Beyond Gate Beautiful - Duncan Smith

Many believers sit at “Gate Beautiful," close to God, yet never truly transformed.

In this powerful message from Duncan Smith, uncover the story of the lame man who lived in proximity to the presence but never stepped into it. This sermon confronts hidden disappointment, spiritual passivity, and the danger of settling for “church” without real encounter.

With bold clarity, this message reveals:

•  Why being near God is not the same as knowing Him 
•  How disappointment and pain can keep you stuck 
•  The power of Jesus to lift you out of limitation and into freedom 

This is a call to stop living on borrowed faith and step into your own encounter with God.

You weren’t meant to sit at the gate.
 You were meant to walk, leap, and live in His power.

It’s time to go Beyond Gate Beautiful.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Summit Church Podcast. Thank you for joining us as we share weekly sermons and teachings from Summit Church in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Our prayer is that today's message encourages your faith and helps you grow in your relationship with Jesus. Check out our website at summitchurchtn.com. Thanks for listening, and we pray this message encourages you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

You know, sometimes you forget how much God does through us. We're just little old me, and we're filled with the power and the presence of God. He's put his spirit within us, and it's just our joy to be here. We tried two times before, but third time, this is God's timing for us to come and bless you. And uh, you're in the beautiful smoky mountains, and we just had a wonderful drive here yesterday, just seeing the beauty of God's creation and being with you all here. And uh, you can tell I've got a southern accent as well, right? Yeah. I tell people I'm southern, and they look at me strange. But I became American in the South, so I think I'm Southern. So yeah, so we join you all. Oh, but you know, God has got so much more for us. We've just entered into spring and um the new year of the Hebrew calendar as well, and it's like, you know, I'm sensing that God is on the move. He's on the move, you know, he's always moving us somewhere. We never stay stationary. And so I would just want to um encourage you, just remember your faith is living and moving and active, and he's taking us with him. He's not leading a long way ahead. He's just uh ahead of us, uh gently calling us, calling us forward. And so it's so important that the things of the past, you know, the the lies of the enemy, the reminders of the enemy in our life, they're behind us. He he he wants to transform our hearts so we can walk forward into the new. And God told us a few years ago because you know, we came from the Toronto revival, and you can think that you know how to do revival all the time. And he said to us humbly, Um, I want you to become novices in the new and not experts in the old because there's new wine and there's new wineskins, and so we keep our hearts open and humble and think we don't know anything yet, but God is moving us into the new because he wants us to experience deeper levels of him. So we bless you this morning. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

I love you, darling. Nowhere near as long as your pastors have been married. But 35 is not bad. 35 years, yeah. Yeah, we're not in the jubilitious years like you guys, you know, in the Jubilee years. When Kate and I turned 50, we're 58 now, but when we turned 50, um the year before we had become grandparents, and uh our eldest daughter is married to um a wonderful man of God, and they they actually lead our church in Raleigh, which is why we can be here today. Uh, we planted our church 18 years ago, came down from Toronto, and uh and now we're so grateful that they lead the church. But uh they they made us grandparents, right? You don't get to choose that for yourself, it's chosen for you by someone else, right? All of you that are grand grandparents know what I mean. But it was the greatest promotion we've ever had in our lives. But when I first heard that I was gonna become a grandfather, I was 48 years old. And uh not looking in any directions, but you know, and I just was like, wait a minute, I'm not ready to be a grandfather. I'm I definitely not being called granddad, I'm not granddaddy, I'm not Grampy, I'm I don't know what I'm gonna be, I'm gonna have to be something, but it doesn't start with G. Ended up being called Papa, which I'm I'm I was glad to be called Papa, you know, but uh no no offense to all of those Gs, you know, it it's uh all of you that are that you know do start with G out there. Uh I just wasn't ready at 48, you know. And uh but I went into a full-on panic attack. I'm like, well, not panic attack, that's an exaggeration, but I I went I went into a serious funk that I was gonna become a grandfather. But uh then, of course, well, it just I wasn't ready, you know. I was a vibrant young man, and uh and and I can remember it wasn't until I got invited to uh speak at a youth conference, uh a large youth conference that I'd been invited to before uh on on occasions to in Medellin, Colombia, South America. I'm talking like several thousand youth, and in the middle of my funk about becoming a grandfather, I got invited to speak at a youth conference, one that I had spoken at when I was a young man. And I'm like, Andrew, I'm not Pastor Andrew, I am not coming. You've invited the wrong guy. I just found out I'm gonna become a grandfather, and you're inviting me back to your youth conference? No way. And uh he's like, no, no, Duncan, we want, you know, you're you're it, and I was bound into it, and the Holy Spirit had his way, and I found myself in Colombia, and it wasn't until just the morning that I was gonna preach that afternoon, that, that, that night for the first time, I just started speaking in tongues. I've been kind of the closest I've ever been in depression, thinking I'm an old man, thinking that my life's over, thinking it the world belongs to everybody else now, not me, not the next generation, not me. And I'm just walking up and down, darabashikendidabisol, to ki daraba, my head's down, and and and I'm just speaking in tongues, and and and then the Holy Spirit He just hit me, and he just renewed my youth like the eagles. And I just realized, what am I what am I not an old man, I'm never gonna be an old man in Jesus' name, in my mind, in my thinking. The Holy Spirit is constantly renewing me, and I command that devilish funk off of me in the mighty name of Jesus, and boom, it just lifted off of me, you know. And uh, and then you know, this all happened before my grandson was born, and uh, and then the day came, December 2016, and uh December 5th, 2016, and I was the last there because the traffic and Kate was already there, our other two daughters were already there, and there's my uh daughter with her son up here on her chest like this, and and a husband uh right there, Aaron. And I looked at our daughter Jess and I looked at Aaron, and my eyes were like locked onto my grandson. We have three daughters. I'm the only male in our family. We even had a female dog. I mean, for goodness sakes, you'd think that the dog could be male, but no, you know, I'm surrounded by people I don't understand, you know, and then and then I look, my eyes are locked on my grandson, and I oh I love him, I love you. It just like gushed up from within me, and uh and I suddenly thought, oh no. This you know how you can have a million thoughts, it feels like lots of thoughts all at once, you know. I looked at him and I thought, oh no, he's not coming home with me this time. Oh yeah, he's not coming home with me this time, and then I had this literally full-on panic. I thought, it's an emergency. Oh my gosh, he's going home with these two goofs. They're not even ready. Anyway. I have a brother who's buried there. My mum and dad gave their whole lives to uh the West African people, and my mum and dad are both still alive, they just they're octogenarians. Uh, and for those of you who don't know what that means, I did not eat a dictionary for breakfast. That is a person in their 80s, and so my mom is uh um well, they're in their mid-80s, and uh and they still to this day are devoted to seeing the kingdom of God come among the most unreached people groups of the world, and uh they're people of prayer, they're I mean, Kate and I, we they they literally, the amazing thing is we uh sponsored them to the United States and they became citizens uh in in the US, actually in 2025, and my it was so cute. My mum and dad were by far and away the oldest people in the citizenship ceremony of like 70 odd people, and they were just they were so cute, they were probably 50 years older than everybody else, it felt like. But but they're proud to be American citizens, as we are as well. Kate and I became Americans in 2010, although we've been over here in this is our home, North Carolina's a home since 2008. 2015, what did I say? I'm so sorry. 2015 we became American citizens. Why did I say 10? Anyway, uh by the way, I'm just warming up. I like to sort of warm up, and I'm a verbal processor. Anybody else in the room a verbal processor, Pastor Sandra? You know. So uh I like to warm up a little bit, and I I get I can sort of feel you in the spirit, you know. And I like how you're laughing a lot. Uh by the way, I love Kate and I love this church already. You you guys are just full of the Holy Spirit, you know. Yeah. I I go to I go to some churches, I mean, you y'all y'all eat sugar cane in the spirit. I go to a I go to a lot of churches, well, not a lot, but I go to some churches around the world and they're just sucking on lemons, bless them. It's like, guys, get off the lemons. There's sugar cane in the Holy Spirit, you know, but anyway, they they they don't know, you know. Anyway, shika bungu. So um, whoa, feel the Holy Spirit's presence here with you guys. Thank you, Lord. You know, growing up in Nigeria, uh, I still speak the language fluently, uh, but as you can tell, my parents are British. And so that's why my accent comes from. And it's very confusing when people say, Where are you from over here in America? I made the mistake uh about 17 years ago, a year after we arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina, where we planted uh a catchfire church. We'd been eight years in Toronto uh with John and Carolina in the in the revival. And we came down to Raleigh and planted a re what we what we were hoping would be a revival church, and uh, by the grace of God it is now, but we've like Kate said, we thought we knew what revival was and that we were experts and coming down to bring revival to Raleigh and that Raleigh needed us, and then we realized pretty quickly no, no, no, it's the wrong way around. We know nothing about revival, and actually we need Raleigh, because if Raleigh doesn't come through our doors, we're done as a church, you know. So we had a very humbling time in our first three years. But among all the things that were humbling, I was down in Wilmington, or close to Wilmington, um, just south of Wilmington at the beach, and uh I was in this little cute little bookstore, and uh I was way in the back of the bookstore, and uh someone came up next to me and they asked me if I was looking for something, and I I I only spoke like a half a sentence, and the and the person goes, Oh, where are you from? And I said, I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina. From the front of the bookstore, the owner, she yells out, like this is from here to the sound desk, with books in between us, aisles, you name it. I mean, she couldn't even see us, and I heard, oh no, you are not not with that there, man there accent, you're not, anyways. It's just funny. So, yeah, turn with me to the book of Acts and chapter three, and I'm gonna get to get into preaching the word of God for you all. And we were asking the Holy Spirit uh what he wants uh us to preach on with you, and uh, of course, in a church like this, you're so in love with Jesus, we can tell that just from uh watching you all worship. And uh I grew up in a church where nobody moved a muscle apart from their vocal cords, nobody put their hands up in the air, expressions of worship were very silent, inward, you know. And uh I'm I'm not putting down the denomination that I grew up in, but expressive worship was not part of uh not not part of our world at all. Uh my parents loved loved God, but they had never met the Holy Spirit back then. Now they're just revivalists. Now they're drunkards in the Holy Spirit, which is awesome. Um by the way, for those of you who who've never heard of the Toronto Revival, um, in 1994, the Holy Spirit came to a church uh of about 300 people on the end of a run. It was the location building was just at the end of the runway uh in Toronto's International Airport. So there was the air, the runway, the big fence, and then you know, a road, and uh, and then uh the our church building. And uh and so you can imagine 747s coming in, you know, quite regularly over the top of a little building that close. It's a pretty noisy church, you know. But uh the pastors, John and Carol Arnick, were very, very hungry for the Holy Spirit. And uh they had had some amazing uh moments of impartation. They said, Lord, we're desperately hungry. What could we what do you want us to do so that you'll show up? And the Lord said, I want you to do two things. I want you to give me your mornings, and number two, I want you to go to the places where I'm moving and have people lay hands on you. And so they gave their mornings to Jesus uh for, you know, uh for I don't know how long, but many, many months. And then in late 1993, uh they went to Argentina to the revival. And a man by the name of Claudio Friesen, who's one of the leaders of the Argentina revival, which was exploding in the 90s, 80s and 90s, uh, at a conference, he gave a call for anybody who was a foreign pastor to go up onto the platform. Well, John and Carol had sold everything that they, well, not sold, they had got it got together. John was in business but always wanted to be a pastor, and he was um he was a bi-vocational minister at the time, and he got uh as much money as he could, and they bought their tickets to uh Buenos Aires, Argentina, and so they were very desperate, and so they were somewhere quite near the front, they just ran up onto the platform along with a few others, and Claudio Friesen went down the down the road, you know, laying hands on all of them. Take it, take it, take it. Like this, and uh, and then they got to uh Carol, and she's like a ragdoll Carol, she's a lightning rod in the Holy Spirit. But John's more of an oak tree, you know. So he's like, he kind of went down onto his knees. He tells it, I went down onto my knees, and I'm thinking, did he push me? Was it was it was it me? You know, he's just having all these crazy thoughts, you know. Did I just do a courtesy drop to my knees? You know, and all of a sudden the man stopped, the man of God just stopped, and he whirled around and he looked at John and he said, Do you want it? And Carol's there going like this, you know, on the floor next to him. And John's like, Do I want it? Are you kidding me? I've sold everything to be here, given up everything to be here. Yes, of course I want it. But then he realized, I I guess I don't really look like I want it. And uh, it was all up in his head. All of a sudden, he just realized, and he goes, Yes, absolutely I want it. And then Claudio just said, then take it and touched him. And John realized in that split second that actually that's the big deal. That's the whole big deal. It's all about yielding. We that when when we get up in our heads, we think, you know, unless God smacks me on the head, it's not God. When in reality, actually, we need to give ourselves a gentle slapping and realize it's actually about just saying yes. It's about yielding, it's about letting go. And some people are just wired to be able to let go a lot easier than others. Some people just find it really hard to let go of control, some people find it really easy. We're actually all of us, we're all wired to know God, to feel God, to experience God, and to be friends with God. We're all sons of God in Christ Jesus through faith in Jesus Christ, Galatians 3.26, but actually we can know God as his friends. And so that it's really down to a matter of choice. Now, of course, God has wired us all differently, and so you know, we all respond to the presence of God completely different. And it's really important and helpful if we remember that manifestations, whatever they might be, whatever manifestations we have, is actually our bodily response to the presence of the Holy Spirit. It's not the Holy Spirit. Okay? When you see somebody and they're I mean, when I say it's not the Holy Spirit, it's the Holy Spirit, but it's their actual manifestations, is their bodily response to the Holy Spirit. Are you following me? Of course, it is the Holy Spirit, but we all respond completely differently. And in fact, you know, that's it's very rare that I ever hear somebody who has the same language in tongues as somebody next to them. And so the Holy Spirit, when he moves, he touches us. We're all wired differently, every snowflake's different, and that's why every human being responds differently to the presence of God. And that's why it's so important for us that we don't look at somebody else and judge whatever it is that's happening right there. You know what I'm saying? And so uh, you know, when the Holy Spirit came, in so John and Carol in December 1993 got back in January 94, they had invited a man by the name of Randy Clark, who was a pastor in Missouri in a church that was part of their network, and they'd heard about Randy, had had a touch of God, and they had invited Randy to come. And Randy had never been out of Missouri, let alone out of the United States. So now here he is going to Canada. And he goes to Canada in fear and trembling as a pastor, but he's got the anointing of the Holy Spirit. John and Carol got gloriously anointed in Argentina, as I just described. Oh, by the way, John went flying at that point when Clouds and Claudio said, take it. He sure took it and God took him. And uh, when they got back in late December in mid-December, they were just so hungry they invited Randy. Randy came January the 20th, 1994, it was a Thursday, and he there was probably about as many people as there are in the room today, and he just said, Um, although a much smaller room, and he said, Randy said, at the end of just sharing a bit of testimony, he said, if anybody wants the anointing, just stand up and come down here to the front. Or just as he said that, very relaxed, no hype, no, you know, just if you want the anointing, come down here to the front. Just as he said that, people were like, Yeah, I think I, yeah, that'll be good, yeah, yeah. They just stood up, and as they stood up to come forward, the glory of God just hit the room. The power of God hit them so powerfully, nobody could stand up. People were crushed to the floor, knocked out of their seats, nobody made it to the front. Everybody was just, as we say in England, smithereens, just under the chairs, just completely crushed under the weight of weighty glory, some laughing, some crying, you know, some laughing kind of like beyond hysterical laughing, crying, shaking, you know, people crying out, people whoa, you know, just ballistic. So much so that the um pastor uh uh Kate, help me. No, the woman's pastor. Mary Audrey, sorry. Mary Audrey. Mary Audrey was just in the side room doing an equipping class, and they heard the noise, and so she opened the door to see what in the world was happening. And as she opened the door, she thought, where is everybody? Because there was just empty seats, but everybody was underneath. And as soon as she saw everybody was underneath, and that glory that was in the room, she faceplanted. And John says the biggest miracle of all happened to her. She didn't speak for about 20 minutes. And what happened, guys, okay, is that John said we're gonna meet tomorrow night, and then we're gonna meet tomorrow night, and then we're gonna meet tomorrow night. And by this time, people started coming from all over the Toronto area, then they started coming from all over Ontario, and pretty quickly they heard about it all in you know, Michigan and New York and all those Ohio and all those area states, and then within a week, two weeks, pretty much the world heard all about it. The British press came and and then it was in the British tabloid in the newspapers all over the UK, for example, as well as many other countries. Kate and I heard about it. It was called, and the British press called it the Toronto Blessing. John liked to call it the Father's Blessing. But what happened then is that they continued for 12 years with nightly meetings, an average of over a thousand a night, on average, for 12 years, guys, with people coming from all over the world. And so Kate and I arrived about five and a half years in. We'd heard about it at the very beginning, but we were having children and just our life circumstances. We were not able to get to Toronto, but when we did in 99, and then in 2000, when I walked, we just went one night in 99, but in 2000 we went to a small conference. When I walked into the room, the Holy Spirit spoke to John and said, That's the tall Englishman that I told you about two years ago will be your first executive director. There he is, go and ask him to uh to work with you. And I had just finished a master's in business management, 32 years old, and very, very hungry for God, and very hungry for the presence and power and love of God. And I had just got gloriously baptized the day before in the Holy Spirit, sorry, in the Father's love that just turned my life upside down. I'd already been baptized in Jesus, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, but I'd never even knew that we could be baptized in the Father's love. And I was baptized in that glorious, liquid, golden honey love of the Father. So that's that's a little bit about Toronto, but I want to preach the word that God's given us for today. Oh, y'all as well as me. Okay, Acts chapter 3, are you there? Okay, verse 1. And Holy Spirit, we ask that you would speak to us through your word and enable me to preach your word in Jesus' name and give us eyes to see and ears to hear, and hearts and minds to understand what the Spirit is saying to us today. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that's called Beautiful Gate, to ask alms of those entering the temple. The title of my message this morning is Beyond Gate Beautiful. Beyond Gate Beautiful. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms, and Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, Look at us. And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, I have no silver and gold, but what I do have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and he raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God and recognized him as the one who sat at the gate beautiful of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Hallelujah! What an amazing moment that was. The very first miracle recorded after Pentecost. The first miracle recorded after Pentecost. Well, if you consider uh 3,000 people giving their lives to Jesus a miracle, which I do, I guess it was the second. But uh, in terms of a physical healing miracle done by one of the apostles, and of course done by the Holy Spirit through them, uh, this is the moment, and what a moment. And it's uh it's not an accident that it is the story is exactly the way it is. I was in uh Niger, which is the country above Nigeria, uh about 10 years ago, no, more than that, maybe maybe 14 years ago, and uh and we we were on our way into the bush-bush, and we were just turning off with some friends of mine that are apostles, we were just turning off uh the um about to turn off the main paved road to go into the uh or high ratio four-wheel drive for several hours into the bush uh to go and speak to some of the most unreached people groups in the world, show them the Jesus movie and so on. And uh we pulled up, it's the last place you can buy a nice ice cold Coke, and uh so we pulled up to buy a nice ice cold Coke, and and uh there was a man who was, as we walked up to the very um uh sort of shack, very rough bush town, desert everywhere, sand everywhere. There's a man, and he's on his, he's got, he's on his, he's his knees are covered in calluses, he's on his knees and he's on his elbows like this. And his and his legs, his d his feet were just dangling helpless because they were club feet. Of course, here in America, they'd have been surgically uh, you know, um helped, surgically positioned, and that would have been the end of it. He would have enjoyed a wonderful life. Uh, but unfortunately, right there in the edge of the Sahara Desert, no medical help whatsoever like that. He spent his entire life, and he's a young adult in his early 20s with the club feet. And my friend Terrier from uh from Norway, he is like the Indiana Jones of Christianity. I kid you not. And he looked at this man who was who was begging, and uh he said to him, I don't have any money to give you, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus, Christ of Nazareth, and he took his empty hand and he just yanked him up, and the man he dropped him down like that, and the man's feet went, and then he just took off running, and then he turned around and came running back, and we've got the whole thing on video, which is pretty amazing, but I didn't realize I was gonna preach on this, so I don't have the video to show you. But you could probably find it somewhere on YouTube, actually. I think I found it a few weeks ago. But the moment where he pulls him up is not on video, but the moment where he's running and then he runs back, and then he does this as he runs back, and of course a crowd's just running, as it happens in Africa, you know. Crowds just running from everywhere, all of his friends, people, I don't know if they were his friends, but people in the village who knew him, everybody's smiling, and he's just the joy on his face, and as he comes running back towards us, he stops and he goes like you would if you'd never walked. Absolutely extraordinary moment. But it's easy when we read like that, it's easy for us to just for it to just go over the top of us. Just another Bible story, another, another verse in the Bible, another little part of a chapter, Acts chapter 3. If you're if you're like me and you read your Bible through from cover to cover every year, which I've done since I was 20, I don't say that to boast, I say that, for those of you who don't do that, to get into a discipline of reading the word of God. Read it every day, everybody, okay? Literally get into a discipline of reading, because somebody once told me, a musician, that spontaneity is the reward of discipline. But the problem with that is that we can easily just read over chunks of scripture and we don't connect to the story. But this morning we're gonna connect to this for just a moment. Gate Beautiful. Gate Beautiful was probably the Nicanor Gate, probably the Eastern Gate. That's what most scholars believe. It was an extremely high gate, 75 feet tall, in Herod's temple, made of bronze, so beautiful and ornate, so beautiful that Josephus, a historian that's well known of that era, writing of that era, Josephus said, gold and silver are not more beautiful than that gate. That gate required several men just to open it. Couldn't be opened by a person, definitely couldn't be opened by a lame man, crippled in his feet. That gate separated the outside with the holy place. Not the holy of holies, but the holy place, the place where the Israelites, where the Jewish people, where the where the people of Jerusalem would go in to worship Yahweh in his temple. And but not only could the man not open the gate on his own, it is extremely likely, and most scholars agree on this, that the man had never ever, ever, ever been through the open gate. Because even though in the book of Leviticus and chapter 21, God gives verse 17 to 23, God gives the uh the rules to, or the the yeah, the rules, I guess, the the um statutes uh to the leave, Levitical people, and especially to the eronic priesthood, and God says, nobody that is marred, nobody that's blind, nobody that's lame or crippled will ever be one of the priests who will minister before me. No, none of them will be the ones to uh slaughter the sheep and the bulls and minister to me. But he does not, there's nothing there that says, No, nobody who's lame and crippled or blind can enter my presence, can be in the holy place. But then a number of years later, a thousand years later, David, or several hundred years later, King David, when he goes up to go against uh the Jebezites who ruled Jerusalem and lived in Jerusalem at that time, when he goes up to fight them, they taunt him and say, You're not gonna ever get up here. Not even the lame or the crippled can enter into this stronghold. Sorry, excuse me, I got that wrong. Even the lame and the crippled defending this stronghold would stop you guys from getting up there is what he actually said. And so it turns out that Joab goes up through the shaft in the water and he conquers Jerusalem. And the Bible tells us, okay, right there in uh 2 Samuel, chapter 5 and verse 8. Let's just read it. 2 Samuel chapter 5 and verse 8. David says, and David said on that day. Well, let's just go to verse 6. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, You will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off, thinking, David cannot come in here. It's too fortified. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is the city of David, and David said on that day, Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the watershaft to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul. Therefore it is said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house or into the temple. And David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David. Mmm. So from that day, people like this man had never been allowed into the temple. And so here's this man, crippled from birth. The Bible says he was being carried, where he was carried daily, to the gate beautiful. And he was laid at the gate beautiful. And the best he could do in his world was beg. All he could do was hope that people would give him things. His whole life was longing to go in. His whole life longing to be a giver, longing to get out of his circumstances. And I want you so at the very, very end, we, or not the very end, but at the end of this story, which is in Acts chapter 4, 22, it says, now the man was over 40 years old. He'd been laid there daily for decades. Decades. And that included this is this miracle is just right after Jesus has risen from the dead. That means that this man, it occurred to me one day, this man had survived three years of Jesus' ministry and had never been healed. Three years Jesus had walked past him. Three years he'd watched his friends being healed. Three years of knowing that his friend that was the guy at the pool of Shiloh, he got healed. The man that was born blind, who was at the gate in Jerusalem at the temple, it doesn't say which one in John 9, which temple, but that man also born blind, completely healed by Jesus. But this man, we don't know why, this man was not healed. And it occurred to me that this man in his heart must have been filled with disappointment. He must have been filled with the loss of hope. He must have been filled with God loves everybody in the world, but man, there's just no way he could love me. And you know what? All around you are people just like this man. America is full of people just like this man. People that are carried to church, carried to church. I'm not talking about literally physically crippled people. I'm talking, although there might be, but they're not usually carried. But I'm talking about people that have been born into Christianity, born good old boys and girls, born into families that know Jesus, or at least know of Jesus. And actually, this nation, our nation, is filled with people who are at church right now on Sundays. And those people all across this area, all over Tennessee, all over North Carolina, all over the south. It's called the Bible Belt, after all. All over at church on Sunday, stuck at Gate Beautiful, never ever been fully in into the presence of Jesus. They're stuck in churchianity instead of being truly in Christ Jesus. They go to church on Sunday to appease their mama, to do what daddy taught me to do, to just do enough as teenagers to be there for mom and dad, or maybe granddaddy or grandma, just enough for them, but in their hearts never really truly entered in. And we get hurt by other people. And because we get hurt, we go into the cave of self-pity. We don't announce it to everybody, but the truth is inside our heart we retreat into that cave where we go over and over and over how many times people have hurt me. Pastors have hurt me, the church has hurt me, my mom and dad have hurt me, my brothers and sisters have hurt me, my friends at school have hurt me, my my teachers have hurt me. I've been hurt by everybody, and because I've been hurt by everybody, everybody is gonna have to pay for it. Your neighbors are just like this. In fact, every single empty seat in this room is somebody right now, a future member of this church, but right now we gotta go find them and set them free from the cave of self-pity and set them free from churchanity and religious uh religiosity and set them free from gate beautiful and get them beyond gate beautiful into a glorious relationship with the God of love who loves them like crazy and has got a brilliant future for them, and it's not being carried around on everybody else's faith or being carried around on everybody else's experiences or being carried around even on everyone else's anointing. And even right now, this morning in this church, it's so easy for all of us in a church like this where there's so many people that just love God like crazy, outwardly, visually, we can see that, and yet on the inside in our own hearts, we are struggling. And if we're really real, we've got our disappointments. Things have happened that have upset us, things that have happened that honestly you need to be fully validated that it's bad and that it's rough and that it's tough and that it's difficult. Because the things that are happening to some of you, I saw in the Holy Spirit, some of the things that have happened to you or are even happening to you are actually really, really tough. And the hardest thing in the church community is that it's very rare for us to be validated when it's tough because it's so easy for us all to just say to those that are hurting, hey buddy, listen, God bless you. We're praying for you, dude. It's okay, you can get through it, you can get through it. Come on, but the truth is actually that person is really, really, really struggling. And somehow in the Holy Spirit, somehow in this revival, we've learned that revival is not just about getting so blasted by the Holy Spirit that the miracle is not that we that we uh got touched by God, the miracle is that we're still alive and get to testify that we got touched by God. That's one of my pastor's sayings, right? That's the real miracle. Because when God touches you with a million volts of electricity, you're gonna be glad that you're alive still afterwards to tell everybody about it. You know? God touched me so powerfully one day at university when I was a young young adult that I thought, God, if you come with one more volt, I'm gonna die. But you know, revival's not just about those power encounters. Revival is also about God, the Holy Spirit, as we allow Him in the love of the Father to actually take us on a journey into our achy-breaky hearts, into the areas of our heart where it hasn't gone well, where things have happened to us that have been really painful, where there's disappointments, where there's setbacks. And you know, it's not so much what others have done to us, although if you listen to the narrative of the human race, you'd think it was. But the truth is, it's not the things that have been done to us that have really, really held us back, that have really led to us in this battle in life. It's actually our wrong reactions to what others have done to us. Because actually, we can't control what goes on around us. Have you noticed that? I mean, I've tried to control my wife for 35 years. I can't get her to behave the way I want her to behave if I tried it. It just doesn't work. And vice versa. There's just not a lot that we can do about the fact that hurt people hurt us, and even nice people hurt us. But what we do have control over is our wrong, is our reactions. Whether or not we're going to respond by closing our hearts to love, staying put on our carriage bed that everybody else carries us on in life. Stay here at Gate Beautiful. It's a beautiful gate. Look how beautiful that gate is. Wow, wonder what it's like on the other side. Man, it must be so nice for those revival kind of people, you know, that just seem to meet with God all the time. And yeah, but you know what, that's not for me. I'm just I'm the I'm fine with where I'm at. You know, my life's great. I love it just the way it's going. It's it's cool, it's cool. But the reality is there's just so much more. And this man had seen Jesus passing by, and then he heard one day, you know what? Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he's been crucified. He's dead. Now you really have no hope. Dude, you're crippled for life. And you know what? That is exactly how many of us we get to that point, and maybe not us in this room, but let me tell you, millions of people here in the United States of America get to the point where being at church is enough for them to be fully convinced that God loves everybody else except them. They're not gonna be, they're not gonna tell you that, but if they're real, that's what they're that's the big deal in their life. They're not just disappointed with the people that have hurt them, they're mad with God because if God loved them so much, why did he let them suffer the way he has? Why is my brother buried in Nigeria? Why is my mother-in-law, why did she die of cancer, age 57? This is this is the human reaction, and you know, here's the amazing thing in Peter's response. He says to him, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That's right. I'm talking about that Yeshua. There were many people that were called Yhoshua, Yeshua. There were there was a name at that time, but this one, Yeshua, Hamashiach of Nazareth, the one that you thought passed you by, the one that you thought didn't care about you, the one that you thought was not powerful enough to heal you in your condition, the one that you thought was crucified, the one that you heard was raised from the dead, the one that you heard had now left the earth and was gone, and there's no hope for him. In his name, rise up and walk. And he just lifted him up out of his self-pity, out of his cave of disappointment. Right out. And the fascinating thing to me is that it was in his ankles and his feet that he was crippled. And what is it, Isaiah 57? How beautiful. Are the feet of those who bring good news? And what was the anointing for to enable you to be a witness? Acts chapter 1, verse 8. And so this man, what's the first thing that happens to him? He's such a type of the church that's saved but not baptized in the Holy Spirit. The church that's saved is stuck at Gate Beautiful, crippled in their feet, can't really, really, really win the world. But when we're baptized in the Holy Spirit, oh my gosh, he comes running leaping up, runs all the way in. Oh yeah! And nothing can stop this man, nothing can stop him. He's leaping, he's jumping, and you know what? Oh, y'all, we've all seen somebody like that in church. We've all seen them. We're like, dude, calm down. What has got into you? I'll tell you what's got into them. The Holy Ghost has got into them. That's what's got into them. Sheikha Rabbayin.