Renewed Vision

It is great to be here at Broward Church.

And I thank you guys so much for having me. And more than that, just your partnership with the Orlando Church and so many of the things that we do. We do really rely on this Church and its support quite a bit, whether it’s the camps that we do for our kids that are also coming up that we thought that planning a global conference through a pandemic was not enough. So we decided also to plan camp this year as well. And so we’re excited to do that. Three weeks later to do the conference.

And we really do rely on this group and your members and your staff and all the young people that you have here as counselors and directors for that conference, but especially for the World discipleship Conference that we’re going to be talking about today. I really do thank you for giving your support to this conference.

Tony has been amazing, has really coordinated all of the worship teams. There are so many different tracks and conferences and opportunities there to worship God with the music. And so Tony has been amazing and really corralling all of that.

That’s a lot of work, and we’ve put a lot of work into this conference as well. But we’re going to get to that. Okay?

So I don’t just want this to feel like a 30 minutes timeshare presentation. I will try to close the deal at the end. I’ve instructed the ushers to give everybody here a free gift today. So for your attendance. Well, I was going to say you won’t leave empty handed, but don’t take this with you.

Actually, you’ll need this later in the service, and we will take Communion together as a family as well.

But we’re going to talk about the conference at the end. I feel like we need to study the Bible a little bit first, so we’re going to get into the scriptures. I’m thankful for Sandy sharing her heart, sharing her testimony. She did a great job. In addition to doing a great job, I feel like she took all the pressure off of me. She said every time I came here, I don’t remember who spoke, and I don’t remember what they said. I don’t even feel like it matters what I say for the next- just. But what’s true about what she said is that it’s not about this, is it? It’s about sort of what happens afterwards. When you’re studying God’s Word, when you make it personal, that’s really when lives change. This is just a bit of a teaser always, and it’s meant for the main course, which is God’s word and the power that comes from the word of God.

So let’s talk a little bit about vision and why that would be the theme for this conference. Do you realize that everything that exists, everything starts as a vision, as an idea, as a thought.

And I don’t expect you to believe me. So I’m going to kind of prove that a little bit.

Everything that exists in the world today started as a thought in the mind of its creator.

Do you realize that? Everything that exists, in fact, that’s why they call it, have you ever heard the term intellectual property? It means you can own your ideas, you can own your thoughts, you can own your visions, you can patent them. Have you ever had a great idea and never did anything about it? And then you see it on like, Shark Tank or something like that, and you’re like, Man, I thought of that. That was my idea. Well, unless you’re worth millions and millions and millions of dollars, you never did anything with that idea.

So for something to start and for it to actually go from just an idea, just a vision, just a dream to reality, there is a process. And the next thing that has to happen is you have to speak.

You have to create words or communication to explain that thought out loud. How many of you guys have ever started your own business? Anybody in here, like, going into business for themselves? Right? You had a thought at one point, and I don’t know what that thought was. It might be, I can’t stand working here anymore.

Or for that person. I can do this myself. Right? Those of you who are entrepreneurs, you had a vision. You had a thought, but it had to come into existence in some way. So you had to start talking to people. You had to say, hey, I’ve got an idea. If you’re married and you want to go into business for yourself, you may want to have that conversation before you come home and say, I quit my job today, but I’ve got a great vision. Not all ideas are good ideas just so you know. Have you ever had a great idea in about two years down the line said, man, what was I thinking?

So it’s important to talk, because when you begin to talk, you begin to share and other people begin to buy in. But at some point, talking is over. You actually have to do something. You have to get to work, you have to get your hands dirty. And so actions always have to come. And then once all of that passes, it forever exists. Something that didn’t exist in the world today, whether it’s this stage or an amplifier or this microphone, which years and years ago, all these guys like Alexander Graham Bell and all the inventors in the 1800s just trying to figure out how to take sound and copper wire and figure out a way to do what we’re able to do right now. So many of the stuff we take for granted, it didn’t exist until they had a vision of thought. They communicated it. They tried and failed many times. But then it’s just the story of how that came into being.

I said, Everything that exists. I’m not even just talking about inanimate objects. I’m talking about you. You exist. And you were, at one point in time, just a thought. My parents were married in they were in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were part of the navigators, sort of a discipling movement there in the early, late 50s, early 60s. My dad had a thought when he saw my mom in the fellowship. And he said, you know, I like her. And he took her out for dinner. And on their first date, he proposed to her. And my parents had an issue with me dating Sean for two years and asking her to be married. They’re like, I just feel like you don’t really know her that way. I’m like, didn’t you get engaged on- parents have retroactive or convenient amnesia sometimes. I’m like, dad. Anyway, first three years of marriage, they have three boys, my brothers, Miles, Mitchell, and Monty. And after six years of that experiment gone wrong, they said, all right, we have got to have a girl. And that’s why I exist in the world today. I was the unloved child, the one they never wanted. No, I was loved.

I had a fine childhood.

I guess. To me, this is therapy. When I get in front of you, it’s just I need to share. My mom did tell me she went down and looked and saw me there with the blue sign and just walked back to her room.

And then two years later, my sister Melissa was born. And then they stopped. And guess who got everything she wanted her whole life.

The first time I ever went toa wedding in this family of churches. I was a young Christian similar to Sandy, I became a part of this Church as a young College student. And I went to my first wedding. And two of the people in our campus Ministry were a little older, and they were getting married. And at the beginning of the service, this young girl comes down the aisle and begins to light the candles and there was a thought that I had in my mind. The thought was, who’s that? I asked my campus Minister and he’s like, That’s Sean Sorenson put that thought out of your mind. She’s amazing. You’re just a two week old Christian. She’s dating this intern guy, and she’s, just put the thought out of your mind.

So I spoke to him. But then actions. I prayed and fasted for them to break up. And now I didn’t do that. I let God just take care of things. About six to eight months later, we started dating. We moved to California. We dated for, like I said, two years. We got engaged, engaged for ten months.

Have been married now for 28 years.

We have three kids. We have Katie, who was able to be here a few weeks ago. I don’t know if she played violin or sang she was here and got to participate in the worship concert. She was a thought. Our thought was we want to have kids, too. We went through a long journey through infertility and ended up going to Beirut, Lebanon, on a mission team and went through in vitro fertilization there and had Katie. She was born there in the Middle East. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon.

And that’s a long journey. But the story of Katie’s birth is so special because it was so miraculous. We call her our experiment, too, right. Our test tube child. And Infertility is no joke. That’s a very lonely and very private and painful journey. And I know there are families here who’Ve gone through that journey, who fostered or have adopted or have gone through those challenges. And it’s a story. It’s a vision. It’s a God story.

And that’s what ends up happening. And I also said that everything that exists started in the mind of its creator. And I’m talking even about the heavens, the stars, the Earth, the atmosphere, all began in the mind of its creator. The universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen is not made out of what is visible. Isn’t that amazing? Like, at some point you were invisible all of space and time and energy and mass was just a vision. It wasn’t material yet. And how did that come into existence? Well, Elohim, God of the Book of Genesis. In the beginning, God Elohim, the plural form of God, spoke, let there be. And really, Jesus is the spoken word. Jesus is the Logos. He is the word of God that caused actions. It says, the Spirit hovered over the waters and began its creative works. So you see God, the Father, Logos, Jesus the Son and the Spirit, all working together to create all that we see.

And that is called the creation story.

It’s the story. I believe that story. Scientists will tell you that absolutely no creative thought went into our universe, our solar system, our planet, our atmosphere, the birds, the plants, the animals, and you.

That’s a dumb thought. That says that then everything that has been created is only man’s creative energy. And nothing that has been created can be attributed to God’s creative power.

That’s just dumb. And that is the height of man’s arrogance. Even the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. We can make a cool stand that holds an iPad. We cannot create Mount Everest. We cannot create a gaseous planet that is millions of lightyears away.

That is the mind of our God.

And what we see in creation is that God can do this all by himself. He does not need our help at all. However, there are some unfortunate times where God says, I am not going to do it all by myself. I am going to choose someone to do it. And if you’ve ever been chosen by God, sometimes you go God, could you just do this by yourself? I am sure that’s what Noah felt. When God called Noah, do you realize in the mind of God, the Ark was already constructed because he knew how many levels it would be. He knew how wide it would be. He knew how tall it would be. He knew where the door would be, he knew everything about it. And yet rather than do it himself, God spoke that vision through his word to a man. And I don’t know if he hired some subcontractors. I don’t know what he did or just got his family to buy in. But either way, man now, through our obedience to God’s word, we spring to action. And that really is what faith is, right? Isn’t that what James defines faith? It’s not just believing God. All right, I believe in the boat, all right? But you’ve actually got to get your hands dirty now. And so faith is really belief and action all working together, but it also has to have God’s blessing. We have to have the favor of God when we are doing and believing in the work of God.

And so God blessed his actions. And then it’s just a God story. Noah got to participate in a crazy God story. And if you read the story of Noah and the Ark, it really is a recreation of the creation story. So God originally did the creation story all by himself, but then did a recreation story, a redemption of man, all the animals, a restart, a refresh, a cleansing of sin, and a Salvation story all in one shot.

And man this time got to participate in that story. Crazy, isn’t it?

Sometimes a vision requires buy in from the whole community. The whole community of God.

I think about the story of Nehemiah. Nehemiah heard about the state of Jerusalem and how the walls were broken down and the gates were burned with fire and the morale of the people was low. And though he lived in luxury very far away with very little connection for his people, he felt compassion and he had a vision to go and help that community by rebuilding the gates and by rebuilding the wall.

But do you realize that when he got there and he rode around the city a few times, where did this project exist in this moment? In the mind of one person. He said, I didn’t tell anybody what God put on my heart.

So God gave him the vision, and he kind of assessed it. And then what’s next? What do you have to do for a vision to become reality? You have to start talking. You have to talk to somebody. And so he began to talk to the people, and he says, you see the trouble we’re in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let’s rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And you know this story, right? They start building and in his mind, he knew what this project would take. And then when he started it, it took double what he thought it would take because they were being threatened. It was a very challenging project. But what’s amazing is when everybody bought in and got to work except for a few and I liked that Nehemiah lists the few. God these are the ones that aren’t helping. And we’re going to talk about who’s registered and who’s not. No, we won’t do that. But the wall was completed in 52 days, and the work had been done with the help of who? God. God’s favor rested on them as they worked.

You know, what’s amazing is the walls of Jerusalem and its gates stood in a state of disrepair for 142 years.

And all that while they were seven weeks from being completed. Seven weeks of a project. What was missing? Vision. What was missing was a vision that we can do this, or even a man that had a vision to pull it together and get the buy in and get everybody to work. And then it was a story. Remember, me with Favor, my God, for all I’ve done for these people. That story, you might think that’s just a construction project.

Why is that even in the Bible? No, it’s so much more. Because that story began to spread and it really began as a signal of God’s favor returning to Jerusalem. And then the exiles started feeling the safety to come back and invest again in the dream of God. And you have the whole second temple period and Ezra comes and they rebuild the temple. They begin worshiping again. They begin celebrating the feasts and the Passover, and they begin to restore God’s creative intent for them. This was so much more than a seven week project.

This was huge, and it was a great story.

And I love Nehemiah’s prayer. God, remember what I did for these people. That, to me speaks of the burden of leadership at times. Sometimes it’s like, you guys are my people. I love it. Oh, this is awesome. And sometimes it’s like these people.

Do you guys lead a small group? Or a family group or lead in any capacity? There are times when you feel God’s favor, and then there’s times where you’re like these people. God, your people. It could be worse than there’s those people, right? At least they’re these people. Better to be these people than those people.

How did this World Discipleship come into existence, this conference? I’ll be honest, I don’t even know. I haven’t even tracked that down. I don’t even think it matters at this point. It all happened before I moved to Orlando. We, as a Fellowship in 2012, had a conference like this in San Antonio. And that was really the vision of. Mike Tolliver at that time and the Church in San Antonio. How many of you guys were able to be a part of that conference in San Antonio. And it was amazing. And they thought about 7000 people might show up and 17,000 people showed up. That’s why they had to move it over to where the spurs play, because they outgrew that facility and then had to get on buses. You guys remember going on buses and you got there like two and a half hours early, and they had Mariachis on stage.

I mean, it was like they had so many pivots of planning that conference. It was nuts. And then in 2016 in St. Louis they planned the Reach Conference, which was for North America.

And I remember seeing Jeff Mannell on stage afterwards, and he just looked spent. He goes, I think I’m going to go home and take a nap for a month. And I thought, man, that stinks to be that guy. Who would be an idiot enough to direct a conference like that that nearly killed two people.

Well, Richard Runge and the AV Matters team just said, no Church in our fellowship wants to take this conference. And so he talked to JP and Mike Block, and he just said, we got to do it here in Orlando. We’re here. We’ve done the last two big ones. I know we can do it. Orlando is the number one destination in the United States for conferences and for tourism. Vegas is number two. So you guys take your pick. You want to do a world- do you want to talk about Jesus in Orlando, or do you want to talk about Jesus in Las Vegas? Yeah. Amen. Orlando was chosen. It beat out all the zero other bids to host this conference.

And so after it was already decided and after I pitied Jeff Mannell for all that he went through to plan Reach, we were in Orange County, California. Life was going great. And I went out to pray one day at a planning retreat for our 2017 calendar. I had gone back into the Ministry, and I’ll share that story in a second, but I went out to pray and literally the only thing I could pray for was the Orlando Church who was looking for a lead evangelist at the time and the conference, and they were looking for a director at the time.

I’m like, you know what? And I prayed, and God really put on my heart that’s you. You’re going and you’re directing it. And the conference is called Vision.

And it was done. It was done when I came back from that prayer. I said, that is a bad idea.

So I knew if I started saying it out loud, I knew that was going to be a problem. Because when you start talking, visions actually then become actions that then manifest, and then there’s no turning back. And I told Dan Rhodidi, who was in the Ministry with me at the time there in Orange County, I said, I know we’re here to plan our calendar. I said, I think I’m supposed to go to Orlando and direct this conference. I said, I have no idea why God would put that on my heart. And I made a couple of calls to Orlando Church as they were looking for ministers and interviewing, and people were coming in to preach. And I made a decision, I’m not applying for that job. I said, if God comes and gets me, then I’ll know that it’s like I had about the faith of Gideon at that point in time.

All right, I know it was wet and dry, but I’m going to switch the combination now, like make that dry and this wet. And then I’ll know that was about where I was at and God did it. God manifested all the things that needed to fall into place. It came through several avenues, and it really was just the story of us packing up all our things in Orange County, pulling our kids all out of school, showing up to Florida, and then screwing plywood on our windows and going through a Hurricane.

I’m like, wow. I’m like God, if you’re with me, you could make it a little more obvious. It’s like Abraham arriving in the middle of a drought to the promised land and having to go to Egypt. It’s not been an easy five years. And to go through the pandemic, it was very challenging. But at this point in time, we’re done talking about it, even though I’m here talking about it. So I guess we’re not done talking about it.

We’re not done talking about it. We still have two months more of emails and Zoom calls and talking about it. But at some point we’re going to do it, and then it will just be a story of how this conference came to be.

What I’m asking for you guys is action at this point. This is where I’m trying to close the presentation I’d love for you guys to come. Believe me, it will never be in Orlando ever again if I have anything to do with it.

Unless Tony decides as he pities me on that final Sunday and says we could do this in Miami, then it’s going to be closer.

But I promise you it’ll never be closer than it is this year. People are saving, people want to come from the Philippines, from Hong Kong, from Sweden, from South Africa, from Australia, New Zealand, and in Broward, we’re like, gosh that’s a three hour drive. The hotels. Don’t be those people. Be these people, at least. Amen? And you can come. And not only we are really the host state, so I would love for you, you guys have the best greeters, the best teams. You’re the best trained to actually come and just volunteer and to be there and to greet people. And some people actually don’t like to come and sit at conferences.

They’d actually rather just be a part of planning it and doing it. And so there will be many opportunities. Our volunteer website is going to come up. You can sign up for shifts. I would love for you guys to come. All the information is on Worlddispolshipsummit.com.

Paul is our volunteer coordinator, Paul Sadler. And the reason is, if you can be happy working at Disney all day, then you qualify to help those people.

Because Disney people are those people, in my opinion. I mean, maybe they’re these people. Maybe they’re your people. I don’t know they’re those people. My family doesn’t allow me to go to Disney with them because I ruin it all the time. I’m like it’s too long, it’s too hot.

I don’t even like crowds. I don’t know why God chose me to do this conference. Anyway, that’s other issues. Remember me with favor my God, for all we have done for these people. That’s definitely about how I’m feeling at this point 2 months out. But it’s more than just a conference, and that’s what I wanted to say. It’s more than just a construction project with gates and bricks. It restored an entire community of God’s people.

And when you go to these conferences it really does give you a sense of restoration of God’s community, God’s fellowship.

I mean, it’s not about who’s speaking and what class are you going to. Half the time you’re like, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Let’s just skip. Let’s just go get some food. Let’s just fellowship together. I mean, really, it’s not even about the content.

It’s about being together with disciples of Christ. How many of you feel like, wow, I have a conference story. I have a conference memory. My wife took a train in 1989 as a young Christian from Colorado to Boston for the World Mission Seminar.

She’ll never forget that moment in her life. I’ll never forget San Antonio because we were totally in debt in 2012. I mean, we had gotten crushed in the housing market in California right before it crashed. I’m a structural engineer, and I said I’m a man, and we’re going to build a second story on our house. And I’m going to spend $100,000 of money I don’t have on top of the crazy mortgage that we already had.

Think Broward prices times well, I was going to say times two, but maybe times 1.5 at this point. And so then when that crashed, my income went down. We were in debt for about ten years. We went through Crown Financial three times, Dave Ramsey about five times. And we’re like the Champions of getting out of debt. We paid off every dollar of our debt. We’re totally debt free right now. But that’s another story.

That leads me to we had no plans to go to San Antonio. No plans. And really, I was back, I was out of the Ministry. I was working as a structural engineer and driving, trying to make an income for my family, leaving at six in the morning, getting home at seven, trying to raise three kids and see them for an hour before bed. And Brian Craig said, no, you’re going.

So he just sort of made me go.

I played guitar for the summit and I was sort of behind the scenes doing stuff all the time. So I only got to go to one class. And I went to a class from Maharhin. And we had known him when we were missionaries. And it really brought back a time when I had great dreams for God and great dreams for my life. And it wasn’t kind of like Sandy said it wasn’t about what he said.

It was, God got me. God got me in that class. God exposed my sin, God exposed my heart, got exposed how much I’d fallen, how much I had given up on my dreams, how much I had become cynical about the Kingdom and the Church. I worked my butt off and sat in the back row with my arms folded for ten years. And God began to just change a hard heart because of one class. And I would have missed that. I just think of the spiritual trajectory of that moment in time. And that’s my story.

That’s a conference story, an event that I didn’t want to be at with people that I didn’t want to be around. God got me. And what is your story going to be? I think there’s going to be about 20,000 stories from this conference. And I want you to have a story. I want you to have a story of I wasn’t going to go or we decided to go and God met me there. God spoke to me there. There’s so much more I could say. Go to the website. Let’s just put it that way worlddiscipleshipsmit.com. I’d love for you to come in person. If not, please register virtually. You can do all that there. We’re going to take the Lord’s supper now. And I think about how this would tie in. And certainly when you think of the cross, it came into being the exact same way that I said every single thing that has ever existed came into being. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ started as a thought in the mind of a good God who said, I’m going to create all of mankind, but their thoughts and their attitudes and the intentions of their heart are only evil all the time is what God stated in Genesis six.

But he knew he had a vision to redeem all of mankind. And through the prophets, he began to speak of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as if it had already happened, because in the mind of God, it already had.

God had already redeemed mankind through the cross.

But at some point in time, there was enough talking. After the Garden, those were the last words, really. God, not my will, but your will be done. You think of Christ, those last words in the garden. I don’t want to do this because now it was time for action and he did it.

Psalm 22. A prophetic Psalm of the cross ends with for he has done it. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He was buried in a tomb and he raised from the dead on the third day. And that’s the only reason why we’re here is because we keep telling that story. That’s our story. And that has been your story. That Christ was crucified, I also must crucify my old life, be buried, put it to death and be raised to a new life in Christ. This is our story. This is our ultimate vision as we take Communion together. Amen. Father, thank you so much for the thought of redemption, for the vision that you had for each and every one of us and for not only the vision, but the words you spoke to us through your word. The glory of your word spoke to our hearts and softened our hearts.

And Father, thank you so much that you have done it, that we today get to participate in the death, burial, and resurrection and that our actions can be different because of the amazing power of Christ’s sacrifice. We pray that, Father, this will be our story and our testimony and that we will continue to share our testimony to the world until we get to see you. And then it’s no longer a story. It’s no longer a thought. We get to actually spend eternity with you. It’s in the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.