In 2022, Don't Be Shaken - Leaders' Talks

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Road Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

It's interesting to me how much fear is being propagated through the media and through the news today.

It's like every time you look at the news, anything you look at, it's fear-inducing.

And I just felt so strongly about a week ago, I changed my, I had my message already set.

We're going to finish out Ephesians.

And then as I prayed and prayed and prayed, I felt like God was saying, you need to encourage the road to not be shaken.

To take up the unshakable kingdom of God in your life and not let this world shake you.

Because that the fear and the shaking that's around us is prevalent everywhere we look.

I'm up at skiing in Breckenridge, and I go into a ski shop, and we're looking for some gloves, and I meet the manager, start talking to the manager, and I mean in five minutes, we are in it.

We are in it.

And this guy's just full of fear.

He's being manipulated by the media.

He's being manipulated by the medical industry.

It's just incredible.

And he's just freaked out.

And I just said, man, I don't know what you're so fearful of.

He goes, What?

How can you say that?

And I can say that's because I know the facts.

And uh and you don't know them.

And if you would, if you would just be a little more aware and read a little more widely, you wouldn't be so fearful.

But you're just in this narrow little fear tunnel, and it's shaking you, and it's shaking your family, and shaking your wife.

And you just said, didn't you say your wife was an ER nurse?

And he said, Yeah.

And I said, Well, my son-in-law was an ER nurse.

And you and I have entirely different perspectives on what's going on.

And so I just felt strongly, you guys, that I want you to be unshakable this year.

I want this to be the best year of your life.

I want 22 to be a year where you realize, wow, they can't shake me.

Because your tendency, my tendency, is always to be shakable.

That's just the way we go.

I mean, think about Adam and Eve.

You couldn't have had a better situation.

They got the whole garden, they control it, they've got total freedom except for one thing.

There's only one thing that God told them that they couldn't do.

Everything else is freedom.

They've got each other, like all the guys in the room, intimacy all the time.

I mean, it's perfect.

There's no sin.

And then along comes the serpent.

Just a few little lies.

You can have it all.

You can be really free.

You can be like God.

You can find nirvana.

You can find everything that you've been searching for in the way of happiness.

And they gave it all up.

They took the road of shame.

They let the serpent who comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, do exactly that.

He stole, he killed, and he destroyed.

So the reason that's important is because that's all of our tendency in this room.

I was I was recently listening to a debate with some congressmen on a newscast that I was looking at, and this one person said this very important point, and that was related to a particular ultra, I'm not going to name the name, but ultra-liberal congressperson.

And this person said, My generation, she, I think she's in her late 20s or early 30s, my generation's never known prosperity.

Do you realize that our poor, the poorest of the poor in America, are in the upper 36% of the rest of the world?

Never known prosperity, and the person made this comment, I thought it was really good, is that actually the opposite is true, is that your generation has never known anything but prosperity.

And so because of that, it's a bait and switch.

So it's always been a bait and switch with Satan.

The bait is freedom, and the switch is slavery.

That's how he works.

And so if you're shakable this year, you're gonna bite the bait and you're gonna get the switch.

And I want to challenge you, you don't have to.

You can walk with the unshakable kingdom.

So turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

And I want to emphasize the fact that you should bring your Bible.

At this church, we're kind of a Bible church, okay?

And what I mean by that is we actually teach the Bible.

We don't just teach from the Bible.

Do y'all know the difference?

So a lot of churches, you know, have little verses that come up on the screen and everything, and nobody brings their Bible.

But at the road, encourage you to read your Bible because the more you open the word, the more you get in the habit of opening the word.

And the more you open the word, the more you're gonna live in the unshakable kingdom.

So Hebrews 12 is talking about shaking.

It's talking about the shakable world and the unshakable kingdom.

And my mantra here today and next week, as we go into a time of a message, a set of messages called a rise and shine next Monday, Sunday night, Monday night, and Tuesday night next week, is this world, this city, this county, your job, and your family are going to be shaken this year.

It just is.

It's going to be hard, it's gonna be difficult.

And if you don't get this, if you don't understand how to lay foundations, good solid foundations, you're gonna be swept away into despair, depression, and fear.

So Hebrews 12 is talking about a very similar situation.

Verse 25.

See that you do not refuse him who speaks.

For if they did not escape, who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven.

So he's talking about the new covenant.

The illusion here, I believe, is this idea of Moses being on the mountain and God speaking, and they rejected that voice, and then what happened to them, many of them were actually eaten up.

They were actually taken into kind of a, seems like it was sort of like an earthquake and sucked down into the uh center of the earth.

How much more so now, thousands of years later, is it not important for us to hear what God is saying to us in heaven?

Verse 26, whose voice then shook the earth.

But now he is promised saying, Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.

And you guys that were a part of us, and we were in Haggai.

Remember when we were in Haggai a year and a half ago when the COVID thing was just getting started, you that have been with me that long?

Just jot this down, Haggai 2, 8 and 9.

Haggai 2, 8 and 9.

And then we did a whole series on the book of Haggai and the unshakable kingdom.

And Haggai was written to remind us that God, in his prophetic work, is actually shaking the heavens and the earth and all the nations of the earth to bring the nations to the desire of the nations.

Isn't that interesting?

You see, the nations don't know that what they really desire is a king.

A good, loving, kind king, and his name is Jesus.

And as they search for materialism and search for gold and search for silver and search for pleasure, what they're really searching for is the kingdom of God.

It's what you're searching for, it's what I'm searching for.

And so God shakes things sometimes.

He shakes things in our lives to wake us up to that which is unshakable.

So look at verse 27.

Now this yet once more indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

So, men and women, what God does is he shakes those things in our lives that we've depended on, and he shows us how shakable they truly are, that he might then rise up within us.

Almost like that, the allegory of a phoenix, the idea of God coming forth through his resurrection, the unshakable kingdom of God.

But sometimes he has to shake what you've depended on so that he can offer you what's unshakable.

He continues in verse 28.

Therefore, since we're receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.

And so we as Americans who've been so blessed with so much abundance are realizing the shakeable nature of the institutions that we once depended upon.

And they're not what they used to be.

They literally are not what they used to be.

Because of greed, because of ignorance, because we've been asleep at the wheel.

These institutions we're finding out in 2020 and 2021 are very, very shakeable.

Our healthcare system is shakeable.

From the world's number one healthcare in the world in 1984 to dead last among major industrialized nations in most major cities in 2021.

And by the way, I am not a big fan of Dr.

Anthony Fauci.

So if you are, then forgive me.

Under Dr.

Anthony Fauci, with his expansion of a pharmaceutical and chemical paradigm in healthcare, since 1984, as the chief of the NIAID, according to the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S.

has gone from the most healthy nation in the world to the least healthy among industrialized nations, with the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest life expectancy.

Our educational system is shakable, from one of the best in the world in the 1990s to one of the lowest among developed nations today.

Our political systems are shakable.

Do I need to say anything more on that one?

From a voting system par excellence in the world to a still unresolved disputed election in 2020.

Our economic systems are shakable.

Under the auspices of state and federal government mandates, of which most experts said we did not need to have.

Business closures have pulverized America's middle class and engineered the largest transfer of wealth in human history.

In 2020, 2021, workers lost$3.7 trillion while billionaires gained$3.9 trillion.

Some 493 individuals became new billionaires, and an additional 8 million Americans dropped below the poverty line.

Domestically, inflation is soaring with the greatest rise in inflation in over 30 years.

Gas prices have doubled, food supply chains have diminished.

But God is bringing the unshakable kingdom in the midst of a shaking economy.

And men and women, we stand on what the scriptures say in verse 28, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.

Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

So men and women, we're receiving a kingdom.

We haven't received the kingdom, we're receiving a kingdom.

Guess what that means?

That means the kingdom that we're receiving in 22 is going to be greater than any kingdom that we received in 21.

We're receiving a kingdom.

Don't quit.

Don't give up.

Don't put your faith in shakable kingdoms.

Put your faith in the unshakable kingdom, Jesus Christ, his church, your family, and the work of God that wants to do through you.

That's the Holy Spirit that lives within you.

You have the kingdom of God living within you.

You do.

You have the King of kings and the Lord of Lords and all of His miraculous power living in your heart.

All He needs is your faith to believe that He might use you in a mighty and powerful way to make a difference in your community and in your family.

That's what it means to arise and shine.

Isaiah 60 says, and we'll talk about this next week when we go into the series on Sunday night, Monday night, cues of night, but I'll just give you a little a little tip to what I'm gonna talk about, and that is, it says, Arise and shine, your light has come.

Yes, it's God's light.

But Isaiah says it's your light has come.

So that means, men and women, if you don't arise and shine, your light doesn't come.

His light is there, it's within you, but it's your choice whether you're gonna arise and shine or whether you're gonna run away in fear.

And in this church, we don't run.

And in this church, we stand.

And we stand together.

You're not alone.

Let not your heart be troubled.

We have each other, it's called blood-stained allies, and we fight together.

And we battle together.

We get our feelings hurt.

It's not gonna always go your way.

If your feelings haven't been hurt and you haven't been hurt by the church, you need to get out more often.

We gotta forgive, we gotta give, and we gotta stand.

And so we do.

And we will.

And we are, and that's the unshakable kingdom.

I mean, I read scripture in the New Testament, lots of problems here.

The book of Acts is one problem after another in the church, but they kept pressing forward with the kingdom of God.

And as they did so, the Romans got more and more frightened because the kingdom was coming and it's an unshakable kingdom, and they couldn't stop what the light was doing to dissipate the darkness.

And that's why we're here.

Now, how do we do it?

How does that happen in our lives?

How do we become the unshakable kingdom?

Well, look at Matthew 16.

Jesus gives us a prescription.

Turn to your left in your Bibles.

You'll come to Matthew, first book of the New Testament.

If you're new to Scripture, just keep coming to this church and you will become very familiar with it.

Matthew 16, 16, 18.

Matthew 16, 18, Jesus speaking, and he gives us his prescription of how the unshakable kingdom moves across the land.

And currently, men and women is taking over the world.

We are taking over the world.

With over three billion men and women across the world who call themselves Jesus followers.

What's been great about the communists in China is they built roads.

And they they made Mandarin the central language of China.

So that's another good thing about the Chinese communists.

But because of that, the gospel is spreading to all these mountain towns and all these villages all over China, and the Chinese Communist Party's paying for it.

Isn't that awesome?

So they build the roads, and then we put our people on it, and we go take the gospel to the uttermost parts.

Pretty good deal.

But here's what Jesus says about that.

He says, this on this rock, verse 18, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

God is building his church.

And don't misunderstand what I'm saying.

When I say church, I mean church, yes, it's a local church, but you're the church.

In other words, corporate together called the road is made up of some whatever we are, 1,500 churches.

So we're the church.

You're the church.

You have the temple of God within you moving forward.

The gates of hell shall not prevail against us.

Either Jesus is a really good liar or he's telling the truth.

And if he's telling the truth, and that's what we believe, then God's gonna keep moving in 22 and unprecedented ways.

God is building an unshakable kingdom.

In the summer of 2020, a group of about 25 pastors met here up at the top part of this parking lot, and we prayed for a kingdom of God revolution in this city.

And then we drove all of us together, drove out east to Gabe Baye's church out there, a Latino church, and we prayed for Kingdom of God Revolution.

Then we went down to the southern part to the prayer garden down there in fountain, prayed for kingdom of God revolution.

And then we prayed over here at Al Pittman's church at um Calvary Worship Center for Kingdom of God Revolution.

And we believed that God was going to do something.

That is an unshakable kingdom.

And then in September, September 12th, 2020, we invited Sean Floyd here, and we had 6,000 people down at Memorial Park, and we worshiped and we prayed, and hundreds were baptized in all those baptismals.

And the media said there were a thousand people here.

Never mentioned the baptisms.

And I told them that's what they would do.

So all these reporters were in front of me, and I said, here's what you guys are gonna do.

You're gonna say there's like 500 people here, and you're gonna see you're not gonna say anything about the baptisms because you're afraid of what God's doing here.

And that's what they did.

In December of 2020, we went to Washington, D.C.

Our whole pastoral staff team went there and some others from our church, and we gathered with 15,000 with Sean right there on the lawn, right in front of the White House.

That's the unshakable kingdom.

2021, we developed a church voter guide.

Haim Goldman was the main guy behind this and his team.

They put together this church voter guide in the last election.

We turned five out of six school districts over because people knew how they were voting.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

In 2021, Pam Holloway started the Health Recovery Ministry.

Over 1,700 people have been healed of COVID through that ministry this year.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

And by the way, as a sidelight to that, it's just it's working with our body.

It's working with your natural immune system.

It's working with vitamins, it's working with the way God meant your body to work.

Working closely with our county commissioners and key government leaders, in 2021, we we declared El Paso County a freedom county.

Right in the face of our governor, that we're not gonna listen to your mandates.

We're a freedom county and we'll make up our own decisions about how we want to do things.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

We held our second annual marriage conference last year to strengthen marriage.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

We held our fourth men's conference, the whole heart advance.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

Pastor Brian developed.

The Unveil Worship Conference.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

We've had over 400 days of prayer, noonday prayer.

That's an unshakable kingdom.

Wholehearted men on Tuesday morning has grown from 140 to 290 men.

Every Tuesday morning at 6 a.m.

That's really an unshakable kingdom.

And tonight at 5 p.m., we're going to have a special alert prayer about some of the stuff that's happening right now.

That we're going to come together and pray.

You're invited to come.

But we really pray, by the way.

It's a prayer gathering where we really pray, and we'll be praying at 5 p.m.

We usually go about 90 minutes, but it's pretty intense prayer.

Encourage you to join us for that.

So 2022, in my opinion, is a tipping point year.

I've never said that.

I've never claimed a particular year is a tipping point.

But this year is a tipping point.

In my lifetime, and I've been here a lot longer than some of you and a lot less than some of you, but I've been here long enough to know that I've never in my lifetime seen the astronomical, cataclysmic, shakeable changes that have hit our culture, our government, our medical systems, and our world like we have right now.

God is on the move.

God is on the move, and He's calling the church to stand.

He's calling you to stand with an unshakable confidence.

I want you to have an unshakable confidence this year.

Don't let fear get the upper hand.

Don't let bitterness get the upper hand.

Don't let unforgiveness get the upper hand, or you will be shakable.

And so he says here, Jesus says, I'm building my church.

So I'm going to take a little bit of theological license with verses 18 and 19.

And this is what I mean.

I don't want to just talk about God building his church.

I want to talk about God building his family.

Because I believe the two greatest institutions in society today is the local church and the family.

So God's building his church through your family.

And that's the higher priority is that you protect and you become an unshakable family.

If you're married, you got to fight for your marriage.

You got to fight for your family.

Because the enemy comes in to steal, kill, and destroy your marriage and your family.

He wants you to fight for your kids.

He wants you to battle for your marriage.

He wants you to battle for your family.

If you're not married, then get in a family.

If you don't have your fight, your biological family around you, then find a family.

Here at the church, get in one of our groups.

Get into one of our community groups.

Make that your family.

Have a spiritual family.

In some ways, that's actually more powerful sometimes than your biological family.

I know our family because of the fact that Liz is from California, I'm from Georgia, you know, our family's you guys.

So we have our family, we have the whole family, but we also have this extended family, and it's many of you in this room.

You're our spiritual family.

And the first thing he says here, the first thing Jesus says is, on this rock, on this rock, I will build my church.

It was Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan preacher.

In the 1700s, he said, every home should be a little church.

And so I'm planting two, I've planted two churches, three churches.

I've planted the whole family church, mountain springs, and the road.

The most important one's the first one.

My family.

Build your family on a rock.

So put your finger in Matthew 16 and just turn to the left to Matthew 7.

Turn to Matthew 7.

Jesus, concluding the Sermon on the Mount, after all that he said in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, we come to the end of chapter 7, verse 24, and he says this: therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

Folks, storms are coming.

Storms are coming.

They're gonna hit you economically, they're gonna hit you medically, they're gonna hit you emotionally, they're coming.

Like that storm a couple weeks ago, that 75 mile an hour wind storm that hit us in Black Forest, and I had a tree this big just taken out of the ground, literally, came right down on my neighbor's barn and just blew it apart.

You gotta have good foundations.

You've got to build your family.

You've got to, we've got to build our church on the rock, not on me, not on our elders, not on our pastors.

We are partners with the rock.

He's the senior pastor.

And he needs to be the senior pastor of your marriage and your family.

And if you haven't surrendered your marriage and your family to Christ, do it.

If you have and you've forgotten, do it again.

Surrender to Christ, or you will be shaken this year.

It's gonna be a rough year.

Or it could be the greatest year of your life.

I remember when I was a senior in high school, and this, excuse me, I was a freshman in high school that related to my senior year.

This new coach came for the gymnastics team, and he was, to use a theological term, a real badass.

Okay?

And this guy came in and he spoke to us like we were morons.

And he had been one of the top gymnasts in the United States for the University of Georgia, and he told us if you're gonna be on this team, you're gonna follow everything I tell you to do, and we'll be state champions by your senior year.

And for the next four years, he he drove us.

He drove us, but we became believers in Coach Boyer.

We believed in him and he took us all the way.

Jesus says to you today, I love you, I'm for you, but you gotta obey me.

You gotta follow me.

And I will make you a championship family.

I will make you a championship church, one in which you are unshakable under the auspices of a shakable kingdom that's all around you.

So number one, this year, build on the right foundation, build on the rock, and you'll be unshakable.

Number two, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Number two, if you'll lay the rock foundation, then Christ will build in your family.

If you'll give him the opportunity, if you'll surrender to him, he will build in partnership with you.

Not him alone and not you alone, but him in partnership with us, he will build his church, he will build his people.

And men and women, that's exciting.

That's confidence building.

We can throw fear out the door if we allow the faith of the unshakable kingdom to rule in our hearts and in our minds.

That's why we said that statement at the beginning.

I'm gonna live on God's word.

I'm gonna walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm gonna live courageously, I'm gonna rise and shine in my family and my community.

The reason we said that is because that's what we're declaring and believing God for.

But remember what we saw in Hebrews 12, 27 and 28.

It's a kingdom that's coming.

It's not here.

So that's what's interesting, isn't it?

That the kingdom of God is always already, but not yet.

The kingdom of God is already, but not yet.

So we get glimpses of the kingdom.

You're experiencing a little bit of the kingdom presence of God right now while you're here.

You're gonna walk out, and something's gonna happen, and it and all the emotion and all the sense of peace will go.

And you'll have to resurrender, recommit, and put Christ back on the throne of your life again.

Because by doing so, the kingdom's coming.

Do you guys understand what I'm saying?

It's the heiress tense.

It's what we call the present heiress tense.

It's coming.

The kingdom is coming, but you have to let it come.

And so that's the partnership.

And if we do, then he builds.

He builds in your family.

Then he says this, verse 19, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth, be bound in heaven, whatever's loose on earth, loose in heaven.

Now, this is really, really important.

Listen to this.

Number three.

Jesus has given us the keys for opening and closing the kingdom on earth.

Jesus has given every one of us in this room the keys to open and close the kingdom on earth.

So you can shake your fist till the cows come home about, oh, God had my father die.

Or oh, and you know, all these things.

When the reality is, sometimes God was calling you to bring the keys of the kingdom, to bring a miracle, and you didn't pray about it.

You didn't ask him, you didn't cry out to him.

That's why we're gonna cry out at five o'clock.

If the church would pray and act, we could change the world.

If the church will pray and act, we can change the world.

You guys believe that?

It's bold prayer and bold action.

So this is my challenge for us.

Husbands and wives, you've got to be praying together.

Or you're gonna get shaken this year.

We gotta pray together.

As a church, when we have noonday prayer, you need to pick one day a week.

If you can, if you're in this area and you can, one day a week, come to noonday prayer and come in there and pray.

But it's also action.

We have people in this room that have gotten their jobs back.

They lost their jobs under mandates, but because of the election that we had, because we worked our tail off to get the right people into office, the law changed and they got their jobs back.

Our country was built to be a democracy by the people and for the people.

No other nation in the world like that.

Are we gonna let it just slip through our fingers?

Because we just sit by with our hands, sitting on our hands, complaining about this or that when God has given us a kingdom, and that kingdom makes you a bold and confident leader.

And we can do this together.

It's called the unshakable kingdom of God.

Satan wants you to walk in fear.

Demonic powers want you to cut and run.

And we have a kingdom.

The unchanging person of Christ, the unchanging king.

It's interesting in Hebrews 12, which leads into Hebrews 13.

Hebrews 13 later says the same, he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The same king who took down Rome.

The same king that brought down communism in the 1980s and 90s, mainly through the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Europe.

The same king that brought the pilgrims to America is the same king that lives within you.

This is our time.

I'm not responsible for 1985.

I'm not responsible for 2040.

I'm responsible for 2022.

And this is a tipping point year.

And God's called every one of you in this room for this time.

May you be used mildly by him.

I believe you will be.

That's why you're here.

You'd have left a long time ago if I was making you too uncomfortable.

I know Americans.

But isn't it fun?

Kind of fun.

You're made for this.

I like that part in the in the movie The Miracle when he says, you are born to be hockey players.

You guys were born to be kingdom people.

That's your destiny.

Now let's grow together.

It's a kingdom that's coming.

We'll do it together.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to thero.org.

God bless you.