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So as America marked 250 years, we celebrate, we remember, we give thanks. That God would guide us with wisdom to shape us with truth and teach us to love our neighbors well. But because our greatest hope has never been found in a nation. Our greatest hope has always been found in him.

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What a message that is. There's nothing we can do apart from you. We can do nothing, Lord. We just acknowledge the fact that we're all broken sinners on my best day. It's just not good enough. But we rely on the free gift of salvation, the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sins. It's not by our works of righteousness, but by the righteousness given to us in Jesus Christ, Lord. Help us to stand in that today. Help us to stand in your spirit, abide in your spirit, walk in your spirit. Father, help your church to be spirit-filled. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So Proverbs chapter 29, verse 18 says that without vision people perish. And I want to talk about vision today because we're celebrating 250 years of America, 250 years of freedom. And the wonderful thing about 250 years is that is a long time period that we can look at. We can look at where we came from. We can look at how we got here. We can see things beyond just the day-to-day lives that we're living. We can see the big picture. We can see the whole story. This is not the best translation. There's a better translation of this verse that says, where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint. Now, if you follow them out to their logical ends, they kind of say the same thing. If there's no vision, if you don't see God, if you don't see God's word, if you don't hear what God's saying, if the blind follow the blind, they both fall in a ditch. The nation that forgets God is turned into hell. There are serious consequences for not having a vision of what God says, what God commands, what God wants, who God is. But I wholeheartedly believe that if we can see where we came from, we can know where we're going. In science, uh mathematically, they can figure out that you know missile uh defense systems, they're able to detect the firing of a missile in a few seconds. And because of its velocity and its trajectory, they can determine where that missile will be in the future. And they can intercept that with another missile. And it has to continually track where that missile is, how fast it's going, because if it turns just a little bit, if it slows down a little bit, it'll miss that interception. But we're able to calculate where we are going based on on where we're coming from. Uh the same can be said if is there any farmers in here this morning? If you've ever uh I earned my PhD when I was about 10 years old on the farm. Uh if you've never seen it, it's called a post hole digger. It's got two handles. You you pick it up, you jam it down. Maybe that's what's wrong with my shoulder. It's all coming together this morning for me. I'm getting that vision. But when you're if you're going to put up a fence, you have to pick a starting point and you have to pick the point you're going to, and you you you sight down that and for every post in between, and that's how you can have a straight post. And the same is true for planting crops. Um, a planter usually has the row marker so that you know that you're on the edge of the thing. But if you watch that row next to you as you're going down the field, you're going to end up with a crooked row. You have to pick a point in the distance and keep your eyes fixed on that, just like it says in Hebrews 12. Fix your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will not grow weary and well-doing. We have to have a vision of God and what God says. We need to have our eyes open spiritually. You know, this is not just uh, I'm trying to academically memorize what God has said, but the word of God is living and active and sharper than a double-edged sword. It is alive and it will transform who you are if you were born again and you have the Spirit of the living God within you, bringing you to life and transforming who you are. The same is true of our lives. Where we've been, what we're looking at will determine where we go. We can see it in the life of David as a young man. He started out on fire for the Lord. He had a vision, he believed that God was with him, and it didn't matter how big the enemy was, whether it was a lion, a bear, or a giant, that if God was for him, who can stand against him? And so when the whole army of Israel stood on the side of the battle, quaking in fear because of the threats of the giant Goliath, David said, Who is this unclean Philistine that defies the armies of the living God? David had a vision of God that nobody else had. Without vision, we will end up somewhere we don't want to go. Without vision, people cast off restraint, without the revelation of God's word, we'll end up somewhere bad. One more example from the Old Testament. Anyone else gotten old in here? Man, it's a terrible it's a terrible thing getting old. It's gonna happen to all of us. We're all gonna get old. But Samuel had gotten old and he had two sons, and neither one of his sons were really following the Lord. They had rejected God's word. They had a vision for what they wanted, and they wanted to feed the flesh. But Samuel, the elders of Israel, they come to Samuel and they say, Hey, Samuel, you're old and your sons don't follow the Lord. Give us a king to rule over us like all the other nations of the earth. See, they didn't have their eyes fixed, they didn't have a vision, they couldn't come to Samuel and say, Hey, pray and discern what it is that God wants for us as a nation. They had a plan, they had a vision, they wanted to be like everybody else. Give us a king to rule over us. And it cost them when Samuel went to God, he said to Samuel, they haven't rejected you, they've rejected me. They had lost sight of where they were going. The only victorious example we have of someone whose vision was unwavered 100% of the time is that of Jesus Christ. When Jesus had fasted for 40 days, the devil comes to him in the wilderness to tempt him. And listen to this. What does the devil say? He says, If you're the Son of God, why don't you turn these stones into bread? You're obviously hungered. The Bible tells us that he was hungered. He says, Turn these stones into bread. And Jesus could have said, No, that seems plausible. After all, I've turned water into wine. What's so different about that and this? But Jesus didn't say that. He had a vision. He said, It is written. It's written. God has given us the revelation of who he is. He's given us the revelation of his word. He has spoken. We know what he said. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. He again, he tempts him. He says, If you're the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple, because it is written, here he goes, he's quoting scripture. It is written that he'll send his angels to bear you up so that you don't even, you know, stub a toe. And so Jesus overcame Satan's vision because he knew God's will, he knew God's vision. Today in our lives, we are being handed arguments. Just like, hey, if you're a Christian, what do you believe about immigration? Because the Bible says you're to love the stranger. Hey, if you're a Christian, what do you say about homosexuality? Because there are churches that are preaching that the Bible accepts and promotes homosexuality. So these are the same arguments that Jesus was faced with, and we can't sit on the fence. We can't just say, whatever, I'm not putting my toe into that, I'm not risking putting my neck out there. The church has to speak the truth in love. If you really love the world, you will speak up about what is true. And sometimes we don't know what is true. We don't want to know what is true because it's just an argument and we don't want to get into it. But next week we're going to do a panel with the elders of our church, and maybe one younger person, I'm not sure yet. And we're going to talk about some issues, some arguments that the church is facing. And what does the Bible say? What does the Bible say? And what is really behind the issue of the separation of church and state? Is it what I hear from the world? Or is it something different? We want to look at some of these issues and really talk about them and see if maybe there's a vision of what the church is. And we've been pushed back into the walls of the church, and we've we've cowered to the secular authority, and it got to the point where people couldn't even say Merry Christmas at Walmart. That's the kind of pressure that we're under in this world to have a do we have a vision for what the world should look like? Or are we accepting the vision that's given to us from our enemy? So don't miss that next week. What it comes down to, these arguments is did God really say this is how the devil got Eve? But we are told in the Bible that we are to take captive every thought that exalts itself against our knowledge of God. This is the game that we're playing. If we are going to overcome this world the way that Jesus overcame this world, we have to bring captive every thought that exalts itself against our knowledge of who God is and what God says. You know, it's easy to look in the mirror and think about, well, I'm not this, I'm not that. But did the word of God ever to tell you to find your self-worth in your appearance? You know, we live in a world where if you're extremely young and you don't have any utilitarian value to the society, really young or really old, well, hey, maybe we should just kill those people. But if you believe the word of God, you believe that your value comes from the fact that you were created in the image of God and all of your worth, all of your value comes from who created you, and nothing that you possess intrinsically of yourself. Boy, that's humbling and it's empowering. You see, we're fighting a battle, and Jesus says, if you hold on to my teachings, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So if the church doesn't have a testimony, and I don't mean the pastor, I mean the church. We are the church. We are all people who claim to have received the word of God and that we've been born again and that we've got the Holy Spirit living inside of us, convicting us of sin and leading us in all truth, then we have a testimony about our freedom of how I used to worry about everything. But one day God convicted me about that I shouldn't worry, that that everything is in God's hands. And if two birds fall, you know, aren't I worth more than a couple sparrows and God feeds them? How am I going to spend all my time worrying about whether I've got enough or worrying if I'm good enough or worrying if I'm smart enough? You know, if I believe what God says about me, that's where freedom is found. And the way that the devil holds you into bondage is he gives you an argument. What did God really say? Bring every thought captive that exalts itself against what God has said. It's not always easy. Just throwing things on the ground. This is why it's so important for churches to have solid Bible teachers, teaching, you know, the nitty-gritty. You know, when the Bible says that somebody hits you on one cheek, turn to them the whole time. Well, what does that mean? You know, Jesus, Jesus says, I did not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword, and then he tells Peter to put his sword away. So there's a lot of confusing things in scripture. Jesus says there's hard sayings, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part with me. Hard sayings, hard things to understand. But this is what I'm here to tell you this morning. If you will surrender to Jesus Christ, if you will ask him to be your savior, if you'll follow him, he will give you his spirit and he will lead you into all truth. There's something inside of you that's greater than what's in the world. So as we look at 250 years of freedom of America, we see competing visions. There's a lot of division in the world today. And as you look at the political climate, man, it's just you'd have to be an idiot to put your toe into that a little bit. It's just like you'll get your head taken off. It's it's crazy. So what I want to do today is try to understand where this is coming from. And what we see is there's there's really two things. Jesus went to the Pharisees and he says, You are of your father the devil, and you do his will. There is the majority of the population. Narrow is the way that leads to eternal life, broad is the road that leads to destruction. The majority of the voices you hear, whether it is the shows you watch on TV or the music that comes through the radio, will be preaching the message of their father the devil. And we can just hear those things and they sound good, and we're like, yeah, that sounds right. And we can believe lies and live by lies and see where lies will lead us. We can experience the fruit of that, or we can follow God. And historically, if you look at the church, the church, even though we hear God, we hear the still small voice of God, and we're following God, we don't always do a good job of it. Even Peter, after Jesus had told him that upon this rock I'll build my church, and the gates of hell won't prevail against it, he says, Hey, wait a minute, get behind me, Satan. So even as followers of Christ, we can believe the wrong things. It takes our, you know, we are learning as we go. We saw the church in its beginning burning people at the stake for giving the people the word of God in the written language. They didn't want that. So we see even within the church that there is spiritual wickedness in high places. And for this reason, the Bible tells us that there must be differences between you and them so that we know who has God's approval. And this is what the Bible teaches us that wisdom is proven by its children. There is a fruit that will come about by what you believe. And I believe that the church, by and large, in 2020, saw the manifestation of years and years and years of a vision that people had that came to fruition, and we saw it rear its ugly head, and even non-believers were saying, Wow, there is something spiritually dark behind this. God gives the church wake-up calls. But by and large, as we look at history, it's really easy for the church to be lukewarm and asleep. You know, we start out chasing our first love. Jesus is everything, but it doesn't take long for us to get our nose buried in our work, and we're just going to church and we're we're teaching the Bible, but there's no real heart conviction burning fire of the Holy Spirit bringing conviction and leading us. We lose our vision. We lose our vision. How did we get here? Quick, quickly, I'll just run through this. There's two people that I want to talk about. One is Nietzsche. Anybody ever heard of Nietzsche? Frederick Nietzsche, German guy. Couple of you. Anybody never heard of him? Now I know who just isn't going to raise their hands no matter what I say. Raise your hands if you have good breath. Ha ha. I'll get you there soon, man. Everybody put your hands up. Gotta make sure they work. See, I got this problem. This is this is this is where I'm at with the with the right shoulder and the thing. So you if you've never heard of Frederick Nietzsche, he was a German philosopher, he died in the 1900s, but you've heard God's Not Dead, newsboy song, God's Not Dead, surely he's alive. Roaring like a lion. So the that that God is dead quote that the whole movie was made around, comes from Frederick Nietzsche, and this is what he said. God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned? Has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe away this blood off of us? What water is there for us to claim, clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sac sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatest of this deed too great for us? We must ourselves not, must we not ourselves become gods simply to appear worthy of it. He realized that the worldview was a biblical worldview, and if you're going to cast that off, chaos is going to ensue unless there's a Superman who can define his own value, his own purpose, his own, you know, what am I living for? What am I dying for? Is it nihilism? Is there nothing? And from Nietzsche we get this idea that there's no absolute truth, only interpretations. Everybody's got their own truth. You've heard that, right? You've probably heard that when somebody says there's no absolute truth, that is an absolute truth claim. It's a self-defeating, like it's not logical, it doesn't make any sense. It's saying that A is B but B is not A. Like that's just and and and this is why this is why we can see Islamists and the LGBT community chanting from the river to the sea in a pro-Palestinian rally, because they see themselves as victim and oppressor, which we get from Michel Foucault, who died in 1984, a French philosopher. And so, as long as you know, if you see the world through through the lens of everything, you know, if you if there's no absolute truth, you must view the lens, the world through a lens of power. There is victim and victimizer, there's the the oppressed and the oppressor. You are one or the other, and there is nothing else. And from this, we get deconstructionism, we get uh critical theory. We we we get what we came to term as the woke culture, and this is how you get a gay person rallying for Islamists who, when that victim, victimizer situation changes just a little bit, it'll throw them off the roof. It doesn't make sense, but it does make sense because when they did when they knew God, they didn't worship God as God, so God gave them over to a reprobate mind to earn their ways. Remember, wisdom is proved by its children. We don't have to correct everybody else's argument, but we've got to know what our argument is. Time will tell who is right. And I believe that the church has the best answer to these questions. Now, if you want to get into all these theories, because if if you're going to go to and get a higher education, if you're going to go past a bachelor's degree, uh Michel Foucault is the most quoted person in academic literature, most quoted source in academic literature. This is the vision. And anybody who has a different vision is shut down and pushed out. But that is the vision of your higher institutions in America. Now you can get in, you can study uh Karl Popper. There's Karl Marx. You can study all these things. Jesus says there's no end, there's no end to books, and much learning is a weariness of the flesh. Anybody anybody on my level? It's a lot. It's a lot. So I think the easiest way to understand it is because all this vision also comes to us through television and media and music. Has anybody heard John Lennon's Imagine? How many people liked it the first time you heard it? I first heard it in 1990. It was on a show called Quantum Leap, and it was about time travel. And so the main character, Scott Bacchalid, went back in time, and he's trying to convince his sister that he's from the future. So he plays this song that's not yet released, and it's John Lennon's Imagine. So what does John Lennon's Imagine? What's the vision? Imagine no heaven, no hell, no countries. That's open borders, no countries. Nothing to kill or die for, no religion to, no possessions, no greed, no hunger, a brotherhood of man living in peace. You know, when the devil comes to us with an argument, he wraps it in glittery, shiny, good-looking paper. Uh, and he goes on and says, You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world can live as one. It sounds good. It sounds right. First time I heard it, I liked it. It sounded hopeful and optimistic. I didn't really hear what it was saying, but it is preaching a message. Imagine no religion. Religions cause wars. We don't want that. Imagine no countries. If you got a country, you gotta defend your country. Countries cause conflict, we don't want that. In uh 2016, the World Economic Forum uh put out a prediction, their prediction for 2030, and they said this, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Now, if we can see the world by this vision, it'll help us understand what Janice Joffa meant when he said when she said uh freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. It's very bleak, it's very nihilistic. And none of these visions are compatible with the word of God. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing, every thought that exalts itself against their knowledge of God, bringing every thought into obedience to what God says. Nothing to kill or die for. You know, this wasn't the vision of our founding fathers. John Adams says liberty must at all hazards be supported. What's he saying? You got to support liberty, no matter the cost. At all hazards, whether it costs you your life, your fortune, your name, whatever it costs, preserve liberty. We have a right to it derived from our Maker. They get to this in the Constitution. We hold these truths to be self-evident. It's not self-evident to half the world today. They don't have that vision of self-evident truth. They have a different truth. They are of their father and they do his will. But liberty must be preserved at all hazards, supported. We have a right to it derived from our maker. But if we have not a right to it derived from our maker, our fathers have earned it and bought it for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasures, and their blood. America is the freest country in the world, and it has been for 250 years. There's a lot of people out there talking about how great Russia is, how great China is, but go to Russia or China, burn their flag, call their leader, Hitler or a Nazi, and see what happens to you. I was asked once, you know, I served in the Marine Corps for a few years in the Army National Guard, and I did this little speech to some elementary grade-level kids, and they asked me what I thought about burning the American flag. Man, yes, it's sad. Yes, it's despicable, but it is the greatest example of how free, how much civil liberty you have in the United States. And I just want all the people who to know who would burn our flag, that it is the blood of our veterans who gave everything that they had to earn them that right. And just like Jesus, who didn't call on 12 legions of angels to mow us down like wet grass, he laid down his life for people that would reject him, for people who were dead in their trespass. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. If that doesn't touch your heart, I don't know what will. So burn the flag, but I hope you come to love it. Go burn somebody else's flag and see what happens. Patrick Henry. Another founding father, he says, Is life so dear, peace so sweet? As to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what others. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. Is there anything in your worldview that's worth dying for? Give me liberty or give me death. The only signer of the Declaration of Independence that was also an active clergy member, John Witherspoon, he said, There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage. What is he saying? He's saying that there is a physical manifestation of our spiritual reality. There is a physical manifestation. What you see happening in the world around you is a manifestation of the truth that we're holding on to, the spiritual reality within us. If the church loses its light, the world will grow dark. If the salt loses its saltiness, it loses its ability to preserve the world from rotting away. If we see a steady decline in the world, we know that the problem is in the church. We've lost our vision, we've lost our connection to the Lord God Almighty. We've lost the power of the Holy Spirit burning within us that causes men like David to stand up at the edge of the battle and say, Who is this unclean Philistine that defies the armies of the living God? If God is for us, nothing can stand against us. No weapon, no power. Nothing. How many people know who George Whitfield is? There's a movie playing at the Grand next Sunday at 7 p.m. called A Great Awakening. I've heard, I haven't seen it, I've heard that it's really good, and it does get into George Whitfield's life. Benjamin Franklin said, without Whitfield, there's no revolution. Without a preacher, there would have been no revolution. Or at best, maybe it would have been like the revolution that they had in France. Does anybody know about the French Revolution? It was ugly. Robesphere, the guy that got the guillotine going, ended up losing his head on the guillotine. So it's like everybody died. They were just killing people left and right. Their own people. Benjamin Franklin said George Whitfield was the revolution, meaning that without Whitfield, we wouldn't have had a revolution. So who was Whitfield? What did he do? What did he say? What did he teach? George Whitfield was born in England. He was a contemporary of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist movement. And John Wesley had his own revival in his own right in England, going around preaching because the Church of England, the Anglican church, said, no, you can't preach here. So he went to people and preached. When George Whitfield was 21, he started out preaching in the Church of England, in the Anglican church. And he preached there for a few years and he was very popular. He didn't preach like the preachers at the time. They said that he preached extemporaneously. Does anybody know? Big word. It just means off the cuff, man. I'm going to tell you what's in my heart. I know who I'm talking to, and I love you so much that I want you to hear what I'm saying because I care for you, not because I want you to see how smart I am or I want to beat you over the head with what the Bible says, but I'm talking to you. Like you talk to everybody else, like you talk to people in your life. The Bible says that if we don't confess Christ before men, Jesus won't confess us before the Father. How many relationships do we have with other people that we've had for years and we've never confessed Christ? He was talking to people because there was a power burning in his heart. He had a purpose, he had a direction, he had a vision. So he preaches in England for a few years in the Anglican church. He comes over to America and he starts an orphanage in Georgia. And when he goes back to England, guess what? He's barred from speaking in the Anglican church. Church kicked him out. Why? Because he was telling people that you have to be born again. You have to be baptized in the Spirit and fire. Jesus said that, not George Whitfield. George Whitfield says, you must be born again. You have to be baptized in the Spirit of God. You have to be able to say, I was a dead, but now I'm alive. I was blind, but now I see there was this point in the history of my life where I said, you know what? My way's not working out. Jesus, help me. Jesus, save me. Jesus, take whatever it is you said, you turned from going your own way, doing what you wanted to do, and you said, Jesus, I need you. You must be born again. The carnal mind can't understand the things of God. You must be born again. The carnal mind is at enmity, it's it's in open rebellion. While we were yet sinners, we we rejected God, we refused God, we turned from God. Every man's way is right in his own eyes, but in the end it leads to death. We did what we wanted to do, and this is true of every single Christian. Before you were saved, you were a sinner and you did what sinners did. And if you're not born again, if you don't have a day in your life where you used to be one way and now you're the other, you need to call on the name of the Lord, for everyone that calls on the name of Jesus Christ will be saved. It's that simple, folks. So Whitfield went back to England and they kicked him out of the church. They didn't like his passionate plea for people to be born again. They said, no, not here. So what does he do? He goes to where the people are that don't know Jesus. And if you look at how England was in the 1700s, it was not a good place. And revival starts breaking out everywhere Whitfield goes. He comes back to America and he continues to preach in the open air. There's only 13, I don't have my fingers. There's thirteen math's not my thing. There's only 13 colonies at the time. And in George Whitfield, he rides up and down through the colonies preaching the word of God. He preaches a thousand sermons a year for eight years till the time of his death in 1770. A thousand sermons a year is four to five times a day. Or if you just divide it by the number of days in the year, see how I'll get about, get around, not say how many days are in the year. If you divide that, it's 2.5 times per day. And he did so extemporaneously. That means without notes, without reading it off the top of his head, speaking to people, wherever he went as he was moved by God, as the Spirit led him. And revival broke out in America. If it wasn't for George Whitfield, there wouldn't have been a revolution. What was George Whitfield teaching? He was teaching that every individual is equal before God. He was teaching that you can understand the Bible yourself because unless you got the Holy Spirit, you can't understand it. And if you have the Holy Spirit, God will lead you into all truth. All of us are wrong from time to times, all of us misunderstand from time to times. But God is not going to leave you there. He's going to finish the good work that he's begun in you. But you got to stay focused. You got to keep your vision on him. Whitfield preached a message about the power of the Holy Spirit. And we can uh behind on my slides. We can go through these 2 Corinthians where the Spirit of the Lord is. Now the Lord is spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. We have to ask ourselves, where does freedom come from? Does freedom come from the vision that we see taking place in America today, that's sweeping cities like New York and Seattle? Where does the vision come from? Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And so if we look at the church and we say, hey, if there's going to be revival in America, if America's going to be saved, there has to be revival. That revival has to come through the church. And if the church is the same thing that it's always been your entire lifetime, and we're in a state of constant decline, then something's got to change in the church because maybe we're the problem. Maybe we've lost our vision. Maybe, like some of the churches in the book of Revelation, we've forgotten our first love. We've got off track. We've lost sight of what's most important. We've taken our eyes off of Jesus. How do you measure freedom? Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The Bible tells us that Paul writes to Timothy and 1 John asks for you, the anointing you have received remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. You need God. If you don't have God, you can't understand the Word of God. You have to be born again. The anointing is real. We need anointing. We need people like Patrick Henry that are there's a fire burning in their heart and they're willing to take a stand and stand firm and say, I'm not backing down. You will give me liberty or you will give me death because I have something that's worth dying for, giving my life for. And maybe like Nathaniel Hale, we would say, I have my only regret is that I have but one life to give. But if we lose that vision, where do we go? John says, Jesus says, I'll ask the Father, and He'll give you another advocate to help you and will be with you forever. The Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. We don't go to church, we are the church. The Spirit of God lives within each one of us. But whether or not the Spirit of God is having his way in our lives, whether or not we have a testimony of holding on to the Word of God. And Jesus says, if you hold on to my teachings, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. If we're not holding on to the truth, we have no testimony. A church without a testimony is a powerless church in name only. Complacent, lukewarm. Salt that loses its saltiness is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under the foot of men. We have to have a vision. We've seen Christianity pushed out of the public sphere. And I believe it's been pushed out because it became powerless and irrelevant. But the highest, the most worrisome statistic is that when children grow up, they leave the church, and I believe it's because they just hear blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It didn't help mom and dad any. It didn't change their lives. They didn't have a testimony of freedom. They didn't have, you know, there was no supernatural working of the hand of God in their lives. They didn't see anything special. Why keep hanging out? The church has to wake up. We need revival. We need revival. I believe physical life is a spiritual manifestation. So really we're getting what we want. Do we want revival? What does a church look like that wants revival and knows that if they do not have revival, they have lost everything? Will we go into that still night with a whimper? Or are we going to go with a roar? That's the question in front of the church today. Will we have God? Will we give everything that we have to have God and to have his vision for our lives? Or will we keep doing what we've always been doing? There's a story about George Washington was praying in the woods while he was the commander of the colonial army. And a British loyalist, another colonist, came upon him in the woods, unbeknownst to Washington and heard him pray. And changed thoughts. If somebody heard your prayer life, would you win them all? Are we pleading the blood of Jesus Christ for our family, for our children, for our neighbors, for our nation? Or is it all lost? Is there anything worth dying for? We're all dying for something. Sadly, most people are just dying for what they want. I wholeheartedly believe that we either have to experience revival or discipline. Either we are moving toward God or we're moving away from God. There's no stagnicity in following Jesus. If you're not listening to the Holy Spirit and following it, you're being given over to a reprobate God. A church without a testimony is a dead church. Half of our culture is saying, Imagine no heaven, no religion, no Christianity. No Jews. Can the church show them what the power of God looks like? It's up to us to seek his face and ash and sackcloth and prayer and fasting. It's up to us to have a vision, revelation, to light the way for the blind. Our mission as a church is for all to know Jesus Christ, experience his power, and be born again. Taste and see that God is good and become the image of God in the world. That's our goal. That's where we're going. And with that, I will close with our verse from 2 Corinthians chapter 2. Verse 18. So verse 17 says, Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. Verse 18 says, and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory. We're getting brighter, we're getting bigger, we're getting better. I'm not where I started at. I'm further down the road, and this is what a church is. It's people that Jesus came and he opened the door to the prison. He says that we see through a glass darkly. As a kid, I worked at Acme Markets and they had an office with a two-way mirror. And when the door was open to the office and the light was just right, you could see in through the reflecting side of that mirror and see inside the office. And this is the vision that God has given us. We've seen beyond the veil, we've seen what's coming. Jesus has ripped the curtain in half that separates us from the Holy of Holies, and we can enter in. Or we can be like the Pharisees who stand in the door, not entering ourselves, nor allowing others to enter in. And if we do that, I imagine the world will just keep going the direction that it's going. Getting worse and worse. Without vision, people perish. Without revelation, people cast off for strength. Let's pray. Father God, we come before you this morning as your church, as your people. And the power that I find in your word exceeds the faith I find in my person. I'm not like David. I'm not like Gideon. I don't speak up all the time. A lot of times it's easier to just put my head down and do my job. But you've caught us for so much more, Lord. You've caught us to be your church. You've caught us to enter in. You've caught us to partake in your divine nature. You've caught us to have a vision and to be the light of the world. And Lord, we I don't want to be the person that messes that up, that misses it. The Bible tells us that you'll wipe away tears in heaven. I can't help but think there'll be a lot of people that squeak in with so many regrets, with so much sorrow over the life that they wasted when they could have lived for God, when they could have reached their children, when they could have reached their neighbor with the gospel of Christ, but they never took the time to themselves live for God. There'll be tears in heaven. There'll be sorrow for a minute. Because we could have been the light, we could have been the song, we could have been the instrument of revival in the hands of the all-powerful God of the universe. Have we been too busy chasing our own dream? The American dream. If we lose our first love, what's as we close this morning, Tommy Roxanne will be up front to pray with you. And if you want prayer, plead with you. Believe if this nation's to change, it's going to start with a movement of prayer. Coming together with other believers to cry out to God. God help us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

Have a great week. We'll see you next time.