Today, We Run

Today, We Run!

51 Years of Miracles. What an amazing journey. God has done incredible things here in the past 51 years. And we have seen His great power. Today we reflect, today we remember, today we renew. Renew our passion to reach the world.

In 1956, a small group of people gathered to start a brand new church. From humble beginnings, this group trusted God for the big things ahead.

Today, we still trust God for the big things ahead. We still trust Him to take us to greater heights. We stand today, ready to move, ready to serve, ready to launch.

Throughout our history, there are some verses that dad has shared time and time again. Verses that challenge us, verses that inspire us, verses that drive us to action.

Two of those verses are from Habakkuk 2:

Hab. 2:1 I will stand my watch

And set myself on the rampart,

And watch to see what He will say to me,

And what I will answer when I am corrected.

Hab. 2:2 Then the LORD answered me and said:

“Write the vision

And make it plain on tablets,

That he may run who reads it.

How many times have we heard dad share those verses? How many times have we heard dad read those verses to us when he talked about the vision for this ministry? He used these verses over and over to describe his BHAG.

Dad was a firm believer in casting the vision time and time again. He stood here over the past year, since last July 2—our 50th anniversary—and said that he believed God would do more in the next five years than He’s done in the previous 50. In fact, on July 16th last year, his sermon title was “The Former 50, the Future 5!”

This was his clarion call to us a church. He wasn’t happy to sit back and rest on what was, to simply reflect on the past, to celebrate what had been completed. No, he was a visionary who had a passion to dream big, and to make those dreams come true.

That was dad’s forte. That was where he thrived. As you look back over these 51 years as a church, we see so many situations where he dreamed big, and it happened.

Today, as we pass from this YEAR OF JUBILEE into this FUTURE FIVE, we must understand that we will not dream small dreams. We will continue to dream big dreams. Big visions. Big goals with a big passion.

We will call on the name of the Lord to deliver great victories in this next five years. Great victories because we will be taking on great challenges. Great challenges, because that is what dad would have done. He would have dreamed big, he would have aimed high, he would have cast the vision that would make us all gasp at the very size of it.

And he would have done that so that we could see that when big dreams come true, you know that it’s a God thing.

And so, what are some of those dreams that we begin to dream about today. What are some of those visions that we will be talking about in the coming months and years? What are those great challenges that we will face as a church?

1) We have a dream of seeing 5000 local salvation decisions as a result of this local church!

2) We have a dream of seeing the attendance of this church double in the next 5 years!

3) We have a dream of adding 5000 in attendance in our Sunday School programs!

4) We have a dream of baptizing 500 each year from now on!

5) We have a dream, in partnership with Liberty’s School of Religion and Liberty Seminary of planting 500 churches in the next five years!

6) We have a dream of sending 500 missionaries in the next five years

7) We have a dream of sending 500 of our church members on various short term missions trips

8) We have a dream of having 5000 of our members, of you, involved as lay ministers. Meeting the needs of our members, meeting the needs of our community, feeding the hungry, providing shelter to the homeless, helping the less fortunate, and letting the world see Christ within us!

These are big dreams. These are God-sized dreams. And always, GOD-SIZED DREAMS TAKE GOD-SIZED FAITH AND WILL ALWAYS PRODUCE GOD-SIZED MIRACLES!

That is what we are claiming today. God-sized miracles. We are trusting God to deliver to us exactly the vision that God placed on my dad’s heart. The FORMER FIFTY were amazing years, incredible years; but the FUTURE FIVE will bring miraculous results.

Hab. 2:2 Then the LORD answered me and said: