Come restore this broken land like out here and then some of the broken places in here and the desperation we have for God everywhere. So, when we pray that out, when we declare, “God come and move within us.” It's a prayer of desperation. We need you, Jesus. We need You, Jesus. I need You, Jesus. See, God responds to the worship of His people who responds to the prayers of His people. So, what we want to do right now is we want to stir up a missional fire through prayers of mission. Prayers of submission. A whole bunch of things we want to lead through. I'm going to lead you through five things and we as a church are going to pray for those. I'm going to get us started and then you're going to lift up your voice and we are going to seek the Lord together. The Lord, He answers the prayers of His people. He answers the humble prayers of His people. So, here's the first thing we want to pray for. That we just be desperate for God, exactly what we just sang about. We need Him. You'll seek Him. You'll find Him when you seek Him with all your heart. So, let me just encourage you, begin to raise up your voice right now. Can you just say, "God, we're desperate for You." Prayers of desperation. We need You, Jesus. We can't do it without You. Even you just pray out, "I'm desperate for You, God. I'm desperate for You." We're desperate for You. Come on. You begin to pray out. God, we're desperate for You. We need You. We can't do it without You. So, good. Here's the second thing to pray, that we would submit and surrender to King Jesus. It's His Kingdom that's coming. It's His will that's been done. He's the one that's moving. He's King Jesus. Begin to pray, submission and surrender to king... submission and surrender to King Jesus. We open up our hearts. We surrender to you Jesus. You are King Jesus. King Jesus, You're the one that's on the throne. You're the one that's lifted high. We submit and we surrender to You. You're the one that's lifted above all things. You are King Jesus. We look for Your kingdom to come and Your will be done. Here's the next one to pray, that we move by faith. Come, follow me. We are moving by faith. And I will make you fishers of men. Come on, pray that we begin to move by faith as a people. We continue to move by faith. We would be a movement of hope for the city and beyond. We would move forward. We move by faith. It's not by sight. It's by faith. We move forward, Jesus. In Jesus, we live. We move. We have our being. We do it all by faith in Jesus' name. Here's the next one after that, that we'd live on mission. We'd be a missional people, full of missional fire. That we would actually go and make, and we would actually go and we would be fishers of men. We've made disciples all through the earth. So, come on. Begin to pray out. We'd be people of mission. A missional fire stirring up inside of our church. A desire to seek and save that which is lost. Pray it out by mission. We would move in mission. May we live in mission for You, Jesus. We will live in mission. We will move by faith. We will move by hope. We will fill with love. We'll live by faith and mission. Jesus came to save and seek that which is lost, and He absolutely sent us on that mission. Jesus, we proclaim Valley Creek will actually be a people on mission. We will be a movement of hope for the city and beyond. We will go by faith. We will do the things that you've told us to do. We will speak to those you've told us to speak to. We want to be the people who live on mission for the mission of Jesus. Here's the final one, and here's my invitation for you. It's just this. Here I am, send me. And my invitation is, would you even just raise your hands like this, just as a sign of faith? If you're comfortable, it's an invitation. Would you raise your hands like this and just say, "Here I am, send me, Lord." Begin to pray that out. Send me, not someone else, me. It's for me. Open hearts and open hands and say, "Send me. For whatever you have, whoever you have, to whatever you want to send me to, send me, Jesus. I got open hands. I have an open heart. Send me. Send me, Jesus. The Lord hears and responds to the prayers of His people. His heart is attentive to humility and open hands. Open hands, open heart, a willingness to say, ‘Okay Lord, it's not for someone else. Send me.’ Send me. It's not everybody else it's me. I'm open and available. I'm ready. I want to move in faith.“ So, thank You, God. You are stirring up a missional fire inside of our church. We are desperate for You. We have hearts that want to see the kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So, thank You for hearing and answering these prayers. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. Good job. Good job.

Let me invite you to go ahead and take your seats. Thank you for praying by faith. Thanks for being a people that are bold. I just believe that when we have moments like that there's a boldness. There's an unhindered prayer that gets sent up to heaven. It gets heard by God, and He moves on behalf of those prayers. So, good job. Welcome to Valley Creek. I'm so glad to be with you today. I'm glad that we get to share this time together. If you are newer with us, I just want to give you an especially warm welcome. My name is Jason. I get the unbelievable privilege and it's shocking to think about sometimes that I get to serve as the campus pastor here. and I'm glad and I'm thankful and I love you guys. At Valley Creek, we are a Jesus-focused, spirit-filled and life-giving Church. And hope has been on the move in so many ways. And so, I got just a few things I want to share with you today. One of those things is Flower Mound you are the broadcast campus. That means that even right now out into the online community, this service is being broadcast out to the world and to all of our other campuses each weekend. And so, I just want to encourage you to continue to join in and be part of this service. Full of faith, full of anticipation, raising your voice. Praying just like you just did with this big faith that gets sent out throughout the world and shows people what we really believe about God. That God is real and we act as if it's so. Actually, we move by faith, and so as a broadcast campus, this 9:30 service has been very full. We have had an incredible move of God even throughout this fall. We've actually many weekends had to turn people away so I have a specific ask of you. Would you consider moving if you're able from this service to the 11:15? We're asking about 200 people to make that move. This is a move that you can make. It's just mission. It's just saying I want to create space for someone else to hear about the goodness of God. So, if you would pray about that and consider moving to the 11:15 service and carrying that same culture there, that same life there, that same hope of the Father into the 11:15 because we are seeing so much of the move of God in people. In people like revelation and surrender and repentance and of people. Invitations, people accepting those invitations. People moving by faith and marking their move at the movement board. Check this out. So, just two weeks ago, we filled that movement board for the first time. One more time, we filled that movement board for the first time. That is 404 next steps that were taken as a campus. So, when we fill that, here's what we do. We celebrate each and every one of those next steps and then we clear the board to actually make more space for more moves to take place. So, people are taking their step and marking their move. We cleared that board, and it is already refilling again, which is totally crazy. And so, if you have taken any of those 10 foundational steps, you are welcome to go and cheer on and have people cheer you on and celebrate what God is doing your life. I'm so proud of you. And I'm so proud of the steps that are being taken in Jesus' name. I'm proud of the mission and the movement that we're seeing all over the place. In the last few weeks, we've been in a series of talks that are based on movement and mission and maturity. We just finished out this section on mission, and so I just want to remind us a little bit of where we've been and where we're going and what God is doing and speak some stories to just build your faith and encourage your heart. But let me just first remind you of what we defined mission as. This is the definition of mission. It's just using all my life to help people discover and experience the availability of the Kingdom of God through the person and the work of Jesus. All my life, the whole thing. Every part of it to help people discover who Jesus is and His Kingdom that never ends. And so, in week one, we started this series of narrative stories. We basically told some of the greatest missional stories in the New Testament and it started with the mat carrier story. And that was the story of the friends bringing their friend to the feet of Jesus. They literally carried him there and when they couldn't get through the crowd, they busted a hole through the roof and started one of the largest insurance claims in the history of the Bible. And they ripped a hole through and they lowered him down to the feet of Jesus because they were so desperate to see their friend meet Jesus. And Jesus responded to their faith, and He healed the man, mind, body and soul. And we were reminded that movement is the evidence of life and mission is the evidence of movement. And it's so important that we're willing to be those mat carriers to go on mission because if we don't and if we don't live a life of mission, we may soon find ourselves just being part of the crowd that got in the way or even worse, the critics which just stood back and kind of judged everything and didn't like what was happening.

And so, there was this reminder in that first week that there's a lot in the world that may feel messy and difficult and create almost a sense of outrage inside of us, but moral outrage is never meant to just lead to emotional rhetoric. It's meant to lead to missional living. And so, that's a great one to hold on to from week one. And then, in week two we talked about the story of blind Bartimaeus, a man that was blind since all the way from birth and then Jesus walks by and he cries out to him. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me," and Jesus stops because people are the point. Because slowing down and engaging is His mission. So, Jesus stops and He goes over to His disciples and He says, "You bring him to me." Hey, guys I could walk over to him, but here's what we're going to do. I'm going to invite you to be part of the mission. You go get him and you use all of you to bring all of him over to me. And He invites them to come and be part of the process. And so, they go and they get Bartimaeus and he's healed by Jesus and it's incredible. We're reminded in week two that blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Meaning, it's really hard to enter into the realities of the Kingdom of Heaven if I'm rich in different areas of my life. That is if I'm holding on to it, and I don't want to let go of it. If I'm rich with resource of time or energy, that I think those are mine to keep it makes it difficult to enter through the narrow gate that leads to a wide life because it can't come with me. I got to release it in order to follow Jesus and continue to go where He's going. So, we said man if we could be poor in spirit and enter in with just this need and this desperation for God and we give this definition of what it is to reach someone. Often, we think about reaching someone is like somebody just out there, but there's a lot of people even within the walls of our church that need to be reached that is to be reached is to become a disciple of Jesus. Somebody who's actually obeying and following Him and that you're really not reached until that reality is your life. So, one of my questions for you is have you been reached? Have you been reached by Jesus? Are you a disciple, a student, a learner, a follower? You're becoming like Him. You're following Him. You're obeying him. That was week two. And then, in week three, we had the story of the Good Samaritan, one of the most famous stories in the Bible. That's the one where a man is left to the side of the road and different characters in the story because he's beat up, left for dead. And then, a priest walks by and a Levite walks by and then a Good Samaritan walks over to him. He binds up his wounds and he pours wine and oil on him. He takes him to the hotel and he pays for all the expenses. We learned in that story that we often fulfill the role of one of those characters. We like to think that we're always the Good Samaritan. In reality, we're many times just that man that is lying half-dead on the side of the road and Jesus came for us. He is the Good Samaritan. He bound up our wounds and he poured his wine and his oil onto us. He gave all of himself to bring us to Him. And so, in week three we asked this question and said, "Are you really good at just loving, but not just monologuing through moving? Not just loving people by talking about it, but actually doing something about it.” Another way to ask that question is, “in life, do you throw more stones? Or do you bandage more wounds?” That's a great question. That's a great question. That's one that's worth holding on to. You see, we are the body of Jesus. When Jesus' body went to heaven, when He was ascended to heaven, Christ's Church descended in the form of his body and now we are His hands and feet everywhere we go.

And so, when Jesus's physical body was raised, His spiritual body, His church came down to earth and now we're His hands and his feet. What's about that is when you go on mission to love someone, it's as if Jesus Himself is loving them. When you speak that word, when you declare that destiny, when you show that kindness, when you go on mission to value, it's as if Jesus himself is the one doing it. That is incredible. What a gift. What a calling on our life. And so, that was week three and then that led into week four, the story of Zacchaeus. When Jesus came to the spot, the exact place he needed to be to reach Zacchaeus, to reach us and Zacchaeus was way up in the tree of self-righteousness. Jesus was like, "Come on down from there. Come on down from the tree of self-righteousness." Come to the tree, the foot of grace. I'm coming to your house today. We learned that when grace flows into our life, mission flows out of our life. When grace comes to our house, the mission is the response and the result of grace coming to our house. However, you see Jesus determines your heart towards the mission of God. So, your passion to seek, my passion to seek and save the lost will never be greater than my passion to seek Jesus. So, that was four amazing weeks of the missional portion. I invite you to go back, check those out at ValleyCreek.org if you didn't get a chance to listen. Valley Creek Plus will work also and they're worth going through and churning through the revelation that God has given. But here's my question for you. Where in those four weeks was God speaking to you and how have you responded? Because in just a moment we're going to get a chance to respond. But begin to think about that as I share some of the real-life stories here in Valley Creek to start to build your faith. I got great stories today.

And so, it starts with this one. My friend, Jennifer, works in new home builds and somebody she sold a home to was in the community. She noticed one day that she had walked out from her house and she just kind of looked low. Started the conversation with her, found out it had been a really difficult season of life. And so, she didn't exactly know where she was going to go in the convo. She asked the Spirit to reveal it to her. Just said, "Man, begin to share your story of what Jesus has done in your life." You may think, "Oh, I don't know much Bible stuff." Okay, I get it, but you got a testimony. And you have a story of what Jesus has done. And so, she began to share that and she talked with her about that. She invited her to Valley Creek and then she asked her what it was like to come to Valley Creek for the first time. And she looked for a second and response was, "That was a little overwhelming," because she had come out of a completely different kind of church experience. And so, she knew it was a lot, but she could feel the life-giving nature of who Valley Creek is. Jennifer began to talk to her about Jesus, to read portions of Scripture with her, to answer questions that she had and little by little by little, she began to follow, follow, follow. She joined a circle. She went and marked her move at the movement board. She said, "Yes, Jesus is Lord." Now, she is following Him and she invited her mom to join the online campus from distance because of one conversation because she was seen and loved and invited to experience the goodness of God. So, then in this story what mission looked like, it was just eyes up. Jennifer had eyes up to see somebody who was hurting and start the conversation and move forward by faith. Here's another one. This one comes out of a family that's had a recent win. The parents of this family have been inviting somebody who's their neighbor to Valley Creek for nine years, and they just recently said yes. Their son, who's a fifth grader here is in Kids Leadership, and he has a friend at school who started off basically as the relationship. This kid is always the one in trouble, and he's always trying to get me to do and see and be part of bad things. And so, he's just keeping distance, but one day he noticed that that kid at school had a Bible. And he asked him about, "Well, who got you the Bible?" He's like "Well, my grandparents got it for me." And then, he sat down beside him and he said, "Well what are some of your favorite verses in that Bible?" "Well, I don't know any verses," and so he began to from his experience in Kids Leadership speak out the verses he had memorized to him and tell some of his favorite verses. And then, had a great idea. Hey, you know what'll be a great idea? We should start something at school for kids so that we could maybe read the Bible together." So, he had a thought. I'm going to start something maybe called the Jesus First Club. He created a Google presentation, gave it to his principal and the teachers, and he's looking right now to start a Bible-based club at school based on the four weeks that Kids' Leadership runs their rhythms and then do it like that and then invite other kids to come and learn about Jesus. That's incredible. What does mission look like in that story? It looks like dreaming with God. And just saying like what could it be like if. And so, I hope that the Jesus First Club gets started at that school. That would be incredible. All right. Here's another one for you. A 15-year-old Leadership Experience student trying to think about how to live on mission. She was in the grocery store. She was walking through the aisle, she hears – she basically hears cans falling on the ground. Looks around the one aisle just kind of leans over, sees a really frustrated worker at the grocery store. Looks like she's just having the worst day. So, she's like "Okay Lord, what's next?" Walks over to her, 15-year-old walking to a middle-aged woman and says, "I'm grateful for what you're doing and what you're doing really matters." The woman stood up, began to tear up, bear hugged her and she got to invite her to Valley Creek Church. What does mission look like there? It looks like speaking life and just looking for a chance to be life-giving to somebody who really needs it. One more. A couple who has a food truck I guess was having just like the worst day in sales and their generator went out and just all the things. And this is how the story started. If I knew that God was going to trade me stickers for a bad day at work, I wouldn't have said yes. What? Okay, so here's what happened. They get to the end of the day. He looks across the parking lot. They hadn't had much good sales. Their generator went out. Rough day. Sees a woman with her children in a car, but it looks like that car has all of their stuff and all of their possessions and all their life, and he surmises maybe that is where they're staying right now. Okay, God so what do you want me to do here? Great. Uses the last portions of the food that he wasn't able to sell and some of his Dr. Peppers and he just walks over to them. Mom goes, "Oh Dr. Pepper, that's my son's favorite." And then, says "Yeah, we didn't know where dinner was coming from tonight." And the little girl goes, "Well, I have something for you too." Grabs her school bag, pulls out two stickers that she was in possession with, hands it to the man and then he just said it hit him like a wave. Those that refresh others will they themselves be refreshed. So, in that moment what a mission looked like, it just said, "Well, mission is all of my life including my food from my food truck or whatever else is in front of me. And what can I give? I can give whatever is in my hands. I can give whatever I have access to.”

And I think that there are so many stories like that and so many more. in fact, to be honest with you, I was struggling because I have so many more, but I do not have enough time to tell them all. But here's my question for you – what about you? What is your story? Has mission moved from just being someone else's story to being your story? Has mission moved to being a story in your life that's living, it's activated and you're going on mission with Jesus to seek and save that which is lost? Let me just tell you, God is doing an amazing move among our whole church. I invite you to join us in that. I invite you to move forward by faith and just see that the story that I told you, those are very accessible, man. Those are just saying like, "I'm going to eyes up and I want to be life-giving." What's in my hand? How do I use all my life to just share the hope of Jesus? See, when grace flows in, mission flows out. When grace flows in, mission flows out. At Valley Creek we want to activate our faith. We are not just hearers of the Word, we are doers. We move forward in the love of Jesus. Check this out, out of James, "Don't merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourself. Do what it says." Do what it says. So, when we take four weeks on mission and we say, "We're going to become a training center. We're going to train on how to live out mission." This is the invitation to actually do what it says. So, let me go ahead and invite you. Grab a pen. Grab a journal. Grab something to take notes on. If you don't have a pen and a journal with you, I would encourage you to begin to bring that with you each week. It's a great way to just write down what God is speaking, but whatever you have to take some notes on. Because we're going to spend a little bit of time responding to what God has been saying. If this is your first day here and you're like, "Well, I wasn't here for all those things." I know, but you'll still be able to answer some of these questions, and you'll still be able to respond to what the Lord is speaking. So, join us in that. Grab something to take notes on. And for the next few minutes I just want to give you some time to reflect. I got so excited about the stories. I even want to just want to take a breath and just say, “so Holy Spirit, would You even speak to us as we ask these questions and as we reflect on all that You've been doing? And we don't want to just hear it; we want to respond by faith.” So, here's the first question – what has the Holy Spirit been saying to you over the past few weeks? Let me give you a few minutes to respond to that and write it down by faith.

The next question is just how has God specifically been inviting you to live on mission? Do you sense it? Do you know how? Can you sense who it's supposed to be? What has the Lord been saying? How has He been inviting you specifically to live on mission? Take about two minutes and write that down.

This next question is closely related to that one, it's who are the specific people God is inviting you to bring to Him? “You bring him to me.” Can you think of who that is? Who's in your orbit? Who is your neighbor, you're nearby to your life? That student, that co-worker. Take a minute and ask the Lord to show you who's He inviting you to invite to Him.

Here's the last question, and if you haven't already, I invite you to just write down something by faith – even if you hadn't gotten to join in the other questions. Grab a notes page. Grab something on your phone and write down something to activate your faith. Last question is, what specific next step do you need to take in response to what God has been saying to you? Even if today is your first day, the Lord is speaking, and He's speaking to you. What step is He inviting you to take? I invite you to write that down by faith.

If the Lord's been speaking to you, I encourage you to keep writing it down. Don't just stop because we're at this point together. Continue to take His words. Write them down. Value them. But what we want to do to really finish out this portion of our time is to take communion. So, all of our teams are going to come forward. We couldn't think of a better way to just honor what the Lord has spoken and done and what's happened over this time in the life of our church than to take communion. You see, communion is for everybody who has placed their faith into Jesus and made him Lord. If that's you, then you are absolutely welcome to take here at Valley Creek. It represents who Jesus is and what He has done and specifically today, it represents the mission that He went on for us. Somewhere in ages past, Jesus was the one that said, "Here I am send me," with the Father. The Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost and this is mission. Communion reminds us of the mission of the life of Jesus that He came when we were the ones in the story on the mat, blind, up in a tree, beat up on the side of the road. Jesus came. He was the one that went on mission for us. I'm thankful that Jesus went on mission for me. I'm thankful that He came for me. Have you ever had a moment when you thought to yourself, "Wow. The Bible stories, the characters in those, I may not have gone through that exact situation, but I sure have felt like that at different points." I felt like I was the one that had to be dragged along on the mat because I just felt like I could not get back up. I could not stand. I can't stand under the weight and the pressure and the things that are happening in my life. I felt literally like somebody had to drag me to the feet of Jesus. If you've ever felt like that person and just understand that you're right. We've all been that person. Jesus carried us when we couldn't stand. When we have been sitting on the mat for way too long with no way to move forward, Jesus carried us. If you've ever felt a little blind in life where it's difficult to see what's in front of you, where it's hard to walk in the light because it looks so dark, everything around you looks dark. If you've ever felt like that, then you're in good company with a man that we talked about, blind Bartimaeus and in that story, Jesus came to heal and restore his sight. In our story, Jesus came to heal our sight, to bring us back to Himself and to let us see with His eyes and to bring us out of the darkness into His glorious light. In that story, He gave us eyes to see Him and how He's been moving and who He is and His goodness in our life. We are that man a Samaritan beat up on the side of the road. People just literally stepping over him, walking by. It seems like nobody cares. You ever felt like that? You ever felt beat up in life? Yep, me too. In that story, Jesus is literally the Good Samaritan and He came to meet us there and bind us and take us and take care of us and ultimately bring us to Himself. He went on mission for us. Zacchaeus climbing up the tree of self-righteousness, trying to do it in his own, in his own strength. Don't need your help. I'm good. I got this. Man, I've been that guy. You ever been like him? And Jesus says, "Come on down from there." It's time to come down from the tree of self-righteousness. Come right to the foot of the cross. And He invites Himself into the home. He says, "Come on, take me to your home today." Jesus, He came to my home. He came to my heart and my family and I'm so thankful for that. So, we are all those characters and Jesus is the Savior in every story. Jesus is the Savior in every story. So, thank you, Jesus, that you're the Savior in my story, in my life and that's what communion represents. You see, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus took the cup, which is a representation of the blood. A little bit like the wine that was poured on the man on the road. And He says, "This is like my blood that's going to be poured out for you. I'm going to be poured out so that you can be filled up. I'm going to be broken so that you could be made whole." That's funny. I'm so excited about that. I just realized we're supposed to take the bread first. It's both of them, right? All right.

So, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus had held that bread and He said, "This is like my body. It's going to be broken for you. I'm going to be broken so that you could be made whole." So, when we think of Jesus, when we eat of His body, we remember what He's done. Let's eat together. In the same way He took that cup and He said, "This is like my blood. It's going to be poured out for you. I'm going to be poured out so that you can be filled up. I am going to pour oil and wine on your wounds so that you will forever be free, be made whole." Let's take it together. So, Jesus thanks for your goodness to us. Thanks for the mission that You went on for us. You really were all of those things the Savior of the story and you're writing a new story in our lives. So, right now we just choose to remember You and think of what You've done. Thank You, Jesus for who You are and what You're doing. In Jesus' name.