A Call to Revival

0:00:00    Don’t miss this. More faith, more Life podcast. Our nation is in conflict and on a destructive path, and I’m going to tell you how to cure it. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Today we’re going to talk about the call to revival and how important it is. And you don’t want to neglect getting the facts about this. You don’t want to let your old time religion get on you and say, well, it’s good enough, and I love God or I believe in God or whatever. That’s not going to do.

0:00:26    And so right now, I don’t think most people understand what’s happening. And particularly the good part about it is there are some good signs, there’s optimism in some people coming back into our country, into our politics, and into our churches. But where people are missing and don’t understand is the level of what we’re doing in our churches and what our churches are about. Right? It’s true. Some churches, our social centers, are very good at what they do.

0:00:56    And I, you know, they’re kind of like a spiritual, well, not necessarily spiritual, you know, inspirational, better word. They’re kind of like an inspirational YMCA. Right? Gather sports, food, games. You have Sunday morning, but Sunday morning, you know, they go play two hours worth of games, but they only have one hour’s worth of church. And so for the whole week of people watching two hour movies and on their phone for five and 6 hours a day, some people, you know, however many hours people do that and all that going on and then cramping it down to, we only have 1 hour church. And you need to realize thousands and thousands of churches stick to that.

0:01:39    They have put little earphones in the ears of people that are in the service saying, okay, you got one more minute and you’re done. And if you’re leading songs, you’re the song leader or the worship leader or whatever, choir director, and you can’t go past that mark because you’re on a schedule. And the sermon has to be on a schedule. Got to get them in and get them out. Some people, they have multiple services, and so I can understand what they’re trying to do.

0:02:06    But the downside is a lot of multiple services are geared towards multiple people. In other words, we have an early service, which is just called contemporary. Okay. And then we have the middle service, which is traditional, and then we have the late service, which is what I forgot, liturgical or something. I don’t know. And charismatic or whatever. I don’t know. But, you know, and so that particular building where people meet called a church, has three divisions to it. They might as well be a political party. You might as well have the Democrats at 830 and the Republicans at 1030 and the independents at 1130 or something like that, because they’re not in agreement even what kind of music we should have. Yet we call ourselves a church, and so there’s so much we have to do. So what happened was in Israel, through the years, they were called of God to love God. That’s the very first thing. Have you ever heard it said, well, I just think we need to do the ten commandments, or try to do the ten commandments. Well, that all started out with God saying, listen, you need to love God.

0:03:13    Love me, love God with all your heart, all your heart. All your heart, soul, mind and strength. All that’s the focus. Doesn’t mean you have to be perfect, doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes. But your focus on life, of why you’re here, is, I’m here to establish a love for God and not a love for myself. Though you’re not going to hate yourself, obviously, if you’re going to, you know, you’re going to have the joy of the Lord. You’ve heard about that. And the joy of the Lord is my strength. There’s great things happening, but the starting point is wrong, and that’s what’s wrong with our churches today, thousands of them, I’m sure, you know, there’s exceptions, but thousands and thousands of church are the same.

0:03:55    They’re all me focused, or you focused, or your emotion, or your past, or your hurts, and we’re going to make you feel better about whatever you’re going through. Right. But they’re not transforming you into what God intended you to be, so that he would come down. Spiritual awakening, spiritual revival, a spiritual renaissance, and that would change the course of the world, or it would at least change the course of your world, and hopefully it would change the course of our national, our country and across America.

0:04:28    And so the problem we have today is some people don’t care anything about God. Okay. Obviously, 30 million people leaving the church, I guess they’ve lost their interest. We have them thinking, well, I don’t need to go to church. They don’t even know what church is. They say the church is the people. You know, here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, here’s all the people. Yeah, true, but it’s not an individual. Do you read up on it yourself? Church is translated a call to assembly, an assembly of people.

0:04:58    And so God, they meet. Then Paul would write the letter to the church or churches in the Bible, and so they would read what he wrote as a group. Nobody got to take the letter home. Nobody had it in their mailbox way back then, right? Oh, here’s Paul’s letter in my mail. I can sit home and I don’t need to go to church because if you didn’t go to church, you didn’t get to hear it. And so, but today I know it’s all different because when it’s social, when it’s so much humanism and all about me and my hurts, and we’re going to make you feel better about yourself and all that kind of stuff, it grows churches, but it doesn’t grow spiritual people.

0:05:36    And you might be a better person, maybe even a happier person, but that’s not the goal. If you’re a Christian following Jesus, you’re supposed to be a spiritual person walking by the spirit of God. And most people don’t even know what that’s about. You know, Paul says, walk by the spirit. If you don’t walk by the spirit, you’ll have destruction in your life. Somewhere. Something’s going to go wrong eventually and destruction’s going to come, and it could come to a whole nation.

0:05:59    So America claiming to have so many people that claim to love God, but so disinterested, right, is on this destructive path. Because now, as you know, people are looking to politicians, people are looking to government, people are looking to the Supreme Court, people are looking to programs, people are looking to laws or changing laws, enforcing laws, making new laws. And these are. And so, okay, making a better military, whatever.

0:06:29    And this is going to make America the way it needs to be. And we’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. Not realizing that the people have roots, who have roots and know about God. It’s not, we can’t say we don’t know about him. It’s that we don’t have any interest in him. And, you know, a little. A little, maybe, but you know what I’m saying? And so we have churches that meet all the time and people that go to church, but the interest level in God is so low.

0:06:55    And the interest level in myself and my feelings and your feelings and your feelings and what’s going on in your personal life is premier and it’s premier in the sermons. Maybe a scripture, maybe no scripture, maybe one scripture, and then the rest is just like a, it’s like a Sigmund Freud therapy. I should write a song like that, Zion, on the couch with Jesus.

0:07:22    You know, therapy, the therapy session. I’m laid out on the couch for Jesus and talking about myself. I’m on the couch talking about myself. I don’t know anything about him or the kingdom or what God’s up to. And so we want to shore up our nation and realize that we must realize that we need a spiritual move of God, too. And that’s the real answer, a God thing. We need a God thing. Now, you know, you may feel you’re just not that interested in that. Okay, well, you could start praying to be interested. God, help me.

0:07:54    Help me to find you. Help me to connect to you. I want to find you. I want to have some interest. I want to feel the presence of God and the things of God in my life. It’d be great if I could hear you, God in my life, and hear what you’re saying and doing and read my Bible. And it comes alive for today, too. But, you know, most people don’t have that. They’re not bad people. And I’m not saying they’re bad, but good is not good enough.

0:08:22    See, good is a long way from God and to be spiritual, and that’s the goal of God. And that was the goal of Jesus. Because when Jesus came on his ministry, there’s lots of religion. You know what? The temple had great, great attendance. It was loud, it was crowded. People went morning and night. They had morning sacrifices, evening sacrifices, lots of religion. People were giving their money to Rome, of course, but they would give their, they would give their money to the temple and support the priests. And all this was going on, and Jesus wasn’t happy with it. He said, this isn’t it.

0:08:57    Why? Because it was still all about them. And he said, here’s the problem. The leadership of those days, they love money. Now think of this as any reflection. Love money. They love to be seen in front of other people. And they love the best seats when they go out to eat, or that’s my paraphrase, they go out to the theater, wherever they go, best seats in the house, because of who they are. Celebrity almost.

0:09:24    And that’s what we have today. That’s where things are going. And so young pastors and ministers and evangelists are copying that. 20 year olds, 30 years old, heading on 40 years, are copying that from the 50, 60 and 70 year olds who became very wealthy, popular and powerful. And so we need a generation that realizes we can’t continue to go that way. God is warning us in a good way. In a good way, and that we are on a collision course by looking the wrong direction. We can’t have churches all over buildings. We’ve got the most beautiful buildings in some cities, our churches, and they’re empty all week long except for 1 hour.

0:10:06    And those people come, leave and go live their lives out the way they want to. And okay, maybe they’re trying to be good people, good for them. We need to be good people. We need to be better people. We need to be loved better and serve better and all those kinds of things. But that doesn’t make us spiritual. And what’s missing is the spirit of the living God. And Jesus said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, the Spirit’s upon me.

0:10:31    And you have the ability to do the same thing, but it’s got to be a desire. And beyond that, if you’re a parent, if you’re a grandparent, if you’re a teacher, a pastor or a leader, you don’t do it just for yourself. You do it for other people. Other people need an example. I wrote, maybe here’s something where I wrote, we don’t need more preachers, we need good examples, because some of the preachers aren’t the greatest examples.

0:10:56    We need good examples. You don’t have to be a preacher to be a good example. You don’t have to be a pastor or a minister on staff at a church or using the microphone once a week to be a good example. And so we see this tremendous division in our country and two sides, you know, all about that, and it would look like they’re never going to come to terms because they’re just. They’re of different minds, you know?

0:11:22    But only the spirit of God can do that. Only the spirit of God can soften the hearts. And all of a sudden we focus and it’s not on us anymore. And we really do want to love God, and. And we have something in common that we know. God of the universe needs to have a place in my life, a big place, a reoccurring place in my life, on a regular basis. And then, and so that’s going to bring a unity and a strength. That’s that invisible power of God that has happened many times across the country. You know, in the book, If You Only Knew, I mentioned 1857.

0:11:59    The Great Revival of 1857. And the country was in terrible shape, and the banks were closing, the railroads were closing and couldn’t run, and money was terrible, inflation, or, anyway, financial crashes and lots of crime, lots of drunkenness, waywardness, and all that. And suddenly something changed. And it started in New York City with one leader minister that started a prayer service at noon. Nobody came at first. And then businessmen started coming and they started praying and praying.

0:12:33    It swept the whole country. You need to read about it even now from New York City. Now we’re out west, way out west, you know, roping cattle or something, and they’re meeting around the fire at night, talking and praising and singing songs to God. And it went across our country, and it brought back good things. And the banks recovered and the railroads recovered, and the economy recovered and people recovered.

0:13:00    Happened right in this country. And there’s more. There’s other countries, there’s other movements, and we need that today. And think about what that would do if it swept our country. And we could still have Democrats, we could still have Republicans. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we agree on one thing, and that’s Jesus is lord, and we’re going to serve him, and we’re going to try to have his attitude, and we’re going to let the spirit of God transform who we are rather than try to change the country by laws, legislation, political parties or political candidates.

0:13:32    You still get to choose all those things, but you change yourself, you get changed. And that’s the whole Bible, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You change your mind, right? Be changed. You’ve heard phrases, if you’ve been around religion or church, about the new creation and your new creature, and you’re forgiven and your past is gone and all those kinds of stuff, but you don’t see that today where people are. You know, people tell me, well, I’ve been a Christian since I was a kid, or I got saved in June or whatever, July or whatever.

0:14:07    When did you become new? When did you just, you didn’t just start going to church. You didn’t just clean up your act, but you became new. And so here we are, we’re talking about the call to revival, and only people like you can desire it and you can go to, if you go to church. Listen, I don’t want you to be a critic. I know what it’s like. I’ve passed for many years. I don’t want people coming to church and criticize what we do.

0:14:31    But you’re not really being a critic or a judge if you’re actually just wanting what God wants and what the Bible says we should have and encouraging that, you’re not saying your pastor’s bad or people are bad or your church is bad. If you’re the pastor or the leader or minister. You’re saying, let’s listen. Let’s focus on what we’re supposed to focus on. And so we need to bear the kind of fruit that God wants to see.

0:14:58    We have good fruit in some places, you know, we’re supposed to bear good fruit. Well, people say, well, you know, our marriages get better and we have more fellowship and people have more friends. It’s so funny. As hard as the churches are in promoting the last few years, community. Community, right? And people are so lonely. People are so lost in themselves, you know? And I was thinking about the prodigal son. A lot of people know about him. You remember the son in the Bible, that he wanted his inheritance right now and then, which isn’t good.

0:15:33    Cause, you know, when you get an inheritance, that’s when dad dies or mom dies or relative dies, and then you get something. Well, this kid, his dad was still alive. His father’s still alive, but he wants everything now. His dad gave it to him. Well, you know, he goes out and he squanders it and everything. And, you know, he’s going to come back and the dad talks about it. He says, my son was lost. Well, somebody could read that and think, oh, dad didn’t know where he was.

0:16:01    I doubt it. This is a rich man, and the country’s not that big, right? And the territories are not that big. The area’s not that big. Like the United States is huge. He could have gone and found him. He could have got a search party. He could have paid somebody to go find him, right? It’s not that he didn’t know where he was, what was lost, a relationship, because he wanted to live without his father’s influence.

0:16:25    Isn’t that what we want today? We want to believe in God, but we want to believe in a God that’ll leave us alone to go do what we want to do. And we don’t want to be bad people. We just want to be independent of our father. We don’t want him telling us what to do. We’re grown-ups, right? And so the difference was, when he got his life in trouble, he did what we need to do. He says, I know what I will do.

0:16:47    I will return to my father’s house. All of a sudden, the father is back in his vocabulary, and he knows that that’s going to make things right. That was the problem, was he? The problem wasn’t that he was young and independent. The problem is he had left his father out of his heart and out of his life. And we’ve done that to where we’re living, going to church, even trying to be good people, even praying at times, at least when things get tough. Right?

0:17:11    And some of you praying for our country, and some people don’t believe in prayer at all. But we need to understand that, that the conflicts that we’re having in our country. Cannot be solved just by a politician. And we certainly don’t want to make a politician a savior. Right. We can have a politician that we think represents God and his thoughts. Okay. That’s okay. But he. They cannot do it alone.

0:17:40    And you can’t have somebody do it for you. You have to decide, you’re going to get with this and understand that the spirit, the conflicts that we have in our country right now cannot be solved without the spirit of God helping us. History is already proven. You can’t do it. It can’t be done. And people have tried and tried and tried. And usually it gets worse. Right. And so we want to keep you protected and all that. So in my book, If You Only Knew, if you don’t have it, you know, it’s still a free download. Or you can order it and get it and have a copy. It’s only five chapters.

0:18:15    There’s a reason. Now, we have another book coming out at the first of the year. It’s a big book, 18-19 chapters. It’ll be in all the bookstores. But If You Only Knew is a behind the scenes book for people like you that want a quick read to give you insight on what’s going on. Because in it I said, you know, we are waging a war that we cannot win in our current condition, our current spiritual condition.

0:18:38    We cannot, as Christians, even continue to bash other people, judge other lifestyles of people who don’t go to our church anyway, who not ask our opinion. Right. We’re trying to tell. I guess it’s okay to say this. We’re trying to tell people who we as Christians. I’m not saying me, but we as Christians consider sinners who we preach. They’re going to go to hell anyway. I’m not saying that’s what I would say, but that’s said a lot.

0:19:07    So these are sinners going to hell anyway. But we want them to change their lifestyle. We don’t want them to live that way. We don’t want them to dress that way. We don’t want them to be any influence. We don’t want to see them. We want to just hide out. Right? It’s none of our business. What we need to do is focus on what we can change. And we need to change the people of God. Focusing on God. Instead of having a people centered church, a problem centered church, we have a Jesus centered church where we love God with all our heart, and he’s our leader.

0:19:39    He’s not just the savior. He’s also the king who directs our lives. And so if you want to see a cultural shift back to or not back to. To a place where we have unity and where we’re prospering, and we are the strongest nation in the world, which may be militarily, but if we’re the strongest nation in the world, we’re only. We may be strong militarily, but we are not strong in the streets. We are not strong in our marriages.

0:20:05    We are not strong in our hearts. We’re not strong in our relationships. We’re not strong in our emotions. We’re a weak people. Right? And our children are coddled. You know, everything. It’s so amazing how parents today want to protect their kids from every, you know, every name caller. Remember, I’m growing up on the playground. You know, whatever, okay? People called people names sometimes. You know?

0:20:30    Okay, wasn’t he fun? You know, it’s not fun being called a name or anything like that. It’s not. Maybe it’s not right. But you know what? We coped. We learned. We learned. We learned that, you know, that’s the world. Not everybody’s going to like me. Not everybody’s going to treasure me. Not everybody’s going to think I’m special because everybody knows if everybody’s special, nobody’s special. And so nobody’s special today, nobody feels special because all of us are special.

0:20:58    And we’re so coddled, we’re so weak. And while other nations are training their children in disciplines, which is probably a bad word in our culture, right? But just structure, disciplines, organization, how to think, how to survive, how to overcome obstacles. Instead of making a special room for you so you can go bang your head against a soft wall. So we’ll put up padding on the wall. So when you get frustrated, you can’t bang your head on these walls because it’ll hurt you, but we’ll make a room for you so you can. It’ll be all soft and padded, and you can leave fourth grade and go bang your head against the wall for a little while until you settle down and come back.

0:21:41    What? These kinds of things are really happening. And if that doesn’t work, or maybe they do it anyway, we’ll drug our kids. We’ll drug them. We’ll put them on drugs so they calm down. I don’t want to get on this warpath. But you know, today there’s a big thing where there’s a difference between men and women. Well, you know, there’s a difference between boys and girls too. And you need to know how to raise them and talk to them.

0:22:05    And we have so many single mothers trying to raise boys, which is not their fault. I’m not blaming them, they do the best they can. But single moms, you need to realize you talk differently to boys than you do girls. You have a different way of communicating, you have a different insight, you have a different reason, you have a different outcome, you have a different goal with them. And if you raise them like girls, which is what’s happening in a lot of places, they’re going to grow up confused.

0:22:34    So, you know, I’m really off the subject here a little bit, but I’m just talking about some of the things that you as parents, grandparents, pastors, leaders, singles face all the time. What am I supposed to do with my life? Everyday stuff. And so you go to church and I’m exaggerating a little if it sounds like every church is like that, cause they’re not. But the majority of the most influential churches in America that are guiding the religion of America are like that.

0:23:02    They, all they do is go and make you feel better and they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re going to make you feel better. Like therapy. So you’ll come back next week. Like you go into therapy and you go in once a week and talk to the therapist, right? So it’s going to be spiritual therapy, inspirational therapy, friendship therapy. All the therapy about your past and everything about you. And you’re going to come in and it’s going to make you feel better.

0:23:27    That’s going to make you come back next week. But you’re not going to be changed. You’re still going to have the same problems. You just got to here, do some more therapy, right, to cope. You’re trying to cope. You’re trying to understand, trying to deal with so much today, so much stress and, and so, you know, I’m okay. I’m okay. I understand some people, that’s the best of God. But I also know the God of the universe has sent his son and his was transformed. You’re going to be changed.

0:23:57    Changed. In fact, that’s the end of the story. Since Jesus was raised from the dead, he has a glorified body now. He says, you know what? If you stay with this and believe and stay with this in faith and don’t compromise. You’ll be changed, too, and you’ll become just like him in the last day. Okay? So even your body’s going to be transformed, you know? And so everything is change, transformation, new creation. And we just don’t see that today. We see people coming, accepting Jesus even as lord and savior. But nothing changes other than maybe some hope that when they die, they’ll go to heaven.

0:24:35    Or maybe if they pray, they’ll get some help to cope. Right? But in the Bible, people were so dedicated, they were willing to die for what they believed. You know why? I don’t understand that sometimes either, but it’s because they were transformed. They were not normal. Right. They were spiritual. Right. They weren’t just being good. They were spiritual people walking by the spirit of God. And I want that in our country, we need a spiritual awakening. We need to help us bring unity and strength and understand that the direction we’re going—we’re not going to solve anything. It’s just going to. Cause if one side does this, one side does that, you vote this, you vote that. This law, that law, right now it’s only dividing us. The other side, whichever side gets angry and angrier and angrier. And then we had, we have assassination attempts, we have people shot at. We have crimes, we have carjackings.

0:25:29    I mean, the list goes on and on and on of the symptoms, and people don’t know how to answer it, and they don’t know what to do. And we want to do it a cheap way. We want to do it the quick way, we want to do it the easy way and leave ourselves out of it. Like, it has nothing to do with me. I’m safe where I am. I’m not there where that crime is. I’m not a drug addict. I’m not shooting, fighting. Yeah, it has something to do with you. Cause you have the ability to be full of the holy spirit and become a spiritual person that is not embarrassed about God and is also not pushing it in a judgmental way where you’re telling people that you don’t even know that they need to change.

0:26:08    They need to change their lifestyle. They need to quit sinning. What if you want to change the world, you change. You change the world by being transformed. And people see that and say, I want. I want what that guy has. I want what that gal has. I want to have the sense of God and the sense of peace and the sense of direction they have. And I realize changing my gender is not going to do it. Changing my clothes is not going to do it.

0:26:32    The changing political parties is not going to do it. Changing presidents is not going to do it. I have to change and I have to be willing to do it and let God do the rest. And that’s something for you today to ponder as we look to a new revival of the spirit. Not just a revival meeting in the spring or fall or we have great services and everybody hoots and hollers and then goes home and nobody changes. No, you have to say, I want to become a spiritual person.

0:26:59    I want to become a spiritual person and then go after it. And you change and somebody else is going to see you and they’re going to, they’re going to feel that spirit of the Lord on you when you even come near. And they’re going to say, you got something. You’ve got something that I don’t have. What is it? I want it. And now we’re on a course for spiritual awakening and evangelism like we’ve never seen before.

0:27:23    Well, I’ve already mentioned the book and the other stuff there. There’s other books there that you can get on the website, https://morefaithmorelife.com. Tell your friends about it. This podcast is different. We talk about things that most people are not talking about because a lot of them are still, you know, they’re still mimicking the church life of poor me. And you can do better. God loves you and how to be a better this and better that rather than a transformed, rather than a spiritual revival, rather than. No, we need to be spirit beings.

0:27:47    So it’s unique in that respect. You need to tell friends and be responsible. If you feel like that this is helping you, maybe consider an offering. If you don’t. Okay, but I would do something, tell people, do something. If this is helping you and you believe this is real information that’s going to save our nation. All right, till next time. Bye.