America’s Real Crisis Isn’t Political

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): America is in a crisis. It’s not political. It’s not blue state, red state, left, right, Republican or Democrat. It is a spiritual crisis. And only a spiritual revival will bring us national survival. I’m going to tell you more on the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:18 – (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. When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more.

0:00:46 – (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, you’ll understand life.

0:01:18 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:30 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, your voice of revival. And I’m so glad to have you with me. Today we’re going to talk about why we need revival, what it is, and, and kind of identify some of the things that would be taken care of in our country if we could have a great move of the spirit in America. So right now, America is in crisis meant. Well, there’s crisis all over that we as Americans, our country, is involved in. But it’s not political as it seems.

0:02:00 – (Steve Gray): Is there political strain? Yes, we have politics even with other countries. We have ships heading toward the Middle East. We’re dealing with Russia, we’re dealing with Ukraine, we’re dealing with China in a big, big way. We’re dealing with North Korea and probably the list is, well, Venezuela. So the list goes on and on of where we’re dealing with crises. And then look at the news in America, crisis everywhere. And it looks political. It looks like left and right and conservative and liberal blue and red, all the things that politics.

0:02:34 – (Steve Gray): But the crisis we face in America is not really political. The crisis we face in America what you’re seeing, left, right, red, blue, liberal, conservative, all those things. And some of the other things we’re dealing with other nations, those are just symptoms, especially those in our own. In our own domestic country, you know, on the domestic side of things, in our cities and the divisions that’s going on and the riots that are going on and the accusations back and forth that are going on and suing everybody, suing everybody, going on. These are all symptoms, okay? And once you understand their symptoms, then you can start dealing with the symptoms. It’s like going to the doctor and you tell him, well, what hurts or what’s wrong or what’s going.

0:03:18 – (Steve Gray): And you don’t know what you have yet. You don’t even know how to solve what you have yet. But you tell the symptoms and then the doctor gives you the answer. So this is what I think it is your symptoms mean. And here’s what we need to do to treat it so to get rid of those symptoms. Do you understand that? So right now we have so many people trying to tell us what to do, what needs to be done, how you solve problems, how they want it, how they this want it, government shutdowns, all those things going on. If you take them first with symptoms, then you ask yourself, are the people that are the loudest and on either and whatever your political side is, the ones that are really vocal, do they have the ability to diagnose why we have the symptoms, we’re dealing with symptoms, but what is the sickness?

0:04:07 – (Steve Gray): And so what we need then is someone like a doctor. And that’s what I want to be for you today and other times is a spiritual doctor. That’s where I live. I live doing spiritual things, reading about spiritual things, praying spiritual things, preaching spiritual things. So all my thing is in the spirit. So I want to diagnose it now and say, here’s the problem. We are in a spiritual crisis. You’re never going to be able to solve this in any other way. It’s not this Northland and Southland and Texas and all the things going on, but it’s a serious, serious problem that we have.

0:04:44 – (Steve Gray): And it requires intervention. But right now we have that. And the people that should be giving us the diagnosis and the cure to all the division to all the crisis is silent. So the politicians, the left, the right, red, blue, you’ve heard it now. They are very vocal of what they want to see done, what needs to be done, what should be done, what the Supreme Court should do. All these things are being vocalized to us constantly hour after hour on television news channels, the Internet, etc.

0:05:22 – (Steve Gray): And yet the church is silent on helping us get unified and get free of our sickness and get a cure. Now, that doesn’t mean the church is silent. There are some preachers out there still preaching, but if you catch what they’re preaching, they’re out of sync with what’s happening in the country. They’re not telling us how to get well in our country, how to get well in our hearts, how to get well in our spirits, that they’re telling us to just hang on.

0:05:47 – (Steve Gray): God loves you. It’s going to get better. Don’t get discouraged. Love one another. Well, those are all great things, but they’re not addressing the crisis that is affecting our economy, is affecting how what we’re able to buy, what we can’t buy. Housing, car prices, I read, I guess this morning or yesterday are, you know, high. They’re still high. And just the list goes on and on of the problems. And yet there are answers and there’s a way to fix a lot of this, but it’s not by getting politicians to tell us what to do and, and just say, well, we just need to pass this law.

0:06:26 – (Steve Gray): We need to pass that law. We need to drop this law. We need to get rid of these people. We need to move those. That is not going to solve the problem because the problem, those are symptoms. The problem is a problem of the heart. And legislation and lawmakers cannot solve your heart problem if you are discouraged, if you’re fighting financial difficulties and it’s causing arguments in the home and all that. We go back, those are symptoms. And then the fighting and the rioting and the threats of war and all those, those are symptoms of what really, really needs to happen.

0:07:01 – (Steve Gray): And so right now, the, our country, we know we’re the wealth, like we’re the wealthiest country in the world. We’re the most entertained country in the world with the least joy. I’ve been to lots of countries in the world and seen poverty and seen families that have very little and watch their kids play in the street in the dirt, you know, just playing and kicking a ball around or something. And they’re so much happier than our kids who have everything at their fingertips. And until you’ve seen it and experience it, it doesn’t hit you so, so hard. But we’ve got the wealth, we’ve got and less joy. We’ve got all these sermons, there’s lots of sermons, but they don’t transform lives.

0:07:46 – (Steve Gray): They more or less teach us to hang on, keep going believe it’s going to get better and how valuable we are and how special we are to God and just not. It is not that it’s not true and it’s not the people preaching or bad people, but. But we need specialists here to diagnose the problem in America because we’re not going to get better until our country gets better and we get out of this crisis that we’re in.

0:08:13 – (Steve Gray): And so laws can change what people do, but it doesn’t change what people think. And it doesn’t change, obviously, people’s behavior, because that’s part of the crisis, isn’t it? Arguing back and forth. Well, this is what the law says. And then people say, well, we’re not going to do what the law says. So now laws become worthless to us and we become lawless. Lawlessness is in our country right now. How do you solve that when people know and hear and hear and hear. Well, this is what the law says. And they say, well, we don’t care. We’re not going to.

0:08:44 – (Steve Gray): We’re not going to do it. So we’ve got to have a spiritual revival, a revival of spiritual things, a revival of God things, of an interest in God things, because only God can change the heart. And a revival then is an upsurge of church, religion and all those things which we’ll talk about in a minute. But we need to get our spiritual health before we can get national health, before we get national peace.

0:09:17 – (Steve Gray): We got to get our spiritual health. Our spiritual health. This is my opinion. Our spiritual health right now is depending on whether America is going to survive the crisis we’re in with wars, rumors of wars, the nations I mentioned, the trade wars, the fighting in the street, the immigration wars, all these things that are going on. And people are becoming lawless and not abiding by the law. If we could get them to abide by the law, it would help.

0:09:48 – (Steve Gray): But they would abide by the law, but their hearts would not change. They’d still be mad on the inside. And so it’s going to pop up again and again and again. And so we need a spiritual revival, a revival of spiritual things. Now, who are the people that can provide that? Are you expecting a politician to provide it? Are you expecting some law person that’s trying to keep the law and keep the peace on the street?

0:10:15 – (Steve Gray): Somebody in the National Guard is supposed to now get us a spiritual revival? Of course not. The professionals, the ones that have been trained to diagnose a problem that solves problems, and that is the spiritual people, the Pastors, the leaders, worship leaders, Sunday school teachers, even ushers, people that are involved in the kingdom of God and have been trained by the kingdom of God now should have answers. And they need to speak out. Answers.

0:10:46 – (Steve Gray): I don’t want to say that, that no church, any place is not speaking out. But this is what I see. You may see something different in your church, but this is what I see. Some churches are speaking out, but they’re speaking out like politicians saying, this is what the Supreme Court needs to do. This is what the legislature, this is what the Senate, this is what the representative, this is what needs to be done. This is what the President needs to do. This is what they left, right?

0:11:12 – (Steve Gray): So they’re actually speaking and repeating political phrases that may be true and saying if we don’t get some of this political stuff straightened out, America is doomed. Maybe so, but the way to change it is they should be in their department. We’ve got politicians, we need politicians, we need the people speaking out, but we need spiritual people who have been invested by God, is invested in them, in scripture, in Bible, in preaching, in.

0:11:42 – (Steve Gray): And now they need to have discernment and bring to the American people each church. We can’t just have one speech that covers America. But if the pastors, leaders, board members, worship leaders, choir directors, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders would begin to discern what’s going on and let the Holy Spirit revive an interest in spiritual things. Because you can go into a youth group or you can listen to the worship of a church and you know, the music is good, they’re singing the songs, but you can just tell their heart’s not really in it.

0:12:15 – (Steve Gray): And so a church wants to get in and get out more than get in. You know, we’re going to get in and get out and we need to stay in. And so we have, you know, three songs and the offering and a 20 or 25 minute sermon or whatever, sermonette, more or less dealing with our feelings and how we’ve been abandoned and how we were victims and how God loves us. All these kinds of things not telling us. This is what we have to have. We have to, as the people of God, lead a revival of a hunger and interest in spiritual things.

0:12:50 – (Steve Gray): It cannot be done. We cannot solve your problems or their problems or our problems with human effort. This is too big. This is too big. It can’t be solved by laws or by board meeting. This is too big. We need to have spiritual activity raised up. And the only way you can do it is to get the people of God who go to church every week to get a hunger for God. Not only because they say, well, I know I should.

0:13:19 – (Steve Gray): Come on, it is bigger than I know I should. I’m saying, you know you better. You know you better. We’re going to destroy each other. We’re going to pass the wrong laws. We’re going to bring in things that were never brought in to our country by people who started the nation. We got to still we have a constitution started by people. We need to rely on them who started it and the people who have kept it going.

0:13:46 – (Steve Gray): But right now we have people entering our country that have no interest at all in who we have been and who we are and, and what’s made us who we are and are trying to change the attitudes of America, the beliefs of America. And it’s happening. It’s not going to happen. It might not. It might happen. It is happening, okay? And so because that the only way to solve it is the people who have been given the spiritual authority to change things in the heavenlies and not just in earth, earthly things. Yes, I believe prayer changes things.

0:14:21 – (Steve Gray): I often refer to. If you wonder if prayer works, remember Jesus said, let’s not hope this happens. When he said, you know, flee to the mountains and the pregnant women and all that stuff. He said, pray that it doesn’t happen in winter. Now, if we can’t change when things happen, Jesus wouldn’t say, pray it doesn’t happen then. So we can change what happens in the earth, but we cannot change what happens in the earth until we change what happens in our hearts.

0:14:48 – (Steve Gray): This disinterest, lukewarm, halfhearted religion where people are coming just to get together and meet friends, rather than the big congregation or the big group that comes for one reason, and that is to encounter the living God. Rather than hurry up and go meet your small group that you ordered spaghetti or you got pizza waiting for you in your small group where you’re going to get together, fellowship and watch a football game or watch a baseball game or play dominoes or something.

0:15:19 – (Steve Gray): And that’s what you’re eager for. We got to move to be eager for the real living God. Because it can’t, you know, it can’t be a church growth strategy. It can’t be home group strategy. It can’t be anything that it has to be. We must raise the level of spiritual love and desire that brings in the power and presence of God. The. That’s true revival. Revival does that. And we’ve got to do it if we’re going to have national survival And I think that church folks and church leaders are so blinded, like, we don’t have to worry. We’re God’s people.

0:15:57 – (Steve Gray): This is a nation under God. It’s all going to be okay. God’s going to not let things happen. There’s no historical reason to believe that. Plenty of Christians and Jews over the centuries have been treated terrible, murdered, tortured, had their, their beliefs taken away, that if they didn’t confess another belief or another religion, they killed them, thrown to the lions. All those kinds of things really happened. A Holocaust really happened to one group of people, Jewish people.

0:16:29 – (Steve Gray): Well, let me back up. It happened, it happened to, it happened to the Soviet Union. It happened. I shouldn’t say Soviet Union. It happened to Russian soldiers by the millions too, but. And they were picked out because they were Russian. Yeah, just because they were Russian. We know, we more know about the Jewish Holocaust because it was so large and it was just Jewish people. Gypsies too. Gay people too.

0:16:56 – (Steve Gray): Yes. Think about it. Gay people were round up. And there is a religion that’s so strong in our country right now that is very, very anti-gay. I’m not pro, I’m not preaching pro-gay, but I’m saying these gay communities that are cooperating and voting, some of these people in that are definitely anti-gay. Do you think that you’re going to escape if they come into power and can change laws, that you’re going to escape?

0:17:24 – (Steve Gray): No. The gypsies didn’t escape the Holocaust, gays didn’t escape and Jewish people didn’t escape. They all were murdered. Okay? So we got to realize what’s happening so rapidly and some people are trying to stop it, but the church is silent. And the biggest thing that we have in our problem is that God is addressing a settled and comfortable church that will not move, that will not rise up, that is complacent, that is blind, that is, that is not discerning. The times did not understand the times we live in. And Jesus said that in his time. He says, you know, things are going to happen because you did not know the time, discern the time that you’re living in. You didn’t discern what, what’s happening.

0:18:16 – (Steve Gray): So we, we hear a lot about revival today and there’s some good signs, but it’s not the cure. Because the problem is we have a lot of young people, great college kids, college campuses, meeting for prayer meetings. That is so wonderful. And showing up for big worship things. But that’s not the church, because eventually they’re going to graduate and they’re going to get married or start a job or whatever, and they’re going to try to find a home church. And when they get in the home church, the home church is not meeting for prayer. They’re not having long worship services.

0:18:50 – (Steve Gray): They’re not filling that. And then so they’ll just have to, you know, join in and sit next to somebody who comes for one hour a week. And that’s all they’re going to do. And that’s all they care about. They may give money or they may not give money. And so that complacency and. And that silence. And when I say silence, I’m not advocating that. All of a sudden all the preachers and all the people need to turn political.

0:19:15 – (Steve Gray): We don’t need to turn political unless you’re a politician. We need to turn what spiritual. That’s our community. I mean, the Bible makes it very clear that we are the community, the saints and the body of Christ, right? And not the body of some political party. And so we need to rise up with our voice, our standards, and say what we believe will solve the problems of America and bring that. And the only thing that will do it is a heart change.

0:19:45 – (Steve Gray): A heart change.

0:19:46 – (Steve Gray): If you.

0:19:47 – (Steve Gray): I mean, how many people have got their testimony? They used to be criminals and they went to prison and they stole or they kidnapped or whatever. Now they don’t do it anymore because they found the real living God, not just a church service. Not just people who have no hunger for God that are cleaner, carnal people. They’re carnal people. They just leave a cleaner life than they used to before or somebody else.

0:20:15 – (Steve Gray): So it’s a true spiritual revival. Is God coming and he wants to interrupt your life. He wants to interrupt what’s going on in the earth. He wants to interrupt the complacent sermons and services that are just producing nothing, not transforming life, maybe inspiring, but not transforming. And he wants to interrupt our churches. He wants to interrupt your life and bring you on a path of real spiritual growth and power and, and effectiveness.

0:20:45 – (Steve Gray): And who knows if you’d really get interested in God, who you really could be. You say, well, I can’t preach or I’m not interested. I don’t like reading the Bible. How do you know until you’ve entered into the real presence of God? One twinkling of an eye, one split second in the true presence of God will change you forever. It’ll change how you feel, how the world looks to you, activities, what you want to do, what you don’t want to do.

0:21:11 – (Steve Gray): And so revival has to begin with some desperation, some hunger. We’ve got to get rid of the apathy. We’ve got to get rid of. Of worrying that it’s going to. We’re going to get embarrassed or that a true revival is only for the emotional. A true revival is only for those extremists. Right now we need a revival. Can we say it like ordinary people are getting a fire for God, a hunger for God. They’re getting their kids in order. They’re teaching them the power of God and the presence of God, that is missing. And let’s not forget that history has said that revivals come most of the time, real ones, not just an extra day meeting. Or when we get all fired up for three or four days or we go to a conference, or we go to a worship conference, we’re all fired up and then we go back to church and life goes normal again.

0:22:04 – (Steve Gray): That is not true revival. True revival is an interruption of God bringing his presence into our presence. And it’s a manifest presence that cannot be denied. And you know, right now, I think God is shouting at us and we’re not hearing him. We can’t hear him. We’re so complacent. We’re so satisfied, we’re so comfortable. Well, the people in the streets are not comfortable. And the people in the streets are guiding our country.

0:22:34 – (Steve Gray): And whether it be one side or the other side, the people in the legislature, the people in the senate, the people in the streets, the people on their podcasts, they are guiding our country. And the church is complacent and silent in knowing what to do. And so if, if you and others like you would tell others, even, even just me, but it can’t be just me, but even just me say, you have to go and listen to this podcast. There’s somebody saying America is in trouble.

0:23:05 – (Steve Gray): It’s in a crisis, but it is a spiritual crisis. If you think, you say, well, we don’t have to worry. Once saved, always saved, we’ll be fine. Oh, we’re going to fly out of here one day. Don’t bet on it. It’s already happening. And you have not flown anywhere. It’s happening. And so you’re getting a warning from me, but I believe God is warning us from heaven that, that the church has gone deaf. The church has gone deaf and God’s still shouting, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

0:23:36 – (Steve Gray): Open your hearts to me. Get a hunger. We need to get desperate. Not so satisfied with the complacency and the common, but get desperate for God, do it for yourself, do it for the children. Do it for your marriage, do it for your nation, because we need it badly. And it’s up to people like you to take a firm stand. You say you’re a Christian. You say Jesus is in your heart. Then you’re asking me and others to believe Jesus resides in your heart and there’s no spiritual activity at all.

0:24:08 – (Steve Gray): None. You’re trying to. Who you fooling? You’re not fooling anybody but yourself when you get him in your life. And if Jesus gets in you, there’s going to be something going on. You need to believe that. All right? So it’s time to get down to business and stop just going using Christian phrases to make us feel better and realize the nation is in crisis. The world is in crisis. We could have an explosion of a war any day now. Any day could happen and we could have an explosion of a greater crisis. More riots, more trouble, more murders, more shootings, more trouble in our nation.

0:24:48 – (Steve Gray): Any minute it could escalate even to a higher level. But any minute, God can break through. God can break through if he’s got a people to break through too, who will rise up and live this out and announce it and show your own hunger and you can tell your testimony. What a hunger, desperation. You know, I. I sought the Lord’s face. I sought the Lord while he may be found. I ran after God. I. I sought the kingdom of God first.

0:25:17 – (Steve Gray): All these things. I got the first love of Jesus back. All these basic, basic things that Christianity is and, and empowers people to live out their lives, to help now turn a nation not. Not just back to God. We need that. We need it. But it turns a nation to not just revival, but to national survival. Because people are right now trying to take away the things that make you feel safe and make who you are, what you are and what you love, but what you won’t fight for.

0:25:52 – (Steve Gray): Let’s get on the ball here. We need a spiritual revival. We’re in a crisis. Not a political crisis, but a spiritual Crisis. Go to https://stevegrayministries.com and you can learn more. Get Mighty Like Gideon, the book on Gideon. Or other books like  My Absurd Religion, and the basic books of revival, like When the Kingdom Comes. They’re all there. And then, of course, there will be a new book coming out real soon that’s going to hit more and more of this.

0:26:16 – (Steve Gray): Why? Because we need it. We need to hear it until we stop our complacency and become on fire. Be sure and subscribe. Tell your friends have you told anybody? Are they still people that you love and care about and friends that you’re eating, you know, doing your home groups with and all that? They’re just clueless, all right? We have a clueless generation, and. And, and we don’t know what to do because we’re clueless.

0:26:41 – (Steve Gray): You know, Noah’s Day, they were got a preacher, Noah, the preacher of righteousness. But the people were clueless, not knowing what was coming until the flood came and swept him away. So tell your friends, let’s get on the ball here and get this message of revival that’s going to turn into, hopefully, survival for the nation. God bless America. Right. America. The nation under God. Till next time, bye-bye.