here? Why am I here? But God put him in a place to to step out in faith Mhmm.

To ask this big dream and to change history. You know, just through him being faithful up until that point. It wasn't just the faith of him asking. It was the faith of believing that even in the mundane, even in when we don't understand, God put him there. And he was probably miserable at times.

He probably hated it. But he realized that, nope, this is where God wants me for whatever purpose I don't know. And then he was given the chance to step out in faith. Yeah. And I think we can apply that to our lives too.

You may not know why you're here. You may not know you don't see the end, but just you being here right now is a step of faith. And then, you take that faith and you build on it to move into bigger faith. And then you take that faith and move into bigger faith.

Yeah, and I love the idea too of serving with excellence, right? Like that's, we see him be like, oh, I've never seen you sad before. Like that means, he's like even on the days where his job sucked, like he showed up and was like, did his job well and did it with excellence so that when it mattered and when something actually came up, it was communicated. Like he had that relationship with him but he knew that something was off.

To drink wine, it might

be poisoned every day. Yeah, exactly, yep.

In a similar way, Gretchen, I was kinda thinking of Sorry. No, that's great pivot. Likening it into a modern context helps me of that role. I mean, if if I can step on a branch and say secret service, I mean, he was at a operating at a high level within a government position, trying to prevent the assassination of a king. So he had worked to a point where he had developed enough trust within that society and and and grown to a level of proficiency because he's not just sitting in the court just, like, waiting all day to test the poison and the wine.

Like, he's he's working outside of that. Mhmm. He's he's, you know, looking for he's like CIA, FBI, secret service type of role.

Yeah. I love it.

This guy's a high level high level agent operating in ancient society, so everybody knows.

Well, I love there's such a little throwaway there of the king asking how long he's gonna be gone, and I imagine part of that would be the trust of letting go of somebody you trust in. Of like, man, I really like this guy keeps me safe and like, I've gotta let him he's asking to leave, it's like, well, how long are you gonna be gone? Because I want you to come back. Yeah, who's gonna drink the wine for me? How long am I gonna not have to drink wine, man?

Shoot. I love it. So, I said at the beginning, I feel like a lot the reason this was on my heart is that a lot of us don't think like this. And I think that's because of two reasons, either we choose not to dream or we have dreamed and we've kind of lost the dream. And so, a few reasons why I think we don't dream, why we stop dreaming.

The first one is comfort. Right, Life got good and so we stopped needing God, right? We stopped needing for him, needing him to provide. Or the thing I had planned, the machine just started working well enough, and like now it's just kind of going on its own, and that's been super great. But now we're just coasting.

The second reason is disappointment. You prayed a big prayer, you had a lot of faith for something and it didn't pan out the way that you wanted it to. And maybe you haven't wrestled with God on that of what his plan actually is in that, and that can be really, really hard. And you feel let down. And that shuts us down from wanting to ask those big things again.

That third reason is fear, right? Like, what if I step out and fail? What if I end up in disappointment because I fail? Or what if people hate me or I lose all my friends or all these different things that we think of. And our last is distraction, right?

The enemy in the Western world loves to just distract us. It's so, it's every, I mean, you talk to so many people and it's like, how you doing? It's like, good, I'm just busy. It's like, yeah, like, the enemy just wants to throw things at us. And like, not all of those things are bad things, right?

We can be involved in a lot of really good things. But sometimes it's just stuff that's in a way of maybe the big thing that God might have. Because we could be involved in good things that like are good for the kingdom, but maybe God's like, well, I've got something even better for you, if you were to just take the time.

Under the fear thing, just honestly for me too, is like a lot of the times I have fear not of failing, but of succeeding. Because then I'm gonna have all this responsibility. Come on, What if I actually do it? And then I have to carry that.

Right, yeah, you gotta keep that up or Yeah. Right, he's like, now he said yes, like what next? Now you gotta go all the way there. Yeah, big time. Yeah, and so for some of you, maybe you've never had a kingdom dream or maybe you have and these things have shut you down.

But for those of us that have been in the faith too, the question isn't just like why have we stopped, it's also the what happened to our dream. Right? I'm sure it's probably just me. I'm probably the only one in the room who's ever had this happen, that you've got a whole head of steam and you're running with what God has for you and then something happens and it just kind of fizzles out. Right, and that's, it could be for any number of those reasons that I had before or it could be for anything else of just, it's too hard, it's not the right time, whatever we think it is.

I mean, I've got a long list of things that like I thought or God was calling me into that like just kinda petered out. I like literally tried to start a clothing brand a couple years ago and was just like, this didn't go anywhere. And I was like, maybe I just wasn't actually hearing that super clearly. And I don't think I was because I definitely revisited it and was like, yeah, okay, I don't think he was actually calling me into that. I just thought it'd be fun.

But it still had purpose. But it still had purpose and it still did great things, yeah. Yeah, and God will still use all of it. That's the amazing part is for, and I'll say that because I don't have that in here, is if you have, like if that, if you've stopped dreaming or if you've lost your dream, that's okay. Right?

Like, God has so much grace for all of us. And I encourage you to read the whole book of Nehemiah, but he in the first chapter, like, when his heart breaks for the city, he's like, God, I've screwed up. Like, that's how he starts the process. It's just, hey, the people of, like, the Jews have failed and my family has failed, and we need you. And we can come to him and ask for renewed fire.

I just had a couple of thoughts. I think one of this idea of like, oh, it's not the right time. I think sometimes God puts a dream on our heart and it isn't the right time. And I think that that's where we go back to what you were talking about, which is being faithful in the small. I think that sometimes we even get our eyes too strongly on the big dream, or maybe it's wondering what is the dream you have for me, what is the dream you have for me, And that we forget that the way we get to that is being faithful in the small, and that there's so many things that we know that we are called to and that we know God has for us based on just simply his word and his character.

That like you know like you talked about like the clothing brand of like how do we like figure out if this dream is from God. You have to take a little bit of a step right? Like you have to dip your toes in and seek the Lord on his direction for that. But I just think, yeah, I think that's so valuable because I think that it can feel like a dream might feel too big or, oh, that dream wouldn't fit into my life, or whatever, but God is so faithful to give us things in baby steps, and I think that's so valuable for our ability to accept something from him, but also in our ability to handle and steward well a dream that he does have for us.

So, a few weeks back, myself and a few others of a men's Bible study that I go to went out witnessing and I think you you go into it with so much apprehension of rejection or something like that. Well, that was never the issue. More people were willing to talk. I think it was my willingness to take the next step. And confront some of the issues that were that were brought up and you know, think we just naturally have this fear of of not succeeding, crashing and burning.

I think that's the height of learning is when you step out, make a mistake, and then correct it and move forward. It is it was so rewarding not only for what I felt like was accomplished but in my failures, I felt like I got better and I learned a lot about myself in that in that situation.

Okay. Yeah.

Something in verse five that's easy to just look over real quick is that Nehemiah asked the king. He says, you send me. Instead of may I go, he says, you send me. So, I think there's something in there to dig out about partnership, about I mean, respecting authority for sure, but, this was a huge job, and it required huge faith, and he needed somebody. I mean, the Lord is enough, but in the natural, he needed somebody like a king to provide the lumber and do all the things.

And so I think, one, I think Chris is right. He is smarter. He's not just just a dude. Like, I think he was really smart at networking, you know, and getting what he needed, but I also think it was the peace of his faith. And he said, if you, you send me.

Meaning partnership and community, and that speaks to that piece.

Yeah. Which just continues to build the level of how big of an ask it was. It wasn't just, hey, can I leave? It was like, hey, can I leave and can I use your reputation to have protection from all these other nations? That would probably do something bad to me.

And can I also have a bunch of lumber for all of this stuff? Like, it's a big ask. Okay. So, let's say either you've stopped dreaming or you've lost your dream, how do we get it back? Say that to you, it's stirring in your heart, what do we do now?

We got four steps. The first one is remember. If you've lost your dream, dig it back up. Pray, ask him to bring it up because a lot of times those dreams, especially the ones that are really meaningful, that tie into your deepest calling are always gonna be there. And it might look slightly different because maybe the season has passed for the specific outcome.

But if God has stirred something in you, he'll stir it in you again, absolutely. And so that first one is to remember. The second is to repent. To say, God, I see the thing you put in my heart, the thing you called me to do, and I totally haven't done it. And you know that.

And just say, God, I settled. I settled for comfort or wrestle with him of God. I have trouble trusting you because of the disappointment. Or I've been giving into fear or distraction. Like, just to lay it at his feet and say, God, need you.

And then the third step is to lay it at his feet, to to re surrender, to give him everything that you've got. And to lay down whatever that thing that's holding you back is and to just say, God, it's not about my comfort, it's not about my safety, it's not about my ego, whatever. It's not about my financial standing, God, but it's about your calling. And to trust that as Nehemiah did that God will just provide along the way. And so if we walk that through, we remember, we repent, we resurrender, then we come to the fourth one, just as Bethany said, of just take one step.

What is what is that next thing you need to do? You found that stern in your heart, you've got the huge big picture that's still so daunting even though you've laid it all at God's feet. What is that next step? Just as Nehemiah did of like, oh, I've got this huge dream in my heart and I can't do it unless I get this one thing to start it. And that's what he does first.

And we'll see, there's a ton more logistics in the process of that book. But all we need to do is just ask God what that next right step is and go from there. Thoughts on this? As we land the plane here, I gonna take some time to pray over us with the prompt of this question of what would your life look like if you believed that God could do something through your dream? Right, like wrestle with that question of like, God, do you have a dream for me?

Or did you have a dream and I let it slip? And then say, what it look like? What would your life look like? What would the lives of the people around you look like? What would this valley look like?

I mean, there's what, probably 30? I'm bad at quick math. 30 of us or something in this room right now, like, every single one of us walked out a dream that God had for our lives, Jackson will look so drastically different. And that's the kind of that's the kind of dream I wanna have. Right?

It's like watching watching you guys walk that out and equipping you guys to walk that out. To change lives for god's kingdom. One little friend group or coworker pocket at a time. So, bow your heads with me. Father God, thank you for giving us dreams.

God, for inviting us to partner with you and making your name famous, God, for changing lives for your kingdom and for doing it in ways that would be totally, totally above our pay grade. God, for calling us into things that are so big that we just have to trust you, to have faith and hold on tight and just follow you each step, God. I just pray for those in this room that don't know what it means to dream. Or maybe they did, and maybe it hurts too much. Or they've lost sight of whatever that is that you've called them to.

Maybe it's the reason they're here in Jackson. And God, just pray with them in their hearts that we repent for times when we've just settled for what the world would give us. And when we've just settled for good, God, when you have the best for us. And we resurrender, God, we lay all that we have at your feet. We lay any fear, anxiety, comfort, distraction all at your feet, God, just just for what you have for us, God, and say, lead us.

Show us your path that you would have us walk. And show us what the next right step is, God. Your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And sometimes that light only shows the next step, god. So show us the next step.

And may we have the faith to trust you and walk it out just as Nehemiah did. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. I'll close with this. And I'll say them nice and slow in case you want to write them down.

The tragedy isn't that we fail at big things. It's that we never attempt them. Like Clay said, we learn so much from failing. And although we might feel like we fail, God will never let us down. We might feel like whatever it was was not a was it was a failure.

It didn't pan out the way that we thought, but god will never let us down. God will always have us. He will always carry us, and it will always have a purpose, like you said. And the last point is that this isn't just something that we can loosely engage in because we have an enemy that is fighting to keep us living a small, quiet life or a nice little life. The enemy would love for us to just keep our faith to ourselves and feel like it brings us joy and we get to be happy here because of it.

And that's absolutely not what we're called to. It's a part of it and it's a great part of it that we get to enjoy God's presence and it makes our days better. But if all it is is just a morning routine and like praying before meals, we're missing the best of it. Yeah. The enemy is fighting to keep you living a small and quiet life.

That this is more important than just, I'm gonna try to dream up this dream. It's gonna mean resistance. It's gonna be hard because the enemy would love nothing more than for you to be stuck on the couch. So trust, and as it says in James one verse two, count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds. Now, come on up.

Well, every week, while we're here, if tribe is your local church, if it's not, you're here, you're family, just like the Olive Garden. We didn't have breadsticks today. We forgot. But when you're here, you're family. So, we always, every time we come together, we pray over our tithe and above and beyond that our offering and it's just something that we see as a speaking of obedience and taking one step, we see it as obedience and just bringing a portion of your hard earned finances.

We work hard and life is hard and money can be tricky. It can feel like it has control whether you have a little or a lot and so, god is so brilliant when he says, bring me a portion of your finance because does God need your American dollars or your credit card? No, right? He created the universe with his breath. But he's so brilliant that he wants us to partner with him and he wants our hearts to stay calibrated to his.

And so I just love that this is one way. And here at Tribe, we call it it's a way to worship. It's a way to surrender to the Lord. And so we're gonna do that now. Whether you give now or another time, I'll tell you ways we can give and then we'll pray.

Have a couple announcements and get you out of here. Here at Tribe, you can give, if you have a cash or check, we have a little box with our logo over there on the at the door. We also have a black lockbox downstairs. Chris gave a Bitcoin about ten years ago and it's still in there. A pretend Bitcoin, Sophie of that.

But online at tribetoh.com, you can always give and then you guys know the easiest way. Hux, if you have that slide, the giving slide, you just type in a new number in your cellphone like you have a new buddy called Tithe Tithe to Tribe. You type, you say the word give, the dollar sign, and then the amount. And it's the number (833) 369-7847. Let's bow our heads and pray together.

Lord, thank you for your brilliance. Thank you for your majesty. Thank you for your wonder. Thank you for your goodness, your faithfulness, your love, your wisdom. Thank you that you never fail.

Thank you so much for just your character and your nature. And Lord, I thank you so much for those dreams that you have put in our heart. Father Riester, what it is you want us to resurrect and let die what needs to die and give us fresh new dreams. We just trust you in that, Lord. We say thank you for all of this money that comes into tribe, Father, is yours.

We just get to steward it. We get to be your hands and your feet. But it is yours, and we say, have your way with every single opinion. I thank you for everybody here who gives faithfully, Lord. May they be blessed by their obedience.

It's how you roll. We love you so much in Jesus' name. Amen. Real quick before we get out, if you sat on one of these, go ahead and get it out from under your bum. If you wanna fill this out, if you wanna know what's going on around tribe, you can fill this out, but the back part is really important as well.

If you have anything big or small that you just need someone to join faith with for anything, a prayer, we take these very seriously. So write that down and then drop it in the box on the way out, and then you can just come up to any one of us. We can pray with you live. That's even better. So feel free to do that.

And then really the the main announcement, you can look at the fridge if you wanna sign up for Tuesday meals or bible studies but specifically, we have a tribe men's bible study that is starting not tomorrow but the following Monday and it'll run for for several weeks, 6PM in the evening and they'll provide dinner. So, they're going to study women, we just had a women's Bible study over the book of Mark and it was most excellent and so we didn't forget about you boys. So, men. It's every Monday at six. Mhmm.

Starting not tomorrow but next. Connor, will you pray us out?

We'd love to see all of you gentlemen there for that men's It's so great. When we do get to occasionally do this to get to bring a bunch of young guns in with all you wise older guys and so I would love to see everybody in this room there. Yeah, Monday nights, 6PM. We're going to go through one Timothy. Super excited about that.

Why don't you bow your heads and pray with me? And then we'll get out of here. Father God, thank you so much for another day. God, thank you for thank you that we could worship you. God, thank you for your presence and for being here in this space with us today, God.

We pray that you continue, to stir in our hearts the things that you have shared with us today, God, and, continue to fill us with your spirit. And may that not just stay here in this building, God. And may that not just stay in our hearts, but may that fill us so that we could pour out into those around us, God. That it doesn't just stay here and stay small, but that it goes out and that we get to share your presence and your love and your light with those around us, God. And that we may impact our coworkers, our families, the people that we meet when we recreate, God, everything that we do, may our light shine.

May your light shine through us, God. We thank you that you're so faithful to show up when we ask. We pray this all in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen. Thanks for being here, you guys.

Have a great week. And as pastor Brian always says, you've got this.