Tonight we want to spend the time that we have talking to you about a very real part of the human experience that is not germane to the men on the platform, but is germane to all of us. And uh as we were just in our hotels, just praying and crying and seeking the Lord, this one word kept coming up in our spirit, and the word is heaviness, heaviness. And if you just live longer than five minutes, you will have an encounter with that word. Life has a way of leading us into places of heaviness. Times when we feel far away from God, times when we feel like we are a disappointment to God. Yeah, times when we feel like we're praying and God is not listening, or we're going through something very traumatic or difficult season, when we've gone through a relationship crisis or come out of a very bad divorce or lost a job, or times when we feel disappointed with our own selves. Um, if you just keep living long enough, you will eventually encounter this word heaviness when your heart just feels weighed down by the circumstance of life. And false prophets don't prepare you for that because they preach a false gospel that tells you that Christ is your genie and that God exists for you, and that if you serve Jesus and ask him into your heart, he will give you an easy life and an easy trip. But no, life will teach us that life is a conveyor belt of hardships and disappointments, it is a conveyor belt of trials and tribulations and hardships. And if life has not convinced you of that, your Lord should have when he said to you that in this life you will have tribulation, and so as believers, we will deal with a type of heaviness that comes from the circumstances of life, and we have community to help us to get through that, and we have the scriptures to help us get through that for me personally. The Psalms. I can't tell you how many tears over the years I've shed on the pages of the Psalms. Just today in the hotel room, Tim and I were shedding tears over the Psalms. We were in there praying. I'm shedding tears on Psalm 91 because it's no secret that I've been going through, and we have been going through at the hands of evil men who love the sin of slander and will pay for every idle word that has come out of their mouth, lest they repent. And Psalm 91 was my food today. We have the scriptures to help us in times of heaviness. We have brothers and sisters and shoulders to help us in times of heaviness. We have the Spirit of God, but there is a different type of heaviness that we want to broach tonight, and it's a heaviness born of brokenness as we look out on the world, as we consider the state of the church, as we look at the sinful nation that we live in, laws that's being passed that's gonna infringe on the Bible and other nations. There is a different type of heaviness that is divine, and it is holy. And and my fear and Tim's fear is that we wonder as we as we preach and travel throughout the nation and around the world, we wonder how many people who bear the name of Jesus is carrying that divine heaviness. A type of holy brokenness over the state is going on. Now, in cities like Nashville, and where everybody's a Christian, where we have churches on every corner. We have some of the best music coming out of Nashville all around the world. It's so easy to get into the rhythms of just doing the motions, running in and out of church. And you look back and you look over your shoulder, you just get comfortable service in and service out, Sunday in and Sunday out. We leave Sunday morning services and we're just concerned about the restaurant and on Monday morning Chick-fil-A. The kids in the car lane, we're gonna take a walk, we're gonna do the dishes. There is no concern for anything happening outside of us, if our cushy little worlds is perfect, and we're not paying attention to all that is happening in the body of Christ that should make the children of God feel grieved, that should bring tears to your eyes. If the only time we cry is when you're hurting over your own mess, but we never shed tears over the mess of the church we belong to, or the cities we belong to, or the countries we belong to, then we have not yet been burned by the coals of fire that I believe God wants to burn you in your heart tonight. You had an encounter recently in which God strapped you with a new level of heaviness when you left the United States. What happened to you just recently when you left the United States?
SPEAKER_00We went to Central Asia with the mission of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to a region where Christianity is illegal. A very dangerous assignment that God had asked us to carry out, me and three other of my brothers. And as we went there, we saw on every single corner what used to be churches that have now become gathering places for other world religions. A place where Christianity uh blossomed and was the dominant belief, a place where the disciples uh gathered, a place where in Revelation it teaches us that this is where the seven churches uh were, and this place has no ounce of the reflection of Jesus Christ anymore. We didn't hear laughter, we didn't see smiles, we didn't see joy, we didn't feel peace, we we didn't feel love. And as I was there, it became so evident to me that what is happening in that particular region is the same thing the enemy desires to happen in places like Nashville, in places like Birmingham, in places that we think it could never happen. I'm pretty sure that there were some followers of Jesus Christ that thought to themselves while living in Turkey, it could never happen here. And here we are in 2026 where the dominant religion has no reflection of Jesus Christ. And it isn't because that there were not faithful men and women, it is because that those faithful men and women passed the baton to a generation that did not honor that faithfulness at the same level of intensity and reverence as they once did. And the reason these nights are so important is so that we could leave a residue and start a fire and create a remnant that does not die on our watch, but allows us to pass down from one generation to the next what we are called to steward. And I have just come to the point where I can no longer handle casually what someone else has laid their life down and calling for. And tonight, as we look at the word of God, I want you to think both personally and corporately, what are the areas the Holy Spirit is placing his finger on in your life to present to him and lay at the altar so that as we leave this moment, as we leave this uh recording, as you turn off the YouTube, the Spotify, the iTunes podcast, whatever you are consuming this gospel from, that you would leave changed and transformed by the renewing of your mind through the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01I want to tell everybody in this room a reality that we forget because we are comfortable in the suburbs and comfortable in our buildings and ACs and all the things. I I just want to remind all of you that right now, as we're sitting in this room, we are engaged in an active warfare. We are engaged in an active warfare. There is a strategic plan of the adversary to dismantle the influence of Christianity. Now pay attention, he cannot overtake the church. For Jesus said on this rock to Peter and the disciples, I will build my church, the gates of hell will not prevail. But however, when the people of God are not aware of the active warfare that we are in, and when we lean away from holiness and cleanliness of heart and faithfulness to God and the Great Commission and being witnesses, when we settle for just being churchgoers at the expense of leaving all those other things on the table, what happens in that moment is the influence of Christianity begins to wane. This is the devil's plan, and then other things fill that vacuum, and then we look up five, ten years from now, and we wonder what happened to the stronghold of Christianity. I just want to remind you that the place that Tim just came from was ancient Asia Minor, which was Turkey. It was the home base of the apostle Paul who sent out people from the gospel all around the world. And yet when we walk the streets of Turkey, I've been there. And he's been there. When we walk the streets of these places and we see no semblance of Christianity at all, a warning went off in our soul, like a sound of a siren saying, if it happened here, there it would happen here. I want to remind you that what we enjoy in the United States, Christianity is not a Western religion, it is not a Western faith. We have tried to package it as a Western faith and try to package it with American Christianity. I just want to remind you what we hold so dear was born in the East. Pause. The scriptures would tell us in the Psalm Selah, which is a Hebrew word for stop and meditate on that. The faith that you and I love was born in the Middle East, it was born in another part of the world, and yet in that very part of the world, we see very little semblance of Christianity. And yet, the churches that Jesus sent letters to there in Revelation 2 and 3, we see cyclical patterns happening of compromise, of lukewarmness. Where people who are on fire, we think that they're over the top. No, people who are on fire are not over the top. Why is lukewarm Christianity normal in America? That we see people on fire and think that something is wrong with them. Why have we normalized lukewarm Christianity or normalized compromise in the church? Why are we not fed up with foolishness in the church? Why are we not fed up with antics in the church and shenanigans in the church? How do we send money and support like and thumb? Men preaching heresies eloquently. And how do we not hold people accountable for mishandling God's words in the scriptures? We have been low to sleep by the culture to such a degree that demons stand in pulpit on Sundays preaching the doctrines of devils, and we don't even know because we don't have enough word in us that it sounds like static in our soul. So the devil stirs up drama around real prophets and let false prophets run free and run rampant. They're in Nashville, they're in Atlanta, they're in Jacksonville, they're on the East Coast and the West Coast, and we're more concerned about the restaurant after Sunday. There is a heaviness that we desire everyone in this room will leave with tonight. A burden or a type of brokenness over the state of the church where we thumb through social media and shed tears over the nonsense we see that passes off for Christianity. We have strong thumbs and weak souls because we scroll but we don't cry. We scroll but we don't pray. We scroll but we don't agonize, we scroll, but we never get down on our knees, we scroll but we don't care. We are gripped by indifference in this nation. And God help us tonight, man. If 500 of y'all, if 800 of y'all, man, if if more of us left tonight, not being watched, content to just do services and go home, but to say, Lord, in my home, in my family, on my platforms, in my church, on my team, in my locker room, on my job, I will be a conduit for you. I will shed your tears, I will speak your truth, I will carry your brokenness, I will care. I will we need more people to have his eyes and his heart and to be burned. What we need is the coals of like like pause. Like yesterday was like Labor Day. Anybody barbecue yesterday?
SPEAKER_00No, be honest, y'all. Come on now. Y'all know y'all ate some brisket yesterday.
SPEAKER_01Yesterday, I I I barbecued yesterday.
SPEAKER_00That just freed somebody up to tell the truth. Now, who barbecued yesterday? Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01I think barbecue is sinful. I didn't have one of the grills. I think it's sinful to barbecue. I didn't have one of the grills with propane. I had the one with coals.
SPEAKER_00Come on.
SPEAKER_01And it takes work to set them on fire.
SPEAKER_00Come on.
SPEAKER_01It takes work to set coals on fire. But once they're burning, they give off an aroma. Come on. Come on, Phil. You can't come into the presence of coals and not smell it in the air. You know a fire is burning when you come around coals. You can smell it in the air. There's something aromatic about coals in the air. You can smell it, you can come close to it and feel the heat coming off of it. That's what we should be like. We should be like little coals set on fire. Watch this word together. That there's a fragrance that comes off of us. Like we care about the gospel, we care about the Great Commission. We care about being witnesses. We care about holiness. We care about having clean hands and a pure heart. We care about obedience. We care about faithfulness. We care about suffering well for Jesus, even when people don't understand your obedience. We care about being different. We care about not being people pleasers. We care about the fact time is running out. We care about staying close to other coals that's on fire. For if you take one coal off the heap and put it to the side, it won't be long before it turns gray. Put out and I feel there's too many people in the body of Christ. The devil is just taking and throwing them off to the side. Coals burning. They're gray and singing, gray and preaching, gray and leading, gray and sitting in pews, gray and going through the motions. Gray. There's gray in this room tonight, but there will be no gray in this room when we're done tonight. And Jesus, I said there will be no gray in this room when we're done tonight. Do you receive that by faith? Come on, man.
SPEAKER_02This ain't no pep talk. This ain't no pep talk. This ain't no pep talk.
SPEAKER_01And especially in places like Nashville, where everybody goes to church and everybody's a Christian. I'm more concerned about Nashville than a place in the bush in Africa. Where we have more comfort to lull us to sleep. It's hard to be on fire when you're overly comfortable.
SPEAKER_00Come on. Come on.
SPEAKER_01This is why you can't let anything satisfy you more. Lord help us, Holy Spirit. You cannot let anything satisfy you more than a deep, intimate, personal, on-fire relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot be more satisfied with your husband or your wife. You cannot be more satisfied with a job, a house, or a car. You cannot be more satisfied than an Instagram following and a platform. You cannot be more satisfied with a guitar and a song. There must be something happening in your heart with you and Christ alone. But you keep closing up next to Christ in that secret place, then He keeps fire burning on that coast. A marriage can change if a husband catches fire tonight. A family could change if a wife goes home with fire tonight. Your dead team at your church can change if somebody goes home with a fire tonight. A church could change if one person goes home as an intercessor with fire in their heart tonight.
SPEAKER_00Take us to the word, Tim. As we turn, as Phil was talking about fire, I was reminded something my dad taught me growing up in the countryside in North Carolina when it would snow and get cold. We had a wood fireplace. And I would ask him, how does the fire go out? And he said, if ever you want a fire to go out, do nothing. Just do nothing, just leave it. Don't tend to it. And that's where a lot of us are in the body of Christ, doing nothing. We've changed nothing. We have the same stale routine that we've had for the last 10 years. We prayed the same stale prayers that we've prayed for the last 10 years. We have an expectation that God is going to move in a fresh and mighty way while recycling the same old, same old to him when the word of God says he desires our best. Not something, not a majority of us, our best. And one of the things that I learned in Turkey that I pray we learn here, I didn't see anyone arguing against each other. I saw strangers get their mats and roll them out and pray in the middle of the street, no matter where they were. And here in the United States, one of the greatest tactics of the enemy is not denying you. It's not denying your prayer, it's keeping you so distracted that you deny the power of the prayer you're supposed to be praying. And it's not even that you're distracted with bad things. Some of you are distracted with good things. Distracted with good things. And you've gotten so fat off of the good things that you've lost a hunger and a thirst and a desperation and a desire to develop intimacy with the Father, to allow him to remind you that today is the day that he has made, and you have a choice. To be made glad in it. We've been walking through 1 Peter, and I want to take you to verse number 13 in chapter one, a very powerful and profound verse. It says, Therefore, preparing your minds for action. Be sober-minded. Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Preparing your minds. What does it mean to prepare your mind, Phil?
SPEAKER_01In order to prepare your mind, you have to desire to have the mind of Christ. A lot of us have the mind of our leaders, we have the mind of influencers. But how many of us have the mind of Christ? You prepare your mind by filling your mind with the word of God and the truth of God's word. You prepare your mind by embracing everything that is in God's word. You prepare your mind, listen, by not being overly attached to this life. You prepare your mind by not being overly attached to this life. There are a lot of us, our minds are not prepared because you're too tethered to right now. You prepare your mind by remembering what Christ said, that he went to prepare a place for you. That where he is, you will be also. It will be hard for your mind to be prepared for action here when you think here is the end all of Christianity. Do you understand that all of this is temporary? This podcast, your ministry, your family, our books, all of this is temporary. It's hard to prepare your mind when your mind is so overly attached to this life. The Lord and the apostles, through their writings and teachings, did everything they can to detach us from being overly tethered to this life so that our minds could be properly prepared for how we live down here right now. If you don't see Christianity through the lens of eternity, it will be hard to prepare your mind. If you don't understand that our sufferings will one day give way to glory, it will be hard to prepare your mind. So you prepare your mind with God's word, not just with podcasts, not just with sermons, but knowing God's word for yourself. Let me repeat that to you that you're not solely dependent on podcasts and sermons and influencers, but you know God's word for yourself. You cozy up with the scriptures, you saturate yourself in the scriptures, you saturate yourself in the gospels in the New Testament. That's how you prepare your mind. You detach yourself from American Christianity, from false doctrines, you detach yourself from idols that keep us busy and things that we have dethroned Christ to replace him with, and you prepare your mind by understanding we are in a warfare and that we all have been called to that battlefield. You must see life as more than just marriage, more than just parenting, more than just building businesses, more than just your investments, more than just your next vacation. God did not call us to just be consumed with ancillary things. He has called us to be witnesses for him on a temporary battlefield until he returns to set up his millennial kingdom. This sounds like babble to so many people in Christianity because we're so attached to our comforter right now, and yet this is how God wants us to prepare our minds. This is how God wants us to think. This is why the apostle Paul, in his final letters that he wrote before he was executed in a Roman prison, he said to a young man named Timothy, who was battling timidity and a stomach illness, he said, No warrior, no soldier who has been enlisted in the army entangles themselves with the affairs of this life. That is, we do life, we do marriage, we do parenting, we go to work, we build businesses, but we do those things as witnesses and warriors for Christ, as agents that have been planted in all these spaces for the glory of Christ. Your home is a mission field. Your first disciples are your children and your family, and then your mission field moves out of your home to your job and your places of work and business, your school, and your like this is how we prepare our mind for action. I live like a man headed towards somewhere. I preach like a man running out of time, and I live like a man running out of time, and I love my wife and reconcile quickly like a man running out of time. I disciple my children like a man running out of time. I leave my staff like a man running out of time. I store my finances like a man running out of time. I give away money like a man running out of time. I run out of my sin like a man running out of time. I run from sin like a man living out of time. I I ask God to help me have a spirit of repentance like a man running out of time. I write, I pulse, I live, I pray, I cry like a man running out of time, I move like a man, knowing that a day is coming where I will cast my crown before my savior. We all tore like two young men running out of time. I don't care what nobody got to say about PAM or T I M. We touring like two men running out of time, doing whatever we can to reach as many people as possible, not only with gospel truth, but to stir up the bride to remind her that we're running out of time. We ain't out here to make glory for ourselves. I would rather be in my prayer closet than on this platform. We out here traveling, leaving our wives and children, sacrificing our bodies and pulling money out of our own pockets to get to as many people as possible, to stir up as many people as possible, to set fire to as many people as possible, to don't just settle for Sunday morning. Come on, man. And so we prepare our mind by understanding the temporary nature of this life, and that everything that we hold dear to right now was gonna dissolve in the light of Christ. This is what Peter taught us in his word. Everything right now is gonna dissolve in the light of Christ, and the only thing that's gonna remain is what we have done for Christ. Are we not aware that he is coming? Why is it in the first century they had more urgency than we do, 2,000 years removed from Christ? Why is it that people look at us crazy when we talk like this? Like that's for Tim and P A M, that's not for me. The apostles was preaching with urgency in the first century, and every day you rise, tomorrow you will be one day closer to the return of Christ. When we think like that, we prepare our mind to live on purpose. Watch the word live on purpose. We want to live full and die empty and leave nothing here that God told us to do while we were in this life. He's not gonna need your ministry in heaven, he's not gonna need you to share the gospel with the Muslim Uber driver in heaven. He's not gonna need us to be, he needs us to do that stuff now. Everybody taking an Uber home, he needs you to be faithful in the back of the Uber now, praying for the person that's driving you home, or praying for your coworkers, praying for all your lost loved ones, praying for your spouse, man. Going into your bedroom with your unsafe spouse and dripping oil on their forehead while they're sleeping at night and laying hands on them while they're laying in the bed and believing for God to do a miracle in their lives. Peter told the people, prepare your mind for action. What are you preparing your mind for?
SPEAKER_00When you think about that, that statement, prepare your mind, is the same thing in the Greek as gird up your loins. Which is a term warriors would use when they had to ready themselves quickly and run. They would gather all of the extra material, pull them up, they would gather their weaponry, they would gather their shield, they would pull them together so that they could run in the direction of warfare. And most of us are running from it. We run from it because we don't know who sent us. You only live with that type of conviction when you know who sent you. You only know who sends you when you audit every voice that enters into your mind. This is why it's important. The voice you listen to determines the destiny you experience. If you listen to the voices of fear, you'll always be afraid. If you listen to the voices of worry, you'll always be worried. If you listen to the voices of anxiety that speak to you on a daily basis, you'll always be anxious. But when you understand that there is no failure in Jesus, did you hear what I said? There is no failure in Jesus. So when Peter is saying prepare your mind, what he's saying is remember who you are. Remember who sent you, remember who called you, remember who anointed you, remember who graced you, remember who gifted you, so that when you run towards the battle, your enemy does not scare you with the same old scare tactics because you know exactly who you are. When you know who you are, you won't take on the label of what other people call you. And some of you have settled for the labels and the names that coach and society, your friends, your family, your co-workers have labeled you, and that's not who you are. You are a son and a daughter of the Most High God. So listen to me. Listen to me before you clap. Act like it. What does it mean to act like it? It means you lace up your boots, you gird your loins, and you run towards where you see the battle happening because there are people that need you on the front lines. I've never seen, Phil, people in other world religions tearing each other down on social media. Only Christians. Only Christians have attacked us for taking the podcast on tour. Only people who say that they are believers, and it dawned on me. But the enemy does not have to stop us if he can just infect us from the inside. I don't know. But this moment, it won't go viral because it's not attractive to gossip. Tell me, tell me why access, having every ticket go out in five hours was not as viral as $60 tour tickets. 80,000 plus seats in five hours for prayer. Like that wasn't viral. Pastors didn't preach about that in their pulpits, but they preached about a podcast tour. And one of the things that we have done as the body of Christ, we believe that God is one-dimensional. So we think that because a person is a pastor, they can also have a podcast. And because business leaders are influential in the business market, they can also be ministers in the streets. Because the God that they serve is one-dimensional. I serve a God that blesses both ends. And so hear me very loud and clear, because it will happen. These are the days that we live in. Everyone has a review. It's crazy that people will visit a church and then go on TikTok and give a review of the church that they just visited. Instead of gleaning and leaning into what it was that Jesus and the Holy Spirit wanted to do, they went in with the with the lens of being a consumer. Like shopping in a mall. Instead of going to learn from the Holy Spirit, going to worship Jesus, going to lift their hands and lay at the altar every sacrifice that they needed to, they still left with the same sin, they still left with the same issues because they had in their mind they were shopping for a church instead of submitting to one. So when Peter is talking about prepare your mind, he's saying, do not do the same things you see other people doing. Be sober-minded. What does it mean to be sober-minded? Know who sent you. Protect your thoughts. Audit the voices who enter into your ears and your mind and the things that try to settle in your soul, and know the difference between someone who says they follow Jesus and someone that submitted to them.
SPEAKER_01As we are landing a plane on our time together, I I want to ask you, do you really love the man that you say you follow? Do you really love him? Do you? Then at some point in time we have to care about the things that discredit him. That bring reproach to his name. I would to God I could jump off this platform and grab every single one of you by your shoulders and shake you. And tattoo to your heart a righteous indignation, a holy anger, a divine grief in your heart for everything happening in the culture and in our nation, and in our churches, and on social media, that blaspheme, attempt to discredit, that brings shame and embarrassment to the Lord. I wish we would leave here angry at foolishness we see on social media angry at things that pass off for the gospel but is not. I would to God more of us would leave here angry and then instill that in the people around us and how we post and how we pray and how we live and how we disciple our children, that we would see revival, not just sing about it and type about it, but through our repentance and our prayer and our holy brokenness, we would see something happen in us, in our homes, in our churches, in our city. I just wish more of us tonight would leave fed up with all of the shenanigans we see in America and in Nashville, especially, and begin to cry out to God to do something about what we see right now. I would more of us will have the mind of Christ to care about the things he cared about. If we love him, we will care about the things he cared about. We will be grieved about the things that grieved him. We will stand for him. We will not be content to just go to church this Sunday and then the Sunday after that and not care about what's happening around us. That we are more powerful when we are united than when we are divided. That Christianity is not for just black people or for white people or for this person, but it is a it is a gospel for all of us together. That we will not contend to just live in silos and hate brothers and sisters that don't look like us. That we will see things in us first. That is an offense to the cross and be grieved with our own sin first, like Isaiah, and then be grieved with the foolishness we see in our church and pray for our pastors and our leaders who are going astray and be grieved for the things we see on social media. If we if more of us leave grieved tonight, we're coming full circle now with a heaviness on our heart, a holy heaviness. You have no idea what God would do with a man or a woman who leaves tonight, who tattoos to their heart, a holy heaviness. That's what we want tattooed to your heart tonight. A holy heaviness. Does that make sense to you? Does that make sense to you? Now, before we pray, um, I want to just remind everybody about the power of God's word. There is there is nothing that we are hearing right now in our lifetime that's more important than God's word. This is not for just devotions. This is the living, breathing revelation of God Himself to humanity. It is his ways, his wisdom, and his word. It is more than just picking and cherry-picking scriptures for a two-minute devotional on Tuesday morning. It is alive and it is active, it is sharper than a two-edged sword. It is transformed me from being a YN to a YD. It creates disciples of those who read it and it reads those who read it. It transforms hearts, it produces better husbands and wives, it produces wiser teenagers, it produces stronger churches, it heals marriages, it restores broken relationships, it comforts those who are wary and broken, it gives wisdom to the simple, it is guidance to those who need guidance, it gives answers for those who are confused, it is the origin of all things, and in the end, it's the only thing that will remain, it will stand forever. We can't add to it, we can't take away from it, we cannot change it, we cannot rewrite it, we cannot reimagine it. I don't care what a transgressive bishop says, we cannot reimagine it.
SPEAKER_02We cannot change it, we don't have the authority to add to it or to take away from it. We must have fidelity to it, and be submitted to it, and be governed by it.
SPEAKER_01It is going around the world. In fact, Jesus said this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.