Urgent and Dependent, Part 1

Here's what I want you to know as we go into this revival series, this is really important stuff. And so, you're going to hear me being pretty serious. There's something I want you to know about our movement. We take God seriously. We don't take ourselves too seriously. And I want you to know as we go into this, when it feels maybe a little heavy, a little urgent, maybe even a little intense, that here's why.

There are two paths in life. There's the path of Jesus that leads to life and joy. And there's every other path which ultimately leads to death and to pain. And revival is literally a life or death matter when it comes to eternal life. We're going to see that in cultures and nations, revival can be a life or death matter in this life. And as intense as that is, can I just remind you that the motivation in all of this is I want you to experience God's path of life that leads to joy.

One of my favorite revival stories is a story that you're perhaps familiar with, but I can almost guarantee you did not know it's a revival story. It's the story of a little shepherd boy named David. This took place about 3,000 years ago in the country of Israel. We have texts that predate the life of Jesus, more than 2,000-year-old texts that tell us this true story of this shepherd boy, David, facing off in an ultimate fighting challenge, a fight to the death against a giant guy named Goliath.

We're told in 1 Samuel 17 that the Israelite army, upon hearing Goliath's words, they and their King Saul were all dismayed and terrified. Now, let me set the scene for you. This battle occurred in a valley known as the Valley of Elah. It is over in Israel today if you want to visit the Valley of Elah. And what happened is that the Israelites were not invading the Philistines, but the Philistines were invading Israel.

And the Israelites, here were their two options. There was certain death. If the Philistines defeated this army and overran them, then the Philistine men would go in. They would kill all the men. They would kill the women and children that they didn't want. And the women and children they did want, they would enslave and abuse in all sorts of horrific ways. So, this is not like, well, gee, I hope we can beat Goliath. It's if we don't beat Goliath, we and the people we love face certain death.

Well, in the middle of this, God has placed this shepherd boy, David. And David is somehow able to face this evil when all the other men in Israel don't have the confidence or the spiritual power to. And here's the question I wanna ask you today. How do you defeat evil when it surfaces in your life? Because when David faced off against Goliath, it wasn't just like he was facing off with the man flu or some uncomfortable thing. He was facing pure evil that was set on killing and destroying him, his family, their entire way of life.

Live long enough and you will have a moment where your spine tingles or you get goosebumps and you just realize I'm having a spiritual encounter with a force of evil. How do you defeat evil when it surfaces in your family, in your life, or even in the civilization that you live in?

There was a family that came to me within the last year or two here. They have a teenage son and the parents came and they said, “John, we're just not sure what to do. Our son is gotten into some really dark stuff. His friends are just into these really kind of death and dying. And John, we were going through his text messages and one of his friends is texting him and saying, you should kill your parents.”

I remember talking with this dad and just the emotion he described, this sinking feeling of, here's this child who we love more than anything in the world and we've given our lives to, and his mind is no longer in our control in any way. And what he's choosing to feed into are thoughts that are evil thoughts.

I remember talking with that dad and saying, “you have a decision to make as a dad in the spiritual realm. You've got to decide if you're gonna go to battle for the soul of your son. And if so, what it means is you're gonna have to give up your ego to share this with other people who can pray for you. You're gonna have to give up your career to say whatever it takes to help my son, I'm willing to do. You're gonna have to pray like never before.”

And he did all those things. He did all those things. And as we prayed, God in time gave the victory. A few months later, that same son was worshiping here at our Sunday night gathering. Totally different friend group.

Listen up, the battle of good versus evil, it will come into your life. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. There is a supernatural realm in your life. And can I just tell you in our nation, in the world right now, the supernatural realm, it is not stagnant. It is not still. Good and evil are fighting each other. When that surfaces in your life, will you be ready like David?

David, who was not even a trained soldier. David showed up as a door dash driver, essentially, if you read the text. And he had an ancient equivalent of a charcuterie board. He had all these cheeses. Literally, it says that, a board of all these cheeses. And how is he able to step up against this evil that all the soldiers are intimidated of? Because of spiritual realities.

You can be prepared spiritually to face the Goliaths of evil that maybe have already stepped into your life or that will step into your life and your family. Goliaths of addiction. Goliaths of sin, Goliaths in our society of ideas and ideologies that lead to death and suffering.

Would you like to discover today how to defeat the evil that has stepped into your life or how to be prepared when evil does step into your life to be like David? Stated positively, how do you get the best from God in life? Because David defeated Goliath, it led to life and prosperity and freedom for his family, his town, his nation. How can you have the same kind of victories for your family, for your community?

David was prepared to face off with pure evil in a battle to the death because David had been reviving his love for God daily. And that's the answer to our question, how do you face evil? It's this, pursue revival as if your life depends on it.

What is revival? Reminder, it is that you are reviving your love for God daily. God, I love you more than anything else. Oh God, I started to place my faith in my abilities or my reputation or my wealth or my family. Those aren't bad things, but I love you more. Every day you're kind of tending to your heart to make sure that you love God more. That's what revival at its core is.

Things we associate with revival, like hundreds of baptisms and emotional worship and the whole culture moving toward biblical values, those are the fruit or the result of individual believers who have been actively reviving their own love for God, just as David did. That's why scripture tells us David was chosen by God because he was a person after God's own heart.

Now, here's the thing, your choice today and in these next 40 days, whether you're gonna pursue revival or not, it's gonna affect your life and it's gonna affect the lives of the people you love. I study these concentric circles here, these ripples, if you will. You choosing whether or not you're gonna revive your love for God, because revival leads to life. The other path, sin, ultimately leads to death.

Your choice is gonna affect your closest friends. If you're a parent or grandparent, it's gonna affect your kids and your grandkids. A church that is experiencing revival is simply a church where enough of the people individually have chosen to revive their own love for God. When that happens, and that can happen across multiple churches, entire regions can experience spiritual revival. And if that happens in enough cities and states, entire nations can experience revival.

As you look at those different groups, I wonder, which one are you most burdened for today? Which one, if your obedience to God in these next 40 days would result in a revival for your kids or your grandkids, for your friends, your classmates, for the people you work with, maybe for the nation itself, which group would most motivate you to say, I'm willing to deny myself, I'm willing to step out of my comfort zone to pursue revival.

Here's the thing, if you want revival for your own heart or any of those groups that you care about, you're going to have to live with a posture of urgency and dependence. What does that mean? Well, you know, your posture is how you normally stand, right? Some people are like this, more and more with our phones, right? Some people are like this.

Your posture is the way you walk about life. And what I mean is if you want to experience revival, the way you walk about life, you've got to have some urgency for the kingdom of God in your life, for the kingdom of God in your family. And you also, as you become more active in obeying God, remain dependent on God rather than on your own strength.

What does this mean? Well, urgent action means that we will do all that is in our control to do as we work for revival. We're not just praying, oh God, please bring revival, but not... any action ourselves — we're doing everything we can to bring about revival, but we're doing it with a total dependence on God that revival is a spiritual thing and we need God to show up. All of our best efforts will mean nothing unless He shows up, but He does require our effort. And you can see this balance between God's part of revival and our part of revival in the story of David and Goliath.

Look at verse 45. David says to Goliath, “you come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.” So, notice David is not at home in his closet praying, “God, please defeat Goliath.” David is on the battlefield. He's doing what he can. And yet he is prayerful. And he is dependent on God. It's a both, and.

In fact, David's confidence as he faces off with a far superior physical opponent comes from this lower line. “Goliath, you have defied God.” You realize that in your lifetime, you will be part of some supernatural power encounters. We're seeing it more and more in the world we live in where the ideas that used to kind of just say, oh, don't take Christianity too seriously, just be busy with other stuff. Now there's more and more messages of Christianity is evil, Jesus never lived, just pure lies. And when you encounter those kind of lies, which can be factually disproven, but there's a spiritual power encounter happening. And you, like David, can step into those saying, I might not be able to defeat the evil that's against me, but the God who's being defied can.

David continues verse 46. “The Lord will deliver you into my hands, Goliath.” So, God's gonna do His part. I'm dependent. And I'll strike you down, I'm gonna do my part. This very day, I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals. If the Philistines weren't so well documented of what they were going to come and do, it seems, you know, it is bloody, but it's exactly the only option they had, right? It's either kill or be killed. “And the whole world will know there's a God in Israel.” So, I'm going to do my part in facing evil, but my dependence is on God.

“All those gathered here will know it is not by the sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's and He will give all of you into our hands.” God's gonna deliver you, but our hands are gonna be active in the process.

“As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly.” Think about that. David ran quickly at this opponent that no other Israelite man would step out to face. Ran out to meet him in battle, reaching into his bag. David takes out a stone. He slings it.

And the point is this, David does his part. You realize that God desires revival in your life and the lives of the people you love, even in our nation. God desires revival more than any of us. He's eager to do His part if we'll step out like David and do our part. Will you be a David for your family? Will you be a David for your school? Will you be a David in this community?

What does all of this mean for you and your journey toward revival? Here's what it means. Work for revival like it all depends on you. David did everything that depended on him. And if he hadn't, the story probably wouldn't have gone the same way. But as you work like it all depends on you, pray for revival like it all depends on God.

American Christians tend to get up in this little thing between God's role and our role. And some of them say, “well, we're just gonna pray every day for revival, but we're not really gonna do anything.” And others say, “we're gonna do all this work for revival, but we're not really gonna pray.” And in the story of David, we see it's a both and. Work like it all depends on you.

Pray like it all depends on God. What would your week look like this week? If this week you said, “I am going to do everything in my power to bring about a revived love for God in me.” I'm gonna do everything in my power. And I'm gonna pray, “God, would you revive my love for me? Bring revival in me, bring revival to my loved ones.”

I wanna help you experience revival by helping you today to understand three things. The first, what is revival? We've covered that. The second, why does revival matter? We're about to cover that. And the third will be our brief conclusion where we say, what does this mean for you this week if you want to begin to experience revival.

Why does revival matter for you? Well, very simply, God commands us to pursue the reviving of our love for Him. Jesus was once asked, “what is the greatest commandment?” If you had to boil all of the Bible down and summarize it to one command, Jesus, what would it be? And Jesus, without hesitating, replied very simple. It's this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.”

Revival is not about religion. It's not about rules. It's not even about performing and you do these 15 things to be part of revival. It's ultimately about your heart. Do you love God more than you love anything else? That's where revival begins. Love Him with your heart, your emotions. Love Him with your soul, your unseen being. Love Him with your mind. How many of your thoughts throughout the day are God-oriented thoughts? Jesus says all of scripture, if you will love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, you will end up obeying and doing everything else that's in here. So, we're commanded to constantly be reviving our love for God.

Why does God command you to do this? Well, it's for your own good. Here's the reality about you and me. If we don't pursue the reviving of our love for God and for His work, then there will be a cooling off of our love for God. It's just our natural tendency. And what happens as your love for God cools off is that the allure of sin starts to heat up. And things that when you were really on fire or warm in your love for God, you wouldn't have considered, you start to dabble with. And then as you dabble with the sin, you start to play with the sin. And then the sin starts to take a stranglehold on you.

Sin always leads to death of relationships, death of dreams, even physical death. Sin always leads to destruction. So, God in love says, make it a way of life that you're constantly tending to your heart love for me, because you are created to be a worshiper. And if you're not worshiping God, you'll end up worshiping sexuality or self or the U.S. dollar or your retirement account or the next toy or some relationship or the next identity piece in your life.

If we did not wander from God, we wouldn't need to pursue revival. But the reality about me, and I would guess it's true of you as well, is just like Adam and Eve, we have this propensity or this tendency to wander away.

Here's what revival looks like in scripture. I call this the blessing judgment cycle. This is really a visual summary of the Old Testament and even the Gospel, what Jesus did on the cross. I'll walk you through parts of this.

Let's start at the one o'clock position. If this was a watch face, the one o'clock, which is where people turn to God. Revival, it starts with people who have known God. There are people in the world who've never known God, but revival is for people who have turned to God. But here's our propensity. We turn to God and then what happens? God blesses. When you turn to God, He will bless you. I'm not promising you that you'll win the lottery or never have the man flu again, okay? But when you turn to God and you start to say, “God, I will live life your way.” Guess what? Your relationships will improve. Obey Him long enough, you will get free from sins that used to control you. Obey Him long enough, your career will improve because you're on time, you're honest, you're reliable, you get along with people. Those things tend to pay off.

And so what happens is that blessing then leads to comfort. You are more comfortable after years of obeying God than you were when you were living apart from God. And what does comfort lead us to? Sadly, comfort leads to complacency. We get complacent. We get distracted. And then out of complacency, not even doing it on purpose, we start to worship other things.

We start to worship our wealth or our comfort or our family or a love relationship or worship ourself, or our sexuality. We start to worship some other thing.

And then here's what happens. Whenever a person of God starts to worship some other thing, God sends a call to repent. In the Old Testament, this came through the prophets. Actually, in the story where David faces off with Goliath, the reason it's a revival story is that there was a king named Saul who had gone through all of this. He had turned to God. God had blessed. The people were wealthy and prosperous. It led to complacency. And guess what? When the Philistines were invading Israel, the people of Israel were worshiping other gods. They were worshiping other idols. And a prophet named Samuel had been telling them, repent, turn back to God. David had, but most of the nation had not.

And here's the fork in the road that you face today and you'll face it repeatedly in your life is right here at about the eight o'clock position. God sends a call to repent. I'm His messenger today for that, okay? You have a choice to make. Will you repent? If so, then you go through revival and it takes you right back up to turning to God and you go through the good part of the blessing cycle again. Whenever we don't choose to repent, we go in some level down the judgment cycle.

Now, these can be really severe. These can be smaller at times. But families and even nations can make this choice. And what's inspiring about the story of David versus Goliath is the whole nation was choosing the judgment cycle. That's why the Philistines were invading. But David's faith and his love for God was significant enough to change the course of the entire nation.

What if your revived love for God in these 40 days could change the course of someone you love? What if your revived love could change the course of your family? What if our revived love as a movement could change the course of the nation that we live in?

When people don't choose revival, they don't repent, it leads to judgment. Now, depending on how long you've been reading the Bible or what your concept of God is, you might think, well, gee, that sounds really mean of God. A lot of judgment, most judgment is self-inflicted. It's our own consequences. Isaac Newton said, “for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.” Most of the judgment in our lives is just our own consequences.

Here's an example. Someone drinks a little too much and they decide to drive. They're swerving around. They get pulled over. They get a DWI or a DUI. They get their license taken away. Now they don't have a driver's license. Did God judge them? Nope. They just did that to themselves, right? Person has an affair, blows up their marriage. Did God do that? Nope. Most of our judgment is self-inflicted. And nations, when they deny the truth of God, tend to choose demonic ideologies that can bring judgment to the whole nation, often by just natural consequences.

There are times of divine judgment in Scripture as well, like Noah's flood or Sodom and Gomorrah. We can see this in the Old Testament, but we can also see this in recent history.

The nation of Germany was, from about the 1500s to the 1800s, a quote, “Christian nation,” meaning it was enshrined in the constitution. We are Christians, and the money that you had to actually pay, I think a 10% tax that goes to the church. The church got all corrupted and it was this form of Christianity without pure Christianity. Pure Christianity can't be forced on people. It's a heart choice.

And what happened in the 1800s is that you had a population that had read the Bible and had known God, one o'clock position. And because of the Bible, they had started schools and universities that generated wealth and they had become comfortable, they had become complacent. And by the 1880s, you get German philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche who says, quote, “God is dead”. And his peer at the time, Karl Marx, who says, “our whole nation is built around the church. Let's swipe that away. Let's build a nation around just the community good called communism.” So Marx and Nietzsche say, “we don't need God anymore. We are a once Christian nation. We're willfully turning away from that to do life better without God.”

God sends pastors and prophets to say, “don't turn away, repent, return.” You can study from the 1880s up until World War I and II, both started by Germany, that the population moves in its beliefs from placing its faith in God to placing its faith in human reason.

You get to the 1940s, yeah, actually the 1930s. And you get a democratically elected leader from the National Socialist Party. Did you know that Nazi, Nazi is not a word they say in Germany, they say National Socialist. Nazi is a summary of National Socialist. The Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They said, “we're going to pool the wealth, we're going to make a better way of life.” And democratically elected was this really charismatic guy named Adolf Hitler, whose favorite philosopher was Friedrich Nietzsche.

And the population chose to say, “we're not going to repent and turn to God. We can do better without God.” What happens when there's a whole society that no longer believes in God and demons, in good and evil, in the supernatural realm? They have to somehow deal with the reality that people are evil. So if you're going to deny the supernatural, how can you deal with that reality? It's happened all throughout history. You vilify a certain race or group. You make them the scapegoat. And so Germany, having adopted a worldview that said, well, people are inherently good, but they're bad in our world, it must all be the fault of the Jewish people. And so they start rounding up the Jewish people in concentration camps like this, Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz, et cetera. Children, women, men, men like these guys who are starving to death. And between six and 10 million Jewish people, exterminated with industrial efficiency. That's on top of the tens of millions killed as a result of World War II. Talk about choosing evil after knowing what is right, and what followed. Incredible judgment.

Look at the city of Dresden, Germany at the end of World War II. Bombed. I mean, look at this close-up picture. This city had been a jewel of the German empire, and it was just all rubble. A firestorm went through the city and killed the entire population.

Here's the thing, you guys. When people groups choose revival or not, it is a matter of life or death. And the more a people group has known the Bible and the word of God, the more dangerous it is if they resist repentance.

Here's how it goes. For people and nations, stage one, the hearts of God's people slowly harden, especially in times of prosperity and blessing. Now you might not know this because we all have problems in our life, but we live in the most prosperous and free time and nation in world history. I'm not saying everything's perfect by any means. There's a lot of problems, but it's easy because it's all we've ever known to not realize we live in the very kind of time that breeds complacency. This happened over and over in the Old Testament, Revelation chapter two. God says, in the New Testament era, He looks down at a church and He says, “you've lost your first love. Return to your first love.”

So that's stage two. God sends a call to people who have known Him in times of prosperity, return to your first love. In Christian revival, this is the role of bold, biblical preaching for decision. In the Old Testament, the prophets did this. In the New Testament, this is our role, those of us who God entrusts to stand on this stage. Did you know the Bible says that in the end times, people will hire people to stand on church stages and tell them what they want to hear? Did you know that my job is to never tell you what you want to hear? My job is to tell you what God wants you to hear. And if you ever move, if God ever takes you somewhere else, you always need to be part of a church where the Bible is being preached boldly, and it's preached in a way that forces you to make a decision. Week after week, you're deciding, do I love God more than all these? Do I love Him more than everything else?

This is my role in these 40 days, to call you to make a decision for God, which leads to stage three. God's people choose one of two paths. There's the path of repentance, which leads to revival, starting individually, then in families, then in the church, and Lord willing, spreading beyond. Or the easier path in the moment of comfort, distraction, just keep living for yourself and kind of your version of the American dream.

Don't worry about repenting from that sin. And it lulls us to sleep spiritually and leads ultimately to death and ruin. When God's people choose the path of distraction and self, they enter the judgment portion of this blessing and judgment cycle.

And so it's in God's love, it's His kindness that leads us to repentance. It's in love that He says, “be revived in your love for me, because it's the only thing that can protect you from yourself and from the lies of the enemy.” Why revival matters: we either choose repentance, which leads to revival, or we continue in our self comfort that leads to ruin.

Sin always leads to death of some kind, pain of some kind, loss of some kind. Missed opportunities for eternity. If you're a Christian, you'll look back and you'll say, I can't believe I didn't, I can't believe I missed that. Kids and grandkids negatively affected when we allow sin. Bondage and slavery, it starts in the spiritual realm, but can absolutely show up in the physical realm when whole societies turn away from God for long enough.

What is the heart of God? He doesn't want us in the judgment part of the blessing judgment cycle. Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son who runs away. It's a picture of us when we run away from God. He has all these judgments that happen in his life and they're all self-inflicted. God the father's waiting the whole time for him to just repent, return home. And when the son returns home, the father takes him back.

So let's look at the better path, the ideal path, the path God invites you down. When God's people choose the pain of repentance, it leads to revival. Now we'll learn more about repentance next week, but here's what I want you to know. Repentance, if your idea of it is that it's all about a cloud of shame and you live under this cloud of guilt and you're like, woe is me, I'm this terrible sinner all the time, I can't ever do anything right — that is not biblical repentance. Biblical repentance is the prodigal son returning home to the father, the father throwing his arms around him, having a huge party. Repentance actually leads to joy. Repentance leads to restored relationship with God, and you walk with God and He becomes your best friend. Repentance may lead through sorrow, but sorrow is not the end of it. We'll talk more about that next week.

Now here's what is incredible about God's grace. A whole nation can be choosing the judgment path. And one person like David can choose repentance in such a revived way that it changes the course of the whole nation. And when a group of those people work together, that's called a remnant. The remnant of believers all through church history — churches get corrupted and polluted by wealth and power and all sorts of other things. But there's always a remnant who say, “we're gonna truly follow Jesus no matter what it costs.” And what revival is, is us saying, as we revive our own love for God, we're gonna be the remnant for Indiana. We're gonna be the remnant for our families. We're gonna be the remnant, maybe even for our nation.

Moses interceded and saved his entire nation. Esther interceded and saved her entire nation. What if your choice to walk these 40 days of revival is not only something that at the end of your life, you look back and you say, wow, that was a pivot in my life of supernatural power and love for God that I didn't even know existed. Not only that, but I see people and cities and maybe even a nation that was spared from judgment, because I obeyed God in revival.

Here's what I believe. I fully believe that if the United States does not see revival, it will see ruin. I mean this as a civilization or a culture. Only God can bring this kind of revival. And I believe he is seeking to partner with awakened believers like you and me to bring about the next great awakening. This is my opinion spiritually as well as sociologically. As an award-winning journalist who's done a lot of work with large systems and populations and sociological patterns, my belief is we are on a trend line of division and hatred between Americans that only Christianity can heal. And whichever side of the aisle you're on, fine for you, but neither side of the aisle is offering much in the way of actually bringing people back together.

Our nation has been in this position in previous times, and you know the only force that has brought it back together? The cross, the Bible, Jesus lifted high, not forced on people, but men and women full of the Holy Spirit who go out into their schools and their workplaces and neighbors who are deceived in demonic lies, get told the good news of Jesus and their eyes are opened.

You guys, I believe this is perhaps the most important work of our life. You realize God could have chosen for you to be born at any moment in history, on any continent, any civilization, any country, any century. And He chose right here, right now, when this nation that you've been born into is at a spiritual fork in the road, a spiritual fork of, are we going to figure out a better society with God or without God?

And the enemy of our souls, satan, who came to kill and steal and destroy, he prowls about like a roaring lion. And there are ideas being spread right now, ideologies that millions of people are grabbing onto that will not lead to life. And you might get frustrated with them. You might try to argue with them. It's not going to help. The only way for them to see the path that leads to life is for them to come to Christ. You realize that apart from Jesus, you and I are powerless against demonic ideas and ideologies. You look at nations like Germany or Russia with the Bolshevik revolution. All throughout history, it's like, why would people choose a path of death and destruction? Because of demonic ideas. The only way to combat demonic ideas is through a supernatural power, the power of Christ.

Now, if you're here and you're a believer in Jesus, 1 Corinthians 15 tells you this: “thanks be to God, He gives us the victory.” How? Through our Lord Jesus Christ. You might look at things like World War II Germany. You might look at certain things happening in the world today, and you could be overcome by intimidation of the Goliath might of some of these evil forces. And it's true that if you were to try to oppose those huge evil movements on your own, you'd get squashed. But in Christ, you can have the victory. In Christ, these supernatural battles that are being waged for souls and for cities, for populations and nations, the gospel is the power to set people free.

Here's the thing, this victory in Christ, it's been purchased at the cross by His blood. But just like David, you've got to step onto the battlefield. The battlefield of your own thoughts. Your thought life. The battlefield of your own home. The battlefield of the city you live in, and I mean spiritual battlefield. You're going to learn in this revival journey how to pray like you've never prayed before, that you are spiritually interceding for the spiritual territory in which you live. If you will step into this, you're going to experience God's power as you increase your love for Him in ways you haven't experienced before. Because like David, God's waiting. He's just waiting. Who will step up? Because He's eager to empower.

I want to skip you forward to why you should ask God to revive you. Four reasons.

Your family needs it. You guys, there's no hope for our loved ones. Healthcare, money, the political party we like, all of it lasts less than 100 years and then we all die. Your family needs Jesus. Pursue revival so that you know your loved ones have eternal life.

Your future needs it. I don't wanna be part of a civilization and a society where the majority of the people turn away from God because it doesn't end well. And I'm not gonna force it on other people, but I wanna do everything in my power to be a compelling witness of the love and the hope and the life and the grace and the peace that are only found in Jesus. Our future depends on it.

Our cities need it. Avon needs revival. Carmel needs revival. Fishers and Brownsburg need revival. And my goodness, does the society or civilization we live in, the United States, need supernatural, spiritual, Jesus-centered revival.

John chapter 10, Jesus says that Satan and his demons are active in the world doing three things. They're stealing, they're killing, and they're destroying. And they do this primarily through ideas. Jesus says, “I have come into the world that people who are deceived by demonic ideas might instead have life and life to the full.”

Here's what's beautiful. You don't have to solve all the world's problems. All you gotta do is follow Jesus with your whole heart, and He takes care of the problems. As we have been following Jesus as a movement, He has been bringing revival here in this church. And it's not because we're perfect. And it's not because we have a great strategic plan. We don't have it all figured out. We've just been following Jesus.