Alright.  Hey everybody, welcome to Valley Creek.  We are so glad you are here with us today.  Come on, whatever campus you’re at, let’s just welcome each other together for a moment.

Welcome to Valley Creek.  We’re glad you’re here.  And it is a new year, a new year, new opportunity, new seasons, new invitations and I know as a new year starts you have so much in front of you.  So many decisions to make, so many choices, so many things to decide, what are you going to commit to, what are you going to be focused on, what is your vision for this year, where do you want to go, who do you want to become, what do you want your family to do?  And as you’ve been wrestling through all those things, I’ve just been praying for you.  I’ve just been praying that the Lord would just speak to you, that He would direct your steps and guide your path, that He would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that He would show you His ways and teach you His paths, that He would give you clarity and confidence and courage for the vision that He has for you and your family this year.

And as I’ve been praying for you, I’ve gotten this really strong sense from the Lord that this is a year of kingdom momentum.  Call it a theme, call it a word for the year, call it a vision, call it an invitation, you can call it whatever you want.  But my sense from the Lord for our church and your life is that this is a year of kingdom momentum, that after a long season of apathy and languishing and lethargy and the great resignation and all of that stuff, that this is a season of kingdom momentum.  I believe the Lord wants to blow a fresh wind upon your sails and get you moving again in the name of Jesus with kingdom momentum.

I mean do you remember the story in Acts chapter 2?  When Jesus has just been crucified, dead, buried, raised again and the disciples are sitting in this little upper room and they’re confused.  They’re disoriented.  They’ve gone through this hard season.  They’re kind of stuck.  They’re not sure what’s going to happen next.  And I love this verse that says, “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind and it filled the whole house,” filled their sails and released a kingdom momentum into their life.  And what I love is that they were ready.  They had their sails up so that when the wind blew, they could harness it and go with the kingdom.  They were engaging the Scriptures and praying together and in godly relationships and focused on the mission.  And so when that wind came, they were ready.  And so I just declare over your life this year that suddenly a rushing, mighty wind from heaven will come and blow into your life and release some kingdom momentum in Jesus’ name.

Come on.  Like think about the word momentum with me for a second.  Like I love this.  As I’ve been praying for you and the Lord is putting this on my heart, at first it was just this word momentum.  And if you think about momentum, what is momentum?  Momentum is an energy, it’s a force, it’s a power, it’s an inertia, it’s a supernatural principle that’s working on your behalf.  Momentum is kind of like a superpower.  It’s a secret weapon.  When you’ve got momentum, everything around you changes.  And momentum is really hard to describe, but you know when you got it and you know when you don’t.  In fact, the best way to tell whether or not you have momentum in any area of life is you can just ask yourself this simple question.  Is it easier for me to do this thing or to not do it?

Like if you’ve got momentum in your diet, it’s easier for you to not eat the piece of chocolate cake than to actually eat it.  Why?  Because you got momentum, you got an energy, you got a power, you got a force moving you in that direction.  If you got momentum in working out, it’s actually easier to get up in the morning and go work out than it is to sleep in.  If you got momentum in your finances, it’s easier to walk away from that thing that you can’t afford than it is to actually buy it.  And if you’ve got momentum on your journey with Jesus, it’s actually easier to obey God than disobey God.  That’s kingdom momentum and that’s what I believe God wants to release in your life.

In fact I love this verse in Proverbs.  It says, “The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.”  Okay, that describes the life of someone without momentum and someone with momentum.  The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns.  Everything is hard, everything is difficult and challenging and oh, I got to get out of bed today and everything is so hard, what am I going to do and oh, I can’t do this another day.  Got real quiet.  But the way of the upright is a highway.  There’s an energy, there’s a movement, there’s a force, there’s a life behind it.  And so can I just ask you a really honest question?  Do you feel more like your life is currently blocked with thorns or that it’s a highway?  Because that will tell you whether or not you have kingdom momentum in your life.

He’s saying a sluggard is a fool.  It’s someone who doesn’t harness the power of momentum.  But a wise person, the upright man or woman, the righteous who walks with God gets the power of momentum and harnesses it, raises their sail to catch the wind from God to blow down into this world, everywhere God wants them to go.  You see, I think if we’re real honest with each other, a lot of us had a lot of great kingdom momentum in 2019.  Remember that?  2019, a lot of people had kingdom momentum.  They were following Jesus.  They were moving forward by faith.  They were engaging in His mission.  They were worshiping, engaging the Scriptures, praying.  Their faith was growing.  They were moving with God.  And then 2020 came and a momentum came against us that was greater than the momentum we had for us and it kind of shut everything down.  And all of a sudden, apathy, and languishing, and lethargy and all those things came against us, stopped our momentum and shut us down.

But can I just remind you that you have a kingdom momentum working for you.  Jesus says, “I will build my church, you, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”  He says there’s a momentum in my church that’s so powerful that nothing can stop it, not even the gates of hell which would be the most powerful dark force in the world can come against it.  And if the gates of hell can’t stop the church, then that thing in your life can’t stop you.  Why?  Because you have a kingdom momentum working on your behalf.  Or how about when Jesus says, until now the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing.  He says the kingdom has a momentum all of its own.  It’s advancing.  It’s increasing.  It’s moving.  It’s taking ground.  And if we will just align our lives with it, we pick up its momentum and go with it.

The problem is I think over these last two years, whether we realize it or not, we’ve picked up a losing mindset.  This shows us that so many of us have lost the kingdom momentum of our life because I think if we’re honest a lot of us wake up in the morning and we almost are like, what bad thing is going to happen today?  But what’s going to come against me today?  What’s going to overwhelm me today?  What’s going to knock me down today?  Sure, you might not say that consciously but in our hearts I think a lot of us, we wake up with this losing mindset.  We think the world has the momentum and it’s coming against us and we’re just trying to survive.  But can I just remind you that the Bible says we’re going from strength to strength, and victory to victory, and breakthrough to breakthrough.  Why?  Because we’ve got kingdom momentum on our behalf.

But we all -- does that include you?  We all -- includes you -- with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.  There is a glory to glory at work, in your life, you’re being transformed, there is a kingdom momentum whether you realize it or not.  It’s time to raise our sails and harness the fresh wind that God is blowing.  Come on, maybe the easiest way to understand momentum is just think in sports.  Like think of your favorite team.  They’ve got the ball, they’re driving down the field, there’s momentum.  They’re doing these good plays.  Things are happening and then all of a sudden, a bad play, and then a second bad play, and then a third bad play.  And you can feel the momentum shift from one team to the other.  And all of a sudden, the other team gets the momentum and gets the ball and starts driving down the field.  And your team now has a losing mindset and starts back pedaling.

And they get overtaken by the momentum.  The other team drives down the field, score, wins the game and it’s over.  That’s what I think happened to so many of us over these last two years.  We had a winning mindset, we were driving down the field, but then the world took over, created a losing mindset in us and now we’ve kind of just given up and resigned to the fact that life is hard and everything is against us.  Come on, I mean think of Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady, okay?  Love them, hate them, it really doesn’t matter.  They’ve got a winning mindset.  If you look at their career and you look at how they play the game, they’ve got a winning mindset.  In other words, they’ve got a momentum that they’ve harnessed in their life.  And if you watch them, it doesn’t matter how bad the game goes, when there’s two minutes left, they -- you can see it in their eyes, they literally believe, give me the ball, I will drive down the field, we will score, we’ll get the ball back again, I’ll drive down a second time, we’ll score and we’ll win the game.

And what happens?  They get the ball and as soon as they get the ball and two minutes are left, the other team realizes Tom or Aaron’s got the ball, we’re about to lose.  And so the losing mindset kicks in, the winning mindset takes over, they drive down the field and they win the game.  Can I tell you, that is the mindset we need to get back in Jesus’ name?  Give me the ball, we will win this game.  Come on, when was the last time you said ‘give me the ball, we’re going to win’?  That tells you whether or not you got kingdom momentum in your life right now.  Why?  Because you don’t have a loser’s mindset.  We have the mind of Christ.  We have a victor’s mindset, an overcomer’s mindset.  Come on, it’s time for you to rise up and say, in Jesus’ name, give me the ball.  It’s time for the church to stop complaining about how bad the world is and rise up and be like, in Jesus’ name, give us the ball because we’re going to go score and then we’re going to get it back and we’re going to score again and we’re going to win the game because the gates of hell can’t stop us because we got a kingdom momentum that’s for us.

That is what I think God is trying to awaken in his people and remind us of what’s already true, that you have a kingdom momentum working on your behalf whether you realize it or not.  Are you with me on this so far?  Okay.  Now, some of you, this is going to stress you out.  This is the equation for momentum.  Momentum is mass times velocity, okay?  Momentum is mass times velocity.  The more mass something has and the more velocity it has the more momentum it has.  If you increase its mass and you increase its velocity it will have momentum, the energy, the force, this kind of unstoppable power working for us.

But if you have a lot of mass and no velocity you have no momentum.  And if you have a ton of velocity but no mass you don’t have any momentum.  Think about it like this, a rock, a big rock has a ton of mass but it has no velocity so it has no momentum.  A fly has a ton of velocity but it has no mass so it has no momentum.  This makes sense to you?  Think of a bowling ball and a baseball.  If I took both of them and rolled them at the exact same speed, which one has more momentum?  The bowling ball because it has more mass.  But if I take a baseball and put it in a pitching machine and roll the bowling ball but fire the baseball out of a pitching machine, which has more momentum?  The baseball because we’ve now incredibly increased its velocity.

And I know some of you are like what the heck does that have to do with my life?  Everything.  Because if you want momentum in your life, you need to increase your mass and your velocity.  What is mass?  Mass is depth, it’s character, it’s integrity, it’s maturity, it’s walking with the Lord, it’s a holiness and a righteousness and a sense of being set apart.  See, mass is all about density.  A lot of us think to increase our mass we need to increase the size and the scale and the scope of our life, but there are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of stuff in their life that ain’t got no mass because they don’t have any depth.  They don’t have any density.  Like come on, a beach ball is a whole lot bigger than a marble but you know what has more mass?  The marble.  Even though it’s smaller, it’s denser.

In fact, when the Bible says we go from glory to glory, do you know what the word glory actually means?  It means weight.  Going from glory to glory means you’re getting denser and denser, not dumber and dumber, denser and denser.  Your character, your integrity, your maturity in the Lord is increasing and as that mass begins to increase your momentum starts picking up.  So that’s mass and then there’s velocity.  Velocity is not just speed.  You can be speedy, you can be busy, you can be ripping all over the place and have no velocity.  Velocity is speed with direction.  Velocity is a submitted speed.  There are a whole lot of people that are super busy and they ain’t got no momentum in their life.  Why?  Because their life is full of all this stuff and they’re busy running around like a chicken with their head cut off.

That’s not momentum, no, no.  Momentum is mass, it’s depth, it’s character and then a velocity a speed with a direction, a focus, a place that it’s going.  Does that make sense to you?  And you say, so how do I increase my momentum?  Well, as you engage the Scriptures, your mass is increasing and then when you’re quick to do what God told you to do, boom, your velocity increases.  Your momentum just moved up.  But when you pray and you spend time seeking God and you respond to what He says to you, that’s mass and velocity increasing.  When you’re in godly relationships and then you’re quick to live out the principles that God has told us are supposed to be in godly community, boom, your momentum just increased.  When your character begins to grow and then you’re quick to be a part of the mission of God, your mass and your velocity are increasing so your momentum, the unstoppable force, the unseen force of your life begins to increase in Jesus’ name.  Does that make sense?

Maybe another way for some of you that might help think this is momentum can really just be like time and movement.  The more time you put into something and the more you move in that direction the more your momentum is going that way.  So you ready for this?  The more time I spend in pornography and move in that direction, the momentum of pornography is taking over my life.  And it actually becomes harder to not do it than to do it.  The more time I spend negative thinking and the more I move in the direction of those negative thoughts, the more negative momentum is increasing in my life.  It becomes harder to not think negative than to actually think positive.  The more I allow myself to be offended and I dwell on that offense and I move towards that offense, the more other offenses are going to be attracted into my life and a momentum is going to go on that way.  You ready for this?  Apathy is actually a negative momentum.  We think apathy is just a stuckness, you’re right, it’s a negative momentum.

It means there is so much mass and velocity moving towards just staying static that it’s actually harder to get up and do anything than it is to just stay there.  But I believe in Jesus’ name, this is the year that God wants to break that spirit out of our lives and release kingdom momentum.  And you say, where does kingdom momentum come from?  It’s so different than world’s momentum.  If you want momentum in the world, you got to strive, you got to struggle, you got to try harder, you got to put in more effort.  You know how we get kingdom momentum?  Submitting and surrendering, trusting and obeying.  Just choosing to align ourselves with what God is already doing because the kingdom already has momentum.  We don’t have to create it or initiate it, we just got to allow ourselves to be taken up into it.

Does that make sense?  And if you’re sitting here and you’re like, dude, momentum, you’re lucky I even got here today or turned this thing on online.  I get it, maybe where you are momentum feels so far away, but let me show you the Lord, He just says little by little.  Little by little.  You don’t have to go from nothing to everything.  Little by little, I will drive them out before you until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.  Momentum is not this one big moment.  It’s we all want it to be.  We want momentum to be this one encounter, this one moment, this one epic thing from the Lord.  No, no, no.  It’s little by little.  Little by little.  The little things done repeatedly over time eventually create this unstoppable momentum in our lives.  That means win the moment, win the hour, win the day, win the week and you will have won the year.

But we just want to win the year.  Right.  Comes from winning the moment and choosing the little by little, the little moment of obedience, the little moment of trust, the little moment of submission and surrender to the rule and reign of God.  Is this making sense to you?  And it’s true in the positive and the negative.  Check this out.  James tells us, “Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed.  Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death.”  You see the little by little here?  Nobody goes from being tempted to dying.  It’s a little compromise, a little thought, a little desire, a little alignment, a little tolerance, a little bit of here, a little bit of there and the next thing you know this momentum wheel takes over and we find ourselves in a place we never wanted to be.

This is why so many people who had kingdom momentum in 2019 have insane worldly momentum right now.  Why?  Because little by little they allowed themselves to align with the things of the world so their own guardrails no longer had the strength to stop the momentum because they had so much mass and velocity moving towards the things of the world that it blew right past all the guardrails, the people, the wisdom, the encouragement, the safety of their life and they are now finding themselves in a place they never set out to go.  Little by little.  It’s true in the negative, but man it’s true in the positive.  “Consider carefully what you hear,” Jesus said, “with the measure you used, it will be measured to you and even more.  Whoever has will be given even more.”  In other words, if you will be faithful with the little, he will entrust you with much.

If I will do the little in front of me and the little in front of me and the little in front of me, before I know it a momentum takes over and what used to feel like much will start to feel like little.  Why?  Because you’ll have so much momentum working on your behalf that it no longer feels daunting or overwhelming because you got this power and this force, because you did little, little, little, it made what used to feel like much now a new little because the kingdom momentum in your life is growing.  And you have this force and this power that as you move through the world, the things that used to knock you down, you knock them down, knock them out of the way and knock them out of the way not just for your life but for the people you love around you, in Jesus’ name.  Does that make sense?  I want you to grab this concept because I think there’s so much truth in it and I know we sit there and we’re kind of like, okay, so like then how do I -- how do I start?

Because if we’re honest, there’s not a lot of kingdom momentum in the world.  We can look around.  How do I do it?  Here’s the way.  You don’t have to create it.  It’s what I’m trying to tell you.  It’s already there.  The kingdom is forcefully advancing.  I will build my church.  Most of the parables Jesus tells us about the kingdom have an illustration of the momentum of the kingdom coming and moving forward and growing.  All we have to do is align ourselves with it.  And how do you align yourself with it?  By engaging in the things the Lord is doing right now.  I want you to think about this.  If you want kingdom momentum in your life this year, this is how you raise your sails.  Engage the Scriptures, pray, build godly relationships and engage the mission.  I know I just super disappointed some of you because you were like waiting for this thing.  You’re like, yes, kingdom momentum.  You’re like, oh, boo.  Listen to me, this is what the Lord is doing, engage the Scriptures.  You know what Isaiah tells us?  That his word will not return void but will accomplish the purpose for which He sent it.

God is in the process of fulfilling His word right now.  Momentum.  Pray.  Jesus says, “If my words remain in you and you remain in me, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.”  He is in the process of answering our prayers right now.  Build godly relationships.  He says he will build his church and assemble his body.  That’s what he is actively doing right now.  And engage the mission, he is seeking and saving the lost.  This is what God is doing right now.  And if He says his kingdom has momentum, then all I need to do is get in aligned with this.  And what I want you to see is these three, this is mass, this is velocity.  If you want to increase your mass, your character, your depth, your integrity, your maturity, this is how you increase mass, this is how you increase velocity.  And you will only be as strong as you are in your weakest area of these this year.  You will only have as much momentum as your weakest area of these this year.

So come on, raise your sails, engage the Scriptures.  Why?  Because it says that all Scripture is God breathed.  Hoo.  The words I speak to you are spirit and they are life.  Hoo.  If you do not let the book of the law depart from your mouth but do what’s in it, you will be prosperous and successful.  He’s telling you, this is how you raise your sail and harness the wind that I’m blowing.  Engage the reading plan with us one chapter a day.  You will be amazed at what kind of momentum, little by little, will take over in your life.  Pray.  Jesus says, pray your kingdom come.  When we pray your kingdom come, we’re praying momentum into our life.  If His kingdom is on the move and the increase of his government there is no end when you pray.  And you say I don’t know how to pray.  Okay, then just when we’re gathered together like just pray with us when we say we’re praying for circles.  Raise your hand and say, Lord, I don’t even know how to do this but I pray for circles.  That’s momentum.

That is more than some of us do in an entire year.  That one moment was a little that will lead to a little.  Come to Tuesday Night Prayer.  When you think about God some random time in the middle of the week, just say, God, are you there?  Can you hear me?  That’s prayer.  That’s little by little.  Then godly relationships.  Just get in a circle, bro.  I ain’t got time.  I know because you got so much stuff in your life and you’re running around like a chicken with your head cut off and you think you got momentum, but you’ve got no mass and you got no velocity.  You got stuff and you got busyness.  Don’t get in a circle to find a friend.  Don’t get in a circle because you think Jesus is going to give you something.  Get in a circle because you decide, I need some kingdom momentum in my life and if Jesus is building his church and this is how he does it, then I need to align my life with that because I’m tired of all the things of the world knocking me down.  Give me the ball, I’m ready to go.

And then engage the mission.  Engage the mission.  Get on a serve team.  Come to serve the city.  Be a hope carrier.  Invite somebody to church.  It’s that simple.  Little by little.  Little by little.  And you would be amazed at what takes over and what starts to happen.  See, hear me, when we’re stuck, it’s not because the wind isn’t blowing, it’s because our sails are down.  If you feel stuck in this season, it’s not because the wind isn’t blowing.  God is moving.  There’s a fresh wind in the air.  This is how we raise our sail to harness the wind that is already coming so we can go in a completely different direction than the world in Jesus’ name.  So can I ask you, is your sail up?  Is your sail up?

Because if not, we shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t feel a lot of momentum in our life because that means we’re trying to create it.  And you can’t create it, you can harness it and you can align your life with it.  And I get it, some of you are like, I want momentum.  I don’t care about this kingdom momentum thing, I want momentum in my business and my finances and my family.  I hear you.  Check this, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”  In other words, if you get kingdom momentum you’ll have momentum in your family and you’ll start raising your children in the way they should go.  And in your marriage, you will feel like one flesh living in a covenant of peace and love.  You’ll start finding momentum in your work and all of a sudden you will have a favor and a wisdom that starts going before you.  You’ll have a wisdom or a momentum in your finances and you’ll be blessed and you’ll be prosperous.  Why?  Because he tells us if we’ll just get kingdom momentum first, everything else in our life instantly picks up a momentum with it and starts moving us to life.

And if we’re honest, we’re the ones that stop the momentum, not the world.  “Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”  In other words, when we know what God is asking us to do, the little, and we don’t do it, it’s like a break in a car.  A car has mass and velocity.  The only way to stop its momentum is to use the brakes.  In Jesus, you have mass and velocity.  The world cannot stop it, but you can choose to break it by putting an opposite force against it when you know what God has asked you to do and you just decide not to do it.  Every time you do this, you’re slowing down your own kingdom momentum.

So if you want momentum, it’s just, Lord, you’ve asked me to do this so I’m just going to do it.  I don’t want to do it, I don’t feel like doing it, I actually don’t even like it, but because you say so, I will do it.  Do you understand that one moment how much inertia you just released in your life?  We have no idea.  We think it’s so dumb, we’re like, okay.  One next step literally starts a spiritual momentum wheel in your life.  You had a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth in a short amount of time.  Look out.  And I get it, we’re in a world of apathy right now.  We talked last week about the spirit of fear.  You know what else is the spirit -- the spirit of apathy.  It’s a real demonic spirit that is wreaking havoc on our world.  We’re in a season right now where the generation just wants to I just want to own my own time.

I want to do what I want, when I want.  If it’s good for me, I want the greatest return for the least amount of effort.  We have this languishing lethargy.  All these words, great resignation, words that didn’t even exist two years ago that we had to make up to define how apathetic things would become, right?  The spirit of apathy is a real thing.  And let me tell you what the spirit of apathy wants to do in your life.  Steal, kill and destroy.  He literally wants to come against you with his own force to push you down because he wants to stop the advancement of the kingdom, he wants to destroy your destiny and he wants to kill your faith.  Remember, the Bible tells us faith without action is dead.  So if he can deceive us into believing we have a faith even there’s no action with it, it’s actually dead.  But he deceives us into thinking, oh my faith is alive, it’s just a hard season.

The Bible tells us faith without action or works is dead.  So we need to be aware of that and we need to come against it.  So can you just hear what I’m trying to say in this?  The spirit of apathy is real and COVID is real.  Don’t use COVID as an excuse to allow the spirit of apathy to hang out in your life.  Don’t let the spirit of apathy hang out behind the excuse of COVID.  Now, hear what I’m saying and don’t hear what I’m not saying.  COVID is real.  If you get COVID, stay home, get better, get healthy.  If you have underlying health conditions, man, protect yourself, be wise, make good choices.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  What I’m talking about is the deception that we’re using with one another in the world to say, ah, it’s COVID so I can’t participate.

That’s actually the spirit of apathy being empowered in your life.  You’re actually better off if you know I just don’t want to do that thing, then just say, I just don’t want to do that thing.  Because you disempower the spirit of apathy that way.  You actually empower him when you deceive or manipulate others into thinking it’s a concern about a pandemic when it’s really just you’re apathetic towards that thing.  And if you find something going like this inside of you, it’s probably the spirit of apathy because light is being shined on it.  And a demonic spirit, when light hits it, reacts.  So if you find yourself reacting, could it just be that maybe the spirit of apathy has been empowered to hang out in your life more than you realize?  But it doesn’t have authority, Jesus does.  So let’s tell it to go.  Let’s stop opening the door and letting it hang out there.

Let’s stop deceiving ourselves and others because we’re afraid of conflict or people pleasing or whatever it is.  Just be honest and say I’m struggling right now in this season of having energy or interest or passion in anything, but I acknowledge that as a spirit of apathy and I refuse to allow it to stay.  So I’m still not coming to the thing today, but I’m confessing that there is a spirit of apathy in my work and in my life, at work and I’m asking Jesus to come and do something about it little by little by little by little.  Come on, you with me on that?  By little.  Come on, sometimes, you know one of the hardest things for me is wanting things for you more than you want for yourself.  Sometimes you have to just like wake up and realize, what do I want?  Like we will all give an account to the Lord for how we lived our lives.  The parable of the talents.  One guy five, one guy two, one guy one.  The expectation is there will be a momentum of that life lived.  And we don’t have to be afraid of someday giving an account to the Lord like I got to do all this stuff out of fear.

No, you got to do it out of a sense of I can’t wait to make the master happy and hear, “Well done good and faithful servant.  Come share in your master’s happiness.”  That is kingdom momentum in Jesus’ name.  Come on.  And when you have momentum, it creates gravity.  It creates a -- when you have mass and velocity -- this is the last thing -- it creates a gravity that draws other people in.  So parents, you actually have a responsibility to create a kingdom momentum in your home to create a gravity that draws your children into the things of this world or the things of the kingdom away from the things of this world.  Students, you have a responsibility to have a kingdom momentum in your life to have a gravity that draws other students into the kingdom of God through your life.  People in the marketplace, you have a responsibility to live as a hope carrier with kingdom momentum to create a gravity to draw lost, lonely and broken people unto Jesus.

We as a church have a responsibility to create a momentum to draw the city into the things of this kingdom.  Like we’ve got to awaken and realize there is a responsibility on us that apathetic living is not okay because we need to create a gravity to set other people free in Jesus’ name because that’s how the kingdom works.  And the more mass and the more velocity you have together, the more momentum you have.  And that is true for our church.  You see, we got to be done with this.  We got to be done with every one of us going in our direction, doing our own thing, trying to take care of our own lives.  There’s no momentum here.  We got to be done with preferences and selfishness and offenses and fear.  Jesus forgives all of us for any of the things we did that were outside of his kingdom over these last two years.  We confess, we repent Lord.  We ask you to come and move.

We say we no longer want to live in our own way going in our own direction.  Instead, we want mass and velocity.  The more of us that come together and move in the same direction with speed through unity and sacrifice and forgiveness and love, we create an unstoppable momentum that creates a gravity that draws the people of the city into the goodness of God.  That’s what time it is.

Like I get it, the last two years most of us lost our velocity.  But you know what increased?  Your mass.  How does your mass increase, your density, your character, your depth?  Because Peter tells us that though these trials have come, your faith which is more important than pure gold, has been purified.  That you’ve been sifted to remove the junk so that you’ve had an increase in dense, in mass.

Consider it pure joy my brothers when trials of many kinds come.  Why?  So that you may become mature.  Can I tell you, over these last two years your mass has increased?  So as you start just little by little moving again and you put velocity now with that new level of mass, character, depth, maturity that the Lord has cultivated in you, you will have a greater momentum in 2022 than you ever did in 2019, just little by little.  Just little by little.  Come on, you miss one day reading your Bible, don’t miss two.  You miss one day not praying, the next time you think about God talk to Him.  You miss one week of your circle, don’t miss two.  And don’t deceive them and tell them it’s COVID if it’s the spirit of apathy that’s keeping you home.  Confess it and be honest about it.  Come on, you miss one week in church, don’t miss two.

That’s the mindset that you have to have if you want to say, I want a kingdom momentum.  I just want to align my life with God.  Here’s what I’m trying to say to you Valley Creek, come on, raise your sails for the winds are blowing.  Raise your sails for the winds of God are blowing.  And they will take you to a place that you’ve never been before.  I speak kingdom momentum over you, your family, your business, your school, our church because we’re going to raise the sails in Jesus’ name.  Suddenly, there was a fresh wind that blew from heaven and changed everything.  So close your eyes with me.

Come on, what’s the Holy Spirit want to say to you today?  My sense is that some of you, even you’re like, I want that so bad, I don’t have the faith for it.  That’s okay, the kingdom is advancing.  Just ask the Lord, Lord, would you just help my life be overtaken by your kingdom?  What is the one little thing in front of you that you need to do?  What is the one little thing you know He’s asked you to do?  Just do that.  Just start just little by little.  It takes the breakers off of your life and allows you to start moving.  Raise your sails in Jesus’ name that you may capture the wind that he is already blowing.

So Jesus, thank you for kingdom momentum that you have set in motion.  We choose to receive that energy, that power, that force, that inertia, that superpower, that weapon that goes before us.  We choose to allow that supernatural principle to be at work in our lives and we raise our sails to capture that which you’re already doing.  Thank you, Lord, for little by little that takes us to a place we could never get on our own.  We receive kingdom momentum as we start this year, in your name we pray, amen.