Deeper Moments: Bill Elliff

Welcome to the very first episode of Deeper Moments — a new series of longer conversations exploring prayer, presence, spiritual awakening, and the deeper life with Christ.

In this inaugural episode, Matt Tullos sits down with pastor, author, and revival voice Bill Elliff for a deeply personal conversation about prayer, the presence of God, repentance, revival, prodigals, and learning to live a Presence-Centered Life.

Bill shares stories from the Jesus Movement, moments of desperation that shaped his walk with Christ, and practical wisdom on cultivating intimacy with God in a distracted world. Together, Matt and Bill explore what it means to “enter the throne room and shut the door,” and how believers can move beyond spiritual routines into genuine communion with Jesus.

This conversation is thoughtful, pastoral, deeply encouraging, and filled with wisdom for anyone longing for spiritual renewal.

Whether you are weary, spiritually dry, praying for a prodigal, or hungry for revival in your church, this episode will gently point you back to the presence of God.

Transcript

– Introducing Deeper Moments

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome friends to Scattered Moments. And this is what I'm calling deeper moments, longer conversation where grace appears. And these are the moments that we have when we look for them. You know, there are moments God places in your path something that you didn't see coming, and you walk away wondering if he arranged the whole thing just for you. And that's what happened at a staff retreat not long ago when I had a chance to sit under the teaching of Bill Elliff. I'll be honest with you, I came into this retreat carrying some things. Scattered thoughts, emotions that I hadn't quite sorted out. Maybe you know that feeling. When you've been praying and there's silence on the other end, and it starts to feel less like a mystery and more like distance. And then Bill opened the scriptures and began to talk about entering the throne room and shutting the door. Something in me was still. It was exactly what I needed to hear, and I didn't even know it. I didn't know I needed it until he said it. That teaching became something healing for me, not because it answered all my questions, but because it reminded me that Jesus is present in every step, in the unanswered, in or the unsettled, in the scattered. I didn't have to have it all resolved to be held. I still haven't had it all resolved, by the way. I I left that retreat feeling something I hadn't felt in a long time, a release. To introduce Bill, he's the founding and national engaged pastor of the Summit Church in north of Little Rock, Arkansas. He spent over 50 years calling people back to God. I know that you're going to enjoy this conversation, and my prayer is that it will be transforming for you as well. I'm so excited to have an opportunity uh to visit with you, Bill. Uh, you've meant so much to me. And one of the things I love about you is that every time I'm in a conference that you're leading or at a retreat where you are, uh I always end up saying, I want to know Jesus like Bill knows Jesus. And so I don't know if it's like a holy jealousy or even if that's a sin, but uh that that's that's that's the effect that you have on me. And so I I wanted to introduce our audience to you. Is there one single shaping event that happened to you that that brought you to the place of desperation to know Jesus?

– Bill Elliff’s story of surrender and spiritual awakening

SPEAKER_01 2:39

You know, there there have been several, Matt, and and great to be with you and your listeners. Uh a real seminal moment for me was when I was young. I came to know the Lord early. My dad was a pastor, and uh I had really wandered in high school, just trying to be like everybody else. And and I got I just got uh sick of it, and I started trying to do better. I thought, well, I'll just I'll just be better, you know. And the Lord kind of let me go in this Bill Elloff self-help program for a while. And it was a horrible disaster. I'll never forget, Matt, it was 1969, April 4th, and I just came to the end of myself. And I said, Lord, I I can't do this. And I I knew the Lord had called me to preach. And I said, Lord, how is this gonna happen if I can't walk with you, you know? And I it was just a moment of absolute desperation and full surrender to the Lord. And uh I went home and opened the door, you know, with my mom and dad, just got clean and I had so much junk. And and my dad very wisely said, I want you to get a uh a notepad and just write sin list on the top and put a number one and say, Lord, just search, search my heart and don't argue with him, just write things down that come to your mind. And if any people are involved, you circle those. And when I got through, Matt, it was seven pages front and back, legal size, just all this junk, you know. And boy, when I began to uh, you know, just confess my sin and clear my conscience, uh uh it was just life-changing. And I didn't know, but we were in the beginning days of the Jesus movement, and so that almost atmospheric movement of God was around us, and I got caught up in that, went to college uh at uh Baptist School in Arkansas, Washtaw, and there in college, just an extraordinary moment happened one day in a noonday student-led uh service, supposed to be 15 minutes long, it lasted all day, they canceled classes, and I was just right in the middle of that, and I just saw the manifestation of God, of his presence. And I'm telling you, it you know that saying that people say, I literally said that when I was in uh college that uh God can do more in five minutes of his manifest presence than 50 years of our best work. So I got that taste under my tongue, and I've just never gotten over it. I just I've pursued his presence, it just became so real to me and so powerful. So every place I've ever been, every time I ever speak, every every church I ever pastor, I just say, Lord, I what can we do to tear down the high places, bring up the low places, get the rubble out of the way to prepare a highway for our God, for your presence. That moment just kind of set me on a path that I've never never gotten over.

– Why prayer can feel frustrating

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Prayer sometimes feels frustrating. Seems like there's nobody on the other other side listening to our prayers. What would you say to somebody who's struggling with that?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Prayer and the presence of God has been my great passion in the last uh years, and uh because I think it's the foundational key to everything. Uh you can experience a lot, you can do a lot, you can work a lot, but if it if that doesn't come from an intimacy with Christ, uh you're just doing it on your own steam. And I think, Matt, I think there are a lot of reasons for that. I think uh a lot of people, if they knew better, they'd do better. You know, if they just had some training about the value of the presence of God, pursuing the presence of God, and if they had the understanding of how do I literally enter into his presence and experience his presence on a daily basis, how do I pray without ceasing? Is that even a possibility? And I think that it is. And uh, and and then if they if they knew better, but you know, the other thing is we've got a we've got a massive enemy. And I wrote in this new book that I've just written on the presence-centered life, how God designed us, he created us to live in his presence. And everything we needed is there. He's made us like him in our uh personality, in our abilities. Uh, we're like him that we can talk and communicate. Oh, that was designed by God so we can know his presence. And he delights in our presence. But Satan,

– Distractions and the battle for God’s presence

SPEAKER_01 8:01

when he saw that that we were created to live with God and to rule and reign, which is what he wanted to do, you think about what he did in that temptation, first temptation in the garden. It was all about pulling us away from the presence of God. He he knew if he could disconnect us that he had us. And and it worked. But that's still his agenda is to distract us. So there's a thousand distractions that just pull away. You know, classic illustration is Mary and Martha. And uh, Martha, you know, you just you're just worried and bothered about so many things, and there's really only one thing necessary, and that was what Mary was doing sitting at the Lord's feet, which I I believe you can do all day, every day. It's not easy because we have these enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil just constantly pulling at us.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

But it's

– Raising a family while pursuing intimacy with God

SPEAKER_00 9:09

I can't even imagine having you you have uh eight children.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I do. I have eight kids, they're all married now, and uh we have 27 grandkids. Oh my goodness. I mean, it just makes me tired mentioning that.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

And uh then along with that, you've got your responsibilities just in this this movement and and shepherding your ministry and writing and all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

I you know the great key for me, Matt, about that getting up in the early morning hours and meeting with God. I've been around, had the great privilege of being around some great men in my life. And uh I've never ever met a great man or woman of God who did not, usually in the early morning hours, so you're undistractable, get up and spend time in God's presence. In your early days, that can be kind of a duty and checking it off the list and read your scripture and have a little bit of prayer. But it's got to evolve into I can't wait to get up because I have the literal privilege of walking into the throne room with God and communing with him and listening to him through his word. And the more you learn to do that, it's just the life, it just sets sets the course. I was talking to one of my good friends, Nathan Leno and uh great pastor in Dallas, and we were doing a little conference together on prayer. I said, How do you what do you do at the in your in your devotional time in the morning? He said, I do whatever's necessary and take whatever time is necessary to enter into the

– Entering the throne room and “shutting the door”

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Lord's presence. And you know, Matt, I years ago, that little passage in Matthew 6, Jesus spends more time talking about how to get into his presence than he does about what to say, our Father who art in heaven. 60 words in that Lord's Prayer, 120 words in how to enter into his presence. And he teaches us to open the door, and we can come in because of Christ. We have peace-facing God, uh, Romans 5 says, and we can open the door and come in and shut the door, which is the important part of the exercise on all the distractions that are outside, and then just turn our attention to the Father, Son, and Spirit that are there and and uh begin to worship

– Phones, distractions, and protecting time with God

SPEAKER_01 11:46

them.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And that's the struggle for me so many times. Uh when I get up, I I go make sure the world is still working, you know, on my front, you know, make sure no nuclear bomb has gone off.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah, as if it made a difference.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah, I look at all the notifications that I have, yeah, and before I know it, I've spent 15 minutes with the world and none with God.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

And if you're not careful, you'll spend all the time with the world.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Or you or you'll start meeting with the Lord and then you'll think, I wonder if that sweater is still available on Amazon, and you reach down and grab your computer. And uh you can't do that. Right. Time with God has got to become more valuable to you than anything else. And you know, you get older, it it's it's really easier uh for me. I'm I you know, my my kids are out of the house now, and so I'm not staying up till three o'clock in the morning with a crying baby or whatever. Right. I I remember those days. It was a lot harder to carve out the time, but you've got to do it then. I just say this real strongly. You've got to do it then to develop the habit now, right over the years.

– How God uses hardship to draw us near

SPEAKER_00 13:04

One of the things that I I love that you talk about is how God sometimes puts you in a place where you can only hear him.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

That's another part of this whole thing of getting to know him. Every single person and circumstance that the Lord brings into your life is by design. I mean, God knows what he's about, and uh and he doesn't miss anything. And you say, well, does he cause it or allow it? I mean, what difference does it make? It's it's it's come your way, and we know that God is good and uh what he brings us is good, and everything in my life, he works together for good. So all those things by from God's side of the equation are designed to push us one place, and that's to him. I like to say, Matt, everything flows from the presence of the Lord. Everything. And his presence is your greatest need. But here's the flip side of this coin, and that is our presence with him is his great delight. I think that's what people don't understand. They think, let me get let me tell it like this: I was with a hundred men not long ago, and I was teaching about the presence of God and about prayer. And the next day, the pastor, as we were starting our first session, he said, Can I say something? I said, Absolutely. He said, He said, The Lord just prompted me to ask you men, he was crying. He said, How many of you men feel like God just barely tolerates you? And men started standing up and then weeping. And before it was over, probably 80 of those hundred men were standing. And I thought, well, Satan's done a really good job. Because if you think that God just barely tolerates you, why would you want to pursue him? Why would you want to be near him? I honestly, this book that I wrote, The Presence-Centered Life, I spend the first half of that book showing people all through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, that that's simply not true, that God really desires our presence. And then the second half of the book, I talk through six essential ways that God has given us to enter into his presence and to know him and to walk with him. I honestly, I think it's the most important topic I've ever picked up and most important book I've ever written.

– What biblical meditation really means

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Some hesitancy to really think about meditating. What is a biblical definition or even process or practice of meditation for the believer?

SPEAKER_01 15:46

That's a great question. My brother and I, one of my brothers, Jim, uh, I've got two, and both are pastors. And uh, we were talking about preaching the other day, and we were talking about study. And Jim said to me, A lot of what I receive from the Lord and teach, I get from just meditating. And I thought about that, of how much time, Matt, in my life I've spent, I've spent with the Word of God on my lap or at the table, and my head back on the chair, just praying, just thinking, just walking through a scripture, uh, just meditating.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

And and I tell, I tell you, the great, you know, there's great promises for that. Psalm chapter one, uh, blessed is a man who meditates on the Lord and his word day and night, and all the promises that come about that. Here, here it here it is in a in a nutshell. It's giving God time. It's just it's refuse, it's this thing of laying aside the distractions, shutting the door, entering in and taking your Bible, which is God's means of speaking to us, and and in prayer coming to him. And you know, prayer is just a conversation between two people who love each other, but Roslyn Rinker said. I love that definition. So it's not, it's not me checking the list off, it's it's me coming in and getting comfortable in the Lord's presence, learning how to do that, and then just listening to him and looking at his word. Lord, what does that mean? What do you want to say to me about that? What does that mean for me with my family? What are you saying to me about my finances? And listening, really listening. I I believe God really still speaks. Well, you know, I think if he's God, he could pull that off.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

With his with the ones he created and designed to speak to us. And and and I'm not just I'm not just saying the word of God, although that's the primary means, but through the word and the spirit of God and prayer, he communicates with us. And part of that, in large measure, is just giving him time in meditation.

– Moving from systems to relationship with God

SPEAKER_00 18:17

That to me is so refreshing because so many times as as I've grown up in church, you know, that it's it's always been like, what is the system? And what you're describing is much more organic than than I was taught.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

It's relational.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah. And that's the way it's designed to be, I think.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

So speak to me as a child. Uh if I want to have that kind of intimacy with Christ, uh you had mentioned, you know, getting up early. How does someone draw deeper and what does that obedience look like for for for the guy or the gal who who really is saying, I just don't want to go through the motions. I I want to have what Bill is describing

– How to cultivate a Presence-Centered Life

SPEAKER_00 19:02

in my life.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

This is interesting. Uh I I felt I'd written this book, Presence Centered Church. How do we build churches that are filled with the presence of God? And about 10 or 15 years ago, and and uh I felt for a long time I needed to write a book to the average Christian, upon answering that question that you just asked. How do I live a life in the presence of God? How does it become real to me and natural to me and organic to me? And I thought I'd write the book, Matt, in about two or three months. And I got about three months into it, and the Lord one day, and I can tell you right where I was sitting, he just kind of spoke to my heart in the way he does, and he said, Bill, you have no idea what you're talking about. I agree. And and I ended up spending the next 18 months studying that question from Genesis to Revelation. It was one of the greatest studies I've ever done in my life. And I began to see why the Lord wants us in his presence, but then how? How? And that's the question you just ask. And I really believe there are there are several ways. Now, you know, you have your ways. Somebody says, Well, how what do you what's Matt gonna think about that? Oh, he he's gonna do this. And you say, Well, how do you know that? Well, that's just his way. That's that's that's what what he's that's the way he functions. God has his ways, and God wants his ways to become our ways, and there are five or six ways, and I just mentioned them just in bullet form. First of all, is we have to learn how to draw nearer, how to just draw near.

– Drawing near to God intentionally

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Right. There's something about the intentionality of just stopping and saying, I need the Lord, man. I just need the Lord, and I need to draw near. I think that's one of the great problems, is we just don't draw near. There's this great promise repeated three times in the scripture, draw near to me, and I'll draw near to you. I mean, what could be better than that? So we have to intentionally, like Mary, choose one thing as more important than other things, and and draw near. As we draw nearer, secondly, we've got to learn how to commune, how to talk to him. A presence-centered person talks to God and lets God talk to them all day long. And it becomes the main conversation. It's where I go to get advice, it's where I go to get comfort, it's where I go to get instruction. Now we're all we're darting over here and here, and we're, you know, we're getting all

– Communion, repentance, and listening to God

SPEAKER_01 21:54

our information there instead of going to the one source of and I was just reading this this morning. In my devotional time, Proverbs 2. Blessed is a man who seeks for this like silver and goes after it like gold, and he and he hungers for it and he meditates. And it lists about 10 verbs that say, this is where this guy's going to live. He's going after God and talking with God. And he's listening to God. So, and God's great tools there are the Word of God in prayer. So if you if you don't, if you don't know how to handle the Word of God in prayer, you've got to learn how to do that. There are lots of books and there are lots of people around you that are a few steps ahead of you that can help you do that. And thirdly, as you're communing with God, he's going to start showing you stuff in your life that's that's not what it needs to be. Because his great agenda is to conform you into the image of his son. And so he's going to start pinpointing issues. Well, here's this anger, Bill. You know, you get angry all the time. So he speaks to you through the word about that, and he and he convicts you about it. So you have three options right there. You can ignore him, or you can blame. You say, Well, yeah, I know I'm angry. You don't know my wife, you don't know what my children did. Or we can agree with God and adjust our behavior by the grace of God. That's called repentance. So we have to draw near and we have to commune, and then we have to become a regular repenter that we're constantly letting him have access to every room of our heart. And we agree with him, and he's not gonna work on it all at once. It's incremental over our lifetime, but but piece by piece, any place you want to, you can stop repenting, but you'll also stop experiencing the presence of God. When you say, Well, I'm just

– Living filled with the Holy Spirit

SPEAKER_01 24:08

not gonna listen to you anymore, well, fine. Well, you won't you won't experience me anymore. I think that's what's happened to a lot of people. You know, God touched an area and they just said, Nope, not gonna open that door. Okay, well, I'm not gonna be in that door if you won't let me. And then, and then just real quickly, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to learn how to let God have control. And that's what the filling of the Holy Spirit is. It's it's just releasing control to the Spirit who lives within us. And and we have to be continually filled. It's a it's a continuous action command there in Ephesians 5, 18, because what happens is we seize control. You know, we'll we'll be having a conversation with somebody and we'll just kind of say the Lord, Lord, I think I'm gonna take care of this one myself.

unknown 25:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Well, I see how that goes for you, right? And then I need to repent again and come back and say, Lord, forgive me. And the men I know who walk with God are men and women who are filled with the Holy Spirit. We we don't like to talk about that because we're afraid of where it might go. But the Spirit of God is mentioned 59 times in the 28 chapters of the book of Acts. We say, how are they so great? How do they walk with God? How do they do so? Well, they were filled with the Spirit, and the Spirit lived through them and spoke through them. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, stood up and

– Learning to follow and abide in Christ

SPEAKER_01 25:50

preached, and 3,000 were saved. And then here's the fifth thing, and that is as we're filled with the Spirit, that's not just, oh, I feel great. We're gonna sit around and sing kumbaya now. The fifth thing is we've got to follow. I love the Matthew, you know, Jesus said, follow me, and he got up and followed him. What a great, great verse. Christianity in a nutshell, right? So we have to learn to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. And uh you see somebody that's really been used, they just they're listening. You can't follow if you're not communing. But if you're drawing near every day and you're communing every day, and you're repenting so the line is open every day, and you're letting the Spirit fill you every day. Then when he prompts you, you follow him, and that's when it really gets fun. And the final thing is you have to learn, Matt, and this is so beautiful, how to abide, how to stay put. And the reason is because distractions and difficulties constantly come. And you have to learn how to resist distractions and how to embrace difficulty and just stay put in the I'm telling you, as I was work studying that in the scripture, the Lord just said to me, Bill, I don't want you to, I don't, I could care less about you writing a book, but I I don't want you to put one word in that book that you can't do. And so I thought about this so long and hard and studied it. We could use other words for that. You know, I could get some cool words, but I thought, I'm just I just want to say it the way the Bible says it, so that when people open their Bible and they say, Oh, that's what it means to abide, they'll understand that it's not a formula, it's a way of living. These are the ways of God. Right. And you just you just can't get

– Encouragement for parents of prodigals

SPEAKER_01 27:50

away from them.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

I I want to ask you uh about prodigals. So many of my friends, as well as me, I've got one. We pray for each other's prodigals. We struggle through that. The struggle sometimes is a week and sometimes it's 15 years. What would you say to someone who's in the middle of that struggle?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Well, I can uh speak to that because I had a prodigal. So uh my wife and I, you know, with eight kids, I would tell Holly every once in a while, I said, you know, with eight children, the the probability of us having one kid that that has some struggles, all our kids had struggles, but one really getting off the beam, and we had one get really off the beam. And uh in high school, we didn't know it, we didn't realize what was going on, got some he had got some drugs involved, and we'd never seen that uh behavior. And so it took us a while to to discover, and of course, there's nothing harder. You'd rather the doctor walk in and say to you, you got cancer, than to say you got a prodigal. So uh what I would say about that, I mean, so many things I would say it's critical for the husband and wife to really guard their relationship with each other because that's the tendency, it gets real tense, and in that tension, we can get on cross sides of how we're dealing with this, and and we start to break down that relationship with a husband and wife. So you got to really work hard at that. You you're the only team he's got that cares for him like a mom and dad would. But but let me cut to the chase of well, let me say two things. Number one, you gotta seek to constantly let them know your heart that you love them and you're you're gonna love them, regardless of what they do. You're gonna love them. That's one thing that's not gonna leave. And again, in the tension of what they're doing, and it hurts so bad if you're not careful. Parents, we can start behaving in ways that uh are very hurtful to the child, you know, and because he's hurting us, you know, or she. So you've got to maintain that and try to maintain their heart, you know, even with all the stuff they're doing. I'll tell you just a little story in the in the middle of that. It went on for several years in our home. And um, one day it just got so tough. I I just said to the Lord, Lord, I can't do this. I I can't, I don't know how to pray. I'm praying, Lord, I wish you'd do this, I hope you do this, you know, and all of that, but I don't have any basis for my prayers. And I need a word. Would you just give me a word, a promise, something? And I didn't know what that would do. I mean, I just, I just, it was just it was a guttural cry. A few days later, I was reading in Isaiah, and I came to this passage in Isaiah 54 that said, All of your sons, I have four sons, all of your sons will be taught of the Lord, and the well-being of your sons will be great. I I believe that God, there's 7,000 promises in the Bible. 7,000. And some are just, I'm gonna do this regardless, and some are I'm gonna do this if you do this. They're conditional. But it's God's operating system. It's everything in the in the Christian life is about faith and is about bringing us to faith, and it operates by faith. God's saying, I want you to depend upon me. And all these circumstances and people are are bringing us back to dependency upon him. So God gives us a word, and then and then we have a decision whether or not we're gonna believe him. And so I believe God speaks to his word like that and can give us promises that we can crawl up upon and just say, okay, Lord, sink or swim, live or die, I'm gonna trust you. You know how sometimes a promise will just jump off the page at you? And that's that's what it did. And so I said, okay. And instead of, I don't know how to describe this, but instead of praying like this, I began to pray like this. It was like I was on top of that. I I knew that all of my sons were gonna be taught of the Lord and that their well-being, I didn't know if it that was gonna take 30 years or three months or or what, but I knew now this was gonna be a part of his story, not his whole story. And so we began to pray in a greater faith. And I don't know how many months later, my wife came home one day sitting on the steps and he's weeping, and he said, I can't do this anymore. And boy, he was real unstable. And I I had come off the, yeah, I had come off the road from traveling because every time I left, he would really act out. And so I just decided I'm I was just gonna, and so what was great about that is I'd cancel all my engagements and I was there and I could disciple him and hold on to him now that he had his heart was back. And uh, you know, that guy is uh my most fervent follower of Jesus today. Married, four beautiful kids, God's using him. He's he's an incredible guy, and he has such a tender heart because he knows where he came out of. That's my best thought. You know, run to the Lord. I just you just gotta run to your mate, stay close there, run to Christ every day to carry you, and then ask him for some promises that you can uh plant your feet on and pray in faith.

– Spiritual awakening and revival in the church

SPEAKER_00 33:57

That is so encouraging. Uh, one other thing I wanted uh you to speak on, which I think you know a little bit about. So many churches right now are in decline, they're dry, uh, they're filled with political conflict. How can we pray for a spiritual awakening in our church?

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Good time to ask that question because I was in the Jesus movement in the early 70s and late 60s, and I didn't know it. I mean, uh, but I thought that's just the way everything was. But it was atmospheric. We've had we've had five of those in American history, and uh, and they've come every 30 to 60 years, and they've been extraordinary times. Uh, I describe it as the extraordinary, the needed extraordinary movement of the Spirit of God that produces extraordinary results. And uh, Matt, I believe with every fiber of my being that we're in one of those right now. We're in the foothills, but uh, and we're not in the full, you know, full bore of it, but but so why I mentioned that is because in days of revival, things they get crazier and and messier in some ways, but they the there's a greater gospel receptivity. That's good for the church. This is a good time to seek the Lord because He's letting Himself be known, He's manifesting Himself. The churches that miss that right now just because they're asleep and not praying, and the key to that is prayer and repentance at the first and foremost. So, number one, it begins with the pastors and the leaders. I mean, I just seeking personal revival yourself.

– Identifying spiritual “bunkers” in church life

SPEAKER_01 35:50

And uh again, I've I've written on that in the present-centered church book, uh, that the first thing is to enter into his presence yourself. And and you got to be willing to do that. You say, Well, I'm not the pastor, I'm a deacon, I'm a, you know, I'm an elder, I'm a layman, whatever. Well, then you do that and gather others around you and begin to pray and move prayer from a side room to the back to where it's supposed to be, which is the foundation of the life of the church, everything by prayer, and everything by prayer. He doesn't say in some things, most things, he says in everything. So, and then though, it's I think, Matt, it's the process of several things. One is uh removing the bunkers in the Gulf War when we were fighting in Iraq. Some people will remember this, that there were bunkers everywhere around Baghdad. And we did a air campaign for I think it was seven weeks, just dropping these massive mega bunker buster bombs. We'd never seen those before. And and they were World War II bombs that they they retrofitted with laser guidance, and they would go down beside these bunkers and then they would they would blow up the foundation and and they would just collapse into the sand. And then our infantry just walked in because all the bunkers were gone. Every church I know, and I've pastored them, has spiritual bunkers and many of them structural bunkers. And so if you want to see revival in your church, you have to spend some time identifying the bunkers. What is it? I mean, it's it's kind of as a as a pastor, it's kind of silly for me to take a little peace shooter and shoot over here and over here and over here. And and I'm not even hitting the target, you know, which is exactly what we do. And we we just try to get through a Sunday, you know, without getting beat up too bad. So only through prayer, the leaders of the church come together and they they discern, they assess like Nehemiah, they go around the walls and they say, okay, where's where is this broken down? Well, here's a bunker of pride. Here's a bunker of immorality. I I remember when God really fell on a church I was pastoring in Norman, Oklahoma. One night uh when God exposed some moral impurity in our church, 450 people got up and went to the prayer room confessing moral impurity. And we were a good church. I mean, we were you wouldn't have thought that of our church. That was just this massive bunker of moral impurity in our church. And when God began to break that bunker up, man, it was unbelievable how the presence of God came. So you got to deal with those bunkers. And then sometimes it's just structural barriers. We don't have time to talk about all that, but we limit God. We say, God, this is a little box that I and we're gonna only do it this way. And and we're in the 12th way we've always yeah, yeah. I mean, really, time you just hit one of the main things. We just say, God, I'm gonna limit you. You know, I've just, I mean, in it in it this here's this, here's a telling statement. Let's just have a minute of prayer. We say that all the time. Well, let me just leave it in a minute of prayer. Well, what I'm talking about is a little segue to start the meeting. I'm not talking about the one main thing that we're supposed to do, which is to enter into the presence of God and commune with the God of the universe and take whatever time that requires. I think you have to ask the Lord to begin those, uh break down those barriers. And then prayer has got to be reinstated as a foundational part of the life of your church. Every great revival movement has been preceded by a movement and in return to prayer. You just can't, you can't, prayer and repentance, you can't find any movement. And what's encouraging right now is what's happening among college students. And they're simply, you know, there have been rallies in college SEC schools and other schools uh where they've haven't, they're having 8, 10,000 kids come into arena and worship. But you know, I I know some of the leaders of those, and they say, you know what we do? We just call them to repentance and we share the gospel. And it's just there's a gospel receptivity right

– Prayer, repentance, and revival among students

SPEAKER_01 40:45

now that's extraordinary. And thousands of kids are coming to Christ. And uh, so I think in our churches, we've just got to return to those foundational things. And, you know, there's so much more, but I I the heart cry for God. You know, Richard Owen Roberts told me one day, he said, I have a I can give you a one-word definition for revival. I said, What is that? He said, God. And you said it in that way only he could, God, you know, but it's just returning God to his rightful place and surrendering to him and listening to him and paying attention to him and obeying him. We had a movement that happened in our church here in Little Rock where God broke in in a service. He went to three o'clock in the afternoon. We came back the next night, three, four hours that night. We said we can't stop. Let's come back the next night. It lasted five weeks every night. And the watchword of that movement was I had been preaching on, don't quench the spirit.

– “Don’t quench the Spirit”

SPEAKER_01 41:55

And you quench the spirit when God tells you to do something and you just ignore it. Because he's telling you something because there's a reason. And so something happened. We had been praying, and something happened in that moment, and that morning the people just decided we don't want to quench the spirit. And the Lord prompted them to get saved or confess something or come to the altar or give money, and they just didn't quench the spirit. And it just kept going. And it was so beautiful what was happening. And all these people were getting saved and spontaneously baptized and given money. I mean, tens of thousands of dollars were given in that that five weeks. We we came to a point where I stood up and said, I've never been able to say this. I think I can say with integrity, every need has been met in the life of our church, every financial need. Because people were just giving because they weren't quenching the spirit. So God, you touched a button right there, Matt. I'm sorry I'm I'm going on. No, go for it. I love it. I just I just think the the it's not complicated.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Yeah, so many times it's just like we're gonna have a revival here, but the Holy Spirit just kind of decides.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Yeah, and it's and then it's just following his promptings and not quenching your spirits, and then you'll see what God will do.

– Resources from Bill Elliff

SPEAKER_00 43:21

As we close, uh some of our listeners may may this may be their first introduction to Bill Elliff. I I wonder if you could share a couple of resources uh that that you have that can help first the the believer and then maybe the pastor.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Uh I appreciate that. And uh uh I I've written about, I don't know, 20 books uh that you know, you write something because you feel like the Lord tells you to do it. All of my books, you can get all of my books on Amazon, but also you can go on to billf.org, E L L I F F Billf.org. And uh and they're all there, and you can get bulk copies there. So I have several books on prayer that people might be interested in. One is called Prayer with No Intermission. Uh, how do you develop a continuous life of prayer? And that's a 40-day book. So it's an easy-to-read, pick up, take a little bite every day. There's another foundational book on prayer called Simply Prayer. And my goal in that book was uh, my goal in that book was just to teach people why we should pray, how do we pray, very practically. So that book is called Simply Prayer. And then this book uh presents the presence-centered life is the one I just finished in the last year. And I have with that a companion group study that's a 10-week study. It's got videos embedded in it. And also with the Prayer with No Intermission book, there's a free resource on my website that you can do a download. A lot of churches will do a six-week study. They'll use the book to just their people read through, but then I have a video-driven uh small group study on that that churches often go through. So those are uh three or four that might get them started, and and there's just tools on there, and they're tools and not real expensive. I I'm not trying to make money, I just want to get the truth out and help people a little

– Final encouragement and closing thoughts

SPEAKER_01 45:41

bit.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

Bill Olaf, thank you so much. This has been so helpful for me. Now, you have ministered to me, and and I'm praying that a lot of folks will uh dive deeper, create, facilitate that spiritual awakening in their own lives. Thank you.