Destination Church, we got to take a quick poll here. Are we somebody who does New Year's resolutions. All right, raise your hand if you're a New Year's resolution person. Okay, let me try this again.

Raise your hand if you've been ever been a New Year's resolution person. I just wanted to make sure my statistics were correct here at Destination. I I looked it up this week and found out that 40 to 45% of people will do a New Year's resolution.

And then you look at the failure rate, which is probably why people don't set them anymore, right. Cuz the statistics say that 8 to 10% of people will give up on their New Year's resolution. Anybody want to guess how many weeks it takes for them to give up.

>> Two weeks. Just two weeks. So, I wanted to talk to you before it happens today.

If you were going to set a New Year's resolution, my resolution to you is that you won't give up in two weeks. , but really today, what today is is this this oneoff message about good plans and building good plans for not just 2026, but for your life and for the things that God might have planned for you. And I I just think that in our culture, we give up on these plans very easily.

Like, can you imagine if every goal and every plan was given up like a New Year's resolution. Like, it just took two weeks of time and all of a sudden they're giving up on the light bulb or the car or the plane or all of these big innovative things that have happened over decades. While I was putting or taking out our Christmas decorations, I came across this box that had this thing in it. You might have heard of it before called a VHS player. And it had a bunch of home videos from when I was a kid.

And so I threw one in for my kids and it was a video from 1996 of us visiting Mount Rushmore. And I my kids were like looking at this and looking at, you know, the seven-year-old version of Josh and and looking at this and and thinking like, man, this is so funny to watch dad on this video. And then they started asking me a couple questions about what Mount Rushmore is. And what you might not know about Mount Rushmore is it took 14 years to build this thing and it took 400 people. And yes, if you're wondering, I remember those facts from 1996.

Are you impressed. Like, "No, I'm just kidding. " , but seriously, there there was a plan in place that took over 14 years to put South Dakota on the map and to further establish this national identity. But what if in those 14 years they would have just abandoned those plans.

And so today, again, I want to talk to you about how we build good plans God's way. Because we can make plans, but if we don't build them in God's way, then we're building false plans, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But we're going to look at five different ways from three places in scripture.

And these three places in scripture are are kind of these passages that people go to when they think about planning. And so, let's w open up the word of God together. First, we're going to start out on page 833 in Matthew 7.

, by the way, if you do not own a Bible, please take this one home with you. This is our gift to you. , we want you to open up the word of God.

, not just on Sundays, but throughout your week. And also, Destination, can I just like tell you this really quick. I'm really, really excited about the all of these messages that are coming up.

And if there was ever a time to start taking notes, now's the time. If you haven't gotten a welcome gift before, our welcome gifts are sermon notebooks. And a pastor once told me, "The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. And I I want you to write some stuff down, not because what I think I have to say is so good, but I think God is going to speak to you through some of these messages. So, feel free to take some notes in your phone or write some stuff down.

But the first thing that we need to do to build good plans is to build plans on a firm foundation. Now Jesus is teaching in Matthew chapter 7 and delivering this famous message called the sermon on the mount. And this is the ending of that really great teaching from Jesus.

And he says this, therefore if you go down to verse 24, you'll see it there. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the wind blew and beat against the house, and it fell with a great crash.

And so what Jesus is saying here is he's saying, , build your life, build your plans, build everything on the foundation of my word, of my teaching, of who Jesus is. Now, if we're taking that example of Mount Rushmore, can you imagine if his name was is I I always say this name wrong. Don Robinson.

There we go. Don Robinson is this guy who was like the visionary behind Mount Rushmore. Can you imagine if he went to Washington DC and he's like, I want to do this monument of the founding fathers, okay, and I want to put it in Florida on the beach and I want to put it made out of sand.

You think he's ridiculous, right. Because what's going to happen. It's going to eventually get washed away by the water.

And this is how our plans look when we make them without God. When we make our plans without God, they are just on sand, ready to be washed away at a moment's notice. But what Jesus is telling us is those who hear his word and build our lives around what Jesus says and Jesus's plans, then we're building the right foundation for our lives.

And so the big idea is that all of your plans, all of our plans need to start with Christ as the foundation. That means praying about it before you go forward with a plan. Taking time in prayer, seeking counsel around it. Not just from people that are going to affirm you and tell you, "Oh, that's a great idea.

That sounds awesome. " But maybe some people that are going to give you some Christc centered push back or maybe you know, for some of you, you're thinking, well, does that mean every plan really like every single plan that I make. And I would say if it's big enough for you to make a plan about, it's big enough to involve God in. If it's big enough for you to worry about, it's bigger enough for you to pray about.

And so, it's important to involve and to to be just connected to God as the foundation of making your plans. This is a big reason why at Destination Church we say that the gospel is our first and foremost most important value. And now we're just a couple months in as a church and I've already gotten the question before, Josh, are you going to are you going to continue to give the gospel at the end of every message and ask if if somebody wants to accept Christ. And my answer to that is yes and no.

Hold with me for a second. Now, let's just look across churches for a second. You'll go to some churches, and I I've been to these churches before where it's just amen and amen and we're done with the message and and move forward in the ways that you will.

And there's some churches that I've visited over the years where every single message ends with an invitation to receive Jesus. And why I say yes and no is because yes we will have an invitation every single time at the end of our messages to receive Jesus. But that is not just for the people who are coming in here who are looking and seeking and finding Jesus for the first time because I believe all of us have an action step.

All of us have a response to the gospel, whether that means building our life on obedience or coming into repentance or walking closer and following Jesus. And so all of us have this step that we need to be able to take as a next step to growing deeper with Christ as our foundation. And let me just say because we've done ministry this way, you want to know the the magic number that we're up to now.

22 people yes to Jesus here at Destination Church. We need to celebrate that. And for us, this is an unchanging thing. The foundation that we build as a church as you build as you make plans. It's an unchanging thing that we want to establish a deeper relationship with Jesus.

Can I tell you one more plan that we have for this year that I'm really excited about, like super excited about. I've been nerding out about this all Christmas break. So, if I haven't gotten back to your text messages, this is why.

We're going to start a new series next week. It's called Who is Jesus. And this series is going to be apologetics through the book of John.

Now, if you don't know what apologetics is, it's your defense for the gospel. So, it's answering all of those really big questions like you know, does God heal everybody. Creation and science versus religion, and why do good things happen to bad people.

And all of these really tough questions. And we're going to be looking at these tough questions while we go through chapter by chapter in the book of John, which is one of my favorite books in in the Bible. And just to give you like one more behind-the-scenes look, this is a corner of my desk preparing for this series.

So, I'm super excited. I hope you come back next week, take some notes for that because not only are we building plans on Jesus like this, but we are building plans for Jesus. And this is the second way that we build plans God's way is we build it for his purpose.

So, let's go Old Testament here for a second and let's go to page 555. We're going to be in Proverbs here for for a little bit. And specifically, Proverbs 16 is this amazing chapter that kind of highlights leadership and plans as it comes to committing to the Lord. Now, quick side note, if you never read Proverbs before, if you're not a big reader, Proverbs is the book for you.

It's like God's Twitter feed, okay. It's short, really quick statements that you can digest very quickly. So, , take that for whatever you will.

And so, what's cool about Proverbs is you can take each verse, , at kind of and extract them a little bit more than you would just going through a book of the Bible. And so I want you to just look at verses 1 and four specifically. And and we'll get to two and three in a second, but verse one says this. To the humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.

Now go to verse four. It says, "The Lord works out everything to its proper end, even the wicked for a for a day of disaster. " And so what this means, what these verses are trying to illustrate is that none of our plans are going to be able to be carried out without God's purpose being at the center of those plans.

Let me just illustrate this again. Mount Rushmore, I'm going to be coming back to this story a lot, okay. So just come with me here. Imagine now if those 400 people would have showed up with their pickaxes and dynamite and carving tools.

They all show up to make Mount Rushmore happen and they don't have any unity whatsoever around what presidents they're carving. Like it would be a mess, right. It would be an absolute mess.

And that's the kind of unity that you and I have to have when we're making plans to make sure it's centered in the purpose of God. And when we are making plans, typically what happens is we find ourselves making plans that are selfserving. But what if instead they're God serving.

So let me give you an example of this. This is the most popular plan at the beginning of every year. I want to lose weight. Okay, let's say that's the plan. Okay, and I would say I would argue that it's somewhat like a a god-honoring goal, right.

Like we want to go against gluttony. We want to be able to care for our bi bodies that God has given us and we want to be able to fill it with good nutrients and things like that. But what if we also used that weight loss journey to grow in other ways. Like what if we used the weight loss journey to grow in our accountability that we had some workout friends or we snapped a picture of our scale every morning and sent it to some friends, right. Or maybe it's going to grow you on in your faith because you're going to get on that scale every morning and the needle's not going to move and you're going to be like, "What's the point of even working out anymore.

, but you're exercising this faith step to say, "Well, I don't know if this is working, but I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep in step with this because I believe that that something is going to happen here. " And so, what happens is on the surface it looks like there's this surface level goal, but if we bring it deeper, we can bring it deeper into God's purpose. Let me give you another example.

Serving at church. This is a great example of something happening inside that you may not see because when you sign up to serve at church, it looks like on the surface, I'm signing up to help at church. I'm signing up to , you know, welcome somebody, move a chair, do whatever the thing is that I signed up to do.

But what you don't realize is something deeper is happening when you when you serve. That it does benefit the church. But I would argue that it actually benefits you and your walk with Christ and your purpose in Christ more because you're getting to know other people that are serving in the body of Christ. You are getting to exercise some of your gifts in a safe god-honoring place.

And so you're able to do all of these things to serve and to commit in a way where you're growing closer to Jesus and his purpose of going and making disciples. And so this is just my ask to you. If you're if you're not serving here, I just want to invite you into that.

We're going to do a serving push the next couple of weeks. And I don't want you to feel pressured by it, but I want you to feel encouraged by it. That it's not just something that you sign up for to to, you know, commit your life to, but it's just a once a month thing where you're showing up and you're able to just see how God's purpose is lived out inside of you.

And serving also teaches us something essential for plans, too. It teaches us obedience. And this is the third way of how we build good plans God's way, is we build with obedience.

So, look again, Proverbs 16. I want you to look at verses 2 and three and then we'll go to verse 9. Verses 2, three, and nine.

And it says this, "All a person's ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. " Verse three says, "Commit to the Lord in whatever you do, and he will establish your plans. " And then go to verse 9. Verse 9 says, "In their hearts, humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.

" Here's the big idea in all three of those proverbs. God's direction comes after your obedience. A lot of us will try to get God's direction without obedience to God.

And you can make a plan, but God knows what's motivating that plan. You can try to establish that plan, but really it's God that establishes the plan. You can try to make a way and plan a way, but God ultimately makes the way.

He He makes all of these things work together. So, just to illustrate this again, throughout the process of constructing Mount Rushmore, there was a lot of ideas and theories and strategies about how to build it and there was a lot of mistakes made. Like, did you know one of the presidents was supposed to be on the other side of of Washington.

And so, there's a whole kind of section of Mount Rushmore that needed to be moved to the other side. And the reason why this happened is because they weren't being obedient to the process that they were laying out for how this mountain was going to get constructed. And so you can have a lot of ideas about the plan that you want to have, but ultimately the direction comes after your obedience to Jesus.

So let me ask this, what step of obedience is Jesus calling you to make. What ways is Jesus calling you to be obedient. Let me give you just a suggestion of one.

Maybe it's baptism. I'm super excited because after today, I get to start planning Destination Church's first baptism service. We got two lined up for this year and we have six people ready to go. This is a good thing.

And maybe God's been nudging you. Maybe you've gotten baptized as a baby and that was your parents' faith, but now you're coming into a season where you want to just own your faith. That you want to own your faith in Jesus and that you want to proclaim your faith and you want to tell people about it.

I just want to invite you to to come into this idea of of exploring baptism. If you have any questions about it, talk to me, talk to Joshua, one of the leaders. We'd love to help you out. There's also a bunch of information about it and what we believe about it on our website that you can check out. But this is one of those things that is a response of obedience.

And when you find that you respond in different ways in your walk with Christ in obedience, what's going to happen is you start to build your plans for the long game. That's the fourth way that we build plans God's way is we build them for the long game. Okay, last time I'm going to ask you to flip in your Bible. Go to page 676. We're going to be in Jeremiah 29.

Some of you already know where I'm going. Okay, don't go there yet. Okay, Jeremiah 29. Okay, and we're going to start in verse 4. And I want you to get the context of what's happening in Jeremiah 29.

Okay, starting in verse four. This kind of summarizes the context. It says, "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

" Okay, you get what's going on. So, there's people group. They're being exiled. And this is what God is speaking specifically to those people who are being exiled.

He says in verse 5, "Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters.

Find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too can have sons and daughters. Increase in number there. Do not decrease. Also seek peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.

Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Okay, pause just a second and then I'll continue with verse eight. If you're not taking that all in, what God is saying here is stay planted. Stay planted for the long game where I have you. Do all of the things that indicate that you would be there for the long long term.

Plant gardens, have kids, get married, don't don't neglect any of these things just because I've taken you out of the land that you call home and put you in this different place. And then the Lord says in verse 8, yes, this is what the Lord Almighty says. The God of Israel says, 'Do not let prophets and divers among you deceive you.

Do not let listen to dreams dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them, declares the Lord.

This is what the Lord says. Listen to this. The Lord is giving them a timeline. How much would you wish that God gave you a timeline, right.

He says, "When 70 years are complete from Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. " Did you take that in. Some of them will not even be around past this. They won't be around to be able to see being brought out of exile back into this land that they belong. So they have to stay planted for the long term in somewhere that they maybe don't want to be.

Even for like Mount Rushmore taking 14 years. Listen to this. It was supposed to take a lot longer because it was supposed to be fullbody representations of the founding fathers.

But what happens is with you and I is we want things to happen at an instant. So, we're not able to like just kind of stay in something for the long game. And sometimes, some of you need to hear this this morning.

Sometimes the biggest step of faith is staying planted and staying consistent in the things that God has already led you to. Staying consistent and staying planted in your marriage, in those relationships. For some of you, yes, a job change is in the future. But for some of you, you just got to buckle down and have faith that God put you there for a reason.

And so, here's my ask to you, Destination Church. If you're here today, will you play the long game with us. I know it's so much easier to just go to a a church that's in a building with a bunch of comfortable chairs, but I promise you that this church is going to make an impact for the gospel here in East Bethl. We're going to bring people to faith in Christ in this growing community around us. And we're really, really excited about it.

And my vision for this church is that we would play this long game, which means that in 2026, we're going to be putting way more of an emphasis and investment into our kids in youth ministry. They're the future of the church, but they are also the current church. And we have a ton of youth and a ton of kids in this community that don't know Jesus.

And we want to get to them and we want to give them this this love of Jesus. And so I'm excited for the ways that we're going to invest into our kids ministry. And I'm excited to say and and just kind of invite you to be praying with me to start Destination Youth sometime this year.

And so we're really excited about investing into the next generation this way because they are the future of the church. Not just Destination Church, but the big C church. As we disciple them, they're going out into the world to help the world know more about Jesus and love Jesus more and to change the world. And that's being in for the long game. Now, maybe God has called you to serve back in kids ministry.

If that's you, awesome. Or in youth ministry. But other than that, what what happens when we play the long game is we don't get that quick dopamine hit.

We don't get that quick like I accomplished something, you know. And when it's a long game, it gets hard to remember that vision. And let me just tell you, as I look at investing into kids and youth, by getting more kids and reaching more kids and reaching more youth, from a business standpoint, okay, from a business standpoint, it doesn't really affect the bottom line. Actually, kids and youth take more resources than they give.

Right, parents. Like they they take a lot. But but the investment and and the ways that we can pour into those kids to go change the world wherever they go.

That is worth it. And so maybe serving isn't in the cards for you, but maybe it's giving. Maybe it's just being able to give to the future of this church so that we can continue to establish this long-term plan in our community. And so if you haven't heard me say it before from stage, I just want to tell you again, we're a brand new church.

And so with that comes a lot of brand new things and brand new expenses. We are as a church, and I want to celebrate this. We are 50 to 55% sustainable as a church.

Can we celebrate that for a second. And so for all of you with question marks above your heads, this is what that means. You're like, "Where's the other 45% coming from.

" , we have parent churches and they have partnered with us. There's three of them to give us resources and one of those is financial funding and that kind of tapers off after three years. And so we our goal is to be financially sustainable by the end of year three so we can look towards building our future here in East Bethl.

And so that is that is the plan and the commitment that we've been giving to God. And in order to kind of build with this commitment, that's the last thing that you and I need to build good plans God's way is to build with commitment. Let's look at Jeremiah again starting in verse 11. It's that verse that everybody knows.

And if you don't know, just go to Hobby Lobby. I'm sure you can find it there. It says this, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.

Plans to give you hope and a future. " Can't have Jeremiah without having Jeremiah. Listen to what 12 says. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you.

You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back from captivity.

I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile. So here's what I want you to see in those verses.

It starts out by saying, "For I know the plans that I have for you. " Here's a hard truth for you this morning. God sometimes knows the plans.

God always knows the plans and you don't. Sometimes you don't know the plan. Sometimes you don't know the timeline.

And they they had the timeline. They knew that it was going to take 70 years. But sometimes we don't know. But we but our assurance is what's found in the second half of this verse.

There's plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope in a future. And so you have hope in a future. Even when it sometimes doesn't feel like it, even when sometimes plans don't go the right way and sometimes it fails and sometimes it doesn't work out. And so what do we do to kind of get to that place of having that hope in that future.

It says, "Call on me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart. " This is what that commitment looks like to build your house, to build your life on the foundation of Jesus, to commit all of your plans to the Lord in whatever you do. So, the question for 2026 shouldn't just be, what's your New Year's resolution.

Maybe it should be, what commitment is God calling you to take. Now, we can all be in this room and say, "I don't want to make a New Year's resolution. " That's fine. But I think that if any of us want to grow as followers of Jesus, we need constant answers to this question.

What commitment is God calling you to take. Maybe it's opening up this book more and reading scripture and not giving up after Genesis chapter 10. You know, okay, maybe it's just me. Everybody's like, I've made it past it. Okay, if you've never given up on a Bible reading plan, good for you.

, maybe it's maybe it's praying. Maybe it's just that you're going to spend more time in prayer. Maybe you're going to spend you're going to finally try to surround yourself with people that are actually going to want to pray for you and you're going to join a group and you're going to try to grow deeper this year. What is that commitment.

Or maybe it's a commitment to church. Maybe it is to start giving and to grow in that way. Maybe it's to start serving and to sign up to help and and to see God grow you in those ways.

Maybe it's to just reach out and invite somebody new to sit next to you. What commitment is God calling you to take. Because Jesus, if you don't hear anything I say today, hear this.

Jesus has a great plan for your life. No matter what you've been through, no matter what your past looks like, God has a plan, a hope, and a future for you. And without God, those plans become pointless. But with God, those plans have purpose. And so give those plans to God.

I'm going to invite the worship team up and I'm going to do exactly what I said in the early part of this message. I want you to just take a private moment with God. Bow your head and close your eyes. This is something that we do at Destination Church here. And I just I I believe that everybody listening to this message, myself included, has a next step, has some kind of action step that God is calling them to take.

Maybe for you, it's that you've made your own plans, that you've always made your own plans and built nothing on Jesus before. Actually, you would say that Jesus isn't even a regular part of your life. And if that's you, I want to encourage you today to give your life to Jesus, to try Jesus, and to see how he can use all of those things, all of the things that have happened to your life for your good and his glory. And so, if that's you today and you need to give your life to Jesus, I just want to invite you to the next steps table after today's service. I want to pray with you.

I want to pray with you to receive Jesus. But for the rest of us, for all of you in this room, there is a call to action. There is a call to build your plans on the foundation of Jesus, to walk in obedience, to walk in commitment, to be able to say, "I'm going to stay planted in these things that God has called me to because he has a purpose for your life, for all of the things that Jesus has brought you through, all of the skills that God has given you, they're for your good and his glory.

" And so I want to just ask this question again as we worship together. What commitment is God calling you to take. Let me just pray for you.

God, I thank you so much for this church, for these people. God, everybody has their own set of circumstances and plans. And God, we can have our ideas about those plans, but God, ultimately you hold the world.

You hold the breath in our lungs. You hold the the very source of life. And so God, we just we come to you humbly and we ask that we would use these plans and give these plans to you and build these plans for your good and for your glory.

Jesus, we thank you for today. It's in your name we pray.