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Welcome to the Aggressive Life. We are halfway through a month of diving into some of my favorite live talks from the past year that were never intended to be on the Aggressive Life, but I thought, oh man, this is good. I wanna get this out to a wider audience. So this week, you're gonna join 3,000 high school students at a night called BIG. It's a yearly event in Cincinnati, bringing students and their leaders together for fun, tons of free food and. hopefully some spiritual inspiration. And I was supposed to be the spiritual inspiration, me. Oh, man, this took me back to my original days in professional ministry, which were with students. Student ministry is integral. It's everything. Jesus led a student ministry. It was called the 12 disciples. There's only one guy that was 18, and that was Peter. How do we know that? It's because when Jesus has to pay the temple tax, You've got to be 18 or maybe it's 19. I can't remember offhand right now to actually pay it. If you were younger, you'd have to pay it. So Jesus creates a miracle where a fish gets a coin in his mouth. And Jesus says, go take this to pay the temple tax for you and I. Because the other disciples, they didn't need to pay it because they were all teenagers, young teenagers. Jesus starts with the young folks. The wave always starts in the student section. So at this big night, I got to teach a skill that all of us can grow in. It's the skill of hearing from God. And maybe as I try to put it in language that a high schooler would appreciate and understand, maybe you can appreciate it and understand it too. Trying to hear from God is an aggressive move. It means slowing down, trying to listen, and then doing whatever he says. But I'll tell you, if you can develop this skill, your life will level up. and you will be in the 1% because very few people can learn this, let alone even want to do it. So let's listen, then let's do it. That's the aggressive life. Let's go. Hey, it really is an honor to be with you guys tonight. Thank you so, so much. When I used to be in student ministry, that's how I started ministry, working with kids who were just like you all the time. And then when I just found I had a lot of barriers and I said, if I ever am a senior pastor, I want to make sure that I support the student ministry to the highest degree possible. So I hope you feel that today and I hope you're thankful for all of your leaders. All the people who are volunteering with you, all the staff people, all the people who are driving buses that are just hanging around, they're here because they care about you and that's great. How many of us would like to hear from God? I'm curious. Who would like to hear from God? I think you could be an atheist and say, hey, if there's a God, I'd like to hear from He, She, them, whatever they are. Love to hear from God. Wow, that might be the most important thing that you can learn how to hear from God. You know, He does speak. He does speak. It's not the way I've described it or experienced it, an audible sound that I hear, but there is a way to hear the voice of God I wanna help you out with, Your generation is what? Gen Z? Okay. Gen Z. I was Gen X. One of the things they said about Gen X, told about us, we were known as the most marketed to generation in American history. Now, I think you guys are more so, but just talk about my generation. My generation was the first generation. When the Super Bowl commercials just were going for like $300,000 30 seconds, $500,000 30 seconds, the advertising on Super Bowl was taking off. My generation is the generation we saw our stadiums be named after corporations to get more money. Our generation was when more and more signs went up, signs on highways over and over and over and over again. Our generation was we had beepers, and you had to get advertisements on your beepers. No Spotify, no podcasts, nothing like that. It was just radio and it was commercial after commercial after commercial after commercial. And so my generation from the cradle, they said, from the cradle all the way through, was the first generation that had nonstop advertising to us. And it caused our generation to be known as the most cynical generation in American history. Because we always felt like somebody was selling to us. And we thought that it really couldn't get any worse than our generation. But you know what? It actually does get worse. How can you hear from God with all the noise that's happening? Because your generation actually has more noise that's happening than my generation. You not only have all the advertisements, you not only have all the branding of stadiums and everything else, you still have billboards, you still have advertisements, and you have social media more than we've ever had before, and Instagram and TikTok and seeing everybody else that you know seemingly advertising to you that they have a better life than you and they're better looking than you and they have more opportunities than you, they're doing greater things than you, and you have more expectations. is put on you by parents maybe than ever before because parents have more riding on the line with you than maybe my generation because your hopes and dreams for you are higher and higher and higher. And there's more wars and there's more catastrophes it seems and there's more news stories about earthquakes and volcanoes and fires and red and white and on and on and on and on and on. How can we possibly hear God? Too much happening. We at Crossroads, here at CSM, we want to give you a place where you could be calm and hear from God. Maybe the best story in the Bible, a story of hearing from God, rather, is a story of the opposite of noise. Elijah is one of the great prophets in the Old Testament. And he actually does a spiritual battle with a false prophet named the prophet Baal and all of Baal's false prophets. And Elijah actually wins this duel. I'm not gonna give you the whole, whole story, but he wins the duel. It's a crazy, crazy thing. He's at the highest of high. He actually talks to God and gets God to send fire down from heaven. I would feel pretty important if I prayed Fire came down from heaven. Fire came down from heaven and licks up a sacrifice in front of everybody to validate that God is the real God and that He listens to Elijah. It's like a pinnacle moment. And then Elijah is just like you and I. He crashes and goes into depression and anxiety. At a moment where he's authenticated before everybody, better than anybody who would go viral with the video, Especially if it's a Gatorade bottle cap video. No matter how amazing all those things be, we would all love to go viral, I'm sure. But having God hear your prayer and you hear God and He sends fire down and validates you in front of the masses would be amazing. But immediately Elijah goes into a depression and he goes into anxiety and he runs for his life. He can't take the pressure. Here's where our story picks up. 1 Kings chapter 19, verse 9. There he came to a cave in Lodz today. You ever come into a cave? I just got to get away from it. I can't, I can't. I wish I could go to a cave. I wish I could just go to a dark place. I'm just tired of all of the stimuli and all of the pressure and all the expectations of my life. I can't live up to it. That's what Elijah does. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. So God speaks to him. The word of the Lord came to him and he said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah? What if God said that to you right now? You're in kind of a dark cave with theater lights. What are you doing here, Jill? What are you doing here, DeAndre? What are you doing here, Lamar? What are you doing here, Johnny? What are you doing here, DeAnn? What are you doing here? I think God is asking us that question. What do you want out of life? What are your hopes and dreams? And he continues. He says, I've been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant. They've thrown down your altars. They killed your prophets with the sword. And I, even only I am left, and they seek my life to take it away. He says what many of us may say. This world is jacked up. Everything is going wrong. And I feel like people are out to get me. I'm not going to raise your hand and have you say, you feel like people are out to get you. I don't know if I can actually do that. But you know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. That's supposed to be funny, by the way. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Sometimes we can feel this way, and this is what Elijah is feeling, like they're out to get me. What am I going to do here? And behold, the Lord, and he said, go out. This is God telling Elijah. This is how to hear from God. Go out. Stand on the mount before the Lord. And the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind tore the mountains in broken pieces, the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake. And the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of a low whisper. So many of us, we think that the way life gets great and God gets great, that big amazing things happen, like a firestorm of I do this or I accomplish that or I have this or this takes place. That's our world is addicted to the big pop. That's because our world is addicted to noise. And so our only expectation is we've got to make a bigger noise and have a bigger splash and have more wow and more of this. And we just want to get. The problem is, the problem is God speaks. in a whisper. And when we have a noisy spirit, we have a noisy internal world, and we're around noise, we can't hear from God, because God speaks in a whisper. He doesn't speak in a broadcast. He doesn't speak in 110 dB. He speaks in a whisper. When I hear God, When I hear God, here's the way it normally is for me. It's a whisper which is defined as, a thought will come across my mind, which I know I wouldn't generate on my own and I might not even like it. And I think Jesus would approve of it. When I have those thoughts, those are the whispers of God. It's like, one day he just said, You should marry this woman. So I married my wife. Like, ooh, I watched the movie. Anyone see Planes, Trains and Automobiles? Old movie? No, never even heard of it. I won't even tell you about it then, forget it. But it's the moments where unless an idea comes across like, hmm, starting Crossroads. When I came to Cincinnati to start Crossroads. I didn't hear audibly from God. I didn't have somebody come and give me a prophetic word. I didn't see writing in the sky. I didn't have this dream or vision. I just had this still quiet thought of God saying, hey, don't let this one pass you up. And then I had literal cold feet. And I learned that was a real thing because I was scared, freaked me out. One of the reasons I'm so committed to student ministry is because you get to have camps. I first heard from God in a camp. Because when you go to a camp, you get stripped away from all the noise. It's still loud and fun, but all the normal noise you have, it's stripped away. That's why camps are critical. The most formative thing for me as a student was going to a camp. Still today, the most formative thing for me is to go camping. That's why I wanna encourage you, if you want to hear from God, flee, just like Elijah did, flee from all the successes you might have, flee, get away, get to a cave, get to someplace that's different. and you very well may hear from God. You know what you're gonna hear from him? He's gonna hear you say something like, he's gonna hear, you're gonna hear him say something like, I love you. You hear him say something like, I'm for you. You can say something like, I'm not giving up on you. You're gonna hear him say something like, I get you and I think you're funny. You're gonna hear him say something like, I have plans for you. I have hopes for you. You're gonna hear from him. and it's going to calm your soul in the noise inside of your world. And you might also find when you go to a camp, you meet people who want the same thing. If all we want to be is around noisy, loud people, then we're going to be noisy and loud. But if you want to be around people who might want to hear from God, those make a quality relationship that could last your whole life. You might even end up getting married to that person. That's a bit of Evan's story. Found somebody, dated somebody. who both had a heart for God. Put yourself around people who want to hear from God and you're gonna increase the likelihood of your hearing from God, because when you hear from God, that's what changes your life and that's what changed your world. Not the noise that's out there, it's the still quiet whisper in here that's been changing lives for generations. And we pray for you. God, I'm thankful for every life in here and every future that's in this room and we want to hear from you. God, even just right now. Might you say something? Might you bring a thought? Might you whisper? I'm going to ask you that. I'll give you five seconds, God. Amen. All right. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes, and live events over at bryantome.com. Pre-orders for my new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man, and a brand new Five Marks of a Man tactical guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps get the show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.