SPEAKER_05: Well good morning revive church.
SPEAKER_05: Hey, great to see you guys.
SPEAKER_05: So thrilling to be with you again.
SPEAKER_05: But really, uh you didn't need to go to all this trouble.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I was coming through that little uh little uh gate right there and I expected a spotlight and some confetti.
SPEAKER_05: Uh Kyle said he was gonna have one of those confetti cannons, but I guess he chickened out.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know what the deal is.
SPEAKER_05: But I've been so uh so excited about uh being here with you guys uh today.
SPEAKER_05: I love you.
SPEAKER_05: I pray for you all the time.
SPEAKER_05: Kyle and I talk regularly, and uh it's just such a joy to watch what the Lord is doing here and and to be able to know you because we've spent time with you, you know.
SPEAKER_05: And uh so uh it's a thrill to be here today.
SPEAKER_05: And we're gonna pick up right where Kyle left off last week in Acts chapter 4.
SPEAKER_05: So if you want to turn there in your Bibles, you can.
SPEAKER_05: You know, I uh my adult spiritual life really started in a great awakening, a nationwide spiritual movement called the Jesus Movement.
SPEAKER_05: Some of you remember that well, uh some of you remember World War II, but I mean that's going back way far.
SPEAKER_05: But uh but the Jesus movement happened in the late 60s and the early 70s.
SPEAKER_05: I was a high school student and then a freshman in college in in 1970, and God just flipped my life around.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, he I was a believer, but I wasn't walking with Christ, and then I just got kind of sick.
SPEAKER_05: You know, there's nothing more miserable than a Christian who's not walking with Christ.
SPEAKER_05: You're just miserable because you know there's so much more, and um and so I just came to the end of myself and I said, Lord, if you're gonna do anything with my life, you're gonna have to do it.
SPEAKER_05: And that's exactly what the Lord was waiting to hear.
SPEAKER_05: And so my heart was just on fire, and I went to college and I discovered that there were all these students that God had done the similar things in their in their hearts, and there was this spirit of prayer that was going on uh all across our campus and really all across the United States during that time, which is typical of a of a great spiritual awakening, a revival and awakening.
SPEAKER_05: We would we would pray all night sometimes.
SPEAKER_05: I remember waking up at 8 o'clock, late for class, lying on the altar in the chapel where we've been praying all night.
SPEAKER_05: And that was just not not untypical.
SPEAKER_05: One day uh we were in our normal chapel service, and a man came that had uh from San Antonio, Jack Taylor, who had had a meeting, a two-week meeting planned in his church that had gone for five weeks, and God had just saved hundreds and hundreds of people.
SPEAKER_05: And he came and he spoke in our chapel, and just it just stirred my heart.
SPEAKER_05: I thought, God, that's what I want.
SPEAKER_05: I want to be a part of that, that's what I want to see.
SPEAKER_05: So I happened to be in charge of a little 15-minute noonday student-led uh service, and I said to this pastor, would you come speak to us?
SPEAKER_05: And so he came into chapel and he spoke for five minutes, and God just fell on that group of students.
SPEAKER_05: It was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_05: We began to confess our sins and get right with each other and get right with God.
SPEAKER_05: We we uh began to uh go to other people and uh and and it went on past the 15 minutes, an hour, two hours, three hours.
SPEAKER_05: Soon they had canceled all classes uh all across the university.
SPEAKER_05: Uh we had this thing back then sitting out on the campus called a phone booth.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know that any of you would know what that was, but that there was a constant line, they tell me, for several hours in that phone booth as kids were just going and getting right with their parents and clearing their conscience, and and all these kids got saved.
SPEAKER_05: It was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_05: I'd never been in a moment like that.
SPEAKER_05: It was just totally spontaneous and unreal.
SPEAKER_05: And I realized for the first time, this is what it's like to be in the manifest presence of God.
SPEAKER_05: This is what God does when he shows up and shows out, when he decides to magnify himself.
SPEAKER_05: And guys, listen, that was happening all across America.
SPEAKER_05: That was happening at college campuses everywhere.
SPEAKER_05: In fact, a few months before that, at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, a normal chapel service had just extended for seven solid days, day and night, 24 hours.
SPEAKER_05: They began to send students uh across the nation to other campuses.
SPEAKER_05: I remember they sent a team to Azusa Pacific College out in California, and the two students went out there and they showed up during a basketball game and they said, We're here to tell you about the revival, what God is doing in Asbury.
SPEAKER_05: And they said, Well, this is a basketball game.
SPEAKER_05: And they said, Well, uh, can we speak?
SPEAKER_05: And they said, Well, we'll give you a microphone at halftime, and they did, and they never played the second half.
SPEAKER_05: Revival just broke out.
SPEAKER_05: And I could tell you story after story like this of what was happening.
SPEAKER_05: Now, revival is the extraordinary movement of the Spirit of God that produces extraordinary results.
SPEAKER_05: God is moving all the time.
SPEAKER_05: You couldn't have gotten out of bed this morning without the grace of God.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, it was him.
SPEAKER_05: He gives good gifts, and uh he's always moving.
SPEAKER_05: But in times of revival, God sees a people, a nation, and he, in his mercy, he opens up the windows of heaven, and he comes down in fresh ways and reminds us of who he is and what his kingdom is like.
SPEAKER_05: And his kingdom comes and his will is done in extraordinary ways.
SPEAKER_05: We've had five of these movements, nationwide movements in American history.
SPEAKER_05: One in the early uh 1700s, 1735, and in which 15% of the population of America came to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_05: 15%.
SPEAKER_05: Now, I I was just doing a little math on that about Denver.
SPEAKER_05: If that happened in Denver, I I think Denver has a population of about 3 million, uh, the Greater Denver area.
SPEAKER_05: If that happened in Denver for the next two years, you would see 8,700 people saved every month.
SPEAKER_05: Every month.
SPEAKER_05: Now just think about that.
SPEAKER_05: Somebody called and said, Man, what's going on in Denver?
SPEAKER_05: You know, you don't believe this.
SPEAKER_05: 8,000 people were saved last week.
SPEAKER_05: 2,000 people a week.
SPEAKER_05: This is like Pentecost every week happening.
SPEAKER_05: And do you know that's happened in Denver before?
SPEAKER_05: Do you know I I have seen a uh uh front page headline of the Denver Post during the third Great Awakening, 1857, that says whole town stops for prayer.
SPEAKER_05: That happened in Denver, Colorado.
SPEAKER_05: Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_05: And so the first Great Awakening, then the second Great Awakening, the Third Great Awakening, the Great Prayer Revival of 1857, 1858, during that movement of God, uh, you're not going to believe, you think I'm just make like a preacher story, you know, but this is absolutely verifiable.
SPEAKER_05: I can I can show you.
SPEAKER_05: During that 1857 revival, 50,000 people were meeting in New York, which is a town then of 800,000 people.
SPEAKER_05: 50,000 people meeting every day in churches all across the city in prayer, and 10,000 people a week were being added to the church for two years.
SPEAKER_05: 10,000 this week, 10,000 the next week, to every church.
SPEAKER_05: Presbyterian, Baptists, Episcopal, every church.
SPEAKER_05: 10,000 the next week, 10,000 the next week, 10,000 the next week were coming into the church.
SPEAKER_05: Now you say, what is that?
SPEAKER_05: Is that, did they have some big program?
SPEAKER_05: Did they have some big rally?
SPEAKER_05: No.
SPEAKER_05: That was God.
SPEAKER_05: That's the presence of God.
SPEAKER_05: And during those times of Great Awakening like that, then the 1904 Welsh Revival that swept around the world, the Jesus movement that happened in the late 60s, early 70s.
SPEAKER_05: Another way to define these Great Awakenings is their times of harvest.
SPEAKER_05: Their times of harvest.
SPEAKER_05: My brother, uh who's older, I have two brothers, both are pastors, and my middle brother uh said, Bill, we're in a great awakening.
SPEAKER_05: I said, How do you how do you know that?
SPEAKER_05: He said, Well, just beside all the things that we know, he said uh he and his wife were they're from Kansas City, they went to California, and he said, we just decided to take a 30-day trip, and we asked the Lord if he would let us uh speak to at least one person a day about Christ.
SPEAKER_05: He said, not only did we speak to one, we spoke to three and four and five every day, and there was not one person in 30 days that we spoke to about Christ that didn't lean in.
SPEAKER_05: They just leaned in.
SPEAKER_05: He said, Bill, it was he and I were both in the Jesus movement.
SPEAKER_05: He said it was just like the Jesus movement.
SPEAKER_05: I want to tell you something.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe you've been following the reports, maybe not, but I've been I've been following and studying revival and spiritual awakening for over 50 years.
SPEAKER_05: And I I believe I can say with real confidence, and guys like me who study this very carefully would be saying, we are in the foothills of the next great awakenings in America.
SPEAKER_05: We really are.
SPEAKER_05: You say, Bill, why would you say that?
SPEAKER_05: Well, three years ago, the catalytic moment was that same school, Asbury, where a normal chapel extended for 16 days, day and night.
SPEAKER_05: Over a hundred thousand people came into the little town of Wilmore, Kentucky during that time.
SPEAKER_05: Holly and I, my wife and I got up, we just said, let's go.
SPEAKER_05: I got kind of a let's go wife, you know.
SPEAKER_05: We just we just let's go.
SPEAKER_05: So we we just went and we walked into that packed auditorium, you could barely get in, day and night, full of the presence of God.
SPEAKER_05: And people being saved and delivered in just record numbers.
SPEAKER_05: We wondered if that would continue after Asbury, but it has.
SPEAKER_05: And on college campuses all across the country, here and there, God is moving.
SPEAKER_05: There have been 27 uh uh uh in basketball arenas of Division I schools like uh Georgia and uh and the University of Arkansas, where there have been 8 to 10,000 students gathering to worship Christ and thousands and thousands of kids getting saved and baptized.
SPEAKER_05: Over 150,000 kids have come just to those uh rallies.
SPEAKER_05: California, 300 churches gathered together two years ago to just have a day of baptism in the ocean, and over 6,000 were baptized in one day.
SPEAKER_05: The next year they did it again, over 7,000 were baptized.
SPEAKER_05: 13,000 in in two years.
SPEAKER_05: Now that's not normal.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know if you know that, but that's not, and it's particularly not normal for California, right?
SPEAKER_05: God is just moving.
SPEAKER_05: Just two days ago, we we have multiple locations of our summit family of churches there in Arkansas.
SPEAKER_05: Two days ago, I get a a text from one of our pastors who's in a college town.
SPEAKER_05: Uh there's there are uh four colleges in the town of Conway, Arkansas.
SPEAKER_05: He said, Bill, he said, My wife and I went to the Athletes in Action end of the year recap banquet last night.
SPEAKER_05: Oh my, he said.
SPEAKER_05: AIA primarily does ministry at Hendrix.
SPEAKER_05: Since I've been in Conway, Hendrix of Highly Secular School has been the absolute darkest place in our city.
SPEAKER_05: They've kicked ministries off campus, they've been a hub of some dark spiritual activity, and then there was a little pause in the paragraph, and he says, Well, that's all changed.
SPEAKER_05: The president of Hendrix goes to our church.
SPEAKER_05: She came to Hendrix three years ago.
SPEAKER_05: She spoke last night of the revival that's happening on their campus and how the students that were part of AIA, this ministry, saved her from moving off because when she got there it was so dark, she was going to leave.
SPEAKER_05: She said, now it's like so much light has burst through on our campus.
SPEAKER_05: I can walk through the cafeteria, see Bible studies, people wearing Jesus shirts, which would have never happened before.
SPEAKER_05: Uh, and all the students, he said, who spoke last night, go to our church, they shared of so many coming to Jesus and how God is just radically saving people.
SPEAKER_05: We left in tears, praising God, it's harvest time.
SPEAKER_05: It's harvest time.
SPEAKER_05: Now, what do you do in a time of harvest?
SPEAKER_05: Do you just do the same old thing?
SPEAKER_05: I come from a Arkansas is kind of an agricultural state.
SPEAKER_05: You got a lot of agriculture here in Colorado.
SPEAKER_05: But I want to tell you something.
SPEAKER_05: I my granddad was a farmer.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know a lot about farming, but I know this harvest time is different.
SPEAKER_05: When the harvest comes, you don't find a farmer that's waiting until dawn to get up, that's having his coffee at 10 o'clock in the morning.
SPEAKER_05: They're up way before dawn.
SPEAKER_05: It's all hands on deck, they do nothing but the harvest, and they stay now with lights on their combines, they'll go to way after sundown, it's harvest time, right?
SPEAKER_05: You don't you don't sit around.
SPEAKER_05: Here's what Proverbs says he who sleeps during harvest is a son who acts shamefully.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, if you found a farmer and he was just playing around and he was inside his house playing video games when the harvest came, you'd think, well, he's he's lost his mind.
SPEAKER_05: It's harvest time.
SPEAKER_05: And I want to, what I'm trying to say to you, and I wish I could, I wish I had an hour to talk to you about what's going on both nationally and internationally, and the unbelievable, where there was once no receptivity, the receptivity by lost people to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is it is stunning.
SPEAKER_05: It's what happens in times of harvest, it's what happens in a great awakening and has always happened.
SPEAKER_05: So, what's Revived Church gonna do?
SPEAKER_05: Are you gonna be ready for the harvest?
SPEAKER_05: Are you gonna join in the harvest?
SPEAKER_05: Now, last week Kyle preached to you out of Acts chapter 4, and he and he reminded you of Peter and John during a time of awakening, during a time of harvest, right at the birth of the early church, when thousands of people, in a very brief time, historians uh told us, that church went from 120 people to 50,000 people in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_05: It was harvest time.
SPEAKER_05: And Peter and John were preaching the gospel, and they were brought in before the Sanhedrin, and they were persecuted, and they went back and they told the church about the persecution and what was happening.
SPEAKER_05: And the church, now listen, the church had a decision to make just like we do.
SPEAKER_05: Are we gonna stay in the harvest?
SPEAKER_05: Are we gonna put our hands to the harvest?
SPEAKER_05: Are we gonna give it all we have for the glory of God because lost men and women are at stake?
SPEAKER_05: Or are we gonna cower in our homes?
SPEAKER_05: And so we see this incredible story in Acts chapter 4.
SPEAKER_05: And I just want you to notice two things.
SPEAKER_05: Number one, during harvest time, some opposition is inevitable.
SPEAKER_05: Right?
SPEAKER_05: You think you think Satan right now is saying about all these colleges where this movement's on Baylor's campus, by the way, where you grew up around the area where you grew up?
SPEAKER_05: Unbelievable movement of God happening on Baylor's campus.
SPEAKER_05: You think Satan is just sitting back and saying, well, I guess I've lost that campus.
SPEAKER_05: I guess I'll just not try to stop any of these students from coming to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_05: Or do you think he's ramping up his work?
SPEAKER_05: Do you think he's trying to oppose the movement of God?
SPEAKER_05: Of course he is.
SPEAKER_05: And that's what happened in Paul's day, in Peter's day, and in the early church's day.
SPEAKER_05: Look what it says here in Acts 4, beginning in verse 23.
SPEAKER_05: When Peter and John had been released, they went to their own companions and they reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.
SPEAKER_05: And the elders, by the way, had said, Stop preaching.
SPEAKER_05: And Peter said, Look, whether you think it's good or not, you be the judge, but we can't help talking about what we've seen and heard.
SPEAKER_05: So they reported this to the church.
SPEAKER_05: When they heard this, the church, they lifted their voices to God with one accord, and they said, O Lord, it is you who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our Father David, your servant, said, Why did the Gentiles rage?
SPEAKER_05: He's talking about an Old Testament prophecy.
SPEAKER_05: Why did the Gentiles rage?
SPEAKER_05: And the peoples devised futile things.
SPEAKER_05: The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.
SPEAKER_05: Jesus had just been crucified, as you know.
SPEAKER_05: For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever, listen how they described it, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.
SPEAKER_05: Now, opposition was happening against the early church.
SPEAKER_05: Some would be killed, some would be scattered.
SPEAKER_05: And listen how they described the apid opposition that was coming through the prophet David.
SPEAKER_05: They said, Why do the Gentiles rage?
SPEAKER_05: It's raging.
SPEAKER_05: Now, you know what that word is?
SPEAKER_05: It was used of horses that were high-spirited and a horse that would stomp and snort and try to resist its master.
SPEAKER_05: It was used of men who were proud and arrogant and took on lofty airs, and uh it used of men who were tumultuous, who were raging.
SPEAKER_05: Right.
SPEAKER_05: You you look at the news today, you see anybody raging?
SPEAKER_05: Have you noticed the spirit of anarchy, the spirit of rage that's happening in many places in our nation?
SPEAKER_05: Why do the Gentiles rage?
SPEAKER_05: And the people devise vain things.
SPEAKER_05: That word means foolish, crazy, things that won't amount to anything, things that are not productive.
SPEAKER_05: And then he says they are gathered together.
SPEAKER_05: It's amazing how opposition creates strange bedfellows.
SPEAKER_05: People come together to oppose Christianity.
SPEAKER_05: That don't even like each other, right?
SPEAKER_05: But remember this it is always against the Lord and his Christ.
SPEAKER_05: In other words, when people, when the world begins to oppose and they will, and they always have, and rise up and oppose, it's ultimately against Christ.
SPEAKER_05: Because you see, Christ calls for something.
SPEAKER_05: As C.S.
SPEAKER_05: Lewis said, if you're going to deal with Christ, honestly, you've got to decide that he's one of three things.
SPEAKER_05: He's either the biggest liar that ever lived, because he said he was the Son of God, or he's a lunatic.
SPEAKER_05: He was a man that just lost his mind, or he was the Lord.
SPEAKER_05: And if he was the Lord, that means he is the Lord of your life.
SPEAKER_05: That means he demands something of your life.
SPEAKER_05: And you see, we resist that.
SPEAKER_05: Man doesn't want, many men don't want Christ as the Lord of your life.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe you didn't want Christ as the Lord of your life for a long time.
SPEAKER_05: And you were the Lord, and you were in charge, and you were doing what you wanted to do.
SPEAKER_05: And so when Christ comes with his claims, there are a lot of people that oppose that.
SPEAKER_05: Now listen, when opposition comes, let's just understand this.
SPEAKER_05: What do we do?
SPEAKER_05: How do we deal with opposition in Arvada?
SPEAKER_05: How do we deal with opposition in Denver?
SPEAKER_05: How do we deal with opposition that might come in Little Rock in the midst of a great moving of God?
SPEAKER_05: Well, we could hide.
SPEAKER_05: We could just hide.
SPEAKER_05: Just kind of get inside of our churches and lock the doors and sing songs and kumbaya and throw a chip on the fire, right?
SPEAKER_05: We could compromise.
SPEAKER_05: We could not speak up.
SPEAKER_05: We could be Christians, but just kind of silent Christians and just not tell anybody about the hope that is within us, the very thing that would liberate them and take them from hell to heaven and death to life.
SPEAKER_05: We could compromise if we want to.
SPEAKER_05: We could just completely go silent.
SPEAKER_05: We could pull into our little self-centered world and just let the world go to hell, right?
SPEAKER_05: I mean, we could do that.
SPEAKER_05: Wouldn't it have been tragic if that happened with the church in Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_05: Just think how differently the Bible would read.
SPEAKER_05: If in the early church the Spirit of God came and power came and they began to just share the simple gospel, and all these people coming to Christ, but a little opposition came.
SPEAKER_05: What if they had just all gone silent, right?
SPEAKER_05: Well, there wouldn't be much left of this book, right?
SPEAKER_05: So what did they do?
SPEAKER_05: Well, here's a second truth I want you to see, and that's this inexhaustible power and boldness is instantly available for anybody who wants it.
SPEAKER_05: You say, man, I, you know, I live in my neighborhood, and I love the people in my neighborhood, and most of them don't know Christ, but I don't know that I could ever share Christ with them.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know how to do that, do that.
SPEAKER_05: I've got all these people at work that don't know Christ, some are maybe opposed to Christ and the things of Christ, and and and I'm not talking about being obnoxious.
SPEAKER_05: I don't, I'm not, I don't want to be that.
SPEAKER_05: I want to be Christ-like with them, but how can I be bold to share the gospel of Jesus?
SPEAKER_05: Because the Bible says, how can they be saved unless they hear?
SPEAKER_05: And how can they hear unless we tell them?
SPEAKER_05: Right?
SPEAKER_05: So we've got to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_05: The gospel, the good news about Christ, that he lived and died on our behalf and rose again and ascended to heaven and will be our Savior if we believe in him and ask him to save us.
SPEAKER_05: The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believed.
SPEAKER_05: But what should I do?
SPEAKER_05: How can I do this?
SPEAKER_05: Now look what happened.
SPEAKER_05: This is how the Jerusalem church, we could say, this is how we pray, revive church and summit church would respond in this moment, in this harvest moment.
SPEAKER_05: And we are in a harvest moment.
SPEAKER_05: Look what it says in verse 29.
SPEAKER_05: They lifted up their voices together and they prayed.
SPEAKER_05: And they said, Oh, now, Lord, take note of their threats and grant that your bondservants may speak your word with all confidence, with all boldness.
SPEAKER_05: While you, it's God's work to save, we can't save anybody, while you extend your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
SPEAKER_05: And then listen to what happened, verse 31.
SPEAKER_05: When they had prayed, the place where they'd gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak the word of God with boldness.
SPEAKER_05: And that's when you began to read that the church grew and grew, daily people were added, and then began to multiply and multiply and expand, and this incredible movement of spiritual awakening happened in the Jerusalem church.
SPEAKER_05: Does it say, and when they organized?
SPEAKER_05: Does it say, well, I know what they did.
SPEAKER_05: When the opposition came and they had the gospel, and here were all these people who didn't know Christ, they organized.
SPEAKER_05: When they organized, when they discussed, when they printed up some flyers, is that what it says?
SPEAKER_05: No, listen to this operative word.
SPEAKER_05: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_05: It's a really important word.
SPEAKER_05: When they had prayed.
SPEAKER_05: You know, I travel a lot and I love to watch people.
SPEAKER_05: I, you know, I like getting on a plane and just watching people as they come in.
SPEAKER_05: So I was on this plane, and uh there was this guy sitting across from me, and he he was all, a man had a very expensive suit on and shoes and a Rolex watch, and he was reading this high-powered business magazine.
SPEAKER_05: And I just I just had this thought.
SPEAKER_05: I just thought, I bet that guy is a powerful guy.
SPEAKER_05: I bet he made something, did something, run something, oversees something, you know.
SPEAKER_05: And I was just thinking about it.
SPEAKER_05: And then, Tim, I had this thought.
SPEAKER_05: It was just, I think it's the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: It just said, I just thought, I wonder who the most powerful person on this plane is.
SPEAKER_05: Do you know what?
SPEAKER_05: I instantly knew the answer.
SPEAKER_05: You say, Bill, are you that smart?
SPEAKER_05: No, not at all.
SPEAKER_05: But I instantly knew the answer.
SPEAKER_05: And it just came to my heart.
SPEAKER_05: The most powerful person on that plane was a person who prayed.
SPEAKER_05: Everybody else just had their own resources.
SPEAKER_05: Their mind, their wisdom, whatever they could, their abilities, what they could bring to the table.
SPEAKER_05: But you see, the person who prays brings God into the equation.
SPEAKER_05: You have all the resources of God.
SPEAKER_05: You have the inexhaustible wisdom of God, the inexhaustible power of God, God's ability to extend his hand to do things that couldn't happen any other way.
SPEAKER_05: And I look behind me, and there was kind of a college-age guy as he was all tatted up and had dreadlocks, and I just thought, maybe it's him.
SPEAKER_05: Could be him, could be that guy.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe early on, you know, this kid has just figured this out.
SPEAKER_05: That prayer is this means that God has amen.
SPEAKER_05: Well, that was some call.
SPEAKER_05: Did I lose my mic?
SPEAKER_05: Am I still there?
SPEAKER_05: Testing?
SPEAKER_05: One, two, three, four.
SPEAKER_05: Can you all hear me?
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
SPEAKER_05: So um I have no idea what I was there.
SPEAKER_05: Is that my mic?
SPEAKER_05: Huh?
SPEAKER_05: You want to grab me a handheld or something?
SPEAKER_05: Testing one, two, three, four.
SPEAKER_05: Am I good?
SPEAKER_05: Bring me a bring me a you know.
SPEAKER_05: I think what's happened is that Kyle is really wanting to preach today.
SPEAKER_05: He's not sitting down there.
SPEAKER_05: I think maybe he's back there with a little mic doing something.
SPEAKER_05: Bring me a, you got a hand tail you can bring me?
SPEAKER_05: Huh?
SPEAKER_05: Now, okay, testing.
SPEAKER_05: Good deal.
SPEAKER_05: All right, I'm gonna go.
SPEAKER_05: Uh so anyway, I was on the plane and I looked a little segue there, and and I looked, I thought maybe it's that guy, and then I looked in front of me, and there was a silver-haired senior adult woman, and I thought it's probably her.
SPEAKER_05: She's probably the most powerful person.
SPEAKER_05: Because when you get older, you kind of start realizing what's really important and what doesn't matter at all.
SPEAKER_05: And prayer really matters.
SPEAKER_05: Bringing God in the lives of my children through prayer really matters.
SPEAKER_05: Bringing God in the lives of my 27 grandkids really matters, right?
SPEAKER_05: Praying for your lost neighbors really matters.
SPEAKER_05: It brings God and his ability into the equation.
SPEAKER_05: So prayer can do, without prayer, you get what you can do.
SPEAKER_05: With prayer, you get what God can do.
SPEAKER_05: And so what happened is these Christians, and they were just like you.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, they were just people going to work every day, eating their Cheerios, you know, just people that had been saved by the grace of God, had come to know Christ as their Savior and Lord.
SPEAKER_05: He had changed their life and transformed them, and they wanted to give that to other people, but they were scared.
SPEAKER_05: They were afraid.
SPEAKER_05: And so they prayed.
SPEAKER_05: And when they prayed, the place was shaken.
SPEAKER_05: They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.
SPEAKER_05: Now, we talked about this last time I was here, but let me just remind you of what the filling of the Holy Spirit is.
SPEAKER_05: It's not something weird, it's not something that makes you jump pews, okay?
SPEAKER_05: It's not something that makes you act crazy.
SPEAKER_05: The filling of the Holy Spirit is just a word that means the control of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: In fact, Paul says in Ephesians 5.18, don't get drunk with wine.
SPEAKER_05: That just leads to excess and dissipation.
SPEAKER_05: In other words, when you're drunk with wine, you do what the wine tells you to do, right?
SPEAKER_05: You're controlled by the drink.
SPEAKER_05: Don't be controlled by stuff like that.
SPEAKER_05: But give the control of your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_05: And when Christ is in control, he produces all kinds of beautiful fruit.
SPEAKER_05: Love, joy, peace, patience.
SPEAKER_05: Because when you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes to live literally inside of you.
SPEAKER_05: He dwells in you.
SPEAKER_05: In fact, Jesus, when he was leaving, after, right before his death, said to his disciples, said, I'm going to go.
SPEAKER_05: And they said, No, don't go, don't go, please don't go.
SPEAKER_05: It's just getting good.
SPEAKER_05: And he said, Look, if I don't go, I can't send the Holy Spirit, but it's going to be good for you because now I was one person in one place.
SPEAKER_05: Now the Holy Spirit is going to come and dwell all of you, and he can be all over the world, moving through my church, moving through Christians.
SPEAKER_05: The filling of the Holy Spirit is the continual conscious surrender of control to the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you.
SPEAKER_05: This is what happened to me when I was 17 that flipped my life around.
SPEAKER_05: I was trying to run my life.
SPEAKER_05: And that's always a disaster.
SPEAKER_05: It just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_05: Anybody tried your own self-help life deal?
SPEAKER_05: How's that going for you, right?
SPEAKER_05: It just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_05: You know why?
SPEAKER_05: You were not created to work like that.
SPEAKER_05: You were not designed to do that.
SPEAKER_05: And God intended for you to be with him, for you to have his presence, and he's provided a way that the Spirit of God would literally live inside of you, but you've got to cooperate.
SPEAKER_05: You've got to, in humility, not pride, but in humility, say, Lord, I need you.
SPEAKER_05: I want you to be in control today.
SPEAKER_05: I want you to be in charge.
SPEAKER_05: And I'm willing to do whatever your spirit tells me to do.
SPEAKER_05: So here's how I want to live my life.
SPEAKER_05: I want to live my life every day, making the choice to be filled by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: Amen?
SPEAKER_05: And then just follow the prompting of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: That means if the Lord just prompts you to say you're sitting somewhere and there's a guy right there, and the Lord said, Tell that guy about Christ.
SPEAKER_05: You know, you're tempted to say, well, Lord, what if he what if he didn't like that?
SPEAKER_05: What if he what if he doesn't understand?
SPEAKER_05: What if he opposes me?
SPEAKER_05: What if he thinks I'm a fruit cake?
SPEAKER_05: I mean, you know, what is this?
SPEAKER_05: Well, why just do what I say?
SPEAKER_05: And you'd be you'd be just shocked at how many times when you follow the prompting of the Spirit, there's a guy that's just waiting to hear.
SPEAKER_05: And God has put one of his children right beside this guy because he loves him.
SPEAKER_05: And he wants to redeem him.
SPEAKER_05: And he sent him a messenger.
SPEAKER_05: And it's you.
SPEAKER_05: But you see, if I don't pray and I'm not filled with the Holy Spirit, I miss those opportunities.
SPEAKER_05: And he doesn't hear the word.
SPEAKER_05: Here's the truth.
SPEAKER_05: Prayer leads to the filling of the Holy Spirit, which leads to power.
SPEAKER_05: Power and boldness.
SPEAKER_05: Listen.
SPEAKER_05: What's it gonna be?
SPEAKER_05: I'm telling you, we're moving into a time of harvest.
SPEAKER_05: What's it gonna be?
SPEAKER_05: What's it gonna be with you?
SPEAKER_05: What's it gonna be with the church?
SPEAKER_05: What's it gonna be with your family?
SPEAKER_05: And do you want to pray and ask the Lord every day to fill you and take control and then say, Lord, I'll go where you want me to go, I'll say whatever you want me to say, because my life is in your hands.
SPEAKER_05: Can I tell you one final story, and then I'm gonna ask you to consider making an important decision.
SPEAKER_05: Joseph Soon, T-S-O-N, is was a Romanian pastor.
SPEAKER_05: He was in Romania.
SPEAKER_05: I I knew Joseph.
SPEAKER_05: I got to meet him and know him, had him preach in my church later.
SPEAKER_05: But Joseph Sohn was uh uh a pastor under Ceausescu Q, I'm saying that right, and it that was one of the most uh oppressive communist regimes on the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_05: And so they were under constant, the church was under constant persecution.
SPEAKER_05: Joseph was taken into the police headquarters there in Aradio where he lived many times and beaten and tortured for his faith.
SPEAKER_05: One day Joseph was reading the passage where Jesus said, if a man wants to follow me, he must take up his cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_05: And he said, you know, we kind of spiritualize that.
SPEAKER_05: And when we say the word cross, we think of a nice little pendant, you know, or a big steeple with a nice cross on the top.
SPEAKER_05: But I want to tell you something.
SPEAKER_05: When Jesus was talking that day, and he said, if you want to follow me, you've got to take up your cross.
SPEAKER_05: They had seen their countrymen crucified on Roman crosses.
SPEAKER_05: Agonizing form of death.
SPEAKER_05: And what it meant to them was, you have to give me, if you're gonna follow me, I want you to give me the rights to your physical body, that you would be willing to die, that you would be willing to give yourself for the cause of Christ.
SPEAKER_05: And so it just really flipped Joseph's life around.
SPEAKER_05: And then he began to preach to his church.
SPEAKER_05: We must cross the line.
SPEAKER_05: We must give him the rights to our life and the rights to our body and the rights to our future, and because he owns us and he bought us at Calvary twice over.
SPEAKER_05: We belong to Christ, and this is the best life, amen.
SPEAKER_05: To give him the rights to let him be in charge and let him be in control.
SPEAKER_05: And suddenly those Romanian Christians began to witness boldly all over Aradia.
SPEAKER_05: A revival occurred, and all these people started coming to Christ.
SPEAKER_05: They'd been just waiting to hear the gospel, but no one was telling them.
SPEAKER_05: And so these bold Christians who took up the cross, who said, Lord, I'm willing to die for you, began to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_05: And so they brought him again into the Secret Service station, the police station, and they beat him, and he said, You've got to, they said, You've got to quit telling your people to do this.
SPEAKER_05: You've got to stop this.
SPEAKER_05: And he said, We will not stop.
SPEAKER_05: We can't stop.
SPEAKER_05: They took him into another room and they gave him the ultimate challenge.
SPEAKER_05: They said, if you don't stop talking about Christ publicly, we'll kill you.
SPEAKER_05: And he laughed and he said, That would be great.
SPEAKER_05: He said, if you kill me, you send me right to the place I want to go more than any other place.
SPEAKER_05: I'll go to glory.
SPEAKER_05: And you'll take my life and all the works we've done, and you'll spread my blood across those works, and it'll start a fire burning that you will not be able to extinguish.
SPEAKER_05: You know what they did?
SPEAKER_05: They deported him.
SPEAKER_05: True story.
SPEAKER_05: You know why?
SPEAKER_05: What do you do with a man who doesn't care what you do to him?
SPEAKER_05: He's unstoppable.
SPEAKER_05: You see, we're stoppable.
SPEAKER_05: The Spirit of God promises talk to your neighbor.
SPEAKER_05: Just talk to her.
SPEAKER_05: Just share your story with her.
SPEAKER_05: Lord, I gotta live beside her.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, she may think I'm crazy.
SPEAKER_05: I don't.
SPEAKER_05: We're just stoppable.
SPEAKER_05: Open your mouth.
SPEAKER_05: And what they prayed for was fascinating.
SPEAKER_05: They prayed for three things.
SPEAKER_05: They said, Lord, we pray that we would speak your word with boldness.
SPEAKER_05: In other words, we would open our mouths.
SPEAKER_05: Do you know that Paul, every time he asked the church to pray for him, and he was in a lot of hot water, a lot of times in prison several times, do you know what he asked?
SPEAKER_05: He never asked, pray that I'll be safe.
SPEAKER_05: Pray that I won't have any problems.
SPEAKER_05: Pray that nobody will hurt me.
SPEAKER_05: He never prayed that.
SPEAKER_05: He said, pray that I would have boldness and courage.
SPEAKER_05: And God would give me utterance in the opening of my mouth.
SPEAKER_05: I just open my mouth.
SPEAKER_05: And we don't have to share our words.
SPEAKER_05: I pray, Lord, that I could speak your words.
SPEAKER_05: We don't have to come up with these words.
SPEAKER_05: They're God's words with all boldness.
SPEAKER_05: So here's the question What's it gonna be for your life?
SPEAKER_05: What's it gonna be for Revive Church in what I believe is a coming harvest season?
SPEAKER_05: Will I step across the line?
SPEAKER_05: Take at my cross and follow my master.
SPEAKER_05: Will I pray and say, oh Lord, fill me, take charge of me, and I'll follow you.
SPEAKER_05: I'll do whatever you tell me to do, and I pray that I can speak your word with all boldness.
SPEAKER_05: If you do, I can promise you, based upon the authority of God's word, God will keep his end of the bargain.
SPEAKER_05: I wonder if you'd bow your heads for just a moment and close your eyes.
SPEAKER_05: Now you know, I've been preaching for a long time.
SPEAKER_05: And I've been in many services where we look at the Word of God and we gain information.
SPEAKER_05: And that's good.
SPEAKER_05: We get a little bit of understanding.
SPEAKER_05: But I've been in some services where people didn't just learn the Word, they experienced the Word.
SPEAKER_05: You see what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_05: It's very different.
SPEAKER_05: When they said, that's what I want, and I'm willing to take a step and adjust my life to what God says and what they experienced in Acts chapter 4, that's what I want to experience.
SPEAKER_05: I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and I want to speak the Word of God with all boldness.
SPEAKER_05: So I'm going to give you an opportunity just to do that this morning.
SPEAKER_05: It's not weird.
SPEAKER_05: It's not going to be unorderly, it's not anything like that.
SPEAKER_05: In just a moment, some of our counselors, because of all the stuff down here in the front, are going to be standing on the side.
SPEAKER_05: And if you're here and you say, I just need, Bill, I need Christ first.
SPEAKER_05: I just need Christ.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know Christ.
SPEAKER_05: And I want to surrender my life to Christ.
SPEAKER_05: I want to give my life to him.
SPEAKER_05: I want to encourage you to go to one of these counselors.
SPEAKER_05: And they'll help you do that.
SPEAKER_05: Or maybe you have some prayer need that you need some help in prayer.
SPEAKER_05: But for the rest of us here that are maybe already believers, if you would say, Bill, I want their experience to begin to be my experience.
SPEAKER_05: Every day, I want to be filled with your Holy Spirit and I want to speak your word with boldness.
SPEAKER_05: And I'm committing myself to be filled and to follow.
SPEAKER_05: To be filled with his spirit and just follow him wherever he takes me.
SPEAKER_05: If that's your heart, I'm going to invite you to just come down towards the front.
SPEAKER_05: You can fill these aisles if you need to.
SPEAKER_05: And I want it, as a group, I just want to pray with you for that.
SPEAKER_05: So, Lord, just lead us in this moment.
SPEAKER_05: I pray this would move from a nice sermon to our living experience.
SPEAKER_05: You did it with these people, just normal people like us, Lord, you can do it for us.
SPEAKER_05: And so I pray, Father, that we would say yes to you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_05: I want to quietly, if you just, all of us, just stand together right where you are.
SPEAKER_05: If you need help or you need prayer, go to one of these counselors on the side.
SPEAKER_05: But if you would say, I just want to experience what they experience, I'm just going to ask you to step to the front, step in the aisle, and I'm just going to pray with us all as a group, okay?
SPEAKER_05: Come on right now, as we just wait for just a moment.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: Come on.
SPEAKER_05: Join me here.
SPEAKER_05: Lord, what they experience, that's what I want.
SPEAKER_05: I want to follow you wherever it takes me, wherever it leads me.
SPEAKER_05: That's what I want in my life.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: That's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_05: Come on.
SPEAKER_05: If you need prayer, if you need to know Christ as your Savior, go to one of these counselors.
SPEAKER_05: Now, as we're here at this altar, I wonder if you need in prayer for a moment to do what we often have to do.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe there are areas where you've just not been letting Christ have control.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe it's in your relationships, maybe it's in your finances, maybe it's in things you said, things you're doing, and and you need to repent of that.
SPEAKER_05: The Lord is showing you, you know, I want to be in control, but you're being in control.
SPEAKER_05: Would you be willing?
SPEAKER_05: My way is so much better.
SPEAKER_05: If you'd be willing, just release control to me.
SPEAKER_05: And so right now, here at this altar, we're going to pray just like they prayed.
SPEAKER_05: Would you pray, Father?
SPEAKER_05: I want to give this area to you, and I want to give this to you.
SPEAKER_05: I want to give this relationship to you.
SPEAKER_05: And Lord, I want you to be in control.
SPEAKER_05: I'm tired of carrying this.
SPEAKER_05: I'm tired of trying to figure it out.
SPEAKER_05: Lord, I want you to take control of that area of my life.
SPEAKER_05: And I want you to fill me with yourself.
SPEAKER_05: And I'll just do whatever you tell me to do.
SPEAKER_05: So would you take a moment and just tell the Lord that?
SPEAKER_05: And I wonder if you would just literally say to the Lord, Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: Even right now.
SPEAKER_05: Just take control of my life.
SPEAKER_05: I gladly give control to you.
SPEAKER_05: Just tell him.
SPEAKER_05: And Father, I pray for every person at this altar.
SPEAKER_05: Lord, I we're not looking for something dramatic.
SPEAKER_05: We're not looking for some just feeling or something, Father.
SPEAKER_05: We want you to be in charge.
SPEAKER_05: We want you to fill us with your power and your boldness and your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: We want, Father, to open our mouths to speak your word with boldness to those who need to hear.
SPEAKER_05: And Father, we commit ourselves not just to pray for your control and your filling every day, but then to follow the promptings of your spirit and the illumination of your word.
SPEAKER_05: Fill us and then use us.
SPEAKER_05: And I wonder, Tim, if we could just, with no instruments, just sing this prayer.
SPEAKER_05: You probably know it.
SPEAKER_05: Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.
SPEAKER_05: Would you sing this with me?
SPEAKER_04: Spirit living.
SPEAKER_04: Fall fresh.
SPEAKER_04: Fall fresh on me again.
SPEAKER_04: Spirit fall fresh on me.
SPEAKER_04: Break me, melt me, break me, melt me, fill me, use me, fill me, use me, special living fresh.
SPEAKER_05: Father, that's the prayer of our heart.
SPEAKER_05: Use us for your glory.
SPEAKER_05: Take us fresh places.
SPEAKER_05: And Father, we all pray together.
SPEAKER_05: I'm going to ask you to pray this three-word prayer, send the harvest.
SPEAKER_05: Let's pray it together.
SPEAKER_05: Send the harvest.
SPEAKER_05: Send the harvest, Lord, in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: God bless you.
SPEAKER_05: Give him praise.
SPEAKER_05: Would you do that as you head back to your state?
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, brother.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you, Bill.
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you guys coming up and making this commitment to be controlled by the Holy Spirit, to give up control.
SPEAKER_00: As Bill was sharing in the beginning, I was reminded that when I became lead pastor here, uh a very generous retired pastor donated his entire library to me.
SPEAKER_00: And in that library was a compilation of what's called the 1905 Denver Revival.
SPEAKER_00: And so what Bill was talking about actually happened, and I actually have all kinds of cutouts from newspapers during that time.
SPEAKER_00: So I was reminded of that moment.
SPEAKER_00: You can actually be tweeted, we're gonna move into a time of getting a clippet from our walk by faith theater.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: The the directors of walk by faith theater, Kim and Harry Trump, they attend church here and just selflessly pour into many of our students here at Revived Church and many of our students uh in this area.
SPEAKER_00: And uh a few months back we were talking about the potential of not just hosting walk by faith theater for uh program, but we thought about hey, what would it look like to actually give a snippet within the service?
SPEAKER_00: And at that time, what we said, hey, what if we did the song Sovereign Lord?
SPEAKER_00: And I said, All right, and we didn't talk about it again.
SPEAKER_00: And three or four weeks ago we brought the idea back up, and I looked and I realized in that moment uh that not only was Bill gonna be in town, but the passage that he preached today was the Sovereign Lord passage completely unplanned, uh, except for God's sovereignty.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to invite you, would you give a hand to walk by faith theater in their performance of Sovereign Lord?