Vision: Take One
From the Series: Vision
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: February 7, 2010
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Transcript
Well, I’ve got to take a little poll this weekend, how many of you are loving this? Wow! Overwhelming majority at our Ebenezers campus. How many of you are hating this? I gotta be honest, I’m loving it and hating it at the same time. The inner Midwesterner in me, I’m getting back in touch with my roots, but the pastor in me is like ‘why does it have to come through on the weekend!’ Some of you wouldn’t mind missing a day or two or work, but hey, it is what it is. I want to say an extra thank you because you’re here.
Listen to me, our podcast listeners and our webcast watchers, I usually give you a little bit of love, but you’re not here this weekend are you? I’ve got to give you a little bit of a hard time. I just found out this week that we have watchers who tune in from 160 countries, 6,611 cities across the U.S. so there are a lot of people who are a part of NCC that way. I think this weekend, a lot of NCCers are in your pajamas this weekend, aren’t you? I know you are. You are watching this webcast and we thrilled that technology enables us to do that. It’s so providential that we begin a series on vision with a huge snowstorm, probably the largest storm since the blizzard in ’96. That was our first weekend. I was a kid just out of seminary with a vision to plant a church and pour my life into this thing, and that first weekend was such a major downer because we had three people show up, my wife, my son and myself. I guess with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you could call it six, but it was an inauspicious beginning for us. It was all vision and no reality, and here we are 14 years later and to see so much vision become reality. And we have not seen anything yet. So it just seem appropriate that whenever we get all over the vision thing, prepare for a large snow storm.
Let me mention that over the next few weeks as we think about vision and where we are headed, one year ago this weekend, we launched our Kingstowne campus and I would like for all of our locations to give it up for Kingstowne right now. Hang on to that postcard you got, we are so excited about this event. I love doing stuff we’ve never done before. It is high time that all of us get together. It will be an unforgettable night of worship and vision and celebration. So I can’t wait for February 16th. By the way, that is Fat Tuesday. How many of you know that the Lincoln Theater is next to Ben’s Chili Bowl? If that’s not providential, I don’t know what is. We are giving you an excuse right before Lent to have a little Ben’s Chili Bowl and then we’ll have a service over the Lincoln.
If you have a Bible, turn over to Habakkuk in the Old Testament. It’s one of the minor prophets. Habakkuk Chapter 2, verse 1, we’ll get there in just a few moments. I don’t know if this is how you think about church, but as your pastor, this is how I think about church. When you walked into National Community Church, a couple of things happened. Number one, when you became a part of this church, you said I’m becoming part of the corporate vision of National Community Church. I’m becoming part of the story that God is telling through National Community Church, and you became a shareholder in this corporate vision that we have as a church. We are going to talk about that corporate vision next weekend. But here is the beautiful thing, church is a two-way street and I want you to know that when you walk through these doors, we became a part of your vision. We became a shareholder in the dream that God has given you. We became part of the story that God is writing through your life. This week, I got a couple of emails, and I want to put some flesh on this thing right away because vision is kind of this ethereal, sort of abstract concept, and it’s like how do I touch and feel that? What does that look like? It looks like you! Go look in the mirror, it looks like you. I got a couple of emails this week that lit me up. I love this stuff! We are called as a church to be a dream factory. We are called to help people discover their dreams and go after those dreams and see God do amazing things. I don’t have a lot of time but let me give you the Reader’s Digest condensed version of a couple of emails I got this week. A couple of Georgetown, Jeremy and Valerie, Jeremy used to pastor a couple of churches in Africa and he met his wife, who was part of the Peace Corps there, and they got married and came here and have been part of NCC for some time. This week, I got an email from them. I’ve sat with them and I sort of know the vision that God has put in their heart, but God is going into overdrive right now. Here’s the bottom line, the village where Jeremy used to pastor, 50 years ago the government gave them an elementary school; and when they did, the villagers said that was awesome but could we also get a junior high and a health clinic? Well, 50 years later, they are still waiting for that. Six months ago, the community leaders in that village said that they wanted to give to the church that Jeremy pastored three acres of land, and there has been this vision convergence where God has put it in their hearts to move back to that village and to start a health clinic. What’s so exciting about this, it’s hard for us to relate to it, but the nearest health clinic is 18 kilometers away! So when a woman goes into labor or someone gets injured, they get onto a motorcycle and they drive over dirt trails, and some never make it there. It was years ago that a nurse said to Jeremy, ‘If you really want to show the practical love of Christ to this village, then you build us a health clinic.’ And that’s what they are going to do. And I want to state this for the record – we are shareholders in that vision. That’s why we exist as a church, because God has a dream and vision for each one of us and we want to be part of that becoming reality.
That’s just one email from one NCC couple and I got several more. I got these email from Amanda, who has been part of our congregation, and she wrote and said that I could share some of her email with you. This is what she writes: I’ve always enjoyed working with kids and I’ve found that as I grew older, I never grew up. [Those of you who know Amanda know how true that is]. When I became a Christian in college, I felt passionately about achieving social justice for all. I tried working in drug rehab centers and homeless shelters and after-school programs, and I fell in love with inner-city ministry. I especially loved working with the children and I decided that I really wanted to focus on children in poverty. In my studies, I read that it takes about 10 years to really see improvement in children in impoverished situations. I made a decision that if I wanted to work toward social justice with children, I needed to put in at least 10 years working intentionally and intensively. I started working at the Southeast White House in Anacostia with their Friends program where I mentored seven girls and their families full time. I’m literally a full-time friend. I also made the decision that if I wanted to see real change in poverty that I need to immerse myself in that impoverished community. So I moved into Anacostia and I’ve been there mentoring my girls for almost six years. I have lots of struggles and doubts every day. Life became harder for me when I became a Christian. [Do I need to read that again? Life became harder for me when I became a Christian.] And life became even harder when I went into full time inner-city ministry. It is a daily struggle managing the anxiety that comes from working in these conditions. However, it is in these situations that I can do nothing but trust the Lord for their safety and proper development over time. Doing the things that you love doesn’t erase struggle, doubt or anxiety, it does, however, allow you to wake up excited to do what you love and influence others through your passions. I’ve also learned that in order to survive, I need a strong community behind me supporting what I do. I have a family and friends and this church supporting me and praying for me and helping me through each step.
Do you see what I’m saying? We are about helping your dream become a reality. That’s why we exist. So next week, we’ll talk about how you become a shareholder in this corporate vision. But this week, I want to talk about how we become a shareholder in your personal vision.
By the way, for the record, I’m not talking about your agenda for God, I’m talking about his agenda for you. You better make sure that the vision you have is something that God has conceived in your spirit. We are going to talk a little bit about how God makes that happen. I think Habakkuk is a perfect example. Let’s read it
1 I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guardpost. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint.
Habakkuk is writing in the 7th Century B.C. He is surrounded by conditions of injustice, violence, poverty, destruction, and things are not going well for Israel. Habakkuk has a complaint, he has some problems with that. If you read the whole book, what I love is that God can handle your honesty! He can handle your complaints. You can come to Him with your complaints. He will listen. You don’t have to repress it, you don’t have to make up nice words because He can read your thoughts. Keep it real, keep it real with God. That’s what Habakkuk does with God.
2 Then the Lord said to me,
“Write my answer plainly on tablets, so that a runner can carry the correct message to others. 3 This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.
4 “Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.
Let’s unpack this passage and talk a little bit about how you get a vision from God. I want to share some things and make some distinctions that I think can help you. I had to discover these on my own. Let me say this, I believe God has a vision for each one of us, Vision with a capital V. This Vision, the macro-vision, the big idea, this is what your life is about, so for me, you’ve heard me say this a thousand times, I feel called to pastor one church for life, specifically, being in a church plant environment years ago but I knew that God was calling me to pastor. Then you’ve heard me say that I feel this call to write as I pastor. So, my vision with a capital V is to pastor one church for life, Lord willing, and then to write 25 books. Those are the big Vision things for me. Then there are little nuance visions, with a lowercase v, and these are beautiful and exciting things too. God will give you little visions along the way, like a good example is why in the world do we meet in movie theaters and a coffeehouse? I don’t have time to share all the back story behind those, but those are visions that trace back to seeing a vision of a metro map and seeing us meet in movie theaters and where possible, at metro stops around the area. We are going to talk more about that next week. We need to provide seat belts next weekend. You are going to keep your hands inside the ride at all times next weekend because we are going to share some Vision, 2010, 2020 and I think it will get you pretty excited. And Ebenerzers, it traces back to our vision to be in the marketplace and create a place where the church and community can cross paths. So there are little nuance visions along the way. As you think about your life, God will give you Vision with a capital V and visions with a lowercase v.
How do you get those visions? Number one, climb the watchtower. Climb the watchtower. Well, I’ve never seen a watchtower, there aren’t any watchtowers in Washington D.C. What are you talking about? Well, Habakkuk says I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guard post. Here’s a little history because I want you to have a mental image of this. Watchtowers were built first in pastures to protect cattle and sheep against wild animals and thieves, so the shepherds would be on their watchtowers, surveying and scanning everything. They had a good visibility point. Then eventually, watchtowers became a part of ancient defense systems in cities and in that day and age, it would have been the highest vantage point. It is tough to tell exactly how they climbed up in those watchtowers, but Habakkuk, we have no idea who this guy is. The only place he is referenced in Scripture is in the Book of Habakkuk. It is a little bit of a mystery. Some people believe that he was actually a watchman and was referenced in Isaiah 21. Some people believe that He is actually the child of the Shunamite woman. But the bottom line is that we have no idea who he is, and what I love about that is this – God uses no names, God uses no bodies, God uses people that we have no idea who they are. Those are the people He raises up and gives visions to. So Habakkuk becomes a prophet and God gives him a vision. But I think it’s critical that he climbs into a watchtower. Let me make a translation. The word ‘watch’ in the New Testament, if you do word studies with the Greek and Hebrew, it is interesting because the word ‘watch’ in the Old Testament is a derivative of a watchtower or someone being at a high vantage point, like an ancient guard surveying the horizon looking for invading armies or maybe caravans of traders. They were the first to see. Then over in the New Testament, that word ‘watch’ or ‘watchtower’ has a prayer connotation to it. Jot this down, Colossians 4:2 says watch and pray. Watching is one dimension of praying. If you’ve been around here, you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that prayer sanctifies your reticular activating system. It is the part of our neuro-anatomy at the base of our brain stem that determines what gets noticed and what goes unnoticed. And when we pray, God sanctifies it and you begin to notice the things in a spiritual sense that are happening around you. It is amazing. So, when you begin to pray, in a sense, praying is a form of dreaming. Many dreams in Scripture are conceived in the context of prayer. One good example is Peter on the rooftop of Simon the tanner’s house in Acts where he is waiting for lunch and he goes up to the rooftop and he is praying. It’s a elevated place, like the watchtower idea. And he is praying and in that prayer he has a vision of Cornelius and it changes history because he realizes that the gospel is for Gentiles. Honestly, the reason why many of us who are Gentiles here, who are not Jewish, the reason why you have been grafted in and are a part of this thing, it traces back to that rooftop vision. Aren’t you glad that Peter prayed?
Well, I believe that if you want a vision from God, you better seek the Lord in prayer. I don’t even trust things that aren’t conceived in prayer. As the Lord has begun to put vision on our hearts for 2010 and 2020, I’m going to be honest, it scared me to death. This has been a scary week. So we called our staff to a vision fast. We need to spend our lunch hours praying and fasting because we better make sure this vision is God’s agenda for us. You’ve got to get into that place of prayer and begin to hear from the Lord.
Do you have a watchtower? Let me put some flesh on this. In college, for me, it was the chapel balcony. During lunch hour, it was dark in the chapel, nobody was in there and I’d go up and walk back and forth and pray for a long time. Then over the years, is has been different places. For a while, it was out in front of Union Station. Every Saturday night, I’d find a place and sit in front of the station and pray. Then when we built Ebenezers, the rooftop of Ebenezers, I’d get great reception up there. I had to climb the ladder and go through the hatch. I’m sure the people at the Federal Judiciary Building and Security and Exchange were like, who’s that guy on the rooftop? That was me. It is amazing, in that context of prayer, God begins to reveal vision. You need to find a place where you can go and get away. Get away from the noise and seek the Lord.
Next verse
There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint.
We’ve touched on this but I want you to know that often times, vision comes out of a complaint. Here’s a little thing that I’ve shared before, but I think it’s a good way to discern maybe what God might be conceiving in your spirit. What makes you mad, sad or glad? What makes you pound your fist on the table? What makes you shed holy tears? What puts a smile on your face? What makes you mad, sad or glad? If you can identify that thing, I believe that you are at the intersection of where God might be giving you a God-ordained passion and it’s that passion that then becomes the thing that fuels the vision. It is amazing how many visions come out of complaints. Visionaries do this, they don’t just point out the problem, they say, ‘I’m going to be a solution to the problem.’ And I think it’s in the stories that I read. There’s a problem, and I’m going to be the solution to that problem.
2 Then the Lord said to me,
“Write my answer plainly on tablets, so that a runner can carry the correct message to others.
Write down the revelation. What I’m about to say is that if some of you would implement this into your spiritual disciplines, this idea of journaling, it would absolutely change your life. Every once in a while, I hope this comes across the right way, someone will ask to have a meeting with me, and I’ll sit down in that meeting and we will have an hour conversation, and if that person doesn’t have a piece of paper and a pen, I’m like, why did we just meet? If you have a meeting with me, you’ll find that I have a piece of paper and a pen. I don’t read a book without a pen. I don’t have a meeting if I can’t write something down, because certainly something is going to fire across my synapses and unless I write it down, I’m going to forget it. The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory, and when God says something, you better be ready to write it down. I wasn’t planning on sharing this but I think it is appropriate. I remember after my father-in-law died, we went through his office and what we found was something we didn’t even know about. It was a file, and in that file was every message in tongues and interpretations, every word of prophecy that happened in every service over the entire history of that church. Why? Because he took it seriously, that when the Lord spoke and revealed something, they were going to write it down. I just wonder how many times God is speaking and He is like ‘why don’t you have pencil and paper?’ ‘Is what I’m revealing not worth writing down?’ ‘Are you not listening to me?’ So this week, during our week of prayer and fasting, here’s what I did. I took notes the entire week. I’m not going to share what’s in these notes, we don’t have time. Here are all these sheets of paper and 3X5 cards. It’s amazing when you tune your ears to the Holy Spirit, what He will say. The volume of revelation that He will give. Now, I think you don’t always know. Last week, we were so blessed by Dick Foth being here and sharing with us. I love Dick. He has been my mentor since we were a church of 19 people. I remember Dick shared something with me years ago. He said, “Mark I have something to share with you but I want you to know that I’m not sure if this is a Foth thought or a God thought.” Sometimes he would say that. Sometimes he would say this is more of a Foth thought or sometimes he would say it was more of a God thought. Last weekend, I felt like God gave me a word for my daughter as we were worshipping the Lord. I wasn’t preaching, I was sitting with my family, and honestly, this has never happened before, and I felt like the Lord revealed something for me to share with my daughter. So that afternoon, I sat Summer down and I said, “Summer, I’m not sure if this is a Daddy idea or a God idea, but I want to be obedient to share that thing with you.” So I shared that with her, then it is up to her to take that and process it and ask if that is God speaking to her.
The bottom line is this, God is speaking and if we would just tune our ear to what He is saying, it is amazing the volumes of revelation. You are not always sure if it is a human thought or a God thought, but I promise you this, we need to write those things down. That’s part of what we talked about several weeks ago, take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.
3 This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.
This is a verse we hate, because we hate to wait, and this is where some of you are going to be encouraged this weekend. For some of you, this is the reason you’re here, because some of you have been so frustrated because what you’ve dreamed of has not happened. It’s because you have a human timeline for what God wants to do. The Scripture says that with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. That’s awesome but Lord would You hurry it up! Would You do this yesterday? The bottom line is this, God is not going to get you where God wants you to go before you are ready to get there. Thank God! He is more concerned with who you are becoming in the process. I want to stand before you today and tell you that one of the beautiful things about getting a little bit older is that I have a little bit more perspective. I can look back at my life and I can tell you that for 13 years I was frustrated because I knew I was called to write, but I just couldn’t write a book. I had all these manuscripts on my computer but I could not deliver a manuscript to a publisher. I want to tell you that I look back on it and I’m so grateful that I didn’t write a book until I was 35. You know why? Because it would have been all theory and no substance, there would have been nothing to it. So, I look back on it and I thank the Lord because that frustration that I experienced for so many years laid the foundation for what I write. Hopefully, what I write 10 to 20 years from now has a little bit more weight to it, more gravity to it. Listen, we hate the waiting game. But God is working his promise. He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion. Hang in there, keep on keeping on. Listen, over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from readers with some crazy visions, and it is always so inspiring to me to hear about the visions that God has given to people. I always have a couple of reactions. One is that I sure hope you prayed about this. I sure hope that you’ve heard a word from the Lord and you know that as you quit your job that this is what God is calling you to do. But the thing that is most inspiring to me, and this is where I want to speak to those in our congregation who have made a few more trips around the sun, that the most inspiring emails I get are from the people who are in their 60s and 70s. There’s a woman who just turned 90, we’ve gotten to know each other, we email back and forth, she is so full of life and such a visionary. They tell me about the vision that God has put in their heart, and somehow, their retirement has given them a new lease on life and they are stepping out. There are people in their 60s and 70s who are planting churches. You’re crazy and that’s awesome! It is never too late, but you’ve got to wait patiently.
How do you do that? There are a lot of ways, but here’s one thought. If you are frustrated, you better start fasting because what fasting will do is it will convert your human frustrations into holy anticipation. As you begin to fast, it will prepare your spirit and your mind for what it is that God wants to do, and it will put you in a place where then you are ready for God to begin to do that thing.
I’m thinking big these days. Here’s my mantra of the last month. As I share some 2010/2020 vision next weekend and some of the things we believe the Lord is calling us to do, some pretty big vision, here’s the thing, don’t think big. Don’t think big, think long. If you think long, it will allow you to think big. I’m convinced that 90% of your vision frustration is because you have slapped your timeline on what it is that you want God to do. What you need to realize is that He is the One in control of that timing and you’ve got to step back. We broke all the church planting rules. Some of you don’t know all the history of National Community Church, but this thing was not pretty the first few years. Church planting experts say that is you are 100 people by the end of your first year and 200 people by the end of your second year, you’ll never be a church of 100 people and never a church of 200 people. One of the reasons why I love traveling and speaking to pastors and church planters is because I can tell them it’s not true. It took us five years to grow from 19 people to 250 people. There is nothing glamorous or easy about it. A front-page article in the Washington Post put us on the map and we grew from 250 people to 500 people in one year. But it’s been a long journey, and I’ve found that when I get frustrated or discouraged in the vision that God has given me, it’s because I’ve zoomed in and I’m thinking short term, but I’ve got to zoom back out and think long term, because we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in two years and we underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years.
I’m blessed to have had a father-in-law who planted one church, Calvary Church, in Illinois, and pastored it for more than 30 years, and I saw first hand what happens if you think long and you give your life to something. So if you begin to think long, then you’ll begin to think big and it will help you endure some of the frustration, because what you want to happen in two years is probably going to take ten. But if you give it twenty years, what you thought would take forty years will happen. But you’ve got to be in that place where you allow God.
Just a word of encouragement, I remember thinking when we were just a church of 100 people, this is me keeping it so real, I remember some of the frustration that came with that, and thinking that when we are a church of this size, then I’m going to love pastoring and it will be awesome. Note to self, it gets harder. But there was a moment when the Lord revealed something to me. It was such an awesome moment where the Spirit of God said, “Mark, you be the best pastor you can be right here, right now, enjoy the journey. Be the best pastor to 25 people or 50 people or 500 people or 5,000 people, but you enjoy the journey and be in it for the long haul and I’m going to bless it.” Some of you are so discouraged because this timeline thing is not happening. But that’s because you are zoomed in, but I want to tell you to zoom back out and allow the Lord to give you some perspective.
Let’s move to the last verse
4 “Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by faith.
I’m going to share two things about this. The first one is something that would have never crossed my mind, I would never have even thought about it, but to me it is so cool. Habakkuk, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote these words, but the righteous will live by faith. A guy named Paul wrote a book called Romans and he happened to know the Old Testament and he knew this vision that Habakkuk had. There aren’t many Old Testament verses that made it into the New Testament, but this one did. The location is Romans 1:17 The just shall live by faith. Fast forward hundreds of years, Habakkuk has the vision, Paul takes that vision and writes it down and then a monk by the name of Martin Luther living in Germany, I was there two years ago on Reformation Day, I was in the place where he studied and read. I went to the Catholic Church where he posted the 85 Thesis, which began the Protestant Reformation and then led to this thing that we are a part of. I don’t have time to go into what a massive historical deal that is, but here’s what inspired Luther, it was one verse of Scripture, it was Romans 1:17 The just shall live by faith. He took this little phrase, by faith alone, and it became the rally cry of the Protestant Reformation, which changed the course of history. For some reason, today I’m literally thinking about this. Habakkuk had no idea how his vision would change the course of history. You have no clue, no earthly idea, literally, you have no earthly idea. God so desperately, the Creator, the Redeemer, wants you to be part of this redemptive story that He is writing. He wants you to be part of this creative story. He wants to write his-story through your life. He wants to give you a vision. It may seem big, it may seem small, but in the scheme of eternity, is it not true that if you fulfill that vision and one person’s eternal destiny is changed because of it, that you have altered the course of history?
May God give each one of us a vision to serve his purposes.
Last thought, the righteous will live by faith. There is another translation. I’m going to give you two dimensions to this. The righteous will live by their faithfulness to God. An interesting slants, and it fits perfectly with the way I think theologically, that our faith is a by-product of God’s faithfulness to us. But here’s what I want to speak into your life and say be faithful. It is not glamorous. Faithfulness is not glamorous. I’m not sure that that’s what we hope for and dream for, but if you are faithful with the little things, then God will use your life beyond what you can imagine.
I’m going to close with this story. I think it is a beautiful example. I want to bring this down to earth. I want you to know that God’s speaking to you and we are a shareholder in the dream that God is going to give you or has given you. We want to be a dream factory helping you see that dream become reality. I shared some stories up front and I wish I had time to share a few more, but let me share this one.
Years ago, a guy by the name of John Hassler started coming to NCC and many of you know John. He is a great guy and has a wonderful heart. He began to notice the homeless that are around this city with so many needs. He took action. John was really the catalyst, God gave him a vision to begin to meet that need, and this ministry called In Service became into existence and became part of our DNA as a congregation, so every weekend, people go out and spread to different locations. So of your are making sandwiches on Saturday nights and some of you are going out on Sundays and some of you lead a small group during the week for our homeless friends, and so many NCCers have been grafted into this thing. It’s because John was obedient to his vision. He was faithful to that vision. John went over to Germany and did some internship thing, then when he came back, we thought he might be the kind of guy we might want to be in an internship capacity because he felt God calling him into ministry and he’s been so faithful with the vision God had given to him. So we brought God on as an intern and that internship turned into a part-time staff position and we just can’t get rid of this guy. That part-time staff position turned into a full-time position and it was less than a year ago that we were approached by Reach Global, a missions organization and they came to us and said, “Would you ever think about going to Berlin to do a café style ministry like the Ebenezers that you do?” The Germany trip that I went on, I took John with me and I remember thinking at the end of that trip that he wasn’t coming back! I remember thinking he wouldn’t use his ticket because he loved Germany. But he did come back, and then they approach us and we go over there and do recon and the bottom line is this, I’ll share more about this next week, but listen, we will launch a location, we will have a café with a ministry presence in that city in 2011 and John will lead that effort. I don’t even know if John thinks about John this way, but I think about John this way – John was faithful. He was faithful to the vision God gave him.
If you are faithful to the vision God gives you, it will begin to unfold, and chances are, in 10 years, you will end up someplace that you had no clue, that was totally not your vision because you can’t even think that big because He is able to do immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine. If you are faithful, God will use you in a way beyond what you can imagine. Let’s pray.
Father, thank You. Thank You for this dream factory called National Community Church. What a privilege to be a part of what you are doing. God this is your church, your story, your deal, You are the Shepherd of this church. Lord thank You on behalf of all of us that we get to be part of it, that we get to be shareholders in this corporate vision. Right now, I pray for every NCCer, that visions would be birthed and that visions would be resurrected, that God, as we climb the watchtower and wait patiently, as we register our complaints, as we write down the revelations, as we wait on You, that God, visions would begin to become reality in our lives. Lord I pray for each person who is a part of this church, help us be a shareholder in the vision that You are giving them so that your kingdom can come and your will can be done on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
