Your Future Is Bright—And You Can Hold The Hype - Louie Giglio

0:28 the future of the kingdom of God. We talked about awakening happening all over the world. I want to come back kicking off these next few months going into the end of the year and just remind us all again, it's not just the church that has a bright future, but you have a bright future. And I want to come back to a text that we talked about a few months ago in Jeremiah 29, 11, in a life verse for many of you I know in the room right now. And we looked at this in depth a few months ago. We took apart the context of this verse, and it's even more powerful when you understand where God's people were when he made this promise to them. But he said, for I know the plans I have for you. Now, we're going to come back to this, but this is the most important part of this verse, by the way, I think is he's saying, I know the plans that I have for you. So that's God saying to you today, A, He has plans for you, and B, He's fully aware and knows what they are. Now, I'm going to just say again today, He's not prepared to tell you what they are today. It's not likely He's going to tell you all the plans today. He just needs you to know that He has plans and that He knows what they are.

1:38 And you say, well, if He has plans and He knows what they are, why wouldn't He tell me? Because you will mess up the plans. because you won't like some of the plans. You will run from some of the plans, and you will try to circumvent some of the plans. But he's saying, no, I know what I'm doing with you, and I want you to leave this house today convinced that God in heaven has got plans for you. And here's what they are. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. plans to give you a hope and a future. That's why we can say confidently today that your future is bright. And I'm going to add many times through this next few minutes together, and you can hold the hype. So I do believe the best is yet to come. I love that phrase, and I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking, wow, that did something inside of me to know the best is yet to come. Because there's been some pretty good stuff in the past.

2:44 but to think that God's still got more in the future. And I do believe the best is yet to come, but that can get hype-y sometimes. And life isn't hype-y. Life is hard. Life is full of disappointment. Life is filled with U-turns and left turns and curveballs and highs and lows and joy and sorrow. And so what God is wanting to say to you today is, I'm not going to shield you from this broken planet, but trust me, on this broken planet, I've got a hope and a future for you. And your future is bright. And I'm going to give you a few reasons why your future is bright. I'm just going to be able to touch on these today, and we can unpack them maybe another time in another day. Number one reason why you can know that your future is bright today and you don't need any hype around it is because God is in your future. I don't know if you've thought about that or not, but that meeting that you've got coming up this week that you're all stressed about, God's already in the room. He's already in the future.

3:50 He's already there. He's already around the table waiting for you to walk through the door. He is wherever you're going to be in the future. Yahweh is going to be there. and he's enough. He's more than enough and he's greater. He's greater than whatever you're going to be facing in your future. He's going to be there with you greater than whatever you're facing in your future. Your future is bright. Second reason why your future is bright is because your future is in God's hands. He says, I know the plans I have for you. In other words, you don't have to hold the future because he's already holding the future right now. And when you get there, he'll be holding the future. So you don't have to go, man, I don't know if I'm going to make it to this thing three months from now. And how am I going to carry this and hold this and take care of this thing? And he's like, no, I've got that. I'm holding that. I'm holding your future a day from now, a year from now, a week from now, a decade from now, I'm already holding all that.

4:58 So you don't have to. It was pretty crazy. A few weeks ago on the day that London died, my friend David Crowder slipped and fell and broke his leg in several places. And it was a pretty catastrophic break. He's actually sitting over here with a boot on and crutches and the result of a surgery that happened after that. Played the last couple of days in one of those little chairs you ride around in. And Crowder's up there, as you would imagine, in the motorized thing with the microphone, doing what only Crowder could do. But it was a pretty significant break. Had to cancel a lot of things. Shelly and Tony and David worked out right away, we're not going to be able to do this. We've got to cancel this. We've got to reschedule this. A lot of things are going to shift because this happened. And we went a few days later, David had surgery. And Shelly and I went to the hospital where the surgery was happening, went back into the prep area where they're about to take David back to surgery. And coming down toward, you know, just visiting for a little bit, we were like, we want to pray. And we want to ask God for a miracle. We had just seen like the day before, Forrest Frank got healed from his back breaking because Taryn Wells had led some people to pray for him at this event. And Forrest Frank's healed now and writes this song, blows up all over the world. If you don't know who Forrest Frank is, hello.

6:28 Welcome to the world. And so we're telling Crowder this, and he's kind of been in and out of it with this broken leg thing for the last few days, and he doesn't know how all this had resolved. And we're telling him he got healed. And so let's pray for your leg, and let's pray that when you get in there, you'll be healed. You know? So we did. We prayed right there in Jesus' name for miraculous outcomes. And some really amazing things did happen in the surgery that God was organizing and orchestrating things in that process. But Crowder comes out, posts about the thing. He's in the hospital bed. He just came out of surgery, posts, whatever, whatever. He's got Forrest Frank on the brain now. So he hashtags or tags Forrest Frank in his post. And the next thing you know, Forrest Frank says, hey, I saw where Crowder broke his leg, and I've been working on this song, and maybe Crowder would collaborate with me on this song. And so over the course of the next few days, I'm not sure exactly how many days it was from the break the leg to the song dropped, but they collaborated on this song called The Rock. I don't know if anybody heard the song when it came out. It sounded something like this going into the chorus.

7:42 my trust in God. All of the ground is seen, seen, seen. So I'm standing on a... I'm standing on the... I'm standing on the... Rock! Rock! Yeah, that was good. This song comes out and yeah, we got the 808 going in the house down here. I hadn't actually felt that out of our system before, but I loved every bit of it. I think it was, I'm not sure the number of days, but not very many days from, I just broke my leg in three places, I got to cancel stuff, I got to rearrange stuff, to making music and releasing a song that went to the top of the charts.

8:44 God is saying, your future is in my hands. and no matter where you are right now I have plans for you declares the Lord and they are to prosper you and not to harm you to give you a hope and a future it was so fun watching Forrest and Crowder collaborate on this song and then sing the song, just kind of leap out into the world. And knowing that, A, that all happened during Sabbath, because God works.

9:35 And it all happened in a way that we would never see coming. I haven't asked Crowder this, and I'm sure he would say, hey, if it was either doing a song with Forrest Frank, although I loved that, or having my leg back and not broken, I'd probably take my leg back, not broken. The point is that God works, and he has a future, and he's holding your future. The third reason you can know that your future's bright is because God's promises are future. And every promise of God according to the scripture is yes and amen. And all those promises that God is speaking over you today are future promises. In Matthew chapter 1, I went back to Babylon and to the people being released in this promise. They're in, you know, slavery to Nebuchadnezzar, but Cyrus comes. Now they're going to be freed. They're going to get to go back to Jerusalem, back to their home. And the king that leads them out is Zerubbabel.

10:38 and I just wanted to think about Zerubbabel for a minute and so I went to Matthew 1 and I was looking at all the generations from Abraham to Jesus because you know Jesus is a son of Abraham and it was important in the context of the Jewish reader to understand where Jesus fit with Abraham and so all of the lineage from Abraham to Jesus is in the first chapter of Matthew. A lot of people skip right over that when they're reading because who wants to know who was the father of so-and-so and who was the father of so-and-so. But in the midst of this whole thing, Zerubbabel is in the story. After the exile to Babylon,

11:24 Jeconiah was the father of, and it just goes down the list. And then here's Zerubbabel in the story. And then you track down from Zerubbabel, here he is. I got a promise now. I have a future. and I have a hope for you. It's to prosper you, not to harm you, to give you a hope and to give you a future. And now we're being freed back to our place to see the wall be rebuilt and to see the temple rebuilt. Zerubbabel is the one who rebuilt the temple. And all the while God is saying the promise isn't necessarily for today, it's for the future. So you go down from Zerubbabel he had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son had a son son son son and Jacob's son number 10 right here is named Joseph and Joseph was the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus, who's called the Messiah.

12:37 The promise here was a future promise for you. the fourth reason why your future is bright is because the best you is in the future i pray the best you isn't in the past i pray you're sharper more mature stronger smarter more free more able more in touch with your gift more filled with the holy spirit more saved than you are right now. And I don't mean that there is a way to get saved, but then salvation is a process that works its way out through our lives and sanctification. And I pray that you walk more confidently, that you lead more powerfully, that you see God work through you in ways that you have not seen in the past. I pray that in your job, in the sphere where you spend your time, that you are better at what you do in the future than you have been in the past, that you have bigger impact in the future than you have in the past, that you get rid of things that are holding you back in the future that have held you back in the past, that you get delivered from things in the future that you have struggled with all of your life. God's promise is that the best version of you is yet to come in Christ. The best version of you is yet to come. You can check out 1 Corinthians 15, 9 through 11, but Paul is writing and saying, by the grace of God, I am what I am. In other words, you won't believe what I was, but my goodness, look at what I am now. Why? Because God's plan for Paul was future. And when he saved him on the road to Damascus, he was saving him into the best version of himself. Number five, really quickly, your new identity is in the future.

14:36 I was thinking about the woman at the well, and all she was known as in her town was the woman who'd struck out in marriage over and over and over again. And now it's with a guy that she's not married to, and everybody in the town knows it, and that's her ID in her town. Until Jesus shows up, and he's like, no, my purpose for you is not to harm you, it's to prosper you, and to give you a hope and a future, and when Jesus left the town that day, she had a new identity. She wasn't a lady who'd busted up all the marriages. She was the lady who met the guy at the well, and who came back to the town, and invited everybody to come and see him. She was the reason why I got saved, because she led me back to him. Now she's known all around the town as a woman who, yes, definitely had an identity in the past, but now has a brand new identity going into the future.

15:32 And your new identity is in the future. The enemy wants to keep you in the past, tagged by your old identity. And God wants to free you into the future and to give you a brand new identity. I was thinking when I was praying through this about Bethany Hamilton, the young surfer girl who got bitten by the shark. She was 13 years old, world-class surfer. She's out paddling on her board. Shark comes by, bites off her arm. She gets back on the board, crazily enough, and becomes a world-class surfer again. But she's done a whole lot more than that. And for a long time, this girl right here, here she's coming back now, surfing with one arm, doing what most people can't do with two arms. She's just a beast, actually. I have some friends who had surfed with her before. And after this accident, they were surfing with her.

16:26 And they were just paddling out to where the waves were. And they couldn't paddle out to the waves. They literally had to turn around and go back. They couldn't even make it out to where the waves were. And she's over there with one arm just cooking. And they were just like, I don't know how she's doing it. but we had to turn around and go back. And she's just out there like cranking it out to the waves and then doing this kind of stuff. And for a long time, she was known as the girl, the shark, bitter arm off. Did you know Bethany Hamilton? Do you remember her story? You know, the girl, the shark, bitter arm off. You know, Bethany Hamilton, you know, the girl, the Hawaii girl, the who, the shark, bitter arm off. That was her whole identity was the girl the shark bit her arm off. But I wanted to catch up with her a little bit, and I went and saw this amazing picture of her family. And I thought, I bet her kids don't call her the girl who the shark bit her arm off.

17:21 I bet they call her mom. I bet they call her mama. They don't wake up in the morning and go, girl who got her armpit off by the shark. They wake up in the morning and say, mama, because she has a new identity.

17:48 Oh, she's using very much her past. We talked about Lulu, and we know of Nan in our house, and both of these girls have been impacted by the work that she does. She brings so much hope to people who have been through what she's been through, but her identity is different. And the day that the shark bit her arm off,

18:14 God already knew there were four kids in her future. He didn't find that out later. he already knew. You're a mom. And he already knows who he's making you to be. And you don't have to be defined by the circumstance that is branding you right now.

18:43 God can give you and he will give you. It is possible that you're going to have a new name in the future. It is not going to be, oh, you know she whatever. Oh, you know he whatever. Oh, you know they whatever. No, that's not the way people are going to talk about you in the future. In Christ, you're going to get a new identity as you move forward in him. Sixth, your harvest is in the future. If you're planting and sowing in Christ, your harvest is in the future. Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please the flesh from the flesh is going to reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. So look at verse nine. Let us not become weary in doing good. Galatians 6. Let us not become weary in doing good. For at the proper time, that's future, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. If you're sowing in prayer, if you're sowing in faithfulness, if you are sowing the word of God into people's lives, if you are sowing generously into kingdom ventures, if you're sowing your faith and prayer for things to change and move, guess what? All those seeds going in good soil and faith in Christ are going to bring a harvest at some point if you don't give up. And like every good farmer, anybody know any farmers, by the way? Anybody been around farmers? I used to know some farmers when we lived out in Texas, out in West Texas, and their whole life was all about when the harvest was going to come. All year long was all about the harvest coming. All year long, every season, the planting, the tilling, the seed going in the ground, the weather, the rain, the this, the that, the dry, all of it was about the harvest coming because they knew they planted and they knew they had nurtured and they knew harvest was coming. And I wonder if we're stuck maybe in, I don't know, whatever that's numbing our minds today and forgetting that faithfulness plants for a harvest tomorrow. And we ought to be walking

20:53 around, expect that knowing our harvest is coming. Stuff I prayed for is coming. Stuff we gave into is coming. The word that I've been speaking to this friend of mine, it's coming. Harvest is coming. And it's not coming in the past. There has been harvest in the past, but there's one coming right now. And then last, and obviously heaven is in the future. If you think it's hype for somebody to say the best is yet to come, then you forgot that the new heaven and new earth are yet to come. I'm telling you, the best is yet to come. Your loved ones who passed in Christ, they're in the future. They're in the new heaven and they're in the new earth. Your London girl, I believe, is in the future, in the new heaven and in the new earth. And that's where we're headed. That's why Jesus himself said to us, don't lay up treasure on earth where moth and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. If we are following Christ and we are faithfully being discipled by him and we're faithfully storing up treasure in heaven, then all of our wealth is in our future. The best of the best of the best of the wealth that we're going to know in life is in the future. It's in the new heaven and the new earth. The enemy today is trying to trap somebody in this room in the past. And the enemy today is trying to make somebody afraid of the future.

22:49 in both cases, stealing your joy.