Some of you are here because of those calls and we thank you.
We thank you very much for coming.
We're glad that you have decided to be a part of our worship service this morning and learn
more about the Lord's work here at Venture Christian.
We want to help you get acquainted with us.
We are Venture Christian Church.
We're in the 915 service, which is our blended service.
Includes high energy worship songs as well as more traditional hymns and kind of an updated
tempo and arrangement.
We have other styles.
One at 1045 is a little more contemporary, a little more loud.
As somebody said, you kind of feel the worship in there because the sound is a little louder.
We have a traditional service at eight o'clock.
We have an opportunity to sort of find the one that fits who you are.
Venture Christian Church.
What is a Christian?
What do we mean by a Christian church?
Well, obviously the word Christian is focused on the word Christ with the letters I-A-N
on the end of it.
It's not too hard to figure out, is it?
I mean, we talk about Californians.
I can't say that in the Austrian that our governor uses, but I'm Irish.
Californians are people who identify with or belong to California.
Rotarians are those who belong to the Rotary Club, one of the civic clubs of America and
the world.
Christians are those who belong to or who identify with or who follow Jesus Christ.
That's because Jesus invited us to come and follow him.
In fact, it's the text I wanted you to look at.
It's in your notes, and that's on a blue piece of paper inside your bulletin.
I invite you to pull that out and look at it as together we think about the vision of
Venture Christian Church.
Jesus said, come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Notice Jesus says, come and follow.
The first thing I notice is this, that Venture Christian is about journey.
We're on a trip with Jesus.
He says, come and follow me.
We're here to journey together to know God and to make him known, to know God personally
and more deeply, and then to make him known to others.
That's what this journey that we're on is all about.
A journey implies that there is a start and there is a finish.
Journeys don't last forever, do they?
There's a starting point.
There's a finish point.
We went on a little trip last weekend to see my wife's family in northern Kentucky.
We started here.
We flew to Dayton, Ohio.
We drove down across the river into northern Kentucky.
Then we came back home.
That was our journey, a starting point, a finishing point.
For a spiritual journey, the starting point is really that place in life where you come
to and you begin to sense that not everything is okay inside.
You begin to sense that there is this God-shaped hole, a vacuum that only God himself can fill.
You begin this journey to figure out how can I get satisfied inside?
How can I fill this hole that's in my life?
How can I escape the bondages and the guilt and the problems in my life?
The journey lasts throughout the lifetime and the finish of it is death.
A journey involves a start and a finish, but a journey also implies that what's in between
is very important.
That is, what happens from the time you begin this search for something transcendent, something
more, until the end of life is very important.
Now, the journey has all kinds of twists and turns and surprises in it.
The journey consists of a series of decisions that we all make in life, deliberately or
not deliberately.
But these decisions ultimately determine our destiny.
A journey implies a start and a finish and that what happens in between is very important
and it implies furthermore that none of us has arrived.
That in fact we all are still very much in process that we're on a journey.
We are growing.
We are being changed.
A spiritual journey requires some things.
It requires first of all that we discover with others, not alone.
You see, God has made us this way that we need to connect with other people.
He has not made us to be lone rangers.
God has made us to need others in our lives.
And it reminds me to say to you once more as we said in the announcement that next Sunday
at 1045 in room 214 up here in the educational part of our campus, it's going to be my privilege
to meet with all of you who are new to Venture Church.
We want to have a let's get acquainted time.
It's going to be very informal, no pressure, just an opportunity to get acquainted and
to have some Q&A together.
So I hope that you'll join me up there because you see we need one another on this journey.
A journey also requires that we're real.
Not that I mean that we're authentic.
It doesn't take very long in life to learn that we need to build defenses around us.
Would you agree with that?
Even as a child I learned I needed to defend myself.
The first time I really remember this is after my father died when I was eight years of age.
I needed to defend myself in certain ways and build walls so that I wouldn't get hurt
like that again if I could ever help it.
And we learn as we grow up to put masks in place because we're afraid.
A spiritual journey requires that we begin to take the masks off, that we be real with
God and we be real with one another, that we let God know really what's on the inside
of us, not try to pretend.
I mean after all God knows anyway, doesn't he?
So we might as well be honest with him.
And we need to find some people that we can be honest with.
One of our goals here at Venture is to make this a safe place so that you can find a place
where it's safe for you to be who you are.
We're on a spiritual journey together.
You know God has put a universal desire in all of our hearts.
That desire is that we all want to be a part of something that matters.
I've known a lot of people in my life and I've yet to meet a single person who said
I just want to blow my life.
I want to end my life living for nothing.
I've never met a single person like that.
Now some people have lived their lives that way but not because they intended to.
It was the consequence of the decisions they made in the journey.
We all want to be a part of something that is significant and that matters.
I believe that growing into a real community of Christ followers on a lifelong journey
is something that matters and it matters forever.
That's what we're here to talk about today is being a part of that journey.
We invite you to join with us in it.
We want this to be that kind of a place.
Pastor Dave is my co-pastor here.
Come on up here and tell us what kind of a place this is.
You've got some neat ways of putting it.
Thanks Galen.
Listen some of you are probably saying what in the world is this guy doing sitting up
there on a stool?
Well listen, Galen our co-pastor is here at the church.
He usually preaches at the 8 and 9.15 hour and I preach at the Saturday night service
at 5 and then at 10.45 hour.
He explains some of the differences between them.
There is a way to tell us apart.
I'm the one that has the solar power spot on the back of his head.
I have baby oil on it today so I can get a tan off of this new screen that we have going
here.
Listen we believe that God's house ought to be just filled with joy and laughter.
But if you take a look at your outline, we've got a lot of other things.
What kind of place do we want to be?
Now listen, I've spent several hours this week with technicians from Dallas trying to
get a PDA that I have functioning again because it went haywire.
And I had a guy say to me about 10 o'clock the other night, well pastor there's something
corrupted in your files.
Well I knew that already.
How many of you have ever known anybody with a corrupted attitude?
And I find out if I'm that careful I can get one.
So when we're talking about a church place, look at the first one, we want to be a place
where positive attitudes are developed.
There's enough negativity in the world, doesn't need to come from here.
There's another thing, we want to be a place where good people become better.
Now somebody's going to say, well I thought the church talked about sinners and all that.
Well we are and you're going to hear Galen talk about that.
But if you take a look in the scriptures, it says that God created, and after He created
everything which included man and woman, He said that this is good.
There's a goodness that God has placed within us, but in some of us it's gone dormant.
We see it in movies like Snow White and so forth.
Remember the story of Snow White?
She dies because she ate the forbidden what?
You know the poison apple?
And then she's laid out in a glass coffin because her beauty still remained until the
prince came and kissed her and she came alive again with the beauty that God intended for
her to have.
On the other side of that you see where you have the princes kissing the what?
The frog.
The men are always the frogs.
And all of a sudden the frog is released to live the life that he was intended to live.
We believe that when we get connected with God, the goodness of God is released within
us.
Here's the third thing we want you to see is simply this.
This is a place where hurts are healed.
Now we've got to get honest about this.
Everybody has hurts.
Everybody has scars including the Lord Jesus Christ.
Nobody gets out of this life without scars.
Sometimes our scars are self-inflicted and other times they're inflicted upon us.
But this place is a healing place where God comes and begins to heal the soul.
And because he begins to heal the soul, he begins to heal all of life around us.
This is a place where friendships are developed.
And may I say to you not just short, shallow friendships but long-term friendships.
Matter of fact, if the person who's sitting next to you and if you are a Christian, then
that person is your brother and sister in Christ.
They are your brother and sister in Christ.
They are your friend.
But they are not just your earthly friend.
They will be the friend that you live in heaven with forever and ever.
So why don't you take a look at the person next to you and say, you are my forever friend.
Because these are the people we're going to live with forever.
These are the people we're going to be around with in heaven and heaven and heaven forever
and ever and ever.
Now the next thing we need to see is that this is a place where marriages are strengthened.
It's been married 42 years.
Now I say this quite openly.
Been married 42 years, been married happily for 35 years.
You get my drift?
Listen, marriage is God's idea.
We're a little confused about that in this state.
But marriage is God's idea.
Okay?
But when we say marriage is God's idea, we know that Satan's job is to try to undo what
God calls good.
So don't be surprised that you have difficulties in your marriage.
Don't be surprised that the enemy, as we call them, Satan comes against us.
Because the enemy is about trying to destroy everything that God has put together for our
good.
He put together marriage for our good.
Satan's trying to destroy it.
What's the job of the church?
We're at a place that we want to strengthen your marriage and say hang in there.
God's got a plan for you, not only for eternity, but right now in the midst of your family.
I can say that better after 42 years of marriage.
You know, there were those times when I would roll over in bed and put my arm around my
wife and say, God, thank you for the greatest gift you've ever given to me.
And there are those times, and I've said it publicly before, where I've gotten bed turned
my back to my wife and said, God, where did you get this woman?
Okay?
She said the same thing about me, and we're honest about that.
But yet God, after 42 years of marriage, binds us together in the goodness of his love.
Here's the other thing you need to see, which is where families are bonded.
And I have three children.
I can call them child.
They can call me dad.
But there's something else about that.
Because they have given their life to Jesus, each of my sons are also my brothers in Christ,
and my daughter is my sister in Christ.
There's something that's happened to us together as a family as we've ministered together,
prayed around our table, and asked God to bless our home.
And our family has become sweeter and better because of it.
Now let me ask you, how many of you ladies are married?
Can I see your hands?
Okay, now I'm going to ask you the next question.
How many of you have a remote control in your home for your TV?
Now the next question, how many of you have husbands that drive you crazy with it?
Okay, now listen, there's a restlessness in life.
There's a restlessness in life.
If a man gets a remote, you see the restlessness.
My wife says to me, keep it somewhere.
Just click it somewhere and stay more than 30 seconds.
Right now, that whole thing says to us that there's a restlessness in our life.
And here's what I know, the Bible says to me that God gives to me a peace that passes
all understanding.
And I need that peace because there are things that come into my life that spark my restlessness.
And unless God is there, I'll wonder and I'll wonder and I'll wonder.
Instead of journeying into his arms and finding the peace that only he can give to me.
What's the next thing, kind of church we want to be?
Well, we want to be a place where love is alive.
Well, we just don't talk about God's love, but where God's love is demonstrated and people
are blessed because they come into God's house.
Here's the other thing that we say, we want to be a place where God is understood.
Now let me be very, very candid about this.
We have both taken time to get educated in scripture, in the Bible.
We both have our academic degrees.
And we have taken years of our life to set a study time aside just so we can grow on
God's word.
And I have to tell you, it would not be difficult for either one of us to get up here on the
weekend and to give to you what I call a Bible history lesson.
That would be easy for us to do, but you'd walk away with some good history and what
else.
And so what we try to do every weekend is to answer the question, so what?
That's what the Bible says.
And here's the question, so what?
What does it mean to my life today?
To know about God, but not to know God is something we don't want to have happen.
So when we preach and teach, we want to tell you what the Bible says, but yet in a way
that we can get a handle on it and know that we know God better because of the things that
we read together in His word.
Here's the other thing, type of church we want to be, we want to be a place where Jesus
Christ is Lord.
Well, somebody says, well, what do you mean, Jesus Christ is Lord?
Listen, I can say an awful lot about that, but let me simplify it by saying it this way.
Of all the people who've ever lived and walked on the face of the earth, Jesus is the person
that we need to listen to and follow.
He is the most significant person who's ever been on the face of the earth.
And when I listen to Him and follow Him, make Him the Lord of my life, He reconnects me
with God, Creator, my eternal Father, that I might have relationship for Him now and
forever.
Listen, we call that life transformation.
And I want you to turn your attention now to the screens because we have a testimony
for you.
Ron and I met in high school.
We dated a couple of years, got married, moved around a lot because he was in the military
and settled here in 1978.
He moved here in 78 because Ron got hired after getting out of the military.
He got hired by IBM.
And we started getting involved in activities to do here in the Bay Area, hiking and biking,
snow skiing, winter sports.
And we were training to climb Half Dome in 2006.
And July 3rd, my world changed.
July 3rd, 2006, I woke up to the alarm clock and my husband didn't, he had died in his
sleep.
Ron and I have been together 36 years.
And I found myself alone for the first time, really alone.
I mean, we'd been apart because of trips or things, work related things.
And I found myself sleeping downstairs because we didn't want to go back upstairs.
And it was difficult to go back into the bedroom.
You're putting one foot in front of the other and getting through planning a funeral, making
arrangements.
And God putting the people, the high people in your life to help you do what you need
to do to get through each day.
And as I'm trying to adjust to life anew, I wanted to find a church family.
I'm grateful.
I know that all my needs are being met.
All my needs are being met.
God's got a plan.
I'm still trying to live each day, one day at a time.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to cross for you and not to
harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
This is my story.
This is my life.
And I thank God for every part of it.
Amen.
All right, thank you.
You may be seated.
Thank you, Stephane.
Praise God.
You know, the reason we were in a hurry to get up here is because that slide that said
real people with real stories building real community, that testimony that Eva gave to
us is just a wonderful example of that.
She's right here in the choir this morning.
Eva, God bless you.
Thank you for sharing with us.
And folks, that's what it's all about.
We're in this journey together.
We need each other.
We need each other on the journey.
Our vision is to build that kind of a church.
But we have a message, we declare, as we're with Jesus.
In Mark chapter 1, you'll notice there's another verse we read from verse 38.
It says, Jesus replied, let us go somewhere else.
Notice, let us go.
He's journeying together with his followers.
Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there also.
That is why I have come.
As we journey, we, like Jesus, have a message to share.
And that message is that God wants everyone to know Him.
God wants everyone to know Him.
He loves all people.
God is not hiding somewhere in His universe.
God is all the time communicating His glory, even in languages that have no vocabulary,
like in the heavens displaying His glory.
But God wants a people to articulate His love and His truth to others.
And that's why we're here.
You'll notice that we are this weekend talking a lot about global outreach.
We have a man who's heading off to Africa tomorrow.
And in the month of October, as a congregation, we're going to celebrate reaching out to other
nations of the world.
Whether it be in other cultures or be right here at home, as we do in our school ministry,
in our sports ministry, and so many other ways, we as a congregation know we have a
message to declare.
We want to help other people come to know God.
Now, what does it mean to know God?
To know God is much more than to know about God, as if God could be somehow condensed
into a theology class or a subject or a topic to be mastered.
What it means to know God is to have a relationship with God, a relationship.
We want to help everyone come to experience God in their own lives.
This relationship that we can have with God is a relationship that is based upon love,
His great love for us.
The Bible tells us that God loves all the world, all people everywhere.
As someone has said, if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
Because you're precious to Him.
He loves you.
That's why He created you.
You were created to know God and to enjoy Him.
That's your purpose.
So what is it that prevents this love relationship with God?
All people have it.
It's because of that innate human desire to be boss of our own lives.
We all want to be in charge.
We want to be in control of our lives, not God.
That's what the Bible calls sin.
And it is that desire, that self-centeredness, that self-focus that all of us have.
It is that which separates us from God and places our spiritual journey and our ultimate
destiny in terrible jeopardy.
God tells us in His word that He pursues us.
He relentlessly pursues you.
Jesus said, I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.
He came to personally, Jesus came to personally show us God through His life and His works
and then to provide our reconnection to God through His death and resurrection.
The Bible says that even while we were still sinners, while we were very much self-focused,
God demonstrated His love for us in this way.
Christ died for us.
Your spiritual journey brought you here today to this service, to this campus.
It's no accident that you're here.
Today you can begin a new chapter of your spiritual journey, a whole new direction in
it if you will become a follower of Jesus Christ.
And that's what we invite you to do.
No matter where you've come from, no matter who you are, God loves you.
When Jesus extends the call to you and He says, come, follow me and I will make you.
I don't know what He wants to make you.
I don't know how He wants to form your life and use you, but He does.
I hope that you will join us on this spiritual journey to know God personally and more deeply
and then to make Him known to others as well.
Pastor Dave, come now and wrap us up.
Thanks, Galen.
You know, Galen and I have been in the ministry long enough that we've made a lot of hospital
calls.
I made one this week.
Matter of fact, I made several this week.
One was a call to the emergency room over at Santa Teresa to a friend of mine that has
been a friend of mine since high school days.
And when I got there, he was weak.
He'd had pneumonia about a week and a half ago and was still trying to recover from that.
And through what I call a whisper of a voice, he just said to me, something's terribly wrong
with my body.
Now, listen, you don't have to look around very far.
You look at 9-11, you look at the corporate greed of Wall Street and the things that we've
been living through the last couple of weeks to know that there's evil in the world.
And there's personal evil within us.
Somebody said it this way, everybody has been snake bit talking about Satan, the great serpent.
Everybody has some trouble in their life that they brought on themselves by their own bad
decisions.
But there's some great verses in the Bible.
I call them exesketch verses.
You know what an exesketch is?
You know what I'm talking about?
It's where you make an ugly picture and then you do what?
You turn it upside down and what?
You shake it and you have a do-over.
Listen, one of the things that we know about God is that he's the do-over God.
We mess up things and he brings forth his forgiveness and he brings life to it.
He's the exesketch God.
And what I mean by that is not that he overlooks the things that we do, but he finds a way
to bring forgiveness for the things that we do.
Because we matter to God and God has chosen to live in relationship with us.
One of my favorite stories is a story that comes from a man by the name of Ron Dunn.
Now Ron had a five-year-old boy who was turning six years old and so he said to his soon-to-be
six-year-old son, why don't you select five friends and we'll go out to the amusement
park together and we'll celebrate your birthday.
And so his son selected five friends.
Now one of these amusement parks in Southern California was like the Santa Cruz Boardwalk
where you had to buy the individual tickets to be given out.
And so when he walked into the park with these kids, he just bought this humongous pile of
tickets so they could go all the rides.
And you know, some of the rides were two tickets and some were three and some were four.
And so he said he had these six kids and every time they get ready to go on a ride, he would
be taking off three or four tickets and handing them to each of the kids and they'd go ride
that ride and then they'd come off and say, let's take another ride.
And he would stand there and he'd pass out three or four tickets to the kids again or
they get on the ride.
And he said lunchtime came and they went over and began to eat the hamburgers, the hot dogs,
the corn dogs, to find some cotton candy and to do those things.
And in the midst of eating, they began to play with a bunch of the other kids that were
having lunch with their families.
And when they got ready to go on some more ride, he called his kids together and they
went to the next ride and they all lined up and he was passing out tickets.
And as he got to the last one, he packed out some tickets and he stopped for a moment.
And he said, I thought I was passing out tickets to six kids.
And he realized that he had passed them out to seven.
And so he kind of looked around and he spotted a face that he didn't know and he said to
the little boy, he said, who are you?
And the little boy looked up and said, I'm your son's new friend.
And then this little boy looked at him and said, your son told me that if I would be
his friend, his dad would give me tickets for the ride.
Now, really, that's part of what we're talking about here.
There's a heavenly ride, begins on earth, takes us all the way to heaven.
And because we become a friend of Jesus Christ, God gives us a ticket.
See, there's some people say, well, you're just talking about heaven.
You know, there's a country western song out now that says what I've heard people say forever,
everybody wants to go to heaven, they just don't want to go now.
Yeah, I am talking about heaven.
But Jesus said this, I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.
That's a here and now thing, that you may have life to its fullness right now in the
here and now.
See, heaven begins for us here.
And at the right time, we are translated there.
Because God has a plan for us that begins right here.
But I have to invite Jesus into my life to be my friend.
See, there's some of you here today said, well, you know, maybe I need to think about
that.
I've heard about Jesus and I don't really know enough and I would like to know more
about that.
And I have to tell you, Galen and I are available for those conversations and so are other
people on our staff.
But may I say to you, some of you, this is your day.
You're not here by accident.
God's been talking to you about going to church and getting closer to Him.
God's been warming your heart with His love and somehow that motivated you to get out
of your bed today and to get here this morning because today is your day.
Today is the day where God wants you to say, yes, I want Jesus to be my friend and I want
you, God, to be my Father forever and ever and ever and I want to sit at your table in
heaven someday.
See, God loves the world, but just as Galen said, if God had a refrigerator, your picture
would be on it.
God knows you by name and He's inviting you by name to be His forever child.
Somebody says, well, how do you do that?
Well, you tell Jesus that you want to be His friend.
That's how you start.
And you tell God that you want Him to be your forever Father.
And you can do that just while you're looking up here.
You don't have to close your eyes or anything.
All you have to say in the depth of your heart is, dear Jesus, I want you to be my forever
friend and I want your Father to be my forever Father.
And if you'll just start right there and take a step of faith, God will meet you there.
But it's a conscious decision by faith.
I want Jesus to be my Lord, my Savior, my forever friend.
And I want God to be my God.
And for some of you, today's your day.
God has opened the door and He's asking you to walk through it.
Now listen, one of the ways that we celebrate being children of God in the life of our church
is through what we call the Lord's Supper.
Some groups call it the Eucharist.
Some other people call it the Communion Service.
It's where you eat a piece of bread and drink some grape juice or some wine and you are
reminded that you have become a friend of God through Jesus Christ and that God has
a place setting waiting for you at the table.
Let me ask you a question.
How many of you home have your place to sit at the table?
You do, don't you?
God has a place for you to sit at the table.
And one of the ways that we remind ourselves about that is through what we call the taking
of the Lord's Supper.
Galen is going to come and talk more about that and then we are going to receive the
Lord's Supper this morning.
Galen?
In this service we remember Jesus in a special way each week.
And what we do is to pass the trays and we invite you if you are a follower of Jesus
or if today you want to become a follower of Jesus, we invite you to take a piece of
the bread and one of the cups and hold it and pass the tray on to some others.
Then to spend a few minutes reflecting and thinking when you are ready to partake and
remember Him.
The usher is going to distribute the elements and I am going to pray right now.
Father, I pray that as we remember Jesus together that in a very wonderful way the Savior would
draw close to each of us.
And as we remember the price that Jesus paid on the cross to sacrifice, may our hearts be
broken and may we be drawn to Him afresh and anew.
Amen.