GET READY PT4 ALPHARETTA 2026 — NEW GRACE FOR A NEW RACE

There is a morning in the Bible i cannot stop thinking about. A new day. A new era. Everything old behind them and everything promised in front of them. Numbers 20. The desert of Zin. And the nation standing there is not the nation that came out of Egypt. Every single person who walked out of Egypt is dead in that desert. This is their children. A new generation. A whole new race of people standing at the border of a land not one of them has ever seen. 40 years of wandering is finished. This is the dawn. And Moses is 120 years old and he is standing at the door of the only thing he ever wanted. Then the water runs out. And the new generation does what the old generation always did. They come at him shouting. And God speaks. And listen to what God says, because it is a NEW instruction for a NEW era. Numbers 20:8 -- Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. SPEAK to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. Speak to it. Now watch him. Numbers 20:10-11 -- Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. God said speak. And he swung. Why would he do that. He's not a rebel. He is the most faithful man in the book. He did it because it had worked before. Go back 40 years. Exodus 17. A different rock, a different desert, the same complaint, and God said this. Exodus 17:6 -- Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink. The first time, God said hit it. This time, God said talk to it. Same man. Same staff. Same God. New instruction. He wasn't rebelling. He was remembering. He reached back for the method God Himself had blessed in the old era, and he used it in the new one. Numbers 20:12 -- Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them. 40 years faithful. He never went in. Numbers 20:11 -- Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. WATER GUSHED OUT, and the community and their livestock drank. The water came. He did it the wrong way and it still worked. Nobody standing there saw a failure. They filled their jars. They watered their animals. They had a great day. As far as that crowd was concerned it was the best meeting of the month. The only one in that desert who knew it was a disaster was God. THE OLD WAY STILL PRODUCED WATER. IT JUST COST HIM THE LAND. He was faithful. He just wasn't full of faith on the one day it required it. Faithful is what you have been. Full of faith is what you are the day the instruction changes. In 4 weeks we coronate Ryan and Lyndsey as the campus pastors of Alpharetta. Jane and i are not going anywhere. This is our home and this is our church. What changes is not the address. It's the reins. In 4 weeks i take my hands off the reins of this campus. And reins don't hold themselves. That is a new era for this house, and a new era comes with a new instruction. It always does. That is why this change is happening now and not in 5 years. And let me tell you how i know this body can carry it. In February i went down. 3 pain medications, months of dosing up to get through a Sunday and collapsing afterwards, then the operation at the end of April. i expected everything to slow down. Bogor happened. The Gwinnett land closed after 8 years and construction started. Ryan preached with an authority i had not seen on him before. Jessie and Ben and Adriana and Jacob picked up weight they had never carried in their lives. So much happened while i was on my back. That is not a compliment to me. It is the opposite of one. This church does not move because of a head on a platform. So what is the new instruction. 1 Corinthians 10:4 -- they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. The rock was Christ. That is why the instruction changed. You strike it once. He was struck once, for all of us, and it is finished, and after that you never hit Him again. You speak to Him. That is the new grace. Not earned. Not beaten out of the rock. Spoken to. And there is a new race standing in this room this morning. A new generation of this church. People who were not here when we started, who did not carry what we carried, who owe nothing at all to the old way of doing it. NEW GRACE FOR A NEW RACE. Now let me show you how a whole church picks up the staff and swings. We hire it out. Ephesians 4:11-12 -- So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. It does not say He gave the pastors to DO the works of service. He gave them to EQUIP HIS PEOPLE for the works of service. My job is not to do the ministry. My job is to get you ready to do it. Ryan's job is not to do the ministry. His job is to get you ready to do it. The staff of a church are not the workers. The staff are the trainers. You are the workers. And a church that forgets that still produces water every Sunday. Smooth. On time. Great band. Nothing ever goes wrong and nobody sitting in it sees a failure. It just costs you the land. It's time to get ready for the shift. So here's the challenge, and i want it done before you stand up. Go to lean in. It's on the screen. There's a list on that page. Prayer. Car park. Hosts. Kids. Production. Media. Cafe. Set up. Pack down. Worship. Safety. Youth. Connect Groups. Read it and pick one. Not the one you'd be best at. Not the one that looks impressive. The one you can actually do 2 Sundays a month, starting in September. And do it now, while i'm standing here. Not in the car. Not tonight when it goes quiet. Now. Because almost nobody says no to serving. They say later. And later is how a full room ends up with an empty roster. If you have never served in this house. Pick one. If you served years ago and quietly stopped and nobody ever chased you. Pick one. If you got hurt here and you've been coming in late and leaving early ever since. Pick one. If you're 15 and you think you're too young. Pick one. If you're 75 and you think you're too old, there are jobs on that list you can do sitting down. Pick one. And there are 2 more at the bottom of that page that are not for everybody. One says put me in leadership training. That is for the person who has been filling a gap for 3 years and it is time you were trained to carry one. And one is new, and i have only got a few seats in it. Some of you don't run a team, you run a company, and you have been sitting in this room for years and nobody has ever once asked you for the thing you are actually best at. i'm starting a table. Business owners and senior leaders, working through Multiply or Die, and i'm going to lead it myself. Let me finish where i started. A new era, and somebody who had to decide what to do with it. January 20, 1961. Washington. 8 inches of snow the night before, the city shut down, they sent the army out with flamethrowers to melt the snow off the road so the parade could happen. A 43 year old man stands up in the cold with no coat and no hat and speaks for 13 minutes. And out of 13 minutes, one sentence survived. ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU. ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY. Now watch what one sentence did. Six weeks later there was a thing called the Peace Corps and it did not exist on the 19th of January. First group out was 51 people. Then 500. Then 5,000. Then 15,000 at once. And since that morning more than 240,000 Americans have signed their name and gone to a country they had never seen and given away 2 years of their life for almost nothing. 240,000. Because a man asked them to. 3 years later they built one for the poor inside America and over a million have been through it. The best graduates in the country started taking government jobs that didn't pay. And in May of that same year he stood up and said we are going to the moon before the decade is out, and nobody knew how, and the technology did not exist, and 400,000 people went to work on it, and 8 years later 2 men were walking around up there. One sentence. And a nation that had been asking what do i get turned around and started asking what do i give. And it still wasn't enough. Because a country can ask you for your effort and it cannot do one thing about you. It can send you to Ghana. It can't fix your marriage. It can put you on a rocket and it cannot forgive you a single thing. He was asking on credit. I'm not. Everything you have, you got out of that rock. He was struck once, and it is finished, and there is nothing left for you to earn. So i am not asking you on credit this morning. I'm asking you on a receipt. A new era. A new instruction. New grace for a new race. Moses raised his arm and hit the thing God told him to speak to. 40 years faithful. One old habit. He never saw the land. He wasn't a rebel. He was tired, and he did what had always worked. Don't strike the rock. We are 4 weeks out. The reins are changing hands. The head is ready. The head has always been ready. The body is what we're waiting on. Don't leave here with a feeling. Feelings are cheap and they're gone by Tuesday. Leave with your name on something. Get ready for the shift. Pick one.