- Happy New Year.

Like you aren't sick of hearing that already.

It's probably the last thing you remember hearing

8 hours or something long ago like that.

Hey, I'm Brian. Welcome to Crossroads.

Yes, the first full day of 2023.

Welcome to the whole Crossroads community,

many of us who are gathered digitally

or physically every week.

We've shut down all of our physical sites

and all of our locations because we're giving you,

the volunteer an ability to just have the time off

and our staff as well.

So thanks for rolling with us as we all are here right now.

I'm excited about two things that are going to happen.

First, the very, very end of our time,

we're going to give you a brand new worship song

and performance of it you can worship to.

That's going to be, I think, really, really solid.

I'm going to give you a talk of something I did

here in this building not too long ago

that turned out pretty well.

And I'll tell you more about that in just a moment.

But before we talk about 2023,

you do realize the 2022,

as far as Crossroads is concerned, was great.

I mean, awesome.

I mean, like, everything you could measure,

everything up and to the right,

like, just about everything highest of ever

in our history as a church.

Wow, wow, and wow.

Let me give you some highlights,

which I think are pretty encouraging.

Baptisms, people coming into a relationship with Christ,

they get baptized, over 1300, 1360 baptisms.

Pastor math, I could just say 1500.

I could just round it up and say 2000.

But no, that is an unbelievable amount. Well done.

I know you had a hand in that.

If you got baptized this year,

I hope that you're doing well and great in your faith.

Great to have you part of the covenanted community.

That's baptisms.

We've also got camps have been taking off, exploding.

And we had 201 baptism by the way at camps.

5350 people who are actually at all of our camps.

Whew, that is crazy.

We had 500 people signing up for a GO Trip.

That's a place to serve somebody in a cross cultural experience.

So let me tell you why it's important.

It's really important because while we want all of us

to be experiencing God however we can,

we recognize that there's certain things

that we need to turbocharge our growth.

There's only so much growth you can have watching a screen.

There's only so much growth you can have

actually sitting in a Crossroads building.

We have structured our church in 2022

around the seven proven practices.

We had a whole series on that.

These are the things that stand the test of time,

they could be called the seven Ancient Practices

or the seven Sacred practices.

Things like telling my story, weekly teaching,

community, serving others.

There's seven of them.

I'm not going to go into all this right now,

but we're structuring our church,

we have structure our church around those things.

You can see it on our web presence and other ways

because we want you to grow.

We don't just want you to attend something.

We want your life to be fully and holistically aligned

with who God is and have all the blessings

and all the fruit of that.

What camps and what GO Trips do is

an area of turbo charge where you're put into something

that's uncomfortable, that's an adventure

that's outside of what you're normally expecting,

and it pushes you farther than you would have ever gone before.

So consider please in 2023, if you have a goal

or if you want to add yourself a new resolution 2023,

make it, "I'm going to attend a camp

or a Crossroads GO Trip."

You will be very, very thankful that you did.

By the way, speaking of digital,

we're interacting digitally right now.

Would you like some more good news?

Of course you would like some more good news.

We've had 150,000 journal entries

inside of the app this year,

which is about understanding the Bible.

We've had 1.1 million prayer requests,

1.1 million prayer requests, 5 million prayers prayed.

That means if you submitted a prayer request,

on average, 5 people have prayed for your prayer request

and the number of yeses are actually pretty astounding.

Take advantage of our our Crossroads app this year.

You'll be the better for it.

Now, what we're going to do right now

is we're going to go to something that might be

a future thing that we do as a part of the church.

We're always trying to do something that's forward facing.

We don't want to be the church of yesterday.

We don't even want to just be the church of today.

We want to be the church that's in touch with

what God is doing tomorrow.

The New Testament says to walk in step with the Spirit.

So we're trying to understand what that is.

Sometimes God will give you a download of a thought

that's directly from His voice box and you go,

"Okay, God has spoken."

That's very rare, though.

Most of the time what happens is we have a nod

or an inkling and we step and we try something

and then we learn, "Oh, that was God prompting me here

that I should keep doing it."

But we've got to get moving, that's why at Crossroads

we want to talk about your spiritual adventure.

If you're going to grow spiritually,

you have to see it as an adventure.

You've got to move.

You've got to take action on things.

So we've had this idea: what do we do to reach

the youngest generation in America

or the younger generations?

What does that future look like?

And so we're testing different things,

trying different things.

One of those things, we basically set up

a comedy club atmosphere

here at our Crossroads Uptown location

and invited a bunch a bunch of youngsters,

which would be, like, anybody who's in 20s

or late teens for me.

We had a couple gray hairs, but it was mainly

a real, real young crowd.

And we had four different talks taking a swing at

helping those folks navigate life and spiritual formation.

We're going to give you one of those talks.

It was my talk.

I hope it's helpful for you.

And I'll see you back here in about about 10 minutes.

Man, all right, all right.

I'll own it. I own it.

I'm the oldest person here.

I get to fill the dad role,

and I'm going to do that joyfully tonight.

I'm going to do that tonight.

I have been, man, I've been through

a lot of difficulty in my life.

I've been through a lot of ups and downs.

And what I noticed is the one thing

that I can always depend on is the truth that's in this book.

I'm going to give you a verse tonight that I've memorized,

but I'm going to read it for you anyway,

just so you know I'm getting it right.

It's Philippians 1:6, it says this:

I'm sure of this, that he began a good work in you

is faithful to complete it.

What does this mean to you?

It means your future is secure. It's secure.

For much of my life, I've had levels of stress.

All of us have stress, anxiety, fear in one degree or another.

All of us have different things that have triggered it.

Some of my things have been,

gosh, seven years to get through college.

Some of you are going to do it in four years.

Very, very impressive. It took me seven years.

My -- I still have recurring nightmares today,

not today, four days ago, literally,

a recurring nightmare that I had a final the next day

that I didn't know about and didn't study.

But I still have this on and on and on.

Massively difficult.

I got inside of credit card debt that was incredibly painful

and caused me to fear credit card debt.

Credit card debt was so bad I got married

and after two months of having our own apartment,

had to humiliate myself and go into

my father-in-law's attic with my new wife,

with his daughter, because we couldn't afford our life

given the level of debt that I had.

We had a kid and the level of stress and anxiety

was high because we had zero medical insurance

Do you know how humiliating it is to go into a hospital

and just tell them, "I'd like to have my child here,

but I can't afford it"?

And them put you on charity care, and I was thankful for it.

I've had the stress and difficulty of starting a church,

the stress and difficulty and anxiety of keeping

a bunch of nonprofits I've helped started keep going.

And I have to say to myself, before God,

he who began a good work in me, is faithful to complete it.

Why? Because my future is secure.

I don't know if there's ever been a more important word

that all of us need to hear,

especially those of us who are younger.

The American Psychiatric Association takes a look at

what's happening in our country.

Nearly two in three adults, that's 65% say

that there's a certain amount of uncertainty

in our nation causes them stress.

60%, 60% of all of us say the number of issues

that we are currently facing as America is overwhelming.

And here's the thing, on top of those statistics,

the younger you are, the worse you're doing.

This is the way it is in every developed country

as they take these statistics,

the younger you are, the more stressed you are,

the more anxious you are, the more fearful you are,

the more likely you are on medication,

the more likely there's other medical mental illness issues.

The younger you are, the worse off you are.

Why is that?

Number of different theories for this.

One is, well, younger people, they're just weaker.

Next generation, just they're not as good.

You've heard it, you know, the snowflake generation,

all that kind of stuff.

Do you realize that every generation in American history

since the Revolutionary War

has said that about the next generation?

Every generation thinks that they're the best ones

and the ones coming after them are losers.

It's just not true, but that's one theory.

Maybe this is the weakest generation.

I don't believe it. I don't think it's true.

But that's one theory.

Another theory, which of course, you'd know about,

you're aware of this, we ought to at least talk about it

is social media.

I can't imagine how much more stress I would have had

when I was 18, 19, 20, if I knew I was losing.

I can't imagine seeing pictures of people

who are doing things that I couldn't do

and I couldn't afford to do.

I can't imagine how much more credit card debt

I would be in.

Fortunately, I only had spent time with losers,

so I felt like it was okay.

So, social media is definitely jacking it up.

The third thing is where I want to spend the rest of our time.

The third reason why or possibility for why

the younger you are, the more stressed,

the more anxious you are, is the younger you are,

the less likely you've grown up in a culture

that respects God.

The younger you are, the more the world view

has taken over your mind, your acquaintances,

your education, your everything that says

you are a random chance accident.

There's a random amalgamation of proteins,

there was this cosmic goo

and over random periods of time

and natural selection, there's you.

So there's cosmic goo and there's you.

Don't you feel good about yourself?

And the answer is no, no.

How can you possibly feel secure in a future

when it's all about you, when you and I know

that we're not that good and we're not that adequate?

It's warping us, it's hurting us,

it's killing us, it's wiping us out.

Out of my podcast, oh, gosh, maybe two years ago,

a psychologist, a Jewish psychologist,

very, very smart woman.

And she deals with children and families

that are in stress and anxiety and fear.

And she tells parents, she said,

"If you don't believe in God,

you need to lie to your child."

She put that clearly, because she says

you might have some great comfort

that there's nothingness and when you die,

it's blackness and there's nothing but you.

But your child doesn't.

They can't handle the idea that there's just blackness

and there's nothingness.

So if you want your child to not struggle with anxiety,

you need to tell them what you don't believe yourself.

She tells them to lie.

Her name is Erika Komisar.

I just want to tell you, I want tell you right now,

is it any any surprise at all

that we're doing everything we can to tell one another

there is no God, there is no higher entity,

there's nothing out there, and then we actually act like it.

What did you think would happen

if you told a whole culture, a whole younger generation

that you are alone, you are so very alone,

that there is nobody that has your back,

there's no higher power, there's no backstop,

there's no power beyond your own pocket book

or the government?

What did we think would possibly happen,

other than what's happening right now?

Youngest generation in crisis because

we're getting the fruit of our labors,

the fruit of our teaching that says it's all about you.

That verse said he -- he who has begun a good work

is faithful to complete because your future is secure.

He, not me. He.

I think it's interesting it doesn't even say God,

it says he.

Why he?

I don't want to really debate the whole thing

of is God male, female, because Jesus says,

the New Testament says God is Spirit.

So where there's spirit, there's not genitalia.

Now, Jesus certainly had genitalia,

but God is -- doesn't have genitalia.

So, how do you understand is He male or female?

I don't want to get into the whole was God male or female?

All I want to do is say this verse,

and the rest of them in the Bible,

when they talk about God, they call Him a He.

Not really saying He is the best way,

but it's saying He's a personal God with personalities,

with a personality.

He understands things. He's knowable.

He's not just this general cosmic aura that's out there.

He's someone you can know and someone you can interact with.

He isn't me, because if I'm left to me,

I don't have the resources to get through my stress,

get through my anxiety, and get to a future that's secure.

But He will give you a future that's secure.

When I saw this just come so beautifully into focus

was when I went over to India.

The first time I went over to India,

we had started some homes that were helping children

who had come out of the rape for profit industry.

That's what a brothel is in India,

the rape for profit industry of minors, of young girls.

And as these girls would get rescued,

they would -- they are put into a place

where for years and years they are deprogrammed

to try to understand that there is a God who loves them

and trying to understand that there is a purpose for them

and there is a future for them.

And I came into one of the exercises in this home

that we support, and they brought in this guy

who had these this whole drum set

and he gave everybody a drum.

So, I was there as a visitor.

So I sat in the circle with all the girls and I had a drum.

And he's, like, kind of drumming.

And we all start drumming together.

And he'd go softly and we drum softly.

He'd started drumming loudly, we'd start drumming loudly,

and different cadences.

It was really cool, the whole thing.

And then he gets done with the whole thing

and then he tries to give his talk to everybody.

And he says this, "What did we learn today?

What we learned is

in here everything that we need is in us.

That's what we learned.

Everything we need is inside of us."

I looked around at these girls, knowing myself

that this is certainly not what the Bible says.

He who -- He who started a good work in you

is faithful to, but He not me, He.

And I looked -- I'm thinking, I'm looking

and these girls just looking at him like,

"What are you talking about?"

See, only in a spoiled country like ours,

where we can debate endlessly,

have time to debate endlessly,

and we don't have to worry about shelter,

food or staying dry.

When you don't have to worry about shelter, food

or staying dry, you can have all kinds of

interesting theoretical ideas, like,

"Oh, we all have the power within.

It's all me, I have all the things."

But it's not until you get to the most extreme situation

that you can actually test an argument because

these girls are, like, "What are you talking about?

I was in a brothel with zero hope,

no power in me to get me out of a brothel.

And somebody buzzed it in the door.

Which was funded, wow, by the way,

it was funded by people who believed in Jesus

and believed that this world is supposed to give hope.

And they busted into the brothel and they got me out.

And they're right now trying to get me to a place

that I've never been in my life.

All the -- all the answers

and everything I need is inside of me?

No, it's outside of me. It is He."

That's what a savior is.

That's who Jesus is, it's a savior.

Now, when you understand that this is

the way your future is secure,

by looking at He and not at me,

by seeing that He started something in you.

You're here tonight, not by accident,

because He started something in you.

And there's something maybe here that He's going to

continue to build on and build your work.

When you start to see this, things in the Bible come alive.

Let me just give you a couple more verses so you see

this isn't like one verse I'm just kind of reading into.

The book of 1 Thessalonians.

Book of 1 Thessalonians.

Where is it? There it is.

1 Thessalonians Chapter five:

This doesn't mean that you sit back

and you don't take major moves in your life.

It doesn't mean you're just passive

and letting life happen to you.

It means I'm able to step out

because He is faithful to do it.

He is faithful to complete it.

Also in the book of 1 Peter it says this:

And after you have suffered a little while,

let that sink in for a little bit.

And after you have suffered for a little while,

one of the things you can be sure of is you will suffer.

And if you're afraid of suffering, then get used to

having chronic stress and anxiety in your life.

You will suffer.

I don't know when it's going to be.

I don't know how bad it's going to be,

but I just want be one guy to tell you the truth,

it's going to happen. It is.

And probably worse than any suffering you've had?

Yes, your worst days may be ahead of you.

Doesn't that make you feel real good?

I'm just telling you, man.

I'm just telling you, if you if you keep thinking

this Pollyanna crap that it's all about in me

and I've just got to think a better thing for me

and it's all going to work out well.

But, dudes, come on, come on.

Can we be adults here and think about world history

and the history of the Bible?

You and I are going to have difficulty.

I'm not saying you aren't going to have a secure future.

I'm not saying God isn't going to do something great in you.

I'm not saying that.

He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete.

Your future is secure, and in the midst of that future,

you're going to go through difficulties.

So when you understand

you're going to go through difficulty, guess what?

You don't have to be stressed about it,

because it's going to happen.

You don't have to be afraid of it,

because you know it's going to be real.

But greater is him who is within you,

than him who is in the world.

That's what Jesus said.

And it continues to says this:

Oh, man, that's some good stuff right there:

restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

Why? Because your future is secure.

Why? Because He is secure.

Friends if you want what everybody else has,

then just keep thinking like everybody else.

Just keep thinking that if the right person gets in office

and if you think the right thoughts

and if the right public policies are in line,

then everything will be okay.

And if you see those things not happen, what happens?

You're going to get more stressed,

more anxious driven, more freaked out.

But if you have a centered worldview that says,

no, difficult times are going to come, but it's okay

because he who began a good work in me

will be faithful to complete it.

That's one thing I'm sure of.

If you believe that, you act that way,

your future will be secure.

Thank you very much. [applause]

I had a great time at that event.

It was a lot of fun being with a lot a lot of good people.

Whenever you're around people that want to grow,

that want to advance or improve themselves

and want to get closer to God, it's a great group to be with.

That's what Crossroads wants to be for you,

people who are trying to go towards God.

And those seven proven practices I mentioned earlier

are the way to get closer to God.

So in 2023, figure out how you're going to fit

those seven proven practices into your life

and go forward with it.

That's how you and I get closer to God.

Well, one of the proven practices,

it's actually inside of one of them.

One of them talks about having weekly teaching,

kind of inherent in weekly teaching

is often times worshiping, connect with God through music.

That's what we're going to do right now.

Worship is when I sing something to God

that actually encourages Him, that actually blesses Him,

that actually elevates Him,

elevates His characteristics, His qualities, His will.

It's not the same thing

as singing my favorite country songs,

though I love to do that.

There's something spiritual takes place

when that happens because worship is sacred,

it's ancient, it's important.

We write worship songs around here

because they are important.

We're going to give you right now

a special online release of a song that our label

is going to be releasing on January 13th.

It's called Lost Time.

And what it means is that God doesn't waste anything.

Whatever the difficult things that are going on in our life,

there's a purpose that He has,

there's a future that He has.

There's an ultimate place where he's going

and He doesn't waste anything.

I think that should help us get ready for my talk next week.

I'm going to look at something in the book of Ephesians.

It's about how we should be different.

What kind of different? Like optimistic different,

like, positive difference, like, faith-filled different.

Man, I'm tired of the cynicism.

And if you're tired of cynicism and the negative news

and you want to be different, next week is all about that.

And that hope, that purpose is part of why I worship

and worship gets me to that purpose as well.

Let's do that together right now.