GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

God's Invisible Plan

Micheal Goetz

01 God’s Invisible Plan and Knowing God’s Will

So the calling, 5 takeaways, inspiration.

Father in heaven, bless us in this time together.

We have come to grow, to learn, to never be the same.

And so through the power of your Holy Spirit, we pray that you would have absolute way, unhindered access to our hearts and that we would leave here.

We would leave here and that the world would not be the same because we met with you.

This is not about being a missionary seminar.

How do we know and follow God's call for our life?

So we're gonna springboard out of Ministry of Healing.

Every son and daughter of God is called, she intentionally uses the word, to be a missionary.

We are called, she repeats herself, to the service of God and our fellow man.

If at the end of GYC you're like, I have no idea what my calling is.

Reduce it to this single simple sentence.

And if you're a preacher, if you're a teacher, every 1 of your lectures, sermons should be reducible to a single simple sentence, and that is this, for this seminar, that you are called to be of service.

William Carey is known to be the man who would not give up.

He was born on exceptional beginnings is how they describe.

He was born in August 17, 1761, in an obscure village about 800 inhabitants.

So he's he's he's from like nowhere and Today's like oh you're from the middle of the middle of nobody knows South Dakota.

All right, all due respect to those from South Dakota, right?

Up until about age 14, he was godless, addicted to swearing and gambling and even stealing, lying of course.

Then his father kept insisting on it, come on, stop it, stop it, stop it, you know, live right, live right.

Well, here's William's weakness is his ability to communicate.

He could, he had a terrible problem with stuttering, terrible problem with stuttering.

So he comes out of this life, decides to follow God, tries to get a job, but he stutters, and so his communication is misunderstood, of course.

There wasn't a lot of variance, a lot of acceptability, and so he gets a job as a shoemaker apprentice That's the only job he could get and then he's going to look for a wife.

This is this is How they tell the story he tells his own story The only 1 that he could find that would marry him was a girl named Dorothy So he wasn't looking for for the 1 he was looking for the 1 that would marry him Like that was that was where he was at and everybody knew it Like he's gonna just get what I mean if he can get somebody he's gonna that's gonna be like a win And so he got Dorothy all all due respect to Dorothy and I believe and I hope 1 day I'll meet her in heaven but she struggled with severe mental illness and And in that time, of course, there wasn't terms like mental illness, it was terms like crazy.

She was the 1 that was willing to marry William.

You can imagine what that did for his his reputation.

He couldn't communicate, he could barely get a job just as an apprentice, and and then he marries what they termed crazy.

But God was working on his heart while nobody else would give him attention, God was working on his heart and so he decided he wanted to be a missionary in a time when there weren't missionaries.

Like, you didn't go somewhere else to be a missionary.

So when William says, hey, I wanna be a missionary, Lord, send me.

And he really believed this was God's call for his life.

Your life's not together, you don't communicate well, your wife's not together, that's for sure.

But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, IIII can plod.

Comes from the shoemaker, like, plodding, and he just, he would just repeat him, I can plod, but I can plod.

Guys, this is the, this is the 1 that the church, everybody at GYC said, you know, it's nice that he's here, but, you know, if we could find something for him to do, maybe he can collect the offering.

That's the kind of approach that people were taking.

But he's like, no, I want to be the 1 that shares Jesus.

So for 11 years, he kept asking, 11 years, he kept asking, can I go as a missionary?

For 11 years, they said no, and they said no pretty strongly.

But finally, finally, they said, we've got a little spot for you.

We're gonna send you, because he had by that time learned Latin, Greek, Dutch, and French, And so they'd given him a little tiny church to preach in and in his 1 line to his little tiny church That he's known for now that has lived through the ages Expect great things from God attempt great things for God and That was his line to his little tiny church.

And so he kept saying I want to go as a missionary I want to go as a missionary.

So he finally got some just some meager resources just to get to India and he takes Dorothy to the to the dock and they're about to get on the boat.

And as he gets on the boat, he turns around and she's wrapped herself around 1 of the wooden pillars that hold up the dock.

He has to pull her off of this wooden pillar, drag her across the dock and get her on the boat.

And here's the thing, the gospel, the gospel creates reform.

You can be, if you want to, If you feel called and God has mobilized you to care for mental illness or hunger, that's great.

Just know this, that the gospel will also impact all of those.

In fact today Today I'm like advancing slides.

Don't worry Today his statue sits in front of the Capitol in India, and Hindus every year pay their respects to a Christian missionary who made a difference in their country.

Because I can applaud, and that's all he wanted to do.

I'll just keep going I'm just gonna keep sharing Jesus Guys, whatever it looks like to you Whatever God has called you to do wherever he's placed you You can plot and live out the line of William Carey.

Let nothing that you consider a weakness in your life hold you back.

Every son and daughter of God is called, that's a calling to be a missionary.

We are called to the service of God and our fellow men.

This quote is going to open every 1 of our sessions.

We're going to tell a story and then we're jumping into 5 points.

The 5 points today are going to challenge us a bit.

They're going to wreak a little bit of havoc in our thinking about knowing God's calling.

Some of you are going to jump to, last year we did a seminar on how to know God's will.

So I'm gonna throw up a couple of lines in review just to put it off and say, all right, this is what we understand about knowing God's will in a very practical way.

02 God’s Invisible Plan... I Just Gotta Have Faith

Good morning, again, God's Invisible Calling and Wisdom, or I Just Gotta Have Faith is the title.

We're going to track this idea of God's calling for my life, and then we're gonna turn it on its head at the very end and say, We've got to have a better way.

We're gonna open, obviously with prayer, and then a calling.

Every single 1 of these sessions is gonna start with the same quote because we're gonna, I want everybody, anybody, everybody to hear this and it's reduced down to 1 single simple sentence for your life, right?

Then we'll do 5 takeaways for you note takers every single time we have 5 takeaways.

And finally, we'll end with some, make sure we land with some biblical inspiration and a story from from the Bible.

Father in heaven, we're gonna jump into this and we are here because we want to know, We want to follow your leading and so Lord take our best efforts now and have your unhindered way in the name of Jesus.

Every son and daughter of God is called to be a missionary.

We are called to the service of God and our fellow man.

Wherever you go, whatever you're doing, it's got to be about this.

Listen, 1 of the best things you can do to grow is not to read books on that subject.

Read stories, biographies, and find out how other people journeyed through some of those same questions.

Read about relationships, read about leadership, read about...

But take it and read a biography about somebody in their life and their relationships and their leadership.

I think it's, I think that's why the Bible was written in so many stories.

It's because we learn better with those stories.

So we're gonna start off, we'll get to the 5 points for those type A people that are like, hey, wait a minute, I need something on my notebook.

Our missionary is probably is arguably, arguably 1 of the greatest that that ever went to the continent of Africa and then arguably even a missionary some people say David Livingston wasn't a missionary.

He opened the door in my book to mission service in Africa.

It's said that in the Livingston home It constantly smelt like that, like tea.

His grandfather and his father used to put him on their knees and tell him stories of great missionary exploits.

Young David would look into his parents' eyes and say, I wanna be a missionary.

At age 10 he's working 14 hours a day in the cotton mill and on top of that he's learning Hebrew and Latin.

His journey, his dream was to be a missionary and to follow the stories that he had only heard third hand.

But you have to understand, mission work in David Livingston's time was you took a boat to whatever coast you were going to and that's where you did mission work.

You didn't penetrate into a country or continent.

Like if you read a missionary book, it would not be going beyond.

You just get to there and then you share.

But make sure you're next to the coast in case you need to leave or that's your connection, right?

So they're there serving and they start to go inland and they lose some children.

She goes back home and some of the most beautiful love letters are between people of distance.

I just finished a biography on Abraham Lincoln and his time away from home.

Some of the most incredible letters, ah, read the letters of the past.

Well anyway, between David and Mary, some of those beautiful, most romantic letters would be sent back and forth.

Now, I'm not saying that's God's calling, but that's their journey.

When they saw each other again, Mary could hardly recognize David.

His pigmentation wasn't prepared for that.

He had ran into a branch and his face was disfigured and his shoulder.

He was home for a while and then told her, and the famous line from his life, right?

That the smoke, The haunting specter of the smoke of 1000 villages in the morning Sun is still burning in my heart and I have to go back So he goes back and Mary eventually joins him and the day that she gets to Africa She ends up contacting contracting rather a disease in which takes her life and he buries her.

But when he buries her, this is real life, this is a real person, he's burying his wife, the mother of his children, they lost some children.

He is recorded as having prayed this prayer, and I pray this prayer every single day now.

It's part of my prayer time, it's a piece of it, it's not the only thing I pray obviously, but he prayed this prayer, My Jesus, my King, my life, my all, I again consecrate myself to you.

Sever any ties that bind me except for the ties that bind me to you and to your service.

And David Livingston records the words of God coming back to him and he says he knew in that moment, kneeling at his wife's grave, that Jesus was saying, Lo, I am with you always, even at the grave of your wife.

On May 1 of 1873, David Livingston's team, his support team that helped him move around, helped him do the medical work, the exploration work, found him dead.

They found him dead in a kneeling position.

I've been to the place and seen the celebration and the respect that is held for his life.

They prepared his body and they carried it to the coast to be shipped back where it would be finally buried in the Westminster Abbey the following spring, April of the following spring.

But they took his heart out and they buried it in Africa and they sent the note back and said here's David Livingston, but we've kept his heart because he gave his heart for us.

30 years though, 30 years of missionary work and David Livingston.

Does anybody know how many people accepted Jesus because of David Livingston's work while in those 30 years?

Was there 1 person in 30 years, David Livingston, or none?

Well, let's give him 1, just for the goodness of statistics, let's give him 1.

David Livingston, his heart buried in Africa, his body buried up in the Westminster Abbey, and when God puts those things all together and raises him, what he's going to find out is not just 1, but that the roads and exploration and maps and trails that he established and the courage that he demonstrated inspired thousands of others to go to foreign lands and share Jesus.

03 God’s Invisible Plan and Flunking the Spiritual Gifts Test

We're gonna look at 1 quote and tell a story.

We're gonna jump into 5 takeaway points and we'll land with some inspiration.

Father in heaven, thank you for this afternoon.

We just ate thank you for providing always and being so creative in your provisions and Now as we spend time together and with you We pray that you'd have unhindered access to our hearts.

"'Every son, every daughter of God "'is called to be a missionary.

"'We are called to the service of God and our fellow man.'" That's the single simple sentence.

If you come away with a question of what is God's calling, it's reduced to this in 2 sentences.

Every son and daughter of God is called to be a missionary wherever you go whatever you do this is the non-negotiable you're called to be a missionary All right, some of us like the, hey, give me the outline, 1.2.3.

Others of us are moved, motivated, Inspired by stories.

So we're gonna start with a story of a missionary And I'll I'll repeat myself.

1 of the best things we can do is to absorb other people's stories Read and listen to biographies I would argue that that's parallel or on par with with actually reading a book about leaders, about leadership, is to listen or to read somebody's story who is a leader.

I am not, I am not, there's some parts of people's stories that they're just gonna have to explain in heaven.

She goes as a missionary for 53 years without furlough.

And this is an age that women were not being sent as missionaries.

I mean, that's just not what you did, unless you were married.

And then, and that's just the timing that it was.

But Amy Carmichael spends her life, arguably, as a missionary to India.

Some of the things that she impacted were things like social needs for especially young girls that had otherwise been threatened with just simply abuse.

Now understand how incredibly difficult it was for her to show up and tell young girls in India who had been sold by their parents to serve as slaves for the gods, for the temples.

She shows up and says, I want to introduce you to a God.

You're talking to a world that wants nothing to do with that because the last God that they knew, 1 of them enslaved and abused.

So, and then you talk to them about a father.

So that, So the context of Amy Carmichael, she has to earn their trust.

This girl throws herself into living in the culture, dressing and smelling, eating, acting, so that there's no barriers between her and the people that she wants to reach, that she feels God has placed her to reach.

This is how, this is the story she told, that she would pinch his cheeks until he cried because the water would accentuate and bring out the most brilliant blue.

I think every sister's pinched their brothers until they've cried, but at least she has a good excuse.

She just loved the color of his eyes when he cried.

Her prayer request, God give me blue eyes.

Why am I stuck with these dumb brown eyes?

And so she would pray, God give me blue eyes, give me blue eyes, give me blue eyes, give me blue eyes, never happened.

Then she writes years later, now years and years later, she's serving as a missionary, and she realizes if she had blue eyes, She wouldn't have had access and trust.

She went so far as to try to dye her skin darker with like coffee grains, grounded coffee, just trying to get darker so that she could fit the part and come into these communities to reach the young girls, share Jesus with them.

And years later she admits, God knew what he was doing all along with not giving me blue eyes.

There are there are things that we perceive as weaknesses that God gypped us.

Why didn't God give me the abilities like he has or that she has?

Why isn't God giving me the opportunities like they have?

Sometimes it feels like God doesn't like to give us special things.

Like he doesn't love to give us what we like.

To serve God means that you have to give up, that you have to sacrifice.

It sounds like to serve God, you don't get nice things.

We're gonna hit that in the second hour this afternoon specifically.

But Amy Carmichael tells her story that if God had given her everything she thought she wanted that she would have lost out on opportunities.

She wrote a ton of books, opened up the field to people realizing that they can serve because here's a woman that served, that they could serve even with their weaknesses.

She died in India in 1951 at the age of 83, 53 years.

She didn't want a stone to mark her grave, and so they marked her grave with a birdbath, and simply put, the girls and women that had been ministered to and had met Jesus put the simple word, mother, ama in their language, mother.

And then she's probably best known for this line, missionary life is simply a chance to die.

And that sounds like such a loss, such a sacrifice Missionary life is just a Call a chance to die.

But what if, what if, what if possibly this call to die is not, is not a loss, it's an opportunity for something bigger and more meaningful?

Death is, is, is a reality and like they say death and taxes are the 2 certainties, right?

But what if, what if you come to the end of your life, think this through, What if you come to the end of your life and your house is sold, the pictures you hung on the wall, somebody else, or let's even back up from there.

You're not even dead, it's your grandchildren, and your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are looking at these Ancient photos I they're in color, but maybe by then they have some 3d Everything's 3d pictures or I don't know.

They're looking at your old pictures and and somebody's saying oh, yes, that's your great-grandmother That's your great-grandfather.

Oh, okay And you're nothing but a picture on the wall.

Or as I was about to go to the house that you lived in, the place that you spent your years, you work for a company for 40 or 50 years, and then you walk out 1 day and you're retired.

Comes the question like, what happens then?

Do I, is that what my life was meant for?

There's this craving that we have that we would be more than a picture on the wall and that somebody we would be more than just a house that gets sold.

Yeah, there was some old guy that lived here and he passed away and now we're selling his house.

Like, don't you want something more to your story?

So Amy Carmichael's invitation to be a missionary is more than dying.

It's dying to that and living for something that goes beyond us, that supersedes us.

Thousands, thousands of women, their lives were changed and their eternity was changed because Amy Carmichael died.

All right, so this first 1, we positioned it right after lunch because it is the most boring.

When GYC asked, I said, look, we, this is what we want to do with seminars, and we want a seminar on spiritual gifts.

All I could think of, and maybe some of you have been spared this, all I could think of was growing up and even as a young adult, taking another GIFS assessment.

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God's Invisible Plan

03 God’s Invisible Plan and Flunking the Spiritual Gifts Test

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Recorded

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You Know Enough, Part 2

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Creative Outreach for Everyday Life

05 Called to Serve II

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With All Boldness

With All Boldness Part 2

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Plenary

The Crisis and the Challenge

1h 11m

John Chung, Chelsy Jourdan, and Sebastien Braxton: Cubicles and Christ

Transitioning to the Spiritual

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Plenary

GYC Beyond

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Jesus Cares

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Plenary

The Lost Sheep

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2. Live

45m

Sound Doctrine