0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): If I ask you what the good news is, what’s the gospel, you probably could tell me. Or could you? You may have never heard the true gospel. And I’m going to tell you about it on the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:12 – (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.

0:00:37 – (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.

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0:01:24 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Your voice of revival and my words that I have today are very important. But every time we come and do this, it’s so, so important. And I don’t want to sound arrogant or separate myself or like I have something and you need to listen to me and other people are not worth listening to. But not everybody is as focused as I am on the subject of revival and needing it. A revival of the spirit of God in America. Right now, we need it around the world, but the world kind of follows.

0:01:55 – (Steve Gray): America leads the way. And if something would break out at a greater degree, which is very possible, it might, but people don’t know how. And I’ve led two revivals, made history. We’ve talked about those in the past. They weren’t just couple of weeks, they went. Both of them went three and a half years, Both of them did. And we had four and five services a week for three and a half years at two different times in my life.

0:02:21 – (Steve Gray): And I was the leader and I preached every single service. All right, and they were intense and I like that. But anyway, we need a fresh outbreak. I’m not looking Backwards, I’m looking forwards. I can tell you about what we experienced, which is good to build your faith and hunger for the things of God. But we need an outbreak of the spirit. We need a renaissance, if you want to call it that, a renaissance of revivals of the power and presence of God.

0:02:51 – (Steve Gray): Now, one of the things as we look to this, though, is I’ve got to talk to you about the gospel today, but I need to remind you, I was reminded some other folks remember the presence of God is here already. So sometimes we refer to it coming down because we’re down, you know, and he’s up and we’re down. And so we refer to it something coming down or something flowing out. So it’s what’s hindering. Revival is not God, it’s us.

0:03:21 – (Steve Gray): Now, God could be holding back some because of us, but he’s not holding back because he doesn’t want to have one, or it’s not time, or we’re not good enough or some other reason from God’s point of view. God’s saying, yeah, I want to have an outbreak of the power and presence of God on the face of the earth, but I don’t want to throw my pearls before swine. The Bible says, I don’t want to take all my goodness and all my power and.

0:03:48 – (Steve Gray): And all the things that go with that, the kingdom of God and then put it out there and nobody pays attention or nobody cares and it turns out bad. I mean, Jesus did that. He came as the Messiah of the world and they didn’t accept him with the crowds now, obviously don’t ever say Jewish people didn’t accept Jesus or Jewish people are the crucified, you know, Christ killers or anything like that. Because the first followers were all Jews. Okay, Right.

0:04:20 – (Steve Gray): And the Jews passed it on to non-Jews. So that’s a great story. But the majority of the religious community of his day did not accept. They rejected it. And that’s what we’ll find today. God could open up the sky for us even bigger, open up every window and door into heaven. And the religious community and most churches would not accept it and would not change a thing. So the preparation for revival is going on.

0:04:47 – (Steve Gray): But there are people trying to prepare themselves to be carriers, to be accepted, to not be afraid of it, to want it, to help it, to grow it. And then there’s other people that are being prepared to receive it, to receive it, to receive it. So that’s probably where we are and we need a great move of God. But before that, I want to help prepare You. And I’m going to tell you something that you may not hear other.

0:05:10 – (Steve Gray): Another place, from another place and another person in your entire life. You might. And there’s probably somebody in the world that’s saying it too. I just don’t know anybody unless they’ve been my student or followed me or listened to my sermons. And then they go and share it also. Okay, So I want to talk to you about the good news, all right? And I want to talk to you about the gospel because I’m finding out that most people have never heard the gospel.

0:05:42 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, you can go to church and never hear it. And you say, yeah, I’ll get it. But I don’t go to that kind of church. I go to this kind. We have an altar call. Every service, we have an altar call. And they tell us. And they have us raise our hands or bow our heads or whatever. And we have people and we give our lives to Jesus and we say the prayer. We ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins and to. And we admit we’re sinners and we forgive us of our sins. And we believe that you’re the Savior. So save me and now and we may throw in, I want to serve you. We say that we want to serve you. I want to follow you. We say that at our church. And they may throw that in, but that’s the end of it. And so when you realize you haven’t heard the good news, when I’m telling you what I’m going to tell you, then you substitute and think, that’s the good news, okay? But that’s not the good news because at the end of that prayer, then you’re saved, right?

0:06:44 – (Steve Gray): And what does that mean? So you ask pastors and leads, what does it mean to be saved? Okay? What is salvation? What does it mean to be saved? What is the good news of the gospel? What is the gospel? All those questions. And it’ll go something like this, that you pray a prayer so that you can go to heaven when you die and you don’t go to hell. That’s why most these evangelist people go around and they ask people, do you know that you would go to heaven if you were to die today? Do you know you’d go to heaven? All right, now that’s very, very important.

0:07:15 – (Steve Gray): That’s a truth. It’s a truth that if you belong to Jesus and you die, you go to heaven. That’s a truth. Okay? So we’re not taking away from the truth, but we are taking away that. That’s not the good news. The good news has never Been about us traveling somewhere else. It’s not about us going up. That’s a truth. But it’s not the good news. It never has been the good news. All right, so the good news of the gospel, what is it? You know, Paul talked about that. He said people will preach another gospel.

0:07:47 – (Steve Gray): Not that there is another gospel, he said, but it’ll be another. And that’s. You’ve heard another gospel. And that’s why your walk can be difficult. That’s why the presence of God can seem far away or God can seem far away. What I’m going to tell you today is why your prayers certainly God, through God’s grace, we get our prayers answered. But we have a lot of prayers that we don’t admit we didn’t get answered. We don’t admit it because we want to honor God. But still, we know there’s a lot of things we don’t understand.

0:08:15 – (Steve Gray): We read things in the Bible that are not happening. The fullness, the greatness of God, the presence of God, the glory of God, and just having a fire shut up in our bones that makes it so much easier to walk with fire than to have coldness in there, you know? And just trying to love God, but trying to read your Bible, trying to be a good dad, a good parent, a good worker, a good friend, whatever. And you’re trying all these things and you’re doing your best.

0:08:41 – (Steve Gray): But so many times, maybe this isn’t you, but I know people pretty well. So many times when people go to church and they start singing the songs and God does start moving just a little bit or you can feel God a little bit in the music or whatever, they start repenting. They start saying, I’m sorry. So a church service that meant to glorify God and take us into the things of the spirit of God turns into a repentance service.

0:09:07 – (Steve Gray): Secretly, people are saying, I know God. I know. Oh, God, I know I failed. Yeah, I know I’m not what I should be. I’m sure there’s some people that don’t care. But that is, people do that. They get convicted of living less for God, less for Jesus. And then it comes out when they’re at church. And so now we’re going nowhere but looking backwards at our week or our life. And we can’t move forward with God because we don’t have it in us. We’re not serving to the fullest measure that we could.

0:09:37 – (Steve Gray): And it’s not that we maybe don’t want to, but we don’t know how to. All right. So I want to start with the. The good news. Okay. And you think you’ve heard it. And if I ask a hundred pastors what salvation is, what it means to be saved, all, probably all 100, are going to say the same thing. It means that you get your sins forgiven and make Jesus Lord, Messiah, Savior. You get your sins forgiven and then you’ll go to heaven. When you die there again, it’s all about you taking a journey.

0:10:12 – (Steve Gray): All right, so let’s go back to the beginning and something. And the very beginning of the story actually starts with Lucifer, who’s in heaven. And he’s an archangel. Beautiful. The Bible describes him if you accept some scriptures that mean him. And yet he rebelled against God. He said, I want to be like God, I want to rule like God, I want to be like the Most High God. He rebelled. And as an archangel, he had ruler, he had guidance, I would say over one third of the angels. And he persuaded them to follow him.

0:10:48 – (Steve Gray): So what did God do? God kicked Lucifer out of heaven and he got a name change. We know him as Satan, the devil. And where does he go? To the earth. He comes to the earth. All right, where does the Bible go next? What happens next? Lots happened, but of significant. Okay, all right, what happened? God came down. Where’s God now? In the garden. I mean, we know God’s everywhere, but his presence and glory he brought with him. And now he’s in the garden.

0:11:25 – (Steve Gray): He’s on the earth in a special place called the Garden of Eden. And then what’s he do? Well, we know he creates and does things. And then he says, I’m going to make man in my own IM and woman too, in my own image. And he forms Adam out of the dust of the earth. There’s the man. He takes a rib from the man, creates a woman. Now we got life, we’ve got a man, and we got a woman. And where are they? They’re on the earth. Where is God? Walking with them through the cool of the day. Walking, walking, walking with them.

0:11:55 – (Steve Gray): And where’s God? He’s down here. Oh, he’s up there too. You get it. You know God. But God did not manifest his presence in the earth. Who else is down here? The devil. Satan’s down here too. And God comes down to the earth in the midst of that rebellious kingdom and manifests himself and creates a man and a woman in his own image. Okay, remember, Lucifer, who became the devil, is not in his image. He’s the image of. He’s an angelic being, but he’s not in the image of God.

0:12:28 – (Steve Gray): And he does that. Well, we know what happened then. They got pulled into rebellion, too, just like the angels. Because the devil’s pretty sly. He knows how to talk the talk, and he’s pretty sly. And he convinced Eve to eat of the one tree she wasn’t supposed to eat of, because if she did, she would be able to relate. It’s the knowledge of good and evil, the tree, the knowledge of good and evil. And she would be able to relate to good because she was created good, but she would now be able to relate to evil because this tree, see?

0:13:04 – (Steve Gray): And now we have the Tree of Life. That’s the one we have now through Jesus. But anyway, so she falters. She gets confused and all that. And then she comes and serves the same fruit to her husband, Adam. And he sins and he does it. And the mankind, then we call it the fall. And they fell from the grace of God, but they fell actually from the glory of God. Right? They fell from the glory of God. They didn’t die.

0:13:31 – (Steve Gray): They died in the spirit because the glory of God left them. And that’s why they knew they were naked. They were clothed in the glory of God. Now it’s gone. Now they’re naked, okay? And so, same thing happens. You know, we can talk about that story. There’s a lot to say about it. But, you know, the result is the same because they gave the power and the. And because they were supposed to subdue the earth.

0:13:51 – (Steve Gray): I like that. He said, go subdue the earth. That means there was something out there, needed to be subdued. You know who it was and you know what it is, all right? And it’s still in our world today. Still, we need subduing people. But that’s another sermon. But anyway, so Adam and Eve, they get tossed out of the garden, just like Lucifer was tossed out of heaven. Now they’re out there, right? They’re out there.

0:14:12 – (Steve Gray): And now what’s going to be the story? They’re going to get in trouble. You know, Cain’s going to kill Abel. But it comes along and it gets worse and worse and worse. And I can’t tell you the whole Bible story because there’s too many stories. But one that we know well is the story of Noah. And God says, I’ve had enough of this Earth, so I’m going to flood the Earth. But wait a minute. Before that, he came down.

0:14:42 – (Steve Gray): He came down and talked to Noah and told him to build a boat to save your family, all right? Here on Earth. Noah’s not going to fly away. He’s going to float away. That’s all right. And be saved. And so time goes on. And God wants to now create his family. Start his family. A family of faith. And so he’s got to find somebody. And guess what? God comes down again. And he talks to Abraham. And we have Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then Israel.

0:15:12 – (Steve Gray): And then Israel would do good and do well. And then they wouldn’t do so well. And what would God do? He’d come down again. He’d send a prophet. Maybe he’ll come down, he’ll talk to a prophet. Come down and talk to a prophet. Say, this is what I need you to go say to the people. Then the prophet would go to the people. Or Moses. He’d come down and he. You know, there he. There’s Moses on the earth. His feet are still on the earth.

0:15:35 – (Steve Gray): He’s still in the dust. And God appears and comes down to Moses. And Moses has to take off his shoes. Because it’s holy ground. And talks to Moses and says, you’re going to be the deliverer. You’re going to deliver my people and get them out of slavery. And they’re going to go into the promised land, okay? And when they get out on the other side of the Red Sea, God comes down, supplies food. He supplies water.

0:15:59 – (Steve Gray): Then they take Jericho. You know, they weren’t soldiers. And they blew trumpets and shouted. And God came down. And the walls came. The stories go on and on and on. Of God coming down. God coming down. God coming down. All right, so now we come to the time of Jesus and his birth, right? And the shepherds are out there. You know the story. Watching their flocks. And the angelic beings appear. A great host of angels.

0:16:32 – (Steve Gray): And I have a feeling it was loud, you know, but that’s just me. And just a great chorus of loudness of the glory of God. And they said, so don’t be afraid. Why? Because today. Today is born to you a savior. What? Yeah. Who is Christ? The Messiah. The Lord. And he’s what, man? Yeah. What else is he? God. He’s all man. He’s all God. And so they said, so today is born to you a savior, Right? And he’ll be called what?

0:17:10 – (Steve Gray): Immanuel. What? God with us? Not us. With God. God with us. God came down. God came down. And then he sent. Later years. Jesus ministers. He’s crucified. He goes up. But as he’s getting ready to go up, he says, don’t panic. I’m coming down in a new way. I’m going to send my spirit. The same spirit that Raised me from the dead I’m sending to you. God came down again by his spirit for everybody that wants to receive and receive Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit, my Lord.

0:17:51 – (Steve Gray): And God came down in that way. And as he’s going up, they’re standing there staring, like, oh, my. I don’t know what they felt. I don’t know. It sounds like they were a little bewildered, like, what’s going to happen now? And an angel comes. God comes through. An angel with him, comes, says, hey, don’t panic. He’s coming what down? Just like he’s going up. You get to work. You get to work for God. You start serving God.

0:18:18 – (Steve Gray): You get on fire and do the things of God. You subdue the earth, whatever you can subdue. If you can’t subdue a nation, subdue your household, right? Subdue. Go out and subdue for God. Because we need people that can subdue evil and subdue bad that’s in the world. And that knowledge of the good, of the evil is in the world. And evil people do evil things. And so he says, don’t panic. Don’t worry. I’m coming back down.

0:18:44 – (Steve Gray): What direction? He’s coming down, okay? And then he says, now you guys go pray and stay there in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes down. And then we’ll be still connected. I’ll be up, but I’ll be down, too, through the Spirit. You’ll have the same Spirit, right? All right. Now, years and years pass, and, well, first of all, we read let’s go stay in Acts for a minute in the Bible. And then what happens? They start having churches and congregations and meetings and meeting and what would happen?

0:19:16 – (Steve Gray): Signs and wonders and miracles. And now these people, regular guys who are the apostles and some just regular deacons or whatever, they’re praying for the sick and they’re getting miracles. And the power of God is touching people, and they’re coming to Jesus like never before. And they’re not flying away. God comes down, okay? So now years and years passed, and now we’re in our day for the last 200 years, 100 years up to today.

0:19:49 – (Steve Gray): And preachers start changing the message because they started losing. They didn’t have the power and presence of God. And so how do you get people to come to Jesus? Because they didn’t encounter God like Paul did on the road to Damascus. I mean, Paul was a murderer. His name was Saul then, but he was a murderer. He was seeing people put to death because they believed in Jesus, right? And he’s on his way to Go lock em up. Lock some more Christians up. And what does he run into? The good news, the gospel he came into. And the power of God came down on him and he changed his mind about everything.

0:20:29 – (Steve Gray): He became the preacher now instead of the persecutor. God came down. But now preachers today, they lost it. They got nominal Christianity and we got better buildings and we’ve got programs galore and we can entertain. We can go to church and be entertained by things and activities and home groups and dinners that keep us busy. But they don’t make us change because we’re not getting the gospel, all right?

0:20:59 – (Steve Gray): We’re getting religion, we’re getting good things. Because there’s good too. But the gospel is what? Okay, so then we hear a prayer, just like I said, at the end of the service. Or what? Or we go and teach somebody and say, now say this prayer with me. Do you know you’d have a home in heaven? And then they say one of the worst lines you can say, which is said all the time. Do you know you’ll spend eternity in heaven? Eternity, that’s forever.

0:21:26 – (Steve Gray): And so we’re giving them the wrong idea. Okay, now let’s back up to make sure we understand that heaven is a place. And it’s a place where if you die in Christ and you’re in a believer, you get to go to heaven. All right? You get to go to this wonderful, wonderful place. Maybe we could even call it paradise heaven. But anyway, it’s a wonderful, wonderful place. But that’s not where you’re going to go forever. You’re never going to spend eternity in heaven.

0:21:53 – (Steve Gray): You’re going to spend it maybe in the new heaven, but you’re going to spend it in a new earth. Everybody that’s in heaven is coming. You can say it now. They’re not going to stay up there. What are they doing? Everybody that’s in heaven now is going to come down. Who else is coming down? Jesus is coming down. The power of God is coming down. And what’s going to happen when it comes down? They’re going to meet their bodies, are going to come out of the grave and they’re going to meet their. There’ll be a glorified body, of course, and they’re going to meet their bodies and be here.

0:22:25 – (Steve Gray): They don’t meet their bodies and go back up again. They stay here on earth. They meet their bodies and then we who are alive remain. Paul says, in case you’re alive when all this happens and somebody will be, then you’re just changed. And now you Got a glorified body and where are you? You don’t go to. You don’t ever get to see heaven the way it is now. If you’re alive when Jesus comes back, you’ll never see heaven. You’ll never go to heaven.

0:22:48 – (Steve Gray): You’ll be here on earth now, as little exception to it. We’ll have a new heaven and a new earth. Because everything’s going to be new then. And the new heaven, though. Oh my. Can you tell me now by what I’ve been saying? What’s the secret word? What’s the secret phrase? Okay. What’s heaven going to do when Jesus returns? Is Earth going up? Are we going up? Nope. We stay right here. And what is up is coming down. Right? And so now heaven comes down.

0:23:22 – (Steve Gray): The new Jerusalem comes down. Out of heaven. Everything’s coming down. The only time you go up. Yes. Is if you die. You get to go to this special place until it’s time to what? Come down. Now let me conclude this and tell you why. Sometimes being a Christian is hard or. Or it feels distant. You don’t feel close to God. There’s no God activity. You go to church and you don’t, you know, sing the songs, do the thing, hour, and you’re out or whatever. You hear an inspirational thing. But it’s not life changing. It may mean that you feel better about your circumstances or something.

0:23:59 – (Steve Gray): So what’s the problem? See? And then maybe there’ll be a prayer at the end and somebody will say, I make Jesus the Lord of my life. Good for them. That’s the good. But you’re not experiencing the good news. Because the good news is what? God comes down. God still comes down. That’s why we say we need a revival. Why is that? Because then God, like, he came down in the garden. He’s still in heaven. He’s everywhere. But a special presence came down in the garden. And God comes down with a special presence. And we just need a name for it.

0:24:32 – (Steve Gray): You can call it renewal, revival, spiritual outbreak, or outpouring, whatever. But God comes down in a special presentation of himself and revives us in ourselves. And we experience heavenly things here on earth. Revival is when God comes down. You know what’s missing in your life? God coming down. It even says this. The Bible even says every good and perfect gift is coming down. You’ve been robbed.

0:25:04 – (Steve Gray): People are robbed every week. It’s not totally out of this, you know, out of character, that somebody doesn’t believe in Jesus out of it. Some good comes out of it. God’s good. And there’s some good, but we’re not living it out. And so many people then they still preach about dying, dying, dying. I know. You know, and they’re just waiting or they’re waiting in the worst teaching that I don’t have time to bring up too much waiting to fly out of here with the church and leave the world behind.

0:25:33 – (Steve Gray): And that’s not scriptural either. We’re never going to leave humanity. The believers are never going to leave this earth. Some believers are going to be on this earth when Jesus returns, okay? They’re not going to fly out and fly back, Right? A one-way ticket is here on earth, right? And it’s not a one-way ticket to heaven, it’s a return ticket to earth. You’ve got a return ticket if you die. And I’ve got loved ones there, you’ve got loved ones there.

0:25:59 – (Steve Gray): And if I’m alive when Jesus returns, I’ll see him coming. If I’m not, I’ll see him there and you’ll see me coming someday. All right? The good news is God comes down and you can go to church your whole life and never experience it and never even know it. And miss the good news of the gospel. The gospel is born to you. This day is Emmanuel, a savior. He’s here on earth. He came down. His title, Emmanuel.

0:26:29 – (Steve Gray): God with us. All right, one story and I’m done. Jesus came upon a funeral of a young man and he had died and his mom was a widow. Maybe I told this last week. Who knows, I might have. It’s been on my mind. And he died and his mother’s a widow, so no husband, no other children, nobody to take care of her. And so Jesus feels as much for the widow as he does for the dead son. I think he had the son come alive to help the widow more than himself, but more than the dead son. But anyway, he speaks and the kid comes to life and everybody’s amazed. All right, but it’s what they say.

0:27:08 – (Steve Gray): As Jewish people know and knew. They said, God has come down to help us. God has come down. The boy sat up, but God has come down. Right now the theology in believing Jews is that God is going to come down and restore Israel, right? Not destroy, no tribulation, restoration. That’s what they believed for centuries. They never believed when you talk to Jewish people thousand years ago, 2,000 years ago, and said eternal life, it never meant to them, they never crossed their mind, oh, looks like I’m going to leave someday.

0:27:48 – (Steve Gray): No, eternal life is. I’m going to spend eternity here with God in His kingdom forever and ever and ever. And we have a new heaven. And heaven comes down. Heaven comes down at the end. Heaven comes down and heaven will come down for you. You need to encourage this. If you want to stay in the church you’re at and it’s not, nothing’s going on. Start speaking up. Start saying, listen, I just want to talk to you about the really, really good, good news.

0:28:13 – (Steve Gray): God still comes down to help his people. You can be that voice. I’m trying to be that voice. I’m not criticizing people that do have another technique. I’m just saying it can be. It’s truth. Heaven is truth. But it’s not the good news. Because the good news is finding somebody who’s hurting right now, who needs help right now, who wants to progress and do be better at everything and serve the Lord with more fire in their bones. Right?

0:28:38 – (Steve Gray): I got good news for them. You say, what’s the good news? It’s not dying, it’s living. God will come down once you understand it and start pursuing it. Why do you think you seek his face? Why do you think you run after God? Because God still comes down to those that seek him. That’s the good news of the gospel. I guess you get the point. It went a few more minutes than I expected to, but if you get the point, try it on. Get it in you. Get it in you. Get it in you. It is life changing and it is the real, true good news of the gospel. Go to https://stevegrayministries.com and look up all the great things, stuff like this all the time. There are books, teachings, podcasts, all kinds of stuff like this, that is life changing. You say, I never heard this before. And if you don’t believe the things I say, open your Bible for yourself and see how God, over and over, talks about coming down among his people and saving and rescuing and helping us in many, many ways. So thanks for being part of this. Tell your friends, be sure and watch next week and subscribe to be part of Steve Gray Ministries and the podcast More Faith, More Life. Till next time, bye-bye.