Revival Come (Week 5)

Well, good morning.

If I haven't met you before, my name is Forrest Coleman, lead pastor here at Multiply.

My family, along with the many other families, did the work and beginnings and the launch of Multiply Church just uh just over a year and a half ago.

So welcome this morning.

If you're new with us, glad that you're here.

Before I get into my message today, um last Sunday, Nathan Head spoke here at Multiply, who is a good friend of ours.

He's the impact team leader at Southland, our sending church, an amazing partner.

And if you haven't heard that message, I encourage you to go to our website, to go to sermons, and to listen to Nate's message from last week.

I was out this last week, and so I got to listen to Nate's message.

I actually listened to it twice this last week because it was that good.

And the encouragement it was to me as he began to speak about the vision of multiply church that Nate, a friend of ours, now for years, from the beginnings of our church, and for him to explain in that message about the vision to see Frankfurt be a place that's a place that's filled with flourishing, with love, redemption, and restoration, recovery and broken families mended, to see people served with the love and the light of Jesus.

And I think about for us as a church, and even the beginnings of this church plant that we're a part of, and from the very earliest of days, before we ever did a service on a Sunday, we were wanting to see God move outside of the walls of the church and into our community.

Which began for us in those beginning days that have gone all throughout of us, beginning in the very beginning to serve nonprofits here in our town, local partners that are serving kids and teenagers, serving in different uh areas and initiatives, specifically with women and children.

And so over that time, we have served and served and served and continued to serve in our community.

And you know what, church?

We're gonna keep doing that.

We have been a church without walls.

Even when we've moved into this movie theater that has walls, we've been outside the walls.

And when we get into our permanent space, guess what?

We're gonna be a church without walls.

Because we know that it's the hand and feet of Jesus that we come and we gather together as believers in Christ to encourage one another, to spur one another on, so then we can go out and do the work of the gospel, encouraging one another in it.

See, we come here on Sunday morning for us to worship God and to give Him glory, praise, reverence, and honor, and to encourage the other believers and people seeking after God and walking towards Him that are sitting right next to you with a word of faith, with a word of encouragement, with a prayer, with a hey, keep going, brother, keep going, sister, as we serve.

So I want to share something with you before I get into my message today.

And what I'm sharing with you is something that's been in my heart for now over a year and a half, a little bit longer than that.

And it's like this for us as a church, we're going to serve and continue to serve as a church.

And our church essentially right now does three things and has been for some time and will continue to.

We do Sunday mornings, we do small groups throughout our city that are outposts of love and of studying of God's word and in relationship all throughout our city.

And I know that God's going to continue to grow and multiply those more to come.

And then we do outreach and missions.

And that aspect of our church, something that's been in my heart now for a year and a half, is for us to wrap and to take that outreach initiative that's going through our church and to wrap it in something called Frankfurt Forward.

Here's what that means.

We want to see and have wanted to see and continue to see Frankfurt move forward to flourish economically, relationally, and spiritually.

See, I believe as Christians that we should make places better than we found them.

That because there are Christians in a community, that means that that community should be flowing with the blessing of God, not curses.

And that blessing should be flowing out from the local church, from his people into our community to see flourishing happen.

And you know, as well as I know that that's just not reserved for one space and place of the local church on Sunday mornings, but that's seven days a week.

And so I'm excited for us to begin this process of launching what is Frankfurt Forward and what it means and what's been in my heart for some time.

And this is the very beginnings, church.

You know, we start like a little sprout.

But to see us be a part of the flourishing of our community, when I think about economically, I think what can we do to help promote workforce involvement here in our community so that people can step into job training in places.

This is long, long, long vision.

Relationally, that we would be a part of the reconciliation of the gospel, specifically in the area of race relations and multi-ethnic engagement.

If you've been here for any amount of time, you know that that's a part and a heart of our church, beginning with our love and care for Kentucky State University, is here in our town.

We're going to continue to do that.

And then lastly, spiritually, through our service and love of the different nonprofits in our town, our serving initiatives and pouring gasoline on the good that's happening here in our community to see more and more happen.

And all of that, all of that, is so that we can continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

So, what does that mean for you right now?

You may ask in Forrest, how in the world do I know more about this?

How do I get more involved with this?

And that's what my ask of you is for you to take a step to be involved, and this is what that looks like.

We've for some time we've done different service uh events, and you all remember this last summer that we did our serve week during their summer where we got to serve eight different nonprofits locally.

It's gonna, we're gonna end this year probably serving over ten nonprofits in multiple local schools this year.

One of the, yes, praise the Lord.

A new school that we're gonna get to serve is the Academy here in town that is uh one of the alternative schools, which we serve the other alternative school, uh Cofield High, because we love those kids.

And um, coming up, we as a church, they've asked us.

They came to us and said, Hey, we've got hungry kids who are coming uh to the academy.

They don't have enough food coming from home.

We would love to have a closet where we have snacks for these kids so that they can take those snacks home.

They said, we've asked multiple churches and we've gotten no's.

Would you be interested?

And you know what I said, church?

You know what we said?

We said, yes, we would love to help in that way.

And so here's what that looks like.

If you're a part of a group or a team here at Multiply, you have an app called Church Center on your smartphone.

Now, that's how you get your information for your small group.

That's how you some of you get your information for your volunteer team.

And so there's an app called Church Center, and in that app at the bottom of it, there's a place that now says sign up where you can click and be involved in these new projects.

Now, I'm not gonna go through all that right now, but if you have any questions on that, um, they'll talk about it more at the end and also CGS services table.

Now, uh, I know many of us all use apps on our smartphone.

For you flip phone friends, send us a um courier pigeon message, and then we'll send you back, or however way you I'm just kidding.

You know, you flip phone friends, you have to use you you have to ask your friends who have a smartphone to do stuff for you.

So ask your spouse, ask your friend to help you to sign up.

I'm just kidding.

Actually, if you're a flip phone friend, you can go to guest services, they can let you know what's going on.

So there's several things that are coming down the pike, and again, I'm just giving you a preview, I'm just giving you a picture of what's to come.

But I'm very excited for us to begin this initiative because here's what I know there are places and spaces in our community that have no interest in having a church come and be involved.

But we're going to come and we're going to continue to knock on doors and say, hey, we're here to serve.

And I believe that Frankfurt Ford is going to be a wrapping or an ability for us to be able to get into some of those places and spaces in the future.

Um I'm excited for what's to come with that.

We're ending our series Revival Come, and I'm thankful to get to share with you the word this morning from the last few weeks that we've been looking at not only the seeds of revival that are here in our state, but also we've been walking through the story of Elijah, God's prophet, and one of the most famous prophets in the Old Testament.

So I'm going to take a moment and pray, and then we'll get into our message.

Father, thank you, Lord, for this morning.

God, we thank you, Father, that we get to be your hands and feet.

Father, I pray, God, that blessing would overflow out of our church.

That when people think about us, the small new beginnings, when they see the work that's happening in our good deeds, Father, they would then in turn worship you like your word says.

That Father, we would be a witness.

Father, though we may be young, though we may be small, Father, help us to lead the way in this community.

Help us, Father, to lead the way in the local church.

Help us, Father, to be carriers of your reconciliation.

And Father, we believe in faith, Lord, that you're going to do it.

We ask that you will.

We know that you will.

Father, speak to us this morning through your word in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen.

This area of revival in our history, our state, as we've talked about, is has many seeds of revival.

And we've talked about that over the last few weeks.

One of that being the second great awakening that happened just 50 miles from here, over in Cane Ridge back in 1801.

We had the pleasure of getting to uh have Pastor Zach, who was a part of the Asbury outpouring that happened earlier in February this year.

And I'm thankful for us looking at this aspect of revival in our state and in our area because I don't want to put God in a box.

I don't want to put a lid on what God would want to do.

Am I here to make some kind of promise that revival's in a sweets of the nation or anything like that?

No, I can't say that.

That's not something the Lord has shown me.

I have no idea what the future holds, but I know this.

Like Zach said a few weeks ago, I want him to see our church as an empty vessel, ready to be filled with his spirit, to overflow to our community.

You think about revival, what it means to be revived, what's the opposite of that?

The opposite of that is death.

The opposite of that is apathy.

I don't care.

What's the opposite of revival?

It's exhaustion, despair, depression, anxieties.

All works and all aspects that the enemy wants to use to kill, steal, and destroy us from having the abundant life that God's called us to have and promised to us.

So as we think about what the opposite of a revival is, today, as you walk into the room, you may be walking in the room today and you're walking in and you are already exhausted.

You're coming in from a crazy week.

All the ups and downs.

You may be walking into the room today and you're dealing with deep despair because of a circumstance that's in your life.

Or maybe you're a part of the high percentage of Americans in our nation right now that are suffering and dealing with clinical depression.

And in each of those aspects, in whatever way you're walking in today, and if that may be you, or maybe at one point it was you, or maybe one point in the future it will be you, I'll tell you this: the prophet Elijah had just as many roller coaster moments as you did, or you have.

See, the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament, that we've talked about his story over the last few weeks.

He was called by God to come and to stand up for God in the face of after 19 consecutive evil kings.

Nineteen consecutive evil kings.

You think things aren't going well in America or going the right direction?

Because imagine that.

Evil.

God calls Elijah to stand up to the king and to bring a word of judgment to King Abab and his evil wife, Jezebel.

And in this word of judgment, Elijah tells him that it will not rain.

See, rain at that point, a farming and agrarian society.

Rain was their economy.

Without the rain, everything shut down.

Famine.

And so a famine struck the land.

And Elijah was taken off to this place called the Kharif Ravine, this cutting place, where God brought him food with ravens and had a brook to come to supply him as God molded him into the man that God wanted him to be.

And at the time it was time for him to take the next step into the power of God.

God dried up the brook and told him to move on to go to a widow's house.

And when he showed up at that widow's house, he had just experienced a miracle through food, and this widow was starving and was at her last bit of food, and we saw a miracle of multiplication happen through Elijah.

That they had more food than they could even eat, and they were overflowing, and her son, who had been malnourished, passed away.

And then Elijah, the first time in the recorded scripture, prays to God that this child be revived and he comes to life.

The first resurrection.

From there, Elijah goes head to head with the evil king and his wife and their priests and their prophets to their false god, Baal and Asherah.

These false Syrian gods who had been brought down into the land of Israel to evil worship, including child sacrifice, including temple prostitutes that had filled the land.

And Elijah, the prophet of the one true God, went on a head-to-head showdown and battle to see which of the gods, either his God, the one true God, or the false God, would bring down fire from heaven.

And what happened?

In this holy showdown, the prophets of the false God, they worshiped and worshiped and worshipped, and no fire came.

But Elijah took the offering, he doused it in water, and the fire of heaven fell.

Showing who the one true God was.

Those evil prophets who had killed the prophets of God.

They and then were killed.

And then last week you heard of the prayer of Elijah.

As they waited, and after three and a half years, Elijah prayed that there would be rain, that rain would return.

And what happened?

After praying seven times, a distant cloud, the size of a fist, was seen by a servant.

And then came a torrential downpour.

See, Elijah was in battle after battle after battle, having to exercise faith larger and larger and larger as his story continued.

He was on this ultimate roller coaster ride.

And when we find him at the end of his story, he has just come off of this moment of fire coming down from heaven, this holy showdown in battle, praying that it would, the rain would return, and indeed it doing so.

These monumental moves of faith.

And the next moment we find him, he's gone all the way down into the ditch.

See, this is what happened in 1 Kings 19.

So Jezebel sent a message to Elijah.

This is verse 2.

So Jezebel, the evil queen, sent this message to Elijah.

Speaking of the false prophets.

Verse 3.

Elijah was afraid and fled for his life.

He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there.

And then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day.

He sat down under a solitary broom tree, and he prayed that he might die.

I have done enough, Lord, he said.

Take my life, for I'm no better than my ancestors who have already died.

We look at the story of Elijah, we see him in a deep despair.

And I want to share some things with you that will guarantee you to also fall into a deep despair.

And we'll see this from the life of Elijah and his actions in this last passage.

The first way for you to fall into deep despair is to forsake your friendships.

Elijah's one friend, his servant, who was there with him in these holy moments, instead of sticking with his brother, he left in solitude and isolation and left his friend, his companion, his servant.

Isn't it so interesting that oftentimes when life gets tough, when challenges come, that for some reason, instead of us pressing into the relationships and our godly brothers and sisters, the enemy convinces us that we need to go and be alone.

The enemy convinces us something like this they won't understand.

Nobody understands what I'm going through.

I'm wanting to get you to shut out the closest people than in your life.

See, this Christian friendship, it's so important.

So much so that that's why we do small groups, and that's why we say that we are discipled and that we walk in relationship with others because Jesus did that same thing with his disciples.

He walked in relationship with them when times were difficult, when they were hard, he had his brothers and sisters to walk with him.

So if you want to be in deep despair, forsake your friendships.

The second thing you should do is focus on the negative.

Elijah said, God, I've had enough.

This has been too much.

This has been overwhelming.

And then he says, I'm no better than my ancestors in self-pity and wallowing.

But it's funny because nobody was asking that of him whether he was better than his ancestors or not.

But he was just focusing on the negative.

Woe is me.

I've had enough, Lord.

He was scared to death by Jezebel's threats.

This powerful man of God who had just seen the Lord work through him to raise somebody from the dead, to call down fire from heaven, has one person say something to him and come after him and say, I'm gonna kill you.

And all of a sudden now he's in the absolute pits.

He's focusing on the negative.

Look at what happens next.

Verse 5.

Then he lay down and he slept under a broom tree.

But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, Get up and eat.

He looked around, and there beside his head was some.

Bait some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water.

So he ate and drank and lay down again.

Then the angel of the Lord came again and touched him and said, Get up and eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you.

And then verse 8, So he got up and he ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nile nights to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.

There he came to a cave where he spent the night.

But the Lord said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?

Elijah is completely worn out.

He's exhausted from the battles that he's been in.

And his response is, and duly so, that he needed to sleep, he needed to rest, he needed to eat, drink, so much so that an angel of the Lord came to him and provided those things for him.

If you want to be in deep despair, forego rest.

Maybe one of the most ignored of the Ten Commandments is that we should rest every seven days.

That the Lord calls us that we would have a day dedicated to him for us to worship and for us to take a break and for us to not work.

Why did God set that up?

We're allowed to work day and night, all kinds of hours that we want and work hard, but God said one day out of the week, you need to rest because that's what He did.

And that was His example to us that one day would be given to Him for us to rest.

Why is that so?

Well, because sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is sleep.

Why am I saying that?

I'm saying this, I'm saying it like this because I heard years ago a pastor say, if you do not Sabbath, one day sickness will become your Sabbath.

If you push yourself so hard, working on and on and on in life, months and months, years and years stacked up, without having the rhythm of rest that God has prescribed to us, eventually it's going to deteriorate you.

It's going to break you down.

That's not how we're designed.

We're designed how God told us in his instruction to us.

So if you want to be in deep despair, if you want to be disconnected, if you want to be uh in a state of difficulty and depressed, forgo the rest that's necessary.

And the next thing that he did, Elijah, that we would do that would put us in that place is forget God.

Instead of him worshiping the God who had just done miracle after miracle after miracle in his life, he went to God and instead said, kill me now.

I've had enough.

Me, me, me, me, me.

Instead of recognizing and acknowledging what all God had done in his life in gratitude, instead, he got to the place where he completely forgot the power of God in his life.

So much so that he's in a place of saying, just kill me now.

So what does God do?

Well, the angel tells him to go to Mount Sinai.

Anybody remember who at Mount Sinai is?

Mount Sinai, this mountain of God.

Mount Sinai is the place where Moses went and communed with God, and God brought down and gave him the Ten Commandments, and God's presence was on Mount Sinai so powerfully.

When Moses came down to the people, his face was so filled with glory and radiance.

It was glowing to the point that they had to put a veil over his face because he had been in the presence of God.

And so, what did Elijah?

What did the Lord have Elijah do?

He said, Go to the mountain and worship me.

Go to where I am.

Don't forget me.

Move into my presence.

Look at verse 10.

God says, Why are you here, Elijah?

In verse 10, Elijah replied, I have zealously served the Lord God Almighty.

But people of Israel have broken their covenant with you.

True.

Torn down your altars.

True.

Killed every one of your prophets.

Not true.

I'm the only one left.

Not true.

And now they're trying to kill me too.

True.

Elijah tells the Lord and speaks to the Lord.

And we see just from this passage his mindset that Elijah was believing lies.

He was believing lies.

And the lies that he was believing about what was to come and what was to happen was causing fear in him.

And oftentimes that's what fear brings us is one of the times that we are in fear is because we don't know what's ahead of us.

We don't know what's going to happen.

There's uncertainty.

There's anxiety about what the future is.

And so if you want to be in this deep place of despair, if you want to be in a place of difficulty, fear the unknown.

Fear the unknown.

I have experienced this so often in my walk with Jesus over the last couple of years.

I've shared with my small group multiple times about in this journey of church planning and saying, Lord, is this going to happen?

Who's going to come?

Is this going to go?

Is this thing going to get off the ground?

Starting with the small group of folks.

I've said it like this time and time again to other church planners.

I said, I said, for the first couple years of us uh planting, multiply church, I felt like I was being chased by a dinosaur every day.

Like, is this gonna happen, Lord?

What's gonna happen?

Is this gonna go?

Are we gonna be able to do this?

People are even gonna come.

Is this thing gonna get off the ground?

You know what so oftentimes, so oftentimes, what we fear doesn't even come to fruition.

I had a friend tell me uh a couple years ago, and I was in fear and not knowing what was gonna happen, and they said, tell me what the worst case scenario is in the situation.

I said, Okay, here's the worst case scenario.

You got any worst case scenario people in the house like me?

When stuff is going on and you're like, all right, I'm gonna think of the worst possible thing that this outcome can happen, and then I'm gonna fear that thing the most.

And I'm gonna I'm gonna tell myself that that's probably what's gonna happen.

And what my friend looked at me and said, What's the worst case scenario?

So I told him the worst case scenario, and then he said, Great, cross that off because rarely does the worst case scenario happen.

Rarely does the worst case scenario happen.

Sometimes it does, but it's the rarity.

Most of the time when we're in fear, it's of things that aren't even gonna come.

So does the Lord want us to live like chicken little, just waiting for the sky to fall, or walk in faith?

See, are you waiting for the sky to fall or are you walking in faith?

And then what happened with Elijah was he was beginning to believe lies from the enemy.

They were putting him in a space in a in a place of fear despite all the power, all the miracles that he'd experienced.

Verse 11.

Go out and stand before me on the mountain, the Lord told him.

And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain.

It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

Then verse 12.

And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire, there was a sound of a gentle whisper.

See, so oftentimes we get to the place where the fear of the unknown, our circumstances seem so huge.

The wind is raging, the fire is burning, but what we need to do is listen for the little voice.

God wasn't speaking in the worries, but a whisper.

God wasn't speaking in the windstorm, he wasn't speaking in the earthquake, he wasn't speaking in the fire, he wasn't speaking in the worries of life, he was speaking in a whisper, wondering, would Elijah be walking in closeness to him to even be able to hear him speak?

Is there quiet parts of your life enough for you to hear God's little voice?

Are you having time that you're in the word, that you're in prayer intentionally, where you turn the music off, you turn the TV off, whether it be in the car or in the morning when you first wake up, that you set up a space for God to truly speak to you, even if so, if he was to speak to you in a small whisper.

See?

Back in verse 10, Elijah tells God that he's the only one left that worshiped him.

And God swiftly corrects him in verse 18.

God says, Yet I will preserve 7,000 others in Israel who have never bowed down to Baal or kissed him.

See, Elijah thought that he was the only one left of the people of God who are following him.

But the Lord's ways are higher than his ways.

God's understanding is beyond our understanding.

When we look at our circumstances, the details that we see, he sees more.

He sees farther.

He sees in the future, he sees people that you don't even know about yet that are going through what you're going through and probably feeling the same way.

And God says, You're not the only one.

Actually, there's 7,000 people who've not bowed down, but have stayed faithful to me.

So, Elijah, what are you gonna do with those 7,000?

You think you're the only one, you're so focused on yourself.

There's actually 7,000.

And in the same way, church, listen to me.

Never believe that you're alone.

Never believe that you're alone.

There's some of you here today, you've come in, and you are having thoughts of taking your life.

The enemy wants so bad to take you out that there's thoughts that are popping into your mind of maybe it would just be better off without me.

Maybe my family would just be better off without me.

Maybe my kids would just be better off without me.

Can I tell you today, church, you're not alone.

You're never alone.

You have a God who loves you so much.

He doesn't want to see your destruction, but instead your life.

Talk to someone.

Tell someone.

Tell your friends, tell your small group leader.

I'm emotional because I think about over my years of church, some of those tragic situations is when believers take their own life.

And I've experienced that in church and in churches.

And oftentimes it's the person that you would never think.

Or there wasn't signs, or nobody was watching.

And it's way disproportionately men.

So men who are here today.

You are not alone.

You're not alone.

Never alone.

Elijah, he wanted to die.

But the Lord had already planned that he would never die.

Elijah was only one of two people ever in the scripture who didn't physically die.

One was taken up in a whirlwind, and then it was Elijah, who the Bible tells us that at the end of his life, he did not die, but instead a chariot of fire came and grabbed him and took him into heaven because he was so well deserving.

The thing that he feared the most.

But you've got to receive it.

You've got to believe it.

See, Elijah was struggling to believe God.

Even though he knew that God had worked powerfully in his life.

Today, acknowledge him.

If you're not a follower of Jesus, today make the decision to receive him, to believe him, so that you could walk with him from now and into eternity in a place prepared for you called heaven.

Bow your heads and pray with me, Father, all across this room, people who've come in today in every different state.

Father, we pray, God, over this moment right now, that if there's anybody in the room here today who God is in a place of deep despair, who've come in feeling disconnected, who've come in feeling the hardships of life overwhelming them.

That right now, God, that you would remind them, that you would show them maybe for the first time that they are not alone.

Right now, Father, that you would show them, that you would speak to their heart right now, God.

That you love them, you care for them, you want to forgive them.

Father, in the room today, the Christians who are in this room, the followers of you, God, I pray, Father, that you would remind them of your truth.

Anyone in this place today who is not yet a follower of you, that today will be the day of their salvation.

If that's you today, I ask you to pray to receive Christ.

The way that you do that is by you just inviting him into your heart, into your mind, into your life, giving your life to him, believing in him, and committing to not turn from him.

And you can pray to God something like this.

There's no magic words, but out of a genuine place in your heart and mind, pray, Jesus, save me.

I know that I have messed up and sinned.

Forgive me, cleanse me.

Thank you for dying on the cross for me.

I believe that you're the Son of God and that you are alive.

Make me alive today, so that one day I can be in heaven with you.

Thank you for saving me.

In the name of Jesus.

Everybody's head bowed, nobody's looking around today.

If you prayed that prayer today, for you to receive the forgiveness and the freedom from Christ today for the first time, I want to encourage you all to just pray for you.

And I want to embarrass you, but if that's you today that you prayed to receive Christ, would you just, on the count of three, raise your hand so that I can see you and lock eyes with me?

One, two, three.

Yep.

I see ya.

I see ya.

Father.

Thank you.

Anybody?

Father, thank you, Lord.

For salvation to come today.

We thank you for how good you are.

You love us now.

And in turn to eternity.

We praise you.

In the strong name of Jesus.

Everybody said, Amen.

Church, where you stand and worship is a close.