Sermon
Rattle: The Awakening of the True Church - Leaders' Talks
Publisher transcript
Transcript
-
You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
-
If the church would unite, it's a fantastically powerful army, probably the most monolithic, united, and definitely the most powerful group of people in the entire country.
-
If we would just unite.
-
Just have courage.
-
God is moving across the land, He's bringing a rattling, and I think it's gonna start to happen.
-
At The Road, our mission is to empower people to change the world.
-
For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
-
We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
-
So I don't want you to turn there.
-
Just listen to me.
-
This is from Isaiah 26.
-
I've repeated it a few times over the last few months.
-
Listen to this, Isaiah 26.
-
When your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
-
Let me say it again.
-
When your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
-
What Isaiah is saying prophetically from the Lord is that when you experience judgment in your life, and folks, the United States of America is under judgment.
-
We are under judgment as a nation.
-
The church in America is under judgment.
-
If you have any doubt about it, read Romans 1.
-
God's given us what we want, what we desire in our flesh.
-
We're under judgment.
-
But here's the cool part.
-
If you have the Holy Spirit and you're in God's word and you're fellowshipping with the body of Christ, you'll learn righteousness.
-
Isn't that exciting?
-
You don't have to be under judgment.
-
You don't have to stay under judgment.
-
You can learn righteousness in the midst of judgment, and you can get greater victory.
-
Greater victory in your life under the judgment of God because you make a choice to learn righteousness.
-
And so that's what God's doing in the body of Christ.
-
That's what He's doing in my life.
-
That's what He's doing in my family's life.
-
That's what He's doing in your life.
-
You're here because you're learning righteousness, and you're going to be better because of it.
-
You're going to be a better person, and we're going to be a more powerful church if we'll learn righteousness in the midst of judgment.
-
So, as you guys know, a couple weeks ago, I went into 10 days of fasting and prayer.
-
And many of you joined me at 5 a.m.
-
every morning, except for Sunday.
-
We came here to pray at 5 a.m.
-
And this is the result of it.
-
These are all prayers of the saints.
-
People in the church who came up here and prayed, and we burned through so many candles.
-
Up here, we got all these burned-out candle things.
-
So we burn through candles, 5 a.m.
-
for 10 days, and then we have Wednesday night prayer.
-
And when we go into worship later on, if you've got something on your heart that you're seeking God about, come up here.
-
We've got cards and pens and lay that before the Lord.
-
Because when we do that, when we do that, God begins to work supernaturally in your thinking.
-
It changes you by sometimes it helps to just write something down.
-
Remember Hezekiah?
-
Hezekiah when the Assyrians had surrounded him, he took that letter from Sinnacrib and he laid it before the Lord at the altar, and then God came supernaturally and slaughtered that entire army.
-
Isn't that crazy?
-
Because he laid it before the Lord.
-
So sometimes a physical act releases spiritual power.
-
Sometimes a physical act releases spiritual power.
-
That's what I think happens with fasting and prayer.
-
So on day one of fasting and prayer, a number of weeks ago, I went up to Castle Rock and my church in Castle Rock, it's called the Rock, and I was there with about 200 other pastors and leaders, and we were in worship, and I was just kind of pacing in the back of the church there, and the Lord spoke to me almost like an audible voice, and here's what he said.
-
He said, The Lion of Judah cometh, be prepared.
-
The Lion of Judah cometh.
-
Now that's that's gotta be God because I don't think in King James English.
-
That was super weird.
-
I said, that's dumb.
-
I remember thinking to myself, that's dumb.
-
The Lion of Judah cometh.
-
And then it's like, well, and then it's like the Lord said to me, Well, that's because you don't think like me very often.
-
And I said, Oh, you think in King.
-
No, I didn't say that, but but I just went before the Lord and worshiped him.
-
And I believe that's what's happening, church.
-
God is coming in supernatural ways within his remnant.
-
Not in all churches, but he's moving in churches that are positioned in such a place where their hearts are fully his.
-
And he wants to come and bring restoration and revival and power in our lives.
-
So turn in your Bibles to one of the most well-known passages in all of the Old Testament, Ezekiel 37.
-
And if you don't know where Ezekiel is, then go to your table of contents and you will find it.
-
And it's after Jeremiah, it's after Isaiah and Jeremiah.
-
You come to Ezekiel.
-
And Ezekiel 37 is a dry bones passage, and it's powerful because it gives us a glimpse into a nation under judgment.
-
A nation under judgment.
-
I'm calling this rattle.
-
I'm calling this the awakening of the true church.
-
Rattle, the awakening of the true church.
-
That God is awakening parts of the church, and it's surprising who is responding, and it's surprising who is not.
-
It's amazing to me.
-
And it's amazing what God is doing as He moves across the land and He's trying, I believe, so hard to awaken the American church.
-
And I think it's a struggle right now, it's a spiritual battle over our nation.
-
I want to talk about this on Wednesday night.
-
And by the way, on Wednesday night I have a special announcement.
-
Wednesday night at prayer, our prayer gathering at 6 p.m., I have a special announcement about something that's coming in September.
-
So I'm not going to tell you what it is.
-
Some of you do know because it's kind of leaked out.
-
But um, but don't be putting your head down and getting into all the leaks.
-
Let me tell you about it.
-
Because the way I'll tell about it would be way better than what anybody else will tell you.
-
Okay?
-
So if something's coming in September, I'll announce it on Wednesday at prayer gathering, 6 p.m.
-
So it's 6 p.m.
-
this week.
-
So look at Ezekiel 37.
-
Here's the situation, you guys.
-
Ezekiel's a prophet during the captivity of the Jews in Babylon.
-
So they are under the judgment of God.
-
And he has this vision, and this is what he sees.
-
The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit.
-
That's the reason we believe it was a vision.
-
In the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a valley, and it was full of bones.
-
That's kind of spooky.
-
How would you like to have a vision?
-
And you're like, in a valley of the dead bones.
-
Waking of the dead.
-
Then he calls me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were many in the open valley, and indeed they were very dry.
-
Men and women.
-
The United States of America is under the judgment of God.
-
We lead the world.
-
We lead the world in depression.
-
We lead the world in pornography.
-
We lead the world in drug use.
-
We've had 50 million babies slaughtered through abortion since 1973.
-
Now listen to this.
-
With nearly 20 million being black babies.
-
You imagine that?
-
That's infanticide.
-
That's the elimination of almost an entire generation of one race.
-
And we don't hear anything about it.
-
Black lives matter?
-
And we don't hear anything about it?
-
I'm old enough to remember when the U.S.
-
government went after big tobacco.
-
Remember that?
-
Okay, they went after big tobacco.
-
And here's what their point was Big Tobacco is targeting young people.
-
Right?
-
Remember that?
-
Eighty-seven percent of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics are in black neighborhoods.
-
That is targeting one race.
-
And we don't hear anything about it?
-
Are you kidding me?
-
God's judgment.
-
God loves the black race.
-
I mean, he's almost an entire generation's been wiped out by abortion, and we hear nothing about it.
-
It's wrong.
-
It's demonic.
-
It's satanic.
-
So America's under judgment.
-
Israel was under judgment.
-
What we have today is not a coronavirus pandemic.
-
We have a fear pandemic.
-
Everything that's happening is to create fear in you.
-
And it's working, right?
-
We've all struggled with it, right?
-
Because it's demonic.
-
There's demons behind it.
-
Under Obama, President Obama, H1N1, you guys remember that?
-
The H1N1 virus resulted in 60.8 million infections.
-
There was zero panic, and China was blamed.
-
Some of you don't even remember it because it was such a small little insignificant thing, but it was 60 million.
-
Contracted it.
-
Fast forward to today, there are 4.6 million cases of coronavirus.
-
Okay, let me just say it again: 60.8 million, 4.6 million.
-
And panic is and hysteria is 24-7 in the news cycle, and Trump's blamed.
-
It's like President Trump took a truck, you know, and he had he had the virus in a can or something.
-
And he went out there and he just sprayed cities with it.
-
Maybe it was it was airplanes.
-
That's right.
-
It was airplanes.
-
And it says Trump for president.
-
Make America great.
-
And he just dumped coronavirus all over the cities.
-
You kidding me?
-
So I'm from Georgia.
-
I'm not very smart.
-
And neither are you.
-
And we can figure it out.
-
So folks, clear the fog away, wake up, smell the coffee.
-
This is to create fear and to do anything possible to bring Trump down.
-
And I'm saying, you guys, that God has raised up Donald J.
-
Trump.
-
I don't even like the guy sometimes.
-
But I don't care about liking someone.
-
I like policies that bring religious freedom, freedom of speech, and will make America great again.
-
So I'm sorry.
-
That's where I'm at on this.
-
Verse 3.
-
And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live?
-
So I answered.
-
So he's asking Ezekiel, you're a prophet, can these bones live?
-
Look what Ezekiel says.
-
He says, I don't know.
-
Only you know.
-
That's how hopeless it looks.
-
And men and women, that's sometimes the way I feel.
-
I feel like when I just watch just 24-7 news and just one narrative all the time, the same narrative, the same narrative, the same narrative.
-
Man, hope just cut my heart, man, slash it.
-
I can't watch that stuff after a while because it just destroys my hope and my belief because it's just this one narrative trying to create fear.
-
And even Ezekiel, prophet of the Lord, great man of God, I don't know.
-
Looks pretty dead to me.
-
And I look at the church and the lack of and the lack of courage in pastors and the lack of willingness to stand up because Hebrews tells us we're supposed to gather together and we're supposed to worship.
-
And then I look at what's happening in China, and those people are being killed.
-
Those people are going to prison because they gather together.
-
And I go, what's wrong with us?
-
What is wrong with us?
-
What are we scared of?
-
We have the king of kings.
-
We're a kingdom of priests.
-
We're a kingdom of kings.
-
We're a kingdom that can take territory back from the devil.
-
He is under our feet, and if we'll believe it in prayer, we can push back darkness all over the land.
-
God wants to come upon the dry bones of the church, and he's moving across that valley.
-
He said, Wake up, church.
-
Wake up, pastors.
-
Lead.
-
Lead.
-
I read Jeremiah when I read through Jeremiah, several places in Jeremiah, particularly chapter 23 and other places.
-
His heart and his passion and his longing is for true shepherds.
-
Shepherds who will lead the flock that are not full of fear.
-
And he talks about the false shepherds that will not lead Israel to the green pastures in the living waters.
-
Folks, we need that.
-
God, we desperately need that.
-
Verse 4.
-
Again he said to me, Prophesy.
-
I love this.
-
He says this like seven times.
-
Prophesy to these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
-
Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live, and I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live.
-
Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
-
Here's the key here, amen.
-
The word of God.
-
We've got to prophesy the word of God.
-
It's prophecy because it ain't happening.
-
That's what a prophecy is.
-
A prophecy is when we speak the word into something where it's not happening yet.
-
Do you understand?
-
And so that's a prophecy.
-
When you declare something that's not there, it's a prophetic word.
-
And God wants us as churches to declare the word of God.
-
This is our foundation.
-
That's why we go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, at the road.
-
Because we believe that when you exegetically and expositorily go through God's word, his word, which is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, will heal your dry bones.
-
It will put sinew on your bones.
-
It will bring life to your dry bones.
-
That's why I've said again and again, I'll just say it here, but if you're married, husband and wives, you guys should be in God's word daily.
-
And if one of the spouses, usually one spouse doesn't want to do it.
-
And it's usually the guy.
-
But anyway, let's just say it's one of you.
-
Right?
-
Okay?
-
Then just go into your living room and just start speaking it so loud that the other person hears it.
-
I mean, wake them up.
-
Wake up, church.
-
Wake up.
-
Now is the time.
-
We are losing our church.
-
We are losing our country unless we get men and women that will declare and prophesy God's word, this is true.
-
And believe it.
-
And sometimes you just gotta declare it even though you don't believe it.
-
And just say it and say it and say it until you wake up your spirit enough that you actually start to believe it.
-
Because when you start to believe it, faith is birthed, and with faith is birthed, miracles will happen.
-
And all of us are at that point.
-
I mean, all of us get tired, right?
-
I mean, all of us get kind of lethargic and we're going on.
-
And so you've got you have to kind of, you have to wake up your spirit.
-
You have to wake up your spirit, and you have to just say it.
-
I'm gonna prophesy to my spirit.
-
I'm gonna prophesy the word of the Lord.
-
Lord, I don't feel forgiving.
-
I can't stand that person.
-
That person betrayed me.
-
That person hurt me.
-
You've got to declare forgiveness into your life.
-
You have to declare it.
-
You gotta say the word of the Lord.
-
Speak truth.
-
When you speak truth, it sets the captives free.
-
And the first captive is you.
-
Your captive.
-
During this time, I'm reading The Search for Meaning.
-
Victor Frankel book, great book about he was a he was a neuro uh neuropsychologist.
-
And he spent three years in Nazi concentration camps in the Holocaust, 1942 to 1945.
-
Probably one of the greatest books, it'd be in the top 10 in the Western kind of the Western hemisphere of the world called The Search for Meaning.
-
Here's his thesis.
-
His thesis is this that even when the most horrible things happen to you, there's only one freedom that you have left.
-
Only one freedom, and that freedom is the attitude that you take.
-
Nobody can take that away.
-
No Nazi guard can take that away.
-
No media, CNN, MSNBC, whatever you listen to, heaven forbid if you listen to those, but if you do, you know, then you're gonna really need a lot of help.
-
But but when you listen to news that bombards you with negativity and hopelessness, that does not give you the power, don't blame it on anybody else, to then get negative and depressed yourself.
-
You actually say no to that and you choose truth.
-
That's what Victor Frankel sang.
-
Then nobody can take away your attitude.
-
Nobody can take away what you believe except you.
-
And so what he's saying here is look, I want to move on these dry bones.
-
I'm giving you hope, Ezekiel.
-
I want you to speak this to the people of Israel that I'm about to move in a mighty and powerful way.
-
Men and women, we need churches and we need families that believe God's word.
-
And the only way you can believe God's word is to be in God's word.
-
And if all you do is get in God's word on Sunday each week, that's certainly a good start.
-
That's one seventh of your life, you know.
-
It's actually it's like it's like one 168th of your life.
-
Because there's 168 hours in the week.
-
But as we spend time in God's word, I promise you you'll see healing happen.
-
I promise you you'll see God begin to make you a more positive and joyful person.
-
Verse 7.
-
So I prophesied as I was commanded.
-
And as I prophesied, there was a noise.
-
Suddenly a rattling.
-
Yeah.
-
So it's like this rattling.
-
I almost brought my deer antlers.
-
Okay, because when you're hunting mule deer or whitetail, you rattle the bones, you rattle the rack because it brings in the deer, you know, you rattle it.
-
So he starts to hear this rattling, and he's not even out hunting.
-
And the bones came together, bone to bone.
-
Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over, but there was no breath in them.
-
So, you guys, when the word of the God, when the word of the Lord is spoken to you, it's not enough.
-
The bones coming together is not enough.
-
I went to cemetery.
-
I mean, I went to seminary, and and I heard professors that had heads full of the history of the church, or heads full of Old Testament history, or New Testament exegesis, or whatever it might be.
-
And I was impressed, and I took notes, and I appreciated all the study that they had done.
-
But there's something more.
-
There's something vitally missing if that's all that you have.
-
Look at verse 9.
-
And he said to me prophesy to the breath.
-
Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God, Come from the fore winds, O breath, and breathe on the slain that they may live.
-
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and they stood up on their feet, and they were an exceedingly great army.
-
You gotta have the spirit.
-
It's the word and the spirit.
-
It's heads on fire and hearts on fire, right?
-
There are churches that are all word, no spirit, they dry up.
-
There's other churches that are all spirit and no word, and they blow up.
-
But when you have churches that are word and spirit, you grow up.
-
So we need to be a church, and we need churches that are word and spirit.
-
As John Wesley said, I want men and women who have hearts on fire and heads on fire.
-
And so he's saying, look, the breath, just like you know, the picture here to Ezekiel had to have been Adam.
-
He's just thinking about Adam.
-
Adam's there, and he's taking the dust, and it, what was it?
-
When the breath of the Lord breathed into Adam, he came to life.
-
And some of you need a fresh baptism in the Holy Spirit.
-
You need a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit.
-
We we were fasting in prayer, we were in here at 5 a.m.
-
and I called people up.
-
I called it, come to the carpet of fire.
-
It even looks like fire.
-
Come up to the carpet of fire, oriental fire.
-
Come up to our carpet of fire, and a bunch of you guys came up there, tons of young people, and we prayed for you to be filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you got it.
-
If you haven't been baptized in fire, come on Wednesday night, we'll get you baptized in fire.
-
Because you're gonna need it.
-
We are going to need it.
-
We are in a law right now.
-
It's a retreat.
-
It's a retreat.
-
July and August is a retreat.
-
I mean, you got Portland burning, but in most cases it's calm down.
-
Great leadership in Portland, by the way.
-
Fantastic leadership.
-
I don't know why there's not recalls all over the country for these looney-tuned politicians.
-
But fire is coming.
-
Starting in September.
-
Mark my word.
-
You will be so tempted toward fear.
-
And I'm preparing you the best I know how as your shepherd and your friend and your pastor.
-
Be filled with the Holy Spirit.
-
Renew your mind every day in God's word.
-
Expect miracles, and God will come.
-
He wants to raise up a great army.
-
He wants to raise up a great army.
-
And the church and pastors generally are running scared right now.
-
And God's calling men like Bob McCoy in Thousand Oaks, California, who they just voted three to two, and a judge said, you're shutting down.
-
First thousand that come in get misdemeanor violations.
-
And I'm praying, we prayed this morning for 5,000 to show up.
-
Five times the number.
-
I pray that people all over California are going to support him.
-
And John MacArthur and others that are starting to stand up.
-
There's a rattling happening.
-
There's a rattling happening.
-
And I'm praying for a rattling all across this country because we are a great army.
-
If the church would unite, it's a fantastically powerful army, probably the most monolithic, united, and definitely the most powerful group of people in the entire country.
-
If we would just unite.
-
If we would just have courage.
-
God is moving across the land and he's bringing a rattling, and I think it's going to start to happen.
-
So Monday a week, not this Monday, not tomorrow, but the next Monday, a group of us pastors, we're gathering here at the road at 8 a.m.
-
And we're going to bury a Bible and we're going to drive a stake in the ground with 2 Chronicles 7.14 written on it.
-
And we're going to claim that on this northern side of Colorado Springs, that there would be a great revival.
-
There'd be a mighty move of God.
-
There would be a kingdom of God revolution start here.
-
And then we're going to get in our cars.
-
These are senior pastors and their wives.
-
We're going to get in cars.
-
We're going to drive to the east.
-
And we're going to go Gabe Valier's future property out there, Hispanic pastor.
-
You guys remember the interview I did with him when we put it out on Facebook and everything.
-
So Gabe land out there, and we're going to do the same thing there on the east side.
-
And then we're going to drive down to Gateway Prayer Garden.
-
And we're going to pray for that to happen in the south part of our city.
-
And then we're going to go to Al Pittman's church at Calvary Worship Center.
-
And Al's going to lead us.
-
And we're going to pray for the west side for God to move.
-
Because we believe, a few of us, I don't know how many of us show up, but a few of us actually believe.
-
We have the audacity to believe that God wants to move with revival power and kingdom of God revolution in Colorado Springs in our day.
-
This is our time.
-
From the four winds, O breath, breathe on the slain that they may live.
-
All across America, you could almost go to any house here in our neighborhood, and this would be true of anywhere in America, and people would tell you, probably every, oh, I prayed to receive Christ, or I've received Christ, or I grew up in the church, or whatever.
-
But there's no life, there's no power, there's no anointing, there's no strength.
-
Right?
-
Right?
-
So what we need is we need a reawakening in America.
-
We talk about an awakening, and by the way, before there's an awakening, before there's a great gospel awakening, there's usually a rude awakening.
-
Now that's kind of what we're going through right now.
-
But what we need in America is a reawakening.
-
Because there's a lot of people that I think maybe they're even saved.
-
They know the Lord, but they're kind of just dead.
-
There's just no spiritual life, and they've just been just pushed down by culture and pushed down by defeatism and pushed down by failure, right?
-
Man, God wants to wake that up.
-
He does.
-
He cares about all of us.
-
And I believe there's a reawakening.
-
And that's what we're going to pray for on Wednesday night.
-
When we come on Wednesday night, we actually pray here.
-
I'm going to share a little bit.
-
I've got that announcement I want to make, but then we're going to pray.
-
That's why all this stuff's up here is a reminder to us that we pray on Wednesday night.
-
And we're going to come.
-
And I'll just tell you, if you, you know, if your kind of prayers are sort of like this, oh Jesus, I love you.
-
And oh, bless me.
-
Bless my ingrown toenail.
-
I pray that it would get healed.
-
And grandma is having trouble sleeping.
-
That's fine.
-
That's fine.
-
You can pray that way.
-
But we're going to shock your boots off on Wednesday night because we don't pray that way.
-
Lord, we want to see you move in this city.
-
We ask you to drive back darkness.
-
We ask you to move in power.
-
We ask you, Lord, to bring a great revolution of your Holy Spirit upon this city in the name of Jesus.
-
That's okay.
-
Be in the back, it'll be fine.
-
You can be back there and everything, and we'll kind of pull you in.
-
And you'll get it.
-
You'll get it.
-
But we're on the winning team.
-
We have victory.
-
Let's act like it.
-
Let's believe God.
-
Let's prophesy because we don't see it right now.
-
But you gotta prophesy, God, for it.
-
And then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.
-
And he's saying to us today, church, this is the whole house of God.
-
This is a church in America.
-
They indeed say, Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off.
-
Verse 12, therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus saith the Lord God, behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and I will cause you to come up from the grave and bring you into the land of Israel.
-
Then you shall know that I am the Lord, and I have opened your graves, O my people.
-
I brought you up from the graves.
-
I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, and then you will know it that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord.
-
Church, here's what he's saying to us.
-
He's saying, You can't do it.
-
I can't do it.
-
We can't do it.
-
This is too big of a deal.
-
This is too impossible.
-
You can't go against the media.
-
You can't go against this or that party.
-
You can't go against these six billionaires that own 90% of America.
-
How are you gonna come against them?
-
How in the world are you gonna do that?
-
How are you gonna deal with all the uh the child sacrifice and the abortion industry and all the stuff that's going on?
-
You can't do anything about that.
-
But I can.
-
I can.
-
If I can just find some people who will let me breathe on them, who will start to read God's word and prophesy truth.
-
You watch what I'll do.
-
This is what I do.
-
This is my MO.
-
This is Jesus' job description.
-
He says, the Spirit of God came upon me that I might set the captives free, that I might heal the brokenhearted.
-
That's what Jesus does.
-
He's done it in your life, and he'll do it again and again and again.
-
And he wants to do it in the church today, folks.
-
There's a rattling going on.
-
There's a rattling going on.
-
Join the true church of what God's doing.
-
We stand together.
-
I see three things happening.
-
Let me give you three things that I believe are the rattling that we're experiencing.
-
Jot these down.
-
Number one, unity in the church.
-
Number one, unity in the church.
-
All kinds of churches, all kinds of denominations, all kinds of styles of worship.
-
I do not care if you raise your hand, keep your hand, you know, this is Superman worship or waiter worship or bus stop worship.
-
I don't care.
-
You know, it's it's the attitude of your heart, not the position of your body.
-
And so God is moving, and we have so many differences, right?
-
Some have bells and smells and candles and stuff like that.
-
And some of the pastors wear really cool robes and all that, like my dad did.
-
I mean, really flowing robes and cool stuff.
-
And some of them have white shoes and white pants.
-
And they blow on them and they fall over and all that kind of stuff.
-
And there's other churches where, you know, it's very staid and professional, and I don't care.
-
If you're worshiping Jesus and you love Jesus, we've got to put these things aside.
-
And we've got to unite and we've got to believe in each other.
-
We don't have to agree on everything.
-
Right?
-
How many of you got married and you realized your spouse didn't agree with you on everything?
-
If you can't raise your hand, then you really ain't married, man.
-
You uh you need to communicate more with your spouse.
-
But I mean, there's differences, right?
-
And so you either choose to realize that you can't change them, so you're gonna compliment, you're gonna grow with them, you're gonna learn from them, and they're gonna learn from you, right?
-
That's what the church needs to do is that I can hang with a Methodist and I can hang with a Lutheran and I can hang with a Catholic.
-
I don't agree with everything they agree with.
-
We might have huge fundamental differences, but if they're trying to make Jesus Lord and they believe that he died on the cross for our sins and he rose on the third day, we can have fellowship.
-
And if we don't, we perish.
-
We either unite and we win, or we constantly bicker and we die.
-
And I encourage you, don't rip into people.
-
If they're Jesus followers, just thank the Lord that we agree on some big things.
-
And we gotta be united, guys.
-
That's the rattling.
-
So that's number one, unity.
-
Number two, well, I see another one under unity.
-
Probably the biggest like disunifying thing is eschatology.
-
Raise your hand if you know what I mean by the term eschatology.
-
Okay, good.
-
So most of you do.
-
So that means that that's the study of end times, that's the study of last day stuff.
-
I don't care if you're premillennial, post-millennial, pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib.
-
I don't care because I read somewhere when Jesus says, nobody knows.
-
Except Hal Lindsay.
-
No, I'm only kidding.
-
Um, okay, number two.
-
Number two, churches filled with the Holy Spirit.
-
So, number one, unity.
-
Number two, the rattling is churches that are filled with the Holy Spirit.
-
And I mean word and spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit.
-
Some are more Pentecostal than others, some are more conservative than others, but the filling of the Holy Spirit is really about who's in control.
-
Some believe in speaking in tongues, some don't believe in speaking in tongues.
-
But the issue of the spirit-filled life, according to Ephesians 5.18, is do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.
-
It's a function of surrendering self to Christ and putting him on the throne.
-
That's the spirit-filled life.
-
That's what it is.
-
Does that make sense?
-
And so we need churches that are filled with the Holy Spirit.
-
Then, thirdly, a great army that stands up.
-
A great army that stands up.
-
The giant is being awakened.
-
Aslan has landed.
-
I love that part in the lion, the witch, in the wardrobe.
-
The white witch, she's moving across the land, and then the word comes, Aslan has landed.
-
Let me read that passage.
-
They say that Aslan is on the move.
-
Perhaps he's already landed.
-
And now a very curious thing happened.
-
The moment the beaver had spoken these words, everyone felt quite different.
-
Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream.
-
Either a terrifying one, which turns the whole dream into a nightmare, or else a lovely meaning, too lovely to put into words.
-
Which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life.
-
And are always wishing you could get into that dream again.
-
It was like that now.
-
The Lion of Judah is on the move.
-
And there's a rattling happening across the land.
-
Very, very faint.
-
Very, very quiet, but it's starting to happen.
-
Let us pray that it would become louder and louder and louder.
-
And that we as a church would find our voice.
-
You would find your voice.
-
That today you'd have a voice.
-
If you go to Safeway, or you go to King Supers, or you go to 7-Eleven, or whatever you do, that you'd ask God, what are you doing here?
-
What are you doing at 7-Eleven?
-
What are you doing at Walmart?
-
What are you doing at Costco?
-
And I want to be a part of what you're doing.
-
I want to follow you.
-
And he may put on your heart someone that's three rows down the way, and you get this sense that they're depressed.
-
And you just take the risk and you walk up to them and say, I know this sounds super weird.
-
This is how you do it, by the way.
-
I know this sounds super weird.
-
I just came from church.
-
And my pastor told me to go with this sense that it might be the Holy Spirit.
-
But when I saw you, I wondered if you needed prayer for anything.
-
God put you on my heart.
-
And then you're going to see the tears start to roll down their face, and you're going to know exactly what to pray because you are obedient.
-
If we started doing that, all across the land, God would begin to bring revival.
-
God would begin to move with awakening, reawakening in the body of Christ.
-
That's the rattle.
-
The rattle is unity.
-
The rattle is the power of the Holy Spirit.
-
And the rattle is that God wants to bring forth a great army.
-
Don't you want to be a part of that?
-
We're on the winning king.
-
Everybody say to your neighbor, I'm on the winning king.
-
You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
-
We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
-
To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
-
If you're walking to a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
-
Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.
-
Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holmes.