Revival Is Coming

0:00Joel 2:28-29 and an open heaven

Amen. Well, turn with me in your Bibles to Joel chapter 2. Joel chapter 2. Joel is after Hosea, it’s before Amos. And if that doesn’t help you at all, just go to Matthew and just start hitching a lift, okay, until you get there, in Jesus’ name. I wasn’t raised in church. I can find anything in the Bible fast except minor prophets. They’re the only ones I can’t find, so they all just get in there together. And some of them have the same type of name. So there’s no condemnation for you. The preacher struggles with it. You can struggle with it too, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Joel chapter 2. I’m going to share with you this morning a little bit of an experience that I had several years ago.

I talked about this a little bit on Wednesday night. I’d encourage you to go back and watch that message online on our YouTube channel or listen to it on our podcast. There’s some of what’s in this message that I shared in greater detail, but I’m going to give you very different information than what I shared Wednesday night. But the Wednesday night message would be helpful. And the experience I’m going to talk to you about today is an experience I had where I got under what I can only call an open heaven, where I began to hear from the Lord in a very special and specific way several years ago. And to some of you this will sound like just another day. To some of you this will sound like, “Oh my God, how did that happen in his life?”

And I have great news for you, because in two weeks I’m starting a six-week series that’s going to help you hear from the Lord in the exact same way. It’s not special for pastors. It’s not special for prophets. It’s not special for apostles. You too can get under an open heaven at any moment and hear from the Lord. That’s a good place to say amen.

Y’all, now listen, we’re going to have to wake up a little bit. I know it rained a little bit, but I will come out there and walk on chairs if I have to. I will throw someone on the camera and I will go. That was a good amen. I know, that’s what that really was. Your spirit was crying out to say amen. Hallelujah.

Joel chapter 2, starting in verse 28. It says, “And it shall come to pass afterwards that I’ll pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” Today I’m just calling my message Revival Is Coming. Somebody say, “Revival is coming.” Revival is coming.

2:38The word: an outpouring in 18 to 36 months

So in December 2022, I — let me be clear. I was actually not traveling and preaching at the time. I had taken a full step back into where I was doing ministry on the internet. That’s all I did. I got online, I preached, I made resources. We touched people around the world. And then I could just go make whatever I wanted to eat for lunch in the kitchen and do my thing. I was having a great time. It’s fantastic.

December 2022, I start to feel a spiritual intensity rise in my personal time with the Lord and in my life in general. I just started to feel the heat turn up for about a month in December 2022. When I got into January, about the middle of January, I was in prayer one morning and it wasn’t a vision, it wasn’t a voice, but it was almost like information beamed down from the heavens into me. And I was laying there — or I was down in my chair. I get down and I put my face in my chair, as long as my knees aren’t hurting. Amen. Come on, somebody. I’m getting a little older.

And so I get down, I put my face in my Bible, in my chair, and I’m sitting there and I feel just this information downloading to me. And to be very clear, this is not normal. This is out of the ordinary. This isn’t what it’s like every day. I do not ever want to be one of those preachers that makes you think that it’s always a mountaintop experience, because Moses would be the first one to tell you that you can receive on the mountaintop and come down and throw a fit real fast. Okay? That was for Bible readers right there. Amen. Y’all got that.

And so it’s not always a mountaintop experience, but this was a very specific moment. And what the Lord shared with me in that time was that within the next 18 to 36 months we would see a great outpouring hit the nation. Maybe the world — I kind of think in my own paradigm, but hit the nation. In other words, we’re going to see the next great revival. We’ll see the next great outpouring. We’ll see the next great move of God. Eighteen to 36 months.

Now, I have not backed off of this number, but I want you to know we are in the very close of that number for me. But let me give myself a little bit of an out, that sometimes in a prophetic paradigm you can only receive as clearly as you can receive. Even Paul said that we see through a glass darkly. So there are moments where you kind of see it.

So let me just say it to you this way. This is what I’m saying: if it happens at 39 months, I’m not going to sit back and kick myself. But I have sensed in this window — I really think 36 months. I think we’re about to see a great outpouring in the nation. And that being said, would we be at the end of the 36 months? Now that I’m standing here, I’m wondering. I think we have another six months. So yeah, I’m not sure. Now I’m questioning my math.

5:57Asbury and the pattern of great awakenings

Three weeks after I got this — so this is just in my room now, keep in mind, early 2023. It’s not like revival fires are burning. It’s not like Pentecostals are acting Pentecostal. I’ve never seen people as not Pentecostal as they’ve been in the last 15 years. We are the least Pentecostal-acting Pentecostals we’ve ever been. Okay? And I haven’t turned on Pentecost, by the way. This isn’t a comeback, I’ve been here for years. Amen. I didn’t stop. That’s why I had to go teach on the internet. I had to wait for people to warm back up to it. Amen.

And there wasn’t a great Pentecostal feeling in the church. There wasn’t a great Pentecostal feeling in the movement. There wasn’t a great Pentecostal feeling amongst my peers. And I get this word. Within three weeks, the revival that breaks out in Kentucky at Asbury University happens. Within three weeks.

Now, my first thought was, I was wrong about the timeline. That was my first thought. I thought, this is it, I was wrong about the timeline. Within about 48 hours I knew that wasn’t the case. And I’ll tell you why in a little bit, but here’s the sneak preview: it’s because there wasn’t any preaching. So I’ll be back to that in a few minutes. Amen. Got to have preaching if you’re going to have a move of God.

And so I thought my timeline may have been off, but then I realized that this was just a small quaking that was showing that God was about to do something. In fact, in every great awakening that has ever happened, there has always been a season of smaller outpourings. Probably the best one that I could illustrate to you would be the Azusa Street revival. When the Azusa Street revival hit in the early 1900s, you can trace Azusa Street back to Texas, back to Kansas, back to Pennsylvania, all the way over to Wales, across the ocean. That’s how long there were little revival fires burning until something happened with William Seymour at Azusa Street. That was incredible. It was highly influential. It was powerful. It was a move of God.

Somebody ought to shout in this Pentecostal church just to prove that you are in fact Holy Ghost filled. Amen. All right, y’all will make me nervous if y’all are quiet. My God, I’ll preach for three hours, Lord.

And so within just a few weeks that revival hits, and I was encouraged because I knew that I was on to something. And so at that time I started to do a lot of study on revivals in history. By the way, this season of intensity and kind of an open heaven lasted for about six weeks, from mid-January to the end of February at least. And I started to do a lot of study on revivals in times past and things that had happened in history, moments where there had been great awakening, great moves of God in the world. And I happened to just stumble upon a pattern that I shared Wednesday night. Again, if you’ll go back and listen to that, I think it’ll be very helpful to you. But I happened to just stumble on this pattern. I wasn’t looking for it. I guess just my systematic brain kind of caught it as I was reading, that these outpourings happen about every 20 to 35 years.

They happen about every 20 to 35 years throughout all of church history. Once you kind of get past the early church, every 20 to 35 years you see a great awakening in the earth. So now I’ve got a word from God. My spirit likes that. But now I got something my brain really likes. I can throw this bad boy into Excel and make a spreadsheet and find out when the next one’s coming.

What I’m telling you is, I’ve got a word from God on this, but I also have a statistical probability on my side, because the last great outpouring came to an end around 2005. I’d say maybe 2007 is probably when the last bit of embers went away. But since about 2005 we have not been as Spirit-filled as we once were. The last great move of God kind of came to a close. It kind of wrapped up, the last bits of flames off of it. So now we’re in the 20 year from the end, 30 year from the beginning of the last great outpouring that happened in the nation. We’re due for a move of God. We’re due for one. We’re due for one like — we could put it, I know y’all send money to them preachers that put big charts on the stage. I could make you a big chart right now and show you we’re due for one. Somebody say, “Send it, Lord.” Amen. Hallelujah.

So I just want to talk to you through a few things that the Lord shared with me in this time. Now, normally I preach kind of one, two, three, A, B, C — you know, that’s kind of how I preach. I give it to you real systematic. I don’t have any system for this this morning. There is no system for this. I’ma share with you as best — and I’ma preach fast and loose. Amen. But I believe this is going to help you just see some things that I’m seeing that are coming. And I believe God’s about to do a great work.

11:16The revival cycle: formation, consecration, visitation

So the first thing I want to share with you is a revival cycle that the Lord showed me. Again, Wednesday night I talked about this in depth, and so you can go back and see that. But there’s a constant cycle that the church is going through. When it comes to a move of God, there’s a constant cycle that we’re in, and the cycle is formation. It starts with formation. Okay? You move from formation to consecration, and then from consecration you move to visitation. That cycle is always in motion. That cycle never ends. Okay? Formation, consecration, visitation.

Formation is when we’re shoring up the foundations of the faith. This is when you have churches that are getting serious about the disciplines that go along with living for the Lord: Bible reading, prayer. This is when we start talking about doctrine. This is when you get just good foundational Bible teaching where you learn what to believe and expect from the Bible. This is formation. It’s foundational. It’s building out a framework. It’s formation. This is a very important season for a church to go through — not only a church, but the church at large. Amen.

And so there’s formation, then you move into consecration. This is where, after you’ve been in formation for so long — let me just tell you this: you can only spend so much time in the word. You can only spend so much time in prayer. You can only come to so many services at church. You can only listen to so many good godly podcasts. You can only watch so many preachers on YouTube before eventually this thing just grabs a hold of you. You can only do so much of that before it grabs you and pushes you to a different level in the Lord. And that is consecration.

Consecration is the moment where you click over from just building your foundation to, all of a sudden, you are pulling away from things that may not even be a problem, may not even be bad. I’m not talking about pulling away from sin. I’m talking about pulling — you might just find that you all of a sudden have a distaste for football. You might find that you all of a sudden — for me, it’s TV. Just when I go into these moments, I can’t do TV no more. I don’t have a problem with TV. I like TV, want to be on TV. I’d love to just start my own sitcom today. Amen. I have a good time. I’m going to start a reality TV show right here in the church. I would love that. I want to be on TV. But in these moments I pull away from TV. I just find myself doing that.

For you, I mean, it could be any good godly thing. I’d encourage you not to make it work. Amen. Three people got it. I’m happy about that. Amen. But you’ll pull away from things and you’ll go to a place spiritually where you start to get a little more serious. You start to get a little more tuned in. You start to go to a place in the Lord that is deeper. It doesn’t last forever, but you will have those seasons of consecration.

At some point, as we consecrate ourselves unto the Lord, we separate ourselves from things that are frivolous and we really focus on the Lord. We really focus on Jesus. We really focus on his presence. There’s a moment of visitation. It’s sovereign. It’s divine. But there’s a moment where God looks down, he sees it, and he pours out his Spirit. Somebody say, “Yes, Lord.” Yes, Lord.

So there’s a moment of visitation, or as we like to call it, revival. There’s a moment of revival. And I had a pastor friend who pastored a church that was in revival in a season in the late ‘90s. And I asked him one day, I said, “What was it like?” And he said, “In revival, everything works.” He says, “In revival you can do no wrong. Every strategy works, every invitation works, every joke works, everything works.” Just everything works in revival. You say “lift your hands,” people lift their hands. They fall on the ground, they run to the front, the whole bit. Just everything works in revival. There’s a great grace on the results of revival.

15:24Revival is not arrival

I’m going to talk about that more in just a second, but I do want to just share something with you that I felt like the Lord told me before service to share with you. This cycle is always continuous. The cycle is always continuous. The cycle always goes formation, consecration, visitation, formation. So visitation should go back to formation at some point.

What we do really poorly in the Pentecostal church at large — in fact, if you want to go back through 2,000 years of supernatural history in the church and find out where it goes off the rails, it goes off the rails right here — is that when God pours out his Spirit and there’s a moment of visitation and revival hits, we have confused revival with arrival. But revival is not arrival. Revival is just part of the cycle.

So if God poured out his Spirit this morning in a way where all of a sudden none of us could stand and we’re in here for the next six hours under just the glory being poured out — I knew a preacher that said you got to get under the spout where the glory pours out. Amen. And so God pours out his glory and none of us can move and we’re receiving from the Lord, and then we get up and go to the buffet when it’s done and act like nothing ever happened.

I don’t think that’s what we want. Because I’ve been in Jeremiah. I’ll throw pins, I don’t care. It is easy to prophesy favor, favor, favor, favor, favor, favor, favor. It sounds good, it preaches good, everybody likes it and everybody will be happy with you. But there is something that is possible in the Spirit. It’s called favor in the unfavorable. It doesn’t all have to be a Cinderella story, baby.

You won’t live in revival forever. It will come to an end. But if you will re-engage in the cycle, you’ll grow deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper in the Lord. Somebody say amen. Hallelujah.

17:29What to expect: salvations and the supernatural

So it’s a cycle. Here’s what you can expect in revival. This is something else that the Lord shared with me. The first thing you can expect in revival — if you’ve been in here for the last two months, you ought to know what I’m about to say — is souls. Salvation, salvation, salvation. Salvation. There will be people getting saved. They won’t be able to get here fast enough to give their life to the Lord.

That’s what happens when a visitation happens, when there’s a revival that breaks out, when the presence of the Lord hits the church in a unique and powerful way. Sinners will bum-rush the doors. And I can prove it to you, because in Acts chapter 2, starting in verse 1, it says, “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak” — hallelujah — “in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

And they’re in this room and the Holy Ghost pours out in such a way that there’s not even three people in the back row going, “I don’t get it.” Everybody got a touch from God in the room. Everybody. Everybody experienced the glory of God at Pentecost. And by the end of the chapter, Peter’s got his head reached out a window and he’s preaching, and with 120 people in the room, 3,000 people give their life to Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. You know what I like about them numbers? That means we could see 3,000 people get saved at any moment. Come on, somebody, give the Lord a shout right there. Whoo!

So it’s inevitable. When there’s outpouring, when there’s revival, when there’s visitation, it is inevitable that people will get saved. And yes, revival is a blessing to the saints, but my friends, hear me. I used to have a pastor who said this, he harped on it and it got in me: revival is more than goose pimples and doodads. Right? We need to see the power of God.

And along with people getting saved — which if we get nothing else, that’s a pretty good bargain right there, I’ll take it — if we get nothing else, there are supernatural results that occur in revival. And there’s typically these four things that happen when there is a visitation from heaven. Normally see these four things.

One is prophecy. We’ll see prophecy increase. We’ll see people receiving from the Lord in a way that they can articulate and share with other people. Prophecy and things in the prophetic realm: words of knowledge, words of wisdom, etc. Words of encouragement, I would say, go in there.

You’ll also see tongues. The baptism of the Holy Spirit will almost happen just naturally. I have a gift for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but I’ve never walked in the room and people just started getting it. So I’m expecting that in revival. Amen.

And healing. Supernatural healing, divine healing. This is one of our 16 core beliefs in the Assemblies of God, is that divine healing is for today. Healing is your portion. But healing goes to a whole nother level in revival.

And then there’s a fourth one. Now, those three are pretty normal. You can actually live a life where those three things are in occurrence on a regular basis. The fourth one happens uniquely in places where the presence of God pours out, at least in my observation, and that is people falling on the ground. This is the one people find to be the strangest, but it’s the one I kind of like the most. Amen. I enjoy it. I like it. This is the one that I — I always tell people that prophecy, tongues and healing are for other people, but when I go do services, the falling’s for me. Amen. That’s the Lord just saying, “Okay, you can enjoy it too.” Hallelujah.

And so people always ask, where’s it at in the Bible? The best Bible I can give you on this — and I can take you through several hypotheses on this — but 2 Chronicles chapter 5: the priests entered the temple to minister before the Lord, and the Bible says that the glory of the Lord fills the temple so that the priests are unable to stand. They are unable to stand. Now, what that means to me is that they fell down, because I’m pretty sure they didn’t crawl in there. At some point they were standing up, and the glory of God touched them in such a way that they could no longer stand. They hit the ground, and the Lord ministered in that room.

And so I’ll also tell you this. People treat falling — and I’m not going to just get people to fall. In fact, I always tell people, don’t fall if you’re not going to fall. Like, don’t give me no freebies in the altar. But if you’re going to fall, you know, just go with the Lord. Let’s see what happens, and stay down there for two minutes and see if the Lord does something.

But people often treat falling like it’s a modern invention in the Pentecostal church. Our roots on paper are only about 120 years old. And I’ll give people that — about 120 years ago people who were getting touched by the power of God went, “Hey, maybe we ought to write some of this down.” But if you go back about 500 years, if you look at people like John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, there are a lot of accounts of people under their ministry falling.

In fact, in John Wesley’s ministry, they said that people would crumble in the altars — that it would make... I’m sorry, not in the altars, in the aisles — that they would walk in and grown men would be made weak and they would fall and they would hit the ground under the power of God. So we’ve seen this throughout all of church history. Lots of documentation in the last 500 years. Prophecy, tongues, healing, falling.

23:25Two marks of the next move of God

The Lord also showed me two marks that would be evident in the next move of God. There would be two things that would be important. They would be pillars. They would be anchor points of the next move of God. One of them is a little obvious, and that is that preaching must be a priority. Preaching will be a priority in a move of God, the next move of God particularly. But in history, no revival has lasting substance unless there is strong preaching.

John Wesley famously said, “Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles around to watch you burn.” And when revival fires pour out in a church, when something gets lit up in the church, people will come from all over the place to see it. It will happen. But one of the groups of people that will be attracted are going to be lost people. That’s why you must constantly have the gospel preached around revivals. You must constantly have the gospel preached.

But also, you’re going to have believers flock to a move of God. Believers will hear God’s doing something. They’ll hop on a plane and they’ll head out to go be a part of it. And if people are going to engage, especially believers, in a unique environment where the presence of God is pouring out in a special way, then not only can you have revival, but you must have revelation. Revelation must pour forth in those environments, because revival, as we said earlier, it does not last forever. Revival is not arrival. But the word of God never withers. It never fades. It never fails. It never returns void. So whenever there’s revival, you must have strong preaching.

The second mark is this — and I need you all to give me some latitude as the pastor of the church here on this one. The second mark is that ministers are going to start laying their hands on people again. For about the last, I’d say 20 years — we have seen, maybe probably maybe 20 years ago, we saw a great exodus of pastors from the altar. And so now a lot of altar calls happen, they happen from up here, and they’re just observed. And you’ll get people down in the altars praying and pastors will kind of just observe what’s happening, and they won’t involve themselves with it.

Being a preacher, I can tell you there’s some good reasons for that. Looking at the church at large, I can tell you that there’s been a season that that was needed. We needed a season to step away, to come back into that. But it was in December of 2022, this was one of the first things the Lord showed me, is that if we were going to see God move in a powerful way, preachers were going to have to get back in the altars.

When I started traveling to preach, the key reason that I did it when I went back into going in — and let me just be honest with y’all what I did when I went back into having to go in and dealing with people. I didn’t have to on the internet. I shut that MacBook Pro and I was done for the day. Amen. But when I went back into having to be in the room, deal with people — what I wanted to do was show pastors how easy it is to navigate getting in the altar and praying for people. Because I’ve watched a lot of my peers be very afraid of it. They don’t know what to do with it. We did not have great models for what to do with it in the time that a lot of my friends came into ministry. But I started a little early and I saw some things that have helped me. And so the next great move of God’s going to be marked by pastors getting in the altars.

One of the reasons that pastors have gotten away from it — we talked about it the last two weeks. This was not intentional at all. It’s a happy accident, or as I like to call it, the anointing. But we’ve talked over the last couple of weeks about how there is a unique difference between believers who are in the marketplace and believers who are in the ministry. And we talked about a kings and priests paradigm in one week, and then we came back the next week and we talked about the priesthood of believers, how we are all a royal priesthood and so everyone is a minister. And both of these things being true, what that means is it’s not a problem to solve, but Lord, it is a tension to manage. It really is.

And so what pastors did is they pulled away from the altar because they said, “I’m going to let the priesthood of the believer operate in our churches.” And I watched pastors say, “If you need something this morning, someone standing near you, just lay their hand on you.” That’s all good and fine. But the next move of God will be marked by pastors stepping back into their apostolic authority and laying hands on people and seeing the supernatural power of God flow — not by accident, not off in a corner, but intentionally in their services. If you believe that, give the Lord a shout of praise. Amen.

28:59Where we are now

So where are we now? Where are we now in this timeframe of the Lord pouring out? I’ll be honest with you. When I say we look through a mirror darkly, that is the best way I can describe something like this. I resist every urge to chomp at anything that I see, because sometimes when you get something like this, every time the wind blows, you want to run after it to see if that’s the thing.

I remember after the revivals of the ‘90s had come to a close, we watched for two or three years that every time somebody sneezed in a service, 2,500 people showed up and they thought it was the next great move of God, and in six weeks they realized, well, we’ve just been doing long services for no reason. Right? I mean, that’s the truth. And so I try not to run after everything that I see.

But I will just tell you some things that are happening in our culture right now. In a recent Barna report — now, Barna does a lot of studies and statistics and... there’s another S word that I’m looking for here and it’s not coming to me. I can’t think of it. They do a lot of polls, surveys. Surveys, that was the word. I don’t know how polls got me there, but it did. Amen.

They do a lot of surveys that affect things that are happening in the church. In the last few years they’ve been surveying Gen Z. Gen Z right now is around the ages of like 14 to 28. So these are young professionals and those who are going to be young professionals within the next 10 years. Gen Z is the generation that will be running the world in the next 15 years. Okay? And as young as I look, I’m not one of them. Amen. When you laugh, it hurts me.

But they’ve been surveying Gen Z, and for the first time in American history we have seen something happen in Gen Z that we’ve never seen in any other — even from colonial America, we’ve never seen this happen before. And that is that Gen Z men — Gen Z, well, they aren’t all men, because they’re too young, so Gen Z boys and men, amen — right now are attending church more than Gen Z women. We’ve never seen this in American history. Women have always dominated religious attendance in our nation, and right now we see Gen Z men attending church more than the women.

And some media is reporting that the gender gap in Gen Z with church attendance is going to continue broadening, that we’re going to see that happen more and more and more, where men are leading the way in that. That is culturally unique in this time period. In fact, they said that from 2019 to 2025, Gen Z church attendance climbed 15 percentage points. From 2019 to 2025, Gen Z men have said, “I have got to get in the house of the Lord.” And I will tell you something about this generation that you can’t really see, is how much Christian content they took in on the internet before they ever made that decision. So they’re just taking in the word of God, and then eventually they say, “I’ve got to get in the house of the Lord.”

Additionally — and I try my best not to sensationalize anything. The Lord is so good and it is so easy and it is so normal for the believer. I don’t have to hype up the Lord before he moves into the room. You can receive very easily from the Lord. So I’m very careful about sensationalizing. I want you to know I’m very cautious about this. But the assassination of Charlie Kirk — we’re like super early in on this right now, and we don’t know what the full play culturally is going to be from his assassination. At the moment, it does not look like his death will be in vain. It looks like Charlie Kirk could be a lightning rod, could be a catalyst for the next great move of God.

Even people who disagree with him are taken aback by it — except the people you see on the internet. You got to stop looking at those people, they’re crazy. There’s a reason they’re showing up in your feed. Right? It’s because another 2 million people watched that reel and went, “What in the world is this person talking about?” That’s why it’s showing up. But even people who don’t agree, even people who are on the other side of the aisle, even people who are not born again, are looking at this moment in our current history — because this is history. You may not realize it, but you just lived through history. And they’re looking at it and they’re going, “That’s not right.” So something is wrong here. Something is not lining up.

And I believe his death might be a catalyst for the next great move of God, because some of the statistics we’re hearing back about people who have gone to church since then, people who have started reading the Bible since then, people who’ve engaged with online content about the faith since then, people who have made decisions to join his organization... And listen, I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t get into the political realm. His organization is obviously conservative, it’s Republican, that’s what he does. But let me tell you something, his organization’s also got a strong gospel vein. And they point people towards the church. They point people towards — in fact, that night that it happened, on Wednesday night, if you were here, one of the first things I said is we need to pray for preachers that Charlie Kirk was connected with, because they might not be safe. They don’t have Secret Service.

So there’s a strong faith vein in his organization. People have joined it in droves. It’s in the hundreds of thousands of people who have joined his organization right now. I just say those things to tell you that there’s something happening. There’s a shifting. There’s a stirring right now, more so than I have seen in the last few years.

When I received this word from the Lord, a revival broke out within weeks. And I think it’s great that some people went to Kentucky and sang some songs. I think that’s great. I don’t want to belittle it, but to some degree I have to, because we get so excited over the mildest stuff sometimes in the church. But in the last several months we have seen things happening in our nation. We have seen a stirring in the church. An entire generation has upset the cultural norm when it comes to the church. We have just seen someone who — for whatever reason that he was assassinated, for whatever reason, political martyr, religious martyr, however you want to — for whatever reason, it has somehow, somehow pointed people towards the cross. Something’s happening. Something’s happening.

36:36The eyes of the Lord: a prayer for revival

Second Chronicles chapter 16 says, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.” The eyes of the Lord are just searching throughout the earth. The eyes of the Lord are looking at churches and prayer meetings and private times with the Lord, and the Lord is looking constantly to and fro throughout the earth.

And I just believe that if we’ll commit ourselves to his word, to his presence... For the last several weeks I’ve been talking about this mission statement: we’re building a Jesus-centered, Spirit-filled church. I’ll probably talk about this again in a few weeks. But there was a day that the Sadducees come to Jesus and they challenge him with a question, and they said, “Well, how does this work, and this work, and this way?” And they start hitting him with some — trying to put him in a corner. And Jesus answers their question, and then he finally looks at him and he says, “You know why you guys struggle with this? Because you know neither the Scripture nor the power of God.”

We’re building a Jesus-centered, Spirit-filled church. Because if Jesus is the word made manifest and the anointing breaks the yoke, then we need Jesus. We need the word and we need his power. We need both.

And I believe if we’ll do those things and we’ll commit to those things — for all people, not for some people. But if we’ll say we’re going to open up the Scripture for all people, we’re going to create a place where all people can encounter the presence of the Lord — I think if we say we’re going to build... I’ve been saying a lot lately that build is the most important word in the whole thing right there. We’ll build. If we’ll just say we’re going to get busy about the work of the Lord — I think if we’ll do those things, if we’ll commit, the eyes of the Lord will search to and fro throughout the earth, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll catch his attention right here at Saraland Church. If you believe that, give the Lord a praise this morning. Hallelujah.

All across this place, why don’t you lift your hands to heaven? Heavenly Father, we ask you to move in this place today, God. Stir something in our hearts that prepares us for revival. Stir something in our hearts that prepares us for a move of God. Stir something in our hearts that says we’re not going to live under the status quo. We’re not going to live under the status quo of false promises from preachers we can’t trust and false promises from preferences that we cannot seem to let go of. But God, let us just fall in love with the authentic power of God.

Pour out your Spirit in this place. Do a work that only you can do. Father, we repent for every moment that we’ve taken for granted in your house and in your presence, that we treat it as casual and common. And Lord, we invite you today to do something in this church that maybe even from a leadership perspective, if we step back, we’d go, “Oh, it’s reckless to let that happen.” Well, why don’t we just let go and let you have your way? God, teach us the art of letting go. Teach us the art of letting you have permission to do what you want to do, in the way that you want to do it.

Holy Spirit, we invite you to mess up our paradigm, to mess up our expectations. Holy Spirit, we invite you to mess up the church if that’s what you want. But while you’re at it, pour your Spirit out in a powerful way. Let your power and your presence be evident in this place. Every time somebody walks in, let them sense that there’s something in the atmosphere that is different. We invite you. We invite you. We invite you. We submit and surrender to you, Holy Ghost.