Faith Builds The Fire

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Not everybody, but a lot of people are talking the word revival now, but most of them are standing at their churches with their hands up in the air, hoping that something falls out of the sky. It doesn’t work that way. I’m going to teach you on the next podcast of More Faith, More Life, how to get the fire of God to come down and what you need to be doing in your church right now.

0:00:20 – (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, non-profit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:45 – (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 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.

0:01:19 – (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.

0:01:31 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I’m Steve Gray, here’s my wife Kathy. We love getting together with you and talking about the great things of God. We hope we bring out things that you’re not here in every place else. Yes. You know, when we. Kathy, when we. We’re going to talk about our legacy today. And when we started a church, the church, our first church, after we traveled on the road, you know, I start asking, I think I asked God and God asked me too, why do we need another church? Even in a town of 532 people, they already had two churches. And this was the third that had been closed for four years. You know, we told that story and we’ll probably tell it today, but why do we need another church? What do we do? And I thought if we’re going to do another church, then it needs to be different than those churches. Cause there’s no reason to have the Methodists going and the Baptist going and they’re Paying two pastors, they’re trying to pay for two buildings, they’re trying to keep two programs going.

0:02:25 – (Steve Gray): If there wasn’t anything different, a few theological differences, but then they had the community church or whatever. No, it was disciple. No, it was Christian church. Just called Christian Church before we got it. And they had their way of doing it, but they were also same nothing. There was no noise coming out of them at all.

0:02:43 – (Kathy Gray): Sure.

0:02:43 – (Steve Gray): Okay. So what are we going to talk about today, Kathy?

0:02:45 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, well, I want to cover, I think last week, I think we talked about getting the church building and starting, you know, and how we grew it. But I want you to share how you laid a foundation for the. For revival to come 12 years later. Because some people think, oh, it just fell down on us. You know, Steve Gray was really lucky, you know, Revival just fell down on him and those people, you know, and that is not what happened. It was a 12 year process where you were not only laying the foundation in your own character. And as we shared, you know, you were like Mary at the feet of Jesus instead of Martha, running all over the United States and doing that.

0:03:29 – (Kathy Gray): But you spent that time building your character and learning God. But that’s also what you did for our congregation. And so I thought in this podcast we could share. You could talk about some of the different things that you put in to the people so that then they were able, 12 years later, to accommodate a move of God. Okay, so you want me to do that? You want me to ask you about it?

0:03:55 – (Steve Gray): Some of this stuff I can take off right now.

0:03:58 – (Kathy Gray): Well, you go ahead.

0:03:59 – (Steve Gray): Well, some things came to my mind.

0:04:02 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

0:04:03 – (Steve Gray): Just for everybody’s backup, for everybody knows. You mentioned revival 12 years later, that when we opened the church, which had been closed for four years in a town of 532 people, not in the church, in the town, and nobody in the church. Nobody. No money, no nothing. And we turned down, great, a great church in Chicago to do this. Well, I started preaching, though, in that town when we had no people, a handful, that revival’s coming. Or imagine. I used the word imagine at first because I didn’t say. I didn’t want to say it’s coming, but my faith said something’s coming somewhere, not necessarily where we were, but imagine people lined up to get in this building.

0:04:42 – (Steve Gray): Now it’s a country church that kind of looks like what you see on postcards with snow on the ground, you know, and there’s the church on the hill and it’s white.

0:04:50 – (Kathy Gray): It was cute.

0:04:51 – (Steve Gray): White little country church. It kind of looked like that. Later we added a gymnasium, which we needed for the revival. But anyway. And I began to say, imagine people lined up to get in this place. That was fantastic talk. And it was faith talk, but it was also preparation talk. So even John the Baptist knew his mission was he was not Jesus. I’m not Jesus. I want to have a Jesus thing. And John says, prepare the way.

0:05:20 – (Steve Gray): You got to prepare the way for the Lord. And, you know, back then, they would. They would prepare the way for kings. That meant kings would come in. They did that for Jesus. We call it Palm Sunday. When they laid down their cloaks and coats and palm branches, that was preparing the way to enter as a king. Well, they would do that for kings or warrior coming. And they, you know, they. They’d clean up, they’d make a path, they’d get the rocks out.

0:05:44 – (Steve Gray): They make a highway for God or a highway for the king or a highway for the warrior. And so that’s what John the Baptist said. Even he knew, as powerful as Jesus is, there needs to be preparation. And so I knew that. So I didn’t know. I didn’t know for sure what I was saying was going to happen. I believed it by faith. And if faith is sure, then I was sure by faith.

0:06:06 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:06:07 – (Steve Gray): Okay. But anyway, so I began to prepare the way. And I knew I had to do it piece by piece. One of the things that I know that pastors. We’ve been all over the world talking about revival and pastors wanting to know, how, when, how do I do this? I want revival at my church. I want what happened at that church, your church, to happen in my church. And they are making big mistakes. And one of the big mistakes they’re making today, even if they talk about revival, is they have too many programs, too many things.

0:06:40 – (Steve Gray): Most churches want to be everything to everybody and have everything. But when we started the church, I made a decision. We’re just going to have church. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have the money to have or we didn’t have the resources to have all that everybody else has. And maybe we’re just too small in a small town, but nevertheless, we circled the wagons around church. We’re going to learn to make church.

0:07:02 – (Steve Gray): Just like in the olden days when they had revivals or they had moves of God. Before they had all the electronics and before they had all the programs, people went to church. And so I focused on, we’re going to have church three times a week, and it’s going to be church. We did Break out and start a children’s ministry, too. But that was really difficult. We got a lot that was preparation because, you know, if we’re going to have revival in 12 years and you got kids that are 8 years old, you know, or 10 years old, they’re going to be 22 years old when the revival breaks out. Well, they’re going to have to be a part of this.

0:07:40 – (Steve Gray): They need preparation, too. And so we started a children’s program with the idea, as you’ve said and others, that there is no Junior Holy Spirit. The kids can experience God just like we can, maybe on their level, but it is an experience to experience God. We taught them to honor God. Put the toys away. You don’t bring toys to church. Well, who in their right mind would have done that when entertainment. No, you go to church. We’re here to go to church. And we started that.

0:08:09 – (Steve Gray): Got a lot of kickback. Not from the kids. Kids loved it. Parents thought, you can’t do. We can’t. You can’t sit, don’t. You can’t expect my kids to go to children’s churches, they call it, you know, whatever, and then raise their hands and worship God. You have to, you know. But that’s what we did.

0:08:23 – (Kathy Gray): And, you know, I have an elementary education degree, and I am still such a teacher in my heart that I want people to have a foundation of understanding the principles. And so I actually am the one who gathered a couple of people that I knew there was a mantle on them to be raised up to teach the kids. And I remember going and sitting in their little kitchen, and their house is right by the railroad tracks in that little town.

0:08:52 – (Kathy Gray): And we would sit together and I would pour into them the principles of teaching children and believing for children. And then we wrote up curriculum and we called them word warriors and other things like that. And because I wanted to have the attitude from the beginning, we’re raising up an army of kids who know how to preach and teach and fight back and gain battles for the Lord. And I really could feel that pushback in the spirit realm because the enemy does not want us to raise up our kids.

0:09:27 – (Kathy Gray): So that became a powerful foundation.

0:09:30 – (Steve Gray): Now, once we got past the parents rising up and spirits rising up, they started really liking it. Parents liked it. And I don’t know of anything that even today in our church, you can go to our church and you’ll see all kinds of kids up front. They come up to worship and they do. They sing every song as best they can, as best they can read and do it, they raise their hands, they jump up and down, sometimes they bow on the floor.

0:09:58 – (Kathy Gray): I have a number of them. On our Friday night fire service where we worship God and we pray and, and they, we pray real hard and push for big specific things. There’s more and more kids coming. I mean, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year olds coming and being equipped and they’re, you know, some of them have more strength and faith coming out of them than some big people.

0:10:24 – (Steve Gray): And when we do our prayer services on Friday night, the people, most everybody stands, comes up to the front and stands. You can sit if you want to, but there’s only 10 people maybe to do that, or maybe they have a baby or something with them. But those kids come and they stand up the whole time, the whole prayer service. They don’t give you any indication that they wish they were someplace else so it can be done. So we did that.

0:10:44 – (Steve Gray): And that was part of the preparation is prepare the next generation and get rid of the toys. It’s church. It’s time for God. And that changed the lives and the attitude of a lot of people. That was one of the first rounds of that learning to honor God as a family. So I taught that how to honor God and realize that if you standing, you got three or four kids and looking, and they look like they’re about half asleep or they’re playing on their phone or whatever, that doesn’t honor God.

0:11:14 – (Steve Gray): And that doesn’t cost me anything. That your kids or your family or your wife or your husband don’t have any honor for God. That doesn’t cost me anything. But it does cost you. Honor the Lord with all kinds, honor the Lord with your wealth, honor the Lord with your praise. All the things. But anyway, so I established that.

0:11:32 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, you do.

0:11:32 – (Steve Gray): I think though, one of the biggest things that was not even back then. And should I say the year that we opened the doors? Because we got a lot of years. We’re talking about 12 years. Well, we opened the doors in 1984.

0:11:44 – (Kathy Gray): Exactly.

0:11:45 – (Steve Gray): And then 12 years later is when a revival broke out that touched the nations and the whole world came.

0:11:50 – (Kathy Gray): Right.

0:11:50 – (Steve Gray): They came from all over the world for three and a half years, five services a week. Okay, but how do you do that?

0:11:56 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:11:57 – (Steve Gray): Without preparation.

0:11:58 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:11:58 – (Steve Gray): So the one, the one thing is I was able to lay into these people and I hope I still do today. It’s harder today, by the way, to do this, but that was commitment. Absolutely commitment. When you say love God with all your heart, you have to Mean it and believe it and do it, and then seek the kingdom of God first. And first means first and always have a first love, which Jesus talked about in revelation that you need to return to your first love.

0:12:24 – (Steve Gray): So I put the word first in their lives and I put commitment into their lives. And they began to see the fruit of it. They began to be the happiest they’d ever been with commitment. And that’s. Jesus knows what it’ll do for you, but we don’t know it today. It’s harder today. Commitment is all time low. That’s why we have so many divorces, whether they be Christian divorces or just regular.

0:12:47 – (Kathy Gray): Well, there’s so many options, too. A lot more options now than living back in 1984 in a town of 532 where there was no Internet. We lived there when finally Internet came on the scene, and I remember, like, what is this?

0:13:01 – (Steve Gray): What is this?

0:13:02 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:13:02 – (Steve Gray): Well, today people can be a lot more independent because they can work and then they have their phone, they can talk to AI if they want to, they can chat, they can go home and be. Have no partner, no kids, no anybody, and just be independent. But they’ve got the whole world in their hands or on their TV screen or whatever, or on their computer, so they don’t feel alone. And they have people they can converse with, but they really are alone.

0:13:28 – (Steve Gray): And so the word commitment is hard, but it still works. And so I try to have a committed church.

0:13:36 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, you did.

0:13:36 – (Steve Gray): But in this culture, I mean, even today, this culture, it’s harder. But we do have people that come three times a week to our church, Revive Church in Kansas City. But then we have some that we at least got them committed to come every Sunday. They come every Sunday. And in our culture today, I had to say, I’ll take it if that’s all I can get. But I’m sure we have people that drop in, but nobody knows who they are because they’re not in the system.

0:14:03 – (Steve Gray): They just drop in. But anyway, so I taught a commitment. You reminded me a few minutes ago of a story of.

0:14:09 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, my!

0:14:10 – (Steve Gray): You want to tell it?

0:14:11 – (Kathy Gray): Well, sure, I’ll kind of start it and then you can finish it. You were teaching that principle and everyone was getting it. We’re several years into this experience of church. And then a young man who had potential came, started attending, and he almost immediately had kind of a different attitude and spirit. He was a little bit of a.

0:14:32 – (Steve Gray): Spiritual, Know it all, except you left out 1. You’re leaving out part of it that’s major.

0:14:37 – (Kathy Gray): What?

0:14:38 – (Steve Gray): At first he went for it.

0:14:40 – (Kathy Gray): Yes. Yeah, I was saying that.

0:14:42 – (Steve Gray): Do you remember why he questioned it?

0:14:44 – (Kathy Gray): Well, of course he finally questioned it because he did not like. No, but what was it?

0:14:51 – (Steve Gray): It was first.

0:14:51 – (Kathy Gray): Wait a minute.

0:14:52 – (Steve Gray): A mutual friend who was in the ministry, a traveling minister. And I met him and he was a friend and I didn’t know when he came. This other guy came to church. They were good friends in high school. Well, now that this guy’s a Christian and that guy’s a Christian and one’s in the ministry and he’s in our church, they started fellowshipping together and getting together and it was that guy in the full time ministry that said you don’t have to go to church three times a week, you don’t have to go, just go and if you feel like staying home. And well.

0:15:21 – (Steve Gray): And you know what happened to that guy? First of all, he got divorced. Then he got divorced again. Then he died.

0:15:27 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:15:27 – (Steve Gray): Quick.

0:15:28 – (Kathy Gray): And he was prematurely died.

0:15:31 – (Steve Gray): I don’t think he made it even to be 40 years old. If he was 40. I don’t remember what he died of. But he was promoting that. Okay then. And that’s when he started. But he started believing it and letting down and disappearing.

0:15:43 – (Kathy Gray): That leaven kept being thrown on him.

0:15:44 – (Steve Gray): Got it. So what happened? Yuck.

0:15:46 – (Kathy Gray): Well, so then he got. He started pushing against our attitude and specifically against you and murmuring and complaining and popping among all the people too. That’s really naughty. And you know, it was. Was really bad. And he started changing and you could see he wasn’t. He didn’t have any joy anymore.

0:16:07 – (Steve Gray): And then what happened?

0:16:08 – (Kathy Gray): And then he left and he started a church on his own.

0:16:14 – (Steve Gray): And I didn’t hear from him again for 10 years.

0:16:16 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:16:17 – (Steve Gray): And then 10 years later I heard.

0:16:19 – (Kathy Gray): Back from him, showed up and I think he might have written you a letter.

0:16:22 – (Steve Gray): He did. He wrote me a letter.

0:16:23 – (Kathy Gray): An official apology.

0:16:25 – (Steve Gray): Yes.

0:16:25 – (Kathy Gray): Didn’t he. Why did he apologize to you?

0:16:27 – (Steve Gray): Well, now that he was in the full time ministry and he’s trying to pastor, he wants a church that like he saw there. And he apologized and he said I now I know what you meant and what you were doing. I understand now that I’m a pastor. And he said, and I tell everybody I meet that I learned commitment from Steve Gray. He taught me what commitment was. And then he’s doing it and then now he. And he went on. He was, you know, he was.

0:16:55 – (Steve Gray): He did. Well, yeah, but it was that. That was the other guy, that traveling ministry that. Yeah. Put the hook in his jaw and pulled on him. And they were good friends. And so he started believing you don’t have to go to church that much.

0:17:06 – (Kathy Gray): Can you believe that a full time minister would say that to anybody?

0:17:11 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, because when he went, he traveled from church to church. I’m assuming he liked people to show up when he was there.

0:17:17 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:17:17 – (Steve Gray): And then I guess when he’s not there, it’s not important. But anyway, he is no more.

0:17:21 – (Kathy Gray): So anyway, I forgot about that fruit of that life.

0:17:24 – (Steve Gray): That’s really sad. He was talented, but. Yep. I don’t know where he got wayward. He was wayward.

0:17:30 – (Kathy Gray): Well, I got that spirit of the world.

0:17:31 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And so, and so those are, I think when you prepare the way like you said. So today we have pastors that they know we need revival or something. Not all of them are preaching feel good messages. They’re trying to push, but they can’t get the people to grab it because they’re not preparing the way sermons. They’re not preaching commitment, loyalty, generosity, dying to self, which is another subject people probably don’t understand.

0:18:03 – (Steve Gray): But when I say it, you don’t disagree with it. You might not understand how big it is and how it really works in your favor to learn how to die. Pick up your cross and follow him and die to yourself. Lay down your life, all those things, but that doesn’t matter. I know you know that people know the phrase. But anyway, dying to yourself, sacrifice all those words. And so I began to teach those. Now I didn’t do it for a two week, what do they do series or a six week series.

0:18:32 – (Steve Gray): I did a 12 year series.

0:18:33 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right. That was really the underlying message was, you know, die to yourself. Learn to honor the Lord. Put your trust in his word and not the word of the world.

0:18:44 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, the word of God.

0:18:45 – (Kathy Gray): And believe it and do it.

0:18:47 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, do it.

0:18:48 – (Kathy Gray): That was in every sermon.

0:18:50 – (Steve Gray): Nothing else matters.

0:18:50 – (Kathy Gray): Every sermon you preached.

0:18:52 – (Steve Gray): And I would tell them, remember this is the. I used to say this is the most important hour of your week. Which was a lie because we were there more than an hour because our people started not pushing to get out quick.

0:19:03 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:19:04 – (Steve Gray): They wanted to hear the word of God. They came to sing, they came to worship, they came to fellowship with each other and they came to hear the word of God.

0:19:11 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:19:11 – (Steve Gray): And they expected it. So we would start at 10 o’ clock in that country church. And by the time it got to be 10 years later, it was full on Sunday morning. And we also had Wednesday and No, we had Thursday and twice on Sunday. That’s how we did three and it was full and you’d come at 10 and we almost always got out at the same time. 12:40. I would finish my sermon at 12:40.

0:19:39 – (Kathy Gray): Right when the.

0:19:40 – (Steve Gray): 2 hours and 40 minutes. Yeah, 2 hours and 40 minutes. And then we’d come back and we would get out at 12:40 and everybody would be back at 6 o’. Clock. We’d go rest, eat, rest, whatever, come back at six o’. Clock. And then after it was done at eight or eight probably then people would go to each other’s houses. And just the people I talk to today, can’t imagine it, they immediately start asking questions that I get, but they leave out the God factor because they say, how, how do you not get so tired?

0:20:16 – (Steve Gray): How do you get up and go to work? How do you get your work done and go to church that much? What about the kids homework? What about their schoolwork? What about the sports? Yeah, and just all these kinds of questions and say, okay, I get it, they’re important questions. But that’s not asking first questions. How do you put God first? What do you do? What’s the mindset, the attitude? That works because when Jesus said put it first, he said in his righteousness, all the other things will come to you.

0:20:48 – (Steve Gray): You don’t have to go to them. And I preached that and preached that and preached that as a theme of our church. Things will come to you. And I said, let’s watch it happen, watch it happen. And it did. But.

0:20:59 – (Kathy Gray): Well, you know, I want to say something about you though, because the people of a congregation always reflect the leader. Yeah, all right. And so you were the most committed to the flock that God was entrusting into your hands. You were committed helping those people. You had a real heart for them. That’s what was compelling you.

0:21:21 – (Steve Gray): And I preached three hours a week at least. Yeah, you preached every Wednesday, midweek, Sunday morning, twice on Sunday. And I’d preach an hour and I never repeated.

0:21:32 – (Kathy Gray): Right. And it was a full meal deal. And I still have notebook after notebook. I saved all of your outlines and you would type them up. We did not have a, the computer or the printer yet, so I have many, many notebooks full of those treasures and jewels and just complete teachings really, that I’ll probably draw upon one of these days soon because that is your legacy, all of that teaching and preaching.

0:22:01 – (Kathy Gray): And one thing I really loved about you, you always preached. Not like there were was just a small group and not like you were in A little country church or town. You always preach, Steve Gray, like you were preaching to a thousand.

0:22:14 – (Steve Gray): I know, always. Even if there were just 40 or when we had 40 or 50 people in the early years, you know, you were doing it. Yeah, I’d stand there and preach like I was preaching in a stadium or someplace.

0:22:26 – (Kathy Gray): But, you know, that was your faithfulness and your commitment to the task. God had blessed you with this congregation, this church. And it was your faithfulness and commitment to the word of God.

0:22:37 – (Steve Gray): God, yeah. And I was. The people were very, very prepared.

0:22:43 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:22:43 – (Steve Gray): So when revival struck, it was a God thing, but it was not just a God thing. Because if it was just a God thing, it would have only lasted a while. And back then, there were many places around the world, thousands of places around the world, where God opened up the skies and came down in a new, unique. And it was a kind of a unique grace period, too. It’s like I used to tell people, it was so easy if you wanted it, if you wanted what God was doing.

0:23:10 – (Steve Gray): It was easy to get so much grace. But if you didn’t, then it’s like the Pharisees. You didn’t get anything. So the skies opened up in many, many places. But they could only go two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. They try to have these multiple. Like us and other places. And then they would wear out and go back to whatever they used to do, their old schedules. And then they’d come and visit us. You know, they’d get on a bus or car or a plane and fly and just enjoy the weekend.

0:23:40 – (Steve Gray): But they couldn’t do it in their own churches because there was no preparation.

0:23:43 – (Kathy Gray): There was no preparation. One last point, maybe, And I think we could go on next time we do. This is the power of all. And that was another big, strong attitude and principle that was not well accepted. And you had to teach it into our people. But, you know, as we’re saying, the power of all of us. And so when revival hit, we had unity.

0:24:09 – (Steve Gray): That was there in the room. Well, yeah, you didn’t come to our church then. And it amazed people even then in the country, but you didn’t come to the church. And when we eventually got 150, 180, and that was about the most before revival. Let’s say 150 was regular all the time. And it filled the little church. And then we had a gymnasium, which we didn’t use except for a gym then. But anyway, it amazed. People would still kind of drop in from places.

0:24:39 – (Steve Gray): You remember the seminary professors that you met when you were in seminary and didn’t forget you and you and I would invite them to come and speak, they were totally amazed. Even before what was called revival and before we made the news and nobody knew us except friends like that, that when you came in, you didn’t have pockets of people doing their own thing. And many times you go to churches, even good ones, but they still have pockets of the people on their phones, the kids texting each other.

0:25:08 – (Steve Gray): Then you got the person who sits down during worship and reads his Bible, looking for a word from God. And then you’ve got the dancers and the flag wavers and the loud singers and then the. No mumblers.

0:25:21 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:25:22 – (Steve Gray): And you got some people raise their hands and some people sit down or don’t raise their hands. And so I wanted the power to come because we were all marching around Jericho blowing our trumpets and the walls come down. And so we have that church today.

0:25:37 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, we do.

0:25:38 – (Steve Gray): When we have new or newer people, we understand they won’t be raising their hands. They’re not going to be singing loud. A lot of times they just look and watch and do the best they can. We understand that. But if they keep coming back, that’ll change. Because the majority of the people on a morning, including the children, will be there worshiping God. I told you last week before about the boy, that there wasn’t anybody even near him. And he stood up all by himself. There were people up there, but he had. I don’t know why, his parents weren’t with him.

0:26:07 – (Steve Gray): And he stood there and sang every song, raised his hands and worshiped God. And I don’t know, he’s about this tall. So what would he be, eight, nine years old maybe? So that’s very, very common. And if you’ve never seen it and you want to visit Revive Church of Kansas City and see a group of people where everybody raises their hands unless they’re a visitor or new, you know, the children as old as soon as they can get it.

0:26:31 – (Steve Gray): We have grandchildren now that as you know. Yeah. And you start singing and doing it. And we don’t tell them to raise their hands, they just do. And they worship and sing with us. And remember when one of our girls was young and they were getting that, and we went to a hotel with Brooke, I guess went with a hotel to Brooke, and we were going to speak in that city, and we went in the hotel and when we went to the hotel, the elevator opened up and closed and there was music, elevator music.

0:27:00 – (Steve Gray): And she just started raising her Hand in the elevator. Because music was associated with God. And that’s what we have at Revive Church of Kansas City. You can go streaming, get it, you can stream it, Revive Church Kansas City and see it. You can’t get it through the cameras. Like you can’t stand in the middle of it, but it’s better than nothing. You can also tell your friends about this podcast because we’re trying to dig in with Legacy, how it happened, where our church, which will maybe hit next week, then we’ll get into the real revival days that we had five services a week. Actually, we said just a minute ago we had three services a week.

0:27:36 – (Steve Gray): But two years before revival came, maybe we start there. I said, it’s starting, it’s beginning and we’re not ready as we should be. So we added a Tuesday night service just to pray. We didn’t pray for the sick or the missionaries or for money or prosperity or anything. We only prayed for the glory and presence of God to come down. And that lasted two years. Two years. Every Tuesday. Then we went. Actually, then I went Tuesday, Thursday.

0:28:02 – (Steve Gray): Cause we moved it to Wednesday, but Tuesday, Thursday and twice on Sunday for those two years until God came down and history was made and the Smithton Outpouring came until Newsweek, Time magazine, we got, you know, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Dallas, Kansas City, of course, St. Louis, of course, papers and reporters, CBN, all came for three and a half years to that place. And people lined up just to get in the building every five days.

0:28:33 – (Steve Gray): Five days a week too.

0:28:34 – (Kathy Gray): And to meet with a prepared congregation.

0:28:37 – (Steve Gray): Who also they showed up an hour early. Some of them, I was going to quit, but some of them, well, we can talk later. But some of them handed out water to the people in line, water bottles. They make sure the church was clean. The restroom. Restroom. Didn’t we just have one? Did we have two? Oh, no, we had two. I don’t know.

0:28:57 – (Kathy Gray): Really, we might have had two.

0:28:58 – (Steve Gray): I mean that’s what’s the country church we inherited, you know, singles, I think. And then. Yeah, so we’ll talk more about that. But the whole world came. Yeah, from everywhere, all over the world. And we did it for three and a half years, lined up. We’ll tell about that later. But today’s message is you have to prepare. If you don’t have the power in your church to prepare the church, you do have the power to prepare yourself and prepare yourself for a greater move of God, for a greater. And the more you prepare yourself for it, believe it and seek first put, have some firsts in your life, love God first the most, you will advance far beyond anybody else. That’s just nominal and so it’s really worth it, even on a personal level. So I encourage you to do it.

0:29:43 – (Steve Gray): Tell your friends about this podcast and the books you can get at https://stevegrayministries.com. You can follow us, you can give offerings to us, all those things and help grow together where I think maybe the church is is going—to a great outpouring of God’s spirit around the world. We hope, but we certainly hope it’s in our nation. Until next time. Bye-bye.