Can a nation’s spiritual foundation be renewed in times of political and societal discord? We explore this pressing question and more in our latest episode. Inspired by the guide “If You Only Knew: A Guide to the Clueless Generation,” we discuss how true transformation comes not from legislation but from a change of heart, driven by Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Spiritual leaders hold the key to uniting hearts and minds, setting the stage for a better future. Join us as we consider the pivotal role they play in fostering national renewal through spiritual enlightenment.
Key Takeaways:
- The critical need for spiritual and national renewal to save the nation from current and future challenges.
- The distinction between spiritual transformation and political legislation, emphasizing the former for true change.
- The role of spiritual leaders in fostering a revival that can unify and transform the nation.
- Awareness of the current emotional and spiritual state of the nation and the potential consequences of not addressing these issues.
- Encouragement for individuals to embrace personal transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit to build a stronger, more resilient community.
Where To Dive In:
00:00 How to save our nation: a spiritual approach
03:53 Need for spiritual renewal to transform hearts and nations
08:03 Church’s role in combating spiritual evil post-9/11
09:24 Spiritual renewal transforms lives and unites people
13:22 Letting go of anger for a happier life
13:50 Facing unprecedented spiritual challenges and the need for change
14:45 Emotional unpreparedness in a divided and strained society
19:13 Spiritual renewal as the key to national revival
About the host:
Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, My Absurd Religion, and If You Only Knew.
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Transcript:
0:00:00 Hey, don’t miss the next podcast of more faith, more life. I’m taking a little sidestep to help you understand what God is up to and how to save our nation. Hello, everyone, and welcome again to another more faith, more Life podcast. This podcast, through the last year, we’ve done a lot of them. This last year has been to help you personally, on a personal level about your faith and getting more faith, obviously, and how it will produce life.
0:00:27 Examples from my life, examples from other people’s lives, examples from the Bible. We’ve done all those things. But in the next few podcasts, at least, starting today, we’re going to do something different. We’re going to talk about our country, which of course is about you. We’re going to talk about our nation, which also kind of fits other nations. If you’re from another country, that doesn’t mean this won’t apply to you. But I’m using our nation because this is where I live and what we do now.
0:00:53 So I want to talk to you about what’s going on in our country, so to speak. But here’s the problem that I see that pastors, leaders, bible teachers, religious people, they begin to talk about our country and what do they do? They start talking politics and political levels and how we should do it. And then it gets into arguments like, what would Jesus do? Would he be a Republican or a Democrat? Would he be in favor of this or against that?
0:01:20 Some people, everybody’s got him on, got Jesus on their side, and I don’t want to do that. And I don’t think other religious leaders need to do that either. That’s for the politicians and the people to argue. And the only reason I would do that is if you would ask my opinion, if you ask my opinion on somebody’s alternative lifestyle, alternative way of doing things, believing, alternative way of education, alternative way of raising children, marriages, all that stuff, I could then tell you, well, this is, this is my opinion and why.
0:01:52 It’s not a, it’s not an opinion like a rule. It’s not a what. I want to tell you why I think that’s not going to work. I want it to work in your life. Okay? But in this case, we’re just going to stick, and we’re going to stick with, with the spiritual side that affects the political and affects the emotional of people, affects how other nations see us and react to us. I’m using this as my study guide.
0:02:18 If you only knew. A guide to the clueless generation. I’m going to hold this up. You can of course, get it on morefaithmorelife.com. you can download it for free. Still, if you want the book like I’ve got right here in my hand, it’s just not very expensive and $7 or something like that, and you can get that. But now we’re going to go through it, because we’re in desperate times with the nation, and I want you to understand it. If you got the book already, then maybe you understand some of it. But this will give me a chance to just clarify. So today we’re going to do something different. We’re going to talk about the clueless generation. We’re going to talk about what we need to do.
0:02:52 And this little booklet starts off. It’s called if you only knew. And it starts off with the introduction, and it’s called how to save our nation. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today, how to save our nation and what we need to do. Let me lay it down. What we need to do. All right, so we are at a point now where our nation is turning a corner. Could go either way. Still, I believe it could go and really improve and it could really get worse.
0:03:20 I think other nations are watching us to see what direction we go and all that. So it’s a little political in that respect, but what do we do? And so I don’t want to be a pastor who now turns into a politician and tells you how to vote or tells you we need to pass legislation against this, because you can’t legislate morality. You can’t change a heart by legislation. You might be able to change a law, and it forces people to do what somebody thinks is right, at least, or what’s morally right or whatever.
0:03:53 But what we want to do is change the heart of a nation. If we want to save our nation, hearts are going to have to be changed, and there’s only one person that could do that and one power that can do that, and it’s Jesus. With the power of the Holy Spirit, you can be transformed. You can be changed. Everything looks different. The world can stay the same, but it looks different to you. It feels different to you. You think differently than you did before. You’ve been transformed.
0:04:20 That’s what the kingdom of God does. The problem with religion, and I say that loosely, not because religion is kind of different than being spiritual. You know, that is, it immediately then begins to try to legislate, come up with laws, rules, how you’re supposed to do it. And if you don’t, then we’re going to try to pass this law or whatever. And so everybody’s trying to pass laws on all sides and force people to do what they think is right.
0:04:47 Well, I’m looking at it the way I think it should be looked at for spiritual leaders, Bible teachers, pastors. We should be looking from what do we need to do spiritually to save our nation? Because if the spirit, if we do it by the spirit, then it changes the heart. And if the heart is changed, then we build unity. Hearts are starting to go the same direction, and we know why. It’s not just a what, but why do we want to do this? Okay, so we are at the point now where I have in this, and you’ll find a lot of these quotes and things we’ll be doing and tweeting, but in this, in the book and in the introduction, how to save our nation, I have the need for spiritual and national renewal more than just a good idea.
0:05:29 All right, so, you know, being in the business, I am around churches and religious people. Sometimes I get the idea. We hear the word revival or renewal. Sometimes I even use the term renaissance. A new something. We need a new something. All right, well, we have a little bit of problem with that because a lot of times churches, big churches, middle churches, small churches are not, they’re not really preaching. We need to do anything different.
0:05:55 They kind of like what we’re doing now. So the churches want to stay the same. Who do they want to change? Everybody else. They want to change everybody else is the problem in their book. And so when we preach, we preach against them rather than say, this is what we need. We need to be the people. We need a national renewal of spiritual strength and revival of the spirit of God upon the people of our nation.
0:06:22 And it’s not self-effort, but it is spiritual effort that we put our spirits forward. And so the need for a national renewal is more than just a good idea. See, we’re not just at the point now where we can say, well, it’d be nice if my church was more lively. It’d be nice if more people came to my church. I wish my church was a little more committed. You know, just things, the wishes that pastors and leaders, board members, you know, wish worship leaders, music leaders, I wish.
0:06:52 I wish our church would sing. They just sort of mumble, okay, those are all good. But we’re not talking about making what we have better. We’re talking about we have to have a renewal of the spirit of God in the churches that spills over into our nation. So the people in our nation can hear about, there’s something going on and people are changing and we’re unifying ourselves. So what we’re doing is now, though, is not just a good idea. It’s not a good idea. Like, we need to make churches better, more committed or whatever, or even people better. We don’t even need to make people better, right?
0:07:28 We need a spiritual renewal because we are opening ourselves up to all kinds of problems. First of all, without a spiritual renewal, now on the level we are spiritually as a nation, okay? We are open now to, if you believe in this, we are open now to what I would think would be like demonic evil spirits. Used to be before 911 in New York, you know, the towers, twin towers went down, people, even churches, but nobody talked about evil spirits or people being evil.
0:08:03 And as soon as that happened, they realized that, you know, some people are evil, they are, there’s and now, and there are evil spirits that make people evil. And so we’re opening ourselves up and it starts at the church. The only institution in the United States of America or in the world that can shut down the powers of evil that are being unleashed towards us is the church, the people of the church, the power who have been given the power of the Holy Spirit, who read their Bible and say, where Jesus and others say, I’m giving you the authority and the power to do something about spiritual evil, about powers of darkness to do something.
0:08:42 So that’s the first problem we have. We have the unleashing of evil spirits of spirits that are just evil. That’s all they do. And we need to stop them. But the church is doing nothing but just continuing to do what it’s doing and focus on poor old me or whatever the poor old me gospel, where we just come and we’re making you feel better about who you are. Like therapists, we want to make you feel better, but we can’t do that. We have to make you help you change, want to change and have this renewal in your spirit where the spirit of God has become alive to you and serving God. And you have a message that helps us get our lives in order.
0:09:24 And we’re not going to start rules then. It doesn’t start with rules. It is what’s happened, what happened to me. It is a power of the holy spirit that just alters your whole life to where rules are now. Not rules anymore. They’re not just good ideas. It’s like this is who you want to be. You want to be this way. It’s not your church telling you to be this way or me telling you to be this way, it’s something has happened. You are telling you to be this way, right?
0:09:56 And so now we’ve, now we have a changed person. Instead of a person saying, well, my parents want me to, my church says I should. My church, oh, God probably wants me to. Or the preacher said, oh, you said, you said you need to make some changes, and then you changed, but you wanted to change. And now you see the world different and everything feels different. So now the people that maybe you were angry at before, maybe those that you were divided, maybe those that you absolutely want to go just stomp them into the ground, and you want to yell and scream and go protest and write nasty things about people on the Internet, you don’t want to do that anymore.
0:10:40 Now, if the other person at the other end that you would have written nasty things about, if they changed, too and they have something spiritual happen in them, then of the spirit of God, well, now neither one of you are going to do it because both of you are looking at each other and saying, well, you know what? This is my, this is a good life. It’s full of, like we talk here, faith and life. And I believe that God is moving, and I want to move with God and help improve our nation.
0:11:08 God’s way. God’s way, by the spirit of God. And so we’re not talking about a new idea or a better idea or we just need to make things better just to make them better. No, we’re talking about a nation in trouble. We got to save, have our nation saved from the trouble of evil. Then we have people that are already full of evil. We have spirits that are released as evil. We have people that want evil against us.
0:11:37 We have nations that are against us and planning and plotting evil against us. All of these things are happening at the same time. And while what’s happening at the same time, the people of God, the church, the pastors, the leaders, many of them feel and think that they are really involved in this problem. But as I said, they’re not in their category. They’re turning into politicians. So they’re bringing politics into the church and trying to sway people how to vote or how to think or how to interpret, you know, or how to pray against that lifestyle, or should we let them in? Should we ordain them? Should we not ordain them? All these things that are going on, listen, if we get a spiritual renewal in your church, in your pastor, in me and us, everybody, and all, all of a sudden the spirit of God is coming and renewing people, empowering us to think different, to be different, to feel different. We don’t feel like losers. We don’t feel depressed anymore.
0:12:42 You understand what I’m saying? Listen, you may have a good reason to be angry. You probably do. Somebody did something, but to you. But do you want to be angry for the rest of your life? I have people that have been in our church for years. We have a lot of people. I think it gives stability when you have people in your church that have been there 510 and 2020 years, 25 years. But we also have people that came and left, and some of them didn’t leave. You know, they were unhappy about something, and they’re still unhappy years later. They’re still unhappy years later. They still blame. And you don’t want to do that. Listen, if you. If you got your life, you got your income, you’ve got maybe a relationship, maybe you’re married, maybe you’re not. Maybe you got kids, you got grandkids like I do.
0:13:22 And all these things. You’re trying to pay your bills, keep a job, hope the economy last, all these things are going on. And I’m trying to tell you you’re fighting the wrong battle for one reason. If you’re angry over stupid things that happened a long time ago or happened in the past or you can’t do anything about anyway, but now we are waging a war in this country right now against powers that we cannot win against in our present condition.
0:13:50 In other words, the unleashing of more evil spirits on us. Let’s see. I was reading a scripture about it. I should have looked it up better, but it was like God was telling the Israelites that you’re going to face spirits. When you go into these other nations, when you go into other nations in the promised land and other nations, you’re going to face spirits. You’re going to face things you’ve never faced before.
0:14:18 And that’s where we are now. We’re getting ready to face things that if we don’t make our change, if we don’t change and shut them down, we’re going to have to face things we’ve never faced before, spirits we’ve never faced before. I want you to think about that, because sometimes some people now are not making it anyway. You know, I was talking to our church about going past this park where a lot of people walk and take their dogs and all that kind of stuff and how unhappy everybody looks.
0:14:45 You know, I mean, they’re walking their dog, they’re doing their little jogging or whatever. But, you know, I’m watching these people, and they look so intense and so unhappy. And you go into whatever store you want to go into, you know, and buy something, a retail store, grocery store, whatever, and there’s so many people look so unhappy and angry, or just. They’re just going for it, you know? And so we’re.
0:15:09 And we’re divorcing now we’re angry. Now we’re terribly offended. Right, people? We’re at everybody. We’re arguing with everybody. We’re fighting between. Every group is totally fighting the other group. Okay? Now, we may be surviving slightly. We may be going from day to day, but what if there were more evil spirits released and we’re barely released and we’re barely making it. Now we’re depressed. Now we’re angry. Now we’re upset. Now we feel like a victim now, or we feel like a loser or we’re depressed or whatever. Whatever. Whatever.
0:15:45 Now, how are you going to make it if anything else changes, if it gets worse, how are you going to make it emotionally if you’re faced now with the things you’re faced with, but you’re still safe and you’re still. You can go and move around and do things, but what if another nation attacks us in the next year or two years or whatever, and all of a sudden we have to start rationing things and we have to stop.
0:16:11 We have to turn our lights out at night, which I don’t know if that would happen, but, you know, in world War Two, in Europe, they would. They couldn’t have any lights at night because of the bombing. Their whole lifestyle changed, and they had to emotionally change with it. And that’s what was so great about the British people, how they emotionally stood and stood and stood in world War two. But are we prepared for that? We’re barely standing now.
0:16:39 And yet, any change, and it’s not just you, it’s not just me, it’s not just the people at the park over here. But I’m looking at pastors and leaders and religious leaders, and they don’t know what to tell you. They don’t know what to say either. So they just continue to soothe us instead of save us, soothe us instead of help us rescue so that we’re prepared for anything. And we’re not prepared. I don’t think our nation is prepared.
0:17:07 You might talk to a military person. I did that not too long ago. And one military person was concerned that our nation is not militarily prepared, but another one said, yes, we are. Okay, fine, fine, fine. But you know what? We’re not emotionally prepared. We’re not spiritually prepared. We’re not in our relationships. We’re already strained in marriage, and children go to school and they’re emotionally strained, and they’ve got to have, I was going to say timeout things, but that sounds like they’re in trouble, but just rooms where they have to go to release their anger because they’re so angry and they’re so emotional, and they’ve got so many emotional problems today with our children and some adults.
0:17:48 Okay, so we’re not ready for anything to get worse. You know, we’re barely getting through now. We’re showing it in our emotional state. Yes, groceries are higher. Yes, it costs more to live now than it did. Yes, those. Those are all. No, those are not fun things. It’s a strain on people. It puts a strain on everything, and it makes things worse. Okay? But that’s not the root of it, because you know what? People have gone through that for years and years, centuries, centuries. They’ve gone through wars and famines and floods and all that, and they come out strong and they stick together and they’re unified. And you see that we’re not there.
0:18:23 We’re divided. We’re weak, we’re whiny, we’re weak. We have to quit crying. You got to quit crying, you know, and grow up and realize it. No, that is irrelevant now, because we are in the need, absolute for our nation. The only answer, the only answer that can save our nation now is a spiritual revival of the spirit of God that flows over us. And all of a sudden, not just me, not just you, but people everywhere are noticing spiritual things, hungering after spiritual things and wanting to get closer to God and wanting to be a servant of God. And all of a sudden, the spirit of God begins to change us. And we feel different about our past, we feel different about our relatives, we feel different about our wife, our husband.
0:19:13 Even children, even children change. I’ve seen it and seen it and seen it. Children that have special problems, emotional problems that. And seen them absolutely changed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Become another kid, of course, or you can become another adult. So how to save a nation we’ve got to have? First? We’re waging a war we cannot win. We’re not going to win this in our present condition.
0:19:37 We are not prepared against evil spirits, evil people, economy, war, whatever might happen or not, we’re not ready. We’re barely hanging on now. We have to have a spiritual renewal. So what number one pastors need to start preaching spiritual things, spiritual renewal. They need to start preaching the Bible. They need to start preaching transformation, the power that transforms people. And stop treating us like victims and feeling sorry for us and soothing us when we need to be rescued from this and prepare us for anything so we can be the light of the world and we can stand against every evil spirit and every evil dart that might be shot at us. And when we’ve done everything to stand, the Bible says, then just keep standing.
0:20:22 So we need to, we need, we need this renewal. We need that. And so this book, if you only knew. I’m going to make a study guide from this. If you want to make a get a study guide, look closely and you make see, there’s a free study guide that based on just this chapter that we just talked about, the beginning of this book. So if you only knew and a guide to the clueless generation and so you can get it just like I’m holding it now. And we need to keep on standing. We need to go beyond just a good idea that our churches need to be better or whatever.
0:20:57 We need to restore spiritual and emotional, psychological, relational freedom. Freedom, freedom. And I’m going to help you understand this is imperative that you get this okay. All the legislation’s okay, but you need to start praying and speaking. We need spiritual renewal revival if we’re going to save our nation. I hope you got that today. You need to get the book. If you only knew what you can. It’s free download, but I’ll also get you a study guide and start telling your friend, this is where we are, folks.
0:21:33 This is the timetable, this is where we are. And we can turn this around, but the people have to understand the cost if we don’t. And what’s going to happen if we don’t. We can prevail, but we’re going to have to do it God’s way. Until next time. Bye.