When the Fire Falls (August 30, 2026)

Revival sounds exciting until it starts rearranging your life. We dig into why a full church, a polished service, or even a dramatic spiritual moment is not the same thing as genuine Christian revival, and why the Holy Spirit often brings conviction before comfort. If we say we want God to move, we also have to ask a tougher question: would we actually be okay with what He wants to change in us?

We go to 1 Kings 18 and walk with Elijah onto Mount Carmel, where the real battle is not volume or popularity but allegiance. Elijah’s words hit like a spotlight: how long will we waver between two opinions? And the detail we can’t ignore is this: before the fire ever falls, Elijah rebuilds the torn-down altar. That becomes our mirror. Sometimes what we call “waiting on revival” is really us avoiding repair, repentance, and surrender.

From there we get practical and personal: divided loyalty, lukewarm Christianity, secret sins, and the reality that true spiritual renewal gets messy. Messy can mean exposed motives, uncomfortable obedience, and new people walking in with real brokenness, but it can also mean a church that serves, prays, and shepherds like Jesus. If you’re hungry for revival, this conversation helps you name what belongs on the altar and what needs to be rebuilt first. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s asking for more of God, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

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Opening Prayer And Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. You are worthy of our praise. Hallelujah. Father, we thank you and we praise you for your presence in this place today. Lord, go before the Word. Prepare the hearts and the ears and the mind, Father, for the word that you will deliver this morning. I thank you for classroom workers and for students. Pour out your blessings. Father, I praise that this word is delivered. That it's everything that you've prepared today. Father, that it's not my word. Father, that the word that we will be delivered today will be alive and well. Moving throughout the building today, Father. Father, I thank you and I praise you. I give you honor and glory in the mighty name of Jesus. And the church says, Amen. You can be seated and we'll start moving the kids back to kids'

Setting Expectations For Kids’ Class

SPEAKER_00 1:37

class. Hey parents, one more thing really quickly. I'm just going to ask you to just check your kids real quick and make sure they're not taking squishies and phones. If they if you want them to take their phone, that's fine, but we are going to put them on a table. What we're having happen is kids playing on their phones while we're trying to do lessons. So if you want to send them, that's fine, but they won't have them in their access. No squishies, no nidos, no dumplings, no fidgets. Did I name them all? Are there more?

unknown 2:05

No toys.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

What?

unknown 2:07

Can we just say no toys?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, no toys is really the answer, but people say, well, this isn't a toy. Right, it's a fidget. It's a toy.

What Revival Is And Isn’t

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So I've been praying about something quite a bit, and it's a word that we like to use in the church quite regularly, and the word is revival. That's a good word. Right? And I love the thought of revival. And I liked the Azusa Street revivals and the stories that came from that. I mean, we're talking like, remember, I was talking about Smith Wigglesworth and raising people from the dead and that kind of revival. Like we're talking like 1970s, 80s, Pentecostal revival, fill the tent, people falling out in the spirit. Some of us were around for that, some of us were not. Amen? Let's be honest, if it happened today, some of us would be afraid of it.

unknown 3:01

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Right? Now, I remember one time that I saw the spirit move so strong that it was actually, I don't want to say scary because that's not the word I want to use, but for lack of a better term, it was wild, is what it was. And I remember Florence, she just said, I want to pray for people. If you need a healing, if you need a touch from the Lord, I want you to come forward. And the next thing I know, the whole front of the building on the other side was full of people. People everywhere. I didn't even think there were that many people in the building that Sunday. And they're all lined up. And she's walking down the, and I want to be clear, I'm not saying that this was Florence. I'm saying the Lord was moving that morning. Amen. And she's touching people and they're falling to the floor. And it was happening so fast that the three guys that were trying to stop people from bouncing their heads off the floor couldn't move fast enough. We're stepping over people as we're trying to move. And I remember Alona's not here this morning, which is unfortunate because I'm sure she remembers this. Where she, oh, there she is. I didn't see you guys sneak in. Florence gets to Alona, there's nobody behind her. She doesn't even touch Alona, and Alona's boink on the floor. I see her head hit the floor, and I'm like, she's unconscious. Concussion. This is not gonna end well. And when she stood up, it was like it never happened. The Lord was moving so strong that morning, and I thought to myself, I have never seen or experienced the Lord move this way, and I don't know if I ever will again. And it was such an exciting time to be in the sanctuary, to be in the presence of God. And I think about that word revival, and I pray on that word revival because then we come to the to the early 2000s, and then we get into the to the to the tens and then into the 20s, and revival just doesn't look the same as it used to. Right? Revival now means the church is full. That's how they look at it now, right? Like God must be doing something in this place because it's full. They're in an empty seat in the house. That's not revival.

unknown 5:09

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Church has become a spectator sport.

unknown 5:14

That's right. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Right? Everybody wants their participation trophy. I showed up on Sunday, therefore I am part of the body, but they don't engage with the body. They don't actually become part of the body. And so we talk about revival a lot. We pray about revival, we sing about revival, and the idea is that for us, revival looks different than what it looks like to God. Because revival to God doesn't look like a full house. It looks like a surrendered body. Right? It looks like a body of people who will gather together and say, Lord, your way, not our way. Right? Now, the really hard part that I have is we pray about revival all the time. But do you know that revival typically begins when a gathering of unsaved people begin to believe in the Lord? Look around the building for just a second. Look at the person you're sitting next to. They've probably been here since Jesus walked the earth. We know each other by name, right? We hug each other every Sunday. We know what's going on in each other's lives. The problem is we're all believers in Christ and we have become comfortable sitting in a seat. Now, I want to remind you that we were so uncomfortable at one time we had to buy new seats. Right? Because we're sitting in there, they're too small, they're not, the backs just aren't right. We need new chairs. We need new, listen, I gave you new chairs and now you're asleep. The body sits and it consumes and it becomes sleepy and it becomes tired, and it's not truly looking for revival. Because my question is if revival fell today, if the heavens split open right now and the fire fell on this building, would we be comfortable with what the Holy Spirit was about to do with us? The answer truly, we we can say yes, and some of us probably are, but there's a lot of us who are not. There are a lot of us who, when the spirit begins to move, even in our own lives, convicting us of the things that we're doing that we shouldn't be doing, we can't stop and listen to that and take it for what it is. Instead, we fight it. And we argue that this isn't what revival is supposed to be. Revival should make you uncomfortable. Revival should make you uncomfortable. Revival is not an exciting version of church. Right? Revival is not when people are laying on the floor out in the spirit. That's not revival. That is a move of the spirit. It can be the start of something great, but the problem is oftentimes the church gets excited about that and they say, We want that next week. They say, we want that every week. No church will ever sustain itself only living in the prophetic. It can't happen. Because what happens? The spirit moves, you end up on the floor, and then next Sunday it happens again, and then the following Sunday it happens again, and then pretty soon you're like, I don't need to go up there. Been there, done that. And the prophetic becomes less important. So, forgive the terminology, but I don't know how else to say it and say it politely, but we want to we we want to prostitute the prophetic.

unknown 8:41

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Right? We want to prostitute the move of the spirit. We want to say that this is what God will do in a church. No, that's not what God will do in the church. What God will do is convince you to surrender your heart, your mind, your spirit to his will and not your will. To his will, not the will of the people around you. Have you ever met somebody that ends up in friendship or relationship with somebody you know darn good and well they shouldn't be in friendship or relationship with? And you're staying, you're like, what is wrong? Why are you doing this? You know that this isn't where you belong. You know this isn't what you should be doing with your life. And they say something very simple. I like it. I like it. The church begins to do that with the gifts of the Spirit. Right? So when the prophetic starts to happen, I like the way that that makes me feel. I like the way it makes my church look. Right? You get a visitor and they're like, Have you ever seen anybody get up and leave during a Pentecostal service before? Right? And you're like, Yeah, yeah, that's what the spirit will do. Spirit scare them off, right? I'll tell you a quick story. I gotta get into this message. But I had a friend who came to a Wednesday night service with me one time when Pastor Florence was preaching. And she, oh Lord. It's almost like she could smell it. You know what I mean? Like, you know how a shark can smell blood miles away. So this girl comes into the church, she is not Pentecostal by any stretch of the imagination. She's a believer. She went to church every Sunday, she was very connected to her body. And Pastor Florence just very nonchalantly says, I just want everybody right now to just pray in the spirit. Got a building full of people speaking in tongues. And this girl's like, mm-mm. And Pastor Florence, God bless her, she says, Now I know there are some of you who are sitting here who just aren't listening, you're just not obeying the spirit, and you really just need to. And this girl's like, you can she's tighten the seat, you know what I mean? Like, fist clenched, your face is all blue. And I hear her start making some noise, and I'm like, ooh, what we got going on over here, right? I know she's not Pentecostal. She was speaking Spanish. She was a fluent Spanish speaker. She was like, I didn't know what to do. She was like, I felt like I had to do something. Right? You ever seen anybody go through something like that? But here's what happens is we we take that, we take that move of the spirit, and we say, Yeah, because my church is better than the other church. My church is stronger because we have a move of the spirit. That is not revival. It is not revival. We have gotten to the point where we don't even really know what revival looks like anymore. We don't understand it. Listen, sometimes, whenever revival breaks out, it breaks out in a way of celebration or repentance, reconciliation. Listen, sometimes it causes us to let go of things that we have held on to for a really long time. It's hard. We see people who rub us the wrong way or whatever, and when revival truly breaks out in our lives, it is simple for us to just let go of it. Sometimes revival is God calling us to something new. But not every time. Sometimes revival is restoring things that we've walked away from. Because can I listen? I tell everybody this. I love old hymns. Right? I think they're great. And I think they serve a purpose in the church. You tell some of these younger folks that they're like, I don't like those kinds of songs. Right? If we never meet again this side of heaven, then that song, when you hear it, doesn't it do something to you? Right? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Listen, when I hear that music in the suite by and by, it does something. When the church actually listens, but we've become consumers. We want to be entertained. We want the songs to be upbeat. We want the bass to be loud. I like that. I like that a lot. But we want to be entertained. We don't want to submit to the move of the spirit. And we are so broken because of it. We love the idea of revival. We love the concept of revival or the thought of revival breaking out in the church. Until revival starts to touch the places that we are comfortable. Right? So we sit in our seats and we're comfortable and we say, you know, God can do all of these things. God will move mightily in the lives of the people around me. He will change people from glory to glory, from situation to situation, right? But I don't want him to do that to me. Because if he calls me out of this, then I have to surrender more to him. Surrender to God equals lordship of your life. And that's where the church struggles. We want to treat him as a savior. Can we agree on that? But we don't want to treat him as the Lord of our lives. Because lordship is submission from us. It's the submission of our flesh, of our spirit. And we can't, because if we submit, then change happens, and when change happens, we become uncomfortable. The church wants to be comfortable. That's why it's a balmy 72 degrees in here on Sunday, right? That's why you got nice, comfy seats. Next, you guys are going to be asking for heated toilet seats. Right? Because if we're not comfortable, why would we come? I said last week that the church has gotten so bad about being with one another, and we've decided that comfort is so important to us that we would prefer to watch church at home. The comfort of our couch. Sitting relaxed at home in our PJs and not having to move when the Spirit moves. Can you imagine watching a time of ministry where Pastor Holly's up here praying for people? Can you imagine watching that on TV? That move is not the same. That touch in your life is not the same.

Elijah On Mount Carmel

SPEAKER_00 14:55

We're going to go to 1 Kings and we're going to go from we're going to be in chapter 18, and we're going to read from 20 to 39, and then we're going to jump around in there a little bit. So if you've got your Bibles, we're going to go to 1 Kings 18, and we're going to start verse 20. It says, so Ahab summoned all the people of Israel and the prophets to Mount Carmel. Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, Are you ready? How much longer will you waver hobbling between two opinions? Do we know what those opinions are? If not, we're going to find out here in just a second. If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, then follow him. But the people were completely silent. Then Elijah said to them, I am the only prophet of the Lord who is left. But Baal has about 450 prophets. Imagine that, you're a little outnumbered, right? So you've got all of these people prophesying, all of these people speaking of this God, and yet you're one lone voice. Now bring two bowls, the prophets of Baal may choose whichever one they wish to cut into pieces and lay on the wood all wood of their altar, but without setting fire to it. I will prepare the other bowl and lay it on the wood on the altar, but I and but will not set fire to it. Then call on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by setting fire to the wood is the true God. And all of the people agreed. Now I just want to say, that's some influence, right? You've got 450 prophets who could have just simply said, No, our vote is better than your vote. There are 450 of us, they're only one of you. We're just gonna say, we're right, you're wrong, we're smart, you're dumb, we're big, you're little. Right? That's very simple. But instead they agree. Why do they agree? Because they genuinely think they're right. Have you ever thought that you were so right you were willing to make yourself look like an idiot?

Confidence, Pride, And Looking Foolish

SPEAKER_00 17:21

I did it yesterday. I was so confident. Now, listen, don't judge me, okay? You better. Umbrella of grace as I tell this story. Uh, Easton plays football for Indian Valley. Now, we played Tusky Valley last week, not yesterday, Saturday before, and we looked terrible. They couldn't get a play started to save their lives. Like, I was like, this is bad. We are gonna have a really bad season. Alright? Yesterday, we had a home game and we played the Mustang. Now I gotta be careful how I tell this story. I know, I gotta be careful how I tell this story. I'm just huh? Yeah, I know you, yeah, I know you guys know where I live. I'm actually not afraid of most of you. It's Blaze that I'm worried about. So sitting over there, he's a he's a Mustangs through and through like tires are slashed in my car on the way out. Anyway, we get to the game and I make a bet with Emmett. I bet the Mustangs are gonna win. And when they betting against my own kid, just so we're clear. And when they do, you have to mow the grass, and I'm gonna pick on you the whole time about it. But if the Braves win, I'll mow the grass. I hate mowing grass. Hate it. Hey, I'll pay you to mow my grass this week. Because guess what? I lost in big fashion. Right? It was grandiose. It was embarrassing. So when Emmett came back over to me, I said, we didn't shake on that deal. We didn't shake, so I we didn't shake, so it's not official. Right? But my wife heard it, so she said, No, you're mowing the grass this week. Anyway, have we ever been so confident that we've been willing to make ourselves look stupid in that confidence? Right? Not having all of the facts, not knowing what was actually going to happen. Where are we at? Sorry. Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, You go first, for there are many of you. Choose one of the bowls and prepare it. Call on the name of your God, but do not set fire to the wood. Now, I want to be clear that he's being very fair. He's letting them pick the bowl. He's letting them go first. They decide basically what the mark is. So they prepared one of the bowls, they placed it on the altar, and then they called on the name of Baal from morning until noontime, shouting, O Baal, answer us, but there was no reply of any kind. Then they danced, hobbling around the altar that they had made. Now, I'm picturing some grown men looking really foolish right about now. Grown men ever looked foolish? Okay. About noontime, Elijah began to mock them. This is my favorite part of this story. You'll have to shout louder, he scoffed. For surely he is God. Perhaps he's daydreaming, ready, or relieving himself. Dude has no chill, right? Like he's just letting them have it. Or maybe he's away on a trip. Or he's asleep and he needs to be awakened. So they shouted louder, following their normal customs. This is wild. They cut themselves with knives and swords until blood started gushing out. Now I'm picturing these guys just falling over dead because they are so desperate to prove that they are right. They raved on all afternoon until the time of the evening sacrifice, but still there was no sound, no reply, no response.

Fire Falls After The Altar Is Rebuilt

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Then Elijah called to the people, come over here. And they crowded around him as they were as they repaired the altar of the Lord that had been torn down. He took twelve stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel, and he used the stones to rebuild the altar in the name of the Lord. Then he dug a trench around the altar large enough to hold about three gallons. That's a lot. He piled up wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, laid the pieces on the wood, then he said, Fill four large jars with water and pour it over the offering and the wood. And after they had done this, he said, Do the same thing again. And when they were finished, he said, Now do it a third time. And so they did as he said. And the water ran around the altar and even filled the trench. So there's three gallons of water just in the trench, not to speak of what was poured on top. At the usual time for the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed. O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all of this at your command. O Lord, answer me, answer me so these people. Will know, O Lord. Our God. Is that a typo? Our God and that you. Oh, that you, O Lord, our God. Okay. I was like, wait a second. Took me a second. God got her together. Now we're good. Our God, and then have brought them back to your cell. I was struggling. I was on the struggle bus for a second. Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bowl, the wood, the stones, and the dust. And it even licked up all of the water in the trench. And when the people saw it, they fell face down to the ground and cried out, The Lord, He is God. Yes, the Lord is God. And we're going to stop there. Imagine being one of those prophets, dancing around and cutting yourself, looking an absolute fool. Begging for this fire to start, to prove that he is God. And with such a simple prayer, the altar is ignited into flames, flames so big, so hot that it was able to consume three gallons of water, all of the dust, all of the wood, all of the meat, literally dissolves everything. But God. But God. I need to point out something important though. And I want to, can we go back to Far? I don't know exactly what verse we're going to be in. Actually, it's going to be in 30. Can you go to 1830 for me? Because before he ever repaired, or before the fire ever fell, Elijah actually had to repair the altar because the altar had been torn down. And so he takes 12 large stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel, he puts them around and he uses that to rebuild the altar that has been destroyed. Before he ever prayed for fire, he chose to rebuild that altar. Here's my point. Sometimes we pray for fire to fall. Amen? We're begging for revival in the house of the Lord. But at the end of the day, sometimes we just need to stop and rebuild what God has already done. Have we ever experienced revival the way that they were experiencing revival in the 70s and the 80s? No. Why? What's changed? Because I'm pretty sure the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And somehow the God that existed in the 70s and the 80s is not the same God that exists today. Or at least according to our standards. It's not God who has changed, it is the church who has changed. It is our desire to be comfortable and not consumed by fire. We are refined in fire. We are refined in trial. We are not refined in comfort. We become fat and lazy. We become so swollen on all of the things that we think church should be rather than what church actually is. This is not a place where you come and get comfortable. This is a place where you come and you be you become changed. You learn something about yourself. You learn something about the God who is supposed to be Lord of your life, and that's when you make sweeping change that allows you to actually have relationship with Jesus. Relationship with God. It has nothing to do with you. Less of me, more of you. Less of me, more of you. This isn't about me. This isn't about what I want. It's not about what I desire. It's about what God wants for me. And I tell you guys all the time, I don't pray for you the way you want me to pray for you. I pray God's will in your life. Because if I pray, if I pray your desires, I'm questioning what God is doing in your life. Listen, his plan is always greater than mine. It is always greater than yours. This isn't about what I want, it's about what God wants for me. Sometimes we need to return to the things that already exist. We need to return to the things that already have happened, and we need to look at them and understand just how God truly, good God truly is in those circumstances. Now, we can't recreate it. Somebody asked me the other day, if you had the opportunity with the knowledge that you have today to go back to 10 years old and live your life again, would you do it? And here was my answer, no. It's very simple. Because can you imagine the immense amount of pressure to recreate the good things in your life? I was, Emmett and I went to my grandma's house the other day. She'd gotten a bunch of stuff, and we went over to go through some of it, and uh we start finding all of these little little trinkets. We found a croquet set. Uh, there were some super soakers, like real super soakers, y'all. Us 90s kids, we're like, all right, now let's go, right? Real super soakers, all of these really fun toys, and it brought back these memories, right? Now, I lived on the west side of town, don't judge me for that. That's where I grew up. And uh we had a rule in our house. When you got home, we were latchkey kids. When we got home from school, we went in the house, we did our chores, and we went back outside until the street lights came on, right? And we had a neighborhood full of kids that we would play all the games with. I mean, we were, for those of you who may have lived on the west side in the early 90s, sorry if we ever ding-dong ditched you. Because we did that a lot. And it was fun, and I remember those things. I got to have breakfast with a friend yesterday, and uh, he was a school teacher of mine, and I was sharing with him some of the defining moments in my life that he was a part of, and he's like, I had no idea. Can you imagine trying to recreate those moments that made you who you are? And the disappointment when you can't. We can go back and look at those things, but we cannot live there. We can go back and we can study and we can understand that God will move today the same way he moved in the 70s and the 80s. We can't live there, but we can say, God, what was it that you did? What was it that they were doing that we need to be doing for you? They were gathering in the name of Jesus. They weren't gathering in the name of fellowship. They were gathering in the name of Jesus. They were gathering in a hope that the Spirit would fall. They came to church believing that God was going to show up. We come to church believing there's gonna be donuts and coffee. We come to church believing that the air conditioning is gonna work. We come to church believing that our pastor is going to deliver a word. We do not come believing that God is going to show up. And so we sit here thinking, well, he just keeps talking. Why was there an extra worship song this morning? Are we gonna get out of here in time for lunch today? I got places to go, I've got things to do, and we're so consumed with what's gonna happen next that we are not consumed with the idea that God could show up in a moment's notice. That if the fire fell right now, every one of you would be like, this is inconvenient. Could he have done this like at 10 o'clock because subways call in Manane? We no longer desire to see God actually show

Choose God Or The World

SPEAKER_00 30:57

up. Here's the big part revival actually requires a decision on our part. Amen? It requires us to make a decision, and that decision is very simple. Do we serve the world or do we serve God?

unknown 31:10

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

That's really the decision that has to be made. Now, here's the problem. We oftentimes we get saved and we're on fire for Jesus, right? You ever met those, you've met those people, right? They just they come in guns ablazing, like, I will do anything in the name of Jesus. Anything you need from me, Pastor, I will do it. I will show up, I will cut the grass, I will clean the toilets, I'll reshingle the roof. And then all of a sudden the work needs to be done. And that fire has burn out. And it's not, it doesn't happen overnight. What happens is we separate ourselves and and and we find other things to occupy our time, and we slowly, just like I said last week, we slowly just become lukewarm. I heard a pastor say the other day that lukewarm Christianity isn't a problem. What do you mean? Well, if you're saved, even if you're lukewarm, you're still saved. Because we don't get into heaven by deeds. I agree with that. But if you're a lukewarm Christian, I'm gonna have to ask you a question and it's not gonna feel good. Are you actually saved? Like, have you really surrendered your life to Christ? Because people who have truly surrendered their life to Christ typically don't become lukewarm. You ever been in the prayer room with Pastor Holly? She's scared you. Because she's a prayer warrior. That's what she believes. She believes that through intercession, God will move in the lives of the people she serves. She's praying for you guys. You don't even know what's happening most of the time. And she's getting serious about it. Because she believes that if she intercedes on your behalf, that great things will happen in your lives, right? Amen. Hallelujah. I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful to have people that surround me that will pray for me, but you know what? We don't do it for one another. We look at each other and we're like, yeah, that was a dumb decision, and you're gonna pay the consequence for that. And we laugh and we walk on, right? Pray for the people around you. Because the decision is live for the world or live for God. Amen. It's very simple. Now, Elijah asked them, he asked them very specifically, how long are you going to be split between two things? Church, we should be asking ourselves the same question in this moment, right now. How long will we serve two different things? Have I given my life to Jesus? Am I truly following the calling on my life? Am I believing that God is gonna do something great in my life? Or am I saying, well, I went to church and I did my part? You know how many times people will say, Well, all you gotta do is call me and let me know when you're gonna do something, and I'll be there. And I call, and I get here, and the only person here is Pastor Roger. For those of you who don't know, he's about 90% of the way deaf at this point. I'm just kidding. But when we work together, he gets me, I get him, and I love working with him. But he's 75, 76 years old. I can't ask him to crawl around in the attic anymore. He used to. And then once I fell through it, he was like, no, that's all you, man. He's like, I'm not gonna be responsible for that. He's 75 years old. We uh 76, I'm sorry. I'm gonna tell a story, another one. So sometimes I put the cart before the horse. I have had this vision for what our kitchen will be like for a very long time. I've been prayerful about it, and an opportunity arose that we could buy a commercial refrigerator. Big old two-door commercial refrigerator. So I bought it. I didn't know that it had to be picked up the next day in a two-hour window. So he called me, he's like, You know what you've done, right? He said, It has to be picked up between two and four o'clock. I had a meeting, I couldn't be there. I was like, Well, can you do it by yourself? Oh, I I neglected to mention it was in Holmesville? Bit of a drive. So he calls Ed, Pastor Roger and Ed, they go and pick that refrigerator up, they bring it back, and they put it in our kitchen for us. God bless them. Amen. Listen. That's what service is about, right? They don't they didn't mess around. Now, I'm not gonna say they didn't have some things to say about me on the trip. I wasn't in the truck, I don't know. And I don't blame them if they did, but they did it with smiles on their faces. That refrigerator is beautiful, and it is going to serve this body very well. Very well. And listen, they've made a decision that they will they they didn't do that as service to me, they did that as service unto the Lord. Because it is what the vision that we have for the building, and they buy that vision, they understand that vision. It's not this guy's nuts. I mean, they think that, but they give me a lot of grace, and I understand it. But they're constant, Roger is constantly serving, Holly, constantly here serving the Lord. Listen, they've made the decision. We know what their decision is, but we have to ask ourselves the question. Jesus cannot operate in our lives with divided loyalty. If today we're showing up at church and tomorrow we're showing up at the bar, it is really hard for Jesus to fix that. We have to make decisions in our lives that say, I will follow Jesus. You know, Jesus doesn't just want you to show up. People say, well, he just wants your best. No, he doesn't. He wants your all. He wants the broken, he wants the ugly, he wants the damaged, he wants the stuff that nobody else wants. He doesn't want your best, he wants your all. Take some some great um, what's the word I'm looking for? It doesn't matter. Just rest in that. Know that that's what he wants. All he wants is your all. It doesn't have to be pretty. Sometimes you need to come to the altar and ugly cry, right? Sometimes you need to be driving in the car and and uh come, Jesus come comes on and you cry ugly for a hot second, right? Anybody been there? Been there, done that. I'm probably gonna do it on the way home today, right? Sometimes we just need to put ourselves in front of God and say, God, here it is. Broken and incomplete, ugly, defective most of the time. Here it is. All of it belongs to you.

Living Sacrifice And Costly Surrender

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Revival doesn't begin when God gets more of our attention, right? You can't just turn your attention to God. That's not what starts revival. It's when he receives all of our heart. It's when we turn over and surrender all of our heart. That is when revival truly begins to happen. Israel had to make a choice. Who are you going to serve? The church has to make a choice. Now, the fire didn't fall just because. The fire fell because there was a sacrifice made. Amen? Now, the beauty is we don't have to sacrifice animals anymore. Bulls and pigeons and ducks and quails and whatever else they might decide that they're going to say. We don't have to do that anymore. Our lives are living sacrifice. But can I tell you what's wrong with living sacrifice? A living sacrifice is difficult because we have the opportunity to get up right before the fire falls. Right? So we're on the altar, we've we've committed ourselves, more of you, less of me. And then God starts to shake you up on the inside, and he starts to say, hey, listen, I'm gonna remove this from your life because I know that it is a stumbling block for you. It may be a job that you think is the only place that you deserve to be. It's the only place. This is what I'm gonna do the rest of my life. And then he removes it from you and you don't understand, and now all of a sudden you're uncomfortable and you're frustrated with God, and you've slipped off the altar now because you're like, I'm not gonna continue to serve you if you're gonna continue to treat me like this. Why would I give my life to you if you're gonna continue to take things away from me? Because we are so selfish and so uh comfortable with the things that we have that we cannot be made uncomfortable by a move of the Spirit. We are not willing to be made uncomfortable by a move of the Spirit. So I want you to think about this. Imagine yourself on that altar as a living sacrifice, and you know that that fire is going to consume everything that you love, everything that is good to you, everything that you feel like you deserve or you have in your life, you are going to get off of that altar. The likelihood that you lay there and allow God to consume those things is very, very unlikely. Whenever we're reading that uh that passage of scripture, and I'll tell you which one it is here in just a second, it's uh 36 and 37, 18, 36 and 37. He never says, make me more powerful or make me appear to be. Instead, he says, bring the people back to yourself. Bring the people back to you, oh God. Not to me, but to you. Can you imagine if that's how we treated the people in our lives? The people you don't like, the people who frustrate you, the people who every time you talk to them, you want to give them a real tight hug around the neck? And you said, God, bring them back to you. God, bring them back to you. I don't have to have a relationship with them, but I need them to have a relationship with you. The fire fell on something that had already been surrendered. The fire doesn't fall because there is no surrender. The church sits comfortably and chooses to live fat and sassy rather than surrender itself to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. I don't think we take that serious enough. I don't think when you hear the Lord is my shepherd, hear that word. The Lord is my shepherd. He is your Lord and shepherd. He has dominion over your life, but he cares for you as a shepherd will. We cannot put Jesus into a box, we cannot put God into a box, we cannot assume that because this is how our lives have been, that it is how our lives will be. He is bigger than your plans, he is bigger than my plans, he is bigger than the plans of our government, he is bigger than the plans of world leaders, he is all-knowing, he is omnipresent, he is everywhere at all times. That means he's with you when you sin. He knows what you are thinking, he's in the conversation where you're talking about your neighbor. Have you ever felt him tap on your shoulder and be like, hey, zip it. Don't say that. Take a step back. Separate yourself from that and evaluate that conversation. Listen, we are to surrender our hearts to Jesus. We're to surrender our hearts to the Lord. Yet we fight every day to have exactly what it is that we want. So today a good question is what do you have on the altar? What is it that we're surrendering to God? You know, one of the things that I I love this about people. Um, it's that they think I'm stupid. It's one of my favorite things. Because people will come up to me and they'll talk to me and they'll be like, Did you hear about such and such? And I'll be like, Oh, really? I'm really sorry to hear that. And then they'll say, Um, but you know. And then they start telling this story about that person, and I love hearing those stories because they don't know that I've already known that. Right? I said this to somebody the other day. When you shepherd people, you know things about them that they don't even realize you know. You sense it, you feel it, you know it in your core. You know when something changes. Right? You look at somebody and you're like, something's not right there today. Something's not quite right. And that doesn't come at my own knowing. It comes at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And so we have these conversations, and I begin to understand that sometimes people think that those who are called of God will always just ignore or overlook. Listen, the worst sins that we have are the secret sins. The ones that we sit on and we hide and we pretend like they don't exist, those are the worst ones. Because if you can say, hey, listen, Pastor Michael, I struggle with, or hey, even to your friends, hey, this is something that I'm struggling with, and can you just pray with me that I can find strength to overcome? It's the one that you sit on and pretend like doesn't exist. It's the one that you don't tell anybody about. It's the one that you pretend like doesn't happen in your life, and yet day after day, day after day, because Jesus already knows. He's with you in that sin. He's seeing the things that you are doing. It's our responsibility to make a choice. I'm gonna end on this.

Messy Revival And Welcoming People

SPEAKER_00 45:45

If revival happened today, the church is going to get messy. It's gonna get really, really messy because what's gonna happen is some of the people who are in the body will become exposed. And you'll start to look at them and go, you know what? They have painted themselves as this, but they are not that. That I have confided some of my deepest secrets with these people, and now I know that they've told other people. Or you're gonna start seeing people file in that front door that you might look at and say, they don't belong here. If revival is what we want, if a desire to bring people to God is what we want, be prepared for messy. Those people need Jesus. Amen? And when they come through the door, we should be willing to mop up whatever it is they drag with them. We can't. The church cannot look at those people and say they're not worthy. Or they need to find. Listen, I had a family tell me that they had a pastor tell them we don't have anything here for you. They better have the same thing I got. The only thing I need to give you is Jesus. I don't need to give you programs, I don't need to give you sound and lights and all of the pretty things. You remember what was it two weeks ago when my microphone stopped working and I took it off? I was prepared to preach without a microphone. The microphone doesn't mean anything to me. It doesn't mean a thing. It's important to me that we capture the message because I think it's important that we allow the world to hear what's happening in our house. Amen? But it's not gonna stop us from believing in Jesus. It might cause me to lose my salvation for just a hot second. But I'm gonna get it back. I'm gonna bounce back. It's frustrating, but guess what? This doesn't make the church a full house, doesn't make the church repented hearts, changed desires, changed perspective. That is what creates revival. I want our church to get messy. I do. I pray every day that people start pouring into this place, and not because I want numbers to go up. Listen, this is not a lie. This is honest to goodness truth, and anybody who has ever counted money for this church can attest to this. I get the best offerings. This church receives the best offerings on the lowest attendant Sundays. It's the truth. You know why? Because those who are faithful are always here. And those who are faithful with little will be trusted with much. Amen. And here's the thing: trusted with much is being trusted, being entrusted to operate his house, to operate his kingdom. This isn't about us having money. This is about God doing something great out of this building. And he continues to do that day after day. No other church, and I don't mean this to sound braggadocious, no other church is serving 30 families in a month's time. Now, they there are other churches who have food pantries, but the way that we do it is personalized. It's not show up, get a box, and keep moving. We want to have a conversation with you. We don't want to feed just your stomach. We want to feed your spirit. We want to be able to pray with you. Listen, I have seen Beth go, can I pray with you? And they're like, nope, and grab their box and leave. That's okay. We're gonna try every time. And every time they come, we still do it. She one time had somebody tell her, you have more faith in me than I have in myself. But Jesus has more faith in you than I have. Just because you're struggling doesn't mean you are not loved. You might not feel loved in the flesh. You might not have somebody who you feel like loves you in person, but I promise you this: God loves you. We have to make a choice. We cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve the world and Jesus. I pray today, guys, that as we move out of this place, that you guys just really start to think about what God is doing in your life and how he has brought change into your life and pray that he will continue to do that for you. I don't believe that any of us standing in this room today or sitting in this room today have arrived. And I know that because you're still sitting here. Arrival will be when you meet Jesus face to face. Today, our desire should be to give more to God, more of Him

Prayer, Blessing, And Dismissal

SPEAKER_00 50:41

and less of us. Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your word today, Lord. I thank you for continuing to guide this house, to direct all of the things that happen here. Lord, make us messy. It's about filling the hearts of your people with the name of Jesus Christ. Fill the house, fill the community. Fill the world, O Lord, with your love and your grace, your compassion. Father, I pray for these people as they leave this place, pour out your blessings upon them. Allow them to reflect on your word this week. Allow them to find great comfort knowing that they are loved by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. In the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Love you guys. We'll see you on Wednesday.