#114 Discover Your Possibilities(01/02/04)

Message by Dr. Robert H. Schuller

I'm very excited about the New Year 2004, because the best is yet to come! Yes, the year 2004 will be the last year of the first fifty years of this ministry, and we will be making plans for the year 2005, our 50th anniversary as a ministry.

As we prepare for our golden anniversary, we are not going to take a long time in the coming months to rehearse all our history, but it is true that this ministry started forty-nine years ago with Mrs. Schuller and myself. I was 28 years old, with $500, my only money, no property. So for six years the only place to preach was the rooftop of a snack bar in a drive-in theater. Everybody said that was bad luck ... but every time I have had bad luck, it turns out to be a blessing. That's so true. I love nature, so preaching under the sky, looking at the sun, the clouds, the birds and the tip of the trees reaching high, I felt at home. My childhood experiences of the outdoors were so real to me. So twenty years later I wanted to continue to look up and see the sky, and I wanted to see the trees with their tips bending in the wind. Today, we have this beautiful place, the Crystal Cathedral. We can't forget all the past history of this ministry and we shouldn't forget it.

Yesterday, I was reminded of what great things God has done through you, the congregation. Those of you who sit here in pews and you who watch on television are a part of this church service. Recently we had a brunch for our members and there was such beautiful harp music. I went over to the harpist, to thank her, and discovered that she has watched the Hour of Power when she lived in Russia. Now she is playing a harp here for us in the same church she watched in Russia. That's fantastic! Then I walked around the room to thank the many seated at the tables. My son and I wanted to meet everybody and hopefully touch them and say, "Thank you for what you are doing and what you have done and what you are going to do." There is no other congregation that ever gave their pastor more encouragement and more support to do the risky impossible things than this church has!

I came to this one table and a lovely young lady jumped to her feet and said, "Thank you. I was one of those ladies that got a box of cookies in prison." "Oh?" ... Yes, this church, for 25 years, packaged boxes with cookies and scriptural readings and we gave them to the inmates in our Southern California prisons. So here, at our Volunteer Brunch, we met and she said, "Dr. Schuller, when I got out of prison this is the first place I came to because I was impressed with that box of cookies. I wondered what kind of people are they? Everybody hates the prisoners. We are bad people. How could a church love us and send us cookies? So I came here. Now I have joined the church and I took the training to be a New Hope Telephone Counselor." Wow!

Yes, we have a wonderful history and history gives us a tradition. And tradition puts a standard before us that motivates us to keep reaching higher instead of reaching to retire!

So the title for my first message of the year 2004 that I give to the whole world is simple: The Best is Yet to Come! Repeat these six words often. They help each of us to be positive about the future. Now how can we say that without just being flamboyant? Because of a Bible verse that has impacted me for many years. It is Jeremiah 29:11. God is saying through Jeremiah,

"I have a plan for your life. It is a plan for good and not evil. It is a plan to give you a future with hope."

Wow! Many of you have heard me preach on that Bible verse many times. I have told you how I was brought to Russia by Armand Hammer who notified Mikhail Gorbachev, "I am bringing my television pastor to your country. He should have the right to preach about God to the Russian people."

It was a long ordeal to negotiate, but the government official in charge of radio and television finally said, "Okay, Schuller, go down the hallway and you can record a 20 minute sermon and we'll air it. Do you have your Bible with you? ..." "No." "Do you have your pulpit robe with you? ..." "No." ... "Do you have any sermon notes with you?" "No ..." "Well, would you be prepared to go right now to the television studio and preach a 20 minute sermon?" I said "Yes." I had no idea what I would say. This is probably one of the most important speeches any public person would ever give. It would air on the one and only television channel controlled by the government.

People in the seventeen provinces in the USSR, and the eight Eastern bloc countries all would hear my sermon translated in their language immediately following their evening news report.

This was 1989. The Cold War was still on. I would be viewed as an enemy. I'm an American. As I walked down that hallway, I prayed, "Oh dear God, what in the world am I going to say?" And into my brain came this thought and this Bible verse, "Share My word with them ... 'I have a plan for your life. It is a plan for good and not evil. It is a plan to give you a future with hope.'" I talked from my heart and I meant it. Then God said, "They love children, tell them Carol's story." And I told them Carol's story. Gorbachev was so impressed he invited me to give a second talk six months later before he would board his plane to meet George Bush for the summit meeting in Washington, DC, which ended the Cold War. Gorbachev told the press that I calmed him. We made a difference. Today our television messages are still seen every Sunday in that country. Yes, it has been an amazing history.

God has a plan for your life and mine

Where do I get my self confidence? Where do I get my possibility thinking? I get it from the Bible ... from this Bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11, and from the words of Jesus, "If you have faith, nothing is impossible." (Matthew 17:20) Those Bible verses have shaped my life. If you have faith, you will be touch with God's plan for you. There is a destiny for every life. I believe it. To prove it, you didn't choose your birthday. You had nothing to say about it. You didn't choose your father and mother, nor the genes and chromosomes that are mixed up in you. You had nothing to say about it. The most important part of my life and yours was destined, not a decision we made.

"I have a plan for your life. It is a plan for good and not evil." Through the years, I would try to communicate that to unbelievers, but they would say, "You can't say that God has a plan for every life when there are six billion people." Yes, I think God has a plan for every life. I think He has a plan for every insect, every bird, every fish and every animal. There is, we now see, a unified ecology and the whole universe is bound to each other. We're learning that now in this century. "I have a plan for your life."

Yes, when you are in touch with God's plan for your life, you can be excited about the New Year 2004, the way I am. I'm excited because I know that 2004 is going to be the best year we've ever had in this ministry. I've been in many planning meetings the past month and they are exciting. We are going to do things in 2004 that no church has ever done in the history of the world.

God's plan begins with the pioneer spirit

The plan that God has for your life begins to work within you when you have the pioneer spirit. How do you get God's plan for your life? It starts with a pioneer spirit. And what is that? Well, it is getting ready to go where you've never gone before. And it's probably getting ready to try what has never been tried before. It's probably taking off into territory that you've been afraid to go into. Yes, often your talents and your gifts are sources of fear as much as faith ... because they would motivate you to try, but you don't want to be a public failure. You need the pioneer spirit.

That's what made California unique. I think all of the 50 states will agree that California is different. I'm an Iowan and I went to school in Michigan, but today I'm a Californian ... not by birth but by choice ... and this state is different. I know some of you are laughing as you say, "Yes, you are different ..." And you say, "There is Arnold Schwarzenegger who is California's new Governor." We are all seeing our governor's pioneer spirit. You need a pioneer spirit, too. Possibility thinking must and will follow the pioneer spirit. But you can't be a possibility thinker if you're not willing to move into new territory and dream impossible dreams.

I remember when our son, (you know him as Robert Schuller II), was eight years old. Then we called him Bobby. Our family was on an outing and we were driving through Brea Canyon. Before all the houses were built, there were ranches and horses. Bobby looked out the car window and said, "I'm going to get a horse." Arvella raising her eyebrows looked at me, I was driving the car and Bobby repeated, "I'm going to get a horse." She said, "Bobby, we live in a house and it has a small back yard. There is no room for a horse to run." "Oh," he said, "I don't care. I'm getting a horse. A real one, a live one." He kept saying that with no basis at all. Now there is an enormous power about making positive affirmative statements, especially when they are not realistic, because when they are not realistic, you get the attention of intelligent people. But Bobby kept repeating his dream and it just became a ritual.

Two years later, it was summer and Mrs. Schuller and I were traveling on speaking missions and so Robert was going to be on the farm for a few weeks. His Uncle Henry, my brother, lived on the family farm in Iowa and Bobby loved it there. This time when he arrived, Uncle Henry said, "Bobby, I got another horse. See, it's white." "Ohhhhh." "Would you like to have that horse be yours for this summer? I'll call it Bobby's horse."

"Yeah, Uncle Henry. I knew I was getting one."

"Really?" Uncle Henry said, "You can name him."

"Bobby looked at 'his' horse with his white skin glistening in the sun and said, "I'll call him Sunshine." Bobby got his horse! Now when a young child has an experience like that, what does that do to the character development? I'll tell you what it does, that child begins to learn the all important principles of "laminating" possibility thinking. It's fantastic!

God calls you into the unknown

Yes, God has a plan for your life and it starts when God gives you the pioneer spirit. He calls you to an adventure into the unknown where you have no idea what is going to come out of it. I was called into the unknown called "California" nearly fifty years ago and I had no idea what God would do with this ministry. Where does the road lead? God has a plan for this ministry and throughout this year, 2004, we are looking at a new ministry for 2005. It is a new production of music, drama and theater. It is going to be a super sensational sermon that has never been preached in this manner. Twenty-two years ago when the Cathedral opened, God gave us a dream to produce a Glory of Christmas. More than a million people have seen the Glory of Christmas and it is fantastic. Nothing has ever been done like it before. Angels fly across the ceiling of the Cathedral, twelve stories high and a hundred feet longer than a football field from point to point. The Glory of Christmas is so powerful that we also created the Glory of Easter based on the last week of Jesus Christ, the Passion and Resurrection. For a long time we've been praying and thinking and my daughter, Carol, said, "Dad, you should have a Glory of Creation at the Cathedral." She is very creative and she wrote a script for it. But we were not ready to try such a big dream so we put it to one side. Recently I went to one of the smartest people in the entertainment industry and I showed him what Carol had written. He said, "This is terrific."

"So what do we do about it?" I asked.

He answered, "I'll give you the name of a man ... he's the best in the business. He can make it happen." So I contacted him and he was excited about it. He came back here a few days ago and said, "What are you going to do about the Glory of Creation?"

I said, "Well ..."

He said, "Schuller, if you let that idea lay on the table, you'll be making the biggest mistake of your life!"

Nobody ever said that to me about anything so I couldn't forget what he said. And we talked and we're going to do it! Wow! That's another big adventure God is giving this ministry. Yes, we are planning to stage it in July and August, 2005, to celebrate our 50th anniversary. That's going to be the big event of the year. It will be a night show at 9:00 PM because it begins in the darkness and you'll come into this totally blackened Cathedral and you will hear only silence. Then a powerful voice will fill the Cathedral, "I have a dream. I am going to make Me a world!" And you will witness the Glory of Creation with lasers, satellite technology and the latest technical discoveries that the experts are using. It will be phenomenal. Pray for this new dream. It is adventure territory. It's the pioneer spirit. We've always had it. We'll not lose it. This is exciting! God has a plan for this church and the next 50 years are going to be sensational.

Yes, what are you planning today? Some of you are terminal. You can say, Schuller, you can talk about a plan for your life. You may 'have a pioneer spirit' ... 'have an adventure spirit' but I won't live the year out." And I say to you with conviction, "The best is yet to come."

I've shared a story that many of you have read in our congregational newspaper. It is a story of the lady who was dedicated to her faith in Jesus Christ and to her church. When she knew the path ahead of her life was short, she said to her pastor, "I want to plan my funeral with you."
He said, "Okay."

She said, "First of all, I want an open casket. I want them to see me holding my Bible in my left hand so they can see that is the book I've lived with all my life. In my right hand I want one of the plastic forks that we use here in our church kitchen when we have our church suppers."

Taken aback, her pastor asked, "Plastic fork? Why a plastic fork?"

She replied, "I'm glad you asked because I want you to tell everyone. They'll all wonder what's with a plastic fork." She said, "You just tell them that I have been at every church dinner in this church since I've been a member. I haven't missed a supper, and every time when they take our plate away and we have to wait for the dessert, they say, 'Keep your fork, the best is yet to come!"

The best is yet to come!

That's the message that Jesus Christ came to give! Life eternal and everlasting joy is for those who say "yes" to Jesus Christ - then fear of the future is gone - and a triumphant spirit overwhelms you. Believe that God has a plan for this church and the next 50 years are going to be sensational. God has a plan for your life. I can't tell you what it is. Read Jeremiah 29:11. Memorize it. Live with it! I have ... and then ... trust God ... and wait for ideas to come that will call you to be a pioneer. That's excitement. That makes a Happy New Year to you all!