0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): America is under attack. No, no, not by missiles and bombs. It's being attacked by ideas. Destructive spiritual ideas, destructive political ideas that are being imported from other countries. That didn't work there. It won't work here. I'm going to sound the trumpet on the next More Faith, More Life podcast. You were made for more than the status quo. 

0:00:25 – (Steve Gray): 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. When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. 

0:00:50 – (Steve Gray): 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. 

0:01:22 – (Steve Gray): So if you're ready to do more, 

0:01:24 – (Steve Gray): subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It's time to be and experience more. 

0:01:34 – (Steve Gray): Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Your voice for revival. When I was a kid, there was a common thing when we only had three TV channels or four or whatever, and they'd use a phrase, you know, they cut to commercial and they'd say, now don't touch that dial. We'll be right back. Well, this is the day I'm going to. Don't touch that dial. I say a lot of things, but this is so timely and so important if you're a Christian, if you're a believer, even a nominal believer, even if you're like, oh, I'm not super, super spiritual, but I still believe in God. I believe in Jesus. 

0:02:07 – (Steve Gray): I go to church fairly regularly. I give a little money sometimes, even if you're in that category or if you feel like, well, you know, Jesus is my life, and I know a lot of people that Jesus is their life. Even though they work in the workforce, they're not pastors or leaders like that. So everybody who's a believer, on whatever level needs to hear this today. I shouldn't plead. You should not plead truth. 

0:02:33 – (Steve Gray): Truth is truth. And people should be able to want it. And if somebody tells you I've got some truth to tell you today that's very, very important, then they're going to want to hear it. But if pleading was appropriate, I would do it for you to not touch that dial. All right? So anyway, I want to talk. Well, I should tell you this. I have a new book. My wife Kathy's been helping me really heavy to hurry on it because of the timing of what's going on in the world and in our country. 

0:03:02 – (Steve Gray): I'm hoping it'll be out soon. And so kind of watch that. And this is some of the stuff that, you know, you're going to get from that. And I'll be letting you know that as soon as possible. And you'll just have to get it. You just got to, got to, got to. And I'm not trying to sell books. Cause I was, you know, on the Gideon book that we just finished a year ago and got out a year ago. We didn't push that, you know, but, you know, we're not trying to make big sales. I don't even talk about giving money very often. How rare is that? On this podcast, give donations or anything like that. 

0:03:36 – (Steve Gray): We could use it. And maybe after you read this book or you get this book or you read. Hear more of what I'm going to say, you say, I better support this. There's something important happening right now in a. In a message. Okay. So anyway, this is so timely. In the book I start reading. I started by helping people understand America is now at a tipping point. You know, I say that, you know, a tipping point, like, going to maybe fall this way or that way. 

0:04:05 – (Steve Gray): And I say that, but I don't. I don't. I think we are so hit with so much crime and message and bad things and war and all that, that I don't think we hear it. We don't feel it anymore. And you actually believed that then you'd want to hear more and more. What do I need to do? What can I do? I don't want that to happen because it could go this way or go that way. So please try to understand. This is no joke. This is not just hype. This is not trying to get you to be my follower or to give me an offering. This is to get you to realize the state of the union and the problems that we're having and action that is being taken. 

0:04:44 – (Steve Gray): And the Christian side of it is so, so quiet. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. You can go to the Other people, and they are adamant, they're loud, they know what they want to do and they've got a plan, okay? If you go to a church, they're going to still talk about your hurt feelings and why it's not your fault. And you pour victim of everything else. And like, what are you? We can't be victims anymore. 

0:05:10 – (Steve Gray): We can't be. We've got to get into the victorious. So anyway, the problem is, as you already know, America is more divided than ever, I don't think. I mean, certainly at the Civil War, it had to be divided. I wasn't alive then, you weren't either. So we can only imagine the emotions. But during our lifetime, and even beyond my lifetime, back to World War II, where my parents were in the war and they told me about what it was like. 

0:05:37 – (Steve Gray): We're more divided than ever because there was division whether to go into World War II or not. But after Pearl harbor, the division left pretty much. Anyway, right now it's worse than that. Trust is broken. I don't know who to trust. Do you? I mean, I'm going to trust because I make myself trust, but trust has been broken, you know, I mean, are you ready to trust our elections, that they're honest? 

0:06:05 – (Steve Gray): Are you willing to trust that all these judges that are taking things to court and all that, that they're being really honest without prejudice, without political prejudice? What about the media? Are you willing to. I sometimes go through the different channels because I want to hear what they say and I want to hear what they say about this other group says about the same thing, but they're so slanted. They have their minds made up to something before it happens, then when it happens. 

0:06:34 – (Steve Gray): We already know what direction, what they're going to do. The media and then what's the motives. You can't trust motives today. People have, you know, selfish motives and that's weak. It's worse than selfish. But what is happening in our country now? What used to be. Oh, let me say this. I read an article once that is a pastor leader, maybe even a politician. Don't refer to your age all the time, how long you've been around. 

0:07:05 – (Steve Gray): I catch myself doing it because I have had such an interesting life anyway. And yet I got to see the world culture change in the 1970s into the 80s, but particularly late. I was real young. Grade school, you know, in late 60s and in the 70s, went to college during the 70s, graduated in the 70s from college, and I saw a cultural revolution. My older sister's five years older than I am. She Was in a completely different world than me. 

0:07:34 – (Steve Gray): She was in Happy Days, you know, the old. I don't know, you guys, my people working with me. You heard of Happy Days? A rerun? No, they don't know what it is. So anyway, the 50s, happy days and those, you know, and their biggest, the biggest threat then was Elvis Presley. Parents were mad at Elvis Presley. When the Beatles came on, then they really got mad. They didn't like Elvis or the Beatles. And so I saw a cultural revolution into drugs and long hair and just a change in look. 

0:08:03 – (Steve Gray): Television shows changed. They became political. They had agendas rather than just to make us laugh. And so all that happened during my lifetime. And now I see an even stronger cultural shift that is happening in our country today. And what used to be that we used to be a country that even though we didn't agree on everything and we shouldn't, we had a moral basis, a moral foundation where we kind of all agreed that this is the way we should act towards whatever, you know, and today we don't have that moral anymore. Now we debate it, now we argue about it. We argue whether we should have police or no police, whether we should have ice or no ice or we should have illegal aliens or no. 

0:08:47 – (Steve Gray): Instead of having like. Well, this is kind of like makes we kind of have a foundation how we're going to hold our country together. It's gone. It's completely gone. And so what's happening is then. And you need to know your history enough. No society has ever abandoned a corporate truth or truths and been able to hold itself together by abandoning common truths that we had as a nation that held us together. 

0:09:18 – (Steve Gray): We've abandoned those. Now we argue them, now we debate them. Some people have them, some people don't. But no country that ever became that divided where they did not know. In the Bible, Jesus mentions truth and Pontius Pilate says, well, what is truth? And you know what the answer is? Truth is Jesus. Truth is a person. Truth is not an idea. Anybody can make up their own truth. But if truth is a person, he says I'm the way, the truth, then all we have to do is believe him and believe what he says anyway. 

0:09:52 – (Steve Gray): So we have this fighting going on and what's happening, and this is my opinion, this is what I want you to wake up to. I think it's very, very strong and very, very threatening. All right, Right now we have spiritual forces. Spiritual forces that are invading their spirits, in my opinion. And by the way, I'll break a weekend. There never been a time in my lifetime when I could turn on commentaries and news shows where people actually mentioned evil and demons, demonic and things. 

0:10:30 – (Steve Gray): You never used to hear that maybe not even in churches in my lifetime much. But anyway, people are starting to say, you know, there's some demonic things, there's powers of darkness happening and it's a spiritual force, unseen spiritual forces that are influencing the minds of millions of Americans, millions. And these spirits or these ideas, if you'd rather just say they're ideas, but these spiritual forces is what I'm calling them. 

0:10:59 – (Steve Gray): They, they are not, they were not here some years ago. I mean any forces can come, but they have invaded and taken over and disguised themselves as spirits that have been from other countries that they've dealt with. And these spiritual forces that they've been dealing with in other countries, they ruined the countries, they were destructive. They kept people in poverty in Warsaw, you know, no advancement, low education, especially against women. 

0:11:33 – (Steve Gray): You know, they prejudice against women. And you know, sometimes I get amazed at the women that are in the streets screaming, screaming, screaming, wanting some of these ideas that have been imported. You know what it is to be imported? It means from someplace else. They have been imported from other nations into our nation and they're screaming about them. And it's the very ideas, spiritual forces that abandon women's rights and force them to wear certain clothing, force them to live a certain way. And they give men all the rights even to beat em up. 

0:12:09 – (Steve Gray): They have a right in other countries. They can beat up, whip and sometimes even kill if the woman doesn't fall into line with their ideas. And those are the important ideas coming into our country. And women are fighting for them. And I don't get it. Sometimes some of my, you know, Jewish people sometimes are fighting for them and yet they're very anti Jew. And sometimes the homosexual gay community is out fighting for them. And I said, what do you, don't you understand in other countries these are important ideas where they kill gay people in their countries and yet you're fighting for it. 

0:12:50 – (Steve Gray): That's why I know this is a spiritual force that has blinded people. It's blinding them to think that first of all things will get better. And it's disguised maybe it's so deceptive. Cause you know what it's disguised as? It's disguised as compassion, you know, caring compassion. It's disguised as progress. We need to make progress into a new time of way of doing things, a way of doing government, a way of doing poor people, rich people, taxes, all that kind of stuff and enlightenment. 

0:13:21 – (Steve Gray): So we're going to enlighten you. We're going to import these ideas from other countries. And because our folks, most of them have no. They don't know history. Cause they went to school in our public school. And so they don't know, especially young ones, college kids. Don't. They get degrees and still don't know anything. Some of them can't hardly read. And so they don't know that these are important ideas that have ruined other countries. 

0:13:47 – (Steve Gray): And so they're destructive. They have been imported. They're destructive force. They're destructive ideas backed by spiritual forces. And once you get that, the Bible talks about principalities and powers, powers of darkness. And they get in and they blind people and they make people see differently than it should be. And then they're arguing and fighting about these things that sound compassionate, they sound progressive, they sound enlightening. 

0:14:18 – (Steve Gray): So their ideas, that people that are destructive. And then certain people are celebrating them. If their candidate who pushes these ideas gets elected, they celebrate. They think it's the greatest thing that's ever happened. And so there's a big deception. And this is one that in my new book, there's a chapter called Do You Think You Will Escape? And the idea is, do you think. Do millionaires, billionaires, the gay community, whatever, women who are now pushing these ideas, do they have the idea that these forces will not reach their homes? 

0:15:00 – (Steve Gray): Is there an idea that these that came from other countries and destroyed, persecuted women, persecuted others that were different, different lifestyles, all these kinds of things that I'm sure, you know, you believe in some of those things. It's probably not always easy. Not always easy for me to be a pastor, but at least we get to do it, you know. But there they have been abandoned. They're persecuted, beat, thrown in prison, and sometimes killed for alternate ideas other than these that are imported with spiritual demonic forces behind them. And so then we really get deceived. Like, oh, I can go out in the street, or I can yell for it, or I can fight for it, or I can vote for it, whatever. Not everybody goes to the street and screams, but, you know, believes that these sound progressive, they sound fair, they sound compassionate. 

0:15:57 – (Steve Gray): And so I'm going to celebrate. I think we need to try these new ideas. And so when people do that, they. They get deceived. Do you think that the more these come and they are coming. Well, they're not coming. They're here. They're here. And just some days ago, I began to hear about these organized movements that want to change the government and Change our way of life, change our country. They want to change it into other ideals, other political parties, other political ideas, I should say. 

0:16:33 – (Steve Gray): And so the deception is it's not going to reach your kids, it's not going to hurt your kids, it's not going to hurt your income, especially if you tend to be on the upper end income wise. And you think that socialism and communism is coming and all of a sudden they're going to say, you know what, you're a movie star, it's okay, you can live in the mansion and be millions and millions and millions rich. We won't make you help us pay for the poor or pay for socialism. 

0:16:57 – (Steve Gray): Pay for communism, Are you kidding me? Go and read your history and find out. They're the first person they went after. They went after their money and you couldn't have it anymore. And they took it, they took it away and spread it around and then became dictators themselves. So you can't trust that these that say they're going to share the wealth and share the power, forget it, it's a lie. They're going to make themself wealthy and powerful just in a different way, and it won't be America. 

0:17:25 – (Steve Gray): They also want to abolish the two-party system. Now it actually isn't a two party system, it's three. There are libertarians, you know, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, okay, But they want to abolish the whole system and start a new one. They wouldn't exist anymore and they want to do this right away. They want to have a major, major movement, sort of like the no kings, only bigger, that changes America. They want to alter America. 

0:17:53 – (Steve Gray): And so now I can talk more on this if I just need you to be convinced it is real, it's happening. The church is weak. The church is weak. We don't have a message, we're not causing it. And here's the reason why it's important that Christians begin to rise up as Christians. Because the crisis we're in right now is not. I know I sounded really political, right? Okay. But it's not politics. I don't want to be political. 

0:18:20 – (Steve Gray): I'm just, I'm just giving you the symptoms, the tipping point symptoms. But anyway, the crisis America is in right now is not because of poor political policy. That's not it. We see that that is just a symptom. It is a spiritual policy. It's the spiritual policy of most all churches across America where we're nominal. We don't want to go too far, we don't want to get too loud. And, and I am not Listen carefully. I am not saying churches need to be political. 

0:18:52 – (Steve Gray): I'm saying churches need to be spiritual. Church is the one place on the face of the earth in this country where, according to God, it's a schedule to go and meet God and meet the Holy Spirit power and be transformed by the renewing of your mind, to begin to experience the power of God and the presence of God and the strength of God and the courage of God, the morality of God. And you get all that when you go and meet and then you go out and then you don't start talking like a politician. 

0:19:25 – (Steve Gray): You talk to people about their spirits, of how you have been changed so that you're not so angry, you're not so fearful, you're not feeling like, well, the only hope for us is to upheaval, you know, an upheaval everything we have. Because this group, of course, they want to get rid of our president. They want to get rid of our president. They want to get rid of Republican and Democratic Party and they want to change the economy. 

0:19:49 – (Steve Gray): They want to have important ideas that, you know, they want to do all this and they mean it. They are serious and they are organized and they have money. While Christians go to church. And, you know, we don't hardly even get the Bible. We get stories and sometimes people show movie clips. You know, I don't know which church it was, but somebody went and they visited their old home church. They came back, they were appalled. I said, what was wrong with it? They said, well, they had some music and then they showed clips from Shrek and made, you know, morale. Good choices, showed the good choices of Shrek. 

0:20:28 – (Steve Gray): And I thought, oh, gosh, no wonder, no wonder we cannot hold back these spiritual powers and forces, the principalities and. And powers. And here's another problem right now. Churches have everything. Churches have abundance of everything. You name it, they got it. Support groups, volleyball, organized sports, church. All different days of the week and times in the morning make it as convenient as possible. 

0:20:58 – (Steve Gray): They have more of everything except God. Cut back on worship, cut back on sermons, cut back on talking about God. Bring in, you know, things from the spirit of the world, the principles of the world, the attitudes of the world. And they do it because it attracts people. So people don't feel any change from the street or work or rioting or whatever. They can go to do whatever they want to do, walk in the church, and there's no challenge at all. Because it's the same spirit. 

0:21:31 – (Steve Gray): It's the same spirit. They're not challenging us, just make it. They're not hitting the spiritual. They may even be political. But that's off balance because the real problem in the United States of America is not political policy. It's our spiritual policy, which is being preached all over America. There are exceptions. Thank God for it. All over America. And so the people are falling for it. They go out and then they go home, listen to the news. And it's like kind of the same attitude. 

0:22:00 – (Steve Gray): We're going to be compassionate, We're. We're going to be progressive, we're going to be compassionate, we're going to be enlightened, we're going to be fair. And hey, you know, and somehow we think that God, if he. If or Jesus, if he was walking the earth now, he certainly would go to all the billionaires and millionaires and say, hey, we need to share the wealth. Share the wealth. That he never did that. Nope. He talked about money a lot. 

0:22:23 – (Steve Gray): And God does too. And it's a funny thing. When God first talked to Abraham about starting the nation of Israel, like, he made God made Abraham very, very rich. God made David rich. God made Solomon so rich he couldn't even count his fortune. He didn't go and spread the wealth. He blessed them. And it was the blessing of God. There's a lot to be learned here about what would Jesus do? Type things, you know. 

0:22:55 – (Steve Gray): And so anyway, now at the end of this, despite of what we see and all that I've said, and there is a major movement kicking up the heels with a plan, and the church has no plan. But in spite of that, that doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan. In spite of it, we see that the spiritually cold, dead, dying, dull. There's a lot of D words there. Churches can suddenly awaken. And we're seeing it. We're seeing it now. I don't want to take too much more time because I want you to get just this message and we're seeing it. And there's in the news, there's things about college campuses, worship meetings by young people, and how there's a fresh movement of young people worshiping and buying Bibles, going to church and things like that. 

0:23:45 – (Steve Gray): That's all good, but think of it. That's a young people's movement which might take root and do something great. But generally it was like in the 60s and 70s, we had the Jesus movement. It changed church too. It changed religion in America to a certain degree. But the major money, powerful churches that could take the message to the nation were silent. And then the Jesus movement, which the old hippie Movement, some people think, you know, yeah, it took, but it took years and years. We don't have years and years. 

0:24:21 – (Steve Gray): We're at the tipping point now. The other side. Those that want to change America and importing ideas, destructive spiritual spirits from other countries, they're now, they're expecting now, and they want to change now before the next elections. And so it's all good sign, but what we need is where is the voice of church? Churches and pastors that aren't just coddling us and cuddling us and helping us to cope rather than help us to be transformed. 

0:24:53 – (Steve Gray): So despite what we see, though, there are spiritual signs of awakening, and most of it is youth movements and college camp. And that's good. We'll take it and it may spill over and get the parents hungry and get the pastors hungry. Okay, let's hope so. But if it happens, the shift we're seeing now is light, but it is on the edge. It's like revival is trying to rumble and explode. It's trying to. It's starting to rumble. 

0:25:19 – (Steve Gray): And so there's good signs and revival. Here's what revival does. Revival restores the vitality, life energy, truth, vitality of the people within the system instead of trying to change the system. Did you get it? I'm almost done. So I hope you got that. What's happening now with these other movements is they're trying to change the system. Revival changes people within the system. So the system doesn't need to be changed because we got our strength, honesty, morality, courage, unity. 

0:26:01 – (Steve Gray): And it's by the spirit of God. Because what's dividing us is by spirits. So what would be the answer to uniting us? The spirit of God, of course. A spiritual uniting. If spirits can divide us, a spirit of God can unite us. And hearts then become realigned with God. That's what we need. Do we see signs of it? Yep. But we better hurry up. We better get on the move. We better get serious. And pastors either need to get the right message or retire, you know, so we need to now think about this seriously. 

0:26:40 – (Steve Gray): You need to think about it seriously. Don't think that if this continues and moves and it's going to move rapid, it wants to move rapidly between now and the next elections that you will escape. Your income will escape, your children will escape, the public schools will escape. Don't be so naive. You're being naive. No. Other countries, the same spirits that came, destructive things, destructive ideas have been imported into the United States of America. 

0:27:07 – (Steve Gray): Nations that rediscover the fundamental principles of what made them great will become great again. And by the spirit of God, not by might nor by power, not by politics, but by the spirit of the living God, we can find and unite this nation until we realize what made us great in the first place. Be watching for my new book. I'd tell you the title but we're still kind of working on it a little bit. But it'll be out real quick. I'll be telling you about it. I may do some special podcasts and broadcasting but tell your friends. 

0:27:39 – (Steve Gray): You got to tell your friends. You've got to talk this over with your children, wife, friends. Go talk to your pastor and see if he understand or she understand this at all, that this is what we need here. We need a spiritual revival in your church that brings us to the point of transformation to where what they talk about common sense becomes common again. Till next time, bye- bye.