Prayer That Brings Revival

In our lifetimes, we are witnessing a supernatural battle for the minds and the souls of our neighbors and our nation. The stakes are incredibly high. And the biggest thing Satan wants in your life is for you to be distracted from that. He wants you to not be in the battle. Will you step into the spiritual battlefield? And would you be willing to endure pain for glorious victory? Would you be willing to sacrifice?

So in this message, I wanna ask you, will you be found faithful as a Christian? You can choose that today in your heart. Just say, "God, today's the day. It's no longer, 'I'm living the American dream and Christianity's just kind of tagging along when it's convenient.' I'm switching the order. I'm gonna live the kingdom dream. I'm gonna seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness." And nothing wrong with the American dream as long as it's the thing that's trailing behind. It's not my top priority in life.

1 Corinthians 3 verse 13 says that each believer, our work will be revealed when we stand before God. This is a judgment that we will all endure. It's not the judgment for your salvation. Your salvation is not dependent on your works, but on Christ's work on the cross. You receive salvation as a free gift when you repent of your sin and believe that Jesus died on the cross for you. But make no mistake, read 1 Corinthians 3, you will stand before God and you will give an accounting, not a judgment for your salvation, but a judgment for your stewardship. What did you do with what was given to you? The amount of freedom that was given to you. The amount of health that was given to you. The amount of education and opportunity that were given to you. The culture, civilization, continent, and moment in history where God chose to place you. What did you do with what was given to you? Were you just in the stands as a fan, cheering along the kingdom, but really never getting on the field yourself? Or were you part of the battle?

We're in week three of this revival series. Here's what we've learned so far, revival practices. Week one, we learned that we need an urgent and dependent posture like David had when the Philistines were invading Israel. Week two, we learned about repentance for relationship, that sin and shame block the power of God in our lives and we can learn to repent regularly so that there's an unhindered flow of God's power as well as His peace and His joy in our life. Probably one of the most important weeks in that 40 days devotional.

This week we're learning prayer. But can I just challenge and encourage you this week, if you'll do every day of your 40 days devotional, you're going to learn some things that you never knew about prayer. In fact, we as a church are going to level up our praying this week. So that's been my pep talk. Now we're going to move into really the sermon about prayer.

Where the football analogy falls short is that we are not in a game, not even a high stakes game. We're in a battle of life or death, where people will either have eternal life or eternal death. And in this life, people will either be freed from the lies of the enemy or they'll be held captive. And we've seen throughout world history when nations do not have Christianity, the amount of genocide, abuse, slavery, so many things that we take for granted that we call human rights disappear when Christianity disappears.

Now, I'll just admit something personal. Maybe it's a guy thing. I don't know what it is. It's not a guy thing because my wife Mel loves these movies too. I love stories and movies about the struggle between good and evil. And I love watching them and enjoying the story, but also kind of viewing it through the lens of the spiritual struggle of good and evil. One of my favorite movies in that category is called The Book of Eli. And now if you're not into action, adventure, or violence, you might not like it, but if that stuff doesn't bother you, you might enjoy it. This is a scene in the movie where the protagonist has been surrounded. It's one of these post-apocalyptic movies. There's no electricity and modern civilization has gone away. And humans kind of revert to these gangs, these tribes that roam around killing people, destroying. And there are some people that don't just kill and steal for their sustenance, there's others who actually just take pleasure in killing.

I tell you that because in Exodus chapter 17, God's people encountered essentially the ancient version of this. It was a tribe called the Amalekites, descendants of a guy named Amalek. They were a fierce nomadic tribe that lived in the desert region there of the Dead Sea. They made it their livelihood to conduct frequent raids on anyone who was traveling through or settling in the area. They would plunder the goods. They would kill for pleasure. And it was one of the greatest insults in Israelite culture to be called a friend of Amalek because these people were just so violent, so cruel.

Well, when the Israelites entered that region after God led them through the Red Sea and they escaped slavery in Egypt, the warriors of Amalek see this huge group of over a million people unarmed and they realize this is the perfect opportunity to raid this group both for profit and for pleasure. And we're told in Exodus 17 verse 8 that the Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.

Now, here's what I want to ask you. As you imagine, you've run from your home, you have kind of what you can hold and you've got your family and you're trying to live in the desert. And now all of a sudden here come these murderers who want to kill you and take all your stuff. When you see evil advancing, what can you do? What can you do when forces bigger than you threaten your loved ones, threaten your life, or in the case of the Israelites here, the Amalekites wanted to wipe out their entire race and their entire civilization. We asked this on week one, when David faced off with Goliath: have you ever felt that way? You ever feel like there's just forces of evil against you? What can you do?

Well, the story continues. Moses, the leader of God's people at the time, said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. I'll stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered. Moses, Aaron, and Hur, that's a guy's name, went to the top of the hill.

As long as Moses held up his hands, what was he doing with his hands up? He was in prayer. As long as Moses held up his hands in prayer, the Israelite army would be winning. But whenever he would lower his hands — shoulders are very weak muscles, if you actually try to hold something over your head for a long time — and so Moses' arms start getting tired. And as they would come down, the Amalekites would start winning. The fate of the nation hung on Moses' prayers. On Moses' persistence in prayer. On Moses' choice to pray when he didn't feel like it. Moses' choice to pray through pain and through sacrifice.

Verse 12, when Moses' hands grew tired, "they took a stone and they put it under him so he could sit down. Then Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that Moses' hands remained steady until sunset." As a result, Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

What can you do when forces bigger than you threaten your loved ones, your life, even your civilization? Here's the answer. Prayer can deliver your loved ones from disaster. Prayer can even deliver your nation from disaster.

It's a remarkable story, this hostile tribe of Amalekites. They moved in on the wrong people group. They thought, "Oh, it's payday. We're just gonna go kill these unarmed people." Little did they know these were the people of God. Little did they know that though it looked like an easy human victory, it was an impossible victory because God was on their side. And God's power was accessed through prayer.

During the third great awakening, one of the leaders of it said this, "There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or any location that did not begin in united prayer." You get a faithful remnant of believers who are praying spiritual prayers. People who move beyond praying for physical needs. That's okay, you can pray for those. But who spend the majority of their time wrestling in prayer for spiritual needs. Claiming the territory of Hendricks County and Hamilton County and Boone County, claiming that territory for Christ, praying against demonic forces, praying for leaders in churches, praying for political leaders, praying for school teachers, praying for the population, doing everything we can like Joshua did with the sword, but also praying as if it all depends on God.

At the end of this whole thing, we're told this: Moses built an altar to give all the glory to God for the victory. He called the altar, "The Lord Is My Banner." If there were a banner over your life, what would it be? Flags and banners, incredibly significant. What's the flag or the banner over your life? "The Lord is my banner." I live my life under Him and His blessing and His way. And Moses said, "Because hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord," or as some translations say, "against the throne of the Lord," "the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation."

Great awakening leaders in the first and second great awakening, they loved this passage and they would talk about violence in prayer. And their idea was this, that we should be praying — they don't mean physical violence, don't misunderstand me — but what they meant is there should be an agonizing spiritually of how desperate we are for God's victory. I mean, do we really believe that there's no hope for our neighbors and nation other than Jesus? "God, forgive us that we think a political party could deliver us from the lies of the enemy. Forgive us for thinking that science or human progress could deliver us. Christ is the only hope. And when we really get that, then we pray with an urgency and the great awakening leaders would preach and write about violence in prayer, meaning, "God, I'm not gonna leave Your throne until You deliver my nation. I'm not gonna leave Your throne until You open the eyes of this person who needs salvation. I'm gonna agonize. I'm gonna be like Moses who was there all day. And if I need a couple other people to hold my arms up and keep me praying for that person I love who doesn't yet know Christ, then I'm gonna find those friends and I'm gonna say, pray with me every day for his salvation."

There was a vigor and a passion to the great awakening leaders. John Wesley is known in theologian circles for being this kind of buttoned up, very formal theologian. But here's the deal, if you read about the great awakening, where John Wesley went, people prayed with such emotion and such passion that he actually faced a ton of criticism from the churches, from the apathetic Christians who would say, "Oh, why would you guys be weeping in prayer? Why would someone fall down after praying for three hours for the salvation of their coworker or their child?" And it was one of the biggest criticisms that they faced. There were times when people would actually faint from having prayed with so much urgency and so much passion.

Now the point is not emotionalism. The point is not to glorify, you know, who's being the most dramatic while they're praying. But the point is to be so absorbed, your whole being in the work of God, in the unseen realm, that your emotions get involved. I mean, we saw this with football, right? We care about it. So our emotions get involved. If we care about a football game that much, shouldn't our emotions get involved? And so revival is not emotionalism and it's not glorifying emotions, but when your love for God is truly revived and when you really start to see the world through Jesus' eyes of darkness and light, death and life, evil and good, souls that are enslaved by demons and that Christ is the only path to freedom in life, it will affect your emotions.

Three observations about revival prayer. First is that revival prayer is passionate. You see this all throughout scripture. Nehemiah, when he brings revival to the city of Jerusalem, it begins with him weeping in prayer, Nehemiah chapter one. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, as He's agonizing and He's wrestling through the capital R, greatest revival of all human history to restore life back to humans, to restore us back to God. What does He say to the other disciples? He says, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."

You will feel deep things if you start to get God's heart about what's happening in the world and in your life. So again, this is not glorifying emotion. This is glorifying God.

But it's willing — you know, David writes about this, "If people call me foolish because I'm so passionate about God, I'm willing for people to call me foolish. I will throw away my dignity" — because what I care about more is having the heart of God and through God as a Father saying, boldly enter the throne, I'm gonna attack the throne with prayers. There's gonna be an urgency and an unconditionally loved, childlike insistence on God. "You've got to do this for our nation. There's no other hope. You've got to do this in my family. There's no other hope. You've got to do this in me. There's no other hope."

Most of us are not currently praying the kinds of prayer that change nations. Most of us are not currently praying the kinds of prayer that shake the gates of hell. Most of us are not currently living lives that really threaten the enemy and what he's doing. It's not because we're incapable.  The moment you believed in Jesus, you were filled with the Holy Spirit. In Christ, Peter says, "You have everything necessary for life and godliness." You've been given everything you need to shake the gates of hell. You've been given everything you need to pray prayers that move hearts and change nations. But the reason we're not praying that way is because we haven't made an effort. We haven't really learned how. You can learn this week to pray with power that shakes the gates of hell and advances Christ's kingdom in your school, in your family, in your workplace, in your city.

Spiritual prayers, prayers that prevail over Satan and his schemes, prayers that prevail over sin, prayers that see Christ's kingdom triumph. Christ's ministry, you realize, was based on prayers like this. He was always praying. Always getting away to pray. Why? Because that's where He drew His power from. And if you set out to be part of revival and you don't have a spiritual discipline of prayer, you will get really discouraged because you're on a supernatural battlefield fighting with human strategy and energy. You need the power that God provides to you through prayer. And such prayer is God's desire for you.

If you think prevailing prayer was only for the super Christians or the heroes of the Bible, well, Scripture says otherwise. Scripture says that prayers that moved nations were prayed by people just like you and me. I want to show you a passage of scripture that was written by James. James the disciple, those inner three, Peter, who we talked about last week, James and John. James describes Elijah the prophet in the Old Testament, praying to change the climate of his nation. Elijah actually prayed for a drought. Elijah had an insight that the only way there would be revival was that the people would have to hurt a little bit. I'm not suggesting you pray this way unless God leads you to, but look at James 5:16. It says this, "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

How would you like for your prayers to be powerful? How would you like for your prayers to be effective? Think about this. What if God said yes to everything you prayed these next seven days? How different would the world be? How many people who you know and you're not sure if they're Christians would become Christians because this week you pray for them by name? How many institutions where you just realize, like, "Wow, a demonic ideology has overtaken that university or that place or that group or that party or that city." How many, a week from now, would be set free because you prayed powerfully and effectively? Now I'm not guaranteeing that God's gonna do it in a week or on our timeline, but He tells us this is a promise breathed by the Holy Spirit, inspired into Scripture, a promise we can claim that "the effective and fervent prayer of the righteous person availeth much" or accomplishes much.

Who's the righteous person? Well, the righteous person very simply, first, it's the person who's believed in Christ's death for the forgiveness of their sins, salvation by faith. That makes you positionally righteous. In God's eyes, after you place your faith in Jesus, He looks at you and He sees the righteousness of Jesus. But secondly, just like we learned last week, it's a believer who has confessed the sins that you're aware of in your life. That gives you practical righteousness or relational righteousness.

And this is backed up right in the text. If you study James 5:16, it says we need to confess our sins. The Lord's Prayer begins with, "Forgive us our trespasses." Our prayer becomes powerful when we've confessed our sins. That's why in the revival sequence, we get urgent and dependent. We repent, now we can pray. As you're practicing repentance for relationship, you're now qualified to pray powerful prayers because the flow between you and God is not blocked. His power is gonna surge into your life.

And then James, inspired by the Holy Spirit, perhaps knew that we would read a verse like this and say, "Well, maybe that was true for heroes in the Bible, but what about me?" And so he continues and he says, "Elijah was a human being just like you, even as we are. Elijah prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And as a result of his prayers, it did not rain on the land for three and a half years." This is called climate change. Elijah changed the climate with prayer, earnest prayer. But Elijah's heart was this: he knew that the nation was headed into judgment. They weren't repenting. And he knew they were so comfortable, they were so complacent, that they almost needed an economic downturn to shake them awake.

Here's the reality. Our choice as the remnant of God's people in this nation, we can choose to turn to God while things are still good, or we can wait for things to get worse. And I'm not suggesting like Elijah that we need to pray that things get worse. That was how God led him to pray. But then get this, three years later, it had worked and the people of God repented and they turned to God. And Elijah said, "Man, I don't know if I can do this again, but I prayed once and God closed the clouds. Maybe now if I pray with passion, God will open the clouds." James 5 verse 18, again, "he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops."

One man prayed earnestly and it changed not only a nation's physical climate, but its spiritual climate. And the whole point back in verse 16 was this: you can pray that way. The same power of prayer is available to you.

You guys, believers just like you, whose prayers brought revival and rescued their nation from peril, the list is long. Here's just a few of them. Moses prayed and it changed his nation more than once, by the way. We just saw one example. Elijah prayed and it changed his nation. Esther prayed. Esther said, "Everyone, we've all got to fast and pray. Only God could deliver us." And He did. David prayed and it rescued his nation. Nehemiah wept and prayed and it brought revival to his nation. John Wesley and those who led the first great awakening wept and prayed. And these colonies in North America, before they were called the United States of America, there was this battle between the slave traders and the profiteers and very evil people, and Puritans and pastors and very good people. And it was the prayers of the revival leaders that let the church overrun at least enough that our constitution was enshrined by biblical principles.

Charles Finney in the second great awakening — and if you look from the second great awakening to the third, it was the Christian abolitionists who wanted to abolish slavery. Why? Because the Bible says so and they gave everything they had for it. Many gave their lives, like the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy, who was a journalist and a pastor and died by a mob who said, "Stop using the Bible to tell us to free our slaves." And then the Civil War happened because of the prayers and the lifestyles of revival Christians, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other fourth great awakening leaders.

None of these did it alone, but they all did it in partnership with God and through the power of prayer and the power of His word. They all had groups. Revival prayer happens best in groups. It's kind of a both and. Jesus often prayed alone. You should have a vibrant, personal, alone relationship with God in prayer, but there is something that will happen for you. Actually, a lot of what you'll learn about how to pray is when you're with other believers and maybe someone who's a little further down the road in their walk, you will learn by example. Or maybe someone who's a brand new Christian — you've been a Christian for a while and you'll hear the emotion of their prayer and it'll wake you up. There's something that happens when, like Moses, you pray with other believers, as Esther asked the whole nation to pray.

You guys, it's time for our families to begin regular times of prayer. When I study these great awakenings in American history, one of the norms is that you've got a family, you have family prayer time. And I wanna challenge you, if your family is just husband and wife, be praying together every day. It's gonna help your marriage, but be praying above. Pray for your marriage and your earthly needs, but then pray for your city, pray for this church. If you've got kids, you've gotta be praying together and teaching them how to pray.

If you're in a small group, this is going to be the week, you guys, our groups are going to graduate to another level of prayer. No more taking prayer requests for 20 minutes and then one person prays for two. How about instead we just pray for 20 minutes? What if we just go straight into prayer? Because if you just share your prayer request to God, everyone else in the group will hear it. It's time for us to grow up and pray some revival prayers as a movement. Devotional is gonna really walk you through, what does this look like? What does this mean?

I wanna encourage you this week, let the Spirit lead you. As you walk through scripture and as you give God your heart, let the Spirit lead you. He's gonna lead some of you to start a prayer group at your school. He's gonna lead some of you to start a prayer group at your place of work. He's gonna lead some of you to start leading prayer for your home. And dad, you're gonna actually become a spiritual leader. He's gonna lead some of you to start initiating prayer with your spouse every day. He's gonna lead some of you, when you show up at your small group, to say, "Hey, remember Pastor John said, we're not gonna take prayer requests for 20 minutes and pray for two. We're just gonna jump right in and we're gonna start praying." You guys, let the Spirit — ask the Spirit to lead you. He will guide you in all truth. He will counsel you.

What does this look like? Just tell God, "God, I wanna learn to pray revival prayers." I know it might sound intimidating and I apologize if it does. We have the rest of our lives to learn this, but we're going to get there by just saying, "God, what can I learn this week? Surprise me. Surprise me with the prayer groups that you start in your homes, in your schools." You want to use the building? Let us know, you can use the building. Let the prayer times be Spirit led. Doesn't need to be a bunch of teaching, but it's just Christ-centered. It's humble. Some of you will want to kneel. Some of you will want to walk around and pace. Just let it be Scripture-centered, Christ-centered, God-honoring.

Jesus escaped to prayer as His power. And you can learn to do the same. You can learn to pray for your loved ones, for lost souls. Even if you've never experienced the kind of power and prayer that we're talking about this week, you can learn it this week if you'll just say, "God, teach me." And that's exactly what the disciples asked Jesus. They walked with Him for a while and they saw irrefutably the power of God. He's raising people from the dead. He's opening the eyes of the blind. He's encountering demons and casting them out. And so they finally realize His power comes through prayer. And they say in Luke chapter 11, "Lord, master, teach us to pray like You. We wanna learn to pray like You, Jesus, because we want that kind of power in our lives."

And He said to them, when you pray, start this way: "Our Father in heaven" — everything in my life is under the umbrella of the Father. There's no political party. There's no economic possibility. There's no threat to me because my Father is that big. "Hallowed be Your name." And then here's your center: "Your kingdom come." When you pray this daily, you're rearranging the U-Haul trailer for your life. Okay, God, I'm grateful for my job and my retirement account, my home, apartment, whatever else, but that's not ultimately what I'm living for. I'm living for Your kingdom. And those other things are in the trailer behind me. They're not what drives me.

Now we don't have time to unpack it, but Jesus mentions one physical earthly need in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us today our daily bread." And then He mentions six or seven eternal matters. "Father, kingdom, forgive us as we forgive others. Deliver us from evil. Yours is the kingdom. Yours is the power. Yours is the glory." So there's this ratio. For every one earthly need, there's six or seven supernatural needs.

What are earthly needs? Job promotion, surgery, health, dog is sick, test at school, circumstances. Do these things matter? Yes. Does God care about them? Yes. Do we in the American church pray almost entirely here and completely neglect praying for the kingdom and for souls, for salvations, for forgiveness, for deliverance, for spiritual power? Yes, we do.

And we will not see revival power in our lives until we get this balance right. And I know it's gonna be hard. But I'm telling you guys, there is so much power available to you that you're just walking right past every day. And it's my biggest prayer for you this week that we would become a church that prays eternally significant prayers.

And yes, do pray for healing from cancer. Do pray for the job promotion. Those things are fine, but don't let your prayer end there. "Give us today our daily bread." And then, God, here's the eternal things. Here's the supernatural things that we're praying for. If every believer in our church began to pray this way, and then we go out into our schools and our workplaces and our cities and our community, seeing everyone through spiritual eyes — oh, that person at the gym, that teacher, that classmate, that coworker, do they know Christ? "Oh, I don't know. God, help me to understand. I pray for their salvation," or, "I pray that You'd help me know if they're a believer." You start praying that way and then you start to — God opens doors. All of a sudden you're talking with this person you've been praying for and you're realizing, "Wow, I get to invite them to church."

Here's my point. Revival prayer rises above earthly needs into eternal matters, into souls, salvations, spiritual territory. And my challenge for your group prayer times, my challenge for your family prayer, especially for your small groups — first of all, just way to go that you are praying in a group. Some of you, you don't have a group yet. If you're not yet in a group, get in a group or just start one. Get two or three friends and say, "I need to be praying with other believers on a regular basis." So be in a group, that's step one. I don't wanna berate those of you who are in a group. If you're in a group, way to go. But here's my challenge, for sure, for this week, and I would love it for kind of this year: make it a goal as a group and as a family to say, "I wanna graduate from just praying for job promotion, surgeries, health and circumstance" — nothing wrong with that, but I wanna graduate that that's a small percentage of the time I spend praying. Keep praying as much time as you are, but now add praying for salvations, for souls, for spiritual dominion of the kingdom of God where we live.

Here's God's promise. He says, "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves" — repentance — "and pray" — what we're learning this week — "if they will seek My face" — that's praying with passion — "and if they will turn from their wicked ways" — that's repentance for relationship — "then I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land."

Let me close with just one story to encourage you guys that this works today, here and now. This is our Carmel location. It's a little bit of a before and after. On the left is when it was called Lighthouse Tabernacle. On the right is the remodel of it that we've made. Some of you might not know this backstory. We didn't know anyone at Lighthouse Tabernacle. We didn't have any relationship there, but Hamilton County, the people of Carmel, had been on my heart for 10 years. And I would drive around Carmel looking at different buildings. We did not have money to buy a building in Carmel. They're very expensive. That building, just the land, worth about $9 million. We didn't have that.

And as I would drive around and look at churches, I would just pray, just the way that we're learning — not perfect, but emotional. And I would march around that building. And my first conversation with someone from Lighthouse ended with a dear elderly woman of God, who's now with the Lord, saying, "We're never selling to anyone ever." And I just thought, well, you don't know who I know. She does know who I know. She just didn't know what His plan was.

I would go to that building. I would march around it in prayer saying, "God, we're a middle-class congregation in Brownsburg. We don't have money to go to Carmel, but I know there's people that You have there for us to reach." And I would pray over and over again, emotionally, persistently. And I invited friends to pray with me. One day, one of those friends sent me a Bible verse. And the gist of it was this — it was something about like throwing a stick in the water and it floated. It's kind of one of these weird Old Testament passages, but I was like, "God, I don't even understand this, but I believe it." So I was in my pajamas. It was my day off and it was winter. I just threw on an overcoat. I drove there and I picked up these sticks and I read the verse out loud.

And then I went to each door of the building and I just kneeled and I just prayed. You see my pajama sweatpants there. Friend lives out of town. So I texted him these pictures, just saying, like, "Hey, I'm just claiming this building for God."

God took it from there. It wasn't without struggle. It wasn't without difficulty, but it opened at Easter. Now every weekend, hundreds of people connect with God there. God answered those impossible prayers.

This last Sunday night, we heard from Nancy, who's right here. Nancy lived in Carmel, didn't have a church. And when she heard about Connection Point coming to Carmel, she said, "I wanna be part of it." She signed up and became part of the launch team. She'd been praying and praying for a group of women in her life to follow Jesus with. And she finally found that at Connection Point Carmel.

Well, what Nancy didn't know, and how God was providing, is that Nancy's husband passed away this last September. And the day he passed away, it was those women from Connection Point Carmel who all showed up at her house, who've been there with her every step of the way. They've made meals. She said they've been closer to her than family.

And when I look at someone like Nancy and I hear how God has used the body of Christ to love a grieving widow, my God, I'm so glad I didn't give up praying when it looked impossible. Because Nancy, her story's dramatic, but it's just one of hundreds of people at Carmel. And that's one of three different churches, Avon, Carmel, and Fishers, where with each of them, we didn't have a big budget or a big plan, but we just said, "God, if You could use us to revive a church," He used us to revive a church in Avon, to revive a church in Carmel, to revive a church in Fishers. Not without a struggle, not without obstacles. But the God of Moses, the God of Elijah, He answers our prayers today, if we will get up above our earthly needs and really start to have kingdom vision and pray kingdom prayers.
In our lifetimes, we are witnessing a supernatural battle for the minds and the souls of our neighbors and our nation. The stakes are incredibly high. And the biggest thing Satan wants in your life is for you to be distracted from that. He wants you to not be in the battle. Will you step into the spiritual battlefield? And would you be willing to endure pain for glorious victory? Would you be willing to sacrifice?

So in this message, I wanna ask you, will you be found faithful as a Christian? You can choose that today in your heart. Just say, "God, today's the day. It's no longer, 'I'm living the American dream and Christianity's just kind of tagging along when it's convenient.' I'm switching the order. I'm gonna live the kingdom dream. I'm gonna seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness." And nothing wrong with the American dream as long as it's the thing that's trailing behind. It's not my top priority in life.

1 Corinthians 3 verse 13 says that each believer, our work will be revealed when we stand before God. This is a judgment that we will all endure. It's not the judgment for your salvation. Your salvation is not dependent on your works, but on Christ's work on the cross. You receive salvation as a free gift when you repent of your sin and believe that Jesus died on the cross for you. But make no mistake, read 1 Corinthians 3, you will stand before God and you will give an accounting, not a judgment for your salvation, but a judgment for your stewardship. What did you do with what was given to you? The amount of freedom that was given to you. The amount of health that was given to you. The amount of education and opportunity that were given to you. The culture, civilization, continent, and moment in history where God chose to place you. What did you do with what was given to you? Were you just in the stands as a fan, cheering along the kingdom, but really never getting on the field yourself? Or were you part of the battle?

We're in week three of this revival series. Here's what we've learned so far, revival practices. Week one, we learned that we need an urgent and dependent posture like David had when the Philistines were invading Israel. Week two, we learned about repentance for relationship, that sin and shame block the power of God in our lives and we can learn to repent regularly so that there's an unhindered flow of God's power as well as His peace and His joy in our life. Probably one of the most important weeks in that 40 days devotional.

This week we're learning prayer. But can I just challenge and encourage you this week, if you'll do every day of your 40 days devotional, you're going to learn some things that you never knew about prayer. In fact, we as a church are going to level up our praying this week. So that's been my pep talk. Now we're going to move into really the sermon about prayer.

Where the football analogy falls short is that we are not in a game, not even a high stakes game. We're in a battle of life or death, where people will either have eternal life or eternal death. And in this life, people will either be freed from the lies of the enemy or they'll be held captive. And we've seen throughout world history when nations do not have Christianity, the amount of genocide, abuse, slavery, so many things that we take for granted that we call human rights disappear when Christianity disappears.

Now, I'll just admit something personal. Maybe it's a guy thing. I don't know what it is. It's not a guy thing because my wife Mel loves these movies too. I love stories and movies about the struggle between good and evil. And I love watching them and enjoying the story, but also kind of viewing it through the lens of the spiritual struggle of good and evil. One of my favorite movies in that category is called The Book of Eli. And now if you're not into action, adventure, or violence, you might not like it, but if that stuff doesn't bother you, you might enjoy it. This is a scene in the movie where the protagonist has been surrounded. It's one of these post-apocalyptic movies. There's no electricity and modern civilization has gone away. And humans kind of revert to these gangs, these tribes that roam around killing people, destroying. And there are some people that don't just kill and steal for their sustenance, there's others who actually just take pleasure in killing.

I tell you that because in Exodus chapter 17, God's people encountered essentially the ancient version of this. It was a tribe called the Amalekites, descendants of a guy named Amalek. They were a fierce nomadic tribe that lived in the desert region there of the Dead Sea. They made it their livelihood to conduct frequent raids on anyone who was traveling through or settling in the area. They would plunder the goods. They would kill for pleasure. And it was one of the greatest insults in Israelite culture to be called a friend of Amalek because these people were just so violent, so cruel.

Well, when the Israelites entered that region after God led them through the Red Sea and they escaped slavery in Egypt, the warriors of Amalek see this huge group of over a million people unarmed and they realize this is the perfect opportunity to raid this group both for profit and for pleasure. And we're told in Exodus 17 verse 8 that the Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.

Now, here's what I want to ask you. As you imagine, you've run from your home, you have kind of what you can hold and you've got your family and you're trying to live in the desert. And now all of a sudden here come these murderers who want to kill you and take all your stuff. When you see evil advancing, what can you do? What can you do when forces bigger than you threaten your loved ones, threaten your life, or in the case of the Israelites here, the Amalekites wanted to wipe out their entire race and their entire civilization. We asked this on week one, when David faced off with Goliath: have you ever felt that way? You ever feel like there's just forces of evil against you? What can you do?

Well, the story continues. Moses, the leader of God's people at the time, said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. I'll stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered. Moses, Aaron, and Hur, that's a guy's name, went to the top of the hill.

As long as Moses held up his hands, what was he doing with his hands up? He was in prayer. As long as Moses held up his hands in prayer, the Israelite army would be winning. But whenever he would lower his hands — shoulders are very weak muscles, if you actually try to hold something over your head for a long time — and so Moses' arms start getting tired. And as they would come down, the Amalekites would start winning. The fate of the nation hung on Moses' prayers. On Moses' persistence in prayer. On Moses' choice to pray when he didn't feel like it. Moses' choice to pray through pain and through sacrifice.

Verse 12, when Moses' hands grew tired, "they took a stone and they put it under him so he could sit down. Then Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that Moses' hands remained steady until sunset." As a result, Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

What can you do when forces bigger than you threaten your loved ones, your life, even your civilization? Here's the answer. Prayer can deliver your loved ones from disaster. Prayer can even deliver your nation from disaster.

It's a remarkable story, this hostile tribe of Amalekites. They moved in on the wrong people group. They thought, "Oh, it's payday. We're just gonna go kill these unarmed people." Little did they know these were the people of God. Little did they know that though it looked like an easy human victory, it was an impossible victory because God was on their side. And God's power was accessed through prayer.

During the third great awakening, one of the leaders of it said this, "There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or any location that did not begin in united prayer." You get a faithful remnant of believers who are praying spiritual prayers. People who move beyond praying for physical needs. That's okay, you can pray for those. But who spend the majority of their time wrestling in prayer for spiritual needs. Claiming the territory of Hendricks County and Hamilton County and Boone County, claiming that territory for Christ, praying against demonic forces, praying for leaders in churches, praying for political leaders, praying for school teachers, praying for the population, doing everything we can like Joshua did with the sword, but also praying as if it all depends on God.

At the end of this whole thing, we're told this: Moses built an altar to give all the glory to God for the victory. He called the altar, "The Lord Is My Banner." If there were a banner over your life, what would it be? Flags and banners, incredibly significant. What's the flag or the banner over your life? "The Lord is my banner." I live my life under Him and His blessing and His way. And Moses said, "Because hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord," or as some translations say, "against the throne of the Lord," "the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation."

Great awakening leaders in the first and second great awakening, they loved this passage and they would talk about violence in prayer. And their idea was this, that we should be praying — they don't mean physical violence, don't misunderstand me — but what they meant is there should be an agonizing spiritually of how desperate we are for God's victory. I mean, do we really believe that there's no hope for our neighbors and nation other than Jesus? "God, forgive us that we think a political party could deliver us from the lies of the enemy. Forgive us for thinking that science or human progress could deliver us. Christ is the only hope. And when we really get that, then we pray with an urgency and the great awakening leaders would preach and write about violence in prayer, meaning, "God, I'm not gonna leave Your throne until You deliver my nation. I'm not gonna leave Your throne until You open the eyes of this person who needs salvation. I'm gonna agonize. I'm gonna be like Moses who was there all day. And if I need a couple other people to hold my arms up and keep me praying for that person I love who doesn't yet know Christ, then I'm gonna find those friends and I'm gonna say, pray with me every day for his salvation."

There was a vigor and a passion to the great awakening leaders. John Wesley is known in theologian circles for being this kind of buttoned up, very formal theologian. But here's the deal, if you read about the great awakening, where John Wesley went, people prayed with such emotion and such passion that he actually faced a ton of criticism from the churches, from the apathetic Christians who would say, "Oh, why would you guys be weeping in prayer? Why would someone fall down after praying for three hours for the salvation of their coworker or their child?" And it was one of the biggest criticisms that they faced. There were times when people would actually faint from having prayed with so much urgency and so much passion.

Now the point is not emotionalism. The point is not to glorify, you know, who's being the most dramatic while they're praying. But the point is to be so absorbed, your whole being in the work of God, in the unseen realm, that your emotions get involved. I mean, we saw this with football, right? We care about it. So our emotions get involved. If we care about a football game that much, shouldn't our emotions get involved? And so revival is not emotionalism and it's not glorifying emotions, but when your love for God is truly revived and when you really start to see the world through Jesus' eyes of darkness and light, death and life, evil and good, souls that are enslaved by demons and that Christ is the only path to freedom in life, it will affect your emotions.

Three observations about revival prayer. First is that revival prayer is passionate. You see this all throughout scripture. Nehemiah, when he brings revival to the city of Jerusalem, it begins with him weeping in prayer, Nehemiah chapter one. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, as He's agonizing and He's wrestling through the capital R, greatest revival of all human history to restore life back to humans, to restore us back to God. What does He say to the other disciples? He says, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."

You will feel deep things if you start to get God's heart about what's happening in the world and in your life. So again, this is not glorifying emotion. This is glorifying God.

But it's willing — you know, David writes about this, "If people call me foolish because I'm so passionate about God, I'm willing for people to call me foolish. I will throw away my dignity" — because what I care about more is having the heart of God and through God as a Father saying, boldly enter the throne, I'm gonna attack the throne with prayers. There's gonna be an urgency and an unconditionally loved, childlike insistence on God. "You've got to do this for our nation. There's no other hope. You've got to do this in my family. There's no other hope. You've got to do this in me. There's no other hope."

Most of us are not currently praying the kinds of prayer that change nations. Most of us are not currently praying the kinds of prayer that shake the gates of hell. Most of us are not currently living lives that really threaten the enemy and what he's doing. It's not because we're incapable.  The moment you believed in Jesus, you were filled with the Holy Spirit. In Christ, Peter says, "You have everything necessary for life and godliness." You've been given everything you need to shake the gates of hell. You've been given everything you need to pray prayers that move hearts and change nations. But the reason we're not praying that way is because we haven't made an effort. We haven't really learned how. You can learn this week to pray with power that shakes the gates of hell and advances Christ's kingdom in your school, in your family, in your workplace, in your city.

Spiritual prayers, prayers that prevail over Satan and his schemes, prayers that prevail over sin, prayers that see Christ's kingdom triumph. Christ's ministry, you realize, was based on prayers like this. He was always praying. Always getting away to pray. Why? Because that's where He drew His power from. And if you set out to be part of revival and you don't have a spiritual discipline of prayer, you will get really discouraged because you're on a supernatural battlefield fighting with human strategy and energy. You need the power that God provides to you through prayer. And such prayer is God's desire for you.

If you think prevailing prayer was only for the super Christians or the heroes of the Bible, well, Scripture says otherwise. Scripture says that prayers that moved nations were prayed by people just like you and me. I want to show you a passage of scripture that was written by James. James the disciple, those inner three, Peter, who we talked about last week, James and John. James describes Elijah the prophet in the Old Testament, praying to change the climate of his nation. Elijah actually prayed for a drought. Elijah had an insight that the only way there would be revival was that the people would have to hurt a little bit. I'm not suggesting you pray this way unless God leads you to, but look at James 5:16. It says this, "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

How would you like for your prayers to be powerful? How would you like for your prayers to be effective? Think about this. What if God said yes to everything you prayed these next seven days? How different would the world be? How many people who you know and you're not sure if they're Christians would become Christians because this week you pray for them by name? How many institutions where you just realize, like, "Wow, a demonic ideology has overtaken that university or that place or that group or that party or that city." How many, a week from now, would be set free because you prayed powerfully and effectively? Now I'm not guaranteeing that God's gonna do it in a week or on our timeline, but He tells us this is a promise breathed by the Holy Spirit, inspired into Scripture, a promise we can claim that "the effective and fervent prayer of the righteous person availeth much" or accomplishes much.

Who's the righteous person? Well, the righteous person very simply, first, it's the person who's believed in Christ's death for the forgiveness of their sins, salvation by faith. That makes you positionally righteous. In God's eyes, after you place your faith in Jesus, He looks at you and He sees the righteousness of Jesus. But secondly, just like we learned last week, it's a believer who has confessed the sins that you're aware of in your life. That gives you practical righteousness or relational righteousness.

And this is backed up right in the text. If you study James 5:16, it says we need to confess our sins. The Lord's Prayer begins with, "Forgive us our trespasses." Our prayer becomes powerful when we've confessed our sins. That's why in the revival sequence, we get urgent and dependent. We repent, now we can pray. As you're practicing repentance for relationship, you're now qualified to pray powerful prayers because the flow between you and God is not blocked. His power is gonna surge into your life.

And then James, inspired by the Holy Spirit, perhaps knew that we would read a verse like this and say, "Well, maybe that was true for heroes in the Bible, but what about me?" And so he continues and he says, "Elijah was a human being just like you, even as we are. Elijah prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And as a result of his prayers, it did not rain on the land for three and a half years." This is called climate change. Elijah changed the climate with prayer, earnest prayer. But Elijah's heart was this: he knew that the nation was headed into judgment. They weren't repenting. And he knew they were so comfortable, they were so complacent, that they almost needed an economic downturn to shake them awake.

Here's the reality. Our choice as the remnant of God's people in this nation, we can choose to turn to God while things are still good, or we can wait for things to get worse. And I'm not suggesting like Elijah that we need to pray that things get worse. That was how God led him to pray. But then get this, three years later, it had worked and the people of God repented and they turned to God. And Elijah said, "Man, I don't know if I can do this again, but I prayed once and God closed the clouds. Maybe now if I pray with passion, God will open the clouds." James 5 verse 18, again, "he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops."

One man prayed earnestly and it changed not only a nation's physical climate, but its spiritual climate. And the whole point back in verse 16 was this: you can pray that way. The same power of prayer is available to you.

You guys, believers just like you, whose prayers brought revival and rescued their nation from peril, the list is long. Here's just a few of them. Moses prayed and it changed his nation more than once, by the way. We just saw one example. Elijah prayed and it changed his nation. Esther prayed. Esther said, "Everyone, we've all got to fast and pray. Only God could deliver us." And He did. David prayed and it rescued his nation. Nehemiah wept and prayed and it brought revival to his nation. John Wesley and those who led the first great awakening wept and prayed. And these colonies in North America, before they were called the United States of America, there was this battle between the slave traders and the profiteers and very evil people, and Puritans and pastors and very good people. And it was the prayers of the revival leaders that let the church overrun at least enough that our constitution was enshrined by biblical principles.

Charles Finney in the second great awakening — and if you look from the second great awakening to the third, it was the Christian abolitionists who wanted to abolish slavery. Why? Because the Bible says so and they gave everything they had for it. Many gave their lives, like the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy, who was a journalist and a pastor and died by a mob who said, "Stop using the Bible to tell us to free our slaves." And then the Civil War happened because of the prayers and the lifestyles of revival Christians, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other fourth great awakening leaders.

None of these did it alone, but they all did it in partnership with God and through the power of prayer and the power of His word. They all had groups. Revival prayer happens best in groups. It's kind of a both and. Jesus often prayed alone. You should have a vibrant, personal, alone relationship with God in prayer, but there is something that will happen for you. Actually, a lot of what you'll learn about how to pray is when you're with other believers and maybe someone who's a little further down the road in their walk, you will learn by example. Or maybe someone who's a brand new Christian — you've been a Christian for a while and you'll hear the emotion of their prayer and it'll wake you up. There's something that happens when, like Moses, you pray with other believers, as Esther asked the whole nation to pray.

You guys, it's time for our families to begin regular times of prayer. When I study these great awakenings in American history, one of the norms is that you've got a family, you have family prayer time. And I wanna challenge you, if your family is just husband and wife, be praying together every day. It's gonna help your marriage, but be praying above. Pray for your marriage and your earthly needs, but then pray for your city, pray for this church. If you've got kids, you've gotta be praying together and teaching them how to pray.

If you're in a small group, this is going to be the week, you guys, our groups are going to graduate to another level of prayer. No more taking prayer requests for 20 minutes and then one person prays for two. How about instead we just pray for 20 minutes? What if we just go straight into prayer? Because if you just share your prayer request to God, everyone else in the group will hear it. It's time for us to grow up and pray some revival prayers as a movement. Devotional is gonna really walk you through, what does this look like? What does this mean?

I wanna encourage you this week, let the Spirit lead you. As you walk through scripture and as you give God your heart, let the Spirit lead you. He's gonna lead some of you to start a prayer group at your school. He's gonna lead some of you to start a prayer group at your place of work. He's gonna lead some of you to start leading prayer for your home. And dad, you're gonna actually become a spiritual leader. He's gonna lead some of you to start initiating prayer with your spouse every day. He's gonna lead some of you, when you show up at your small group, to say, "Hey, remember Pastor John said, we're not gonna take prayer requests for 20 minutes and pray for two. We're just gonna jump right in and we're gonna start praying." You guys, let the Spirit — ask the Spirit to lead you. He will guide you in all truth. He will counsel you.

What does this look like? Just tell God, "God, I wanna learn to pray revival prayers." I know it might sound intimidating and I apologize if it does. We have the rest of our lives to learn this, but we're going to get there by just saying, "God, what can I learn this week? Surprise me. Surprise me with the prayer groups that you start in your homes, in your schools." You want to use the building? Let us know, you can use the building. Let the prayer times be Spirit led. Doesn't need to be a bunch of teaching, but it's just Christ-centered. It's humble. Some of you will want to kneel. Some of you will want to walk around and pace. Just let it be Scripture-centered, Christ-centered, God-honoring.

Jesus escaped to prayer as His power. And you can learn to do the same. You can learn to pray for your loved ones, for lost souls. Even if you've never experienced the kind of power and prayer that we're talking about this week, you can learn it this week if you'll just say, "God, teach me." And that's exactly what the disciples asked Jesus. They walked with Him for a while and they saw irrefutably the power of God. He's raising people from the dead. He's opening the eyes of the blind. He's encountering demons and casting them out. And so they finally realize His power comes through prayer. And they say in Luke chapter 11, "Lord, master, teach us to pray like You. We wanna learn to pray like You, Jesus, because we want that kind of power in our lives."

And He said to them, when you pray, start this way: "Our Father in heaven" — everything in my life is under the umbrella of the Father. There's no political party. There's no economic possibility. There's no threat to me because my Father is that big. "Hallowed be Your name." And then here's your center: "Your kingdom come." When you pray this daily, you're rearranging the U-Haul trailer for your life. Okay, God, I'm grateful for my job and my retirement account, my home, apartment, whatever else, but that's not ultimately what I'm living for. I'm living for Your kingdom. And those other things are in the trailer behind me. They're not what drives me.

Now we don't have time to unpack it, but Jesus mentions one physical earthly need in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us today our daily bread." And then He mentions six or seven eternal matters. "Father, kingdom, forgive us as we forgive others. Deliver us from evil. Yours is the kingdom. Yours is the power. Yours is the glory." So there's this ratio. For every one earthly need, there's six or seven supernatural needs.

What are earthly needs? Job promotion, surgery, health, dog is sick, test at school, circumstances. Do these things matter? Yes. Does God care about them? Yes. Do we in the American church pray almost entirely here and completely neglect praying for the kingdom and for souls, for salvations, for forgiveness, for deliverance, for spiritual power? Yes, we do.

And we will not see revival power in our lives until we get this balance right. And I know it's gonna be hard. But I'm telling you guys, there is so much power available to you that you're just walking right past every day. And it's my biggest prayer for you this week that we would become a church that prays eternally significant prayers.

And yes, do pray for healing from cancer. Do pray for the job promotion. Those things are fine, but don't let your prayer end there. "Give us today our daily bread." And then, God, here's the eternal things. Here's the supernatural things that we're praying for. If every believer in our church began to pray this way, and then we go out into our schools and our workplaces and our cities and our community, seeing everyone through spiritual eyes — oh, that person at the gym, that teacher, that classmate, that coworker, do they know Christ? "Oh, I don't know. God, help me to understand. I pray for their salvation," or, "I pray that You'd help me know if they're a believer." You start praying that way and then you start to — God opens doors. All of a sudden you're talking with this person you've been praying for and you're realizing, "Wow, I get to invite them to church."

Here's my point. Revival prayer rises above earthly needs into eternal matters, into souls, salvations, spiritual territory. And my challenge for your group prayer times, my challenge for your family prayer, especially for your small groups — first of all, just way to go that you are praying in a group. Some of you, you don't have a group yet. If you're not yet in a group, get in a group or just start one. Get two or three friends and say, "I need to be praying with other believers on a regular basis." So be in a group, that's step one. I don't wanna berate those of you who are in a group. If you're in a group, way to go. But here's my challenge, for sure, for this week, and I would love it for kind of this year: make it a goal as a group and as a family to say, "I wanna graduate from just praying for job promotion, surgeries, health and circumstance" — nothing wrong with that, but I wanna graduate that that's a small percentage of the time I spend praying. Keep praying as much time as you are, but now add praying for salvations, for souls, for spiritual dominion of the kingdom of God where we live.

Here's God's promise. He says, "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves" — repentance — "and pray" — what we're learning this week — "if they will seek My face" — that's praying with passion — "and if they will turn from their wicked ways" — that's repentance for relationship — "then I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land."

Let me close with just one story to encourage you guys that this works today, here and now. This is our Carmel location. It's a little bit of a before and after. On the left is when it was called Lighthouse Tabernacle. On the right is the remodel of it that we've made. Some of you might not know this backstory. We didn't know anyone at Lighthouse Tabernacle. We didn't have any relationship there, but Hamilton County, the people of Carmel, had been on my heart for 10 years. And I would drive around Carmel looking at different buildings. We did not have money to buy a building in Carmel. They're very expensive. That building, just the land, worth about $9 million. We didn't have that.

And as I would drive around and look at churches, I would just pray, just the way that we're learning — not perfect, but emotional. And I would march around that building. And my first conversation with someone from Lighthouse ended with a dear elderly woman of God, who's now with the Lord, saying, "We're never selling to anyone ever." And I just thought, well, you don't know who I know. She does know who I know. She just didn't know what His plan was.

I would go to that building. I would march around it in prayer saying, "God, we're a middle-class congregation in Brownsburg. We don't have money to go to Carmel, but I know there's people that You have there for us to reach." And I would pray over and over again, emotionally, persistently. And I invited friends to pray with me. One day, one of those friends sent me a Bible verse. And the gist of it was this — it was something about like throwing a stick in the water and it floated. It's kind of one of these weird Old Testament passages, but I was like, "God, I don't even understand this, but I believe it." So I was in my pajamas. It was my day off and it was winter. I just threw on an overcoat. I drove there and I picked up these sticks and I read the verse out loud.

And then I went to each door of the building and I just kneeled and I just prayed. You see my pajama sweatpants there. Friend lives out of town. So I texted him these pictures, just saying, like, "Hey, I'm just claiming this building for God."

God took it from there. It wasn't without struggle. It wasn't without difficulty, but it opened at Easter. Now every weekend, hundreds of people connect with God there. God answered those impossible prayers.

This last Sunday night, we heard from Nancy, who's right here. Nancy lived in Carmel, didn't have a church. And when she heard about Connection Point coming to Carmel, she said, "I wanna be part of it." She signed up and became part of the launch team. She'd been praying and praying for a group of women in her life to follow Jesus with. And she finally found that at Connection Point Carmel.

Well, what Nancy didn't know, and how God was providing, is that Nancy's husband passed away this last September. And the day he passed away, it was those women from Connection Point Carmel who all showed up at her house, who've been there with her every step of the way. They've made meals. She said they've been closer to her than family.

And when I look at someone like Nancy and I hear how God has used the body of Christ to love a grieving widow, my God, I'm so glad I didn't give up praying when it looked impossible. Because Nancy, her story's dramatic, but it's just one of hundreds of people at Carmel. And that's one of three different churches, Avon, Carmel, and Fishers, where with each of them, we didn't have a big budget or a big plan, but we just said, "God, if You could use us to revive a church," He used us to revive a church in Avon, to revive a church in Carmel, to revive a church in Fishers. Not without a struggle, not without obstacles. But the God of Moses, the God of Elijah, He answers our prayers today, if we will get up above our earthly needs and really start to have kingdom vision and pray kingdom prayers.