A Critical Time in History

You and I live in an age of anxiety. I've often wondered if people look back at this time—you know, people put labels, historians put labels on different times in history—if they look back at this time and say, this was a time of anxiety. People are anxious about the economy, about their jobs, about their families, about their marriages, about the government. It seems like everybody I talk to is just anxious. And they talk to me about what it's like at their workplace. And at the workplace, there seems to be an awful lot of anxiety. It seems like some people you talk to on the street—and I don't know about you—I'm one of these people that every place I go, I get in a conversation. My kids used to hate to take me in public because I always end up in a conversation with somebody. And usually somebody's telling me anymore how bad their lives are. They just tell me how rotten things are, how nothing's working out, and they're having trouble with their friends, and they're having trouble with their families. And it's just a constant anxiety that people seem to be feeling. Of course, I guess you have people in the other extreme. There's a lot of people that are just feeling like there is no future, so they're just sort of partying. You find a lot of young people who sort of feel that way. Like there is no real future. There's no real jobs. There's not going to be a social security left for them. And so let's just have fun because there isn't really much of a future. There is a certain pessimism in our society based on anxiety. And we know that we need to change things. Talk to any politician and they'll tell you that all we have to do is change things. And it doesn't matter which party is in power because the next party says, the other party says, we have to change things, right? We have to change the government. We have to change the economy. We have to change our agricultural system. We need to change our educational system.

We need to change everything because nothing seems to work. And we just feel like there's something wrong. Of course, we bought into certain things. We bought into a belief that if you just took care of poverty, crime would go away. We bought into ideas that science was going to heal all of our ills and we were going to never get sick again. We bought into those things.

I bought into that someday when I retired, I would have social security. It's not going to happen.

Much of what we've bought into in our lives, no matter how old you are here, no matter what your age is, much of what you've bought into isn't going to happen. And so there's a certain pessimism.

There's certain anxiety because people realize they look into the future and they can't figure out what's going to happen. What is the United States going to be like 10 years from now or 20 years from now or 30 years from now? And if you're graduating from high school and you're looking ahead and you said, what's it going to be like in 30 years? What's it going to be like when I go out and try to get a job? And so we live in this age of anxiety. It's just not here in the United States. It's all around the world. You know, if you read about what's going on in Europe, if you read about what's going on over in Asia, there are major shifts going on in the economic policies, major shifts in the way people think, major religious shifts. And of course, tomorrow was the anniversary of one of the greatest shifts that all of us have ever gone through.

You know, if I asked anyone here over the age of probably 12 or 13, where were you on 9-11, 10 years ago, most of you could tell me where you were. And they can, you can say, I remember exactly what it was like when I turned on that television and I saw those jets flying into those buildings.

And I thought, who would do that? Who would do that? I remember the day after 9-11, walking into a place where I go to get gas, a little convenience store, and it's owned by a family from India.

And I looked at the man behind the counter and I said, this is just unbelievable, isn't it?

And he looked at me and he had a great sadness on his face and he says, now you Americans know what the rest of us live through all the time.

He said, this is the way outside of America that so much of the world is. It's violence, fighting over religion, fighting over God, fighting over property, fighting over a little scrap of food. It's not working. And you know, here we are 10 years later, a decade later, and the world really isn't any safer. We have no real problems or solutions to our problems. In fact, the security, there was a great security among many people that was broken 10 years ago, and we don't have it back.

We realize that this world is fragile. We realize that our lives are fragile. We realize it just doesn't work. We don't know what's supposed to work. We think that some political solution will come along. Maybe some church will solve the problem. Maybe some, why can't we just get a group of people in a room, a group of good people, and somehow they all come up with the solutions. You know, maybe the United Nations will come up with the solutions. You and I actually live in a very critical time in history, and the reality is, and we're going to talk about that. We have a time here that we're going to have a break, and then we're going to have another hour, where we're going to go through the Bible. What we want to do with the Beyond Today seminars, or the Kingdom of God seminars, is that we want to discuss your future, my future, the future of humanity, and what the Bible says. And then what that means now, because it's understanding your future that drives what you do now. If we just live in anxiety and worry and not knowing what's going to happen next, if that's what we think the future is, then every day right now is going to be filled with what? Anxiety, worry, problems, because that's all we're going to see. Well, we've got to talk about some bad news today, and then we're going to talk about some good news, and something that can change your life and motivate your life right now, because you can see a different future, because God does promise us a different future. Because here's the reality.

Here's the reality. You could get all the academics in the world in a room.

You could get all the scientists, and they can't fix the problems. You could get all the ministers in a room, and they can't fix the problems. It doesn't matter who we vote in as president.

In the end, he can't fix the problems. Oh no, if we could just get the right person in and mobilize the right, the right, all the pastors together, and if we could just do this, we could just do that. We have all these ideas. If we could just do this, we could fix things. The reality is, I'm going to tell you why in a minute, because it's a reality we have to face. The reality is, we can't fix this. I might say, oh wow, we might as well give up now. That's a really bad message.

I came here to hear that. Well, it can be fixed. It can be fixed, but we can't fix this. Human being can't fix what's happening. Because the reason for our problems, when you boil it down to the core reason for our problems, they're not physical reasons. They're spiritual reasons.

It has to do with our spiritual nature, and it has to do with our relationship with our Creator.

And that is where the core problems are. Everything else, we're dealing with symptoms.

You know, it's like having a really bad case of the flu, and so you take a couple pills that cover the symptoms, but you still have the flu.

All human solutions to problems are dealing with symptoms. We have to go to the core.

We have to go to the reason why we have these problems. And so electing the right candidate, or just getting the churches to work together, or returning to the faith of our founding fathers, won't fix it. No human institution survives, whether it's a government or whatever it is.

No human institution survives forever. There is one thing that's going to survive forever.

Now, what we want to do, and this is the first of a series of Kingdom of God seminars that we want to sponsor here, the next one will actually be in January, where we want to systematically go through over about a year's time what the Kingdom of God really is, and what it means to your life, and what changes can happen now. Because the solutions that are going to happen in the future are solutions that can begin to happen in your life now.

Things can get better in your life now, but they're going to have to begin with an understanding of the future, the goal. You know, when you go to school, they tell you about, hey, you have to have goals. If you have no goals, you don't know where you're going to end up, right? You don't know where you're going to go. What is the goal of Christianity? Mark chapter 1. You brought your Bible? I'll give you time to open it up because we're going to go through Scripture today. We're going to go to the source of the solutions. Mark chapter 1 verse 14.

John the Baptist was put into prison, and Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. Now, the gospel that Jesus brought is a very large subject, but it is based on a specific goal of what God is doing. And he came preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, so here's the words of Jesus, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. He came preaching about the kingdom of God.

Now, he taught about a lot of things, and like I said, the gospel was a large subject, but there was a goal to what he was talking about. There was an outcome to what he was preaching, and the outcome of what he was preaching was the kingdom of God.

Now, what is the kingdom of God?

It's hard to even get Christians to agree on what the kingdom of God is.

Now, we know that there is a creator God. That's why you're here. You believe that there's a creator God. You believe that Jesus Christ is his eternal Son. You believe that Jesus Christ came to this earth as a human being, lived a perfect life, and died for your sins. You believe that, and that's why you're here. But now let's define the kingdom of God, because Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God. Now, we know that God is in heaven. We know that there's an actual place where God is on a throne. The Apostle John in the book of Revelation was given a vision of what that looks like. It's an amazing realm. I don't even know what to call it. It's where God is.

And it talks about a sea of glass, and God sits on a throne, and there are angels singing, and angels coming and going, and there's thunder and lightning and rainbows.

It's a beautiful, wondrous place of sound and light, of interaction of the Almighty God there in presence. So the kingdom of God is in heaven, but the kingdom of God is more than just in heaven. So we say, okay, I can understand that. The kingdom of God is wherever God rules, so that's the universe. I mean, he created the universe, so God is in heaven, but he created the universe. So the universe is his kingdom. Okay, the universe is the kingdom of God. We can all agree with that. That's a premise we all understand. But there's something Jesus said then we need to come to grips with. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his disciples to pray. How to pray? They said, how shall we pray? He said, this is how you pray. And he said, you are to pray, thy kingdom come. Wait a minute. God's kingdom is everywhere. Why would God's kingdom have to come someplace? Why would God's kingdom have to come someplace if it's everywhere?

Here is a fundamental concept we must have if we're going to understand why so much of what we try to do fails. You know, we wonder why there's so much suffering. I sit with people all the time and they ask, why is God allowing this in my life? Why is God doing this to me? I won't show a ask for a show of hands, but I tell you, I've gone to God many times and said, why? Why are you doing this? Why are you allowing this? I don't understand.

You're the great God. You're in charge of everything. You rule every place, right?

2 Corinthians 4. The Apostle Paul deals with this. Remember the world that the Apostle Paul lived in.

Although he'd come up in a Jewish society, he'd been born and raised in a Jewish society, when he went out to start Christian churches, he went out into a pagan world.

Every place he went, it was sheer paganism.

It would be like going to India today, where every place you would go, you would find very few Christian churches, which you would find in their pagan temples, to a variety of gods and goddesses.

And we would find that very uncomfortable. Paul found it exceedingly uncomfortable.

And Paul saw a world which he described as people that were in rebellion against God, lived their lives the opposite of the way God wanted them to live.

Now, you and I live in a country that has Christian influences, and so there's some good in it. But much of what goes on in the daily society you and I live in is not what God wants. How does that happen? How does the creator of the universe, the ruler of the kingdom, how come this is so messed up? I've talked to people who have come to the conclusion God's messed up. God really doesn't know what he's doing to create this mess.

Well, let's go and see what Paul says. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 3.

We're breaking into the middle of a thought here, but we can capture the point he's making. He says, but even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. He says, if there's people who don't understand the message of Jesus Christ, they're dying. The world is dying.

The world doesn't work. Why? Verse 4. Whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. Now, we read through that and we miss something really important. They are blinded. They don't understand. They don't understand who Jesus Christ is. They don't understand his message, which brings them to the true God. But who blinds them?

The God of this age.

You and I live in occupied territory.

When God created Adam and Eve, the earth was part of his kingdom. Because everything's his kingdom.

But he made Adam and Eve with free will, which means they had the right to choose.

Here's the remarkable thing about God. If he gives you the right to choose, he actually gives you a choice. You could give somebody the right to choose and never give them a choice, right?

I'm going to let you choose whether you eat this candy or not, if you told that to a child.

Then took the candy and threw it out the window. Well, they didn't have much of a choice.

The choice isn't there.

When God created human beings, he said, I want you to choose good over evil.

God says, I want you to choose to have a relationship with me. I want you to choose to love me. And God said, I want you to choose my dominion. He wants us to choose his kingdom.

He wants us to choose to let him rule in our lives.

Which means we have to trust him. We have to trust his love. We have to trust his ways.

And so he allowed Satan to come in and influence the first human beings. And when he did, they chose wrong.

Now, God wasn't surprised by that. That's why it says Jesus Christ was slain from the foundation of the earth. When you give human beings choice, we're going to choose wrong.

Sooner or later.

At that point, Satan became the god of this age.

We live in occupied territory, the kingdom of God that is occupied by a foreign ruler.

The idea today, even among many Christian churches, and it's surprising, a majority, according to polls done by Barna, the majority of Christians today don't believe Satan is a real being. And it's a good percent believe that he's not a real being. Satan is a real being. Why does he have to convince us he's not? Because he wants us to believe that this is God's world, and God's messed it up, and it's not true. It's Satan's world, and between his influence on us, we've messed it up. We failed. He failed.

This isn't God's world, and that's why we can't fix it. You know, I live in the United States of America. I love the United States of America. I love what this country stands for, but I also know something. I know it will fail. You say, why will it fail? Because every human invention fails, and the reason why is we're flawed. We could create the most perfect system there is, and it would fail. Why? We're flawed. We have become a mixture of good and evil. We were took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and you can't succeed as a mixture of good and evil. So it fails. It will fail. Sooner or later, this country will fail. It will become something totally different, and that will fail. There's no economic system that won't fail. There's no church that won't fail. There's no government that won't fail. There's nothing we make up that won't fail. But God isn't going to leave it this way. As Jesus Christ told his disciples, he was dying for humanity, that he would be resurrected, which we believe happened. We believe that resurrection happened. We believe he returned to the throne of God, where the dominion of God is, and then he told them, I will return. And when I come back, I will change this.

And until then, he's not going to work. But you and I have a privilege.

You and I have a privilege that the Creator of the universe has said, you can be part of that if you let it be part of your life now.

They say, well, how do we let it be part of our lives now? Okay, I get this vision. Christ is coming back. He's going to change. I'm not sure what that means. I tell you what, in the second part of this, after we have our break, I'm going to go through just a handful of scriptures that describe what it's going to be like when Christ returns. There are hundreds of verses in the Bible describing what it's going to be like when Christ returns. Why? Why did God inspire that to be put in this book? It's because he wants that to be our vision of life. We look around at a failing world and we say, it will get better, it can get better, and I want to be part of it, and it'll be better in my life right now. I might not be able to change my town. I might not be able to change my county or my state or my country or my world, but I can let God change me right now so I can be part of that solution. And those are the only solutions. And if you want to be part of those solutions, we have to learn those solutions now. We have to learn them in our marriages. We have to learn them in how we treat other people. We have to learn them in how we obey the Almighty God. It comes down to, if we want to be part of God's kingdom, if we want to be part of His dominion, we have to have His dominion in our lives now. No halfway measures, no part in Satan's world, the God of this world. That's a reality. Part in that and part with God. It can't be that way. If we want to be part of what He's doing, it's 100 percent. And there's no greater blessing in life to understand that future and to grab hold of that future right now. You know, Christianity has a lot of people who believe in Jesus as their Savior, but God wants something more from you. He doesn't want you just to believe in Jesus as your Savior. He wants you to accept Him as Your King. As Your King. That's dominion. That's rule. People ask me what political party I am. Am I a Republican? Am I a Democrat?

Am I an independent? My answer is I'm a monarchist.

A monarchist? Yep, I believe in a king. Absolute king, absolute rule, absolute dominion.

And I don't understand it all now, but I'm trying to follow. And when He comes back, it's absolute worship. Monarchy. See, the Kingdom of God is a reality that's coming, and it has to be a reality now. What did Jesus teach about the Kingdom of God? I'm going to go through just a couple places where He talked about the Kingdom of God. Matthew 6, 33, breaking in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. One verse. Matthew 6, 33. If you don't have a Bible, we'll try to put this up on the...

Well, I think we're trying to put it up. Okay, it's going up there. Matthew 6, 33.

Jesus says, the words of Jesus Christ, seek you first, the Kingdom of God in His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. If you read the context of this middle part of the Sermon on the Mount, He's saying, don't be overcome by worry. Don't be overcome by anxiety.

Don't let the stresses of a society that won't work destroy you. He says, stop and prioritize your life. And you know what Jesus Christ said? The number one priority in your life should be.

Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, His ways, His love, His direction, every day, in everything. Number one priority. So if we're going to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, we can't buy into this idea that Christianity is just having Jesus in your heart and just sort of going through life in this nebulous sort of loving everybody.

We have to know what love is and the way it's defined by who? The King.

We have to know how to treat each other. We have to have the definition of that because I guarantee if all of us treat each other the way we want to treat each other, guess what we'll do?

Wouldn't the world be great if everybody just let you be God?

Right? If everybody just do what you said? I mean, wouldn't it be great if your husband just did everything you said? Can you imagine if your children just did everything you said? If you went to work and everybody just when you walked in just sort of oohed and auld and waited for your very instructions? You know, when you pulled up at the drive-through, they just they were just so wow we're so glad you're here they took your order you actually understood the person on the you know the squawk box you actually drive through and they give you the food?

Oh we didn't know it was you here's the food but that's not life you and I are God we weren't intended to be God we were intended to be subjects and there's a lot of people don't believe that we were intended to be subjects that's why Jesus called it a kingdom that's why he called it a kingdom and this has to be the first priority of our Christian lives anything second is not what Jesus taught as Christians we take on the name of Jesus Christ we say we are disciples of Jesus Christ we say we are brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ well we say that we have to meet him Matthew 13 verse 44 so he says it has to be the number one priority in your life you really want to do something interesting take Matthew Mark Luke and John and just study all the places where it talks about the kingdom of God you'll be surprised how much Jesus Christ talked about this now we talked about sin I mean repentance for the kingdom of God is at hand at some point in these kingdom of God seminars we will talk about repentance and what that really means but we have to understand the vision first we have to understand what God's doing and why our lives don't work why do we sin why do we mess this up so badly he says again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid and for joy over over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field Jesus Christ said when you discover God's rule and that you could be part of your life now when you discover you live in a world that is not ruled by God and your life can change because you can actually allow God to change your life to guide you to direct you to show you how things work to give you real solutions eternal solutions he says that is so important that to discover the kingdom of God we should be willing to give up what everything but see that's not what we do we want our cake and eat it too we want God to give us what we need while we still do what we want you got to remember the word kingdom is very important you think of all the different words Jesus could have used why did he over and over and over again say kingdom of course in this Jewish society he was talking in they understood exactly what he meant we'll talk about a little bit later how the prophets all prophesied about a messiah and anointed one a son of God who would come and they knew what it meant they were going he was going to rule the world from Jerusalem he wasn't just going to rule the Jewish people he was going to rule the world from Jerusalem with power with miracles and he was going to come from God they knew what the kingdom was they didn't think the kingdom was sort of a nebulous idea they know what meant the direct dominion of God the direct dominion of God and he said to discover this is worth selling everything you have it's worth giving up everything you have now you have to have a real vision of something to give up everything you have right i say okay well that's everybody go sell everything they have and put it in the stock market please don't do that right i don't think too many of us have a great vision of how the where the stock market is going to be it can be up three or four or five hundred points this week up and down and up and down you can lose your shirt right they have a great vision of that what kind of vision does it take to say i'll sell everything i have to be part of that he says this has to be that real in our lives so we better understand what it is let's go to luke chapter 12 luke chapter 12 you see god's dominion in the future and his dominion in our lives now isn't something we talk about we read in our bibles once in a while we go to church once a week and hear about it is our purpose for living when we talk about god's dominion we're talking about our relationship with god and it is love but you have to understand something what we tend to do is we take advantage of god's love we take advantage of god's love what we say is okay god i want a relationship with you but on my terms and god's like a genie in the bottle we pulled a cork when we need something and then we're sticking back in the bottle when we want to go about and do what we want to do kingdom has to do with rule it has to do with obedience it has to do with dominion it has to do with kingship it has to do with monarchy that's what the kingdom is about it's about who is the king and it's about loving the king jesus says here in verse 29 do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink or have an anxious mind we live in an anxious world for all these things the nations of the world seek after and your father knows that you need these things he said this is what everybody else is trying to do everybody else is anxious everybody else is worried about the future everybody else is trying to get control of their lives he said stop god knows what you need let god control your life this is all about dominion it's all about control who controls our lives but seek the kingdom of god and all these things shall be added to you he says do not fear little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom god wants to give us the kingdom when christ returns i'm going to skip down here to verse 35 now jesus says let your waist be girded and your lamps burning that doesn't mean a lot to me in my in my culture i don't know if i've ever girded my waist okay well i i i can say that i i once went to a costume party and i wore an arab outfit and i had to gird my waist it's the only time i've ever had to do that but what he's saying here is you know you have to be dressed he's you're anticipating something this has to do with anticipation and we want god to change our lives now but the change comes because we anticipate the goal he says it's like somebody at night waiting for something to happen so they're dressed they're dressed they have their lamp i can remember when my my children were small my two daughters we would have every other week i would take one of them out well the older one i i took out to breakfast once a week before she went to school and the youngest one had just started school and i told jennifer well now that you've started to school you'll start having your date with dad once you know every other week now we'll trade off with your sister so my uh she didn't my youngest her middle daughter never seemed to show a lot of excitement so i didn't know if she was excited about that or not so i get up it's like 5 30 in the morning and i go out uh you know to get a cup of coffee and try to get away because i'm going to take her out to breakfast before uh the uh she goes to school and i go into the living room and it's dark and i turn on the light and there she is sitting there totally dressed i said what are you doing she says i'm waiting for my date this is still the middle of the night i'm waiting for my date that's the image here it's the middle of the night we're dressed we're getting our lamps and we're we're anticipating we're waiting for this kingdom we're waiting for this relationship with jesus christ and with our father he says verse 36 and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master and when he will return for the wedding and when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately bless are those servants whom the master when he comes will find watching there's a blessing you and i can receive and that blessing is is that we are anticipating that kingdom so we're living by it right now we're not sloppy in our christianity we're living it we're dressed the lamps lit we're waiting for that return we're anticipating that return we want to be part of what he's bringing and you do that and part of what he's bringing is going to happen right now where you are in your life in your house in your marriage with your children where you work the church you go to it's going to change the influence you have will change others help others but it's not going to change the world you and i are not going to change the world only christ can do that the questions he's asking you is do you want to be part of that do you want to help change the world think about that a minute because that's a question god is asking you do you want to help change the world you know how many little children will die in samalia today you want to change the world there'll probably be some kid killed a drive-by shooting today in san antonia you want to change the world you could go to any place you know austin san antonio corpus christa used in dallas you can find people living under a bridge you want to change the world do you want to change the world do we want to make sure that nobody ever commits an abortion again do you want to change the world i can't stop that now but i know somebody who can that's the question he's asking us well we look at the the concept of a kingdom in the way that jesus used it we look at it in the way he used that the meaning of the word he used when he was speaking because it wasn't speaking in english but when he was speaking in the first century they knew what a kingdom was a kingdom had a king a kingdom had a monarch a kingdom had territory a kingdom had subjects a kingdom had a system of laws you know what god has you know what jesus christ is going to bring with him a monarchy you know what he's going to do you know what the the kingdom of god is going to be the universe again there's just one little spot that god is is not ruling right now it's occupied occupied evil occupier he's going to remove him it's first thing christ does when he comes back is he removes satan why he's the god of the present age in the second half we'll talk about how he affects us more than we realize because we deny his existence subjects all the angels and all the human beings and all the the resurrected saints everybody's a subject of god and there's going to be a system of law there's going to be a culture he creates that changes everything the agricultural system the educational system the the governmental system everything changes everything changes more than we realize when you look at the old testament you'll see prophecy after prophecy about this coming time this isn't just a new testament concept it's one of the great issues of continuity that puts the old and new testaments together that shows the completeness in a book that was written over 1400 years by dozens of writers 1400 years over dozens of writers and has the same concepts tell me how that happens it's one of the great proofs this is divinely inspired let's go to acts chapter three because here peter is speaking in the jewish temple and he makes a very important point acts chapter three verse 19 he's speaking to a group of jewish people that have come before him and he says you know jesus really was the messiah and you killed him and he was resurrected he's going to come back and they're saying what should we do what's what's the response to that of course all of us killed jesus christ too he died for every one of us so our response should be how do we respond to that what are we supposed to do what does god one of us to pay such a terrible price for us because we are flawed because we are inside have an evil corrupted human nature and peter says in verse 19 repent therefore and be converted that you have to be changed we must be changed repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the lord and he may send jesus christ who was preached to you before whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things which god has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began he says you will find this in the book of genesis you will find it throughout the bible moses talked about it abraham knew about it you will see that isaiah jeremiah and daniel prophesied about it hosea and amis and jole prophesied about it nehu malachi mica they were all men sent by god to tell people you can't fix this and when you figure that out you can turn your life over to god and live in anticipation of the time when he will fix it and he will help your life now by changing you now and preparing you for that time now he said he taught they were taught and the old testament is just filled with it we talk about vision and that's really this first part we want to talk about this vision if you can get this vision of god's goal for your life it's actually a goal for humanity but if you if you personalize it and you say okay this vision isn't just his goal for the humanity it's my life now and how i can change i want to be part of that vision i want to be part of the kingdom i'm a god's dominion in my life now then your life can change when we talk about vision i think of of a story i once read it's true story and it's about the first woman who swam from the coast of california to catalina island actually i think she went from catalina back but that channel is a is a treacherous channel now i took a boat across that channel i think it's about 26 miles when i was a young man and you don't i remember most about that trip were all the sharks because a group of the the young men i were with they were all going to go take a scuba diving class and they were going to swim i mean go scuba diving and they said you want to go with us we got a free pass i'm not getting in water with those sharks so i've never been scuba diving i never took the class mainly because i just i mean when you're looking at an animal bigger than you they can eat you i'm not swimming with them i'm sorry well the first woman that that swam them her name was fornes chadwick was back in the early 1950s she had already swam the english channel when she started off that day the current the water was so cold and the current so bad that she got exhausted very quickly but the worst thing it was foggy she couldn't see the coast they actually had a boat beside her with men with rifles shooting off the sharks when she didn't want to hit one because then was going to bleed you're going to be feeding frenzy so she's in this incredible danger she's she's very anxious okay this is a very anxious time and she swam and she swam and she couldn't see the coast she became disoriented she didn't know where she was she was trained did she believe that the coast existed yes people believe that god exists doesn't mean they get there did she know how to get there yes that you have training yes did she have confidence when she started there reached a point where she was so disoriented so discouraged so just you couldn't even visualize where she was she begged them to pull them up her up in a boat they pulled her up in the boat and they were less than two miles from the shore she can swim two miles like nothing it wasn't exhaustion or lack of training it was because she couldn't see where she was supposed to go she couldn't see where she was supposed to go she and in that she lost her will to go on she went back she visualized the california coast and the next time she set a world record why because even though she couldn't see it she knew it was there now you have to understand that's the way we have to become with the kingdom of god you can't see it all the time can you you have to know it's there you have to know it's there because you know that god has dominion in your life now how many times do we not go to god for help or don't expect help because why well we haven't been doing what he expects anyways we haven't you know oh god i know i haven't prayed for a month but i'm in i have a problem god says oh it's been a long time since you showed up well i want to talk to you about my problem god says where you been god i don't want to listen to you i want to tell you about my problem god says you know what you missed out in the last month god just listen to my problem god says you're not letting me have dominion in your life are you sometimes we think god is our servant when dominion is about us being god's servant god isn't our child we are his children it's yes daddy not god would you do this for me waiter see this vision this vision of jesus christ returning he's gonna change everything and after the break we're gonna talk about what he's gonna change change what you and i can't fix change what the president can't fix and congress can't fix and the governors can't fix and the churches can't fix i can't fix you can't fix he's gonna change it he's gonna change it because of who he is he's gonna change it because he's the king he's gonna change it because he's gonna kick out the god of this present age and he's gonna re-establish god's rule on this earth and you can be part of it capture that vision and god will let you be part of it