Pentecost 2: 2014 Worth The Risk

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Southeast

Jeffrey Marshall

1. The Undoing of the Saints

The passage we're gonna be focusing on for the next couple nights is Matthew chapter 10, verse 38.

Actually, verse, this isn't the complete passage.

He who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.

How many times have you heard these different verses in the Bible?

They stick, you've heard them before, but the real question is how do you actually do it?

I hope over the next couple days we can get more of a picture of that.

And tonight, I'm going to do something a little different.

If you ever take a preaching class from me, I will tell people, most of what you hear isn't actually a sermon.

It's not a sermon, and I have to admit tonight that tonight is actually a talk, it's not a sermon.

The kind of talk that it will be is a testimony.

Dear God, I'm a person, and I've struggled.

And I pray that you use my struggles to help someone else, to help someone else have strength in theirs.

Complacency will be the undoing of the saints.

A friend of mine heard that phrase as he was dreaming a dream and the dream started off very beautiful.

It was sunset and he's flying in a apparently a plane but he didn't really notice the plane, and he just, he hears this phrase, this very loud phrase, complacency will be the undoing of the saints.

That doesn't match the beauty of what I'm looking at.

And he's just flying, and he notices that he's headed towards some thunderheads.

Those big clouds, the clouds that are really tall.

And As he's flying towards this, his flight starts to get more choppy.

And here's the phrase again, complacency will be the undoing of the saints.

And As he gets closer to the clouds, he starts to get more nervous because he feels in his dream that this is a dangerous situation.

He should be flying a different direction.

Then he starts to fly around the thunderheads and the lightning starts to flash and he hears this phrase again, complacency will be the undoing of the saints, and as he's flying and he's getting more nervous, his heart rate's getting up, he notices something very different about the lightning.

It's not just any lightning, It's kinda funny lightning.

It's flashing different images from Earth's history onto the clouds like a slideshow.

He sees different scenes from the Bible, different kings, David.

He sees different scenes from the early church.

And it goes on, it keeps going on to the point, I remember specifically he said that he saw the assassination shots, right after it actually, right after the assassination shots that started World War I.

And he goes and he sees scenes from Vietnam, he sees scenes from the great controversy in essence, played out in earth's history, and he hears the phrase, complacency will be the undoing of the saints.

But by this time, his plane or his flight pattern is going everywhere, he feels like he's gonna die.

He can't tell which direction is up or down, and he comes out of the clouds, not flying level but flying straight down towards the ground.

And he's flying down and his heartbeat is really, really fast at this point.

And he's coming down, he knows he's going to crash, he knows he's going to die.

He kind of thinks he can tell this is a dream and maybe you know you just kind of catch yourself and wake up, but it doesn't happen.

Rizey comes down to hit the ground, all of a sudden he's a person.

And he's not just a soldier marching, he's a soldier marching in soldier regalia, the kind of uniform a soldier wears at a parade.

And he's marching, he's just simply marching.

But he knows there's something very strange about this dream and this particular situation in the dream.

His heart rate, his feeling is more as if he's at war, more as if he's in danger than it was when he was flying around in the clouds, but all he's doing is marching.

And he looks around And he sees other soldiers dressed the same as him marching in formation.

And he hears the phrase, what's the phrase?

And then all of a sudden his view, it's gonna sound kind of odd, but his view picks up from the soldier that he was and the soldiers that he was accompanied with and he sees something that explains everything.

He sees what was him, and he sees the platoon of soldiers he was marching with, and then he sees, marching in the opposite direction, clearly the enemy in a different uniform, marching the opposite direction in a much, much bigger mass of people and then he sees something that shocks him and scares him and actually wakes him up.

He sees a soldier that was part of the group that he was a part of marching and it turns, joins the other and its uniform changes to be that of the enemy.

And he hears the phrase for 1 final time.

My friend Chris told me that dream in towel trawl room 234.

He came to my room, he said, Jeff, I heard that this dream is weird.

And when he left my room, I got down on my knees and I got tears in my eyes because that phrase summarizes my life.

I can't roll up my sleeves and show you tattoos.

I can't tell you about a drug binge I got over.

And I hated hearing stuff like that because I knew.

But my friend's dream gave me a word to summarize my life, complacency.

But I'm gonna give you a few snapshots from my life that I hope encourage your own, I hope can give you a little bit of guidance as God has given me guidance.

In high school, I was in a chaplain's office.

Back to Menu

1. The Undoing of the Saints

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

That You May Believe

52m

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Lessons in Warfare

Special Forces

51m

Elijah

03 Willing to Give Up Everything

55m

Strong Delusions

50m

What is Grace?

33m

Keeping Focus

Keeping Focus Part 3

48m

“Stolen Valor”

38m

The Most Popular Lie in the Church

34m

Seminars

Beholding Christ in Service: Reflecting His Character in Our Work

1h 1m

Dylan McWilliams Weekend

Our Tactical Advantage, Part 2

1h 4m

The Commandment of Love - Part 1

1h

The Big Questions (Evening Meetings)

6. The End of Social Injustice

1h 36m

Sound Doctrine