Seeds of Revival

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): True revival is not an event. True revival is a journey that leads you up to the presence and power of God that is bigger than you are. On the next More Faith, More Life podcast, I'm going to tell you how to get on that path.

0:00:13 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I'm Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God's promises in their life. I've spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:38 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I'd done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn't good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and, and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That's what I want to share with you. In every episode, you'll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:13 – (Steve Gray): So if you're ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It's time to be and experience more.

0:01:25 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I'm Steve Gray, along with my wife Kathy. So glad you could be with us today. And we're going to talk about something very, very important. Revival roots. Yes, I've been written up in books as one of the revivals of the 90's and even in the 2000s, early, early parts. And so. So I've made history with being labeled a revival person who had multiple services. It was not.

0:01:54 – (Steve Gray): These services we're talking about were not like one in the spring and one in the fall. And it lasts a few days and then everybody goes back. These were, if you don't know us, these were services that were three and four and five days a week for three and a half years. So you think five days a week for three and a half years, packed and out. That's got to be packed out. That's got to be God. Not only would we not be able to do that, even want to do that, that many servants preach five times a week, but the people coming and packing it out five days a week, There has to be something. People don't normally go to church five days a week. They normally don't travel from New Zealand or Singapore or Europe or wherever, Canada, South America, whatever.

0:02:39 – (Steve Gray): Up to a little town in Missouri, spend all their own money, hotel, travel, and. And go to five services a week and say, oh, well, that was nice. That was just like my church. So it made history. So I'm a history maker in that. So I want to help people. Well, actually, this is not my idea. This is Kathy's idea. She wants to help talk about revival roots today. And how did I get to that point where in that year the power of God exploded in one you've heard, like in the twinkling of an eye.

0:03:10 – (Steve Gray): When it happened, it was like a blink of an eye. The events leading up to it were years. Yes, years.

0:03:16 – (Kathy Gray): Years in the making.

0:03:17 – (Steve Gray): And so I think that's what you're trying, Dave, to get the roots of how we got there.

0:03:21 – (Kathy Gray): That's right. I want to get the roots and I want to. What I have been feeling compelled to do with this series of our podcasts is to present your legacy because you have, by the grace of God, God has created in you and with your cooperation, such a legacy that's so rich in so studying, preaching the word of God, leading revivals, but leading a healthy, healthy church and all those things put together.

0:03:49 – (Kathy Gray): And I believe people need to know the whole legacy. And this is the roots of revival. And, you know, sometimes just one thing or one tape or one book can totally change someone's life.

0:04:03 – (Steve Gray): Do you think we could define revival a little bit first? You had one. You read me one definition. But what it's not. And we have a lot of great things happening in our country that some of them are called revival. Maybe they'll have great worship and teenagers and young people and young folks are jumping up and down and they're crying and they come to the altar and they cry out to God. And we call that revival. And it does show a sign of revival.

0:04:29 – (Steve Gray): But there's a thing of God. There's a God presence that is beyond our presence when I see him. Because what we've done, all those multiple services, it's not like having a weekend where a special worship leader comes to town or special preacher, even at a conference or whatever. It's not even a conference. That happens once a year. We have it at the stadium once a year. See you next year. That's not revival. Although some revive stuff happens.

0:04:56 – (Steve Gray): But revival is something that sweeps in and overtakes your life and comes where? In the Old Testament, revival was more like reform.

0:05:08 – (Kathy Gray): That's right.

0:05:09 – (Steve Gray): And we need the word of God, need to be reformed today. That's old New Testament was more just revival came and transformed. And over all the history revivals, you can see the people were absolutely overpowered. Not empowered, overpowered. They didn't get empowered and then walk out and go out to the mall or Walmart and start praying for people. That's great, but that's not the history of revival, which is what you want to talk about today.

0:05:39 – (Steve Gray): Revival is when people start loving God more than they love anything else. Their affections, their love, their attention, their loyalty. Everything centers around Jesus. Everything.

0:05:51 – (Kathy Gray): That's right. Well, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit. So this is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our day and age upon groups of people. And this is what we experienced in our lives. And when the Holy Spirit comes in, he's called the Spirit of life and resurrection. He's the creator, but he's also a restorer. And so my favorite definition, I think maybe I made it up, but probably not, is revival is vigorous life coming back to the half dead.

0:06:23 – (Kathy Gray): And it's the people, it's the believers who. The life's been sucked out of them. The worldliness has crept back in. They're far from their first love and they just don't. They have the same lack of everything in their lives as the people of.

0:06:39 – (Steve Gray): The world, which is what we have today.

0:06:41 – (Kathy Gray): Which is what we have today. And this is why we're crying out for revival. And like you said, it's not. And I'm so thankful that sweeping across our nation and the world now, there's a movement of the younger generation. They are packing stadiums and they are being saved. They are being born again.

0:07:03 – (Steve Gray): So how do you define that when we have a salvation type movement? How do you brand that?

0:07:12 – (Kathy Gray): Well, I wouldn't. I don't like the word evangelistic. I think it is overused.

0:07:17 – (Steve Gray): I like to call it what others called in history a great awakening. Yes, people are waking up to Jesus.

0:07:23 – (Kathy Gray): They're waking up.

0:07:24 – (Steve Gray): But then we have people that are already woke up to Jesus and they've fallen back asleep. Because the Bible warns us, don't fall asleep, stay awake, stay alert. And that's where we become spiritually half dead, which I like to use the parable of the man on the road got beat up. And the Good Samaritan comes and he says that he was half dead. He wasn't completely dead, he was half dead, but he still needed to be bandaged up. And we've got millions half dead in churches and so that's revival. When the people that know God can't seem to get it, but suddenly they come alive by the power of the Holy Spirit and it flows out to an even greater great awakening. Even though there are some signs of great awakening.

0:08:04 – (Kathy Gray): That's exactly so.

0:08:04 – (Steve Gray): Again, let me just capture and then we'll get there. So after many years of journey, what looked like just a twinkling of an eye, I walked into our church. I was struck with what others say like. And I say it felt like lightning bolts from heaven. Never happened in my life before. I didn't have lightning bolt stories. This was it and it changed me forever. I became a different person in front of other people.

0:08:29 – (Kathy Gray): Right in front of your eyes.

0:08:31 – (Steve Gray): Yes. And it was so changed that I went from an obscure country preacher to national and international. I wouldn't say fame, but ministry. I traveled the world, five services a week in our church and then we went other churches all over the world. And that was for three and a half weeks.

0:08:46 – (Kathy Gray): That was amazing. We had to be revived.

0:08:48 – (Steve Gray): Yes. And people showed up in the country every week and packed the place out. Newsweek came, Time magazine came, all kind of newspapers, news, news, news came. That's not the same as having a weekend stadium gathering where it's good. But this swept into what, where people came from all over the world to that. Then in 2008, it happened again. And then it was broadcast in 200 countries every week. And we went all over. And 1,000 people would pack into our church every well four times a week for three. Another almost well, three and a half years. Another three and a half years.

0:09:31 – (Steve Gray): And I preached all those. And people came from all over the world and stood in line to get in the building every four services a week, I guess four days a week. That's different than just having better services. But we want better services and we're happy what's happening. Like we said, it can go in increments, it can go in steps. But let's not say this is revival when it is either an awakening or it's just we are growing in our hunger, we're growing in our seeking.

0:10:01 – (Steve Gray): But the glory of God, that has come down in historical revivals that swept the people completely up to. People from all over the world would come to a place to be touched by God. We're not there.

0:10:14 – (Kathy Gray): No, we're not there.

0:10:14 – (Steve Gray): And let's hope we get there.

0:10:16 – (Kathy Gray): I'm working as hard as I can on our church and the people that I can touch to get that hunger, get a hunger and a dust so.

0:10:25 – (Steve Gray): Let's back up now because it seemed like it happened in a twinkling of an eye. But it goes, yes, let's go way.

0:10:30 – (Kathy Gray): Back, years and years ago to our Jubilation Ministries bus traveling ministry days. And we would go from church to church all around the nation and minister about three services or four at a church, then get on our Greyhound bus, pack up our equipment and drive to another state, another city, another, another church. But we were in one state. And I want to. I want you to tell the story of how someone came running out to our bus.

0:10:58 – (Steve Gray): You're telling the story?

0:10:59 – (Kathy Gray): No, I'm setting it up. Someone came.

0:11:03 – (Steve Gray): Someone came running, running out to our bus

0:11:05 – (Kathy Gray): and knocked on the bus door and it stopped.

0:11:08 – (Steve Gray): Okay, well, I. I wanted to say. That's okay.

0:11:12 – (Kathy Gray): He gives me that look.

0:11:13 – (Steve Gray): So. Well, I mean, you tell me to tell the story and then you're telling the story. That is the story. Setting up the story.

0:11:19 – (Kathy Gray): That is just a tiny portion.

0:11:21 – (Steve Gray): We're all set up now. I want to say this, though. I was a dedicated person walking by faith. I didn't waver. And ministering all over the country in a Greyhound bus, okay. And it was good and I was doing the best I could, but I could not get to anything else than really just doing what I knew to do. Teaching, singing what I knew to sing, teaching what I knew to teach. All good stuff, but it did not have the content.

0:11:54 – (Steve Gray): I wasn't in the containing atmosphere of the glory and presence of God. That was bigger than me, bigger than life, bigger than I can. And I didn't even know you could, really. I don't think so. You're right. We were in Omaha, Nebraska, at a church, and we were driving away and a man came running a big parking lot as fast as he could and pounded on the door while we're actually moving. We stopped and he said, you've got to have these. And you want me to name who they were? I guess, because might as well. I've talked to him on the phone, giving him credit.

0:12:25 – (Steve Gray): And so they said, you have to hear these. I said, what are they? He said, a man named Winkie Pratney came to our church and taught on revival. There were ten tapes or whatever. I didn't know what it was, but we put it in and I started listening as we went down the road to Michigan. And I listened all the way through all the tapes, listened again day and night, listened again, listened again. And I heard names I'd never heard before.

0:12:48 – (Steve Gray): Jonathan Edwards and Finney and all the great revivals. And they described what happened? Cane Ridge Revival. What did it look like? What did it feel like? What did the people do? How did they respond? And it would. And I realized these people were being swept away into something. Like I told we've said before, the Cane Ridge Revival, they described it like somebody had mowed them down, like with a machine gun.

0:13:11 – (Steve Gray): And then it would just sweep in. And there was a loss of everything, who I am into the glory and presence of God. And the more I did it, the more I realized this is something we need. And then it sparked, bang. This is something that's going to come. And from that point on, I began to search and pray and preach and desire went back. We ended up leaving our traveling ministry for that reason, that very reason of those tapes. We left travel. And I said, revival is going to start coming to local churches. At the time, at that time, we had big services down here in Kansas City. We didn't live in Kansas City then, but close enough where you could go down to Municipal Auditorium or the other stadium that's out there. I can't see Kemper and Kaufman and all those.

0:14:03 – (Steve Gray): And they would have these huge meetings of famous people, and they were great. And they'd pack them out and busloads of people would come from all over to hear these people speak. But then they would go back to their local church and nothing. So you had to go to these special events and get kind of fueled. And that's not real. The reality is we need to walk with God to where we don't need. We love special events, but we don't have to have them to keep moving forward. So anyway, that's what was happening.

0:14:30 – (Steve Gray): Now all of a sudden I said, local church. We don't have a local church that we go to all the time because we were on the road all the time. And so that was our journey. We let. We went off the road, started seeking God. And that's when the journey of becoming pastors, you said, maybe God wants to be a pastor. And remember, I said, oh, no, not that I don't want to be that, but that's where we were going.

0:14:51 – (Steve Gray): And that's where we got offered a church in Chicago, a good church, loved the people, they loved us. We had a great time there. Every time we went and they offered us a position, both of us, positions in their church. Great opportunity. We found a house. We hadn't bought it, but we found it and picked it out. And we're getting ready to move to when they picked. Then we saw this little country church, came and Said, would you take this country church, no people, no money, no nothing, no future in a town of 532 people. I thought, you got to be out of your mind.

0:15:21 – (Steve Gray): I have this big church in Chicago waiting for me. But when I asked God what he would do with that, a church closed for four years. Zero. Nothing. And I heard the voice of Jesus say, I'll tell you what I would do. I would raise the dead. And I thought, there you go. What am I going to do? Am I going to go with Jesus and try to raise the dead of nothing in a town of 532 people believing for revival? Or am I going to go where I can just fit in? I got a good paycheck, and I felt like I was going to the kitchen with Martha or at the feet of Jesus.

0:15:55 – (Steve Gray): No, nothing. We had zero, but that's what we did. And I began when I first started then, to say, revival's coming. And I began to speak it and say, I want you to imagine. You've got to imagine that old church that bowed like this. And the old pews. Now it got better and we fixed it up, but at the beginning stages, it was old and stinky, right? But me standing there on that little platform in that little town and saying, revival's coming.

0:16:25 – (Steve Gray): Imagine people lined up just to get in this building. Not because of me, not because of you, but because the glory of God is in this place. And I preached it and I preach it and I read out of books and things about revival stories and certain. And then 10 years later, it actually took 12 years before the event took. So imagine staying in a town of 532 people, which doesn't have a lot of future. Just trying to survive and preach and do good things and learn, learn, grow, be thankful.

0:16:59 – (Steve Gray): It was like being in the wilderness, like John the Baptist. I'm not. I'm not. I'm eating locusts while everybody else is eating gourmet, you know, in Chicago, you know. But I preached that. And 10 years later, I saw the sparks of revival starting to happen in churches around our country. And so we went back and said, it's beginning, and started a prayer meeting on Tuesday night. And all we did was pray for revival.

0:17:28 – (Steve Gray): Reformation. Yeah, reform, renewal, the glory of God, the power of God, the presence of God. Over and over, all we sang about was the presence and glory come that night after night. And that was for two years, wasn't it? For two years, yeah, for two full years. Tuesday night became our most powerful service. And then now I pastored in this little town, but preaching it, saying it, not living it. I didn't know what it was. I mean, I read about it, but personally, I never experienced it.

0:18:02 – (Steve Gray): And I would go to the church and pray and put my head down and play worship music. It was okay. But I got nowhere. And little did I know that if you seek enough and you'll find and that there is a power that is greater than anything I'd experienced, that's out. Could we say it's out of this world because it's from another world. The other world, the heavenly kingdom world,  invaded my world. And there were about 150 people there that night in the country church. It was a Sunday night, you know, and that was a pretty good crowd.

0:18:38 – (Steve Gray): And they all saw what happened to me, and I leaped into the air like I'd been struck by lightning. And people would like that to happen to them. But are they willing to give 12 years or more, really 12 years to get one event? And then when you get the one event, are you willing to pay the price to incorporate the event? Because all of a sudden, if we take this and do something with it, it's going to be costly. It's not like, wow, let me write a book about this, or go on TV and tell people about it.

0:19:07 – (Steve Gray): Wow. No, God. Well, it happened in church. We're going to come back tomorrow night and find out what. I didn't call it revival. I didn't know what it was. I should have known. I preached it enough. But I said, I don't know what this is. I'm coming back the next night to see what it is. And next night and next. And pretty soon a week went by, then another week went by, then another week went by. And by the eighth week, we moved into our gymnasium. And then a television program asked us to come and tell about what is going on.

0:19:32 – (Steve Gray): And people started coming. What is going on in this small town where people are having church five services a week? And so it grew and grew and grew until it went from local and national and international and then made history. And you can read about it in books and places like that. And so getting Understanding Revival. It's a book called Revival by Winky Pratt. And he has two of them, if you can find one with a black cover, that's my favorite.

0:19:58 – (Steve Gray): But I went back and read like Charles Finney. I learned from him and Jonathan Edwards. I think I got the right guy. He said, revival is a spontaneous, sovereign work of God. And it gives you the feeling like, okay, well, I just need to stand here with my hands in the air. Then and eventually it'll happen. People do that all the time, and they don't get it because they don't know this is a cooperative thing. We play a part in revival, too.

0:20:30 – (Steve Gray): Charles Finney said the opposite, in a way. He said, no, what you do is you incorporate anything. Everything that you can do is. Any measure you can do. You do it, do it, do it with all available, all hands on deck, whatever you've got available, and you pursue and push that forward. Now, if you put those two fellows together, you get a sovereign move of God that is bigger than you are, while you are doing all that you can do to pursue God, to incorporate the things you know about God and do it. Now you've got this cooperative thing. And that's what I did. And we did.

0:21:07 – (Steve Gray): And it worked twice and may work again. Who knows what's in our future? But those two things helped me a lot because a lot of people are afraid that if it's really God, you don't touch it and you don't get involved. And then others, they think, well, if I just get a good program and we get the right speaker and the right music and we get the right dancers and flag wavers, you know, we'll have revival. And that doesn't work either. You have to combine, like, you throw yourself into it every means possible. I think that's what he said. Use every means possible so that you can get a sovereign bigger than life heavenly visitation and habitation that overtook our lives in our church.

0:21:49 – (Steve Gray): And like I said, they came from everywhere. And, you know, just if. If a person could get Time magazine or. Or Newsweek magazine, if a pastor to their church to report on them in the easter edition of 1999, I think it was. Wouldn't they do it if you could do it by every means possible? So, yeah, that'd be great. But this I couldn't get. How can I get Newsweek magazine to come to a town of 532 people? Just hear me.

0:22:18 – (Steve Gray): You know, it's impossible. I mean, everybody would do it if you could do it. So this is what God did, and he launched it. But those steps leading there were costly. A little bit. A little costly. Like just us believing that kids could worship God and not have to color in church. That's costly when you have parents that don't want to teach their kids, they just want them to color. But we did, and we fought that, and we got kids that were ready. So when revival came, it was a revival of children.

0:22:48 – (Steve Gray): Imagine that. You know, there's a story, Kathy, of A oh gosh, I forgot what year it's in. It's pioneer type days when they had the Little House on the Prairie type, whatever year that was. And they had churches out there in the country and they'd been praying and you could pray in school then. And families have been praying and one day the Holy Spirit moved on that school and the students one by one would just get up and go outside and start praying and crying out to God, and crying out to God. Some of them would come back in, some of them went out and then more went out and they had a schoolhouse revival right there.

0:23:29 – (Steve Gray): And remember they were already believers. So you can count out and say, well, you know, I'm already a believer. I got everything there is and that and be living half dead. And yet I knew there was more. And reading those books, that's what you really want me to say too. Books and listening to revival and trusting that there's more. So I'm going to read about people who got more. I'm going to listen to tapes in that case more or people like us that there's more can create a hunger in people where they begin to pursue more.

0:24:02 – (Steve Gray): And our church, Revive Church in Kansas City I like to call it, it's a church for those who want more. If you're satisfied and you just, you know, you just want to go to church and sing a few songs and know that you're going to go to heaven when you die, then I might not be the guy for you. I'd like to be, but I might not be. But if you're hungry and listening right now and you want more, you need to do what I did.

0:24:23 – (Steve Gray): You need to read people who have been there even though they're not alive, but you can read about them, read books on the accounts of revival, what were they like? And realize when you go to your church, and this is just my opinion, chances are when you go to your church and then you read about the revivals, none of the things that happened in those great revivals are happening in your church now. That's probably 100% statement.

0:24:47 – (Steve Gray): Our church has experienced it and we are seeing more upgrade. An upsurge of God's power in our churches now where we're getting there sort of again. But the standard is they're going to go to church for an hour, get a 20 minute sermon, 15 minute worship, 20 minute sermon, do the offering and then you're going to leave. And it was inspiring. It's good and you're being a good person to go, you should go to church, right?

0:25:09 – (Steve Gray): But when you read revival encounters like Winkie Pratney's revival book or anybody's revival book that really shares what a real revival is… sometimes, Kathy, I see books on revival and I can tell you're writing on revival that you've never been to. You never came and visited us. You were alive when Newsweek and Time visited us and made the reports and newspapers, Wall Street Journal and Dallas papers, and of course, St. Louis and Kansas City papers and San Francisco Chronicle did a huge big page story, two, several page story on us.

0:25:44 – (Steve Gray): And the news was spreading. You could have come, you know, but they didn't. And so then they say, and then they write a book on revival. Well, you didn't. You've never been in one. You've been in good services, and you're projecting what you think it is, but you've never experienced it for yourself. So read the people that have. And I'm not talking about me necessarily, but read the people that have really been there.

0:26:11 – (Steve Gray): I should say, though, there's a book called when the Kingdom comes on SteveGreyMinistries.com and the sermons. It tells the story of Smithton and how it happened. But then it has lessons that we learned as the preaching that changed our lives and the word of God was each service, the worship was out over the top. You could hear people singing. Remember that? Five miles away, you could hear them singing.

0:26:37 – (Steve Gray): You could be five miles away in the country and I hear people singing and worshiping. And worship would go an hour, hour and a half, 45 minutes. It just depended. So that's what you're. That's the legacy, is walking this out to where I said, there's more and I don't have it and I want it. How do I get it? And the journey began until we didn't. We don't know. Next, I'm still walking that journey out.

0:27:04 – (Steve Gray): Did I cover enough?

0:27:06 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, you did.

0:27:07 – (Steve Gray): Is there anything coming up that you think and hopefully created a hunger that there's people listening, say, I want that. At least that hunger. I want to pursue God. I want to get. I want to be struck like. And I get it like Paul on the road to Damascus. It was like lightning and thunder struck him and knocked him down, right? And I love that story, but I never thought that it's real for anybody else. But it happened to me.

0:27:37 – (Steve Gray): Then I understood how Paul went from a persecutor to a preacher so quickly. And it changed. And I got changed. Suddenly my preaching changed. And suddenly people wanted to hear me preach and sing, sing and preach, didn't they? And they wanted me to sing. Please sing. And one service we went to where we thought it was long enough. Maybe. Maybe we'd just been so good. It was a conference. Maybe we don't need to. Let's just close it out.

0:28:03 – (Steve Gray): People's no, no. We want to hear from the word of God. That's amazing. So I hope that helped people and create a hunger and that this legacy that it was a journey that I went on. There's so many stories. Then after that, well before that and after that, visits and angelic visits and power. But the main thing is revival. I love God more than I ever have in my life. I'm going to serve him. I'm loyal to him. I'm never going to change my mind.

0:28:29 – (Steve Gray): And if I find anybody that loves Jesus more than I do, I'm going to find out who are they and what are you doing that you love God more than I do? I want to know that person. So I hope you got it. Please follow, subscribe, tell your friends, Go to our website https://stevegrayministries.com and see what products we have there. Until next time, Bye bye.