This morning's passage of scripture comes out of Psalm 107,
beginning in verse one.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn there.
We are all about preaching and teaching out of the Bible.
In fact, after this week, we're gonna get back
into our Matthew series,
where we go verse by verse through Matthew.
We're picking up in chapter six.
And so we wanna be good Bible students who go to the Word.
But if you don't have your Bible, or that's too distracting,
we do have the words or the scripture up here on the screen.
And I've asked Kimberly to join me up here
to help read this fairly long passage of scripture.
We'll go back and forth.
Psalm 107, verse one is where we'll begin.
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His faithful love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim
that he has redeemed them from the power of the foe,
and has gathered them from the lands,
from the east and the west,
from the north and the south.
Some wandered in the desolate wilderness,
finding no way to a city where they could live.
They were hungry and thirsty.
Their spirits failed within them.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.
He rescued them from their distress.
He led them by the right path
to go to a city where they could live.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love,
and his wondrous works for all humanity,
for he has satisfied the thirsty,
and filled the hungry with good things.
Others sat in darkness and gloom,
prisoners in cruel chains,
because they rebelled against God's commands,
and despised the counsel of the Most High.
He broke their spirits with hard labor.
They stumbled, and there was no one to help.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.
He saved them from their distress.
He brought them out of darkness and gloom,
and broke their chains apart.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love,
and his wondrous works for all humanity,
for he has broken down the bronze gates,
and cut through the iron bars.
Fools suffered affliction
because of their rebellious ways and their iniquities.
They loathed all food, and came near to the gates of death.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.
He saved them from their distress.
He sent his word and healed them.
He rescued them from their traps.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love,
and his wondrous works for all humanity.
Let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices,
and announce his works with shouts of joy.
Others went to sea in ships,
conducting trade on the vast water.
They saw the Lord's works,
and his wondrous works in the deep.
He spoke and raised a stormy wind
that stirred up the waves of the sea,
rising up to the sky, sinking down to the depths,
their courage melting away in anguish.
They reeled and staggered like a drunkard,
and all their skill was useless.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
They rejoiced when the waves grew quiet.
Then he guided them to the harbor they longed for.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his faithful love,
and his wondrous works for all humanity.
Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people,
and praise him in the counsel of the elders.
Let whoever is wise pay attention to these things,
and consider the Lord's acts of faithful love.
This is God's word.
Amen.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kimberly.
Well, as I said, we are launching into a new year
and a new season and a new theme,
and this year our theme is Tell the Story.
Reader's Digest, any of you guys read Reader's Digest
presently or when growing up?
My family used to get them all the time,
and they were the source of the jokes and the humor.
I remember humor in uniform was one of the things
that I used to read all the time.
Well, Reader's Digest collected 20 short real life stories
about family life, and some of them are funny
and quite humorous, really short stories
that people have submitted about interactions
they've had with their family.
They published these online, and I'm gonna share
just a couple of these short stories with you, all right?
I gotta say this before I say this,
because of first service, they're funny,
so you can laugh after them, like it's okay.
After the first one, there was like,
okay, that was an interesting story.
Maybe they're not funny, and I just laughed, I don't know,
but you guys tell me, all right?
Here's the first one.
For the second week in a row, my son and I
were the only ones who showed up
for his soccer team's practice.
Frustrated, I told him, please tell your coach
that we keep coming for practice, but no one is ever here.
My son rolled his eyes and said,
he'll just tell me the same thing he did before.
Which was what?
That practice is now on Wednesdays, not on Tuesdays.
Q laughing track, there we go, good job, good job.
Here's another one.
It was a typical, noisy dinner at my parents' house,
and Dad was having trouble following the conversations.
Anyone relate?
He kept jumping in with off-topic comments
and asking for things to be repeated.
I finally told him he needed to get a hearing aid.
Looking at me as if I were crazy, he said,
what would I do with a hand grenade?
Q laughing track
You guys are getting, man, that first service,
they were like crickets.
Q laughing track
All right, last one, here we go.
Can you, I'm sorry, can you tell me
can you play with me, my preschooler asked?
Not now, I said, I have too much work to do
around the house.
Taking my hand, and with the wisdom of one
who has lived many a lifetime, he said,
Mom, I have advice for you.
When people tell me to do work, I don't listen to them.
Then I don't have work to do, it works for me,
you should try it.
Q laughing track
That definitely sounds like my youngest,
but probably all my kids at one point or another.
They always had the wisdom of many ages.
But when I preach, there's typically folks
who will come up to me afterward and give feedback.
And when I feed them feedback, not necessarily constructive
or criticism, but interacting with the main point
of the text or talking about how the teaching
impacted them or how they see the connections
throughout scripture or how they're going to apply
the teaching to their lives.
And this is pretty typical.
However, when I have a sermon, then I tell a story in it
and the story lands as an illustration.
A substantially greater number of folks
talk to me afterwards, right afterwards
or in the weeks to come.
And do you know what they remember about my sermon?
My 20 hours of preparation for sermon,
my study, my research, what do they remember?
The story, right?
Oh yeah, I've been there too.
And when I was there, da da da da da da da,
and we'll talk and talk and talk weeks later.
It's like what you said on that one sermon
when you used that one illustration.
The stories, right, why?
Because in all of creation, stories belong uniquely
to humans.
In all of creation, they belong to us.
They are ours and they entertain us.
They teach us, they warn us and inspire us.
Stories have a unique stickiness to them.
We remember stories.
In fact, researchers have found that when we hear a story,
our brain begins producing a hormone called oxytocin.
And that hormone is associated with empathy and trust.
And what they've observed is this thing called
empathetic connection between the storyteller
and the listener.
And what that results in is the listener begins to open up
subconsciously or even consciously to the message
of the story and to build trust with the storyteller.
Literally, a hormone is released when we hear stories
that draws in.
Even as I was telling the few stories up front
in homiletics, that's the art of public speaking
or preaching, right, the way that you deliver a preaching.
They teach you oftentimes that every seven to eight minutes
you need to introduce an illustration because it shakes
people out of the relentless knowledge that you're giving
and pulls them back into the room, right?
Have you guys ever seen that where maybe I'll say something
and then you drift off into the nebulous world
thinking about that thing or thinking about what's happening
back at home or something and then a story is told
and pretty soon I can observe it from here,
a little lean forward, all eyes forward.
What's the punch line, where's this going?
Stories draw us in.
There's also another effect of storytelling
that's interesting, it's called narrative transportation.
And in a study done by two guys, Green and Brock,
they found out, oh, they explained it this way,
they explained it as the listener is in a sense
transported going some distance from their world of origin,
where they started.
In a story, they're transported somewhere else
and somewhat of the world that they came from
is now inaccessible to them
while they're engaged in the story.
And while they're engaged and listening to the story
and they have that focused connection
and that empathetic connection,
they're surrounding some of the emotions that they felt
just moments earlier are somewhat shut off
or put on pause while the story is being told.
The listener is transported and then the listener
is almost like a traveler on a journey
and the traveler who's gone to another world
from his world of origin then returns to the world of origin
but he returns or she returns as a different person.
Something has happened in that journey,
in that story that has changed them.
Now I've seen this a few times happen,
the power of this at a funeral.
You'll be in a funeral and as is pretty typical,
you have a sharing time, an open mic time
and folks will begin to share their experiences
with the deceased and oftentimes family members
who are devastated and overwhelmed with grief
come to the mic first and begin to share about their grief
and the loss through tears and wailing and crying.
But at some point during the funeral,
someone gets up and tells the funniest story ever
about the deceased, about a time in his life
that he did something that was hilarious,
that's shared among the experiences
of the people who are there.
And pretty soon the very people who are crying
and wailing and connected in their mourning
are now laughing uproariously, crying,
thinking about this memory.
They're transported from the room somewhere else
and from that point on the room changes.
What was somber or downcast,
there's just a little pick up of hope and light
that has been brought into the room
because of a story that was told about someone's life.
Stories have the power to connect, they transmit a message,
they transport a person and change them.
And Psalm 107 is no different.
Psalm 107 is all about the power of a story
and more specifically the power of the story of our lives
and those who have experienced the salvation of God.
It begins by saying, give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
His faithful love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim
that he has redeemed them from the power of the foe
and has gathered them from the lands
from the north and the south and east and west, right?
In the NIV translation, if you have that in front of you,
you probably already noticed that instead of saying,
let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim
that he has redeemed them, it says,
let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.
Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.
If you are redeemed by the Lord, you have a story to tell.
And this isn't about thinking a story
or thinking of what the Lord has done,
but this is about saying so.
We're saying that, right?
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
And Village, as a church family,
we are going to get real good at storytelling this year.
Why?
Because ultimately we have the greatest story ever
to tell the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And not only that, we have a story to tell
about the gospel's interaction with our life,
what he has done for us.
You have a story to tell.
And I don't care if you've been in the faith
your entire life and you've kept all the rules
and you're Mr. and Mrs. Goody Two Shoes,
you have a redemption story as well.
You have a redemption story as well.
Psalm 66 in verse 16 says,
come and listen, all who fear God, and I will tell you
what he has done for me.
Come and listen, all you who fear God.
Let me tell you what he did for me.
Grateful, thankful people tell the story.
Could you imagine being locked in chains,
a slave to sin and death, and then a deliverer shows up.
You are my deliverer, right?
The deliverer shows up, a hero shows up
to break the chains and bondage,
to open fling wide the gates of the prison,
to lead you out, and then later on in your life,
you just leave that part out.
You tell all the other stories,
but you don't tell that story.
Could you imagine that?
Grateful, thankful people tell the story,
and the story is about his deliverance.
But it's not just about us personally either.
That first part in Psalm 107 says
that not only did he redeem us,
but then he gathered us up from the east and the west,
from the north and the south.
It's not just personally, but also we've been gathered up.
It's not only that God redeems us out of sin,
but also we've been redeemed from sin.
God redeems us out of a situation,
but he gathers us up into a new life,
a new hope, a new family.
He provides a home for the deserted and the lonely,
a home that is filled with other folks
who have also been delivered.
He brings you to a hospital for the hurting and the sick,
a refuge from the storm, a table that you can sit at
and feast with brothers and sisters,
a roll-up-a-chair, a place where you belong.
Let the redeemed of the Lord give thanks.
As a church, my hope is as we enter into 2025,
it's threefold.
The first is that you would get real, real comfortable
and even excited, dare I say, to tell your story.
That you would be excited to tell your story,
that you could map out the landscape of God's grace
and work in your life, and you could share the story
of what he's done for you.
That if you have felt like you can't do that
or you felt like it's too difficult
or you don't have the words,
that this year would be a year
where you get comfortable and excited
about sharing God's story at work in you.
First, your story, but then also that we would get comfortable
telling our story, how he has gathered us up
and made us his family, how he's given us riches,
spiritual riches in Christ Jesus,
and how he's given us a mission to love him
with all of our being and to love one another
and to bring the reality of his grace and forgiveness
to bear on every area of our life together.
That we would tell of what he's done through us,
among us, and for us here at Village.
I wanna boast in the Lord a little bit.
I wanna boast in the Lord a little bit
what he did for us in 2024.
We set out by faith.
We knew that the Lord had brought us to this moment.
Some of y'all are fairly new to Village,
and so you may not know the story, but here's the story.
This church has been here for many years,
this building 70 years.
The first pioneers of the gospel who said,
we need to go and plant a church 110 years,
who came to Sacramento and planted this church,
and 70 years ago planted this particular location
and built this sanctuary and then the rest of the facility.
That's awesome, but that's also a pretty old building, eh?
Sorry if you're 70 years older.
I did not mean to imply anything, but.
You might need a remodel too.
Okay, we set out with the hope that God could
refresh us and renew us for a new season of ministry.
To say, hey, we wanna connect to our community.
We wanna be a light and a lighthouse in this dark world.
We wanna be a place, a hope, a refuge, a hospital,
a place where people can come and receive the word
and heal and grow in their knowledge of God,
and we wanna do that in an effective way.
So Lord, could you provide a way for us
to begin that process by repairing some of the facility
and getting it up to date and beginning that work here.
And so we set out as a small congregation
to raise $50,000 in pledge funds from among the congregants.
And I'll tell you, in 2024, we ended the year
with over $70,000 raised in pledges.
And you are absolutely boasting in the Lord
for having provided generously to do this.
It was all by people's own impulse,
whatever they wanted to give.
If they didn't wanna give at all, no judgment whatsoever.
And I'll be honest, there's some skepticism
about whether this was possible.
Could we do this?
You look around here and there are lots of brothers,
sisters in the room, but we were smaller
in numbers at that time.
Could we do this?
Lord, what could you do though?
And by faith and through prayer and believing,
look what has been, we're enjoying the benefits of it now.
Imagine a 1970s wood panel wall right next to you.
It was there.
I promise.
Listen to this, 2024, seven people said,
I wanna stand before the congregation
and I wanna declare that I follow Christ through baptism.
Seven people in 2024.
We took two trips.
We sent one group, a service team to the island of Guam
to help a sister church who had gone through a typhoon
and had kind of incurred some damage
and needed some improvements.
We sent a team over there to do a work project
and they went with so much love and excitement
to go bless them and ended up coming back
so much more blessed by the people of Guam
in their hospitality and love.
We sent another team of what?
11 folks who went down to Guatemala
and ministered at our missions partner, Village of Hope,
to young girls who are pregnant or have had children
through means that are horrifying,
trafficking or family members who've impregnated them
and they're being cared for in this facility
and loved and taught the love of Jesus
and we got to go down and partner with them
and help them out on some work projects
as well as interacting with the kids.
Village sent these people to the world,
out to the island of Guam and to Guatemala
to do the work of ministry
and to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
In 2024, we saw the Lord add to our numbers
in doubling the amount of folks
who called this place their home.
We saw doubling of attendance.
Those who said, hey, I want to get on board
with this mission, I wanna help you build something here.
I'm all in.
We saw that happen in 2024
and finally we launched our small group ministry
in full in 2024 and we saw over 50% of our members
join a small group in 2024.
Connect with folks, be loved by folks,
be a part of a smaller community where they can be loved
and use their gifts to love one another.
This is what the Lord has done in 2024.
This is our story.
Share your story.
This is our story.
And finally, my hope is that we would be comfortable
and excited to tell the story,
the greatest story of all times.
That God lovingly created the world
and made humanity in his image to reflect his glory
and to enjoy fellowship with him.
But humanity in rebellion against God allowed sin
and brokenness to enter into the world,
resulting in sin.
But God, rich in mercy,
sent Jesus Christ to die and rise again from the dead,
rescuing sinners and offering them forgiveness
and a new life in him,
where ultimately he will return to restore all creation
and establish his kingdom and dwelling forever
with the redeemed of the Lord, amen.
In Psalm 107, we find all of this goodness of the gospel.
And we learn that many of our stories are wrapped up
in the stories that are laid out in Psalm 107.
And so I wanna walk through just a few of those.
Some of you have a story to tell,
and the story that you will tell is the story
of the love that brings us home.
The story of the love that brings us home.
Is your story one of loneliness and despair?
You felt like your life was pointless
or aimless without purpose.
Did you long for something to fill you up
with purpose and meaning?
Did you long for connection and groundedness,
a table to sit at?
Did you long to belong somewhere?
And did God redeem you from that desolate wilderness?
If yes, then your story is the story of the love
that brings us home.
I moved a whole lot when I was a kid and teenager.
I always lose count of it.
It was in the 30s, I think, 30 times before I hit 18
that my family had moved.
So we never had a home or the home, right?
The place to go back to.
And even as my parents have gotten older
and they now live in Billings, Montana, they have a home,
but it's not something that I grew up with.
It's something that they've gotten in the last few years.
And so we didn't have the home
like many people have in their life.
But what I did have was my Grandma Connolly's house.
My Grandma Connolly had purchased the house
when it was first built.
Back in 1955 or something like that.
And had lived at the same place all those years.
And so when we would go to visit Grandma Connolly,
it was like going home.
The smell, you knew what it was going to smell like.
You knew what it was going to look like.
It was in Bakersfield.
So I mean, that was the only reason
you'd go down there anyways is to see Grandma.
But you'd go down there.
And one of the things that I remember vividly as a kid
and as a teenager is they had two
enormous palm trees out front.
They hated them because of maintaining them.
But I'm talking enormous.
I don't know how tall, 50 feet tall?
Just huge.
The ones that kind of go in the wind, right?
And you're like, are they going to fall?
And they bend, bend, bend.
Well, they had two of those out front of their house.
And when we were kids and we'd be going to Grandma's house,
you would see those half a mile, quarter mile away
on the middle of the house.
And then a quarter mile away on the main road,
you could see the two palm trees in the distance.
And you knew you were about to get to Grandma's house.
And you got all those feelings of going home,
going to that place, like being wrapped in a warm blanket.
And sometimes it was really warm.
It was Bakersfield and she didn't have AC,
so it was a swamp cooler.
So you can imagine what it's like inside of the house.
But it was still like going home.
My grandma was alive and there,
she would always welcome us the same way.
She was the kind of grandma who,
while she's cooking dinner, she'd be yelling out
to the grandkids if they were hungry
and needed her to fix them a sandwich
before dinner was ready.
And then she'd fix us a sandwich of pimento
and bologna or something.
You would gag down and be like,
what are all these dots inside of my bologna?
Anyway, we don't have to think about that.
Think happy thoughts.
That was going home.
That was the warmth of it.
And some of you, some of you, your story is
that God brought you home.
That you wandered about in life
and you felt desolate and lonely.
You felt like you had nowhere to go.
And in Christ, when you found him and discovered him,
you were brought home and you know it.
You know you found a home that's not geographically located
but is in Christ.
And the story that you tell is of the love
that brings you home.
And some of you have a story that tells of the love
that makes us free.
We are all caught in some level of sin,
but some of us get caught in an endless cycle of earning,
trying to earn favor with God
through our good works and our good life.
Some of us have gone to the extreme opposite
and abandoned all good living.
And instead are in utter rebellion to God's commands,
living the way that we want,
doing whatever is right in our own eyes to do,
crushed by the weight of our sin and shame,
struggling against God and ultimately broken.
Do you look back and see the loving discipline
of God in your life?
That he loved you enough to not leave you in your sin.
But instead he allowed you to be crushed
under the weight of sin for your good,
so that you would turn to him and cry out to him,
and he would set you free.
Was that your story?
Tell your story.
Maybe for some of you that is your story.
You haven't yet cried out and you're in that place.
You also, a story is being written.
And will the story be they cried out to the Lord,
and he answered them and delivered them.
The love that sets us free.
Or maybe your story is the love that makes us whole.
Tell the story of the love that makes us whole.
Some of us have experienced a life
where we were so entangled in sin,
it was like being in a prison, a dark, cold prison.
Anyone experience that in life?
Anyone bold enough to say I've been there?
It's like a prison.
It was our sinful appetites that landed us there.
Addictions, anger, pornography, adultery,
the shame and guilt of an abortion, lying,
whatever it is, the list could go on.
Everything was wrong.
The question of is this life worth living,
answered by, well not as it is.
But in our affliction and from our place, our prison,
behind bars, we cried out to God and he heard us.
He sent his word and he healed us.
He healed us and made us whole again.
And not only did he make us whole,
he restored our appetites.
But this time for what is good and what is good for us
and what allows us to flourish.
And now we are learning to say no to ungodliness
and to live upright and self-controlled lives
as his Holy Spirit teaches us.
Is your story a story of the love that makes us whole?
Tell the story.
And finally, tell the story of the love
that brings us peace.
We traverse a world in circumstances
where danger is great and death is imminent.
A world around us that is out of control
or out of our control.
Any of you control freaks in here?
Or recovering control freaks?
Yeah?
Many of us live with that need to control everything.
We wanna control our environment.
We wanna control the circumstances around us.
Or dare I say, we wanna control people
because they're our biggest headache, right?
I remember me and my wife went on a cruise once
and while we were on the boat,
they announced that there were giant swells of water
many, many feet high and that we were to hunker down
and prepare for the shaking.
And I don't know if you've ever been on a cruise before,
it's lovely when you're in the middle
at the buffet for the hundredth time.
But if you step out onto the deck and think for a moment,
you realize I'm out of control.
Like I don't know where I go.
If I get into that water,
I don't know how I'm getting anywhere.
There's no land in sight.
And it's all fine and dandy when the seas are fine
and the waves are fine.
It's all fine and dandy when the seas are fine.
But when that thing starts rocking, you start thinking,
what's gonna happen?
What am I gonna do?
How do I get out of here?
I don't mind flying.
I'm not scared of flying.
But I say a prayer before we take off every time.
Like I know I'm out of control.
I know I've got no control over what happens
in the next few minutes.
And then I can usually calm down for the rest of the flight
and then when they say they're landing, prayer number two.
Right?
Coming in.
And now after watching a lot of YouTube videos,
I'm not even sure I should be praying
while we're rolling on the tarmac
because sometimes you can't even make it to the gate
without crashing.
Like not to put any fear in anyone, but
we are out of control.
And in the moments for us,
those who struggle with control freak,
I always put myself in that,
I don't know if my wife would have to say
whether I'm a control freak or not.
And she said, yeah.
Okay, for us control freaks,
she didn't say that in first service.
For us control freaks,
we have to realize that we're never in control.
We're never in control.
We are a phone call away from the rest of our year
being completely different than what we planned out.
We are one moment away, one wrong decision on our part
or someone else's part.
One health diagnosis away from a completely different life
than you're living right this second.
We're not in control.
And when we realize that,
I realized that when my youngest,
kind of in a vivid term,
when my youngest,
I don't remember exactly how old he was,
one and a half, two, two years old,
had his first seizure.
And you were there, my mother-in-law was there,
and it was utter fear and terror over what was going on.
Just the circumstances, the ambulance, all of that stuff.
And that was the beginning.
There were years of continued seizures at random
with zero knowledge of what was happening.
Brain scans, doctors, we don't understand,
we don't know, we don't know anything.
And you want to provide, you want to protect,
but I remember the breaking point being,
sitting outside of the door, he was in there,
and he would oftentimes have him in at night
and just kind of getting to the point of going,
I don't know if he'll,
I would tremble in the morning,
and I would have to work up the ability
to go around the corner, to peek into the room,
to see if he was still alive.
I was so scared.
And I remember one time just kind of collapsing
in the hallway outside of his door,
and just crying and praying.
I'm dad, I'm supposed to protect, I have nothing.
And by God's grace, they stopped.
Just at some point in time, as he got older, they stopped.
And hasn't had them since 2016?
2016.
No diagnosis, no, we don't know anything,
we just know God was in control and I was not.
And the only way to get through that
was encountering a love that brings peace,
because I wasn't gonna get through it on my own.
Christ, remember when he was out there,
he was out on the waters with his disciples,
and the storms raging, and they go to Jesus
and they're like, we're going to die.
And Jesus with a word calms the storm,
and leads them to safe harbor.
You have to recognize that we're not in control,
and maybe our life was marked by an attempt
to control everything, and we met the Prince of Peace,
who brought peace into our life,
or is bringing peace into our life,
as we submit that area of our life and cry out to him
and say, you have control.
But I'm telling you, church, that these stories
of God's grace need to be told, not just thought of,
and not just broad strokes.
Earlier we sang the song,
let the redeemed of the Lord say so, right?
Right out of Psalm 107, but I don't know
if you've caught this yet, singing,
let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
you haven't done it yet.
All you've done is sing about doing it.
Now we have to do it, we have to say how God has redeemed us,
and not in some broad stroke general term.
Each one of us has a story to tell
about how the grace of God has encountered
or impacted our life on a day to day, year to year basis,
and throughout the course of our life that has steered us,
that has kept us safe.
Sometimes it's the love, sometimes it's the peace,
sometimes it's the wholeness that he brings.
Sometimes it's setting us free from a sin,
or addiction, or pattern of life.
Whatever it is, we have a story to tell,
and we need to tell those stories.
We need to proclaim what God has done.
This is our worship to the Lord,
and this is our edification of one another
to build each other up.
And so I'm gonna end on this.
How will we tell the story in 2025?
What are we going to do to kind of move this forward
as a congregation?
And the first thing I wanna say or lay out there
is you may have noticed in the lobby,
there's a new feature down by the snack bar
on the way to the gym.
On the left hand side, there's a wall there.
It's our tell the story wall.
And on that wall, there's some wire mesh,
and there's a table with some pads of paper.
And on that wall, I'm challenging us, I'm encouraging us.
As God moves, as we experience the grace of God
for provision or overcoming sin or whatever it is,
we experience God's grace, we would write down that story,
and we would roll up that piece of paper
and put it into that wall so someone else can come along
and pull it off and read about God's grace
at work in your life.
There's slots for many, many papers to go up there,
and my hope is that by the end of it,
they're just falling off the wall.
There are so many stories
because you know they're there, right?
You know you can identify how God has moved in your life,
and we wanna put a place out there for us
to not only tell the stories, but others to read them
and hear and be encouraged.
You can put your initials on there,
you can put your name on there,
you can leave it anonymous, I don't care,
just tell the story of God's grace.
That wall is going to be available for stories of peace,
stories of freedom, stories of wholeness,
marriages restored, life put back together,
provision given, peace given in the middle of a storm,
addiction or sin overcome, or just,
he brought me home, he gave me a family,
I feel like I belong.
I thank you, Lord.
Tell the story.
The second thing we're gonna do this year
is throughout the months, we're going to bring
some of you folks who are willing and courageous
to come tell your story live on stage.
We're gonna do a 10 minute kind of interview style
in the middle of a Sunday morning, both services,
and get an opportunity for you to tell the story
of God's grace at work in your life or throughout your life
so that we can all hear and be edified and encouraged.
The third way, the wall, the on stage interview stories,
the third way is through three workshops
that we're gonna launch this year.
The first one is called Landscape of Life.
It's an opportunity for you to map out the moments of grace
of God at work in your life over the course of your life,
moments where he met you, moments where you encountered him
and he moved in your life, and help you to discover those
and mine those and get them all mapped out,
and which moves to a second workshop we're gonna offer,
which is called Before You Share Your Faith,
and there you're gonna learn what to be prepared for,
how to pray for, and how to get ready to share your faith
with others so that we get comfortable and excited
about telling the story.
And then our final workshop this year is called Tactics.
It's a game plan for discussing your Christian convictions.
It's an apologetics class that teaches you how to interact
with current cultural and social issues right now
in a way that you can start conversations
and you can have answers and feel comfortable
about engaging in those conversations with people.
Three workshops that we're gonna offer this year,
and then the final way is each month,
our brother Chandler is putting together a video
of someone's testimony, someone's story about God's grace
that we'll get to experience once a month
throughout the year of 2025, just to encourage us
and to spur us on and to teach us
that we get an opportunity to experience the life of Christ
in another brother or sister.
And so we have our first video actually,
Chandler put together a video of himself and his story,
and we get to enjoy that this morning.
Let's go ahead and get the lights and play the video.
Let's go.
Hi, my name is Chandler Totes.
I've been attending Village for around two to three months.
I'm originally from Springfield, Missouri.
And my story began really from the time I was born.
I was raised up in the church,
definitely attended most Sundays
and I never really got involved in serving in my community,
but it was really just attending church on Sundays
and having that word of God
instilled in my heart and in my mind.
Around the time I was 16,
my mom was going through a divorce
with my stepdad at the time.
I really felt God putting it on my heart
to forgive my stepdad for the things
that was going on in the house.
I kind of wrestled with that idea,
but eventually I just knew that God really needed me
in order for me to move forward
and establish a faith of my own
and not just what my parents would tell me about.
I just knew I had to lean into that forgiveness.
So I forgave my stepdad and my family
for all the issues I was going on at the time.
And once I opened my heart up to forgiveness,
I really felt God's love and forgiveness for me.
It wasn't until April 24th of 2016,
I got baptized and dedicated my life to him.
So I'm pretty big into skateboarding.
I've been skateboarding all my life.
Videography also was a part of that
and making skateboard videos
with my friends and my brother.
So my brother and my friend and I decided
we're gonna move out to Los Angeles
after we graduate high school.
I graduated in 2017, but I got saved in 2016.
So for about a year, I had God just on my heart
and on my mind that whole time.
And I really was leaning into him in prayer
and asking him what he wanted for me.
Even though I had my mind set on moving to Los Angeles
and pursuing the skateboard dream,
I knew that if I was gonna really be a Christian,
I had to just let go of what I wanted
and ask God to give me what he wanted.
And there was a time when I was on my way home from work,
I was driving, listening to worship music
and asking God, where do you want me to go?
And in that moment, I felt God spoke to me two words
and he said, just wait.
I knew that once he spoke those words,
Los Angeles is not it.
I'm not going with my brother and my friend
like I had planned.
God had a different plan for me,
but he didn't tell me what it was.
So I just had to wait and see.
So I started following a couple of different
skate ministries.
I got connected with this one called
Calling All Skaters located in San Francisco.
They had a discipleship training school going on
in August of 2017 through March of 2018.
After high school, I was like, all right,
this is what I need to do.
I need to go away for six months
and just strictly focus on God
and meet other believers in the skateboard community.
I told my mom, I told my dad and the rest of my family,
I'm going to San Francisco.
I'm leaving for six months.
And they were very supportive.
They wanted me to go and follow what God's calling was
on my life.
I found myself in San Francisco,
huge culture shock being from Springfield, Missouri.
It was crazy.
Literally the dream of being in California.
It wasn't the Southern California,
it was Northern California,
but it was just crazy to be in San Francisco.
After seeing it and all the famous skateboarding videos,
it was unreal for me.
For three months,
I was focused on spending time in God's word
and fellowshipping with other believers.
And they were basically training us
to go out into the mission field.
And so they sent me and my crew to China.
It was definitely an experience,
one of the hardest times of my life,
but also one of the coolest times of my life.
So I finished my discipleship training school
in March of 2018.
And I didn't really know what my next steps were going to be,
but I definitely know that I fell in love with California.
My heart was set on coming back out here.
I just didn't know when and I didn't know how.
I decided again, I'm going to trust in God
and ask that he would make the way for me.
So I go back to Missouri.
I'm working my job.
Around October of 2018,
one of my good friends approached my brother and I,
and he said, hey, I think I'm going to move my family
to Elk Grove, California.
And I'd never heard of Elk Grove.
I really didn't even know about Sacramento at the time.
I just knew of San Francisco.
He was like, I would like you guys to come with me.
So my brother and I, we looked at each other
and we're like, man, I think this is it.
I think this is where we ought to go.
During that time, I just devoted myself
every morning to prayer,
asking God that he would just make the way.
I didn't know anyone out there.
I didn't know any jobs, wasn't trying to go to school,
really just was going out in faith.
And so every morning I'd wake up before I went to work
and I just prayed, I'd ask God that he would provide the job.
He would provide the place to stay.
He would provide the community,
the friends that we need to grow out here.
In between that time of prayer,
I found out I got connected with somebody
that was a part of a skate ministry
out in Vacaville, California.
He said, hey, I'd love to be your guys' roommates
if you guys wanna move out here.
So we had him search for apartments
while we stayed back in Missouri,
working, saving up all the money we could scratch up.
So in January of 2019, we said bye to our mom and our dad
and packed up each of our cars, my brother and I,
and we just hit the road for California,
not knowing what was gonna happen,
but just knowing that God was making the way for us.
And so once we got out here instantly,
before we even stayed the night,
before we even had any of our stuff out of our car,
our new roommate, he connected with the founder
and the owner of the skateboard ministry in Vacaville
called Ambassador Skateboards.
And I'd heard about Ambassador Skateboards
just through doing my research in skate ministry.
So I was like, wow, no way, we're meeting Frank Chavez
of Ambassador Skateboards.
And he laid out exactly what he felt like
God was putting on his heart,
which was he wanted my brother and I
to film and make skate videos for that company.
So just looking back at the three months prior,
me just praying, asking God, provide for the finance,
provide for the roommate, provide for the community,
that right there was the community
that we've been looking for.
Just landed in our laps
as soon as we stepped into our apartment.
We had community, we had fellowship,
and we had a job to film for the skateboard ministry.
So for the next couple of years,
we've just been filming and making skateboard videos,
literally living the dream.
We're not filming with pro skaters like we wanted to,
we're not filming with the best of the best,
we're filming with other believers,
other skateboarders that just have their belief in Jesus.
It was just so encouraging.
Being a part of that skate ministry
actually led me to my wife today,
and I met her in September of 2019.
So about eight months of just doing my thing,
skateboarding, I got introduced to my wife.
It was just God knowing exactly what I wanted,
what I needed in the perfect timing.
And I didn't come out to California
thinking I'm gonna get married.
I didn't come out to California thinking
I'm gonna be able to film the best of the best
of pro skateboarders.
I just came out with an open mind and an open heart
saying, God, just give me whatever you want for me to have.
At the time, we were both working jobs
that we didn't really like.
It was a blessing, obviously, but we wanted to do more.
We felt crazy calling on our lives.
Right before our wedding, we quit our jobs,
had some savings lined up, but really didn't have much.
At the time, my brother, he was pursuing a pallet business
where you go and collect pallets and then resell it.
So I saw the fruits of that,
and the timing couldn't have just been any better.
And I decided I was gonna join in with him
and help grow that business where, and my wife,
she was gonna pursue some little side hustles
that was gonna eventually turn into what it is today.
But yeah, it was just taking that step of faith,
saying, Lord, we don't know what it's gonna look like,
but we know that you want us to do this.
Seeing God's provisions for the last two and a half years
has just been absolutely incredible.
And we take it day by day, we take it month by month,
and every month we're just praying,
God, help us to meet our financial needs for this month.
I'm not kidding you, the last two and a half years
have just been straight God providing
every single day of our lives.
We know not everybody can do exactly what we're doing,
but I do believe that everybody can put their faith in Him
and trust Him.
That kind of leads us to where we're at right now.
Our first experience at Village was just complete hospitality
and people just loving on us and coming up to us,
wanting to get to know who we are.
And to be honest, I have been going to church
for all my life, but I haven't really felt
that kind of love and that kind of wanting to get to know you
from a church congregation.
I felt the past two and a half years
of just kind of hustling and working really hard.
I hate to say the word selfishly,
but we've kind of been trying really hard
to do all this, trusting in Him,
but not really making time for ministry.
So yeah, it kind of sounds selfishly,
but in a way it's, we have been doing
what we feel like God's been calling us to do,
but in the back of our minds,
we have been knowing that there's more for us.
It's about saying yes over and over again.
Yeah, it's been an incredible past couple of months,
attending Village and getting to know everybody here.
And we just feel super grateful and blessed
to be able to be a part of a community
that not only is right down the street from us,
but also is just so friendly and so loving and caring.
So I believe that God gave me this story
to tell others that His timing is perfect.
All we have to do is trust in Him and have faith
that He's gonna give us exactly what we need
at exactly the right times.
And it can be a little uncomfortable,
and it can be definitely a mental struggle at times.
I just hope that I can encourage others
to tell their story of God's grace
and His faithfulness in their lives as well.
["The Last Supper"]
Well, thank you Chandler for putting that together
and for being willing to, courageous to get on there
and tell a little bit of your story.
And for all of us, in eight minutes,
we got to know a little bit more about Chandler
and Elisha and their journey that led them here
and God's faithfulness in their lives.
Imagine throughout the year hearing more and more
of those stories and just what it's gonna do for us
as a community of faith to be able to tell more
of what God has done.
So I just wanna remind you as we head on out
and we're gonna move into our time of communion
before we dismiss, but there is a wall out there for you
to mark out the year on those moments of grace
and use it, okay?
You fill it up for not just your encouragement
but for our encouragement to say what the Lord has done.
And then just be prepared.
If you are moved and you go,
right now the Lord is maybe moving on your heart
or you just know I have a story to tell
that would edify or build up the body
and I need to tell that story.
We wanna hear from you.
We have a text message set up.
Let's have that slide put up there.
If you want to tell your story,
and we have multiple ways we're gonna do that via video
like Chandler did there, but we also have the interviews
and even some articles that we're gonna put out.
And so it doesn't necessarily mean
you have to get behind a camera.
It just means we wanna hear your story.
If you wanna tell your story of God's grace
and text the word story to 818-1225.
818-1225, just text the word story
and we'll get in contact with you.
And we wanna begin to prepare that list
of folks who want to share what God has done in their lives.
If you receive the text message communication
from us already about upcoming events and stuff,
then you already have that number on your phone.
Just find that text message thread and reply to its story.
We want your name and we wanna get in contact with you
and start to discover your journey of faith.
And so go ahead and text that.
We're gonna move into our time of communion.
I'm gonna invite the worship team to come join on stage.