Can You See the Signs? - Leaders' Talks

You're listening to this week's edition of the road.

David also lied.

He also killed a man.

He also committed adultery.

And yet, after even after all the mistakes that he made in the New Testament, this is the New Testament.

This is not, he used to be a man after God's own heart, but he blew it.

No, this is in the New Testament.

They described him as a man after God's own heart.

He died and still lives in heaven with Jesus as a man after God's own heart.

Because he knew how to come before God and engage with God's presence and repent and allow God to change it from the inside out.

At The Road, our mission is to empower people to change the world.

For more information on the road, visit the road.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message.

Well, I'm honored to speak this morning, and I just want to uh you'll probably hear a little bit about my life.

Um, can I just be honest with you?

Years ago when God asked me to start speaking, I was terrified.

How many of you would agree and say if you had to stand up here with a microphone, you would be just absolutely horrified, okay?

I can sing in front of thousands of people, and it doesn't bother me at all.

But standing with a microphone, so I said, Lord, you really want me to speak?

Like, why me?

I'm the singer guy, not the speaker guy.

And he spoke to me.

He said, Brian, he said, I'm not calling you to speak because you're a gifted communicator.

And I said, Lord, you really know how to build up a guy.

That's really encouraging.

Then he went on to say this.

He said, Brian, he said, I'm not calling you to be a speaker because you speak so well.

He said, I'm calling you to speak because you know how to listen.

And he said, All you have to do when you get up and speak is pray and incline your ear to hear my voice.

And if you will do that, then I will give you a message and I will give you something to speak to the body of Christ.

And literally, that was the moment that it all changed.

That I didn't have to come up with all these great and elaborate messages.

All I had to do was pray and seek God and ask him what he wanted me to say, and then get up and say it.

So today, I feel like that I've heard from God and I'm excited to share it with you.

And the word that God gave me to share with the road today is look to the signs.

Everybody say, look to the signs.

So let me ask you this.

What what what sign do you think that we, if we had a spiritual sign, what do you think it would be today?

Really?

Digital Babylon.

Okay.

How many of you believe that actually we are seeing, if you look around the world, we are actually seeing spiritual signs all over the world of what is actually happening?

Can I tell you today that I know it's not a question of whether I think or I have an idea or an unction.

Maybe we're living in the last days.

Can I tell you that I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are living in the last days?

How many of you believe the same thing?

Listen to this verse, 2 Timothy 3, verses 1 through 5.

2 Timothy 3:1–5

It'll come up on the screen.

Says this, but mark this: there will be terrible times in the last days.

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God.

Then listen to this last part.

Having a form of godliness, but denying its power.

Okay, based on that verse, how many of you can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, we are living in the last days?

This is not the only verse.

Can I tell you that there are verses all throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, that indicate that we are living in the last days?

If you look at the signs, you will know.

I've got an eight-point message, okay?

We'll be here till one o'clock at least.

Now I'm going to blow through these first seven, and then I'm going to get to point eight, and that's where we're going to sit for a while.

Number one, the reason that I know, the sign that I know that we're living in the last days is number one, great moral decay.

And we read it right there.

Lovers of themselves, treacherous, greedy, hateful.

How many know that that that's absolutely the world that we live in in many regards?

We have never seen so many religions and so many forms of religion.

Have you ever seen that bumper sticker that says coexist?

And it has all the different emblems from the different religions, and they're like, oh, there's just all these different ways to get to God.

No, no, no.

There's not many ways to get to God.

How many know there's only one way to get to God, and it's through Jesus Christ?

But people say there's no truth.

There's no one way, there's no one path, there's many ways, and you decide.

Number two, earthquakes in strange places.

Mark 13, verse 8 says this nations will rise against nations and kingdoms against kingdom.

Mark 13:8

There will be earthquakes in various places and famines.

These are the beginning of the birth pains.

Now I pulled up a bunch of research.

I'm not going to get into it, but I will say this.

Do you know that we have had more earthquakes in the last 25 years than we have in the last 2,000 years?

Go all the way back 2,000 years.

There's only been as many earthquakes in that amount of time as there has been in the last 25 years.

What is it?

It's the rumbling.

It's the shaking of the end times.

It's the shaking of the king's return.

He's coming soon.

Do you believe that he's coming soon?

Number three, famine.

I just read about it.

There's a bunch of statistics I could share there as well, but um I think it's about once every ten seconds a child dies or somebody dies of starvation.

I mean, it's just it's rampant in this world.

Number four, wars and rumors of wars.

Just turn on your television.

Just read the news.

It's happening all over the world.

Number five, increase of knowledge.

Daniel 12, 4 says this that in the end times that there would be a knowledge that would be expanded.

How many know that we can get any information that we want at any time?

All we have to do is click a button and have anything that we want at our disposal.

Number six, the gospel will be preached throughout the world.

And then the Bible says this in Matthew, it says, and then the end will come.

I have a dear friend who does crusades all over Africa.

And sometimes he will promote an event or sometimes not even really do much promotion, but just show up and start setting up, and people in the tens and even hundreds of thousands will show up to hear the gospel.

How many know that the gospel is being preached more now than at any time in history?

There are crusades, there are stadiums being filled with people preaching the gospel.

It's happening in every remote area in the world.

In fact, the same man, and there are several organizations like this, that are actually targeting the unreached people groups and going into those areas specifically, learning their dialects, trying to preach the gospel to those who have never heard it.

Number seven, persecution.

It's persecution happening all over the world.

You know what's amazing though how little it's talked about?

How much persecution is happening and how little we hear of it.

But if you kind of read between the lines and you actually study it out, you can learn that persecution is happening on an unprecedented level.

And then point number eight.

Did you know that one of the signs of the ends of the times is something very dear to my heart?

It's worship.

Everybody say worship.

I see this almost as if this is God's 911 call.

Amos 9.11, and I'm not going to read it quite yet, but I want to give you just a little bit of background if you know much about the Old Testament places of worship.

And can I stop for a minute and just admit to you something?

I have been leading worship since I was 16 years old.

I'm 44 now.

I would say probably the first 10 years, even longer than that, maybe, I was the flakiest, most unknowledgeable worship leader that you've ever met.

Most of the stuff that I did on the platform had nothing to do with knowledge of what worship was.

Do you know that for years I would just get up and sing?

In fact, I would get up and I knew how to hype a crowd.

I could raise my voice at just the right time.

Come on, everybody, you ready?

Come on, here we go.

Let's lift.

And I I could use my gift or what God had given me or my voice to try to amp up the people and do this thing called worship.

But I was singing one time, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

As clear as day, the Lord asked me, He said, What does that even mean?

And I said, What do you mean, Lord?

Holy.

He said, What does it mean?

And then I was singing, Worthy.

Worthy is the Lamb.

Worthy is the Lamb.

He said, What does that mean?

And you know what?

I had no idea.

I had been singing it for years and didn't even know what the word holy meant.

I didn't know what the word worthy meant or glory meant.

I realized the Lord started challenging me and saying, Do you even know why you do what you do?

Do you even know why you sing to begin with?

We dedicate half of our service to this thing called worship.

And yet I have never seen something that has given so much attention that most people have no knowledge about why we do it.

So I studied it.

And it started with little things like the word holy.

And I found out that it meant perfect.

Whole.

Lacking nothing.

So when we declare that he is holy, we are declaring that there can never be anything added to him or taken away from.

He is already perfect and complete.

Oh, and guess what?

He says, Be holy as I am holy.

What is he talking about?

Be whole, be mature, be complete, be a whole person through Christ.

You know what the word worthy means?

Having worth.

Value.

Remember, I was driving to a little uh communion service that we were going to, and I called up, um, I was pastoring a church in San Diego, and I called up one of my uh elders, and I said, Hey, can you bring um some communion elements?

Um, because we're I want to do communion at the Bible study tonight.

He said, Yeah.

He goes, Let me see what I have in the garage.

I'll see if I have any leftovers in the garage.

And I hung up the phone, and I'll never forget that I felt as if I had just died inside.

It was like, oh, what is not right about that?

Why do I feel so bad right now on the inside?

And the Holy Spirit was like just, and I knew the Holy Spirit was trying to keep teach me something.

And I was passing by a Pier 1 import and store, and the Holy Spirit just prompted me.

And I'm not crazy, you know, I don't go to the store and say what bread should I get, you know.

But I mean on rare occasions, he'll speak to me this way.

He said, Pull over, I want to teach you something.

So I pulled off into Pier 1 imports, and I walked in and he said, I want you to buy the absolute best things that you can buy for communion tonight to honor me and worship.

He said, I don't I want you to pay full price for everything that you buy.

So I went in and I picked out this beautiful goblet and I bought this platter and I bought all these little uh uh decorations to put on.

Then I had a uh uh some candles that I wanted to get, and so I grabbed them and I went up to the cashier and I said, Um, how much is all this?

And she said, Oh, she said, good news.

These candles are on sale, they're half off.

And I said, You know what, ma'am, um, if you don't mind, I would really like to pay full price for those.

I have never seen anybody look at me more strange than that lady.

She goes, What?

You don't want the sale?

Why?

I said, You see, I am I am going to use this stuff to worship God tonight.

And and and she literally had to go get her manager, come over.

They couldn't figure out how to ring it up because it was all, I mean, they had to, it like the store shut down because I wanted to buy things at full price.

But I learned something very important.

Do you remember when David, the plague broke out, and he had sinned and by counting all the all the fighting men?

And the Lord said, uh, three days of of destruction are coming.

And and the the angel was standing and literally at this field, and he went and he went was going to offer a sacrifice there.

And the owner of that field came to David and he said this.

He said, Here, take this field, take the take the bull, take everything that you need for the sacrifice.

David looks at him and he says, This, I refuse to offer worship that costs me nothing.

And the Lord redefined worship.

You know what when we declare you are worthy, Jesus, we are declaring his value.

This half-hearted, nonchalant worship.

And a lot of people are like this like Brian, what is the big deal?

I remember this businessman came to my church in San Diego, and he's like, I really like the way you speak and stuff.

He goes, but that singing part, I can't stand it.

I just he said, he said, it makes me so uncomfortable.

Everybody's raising their hands around, and people are singing, and he goes, if it wasn't for that part, I think I could come to your church.

And I said, Sir, you you don't even understand.

That's the part where we actually offer our hearts to God and honor him for who he is, and it has to be costly, it has to be uncomfortable sometimes, it has to stretch you beyond.

Can you imagine if I was courting a girl, okay, let's say when me and my wife were dating, and uh my wife, um, or I'm sorry, not my wife, Kristen, she's not here, she's picking up my daughter from the airport right now.

But um, you know, we've been dating for several months, and I got down on one knee and I pulled out a ring and I said this, okay?

I said, I just want you to know that I've done a pros and cons list.

And I even did uh uh an app where we they took my picture and your picture, and I think our kids will be beautiful.

And I know your life goals, and I know my life goals, and they just fit, and they just work.

I mean, everything on paper is perfect, and so I've thought about this a lot, running through a few computer programs, and I believe that our marriage will last, and so I just want you to know will you marry me?

But I don't want to hold your hand or hug you or kiss you or be intimate with you emotionally in any way.

How many women would run for the hills at that moment, alright?

Yet here's the thing with God.

We come to church and we do the very same thing.

I want to know everything that your Bible and your word has to say.

I want to know everything about you, but just don't ask for me to involve my emotions.

Don't ask me to lift my hands, don't ask me to be uncomfortable.

And yet, God is saying, You mean you don't want to be emotionally involved in this relationship at all?

You just want to be involved with your mind, you just want to know about me and take advantage of the benefits and all the things that I, but without actually involving passionately your worship, David did.

How many know that David was a passionate guy?

And and I'm telling you, this thing, worship, is is on the rise.

There were three Old Testament houses of worship in the Old Testament.

Number one, we had the tabernacle of Moses.

You can read about that in Exodus 40, verse 18.

Exodus 40:18

Number two, we had the Temple of Solomon.

Remember, this is the one that when the priests started singing and the cloud came into the temple and they couldn't even stand.

But then there was a third place of worship in between those two places of worship.

It was called the Tent of David.

You notice that there's three people attached to each of these houses of worship.

The tabernacle of who?

Moses.

All right?

The law, right?

He wrote the first five books of the Bible.

Number two, we have the temple of who?

And it was grand, right?

I mean, it was uh filled with gold.

I mean, it was the most elaborate temple ever built.

But then we had another place of worship called the Tent of David.

Now let me read Amos 9.11 to you.

It says, In that day I will restore David's fallen tent.

I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins, and will rebuild it as it used to be.

I want to read that one more time.

Because I don't know if you've ever heard this scripture, but I'm I'm telling this is a very, very important scripture for us.

This is a sign for us right now.

In that day, I will restore David's fallen tent, I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins, and will rebuild it as it used to be.

Now let me ask you a question.

What is he talking about?

How many of you knew about this third place of worship?

Have you ever heard of this?

The tent of David?

Okay, how many of you have never heard about the tent of David?

Oh wow, okay.

This is the sign of the last time.

This is the last days that he's talking about.

He's saying, in the end, before Jesus returns, I'm not going to restore the tabernacle of Moses.

I'm not gonna, I don't want you to build grand and glorious buildings like a Temple like Solomon built.

You know what I want you to build?

I want you to, I want to restore in those days the tent of David.

Now I do a lot of teaching on Mosaic Tabernacle.

Actually, if you if you study that out, you'll find that the Mosaic Tabernacle is an incredible symbolic representation of Jesus.

How many of you ever have ever had any study done in the Mosaic Tabernacle?

Okay?

I even have uh heard of places that you can go and you can walk through it.

Really cool.

So the Mosaic Tabernacle was the way that God wanted to be worshipped in the Old Testament in between captivity, or when they just come out of captivity into when they went into the promised land.

And the main thing that we need to know about the Mosaic Tabernacle is that they walk through this gate called the gate of Thanksgiving.

I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart.

I will enter.

Do you guys know this?

Some of you guys are seeing it right now in your head.

I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart and into his courts with praise.

That's a biblical truth, a biblical foundation for coming into God's presence.

It was leaving the world and coming through this gate, which entered, was entering the house of God in the Old Testament.

What was the first thing that you ran into when you came through the gate of Thanksgiving?

Into the courts of praise?

A slaughterhouse.

Do you realize that Old Testament worship was a slaughterhouse?

The brazen altar was the first thing that you ran smack dab into when you came through the gate of Thanksgiving in the tabernacle of Moses.

And they were offering lambs.

Adam! Eve, where are you?

As if God, the creator of the universe, didn't know that they were standing behind the bushes over there just a little ways away.

It was literally Adam and Eve making an attempt to cover themselves with their own ability.

And God comes into the garden and he calls them out from out of hiding and he says, No, those leaves will never do.

The only way that you can be forgiven or atoned for, and your sins can be washed away, is if I make a sacrifice.

And God himself made the first sacrifice.

We don't know what animal it was.

I tend to believe that it was a lamb.

And he cuts the lambs or whatever animal it was, makes clothes to cover them properly.

So the same thing is true in the Mosaic Tabernacle.

They come up, they run into the brazen altar, and they come with their sin, and then the priests make a sacrifice, and their sins are atoned for.

Then you have several different, you have the table of showbread, the inner courts, but how many know that the whole point of the Mosaic Tabernacle was not just the outer courts, but the priests go to the inner courts, and then there was a place called the most holy place, where there was a veil in front of it, and a priest one time a year would go beyond the veil and offer a sacrifice for the people.

What was the point of the Mosaic Tabernacle?

So that God could dwell among his people without destroying his people.

He wanted to be with them, but there had to be a veil.

Now let me read this verse to you.

Matthew 27, verse 50 says this.

Matthew 27:50

Like this is crazy, right?

But but if but if you're if you're intuitive and discerning, you'll actually know that this is a sign.

This is this is just as much a sign as what we just saw.

This is God saying, something's changed.

Something's different.

Something is not the way it used to be anymore.

I'm giving you a sign to tell you that something has changed.

I was teaching on this subject in a school of worship, and somebody raised their hand when I was sharing this part of the uh sharing that very verse, and they they said, Hey, Pastor Brian, they said, um, so when the curtain fell down, how come uh everybody didn't die?

And I was like, you know, I don't know.

How many know it's just good to admit that you're you have no idea what you're talking about?

I said, I'm gonna find out because I didn't even know if in Jesus' day the Ark of the Covenant was behind the veil.

And you know what I found out?

It wasn't.

The Ark of the Covenant wasn't even in the temple, it had been long gone, stolen by people that had destroyed the temples.

But but isn't it crazy?

And this is probably the reason that Jesus was so hard on the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

They were operating and doing all the things in the temple that they were supposed to do, all the protocols and the sacrifices and all this stuff, and God's presence wasn't even there.

And he would say, You whitewashed tombs, why are you putting this yoke on all these people?

Why are you so concerned about the structure and all the stuff, all the laws and all the stuff when God's presence isn't even here?

But then Jesus dies and the veil is torn.

And how many know that this had never happened before where the curtain had fallen?

Oh wait.

Oh, wait.

Maybe it had.

Maybe there was another time in history when God gave us a sign of what he was gonna do.

Do you remember when David became king and he went to the elders and all of Israel and he said, The one thing that I want to do, the first thing that I want to do is we have to bring the Ark of the Covenant back into the city.

You remember they put it on the cart and they rolled it in, as it touched it, they died.

Well, he brings it in.

He brings symbolically saying, I want the presence of God to be in the city with me.

I am not gonna do this without God.

I want God near me, I want his presence near me.

But you know what?

He didn't put it behind a veil.

You know what he did?

He made a tent without any walls, and he put the ark in the middle of the city, and then 24 hours a day, he appointed musicians and singers to come and to worship God 24-7.

David was incredible.

The more that I studied the life of David, the more I realized this man was bipolar.

I'm not kidding you.

I really believe if David sat down with a counselor, he would be diagnosed as bipolar.

He did crazy things, he did stuff that made people scratch their heads.

You remember when Saul wandered into the cave?

His enemy wandered into the cave, and just so happened that four David and four and a hundred of his men were standing there, and his men whispered to him and say, David, guess what?

The king is here by himself, unguarded.

And you it God has delivered you, your enemy into your hands.

And David said, I think you're right.

He goes up and he cuts the corner of Saul's garment.

And the Bible says that he was smitten in his heart.

He was cut to the heart, and he realized, I cannot lay a hand on the anointed, even though in every estimation it appears that God has given him over to me.

What was he saying?

He was saying, I am not going to become king until God makes me king.

I'm not going to make myself king.

He goes back to his 400 men, and this is the test of leadership, by the way.

You have to be a man of worship.

You have to know God's presence in order to make these kind of difficult decisions.

He goes back to his 400 men and he says, This isn't God.

They said, Yes, it is.

No, it's not.

He's right there.

He said, I cannot and I will not.

He was being tested of how he would respond to being able to make himself king.

And it happened again.

Remember when David was talking and his men overheard him, and they said, he said, man, it would be really good, be really good to uh have a drink from the well of Bethlehem.

And his men sneak off behind his back and go to Bethlehem and fight through the enemy lines and get a drink of water and bring it back.

And they're like, David, David, and they hand it to him, and he's like, Where's this from?

He said, Bethlehem.

And he goes over and he pours it out.

And his men are like, What are you doing?

Why would you do that?

I'm telling you, he was bipolar.

He you never knew what he was gonna do.

What have you ever read through the Psalms?

And he's like, I'm about to die, it's all over.

And then, like, two verses later, he's like, But God's gonna save me, and I will make it, and I'll never be defeated.

And then, like, three verses later, he's like, My soul is so sad and distressed.

I mean, he was he had learned how to actually live honestly before God.

Church is the lionest place you'll ever enter.

God bless you, brother.

How are you doing?

Oh, I'm doing really well.

All hell is breaking loose in that person's life, and they're like, oh, just God bless you.

And this we wear the smiles, and we come before God and we sing the songs, and and and and and David was like, Help me! God, I need you.

And I know, I understand, I teach on worship all the time.

That there's an argument out there that says worship needs to be all about him and not about us.

The only problem is that have you read the book of Psalms?

It's a lot about David.

But what if God's not surprised by that?

What if God actually loves it when we come honestly and peel back our heart and say, God, this is really what's going on, and I need you.

Waymaker, miracle worker, promise.

I believe that, God.

Even though I don't see it, I believe that you're moving.

And we actually come honestly before God and pour out our heart before God instead of just pretending like everything else is okay.

What if we actually worshiped honestly before God?

Three years ago, I was sit on the uh set on the shelf by God to begin to study even more and wrote several books on the subject of worship.

And I started a worship school at a church in in California.

I didn't know what to expect.

All I know is that God just literally peeled open the doors and put me in this place where I was able to run this school of worship.

I started the school and we had probably, I think, 50 people that showed up that first uh semester.

And um about 40 of them were not even singers or musicians.

And I was like, huh.

Okay.

But it was really interesting to see who ended up showing up that during that time.

One such lady was uh one of three whose either children or a close family member had committed suicide.

But I remember Diane Ford in particular.

She uh sat right in front, and I you could just see it all over her.

It had been five years since this happened.

But uh we would start worshiping, and I saw a progression start to happen.

Where she she began to come out of her shell and I began to talk about this worshiping God honestly.

And so she came up to me after class, she said, Pastor Brian, she said, I I just want to share with you what happened.

She said, I don't even know why I'm in this class.

She said, I'm not a worship leader, and you know, I love to sing, I love to worship.

She said, but man, five years ago my son drove to a lake, parked his car, and you know, put a hose and just basically killed himself there on the banks of the river.

He was 18 years old.

And he said, I have been living in a in a cave, in a hole, for the last five years.

He said, When I heard you announce about this worship school, um the Lord spoke to me and he said, You need to go.

He said, The only way you're gonna get out of this cave is to worship your way out.

And she said, and for three years she was in every class that I did and began to learn how to engage with God's presence to actually be honest.

I said, Diane, it's okay to be honest, just somehow let it out.

Tell God what's really going on, as if he doesn't already know our thoughts that we think every single day.

What if we actually came before him honestly and just said, God, this is where I'm at.

But then as we engage with his presence, we we see from where we're at to see who he is, and he says, Oh, I'm not gonna leave you that way.

I'm actually gonna change you from the inside out.

And I saw her begin to get healed and restored.

You realize that David broke the law.

You realize that according to Old Testament protocol, it was not lawful to have the Ark of the Covenant out among the people.

There was supposed to be a veil.

David also lied.

He also killed a man, he also committed adultery, and yet, after even after all the mistakes that he made in the New Testament, this is the New Testament.

This is not, he used to be a man after God's own heart, but he blew it.

No, this is in the New Testament, they described him as a man after God's own heart.

He died and still lives in heaven with Jesus as a man after God's own heart.

Why?

Because he knew how to come before God and engage with God's presence and repent and allow God to change him from the inside out.

And you know what thought hit me the other day?

Actually, there was a veil.

It wasn't curtain material and it wasn't wood and stone.

But you know what the veil was that allowed him to be right next to the Ark of the Covenant in God's presence without being destroyed?

It was the worship.

24-7.

He had string players playing, guitar players strumming, harp players singing and ministering to the Lord, and that actually was the veil.

It was what God, it allowed God's presence to be among.

It was the worship that allowed God to be close to his people.

It was the it was the music, it was the singing, it was the heart connection that people they didn't just sing, but I love you, Lord, and I live my voice to worship you, oh my soul, rejoice.

Take joy, my king in what you let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your heal.

When you start singing, when you start engaging your heart, and it's not just lip service, and it's not just a song that you repeat on the screen, but you actually open up your heart.

Not just on Sundays.

I'm telling you, every time, every day in my car, I just sing to the Lord.

I just love him.

I just I lavish my love on him.

And guess what?

He comes right back.

He comes right back.

I remember I was going through a hard time and I took a walk.

I was just frustrated.

And I was out there, and I was just like, Lord, I love you.

And right back on the inside, he said, I'm praying for you.

Imagine the Son of God praying for you.

But but sometimes it's just quieting our soul, quieting the distractions.

I've already mentioned the church that I pastored in San Diego, and I'm gonna end with this story.

But I was pastoring a church, and and the Lord began to speak to me about three years into that, and he said, Brian, he said, I'm I'm getting ready to change things in your your story.

And he said, I'm calling you back into worship.

And I'm like, Lord, you you know that I'm like 40 years old, right?

I said, I retired the skinny jeans a long time ago.

And are you sure?

Most people go out of worship into pastoring, and then I don't know very many that have gone from pastoring back into worship.

I'm like, this is not very typical.

But then he said something that's changed the course of my my life's direction.

He said, Brian, he said, I'm calling you back into worship because I need fathers in this generation that can pour into the next generation.

He said, I have so few fathers, especially in the area of worship.

They all leave when they get 35 or 40 and they go do something else.

He said, I need you to stay, and I need you to train, and I need you to equip not just young, but uh every age demographic.

You gotta bring every age together in worship, and you gotta teach them, you've got to show them, you've got to father them, and help them to learn how to engage with my presence.

I said, Okay, Lord.

So I went and led worship at a little missions conference.

There's maybe 30 missionaries in the back room, and it was just me and a keyboard, and I was playing, and I gave them all a C D just to bless them.

And um I met this Indian man.

He said, uh, he said, Hey, I'd like to meet with you.

He said, We've been listening to your C D.

Can we have lunch?

I said, Okay.

And I didn't think anything.

So I'm sitting across the table with this Indian man and his son.

And he said, Brian, he said, I don't I don't know what it is, but but in your music, I just we feel something.

We just, there's, and he said, he said, we're a very small ministry here in the United States, but he said in India we have 15,000 churches.

I said, Come again?

How many?

He said, Yeah, 15,000 churches.

He said, Um, our vision is to plant a church in every zip code in India, and we're halfway there, there's 30,000 zip codes.

He said, Would you be willing to come and train and equip my worship leaders in all these churches?

I said, Sure, yeah.

And I drove away from that meeting and I thought, this is a sixth of the world population that God put me in a meeting to equip basically six of the world population saturated in that entire nation in worship.

I said, God, I think you know what you're doing.

Well, then on the last um project that I did, I did a song called Last Generation.

And it basically says, This could be the last generation the world will ever see.

So, God, I Live for your name.

My pastor was speaking.

And he said, he said, but you you guys think that uh that when we get to heaven that we're gonna run up to Elijah and to Moses and we're going to uh we're gonna ask them, what was it like to put the rod over the water and a part in two?

Or what was it like to call down fire?

He said, that's not what's gonna happen at all.

So you know what's gonna happen?

Those people are gonna run up to us and say, What was it like to live in the generation that welcomed the king back to the earth and to his kingdom?

And when he said that, it was like something gripped my spine and just squeezed it.

And that song came back to me.

What if this is the last generation?

And we actually start a worship movement that ushers the king back to his kingdom.

How many know that worship is on the rise?

There's more worship being released now in the world than there ever has been.

Everything that this scripture says is happening right now.

Oh, stadiums are being filled, and worshipers are coming just to just to gather around.

24-7 uh our prayer uh prayer movements are on the rise.

Everywhere you turn, there's worship here and worship there.

God is going to return, and he's returning to a people who know how to worship him in spirit and in truth.

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