The Glory Cloud is Moving

0:00:00 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Do you like amazing stories? We had a revival called the Smithton Outpouring. People lined up for three and a half years. A quarter of a million people visited. All Newsweek Time came. Everybody. It was at the height of it and God said, shut her down. I want to tell you that story of why we shut down the Smithton Outpouring. I’ll give you the secrets to it and what we did after that on the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:26 – (Pastor 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.

0:00:50 – (Pastor Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. 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.

0:01:25 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more.

0:01:27 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:36 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Hello everyone and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I’m Steve Gray, here with my wife Kathy. Excited to talk to you about some just wonderful things that really, I think, Kathy, are so important to where we are in, in the history of our nation right now leading up to next year when our nation is 250 years old, which is not that old.

0:01:57 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): No.

0:01:59 – (Pastor Steve Gray): You know, Kathy, if you think about that’s old, there’s the historians and Bible scholars have 400 years, that wasn’t it 400 years that the Israelites were in slavery.

0:02:12 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:02:13 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And then 450 years, or 400 years between what we call the Old Testament and New Testament, which they call the silent years, where God did not send a prophet. I don’t believe God didn’t speak to people, but it was informal. God was speaking informally, but he made no formal speeches. So to speak through a prophet for 400 years until John the Baptist shows up and says, prepare the way of the Lord. You know, there’s the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, and till John the Baptist. That’s so exciting.

0:02:44 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So 250 years is not that long to God, but we have a rich history that God’s trying to do. As we learn, as we lean towards the 250 years, I feel the stirring of God. I know other people do, too. We are in one of the great, greatest historical moments, certainly of my lifetime, but in the. Maybe the lifetime of our nation. That’s what I was trying to say.

0:03:07 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:03:07 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well, you’ve got. But you’ve been working on a project. Tell us about your project and then we’ll move on with the project.

0:03:12 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Okay, well, you have been doing. We’ve been discussing really, your legacy. And I’ve felt for a long time that we need to gather together the whole story of Steve Gray. And not because you’re Steve Gray, but because there is a legacy in everything that you’ve lived. The decisions you made, your commitment to God, your movement in the Holy Spirit, touching the world twice with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

0:03:44 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): And there’s so, so many riches there. And, you know, we’ve been married 50 years now, and I’ve watched every moment and every step of the way, and I, I want to put this together, not to talk about you or me or anything like that, but to share through stories, just like Jesus would do, through parables, and bring this legacy to life for the next generations. And again, not to tell the next generations, yeah, you got to do this just like Steve Gray did.

0:04:14 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): But you have such a heart. And I, as your wife, I can say, you have a heart. You have courage, you have commitment, you have dedication, self-sacrifice. You have much more mercy than I have towards people, you know, and working with everything like that. And it’s time for me to gather this all and you to tell your story so we can share it.

0:04:38 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And I might share. When I. When you use the word legacy, I back away a little bit. Like legacies go to people greater than I am. Legacies are from Winston Churchill, one of my great heroes, you know, and I studied, you know, Franklin Roosevelt, too, when I was younger, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by his story. So legacies go to them. But first of all, I’m not a big self-promoter, but I found out, okay, so when legacies are happening and being lived right, a person doesn’t walk away and say, man, have I got a legacy?

0:05:17 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): No.

0:05:17 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Legacies come alive years later when people read them.

0:05:21 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:05:21 – (Pastor Steve Gray): You know, you don’t like George Washington or, or, well, how about Hamilton? They made the musical Hamilton. He’s not going around saying, have I got a legacy waiting for America? You don’t feel like you’re in the midst of a legacy because you’re just yourself. And a lot of it’s still. You’re still battling for the things that are right and against things that are wrong. And so you don’t stop and say legacy, but other people do. Other people can write. And so I decided I’m not going to worry about how I feel about it.

0:05:49 – (Pastor Steve Gray): It’s that years later, it’ll be the value of a next generation.

0:05:53 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:05:54 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Is when it’ll probably be.

0:05:55 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): It’s even happening now.

0:05:57 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well, yes.

0:05:58 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): And right now. Well, you’re planting into people and it’s their inheritance.

0:06:04 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well, what happened inheritance. What happened 20 and 30 years ago can be told now and inspire a generation or generations because we’re possibly at the verge of great move of God and that minds and hearts are going to change towards God in a greater, greater measure. So anyway, so back to the legacy. In the story where we left off in the Legacy last week is when we called it Revival Firefall, I described what it was like to actually be touched by the very hand of God.

0:06:37 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I don’t know if people believe it or I’m crazy or whatever, but it was like a lightning bolt from heaven. Did you know Paul on the road to Damascus was struck very similar. Yes, very similar. And it, you know, knocked him down. And for me, it jumped. I jumped up and he went down. But it was so important. He told it three times in the Bible. He told the story of the road to Damascus. Did you know that? Three times.

0:07:04 – (Pastor Steve Gray): That’s how important. It’s like hanging out with Paul and Paul’s talking, writing the Bible, so to speak, wasn’t that way writing those letters and talking about the great things of God and how to live a godly life and he’s going along and to live the godly life and you need to live for God and have faith and oh, by the way, did I ever tell you about the time I was on the road to Damascus and then he goes to another town, you know, and he’s talking about the greatness of God and the power and how you need to live by faith and die to self.

0:07:33 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Hey, did I ever mention to you that I was on the road to Damascus and the power of God came down and knocked me to the ground? So he told it three times And I view that as we go on and we move on, and we move on, we move on and we teach all these great things and all of a sudden, stop it. By the way, did I ever tell you about the time that heaven came down and struck me lightning and a very much nobody in the. In a town of 532 people preaching in a country church that not too many people cared about except the people that went there.

0:08:08 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We had a good church in a town of 532. We had a town of. A crowd of 150. People would pack in there, maybe more sometimes, but it was indistinguishable to every. Everything else was. Everything was going mega in our country. Big television, Christian television networks are huge.

0:08:24 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:08:25 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Churches were getting big and huge. And we were hearing, like. We heard the phrase for the first time, mega churches. And I remember writing it afterwards. I wrote in one of my books, I said every time I heard the phrase mega churches, it always reminded me that I had a mini church, you know, And. And crowds were shift. People were leaving smaller churches and going to bigger churches because they had more money, more program. I get it, I get it. And I said in there too, like, every time you hear about a mega church, remember some pastors sitting at home going. Or sitting in each church going, like, thanks a lot. Now I got a mini church because people would leave and go to the mega church.

0:09:02 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:09:03 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Okay. So anyway, we. We were. I was struck by the power of God. I described it. They need to hit the podcast. People need to hear it. People need to hear stories. But that went on five services. It was six and five services a week for three and a half years. A quarter of a million people came through the doors of the building. Time magazine came, Newsweek. I’m repeating on purpose. Newsweek magazine came. Magazines, newspapers, television interviews.

0:09:30 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Television people brought cameras into the services from local stations or other stations. The media was really on top of this story of this little town. And of course, we. I. And we were catapulted from an obscure pastor who was thought God was finished with him. Which I said, I told you that I came and said, I think God’s finished with me. And what? A few weeks later, all of a sudden, it happened.

0:09:56 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And a few months later, during that year were catapulted from local, national to international ministry and traveled the world. Publishers came to me and said, would you please write a book? We’ll publish your book. We want you. So I wrote my first book. When the Kingdom Comes is in seven languages now. I think six or seven Languages. And so it just spun and went and went. So now all the crowd, every day, crowds in this small town, crowds are lining up to get in the building.

0:10:24 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Could there be any higher thing of success? What pastor would not want to keep going? Being on tv, magazines coming. I mean, if you. If you’re pastoring a megachurch and you said, hey, I want news magazine to come and do a story on us. You couldn’t get them to come. I mean, I mean, it’d be. What would. Something really would have to happen. And we had to have something happen, happen. That the services were so thick with God that people came from all over the world.

0:10:53 – (Pastor Steve Gray): They just set foot on the property. They just walked into the building. And you knew something intense is in this room and in this church. And so people continued to come. They would. I mean, how many times did our friends from New Zealand, from Singapore, halfway around the world, come and see us? They didn’t come just once. They came back or Japan or North Korea or Europe or whatever. Something had to be in the building.

0:11:18 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So here we have this tremendous story and what appeared to be a tremendous success. We went to Singapore. It was Singapore. And how. Had great services in Singapore. It’s a long flight back. I didn’t feel or notice anything different until we landed. We landed in Kansas City. We had to drive two hours or less to get to Smithton from the airport because we were out in the country, passing all the corn fields. And they called it some. Some called it the Cornfield Revival because you passed so many cornfields to get there.

0:11:55 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Fun. And two things happened. We came over the old railroad tracks of this tiny town. And you described it last night to me. We were talking about this. Something was different. Yes, it just felt different. It felt stirring, but it felt a little empty. Stirring something. I went back to the church building that day because we’d been out of town for two weeks or whatever. And when I entered it to it, it just felt completely different in the sky above us.

0:12:29 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And I came back to you and I said, God said, we’re supposed to move this revival. We’re done here. We’re done. And I obeyed God. I remember telling. It’s. It’s in. By the way, the book, Follow the Fire, you can get it on. Steve grayministries.com talks about how we moved. It’s very dramatic and it was very difficult. But I asked God, I said, well, how do I know if I move that the revival will continue?

0:12:55 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And remember what he said. Yes, I heard him say, I’m not going to guarantee it because that wouldn’t be faith. A guarantee is not. You don’t need faith. Oh, I have to, I have to guarantee. I said, he said I’m not going to guarantee that, that it will keep going. What I will guarantee is you don’t move, it will end, you’re done, it’ll be over. So 1999, I told you we weren’t going to use, not to use dates. But it was.

0:13:20 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We were gung ho crowds coming, lots of, lots of attention being give to us and coming from all over the world. And I said of that year, Thanksgiving will be the last service we have in this building. I’m shutting it down, I’m closing it. I won’t do it anymore. By that time we pray to different cities and where should we go, what should we do? And the most logical I get it was Kansas City. Your parents lived here. They’d been praying for 20 years for us to open a church. And I didn’t know that. Yeah, we had, we had gone to Kansas City a number of times to. To do revival services in different churches and it just was the most logical place to move to.

0:14:02 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We did I need for people who need to know history wise. We did try to stay in Smithton.

0:14:08 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yes we did.

0:14:09 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Before the shutdown moments. I was trying. We outgrew the building. We needed another building. We needed another location. The town was too small for us. People came and we came at sick. We opened the building at 5:30 or 6 and closed it at 1:00 clock in the morning. The neighbors had had enough of us. Crowds were twice the size of the city. Slamming car doors, hadn’t to put up signs and traffic signs and stuff because of the traffic.

0:14:36 – (Pastor Steve Gray): They’d had enough of us. But that’s not why we went. I don’t know. Well, I do know why, but that’s not why the spirit of, of. Of what should have been in that town was leaving and the acceptance was leaving and people who. Well, I’ll just say that. And we had to, we had to go. So we decided Kansas City. So what we did is we start having services after the first. After Christmas in January we opened again by, by attend going to different churches. We’d been to different church, but instead our congregation would go to their church and.

0:15:16 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But a church in greater Kansas City area had an empty building. They had built a beautiful new church and they came and made a deal with us. You can lease or buy our church. It seats 1200 people. It’s in an older part of a city, but it seats and it’s got beautiful kids. Area nurseries, they called it education wing for if we wanted to start a school. And so we agreed and we spent over all the holidays into the first of the year with attorneys and leases and blah, blah.

0:15:50 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And then they put a date on it that at the end of such and such a date, if we’re not in by then, then the deal’s over with. It has to be by midnight on that date, whatever it was. Well, in the meantime, half of our congregation moves to Kansas City. We’re going to Kansas City. So half the people, by the way, when we’re done, 86, 88, 86 households. Yeah, imagine, imagine in that area of a small town and some people lived a little farther away, you know, but imagine 80, 80, some homes up for sale all of a sudden because people are moving, they’re all going to go. Because I said, you guys can stay here, right?

0:16:31 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Stay here. I’m not asking you to move. I’m not asking you to close the church. It says, I’m going and I’m going to go and start having revival services in Kansas City. And we’ll take.

0:16:40 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): You even said, well, I’ll give you this church.

0:16:43 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Yeah, you can have it. You can have it for nothing, you know.

0:16:45 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:16:46 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And, and, yeah, and. But nobody wanted it and it wasn’t working out. And then the people were saying, why would we stay here in this small town if you’re going to move and have services in Kansas City, we’re going with you. So that’s what happened. So half the people left and we knew where we were going, to this other church that was just sitting there empty and we had it all planned out. Then a person in that church who was a high up leader realized, wait a minute, we’re going to start having revival services in our old church.

0:17:16 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And our denomination doesn’t believe in speaking in tongues. We don’t raise our hands. I think that denomination kind of does now. But then, no, we don’t believe in the power of God. We don’t believe healing is for today. And all of a sudden he starts thinking, if I allow these people to do that, I’m afraid of my reputation. Did I let these crazy charismatics buy at a fairly good deal, I guess maybe our building?

0:17:42 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And I don’t want to, I don’t want to be associated with them. So they had to have a vote that we’re going to go ahead with the sale for these people. And he got up and spoke and spoke. You know, one of the people in the Government did that. They spoke for how many hours? Eight hours or whatever, 48 or something. And this guy, he was an attorney, and he spoke and he spoke and he spoke till so many people left.

0:18:03 – (Pastor Steve Gray): There was nobody left.

0:18:04 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): There was no quorum, and they could.

0:18:05 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Not vote on it. And at midnight that night, the deal ended bang. Suddenly, the great revival guy, we’re going to move to Kansas City, has no building. We have no place to go. And so we decided, what are we going to do? So I came up with an idea called cover the city in glory. So I got church in north, south, east and west to sponsor us for.

0:18:29 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Two weeks in the metro area and.

0:18:31 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Said, we’ll just go around the city and we’ll cover the city in glory. So I said, if you’ll let us have our revival services in your church, we’ll take up offerings. We’ll have three. I think we had about three or four services in their church, even Saturday night. But then we will attend your church Sunday morning, and you can have the offering, including our offerings. You can have our tithes and offerings because you hosted us.

0:18:53 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So churches did it, and we kept it going, but it still wasn’t right because we don’t have a place to land.

0:18:59 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): No. But you know, Steve, I just got to interject. During that time, our congregation were thrilled. They were happy. They were buzzing, buzz, buzz, buzz, happy, happy, happy. And they’d come in for these services and worshiping and being friendly to all the out of towners who were coming and finding us in these various churches. They were all so happy and at peace, and they loved this new adventure.

0:19:21 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): And they were, rah, rah.

0:19:22 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And.

0:19:22 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): And inside, you and I were going, my God, what are we doing? My God, we don’t have a church building. What are we going to do?

0:19:30 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And now, of course, when the church building. I forgot to say this. When. This is a good story. So when the church building closed on us and they said, you can’t have it. And it went, now we have no church building. Now all those reporters and media and all those people that said that country thing is so wonderful, they’re going like, boy, has he missed God. He really missed God. And they. And pressure came to me. They said, why don’t you. If you don’t have a building, just relax.

0:19:56 – (Pastor Steve Gray): All you got to do is go back to the. And you. You own the building. Just unlock it and have church, and everybody will keep coming until you get this worked out. I said, I can’t. Can’t. God said, move. Go now. And when I Closed it. I closed it. So we did those churches. And thank God for the church here in Lee’s Summit that allowed us to go when we still didn’t have a building. I think we went six weeks now.

0:20:21 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Six weeks. We just started meeting in their church for six weeks.

0:20:23 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Pastor Alan Cook.

0:20:24 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Yes, a wonderful hero.

0:20:25 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): God bless that man.

0:20:27 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And people came, and people came from out of town still. And his church was packed four nights, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning. We had a great time.

0:20:35 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah, it was wonderful.

0:20:36 – (Pastor Steve Gray): It was over, but in the meantime, we. We had a building offered to us over here in Grandview. And so we started building over there. Then we found out the lease. The day our granddaughter was born, they came to me and said, oh, by the way, you can’t lease this. And we had wood on the floor already building.

0:20:55 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): We were remodeling, remodeling it.

0:20:57 – (Pastor Steve Gray): They said, oh, by the way, there’s a clause that they redacted. You can’t see it.

0:21:01 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): How can you redact things? I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous.

0:21:03 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well, I knew something wasn’t right. But anyway, they said it in there. It says that you. This group cannot sublease to a non for profit. You’re out. That building was out. I went to north Kansas City, which is. It’s. It’s its own city. They invited us. They found a building. They wanted us there. They said, this will really help us. But the building wasn’t. It just wasn’t quite right. I went over here on Nolan Road and 40 Highway. There was a. Now it’s furniture plus.

0:21:31 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Right.

0:21:31 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And I was. I was looking at that building. While I’m looking at that building, Don Moen called me. We chit chatted and I said, I’m trying to get a building. And we talked about all kinds of things. That building didn’t work out well. We had nowhere to go. And we’re finishing up at Christ Triumphant Church was the name of it, with Pastor Allen at that time. What are we going to do? Well, when we first came to the city, we saw some land and the land was still, what do you call it, registered or whatever as agriculture, not business.

0:22:02 – (Pastor Steve Gray): If it had a business property zoned zone. Yeah. It would have been outrageous because across the highway, five acres was, I think a half a million dollars. Okay. But this, this was 62 acres. It turned out to be 63, but it was 62 acres for sale. We only had so much money, whatever we collected going around in these different churches, we got offerings the other nights and we gave our offerings on Sunday morning. So we didn’t get rich, but we had a certain amount of money.

0:22:30 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So I didn’t know what to do. And I prayed and prayed and I thought we’re just going to have to do this. But that land, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s agriculture. It’s not the best in the city or anything like that. But I, and I found out who owned it and the owner had built some apartments by it and he was in his 80s. He’s probably no longer with us now. It’s a long time ago now, but he was in his 80s. I found out his name, made a call, said would you meet me for lunch?

0:22:56 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And I sat down and I told him the story of the Smith and outpouring. I told him why I was moving and what I had to do. And I told him about the other church that pulled the rug out from us when they shouldn’t have, but we’re not were happy they did. Now God turned it to good but. And by the way, that building never did anything. They tore it down, it went to zero. Anyway, so I sat there across from him and I put my hand, I remember putting my hands on the table. I said, look, I’ve got this much money. I think I even took in a bag, I don’t know. But anyway, I said, this is how much money we have.

0:23:31 – (Pastor Steve Gray): That’s all we’ve got. Would you sell us 62 acres at Highway 5 and view high Drive for this amount of money? And he said, yes, I will. So we bought the property and it looked like smooth sailing. Right? 30 days. This is June now we closed the Smith and outpouring and Thanksgiving. Yeah, it is now June and we’re all over the city with no place to go.

0:23:56 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Circling.

0:23:57 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And end of May 1st of June, we closed on it and we were going to be on the property in 30 days.

0:24:04 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:24:04 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So we get ready to do it. We don’t have a building. So I said, well, what we’re going to have to do, we’ll have to set up a tent like old fashioned tent revivals. And we had to even scrounge up the money for a tent. We found a tent for $3,000. So we had to do some services, take the money and go buy a tent, which I hadn’t seen.

0:24:23 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Okay, yeah, you hadn’t seen.

0:24:24 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So smooth sailing right there. Till another phone call comes in, says, sorry, you can’t start because we’re going to put the tent up, you know, in June and start at the end in July. You can’t start having church there now. I said, why not? We got 30 days. It says right here in the contract. 30 days. It’s. Yes. It says there’s people on the property that live there. 1. There’s only one house and they have 30 days to get out. I said, yeah, so what’s the problem? They said, well.

0:24:52 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well, there’s 18 horses and in the contract, they have 90 days to get out. Why didn’t anybody tell me?

0:25:00 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): I know. Well, they must have redacted that.

0:25:02 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Yeah. So the horses now are on there and they have 19. They. They have 90 days. I said, we don’t have 90 days. We have nowhere to go that’s going to put us into September. So I made a deal with them. I said, what about this or that? And they said, oh, I’ll tell you what. If you can find a home for 18 horses somewhere in Kansas City area and a good home, then we’ll. We’ll let you have the 30 days. So you got 30 days that you would be on the.

0:25:31 – (Pastor Steve Gray): To move on the property. But you got 30 days now before you can move on there to get housing for horses. I set out to do it. I had help to do it. We went to every horse property in the area. And I had to connive. I had to buy feed. I had to say, I’ll pay for their room and board, you know, somebody to take care of them. I’ll do this, I’ll do that, and I’m taking every penny. We got to come in. I’m going to take care of the horses.

0:25:57 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But we did it.

0:25:58 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): That is a miracle.

0:26:00 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We got a home for 18 horses. And July 1st of that next year, after we left Smithton. And thanks. Six. Six months later, let’s just say we were on the property. It had no building and it had this little house. It had one water line, you know. And I said, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to put up this tent.

0:26:20 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:26:20 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And then we’re going to go ahead and as we get some offerings, we’re going to buy. We had to start in the tent, but without anything. But we’re going to buy air conditioners. Cause it’s summer and it’s hot. That we’re going to put on the roof of the new building. We’ll buy them early. We’ll buy them first and we’ll use them later.

0:26:37 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:26:38 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So we did. And they pumped air. 6, 10 ton or what? 10 ton units of air into the building. And it just went up into the ceiling. It went up through the ceiling. But you could still lower the temperature. So it’s sort of survivable with fans and stuff. So we went to Europe and we came back to Europe to start a July 4th conference, sort of weekend conference.

0:27:04 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): We were ministering in Europe when we came back from a ministry trip and.

0:27:08 – (Pastor Steve Gray): They were putting the tent up. We drove up and they were still putting the stakes in the last two stakes into the ground. I pulled up, I opened my eyes, I go, oh, my Lord, we look like a circus. It looks like I hadn’t seen the tent. And it looked like a circus tent.

0:27:24 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yes, like blue tent.

0:27:29 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But then it had yellow stripes or something.

0:27:31 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yellow stripes. It was like the, the last ultimate time to humble ourselves.

0:27:37 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Yes, we had a lot of humbling going on.

0:27:39 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Oh, yes, we did.

0:27:40 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But we did it. And we opened on the 4th of July and people and, and I, I started telling everybody in the country we’re going to open that weekend. And we did. And people came from all over the country. I don’t know if they came from the world. I don’t know, but they came from all over the country. And we filled, we packed. It was about a thousand seat tent and we got the chairs. We set up sound system. We did it. And we’d start in the evening and go, go, go. And it was hot.

0:28:08 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well, we started making it pretty well through. And another problem happened. We raised the money and we laid a concrete pad for. Well, wait a minute, I need to back up. First was Labor Day weekend. This happened first. Okay, Labor Day weekend. We had a Labor Day weekend conference. And a lot of people came because now we’re in the tent. And they heard, oh, let’s go to the tent. Well, it turned out for the conference to be 105 degrees that weekend.

0:28:41 – (Pastor Steve Gray): 105. Set it right on my car. So we had to get tarps and throw over. Silver tarps. We threw over the tent. And somebody had to have a new ministry. And that was the garden hose ministry. And they would stand the whole service and shoot water up. Because we had day services too. Not just night. We had morning, afternoon, night. It was a conference. And people had to spend and shoot water up on top of the tent to try to keep it cool on those things.

0:29:09 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But we survived. Then September came. We’re still in the tent. We laid a giant pad down for the new building. It’s huge. I don’t know how many square feet it is now. Same pad. Pat Robertson came through town. He heard about that. He said, let me come. I want to pray over that concrete pad. We’ve got pictures here where I’m. We’re all holding our hands up, and there’s Pat Robertson looking up to the sky, praying over that pad.

0:29:36 – (Pastor Steve Gray): On the 20th of September of that year, our granddaughter was born. I was at the hospital looking goo goo, goo goo. Oh, this is so wonderful. I get another phone call. The city says, you cannot build a church on that concrete pad, which we’d already done and paid for. Already done, already prayed over it. Because you have to have a park over here. You have to have a regress over there. You have to have that to do to build on that property.

0:30:01 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Because, yeah, I guess it was the old Satan was just trying to stop us. I sat down. I was supposed to enjoy the birth of my granddaughter. And I sat down in the hospital, like, whoa, is me, you know, not again. And I prayed and I prayed about it. And I called the guy that was downtown representing us to the city, who called me. I said, here’s what you’re supposed to do. This is what I think God said to do. You sit there and wait and you watch for the guy.

0:30:28 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Because maybe God gave me, like, almost a vision, you know, or something. But he said, you watch for the guy who said that to you. Leaves the office, just sit there till he leaves. And at that time, you scurry into the main guy’s office. So there’s nobody there. You scurry in and you go in and tell them what happened, what they told us. We can’t build on it when they told us we could.

0:30:48 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:30:50 – (Pastor Steve Gray): So that’s what happened. And I’m sitting in the hospital, and he scurried in there, and he told it to the head guy, and he says, nah, I approved you. I’ll approve you now. Gave his signature, and within less than an hour of the first call, I got a second call, says, we’re approved. We can build on the property.

0:31:08 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Thank you, Lord.

0:31:09 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We continued in the tent, and we were built of the foyer up, you know, the front of the building. And all of a sudden, though, before we still couldn’t get in the building, it was starting to go up. But all of a sudden, December comes. We’re still in a tent in December. We took the air conditioning and put heating units in them because they were going to be heaters anyway on top. And we started pumping heat, which also went up through the top and people. And I got to walk around. But you told me and others told me that it was freezing.

0:31:40 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): It was torture because it like gravel for the floor. And I would wear four or Five pairs of socks and then my thickest boots and everything and wrap up with an army blanket. And I tell you what, your feet instantly began to freeze.

0:31:55 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And so, like, hoping sometimes December, usually. But December usually was a mild.

0:32:00 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah, it was.

0:32:01 – (Pastor Steve Gray): It was still mild in December here.

0:32:02 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Usually breaking, though.

0:32:03 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And all of a sudden we show up and I pull up to it and the thermometer on my car says minus 5 degrees. And we’re having church.

0:32:12 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): And that was in a tent. The wind chill index.

0:32:15 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Yeah, in a tent. But you know what? People came.

0:32:19 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:32:19 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And most importantly, when it was 105 and when it was minus 5, God came. Do you know the hundreds of stories that are still being told to this day? Said, I was there at the tent. I was there at the tent. I was there at the tent. God moved. And we hung in there and the city came and said, you are in trouble. I said, what? We’re not going to give you permits. You’re not going to be able to build this. It’s going to take you two years to build this building.

0:32:52 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I said, I don’t have 10 years.

0:32:54 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Two years.

0:32:55 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Two years. I have two years. I have about six months. And then winter is really going to come in. And it came early even. And guess what? Then six months later, on January 5th of that next year, we started in the tent in July. We go around through the holidays, and January 5th, we moved partially crammed in to as much as the city would let us because the building wasn’t finished. They let us get in and start having church indoors January 5th of that year.

0:33:26 – (Pastor Steve Gray): It was quite a thing because people were saying, you missed God. And you. You missed God. You shouldn’t have left Smithton. What were you thinking? You shouldn’t have shut down. You didn’t hear, you know, and I heard all that.

0:33:36 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): You can’t move a revival. Oh, yeah, Move a revival. That was one of the biggest.

0:33:40 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Me, too. You can’t move a revival. And you can’t. And you can’t move the glory of God. And you know what I said? I said, watch me. Yeah, watch me. Because the glory of God is not in a building. The glory of God is on the people.

0:33:55 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Amen.

0:33:56 – (Pastor Steve Gray): They just moved the people to another location and same. And God touched and struck and moved and did until we got into our new building. And we continued to have revival that year until the next September of 911 hit. And all of a sudden, airports were shut down, travel was shut down. And we. And we realized, okay, there’s a new season in our country. It’s we can quit now and start developing as another church.

0:34:25 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We still traveled, but we built the House of Hope and Healing. We finished that building. Oh, we should say this, though. You had a women’s conference a few months after the first January 5th meeting, and Gloria Copeland was the main guest speaker. And people were coming all over to here and it was packed out and we were trying to finish up the building and they kept calling, she’s on her way, she’s on her way.

0:34:49 – (Pastor Steve Gray): She left the airport, she’s on her way. And we’re going, okay, we’re hurrying. And there were men still tacking carpet on the platform. And they finished up that one thing. And they said, she’s here. And she walked in the building when their last hammer went down.

0:35:03 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yes, that story, that was a fun story.

0:35:06 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But 911 happened and then we finished that building. We built a building called the House in Hope and Healing just meant Healing House. And then we built an education building that we still use today with rooms and a gymnasium. So we spent those years building a building. Now, at that point, I don’t know where your legacy is going to go unless it goes up a few years to the Kansas City revival that struck again in an unusual way and people lined up again to get in our building for three years and we were shown in 200 nations.

0:35:37 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And I don’t know if that’s where you’re going to go next.

0:35:39 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Well, maybe just a little bit of understanding about what was happening during those years with us and our congregation and maybe even some of the battles because there were pastors in that area that were bad mouthing us and telling people horrible things about us and they were, oh, well, I was protecting you. I never. And saying, don’t go there, don’t go there.

0:36:02 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I didn’t know.

0:36:02 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): They’re just in it. They’re just in it to be Steve Grace. Just in it to be famous.

0:36:07 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Oh, yeah, they did say. What in the world? They did say his ego got to him in a small town’s not good enough. Now he wants to be a superstar. Kansas City. But a lot of them were afraid, too, because now the famous guy is now in town. But I wasn’t that way at all.

0:36:22 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): No, you were not.

0:36:22 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But we’ll talk about that next time.

0:36:24 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yeah, I think that would be a good area to some of the things.

0:36:26 – (Pastor Steve Gray): We learned during those years and what.

0:36:28 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): We did and what we had to fight against.

0:36:30 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I wasn’t going to talk about that.

0:36:32 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): No, we’re not going to talk about that.

0:36:33 – (Pastor Steve Gray): No. Because that didn’t make any difference.

0:36:35 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Well, nobody. Sometimes people need to know there are obstacles.

0:36:39 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Of course. Well, I already. We just talked about all the obstacles. Well, yeah, but we built a church.

0:36:45 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Well, yeah.

0:36:46 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And we started a school of the Bible.

0:36:48 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Correct me when we’re doing a podcast.

0:36:50 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I’m not correcting you. I just said. I just said I wasn’t thinking that we were going to talk about.

0:36:55 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Well, but you asked me what we’re going to talk about.

0:36:59 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Well.

0:37:01 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Isn’t it fun being married to your husband?

0:37:04 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I don’t want to talk too much about that because those. Most of those pastors aren’t here anymore.

0:37:09 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): I know.

0:37:10 – (Pastor Steve Gray): I outlasted them anyway.

0:37:11 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): They’re out elsewhere.

0:37:11 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Okay, gang, we will get on track and we’ll get one mind and one heart before we see you again. But we’re talking about legacy. Go to https://stevegrayministries.com. to get the book, Follow The Fire. You can also get When The Kingdom Comes, which they asked me to write. Some other materials are there too, like If You Only Knew, and of course, the newest book about Gideon.

0:37:33 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Mighty Like Gideon.

0:37:34 – (Pastor Steve Gray): Mighty Like Gideon. Get that. And then we’re working. Already working on a new book. So tell your friends about this podcast and tell them to get it. We’re going to continue to talk revival because revival is stirring in the land.

0:37:47 – (Pastor Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:37:47 – (Pastor Steve Gray): And we don’t know where it’s going to go, but we’ve had a lot of experience about it. And two moves of God that were sustained for over three years. Not just for one week, but over three years every week. And people came from all over the world. You that live in Kansas City wouldn’t. Whether it’s us or somebody else, wouldn’t you like people to come from all over the world and know there’s revival is in the land? And it’s not just the Royals, Kansas City Royals, and it’s certainly not just the Kansas City Chiefs and other great teams we have here.

0:38:17 – (Pastor Steve Gray): But there’s a place where God is coming down in the middle of our country. We’d like to have that happen, wouldn’t you? Till next time. Bye-Bye.