Revival Is Coming… Are You Prepared?

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Have you noticed the word revival is popping up everywhere right now? And it’s good. That’s really good that it’s a good sign. But do you know we have to prepare for it, to be ready for it, because this would be a mighty thing God wants to do in our nation. I’m going to teach you how to prepare for revival in 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 your 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.

0:01:29 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Your voice for revival. We’re going to talk about revival today. We hear a lot about revival. We hear people talk about revival. Some say we’re having revival. It’s already started or whatever. There’s a lot of talk about it. I don’t personally think we’re there. I think we’re going there. We have great signs of it, many good signs, lots of good signs.

0:01:54 – (Steve Gray): We also have lots of opposition in our country to the good things of God. We have a lot of anti-God people, anti-value, home value, family value people. We got all that. So the opposition is strong. We are now importing. I like that word, you importing. Ideas that are from other places that are foreign to us, that they can be made to sound good and use words that sound like it’s going to be better.

0:02:24 – (Steve Gray): But if you’ll follow through where these ideas came from, you’ll see that other nations are not doing so well as we are and it’s going to actually Take away from many of the blessings that we have now. And don’t think that if it grows and grows because it’s trying to, that it won’t affect you. You’re safe because of wherever you live or how much you get paid or who you know or whatever, or just because you’re a Christian. That’s certainly not going to work.

0:02:52 – (Steve Gray): So. Because it’s not working in other parts of the world, okay? So that’s that side of it. But on our side of it, revival is showing signs or signs of revival. And so what I want to talk about today is, is preparing. Preparation, okay? Because I don’t know of too many churches that actually are preparing for something to happen. They’re waiting for something to happen. But if you have church folks that are living on a nominal level, and I’m not really criticizing that now, because, you know, we’re still in the going, growing moment to see what God’s going to do and how he’s going to do it, where he’s going to do it, how he’s going to do it.

0:03:35 – (Steve Gray): So I was talking earlier with someone about this that, you know, right now maybe you take, you know, every Tuesday afternoon or whatever, you take your kids to soccer practice, okay? Nothing wrong with that. Go for it, do it. But you have to now prepare and say, well, what if God came down mightily and powerfully, unmistakably, and the world noticed and our community noticed and everybody noticed, and people start coming to our church. Cause they want to experience the things of God. That’s historically correct. That’s what happened in many places over many years.

0:04:11 – (Steve Gray): In certain places, God showed up in a stupendous, miraculous way beyond normal. What we feel is normal. And it was changing people. Okay? So guess what if people are coming from around the world, around the country, or even around the community to get God and your church, your community. It’s really hard to say, hey, I’m really glad you’re here, but, you know, we got soccer practice today, so I’ll see you tomorrow night or something like that.

0:04:41 – (Steve Gray): And so that’s not good preparation. The preparation is if God comes in a miraculous, unmistakable, powerful way, which people are praying about it, they’re talking it. That draws youth and old and young and everybody in, and. And there’s unity. Barriers are broken down. We become one in the spirit, and God is moving mightily and transforming lives. Then you know what? You might have to talk to the kids about soccer and say, you know what? Soccer’s fine, but this is more important right now. There’s something more Important than that.

0:05:17 – (Steve Gray): And so I know that for a fact because you know, I pastored two revivals that had one had five services a week for three and a half years. The other then some years later had four services a week for those about three, three and a half years too. And so one of the couples that were there all the time, they had kids, you know, and they brought their kids all the time. And you know, kids had homework too. And they figured out a way.

0:05:45 – (Steve Gray): And so they asked this family, I think it was reporter, cause there was lots of reporters there, people from all over the world came, magazines came, newspaper people. And so a reporter asked him, he says, how do you go to church? Five, was it? What? Yeah, Thursday, Friday, five days a week, doing five services a week. How do you do that? And you know what their answer was? They said, it’s easy. You don’t do anything else.

0:06:14 – (Steve Gray): Oh, that’s Jesus, isn’t it? See, that’s Jesus talking to us. He didn’t do anything else. Single minded, focused. And then he went and got some disciples. And what were they following him around? Right when Peter denied Christ, around the crucifixion, then what? He went back to fishing. But when he saw the resurrected Jesus, he comes running in to him and all of a sudden, now we know the Peter that’s not going to be doing anything else.

0:06:48 – (Steve Gray): Now that doesn’t mean that our folks didn’t go to work or kids didn’t go to school. It’s that anything outside of what we had to do, what would normally be called free time, spare time, our time, me time, your time, date night, fun out, pizza night, I don’t know what people do, movie night, but those are the things that are crowding us. And, and so we have to start talking about that. We don’t have to not have a date night now, cause we’re not there.

0:07:20 – (Steve Gray): Okay? But we have to talk about preparing to say if. And certain people won’t do this, certain churches won’t do this, certain pastors won’t do it. So let’s be honest about it. But there are those that are going to start preparing, they should start preparing for something great, powerful, miraculous to happen in your church or community or whatever, or life. And so you have to ask yourself, okay, now we can have date night or we can have soccer night or whatever, but if God does that, we need to prepare ahead of time to let that go so that we can say the same thing. How do you keep up the pace? Because when God comes down powerfully, it is a pace some Churches in history.

0:08:05 – (Steve Gray): I know one even in Missouri here, that had, back in the 1950s, had church every day, 24 hours a day for five years. Five years. The church was open 24 hours a day. People were preaching and singing and coming in from everywhere. And they’d have cots for people like the preachers to lay down and rest and sleep and get up, and they’d preach again. Or maybe they lived in the area. Okay, well, you know, how do you do that?

0:08:35 – (Steve Gray): How do you prepare yourself for that? Well, you first prepare yourself to say, if this ever happens in my church or community, I’m going to set it as a priority. So I’m preparing myself to not do anything else. That’s what they did. Not anything else. There are others in other Hebrides, Survival and Wales and Azusa street and all those revivals that we study that had church around the clock or many hours a day, long, long services, afternoon, morning, afternoon and evening. God was moving and people were coming, and it was just, you know, and so you have to prepare the way in yourself first.

0:09:14 – (Steve Gray): All right, so when we get to this scripture that I want to get to about John the Baptist, they wanted to know who he was. Who are you? Are you Elijah come back from the dead or whatever they thought. And he says, I am a voice. He said, who are you? What are you? I am a voice crying and calling out in the wilderness. Right? Prepare the way for the Lord. Now, that’s from the book of Matthew. Make straight paths for him. Okay, so we see something here. Okay? He says, I’m a voice that’s doing something. I.

0:09:50 – (Steve Gray): I’m preparing you people for the way of the Lord. I’m doing something that will prepare for him to come in, in a mighty way. And of course, he’s talking about Jesus, and he says, I’m not the Messiah. I’m not it. There’s one coming after me greater than I am. Okay, but get this, all right? Before John the Baptist could prepare the way through the people and to the people and preach to the people about it, he had to already prepare the way in his own heart to be someone who prepares the way. You got it? Yeah.

0:10:23 – (Steve Gray): Cause he’s, you know, he’s preaching in the wilderness, and he’s, you know, he’s kind of a strange Old Testament type prophet. And they describe his clothes and all that kind of stuff. But he had prepared himself, he was prepared himself to be a preparer of others. And so what we need to be doing now is thinking through our priorities, our nominal, lazy, comfortable religion Christianity, because when a true revival breaks out, things change and you don’t know exactly what it’s going to be like.

0:10:58 – (Steve Gray): And so we can’t make it like your denomination. There’s some, they falter with that God wants to do a great thing and now they have to make it fit their denomination. That doesn’t work, or they don’t understand it, or they’re so stiff. That’s why sometimes we see, as we’re seeing today, we see outbreaks of God among youth or college age kids. Okay. You know why that works so well is, well, if they’re college age, some of them work, some of them don’t.

0:11:27 – (Steve Gray): You know, they got free time, they do homework, that was it. You know, their schedules are different and they’re a lot looser. They probably went to some concerts and jumped up and down and sang the songs with whoever the superstar was and all that. And now they’re coming and worshiping Jesus and. And so they just kind of follow through with that feel of freedom and hands up and singing loud and jumping up and down and hooping and hollering.

0:11:51 – (Steve Gray): And so they don’t know this, but because of their youth or their young adult age and because of the attitudes of that they actually were more prepared to receive Jesus than if you go into the church down the street and you try to preach revival and say we’re going to prepare for it and all of a sudden you meet all this opposition stiff people, they don’t want to worship, they don’t want to longer service.

0:12:16 – (Steve Gray): Like the kids will come and they’ll worship, what, a couple hours at least, you know, they’ll have big worship things and that sort of revival it is, it’s showing signs of revival. But if the adults and the churches don’t get on board, it’s going to be hard to maintain it because we need a highway. We need to prepare the way for the Lord to come in in a mighty, mighty way. And I don’t know if we’re preparing people or we’re prepared ourselves to prepare people to live that life of nothing else for a season.

0:12:46 – (Steve Gray): I used to tell them in our church when we had the other, in 2008, we had the revival here in Kansas City, same thing, four services a week every week for three and a half years and long services. And I would tell them, I said, listen, it’s okay if your dream, you know, someday I’m going to retire and I’m going to sit in a lawn chair by the lake, you know, or by the shores and listen to the waves and drink iced Tea and just not work.

0:13:14 – (Steve Gray): If that’s your dream, you know, that’s okay. That’s okay, you can have that one. But not now. That’s for later. Now is now. Now is the day of salvation. Our country needs revival now. A revival that can cross over into the other side of the aisle, cross over into other cultures, cross over into other ideas, cross over into other alternate lifestyles. It needs to be able to cross over because you know what revives pastor so and so some pastor in a church, first church down the street.

0:13:48 – (Steve Gray): It’s the same power that revives somebody screaming at a police officer in this downtown someplace, right? It’s the same power. It’s the same transforming power. It’s just they’re not getting access to it. They’re not getting access to the power of God. Because maybe there’s a youth thing going on campus or maybe something in a, you know, a big thing where they have all the superstars of Christianity on a stage in some stadium. Okay, okay, maybe they’ll go, maybe they won’t.

0:14:17 – (Steve Gray): But we need something, we need something ongoing in a city, in a town, you in a community, big, small, something ongoing where they have access when the mood hits them, when the spirit of the Lord is convicting them, they have to go find that place. Now that church, now that church needs to be, that’s on the corner, needs to be a refuge for them rather than say, well, I’ll have to wait till the conference comes this summer to the stadium or I’ll have to wait till another youth thing comes. And then you say, well, I don’t think I can go.

0:14:51 – (Steve Gray): I’m 50 years old and there’s a lot of 50 year old people out there screaming in the streets that aren’t going to show up to a college campus worship service, right? But if they knew and were being drawn by the Holy Spirit to the church that’s close to where they live or a church that’s in their city where something of God is actually happening. But the problem is the, it’s not getting crossed over to them because it’s not crossing over to the people that attend that church.

0:15:20 – (Steve Gray): There’s no preparation. And so in the 1990s, later, 1990s, I bring that up, I know that’s ancient to some of you who weren’t even born then, but the fire, I call it the fire of God, Fire, spirit, Holy Spirit, they used to call them Holy Ghost. Fires began to break out in local churches all over America and the world, England and Japan and everywhere. You know, because I saw It I was there and all over the United States and I went to hundreds of churches where things were breaking out coming up. Revival was starting to flow, but they had no preparation.

0:15:58 – (Steve Gray): And so, you know, it was real fun. And everybody was up and down, jumping up and down and praying for people. And they’d come and the services were long, worship was long, sermons were long. And then they’d stay and pray, pray. And people would get touched by the power of the Spirit and some of them would be just lying on the floor and you know, at our services then, you know, we’d have people, it’d be the service.

0:16:19 – (Steve Gray): Prayer time started around 10 o’ clock or so, you know, the prayer service type from the sermon. And. But at one o’ clock in the morning, there’s still people there, still people lying, just being with God, you know, or knelt down or whatever. Sometimes they’d get out and go to their car thinking, I’m going home or I’m heading back or whatever. And they’re just like, I’m just going to have to sit here for a while and enjoy, I guess, and glean on what God is doing.

0:16:47 – (Steve Gray): And so it was starting to happen in churches. And so they were all excited the first week and the second week and the youth were all coming and they put their phones away and they’re all excited and they’re up front worshiping like that. And then third week, yeah, it’s still good. But as it goes into the fourth and fifth and sixth week, it starts dropping down and they start wearing out because they did not plan on being challenged. They didn’t plan on their schedule changing.

0:17:11 – (Steve Gray): They didn’t plan on having nothing else to do. But the assignment God gave them, assignment of a lifetime to help carry the revival power of God to other people, not just to themselves, to other people. And so pretty soon they’re wearing down, they’re wanting to rest, they’re wanting to go back and see a movie. Now they’re thinking about seeing a movie again. And so what we try to do is prepare people for the cost and their lifestyle.

0:17:37 – (Steve Gray): And it’s not going to be for the rest of your life. Hopefully it’ll get better and higher for the rest of your life. But if there’s an outbreak of the power of Spirit of God someplace and you happen to be where it’s at, well, get in there, do it. Prepare the way. So the way needs to be prepared. So the idea of it is. Cause they would’ve known this, you say, well, I don’t. What do I do? Well, there’s a lot of picture symbolism here.

0:18:06 – (Steve Gray): So when a conquering king would enter a city who had just maybe he’d won a war or something, well, the people then would go out to meet him outside the city. And then they would make a highway for him. And that’s where we get on Palm Sunday, where they laid their cloaks down, and they laid palm branches down, and they waved palm branches, too, and they made a highway. And it was an actual highway of cloth and, well, everything they could find.

0:18:35 – (Steve Gray): So that as he rode in, whether it be on a horse or probably it was, you know, maybe in a chariot or maybe in a, you know, wagon or whatever. Whatever. Whatever he wrote in on, the path had been smoothed out. And so they would go, and they’d say, okay, looks like he’s coming, and he’s going to go right, and pass this way. So there were people that wanted to honor and enjoy the moment of a conquering king entering into their city.

0:19:01 – (Steve Gray): And so they’d look down, and if there was a big rock in the road, they’d get up and throw it, pick up the rock and toss it. If there was a big rut in there, they’d kick some dirt in there and smooth it out and then lay a cloth over it or a blanket or a cloak or a palm branch or something just to honor them and say, you deserve a path without any obstacles. Okay? Many of us have obstacles in the way.

0:19:28 – (Steve Gray): We have heartbreak. We have wounds. You know, we have disappointments. People hurt us. We’re victims of other people. They treated me terrible, and now I’m going to live the rest of my life being upset. That’s an obstacle. See, we’ve have to get rid of the heart obstacles. We got to treat Jesus as a conquering king who has conquered all those things in ourselves. We have been conquered. Or more than conquerors, right?

0:19:53 – (Steve Gray): We have been conquered. My hurts are conquered. Right? My fears have been conquered. My pride has been conquered. You know, even my poverty is being conquered. I’m prospering in God and in finances. My personality has been conquered. You know, all these things that are about us are in the way. And we may be able to get into your church or into a community with those things in the way at first. But eventually those things are going to get in the way. And your old personality, your old wants, your old habits, your old thought patterns like that are going to get in the way.

0:20:35 – (Steve Gray): And then it ends up stopping, quitting. Or more usually is the people themselves quit. Cause they’re just pulled every way, you know, and all Of a sudden, you know, they’re back to their old self. Jealous of somebody and angry at the pastor. Jealous. Somebody mistreated me. Oh, they gave me a job to do. I got the crummy job. You know, they get to pray for people and I have to park cars, you know, just stuff like that.

0:20:59 – (Steve Gray): And so you have to get rid of all the obstacles and make a highway, a smooth path. So we’re praying for revival, but we want to get rid of all the obstacles in the way that we have placed in it. God didn’t place them there. We have them in our lives so that God can come in with the atmosphere of heaven, that thy will be done on earth like it is in heaven. And the atmosphere of heaven can come into our services where there’s no obstacles, there’s no unforgiveness. Nobody’s angry, nobody’s fighting for attention, nobody’s critical, nobody’s judgmental.

0:21:32 – (Steve Gray): And all of a sudden we’ve got a smooth spiritual highway for God to come into our church, into our lives, into our city. And that highway is okay. I’m going to have to set a few things aside in my life. Not only my attitudes, some of my bad attitudes, bad habits or something, but also some of the things that steal my time and my energy. Just activities that we think are so important, but they are important.

0:21:59 – (Steve Gray): They’re good, but. And they have their own rewards. You know, we have musicals at our church that kids get great rewards out of being in those. But we wouldn’t want it to interfere with a move of God. We need to say, if we had to, we could postpone it if we have to. I can give up soccer or whatever. I can do it. I can give up that. I can set it aside while God does his thing. It will be my thing too.

0:22:23 – (Steve Gray): I’m going to prepare the way of the Lord and make a highway for God. So when he’s trying to come in as a conquering Jesus, trying to come into our town, trying to come into our services, trying to come into our campuses and schools, trying to come in. We don’t have obstacles. Well, we do. We got enough obstacles with the other side that doesn’t love, you know, the anti-God thing. All right, but that’s their thing. And God’s a conquering king. Let him conquer them.

0:22:51 – (Steve Gray): We conquer ourselves and we make a highway, you know? Well, we let God conquer us, conquer us. And we prepare the way for us inside. And then we make a highway for those people who are angry and yelling and screaming in the streets of America. Make a highway for em. Make it easy to come in, don’t make it hard to come in. Don’t make it as difficult as possible. So you prepare your personality, your attitudes, and you show how important this is.

0:23:18 – (Steve Gray): We show how important that nothing is more important than Jesus entering as the conquering king into our city to demonstrate that the power of the kingdom of God that is now at hand, the kingdom of God. John the Baptist said, repent for the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is here. Repent. And so that’s what we want to be able to say. We’re not telling them you’re bad people. We’re telling them the kingdom of God is here.

0:23:43 – (Steve Gray): Look. Look what is happening to us. And you can be a part of this too. This is your kingdom too. And so all of a sudden, we’re not angry at them, they’re not angry at us. Come on, join me. And if you don’t like it, go back to yelling in the street. But I want to make it as easy for you to come in and receive from the kingdom of God revival to be revived in your spirit. Come alive, come alive, come alive. And those other things fall away. And you’re living life to the fullest measure. And the anger’s gone, the anxiety’s gone, fear’s gone. And just life is good.

0:24:19 – (Steve Gray): You know, you’re learning what it means to be human, what God’s intention for humanity was to live that life to the fullest measure. All right? So just think about, are you doing anything personally or in your church or in your community to prepare and make it as easy for God, easy for Jesus to ride into our church, into our community, into our lives with no obstacles. Like there’s nothing in the way now, God, nothing in the way. There’s nothing I will place between you and me.

0:24:48 – (Steve Gray): And if there is, I’m going to get rid of it so you can come in and I’m going to lay down my cloak, my branches, whatever I can do. I’m going to move the stones, I’m going to dig out the low places, bring down the high places, get rid of all the rocks and obstacles in my life so that you can come in and be the king of kings, and we’ll treat you like a king. Come in like a conquering king into my life, my church and my community.

0:25:13 – (Steve Gray): Go to https://stevegrayministries.com, check out all the stuff we have there. Subscribe like all those things. Tell your friends about this, because this is what God’s trying to do in our country. And you can hear other people. Great. Other teachers like that. But you’ll notice most of the focus is on poor old you and how you can feel better about yourself and all that. Well, now, I’m not treating you like poor ole you. I’m treating you like you’re going to be part of a conquering movement that conquers those things in your life and conquers the demonic powers that are being imported into our country. I’m treating you like a winner. A powerful more than conqueror winner and teaching you how to get there. We got some new books coming out. Look at the ones we already have. Till next time, bye bye.