Windstorm I: Back to the Future - Windstorm: A Study In Revival

I was uh sitting out in the fire in our fire pit um yesterday and we had a visitor in.

He was actually here on Saturday night.

We went to the University of Georgia together.

He was quarterback for uh the football team that won the national championship in 1981.

Um and I was a measly little gymnast.

He's big, I'm small.

But we've stayed friends over the years.

We got saved about the same time.

I was uh a freshman at Georgia when I came to know the Lord, and then about a year or two later he came in as a freshman and came to know the Lord.

So we've been friends ever since.

So anyway, we're sitting out there, Jeff is his name, and Isaac and then Jeff's son, Ben, who's a cadet at the Air Force Academy, which is what brought them here.

We were out there, and something Dan Isaac said that I thought was polignant to what you were saying, Victor, is so here, you know, here all of us are we're we're scholar athletes, and then Jeff was asking Isaac how it was going with baseball, and and Isaac said something interesting.

He said, I guess the biggest thing I've learned is I don't play baseball for Jesus.

I play baseball in Jesus.

And I just thought that was a great point, Isaac.

And I think that's what you did, Victor.

You didn't go for Christ, you went in Christ.

And that's the protection and the power that was with you was being in Christ.

So that's cool.

Let's open in prayer, and um and we're gonna we're gonna look at some stuff here and see what God wants to do tonight.

Father, thank you for tonight.

Thank you.

Here we are, Lord, in 2015.

It's a new year, it's a new adventure.

Some of us look back on 2014 as life-changing, maybe altering to the trajectory of our lives and where we were headed, and you've got us on a different road.

You've got us on a different path, and we need you afresh, we need a fresh touch, we need a refilling, a refueling of your spirit because we want to serve you and love you and be a disciple of yours in Christ, not for Christ.

And Lord, we want to look back and we want to see what you've done.

And and I'm reminded, Lord, that you even tell us in Scripture to look back.

Ecclesiastes 7 13, you say, consider what God has done.

So, Lord, as we look back to the future, would you fill us?

Would you give us wisdom?

Would you give us attentiveness even in the lateness of the hour?

Many of us coming with struggles and maybe even confusion.

I speak to the enemy in the name of Jesus Christ to leave this place, to leave our minds, to leave our hearts, so that the word might be proclaimed with clarity, wisdom, and effectiveness into the very fabric of our body, soul, and spirit.

So come, Holy Spirit, and anoint this time.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Alright, you have some notes.

If you look at that, I'm calling tonight back to the future.

That will, I think, become abundantly clear as we move through this.

Um, I felt it was needful in order to give you guys information that leads to formation, which leads to transformation, that I would read some of these notes.

So this is important stuff that I feel like you need to have.

And then tomorrow night, we're actually gonna go into Acts chapter two, and really over the next uh four, and then if it feels like we need a fifth night, I'm gonna just use Saturday night service for the fifth night on uh this windstorm idea.

Um we're going verse by verse through really Acts chapter two.

And so we're gonna be looking back at Pentecost.

We're gonna look back at what I'm calling the very first windstorm.

And so, why the title windstorm?

This really came to me on a hike that I was on in one of my prayer walks up in Black Forest Regional Park where I was praying.

I'd been asking Liz for wisdom, asking others for what do we do?

I feel like God wants us to really take time at the beginning of the year.

2014's been uh an incredible year for all of us here.

I mean, who would have dreamed this time last year in 2014?

We'd be sitting in Chapel Hills Church, you know, doing this thing, you know?

Not me, I can tell you that.

Um, and so, you know, then we went through the 40 nights of prayer.

Some of you are with us then, some of you are new since then.

But uh it's been it's been a big year.

And I think every one of you guys have stories in your job, you have stories in your marriage, you have stories in relationships that were surprisingly good, and maybe in some cases shockingly bad.

But here we are.

And so I was up on this hike, and this and this wind just starts blowing.

Just started blowing, and and it just got really, really fierce.

And for about 20 minutes, is I think we it I didn't have any way to gauge it, but it felt like maybe 15 to 30 mile an hour winds, and you know, it's just rocking the trees and everything, and then it went away.

It was like there and it was gone.

I was like, that's it.

I'm talking about the power of the Holy Spirit, windstorm, revivals, and I just kind of knew in like five minutes.

And and I'll just tell you, that's kind of my MO.

Um, I'll I'll pray about something for days, weeks, sometimes even months, and I don't have any clarity.

Zero.

And then it's like one day, all the study, all the prayers, all the research, all the thinking kind of it comes together and you kind of know what to do.

So I know some of that's true for you guys.

I would say that you know, don't make decisions too quickly sometimes.

If you don't really have solid clarity, because um I think that's part of God's way, is that you feel confusion.

And when you feel confusion, you seek God, and then he gives you clarity in his timing, not our timing.

And that's how this came about.

Well, then I went and decided to look up the Spirit or Holy Spirit in the New Bible Dictionary, and I wrote down the definition for you guys right here Spirit or Holy Spirit.

In the Old Testament comes from the Hebrew word rua 378 times, plus 11 times in Aramaic in Daniel, New Testament, Greek, Pneuma, 379 times.

And the very first main definition is wind, an invisible, mysterious, powerful force regularly with the notion of strength or violence present.

Whoa.

Yeah, it's a good windstorm's a good name.

Then second is breath, and then third, it says divine power, where ruha is used to describe occasions when men seem to be carried out of themselves, not just a surge of vitality, but a supernatural force taking possession.

It is important to realize that for the first Christians, the spirit was thought of in terms of divine power, clearly manifested by its effects on the life of the recipient.

The impact of the spirit did not leave individual or onlooker in much doubt that a significant change had taken place in him by divine agency.

Now, I know that's kind of really scholarly language, but I think what it's saying is that even in the first century, there was this view that the spirit would come at times, especially what they read in the Old Testament, because remember they had the Old Testament at that time, that the Spirit would come on people for a period of time to do stuff.

Samson's a great example of that.

You know, here's Samson, he's kind of a schmo, he's got some character issues for sure.

Um, but he's anointed by God to be a judge.

And so even in his mother's womb, he was anointed by God.

He was called by God, and he blew it, and he, who knows what God would have done through Samson if he had continued to walk in the Spirit.

But the Spirit would kind of come on people.

And Samson's a great example where one minute, you know, he's having an affair, and the next minute he's like killing hundreds of Philistines.

And so, and so they had this idea of the dancing hand of God through the Spirit.

Okay?

What they didn't know yet, at Pentecost at least, that the Spirit was going to come, the promised one, Acts 1.8, where it's a promised spirit was gonna come, but it was gonna stay.

It was gonna become resident on God's people with the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ.

So they didn't know that.

But they knew that it was that it was violent.

It was almost violent, the way it would come, and um, and the spirit would then use you in a mighty way.

And so windstorm to me seemed like a good term.

So that's the term windstorm that we're gonna use here.

Because here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna look at both the ways of the spirit now, but we're gonna look at it from the perspective of also what the spirit has done in the past through great moves of God in the past.

And so you will see quotes and you're gonna see references to the Protestant Reformation, um, the first and second great awakening with Jonathan Edwards.

Um, we'll look some at the Welsh Revival at the turn of the century, 1900 in the 20th century.

We'll look at Azusa Street in 1906.

We'll look at the Jesus.

I just got a book, which is the Book of the Year by Christianity Day, um, and started reading it the other night, and it and it's about the Jesus Revolution.

And um, it's fascinating, fascinating stuff.

I will probably won't get into a lot of that, but some of it I will because especially as it related to worship and new kinds of churches were birthed, which I was a part of, one of those new kinds of churches, which was the vineyard many years ago, and then Calvary Chapel, and we'll look at some of that.

Um I like this quote.

Let me give you a quote.

It's not on your notes here because it came, it came through one of you here recently.

You sent it to me.

I think it was actually it was today, and I added it in my notes.

This is from Jim Cymbala's new book called Storm.

Can you believe that?

That's the name of it.

It's called Storm.

I think it's on the Holy Spirit.

I haven't read it, but here's the quote.

I thought it was really appropriate.

Quote Our culture is no longer a traditional church-going society.

Agnosticism and atheism are increasing.

If we want to turn back that tide, the Christian community has to return to absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit.

It was the Spirit who made the early believers such a powerful witness for Christ in the age of the Roman Empire.

Are there other options?

He writes.

They, the early church, knew nothing of what we now call doing church or going to church.

But they grew and we're sinking.

Let me read that again.

They, the early church, knew nothing of what we now call doing church or going to church, but they grew and we're shrinking.

Those who deny our need for the Holy Spirit's direction and help today, because the canon of scripture has been closed, totally missed the point.

It's not new truth or doctrine that he brings.

We already have God's unchangeable truth in scriptures.

But what we need is the Spirit's life and power.

So that's why we're here, church.

That's why God has anointed this time.

That's why the next few days, some of you are gonna be radically transformed.

Some of you are gonna be touched by the Spirit like you've never been touched before.

And I want you to expect that.

I want you to believe God for it.

When we go into prayer and worship, God may lay something on your heart.

We're gonna have a mic right here on the floor.

You can come up and you can uh lead out in prayer.

Or if you want someone to pray for you, I'm gonna encourage you to go over to that, I think that's a speaker over there, that black thing, speaker thing, and we'll come up and pray for you.

Some of you don't know the Lord here.

Some of you have had such a dose of churchianity, you don't even have a clue about the power of real biblical Christianity.

And what's gonna happen is you hear some of these stories and stuff, you're gonna go, that's what I want.

And I don't know if I've got it or not, and sometimes I don't know whether I've got it or not.

But God, would you would you touch me?

Would you minister to me?

And would you put a windstorm in my heart?

And if that's you, I'm gonna tell you to get out of your seat during worship and just come over here.

And some of us are gonna come up, we're gonna hear what's on your heart, we're gonna pray for you.

Spirit of God's gonna come, and you're gonna get nailed, and you're gonna be set free, and you're gonna be a new person.

And it's gonna be just like our definition right here.

There'll be a significant change in your heart.

I want to start, though, on a negative note.

I think it's important that we understand the lay of the land that's happening in the world today, and in America in particular, and especially in Europe, and I'm gonna call that deception on the earth.

There's a satanic windstorm going on, guys.

There's a satanic windstorm going on.

We are seeing an acceleration of evil on the earth.

The Bible tells us that in the latter days, evil will increase, and it is maturing.

Daniel chapter 8, verse 23, we read these words.

Daniel 8:23

And in the latter times of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, having fierce features, who understands sinister schemes.

We are seeing a rise of evil in the West.

We're seeing a rise of evil in the Middle East that's obvious, and it has been predicted, it has been prophesied for thousands of years that in the latter days knowledge and evil will increase.

And a setup is happening for the coming of the evil one, for the coming of a world leader, the Antichrist, and this evil is rising precipitously.

Let me give you three thoughts here.

I've entitled this The American Culture is Dying.

The American Culture is dying.

Let me give you three indications.

As a missiologist, I study culture.

I love to study culture.

Culture has been always been very interesting to me.

And that was my master's degree, it was in uh missiology, study of cultures.

Let me give you three thoughts that I have on why our culture is dying.

Number one, there is a growing sense of lack of understanding of right and wrong.

We don't understand right and wrong anymore.

There's no sense about it.

As a matter of fact, it almost appears that the elevation of wrongness is esteemed over rightness on obvious stuff that you just would never even think that that's even a question.

And so we've lost our sense of the structure of right and wrong.

Secondly, there's no clear understanding of our institutions anymore.

There's no clear understanding of our institutions, like marriage, sexual orientation, and who we are as a nation.

We've lost that.

So this idea of marriage between a man and a woman, that's under attack.

I mean, I'm going to share with you in a minute that I believe marriage is going to be outlawed in our time.

Marriage will be outlawed in our time.

I'll be shocked if it doesn't happen.

We're just seeing the cracks.

We're just seeing the beginnings of the cracks of the whole culture falling apart.

When you have no clear understanding of the basic governmental, marital, sexual, gender institutions, your culture is dying.

Your culture is falling.

That happened in the Roman Empire.

Gibbons does a great job in the rise and decline of the Roman Empire in describing that.

Thirdly, there's no overarching code of ethics or morals anymore.

There's no overarching code or documents that guide our ethics or our morals.

Now, maybe the Constitution is still esteemed in some places, but even that's under attack.

Definitely not the Bible, which is what our country was first founded on through the Puritans and the Pietists and the pilgrims.

So these are three indicators of the crumbling of a culture.

Well, also, there is going to be a falling away within the church.

It's very clear in Revelation and in 1 Timothy 4.

You might want to just turn to 1 Timothy 4 and let's look at that passage where Paul is writing to Timothy, he says, here's what it's going to be like in the latter days.

He starts off in 1 Timothy 4 with this.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits.

Folks, there's deceiving spirits in the church.

Do you know that?

There's deceiving spirits in the church.

Now it's obvious there's deceiving spirits outside the church, but I'm going to tell you there's increasingly deceiving spirits within it.

Everything he's saying here, as I look at it, has to do with the church.

Deceiving spirits.

And listen to this doctrines of demons.

Doctrines of demons speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.

So he's describing the church.

There's going to be a growing apostate church that is already happening.

I mean, the kind of stuff that pastors and leaders and conferences are talking about over the last 15 years is mind-boggling.

You don't even want to know the kind of stuff that some leading evangelicals are questioning.

I mean, questioning stuff that's just unquestionable in my mind.

And I don't go to the conferences, but I see some of the notes online.

I'm like, you got to be kidding me.

And I just don't have time for it personally.

I mean, I would just go nuts.

I mean, I would stand up, I'd make a fool of myself, I'd be cast out, you know.

But but there's these groups, and there's the Jesus project.

There's the search for the for the um for the uh archaeological and the historical Jesus.

I don't know, you don't even want to go there with what they're talking about.

We've got stuff related to homosexuality that is just pervasive.

It's the discussion.

If you'd have told me just 10 years ago that the big topic in the church would be gay stuff, that we don't have anything more important to talk about than that, I would say, you're crazy.

No way.

And so, you know what doctrines of demons are?

Let me give you a definition of doctrines of demons.

Doctrines of demons are demons opposing truth.

Listen, demons opposing truth by obscuring truth.

That's what demons do.

They oppose truth not openly, but by obscuring truth.

Obscurity, that's really, that's really the word out there.

Don't don't miss this.

That's what the enemy's doing right now.

It's not obvious.

I mean, it's obvious to many of us, but it's it's it's obvious at its end product.

But 10 years ago, it was obscurities.

It'd be little obscurities, and it's happening now.

You've got to be on the lookout for obscuring truth, which is opposing truth, but you don't know it at the time.

That's a doctrine of demons.

And so it says there's going to be this rise of deceiving spirits, doctrines of demons, and hypocrisy.

So they'll use religious language to obscure the truth about Jesus.

About the nature of salvation.

And so, what you're hearing now these days is you're hearing, you know, kind of all roads.

Lead to Jesus.

There's, you know, all roads lead to Jesus or or well the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ at Calvary has some different ways you could look at that.

And you're hearing stuff that is usually couched in language, very scholarly language by scholarly people that you trust or you did trust, and you're going, hmm, interesting point.

And before you know it, they're obscuring the truth, the doctrines of demons, that's not obvious, but it's just slight.

And it's just, but it's headed in the wrong direction.

Forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe in other truth.

So here's what he's saying.

First of all, they're going to outlaw marriage.

It's going to become so confusing as to who can be married and who can't be married and who and what you can be married to, that I believe there's going to be a day where like, where would we just, this we're the best way to end the debate is no more marriage.

Just live with who you want to live with, you know, have relations with who you want to have relations.

It's up to you.

And it's just, you know, it's the ultimate kind of libertarian sort of lifestyle.

Right?

And yet, we as believers and as evangelicals and as and as those who love God's word, we're going to stick to what we believe, but you're going to get in trouble for believing that.

And it won't happen overnight.

It's going to be little slight things that happen, and before you know it, we're way off from God's center line.

Abstaining from foods.

And when I think about that, I think about this whole idea of the way the Judaizers were in the first century when actually Paul is writing Timothy, that it sounds, it sounds religiously holy because you'll be abstaining from stuff to find that relationship with God, and it will be very, very religious.

So Satan's power is going to increase across the earth, but so will the church's power.

And with the windstorm blowing of the enemy and the increase, I'm going to call it the maturity of evil, there's going to be this windstorm of the spirit again.

God always does that.

And we're just going to look at really the last 500 years.

We could go way back into the Middle Ages.

We could go way back into, even though it was a little bit cult-like in the end, in the beginning, I think it was actually kind of a Pentecost with the motonist movement.

But we could go way back there, but I'm not going to go there.

It'll take too long.

It's going to be long enough just doing what we're going to do.

But the reality is God's increase is coming, church.

And I was on the phone with a pastor today, and I said, here's the deal.

He's getting ready to go to Israel.

And he's doing this research, original research, and he's going to do a film of the temple.

And he's going to go down into some areas where the Temple Mountain below, below Jerusalem, that's where some people have never seen this area.

When we were in Israel, we weren't allowed to go there.

But he's got access because of some contacts that he has.

He's going to do this film as it relates to the rebuilding of the temple in the latter days.

Really interesting thing.

And I say, look, here's the deal.

With empowered satanic work, there's going to be empowered churches.

And men and women, that's what the road will be.

We will be an empowered church in the latter days.

I mean, that's what I signed up for.

You know, and I signed up for that because that to me is the most exciting journey we can be on is following Jesus into the latter days with the power of the Holy Spirit.

We have nothing to fear.

I hope you'll come away by Saturday with nothing to fear.

You have nothing to fear.

God is elevating his church with the power of the Holy Spirit, not unlike, and actually with more anointing than the first century.

And so in Revelation 12, we read this woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea.

For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.

I love that passage.

So Satan knows it.

The church doesn't seem to know it because we just keep getting blindsided by his work.

But he knows that his time is short, and he is wrathful in the latter days.

He is angry.

He is frustrated by churches like this that are sitting here right now in an assembly like this, and we're getting instructed, we're getting equipped, and we're going to leave room for the Holy Spirit during worship to come.

And some of you are going to get fired up, some of you are going to get anointed by the Holy Spirit, and you're going to be on fire for Him, and you're going to go into your businesses, you're going to be a changed person, and you're going to lead people to the Lord, and you're going to see people get healed, and you're going to cast out demons and do all that Jesus stuff.

And he's really ticked off about that.

He likes a quiet, kind of religious church where we just, you know, we just read the Bible and oh, and get sweet little verses from God.

We just love that.

He doesn't want you violently excited about his son.

And so, and so this is why he's angry.

This is why he's upset.

And so, do you understand?

I want to just set the stage here.

Do you understand the crisis that we're in?

Some of you in this room are addicted to drugs that did not exist 50 years ago.

Is that good enough to just say that's what the enemy is doing?

The demonic activity of the work of the Spirit is actually through and actually translated in the Greek where we get the word, listen, pharmaceutical.

Pharmaceutical.

And so the drugs that are happening in our culture today, many of which had never even been invented, had not even been formulated 50 years ago, are now pervasive throughout our culture.

You see what the enemy's up to?

And I'm reading about the Jesus movement, and I'm actually the part where I'm at is 1967, Hate, Ashbury, San Francisco.

That's what I'm looking at, that's what I studied all last night.

You know that's where it all started?

It started in 1967 with the summer of love.

And Jesus showed up.

Jesus wasn't even invited.

And he showed up.

1967.

And everybody's high, and they're at Golden Gate Park.

High, a lot of LSD back then and stuff like that.

And then Jesus shows up.

And when Jesus shows up, the only way these kids know how to describe it is the best LSD trip I've ever been on.

And I didn't even drop any acid.

And so and so God's power is greater than demonic power.

And he's coming and he's moving.

And I want to be in line with him.

How about you?

I want to be lined up with what the spirit says.

I'm not going to tell the spirit what to do because I don't know what the spirit wants to do.

I don't even know what he wants to do tonight, except that we showed up because we are eager and expectant of faith that he can't show up.

So the way God changes the world is through windstorms of God.

So windstorms of evil, windstorms of God.

Jesus at his heart was a revolutionary.

He came to change the world one heart at a time.

Jesus focused on the heart of the person.

Win the heart, win men.

Win men, win the family, win the family, win a nation.

The church was birthed out of a revolutionary movement of the heart filled with the Holy Spirit.

To the extent that the church through the centuries has focused on transforming the heart through the work of the Spirit has been the extent of its revolutionary impact.

Arthur Wallace, in his book In the Day of Power, said this: the world of mankind has not advanced by evolution but revolution, by violent upheavals in society.

Eden, the flood, Exodus, the captivity era are Old Testament examples.

Pentecost, the conspicuous New Testament example.

The Renaissance and Protestant Reformation in the 16th century changed the whole thought of life in Europe.

Modern history dates from them.

So all the world has been changed.

You could really do an historical analysis of what has been world-changing events, and it's always revolution.

I just finished the book that I was given at Christmas called The Killing of Patton.

Fascinating book.

What's fascinating about the book, The Killing of Patton, by Bill O'Reilly, which he probably wrote none of it, whenever you say with and it's got the author in really tiny letters, that's the guy who did all the work.

Anyway, so fascinating to look at what was happening with Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, Hitler, and Patton.

And if you if you like history, it's a great read.

You'll read it like that.

It's really interesting, well written.

But what happened from 1932 to 1945, which then affected us, which we now have called the Cold War, was because of a revolution.

And revolutions always start small.

Adolf Hitler was a corporal in World War I, a no-body.

But he had this dream.

He had this idea that the Aryan Germanic white race should rule the world.

And with this little germ of an idea, he built a revolutionary army that took over almost all of Europe.

And that's what cost millions of lives and affected all of our lives even to this day because of that revolution.

Well, revolutions are what moved the earth forward.

And God has moved his church forward with revolutions.

So I've written down a few for you.

I could, we could do three times this many, but it would take too long.

But uh, and I forgot to put dates in there, but I'll just give them to you.

You can write them on the side if you want to on the left-hand column.

Jesus, the time of Jesus up to the 400s, the earliest advances of Christianity in the Middle East that spread all over North Africa, Asia Minor, and Europe were from the revolution of the first century church after Pentecost.

So that's Jesus up to the 400s.

Now I'm going to skip a bunch of eras here.

1400s to the 1600s.

The advance of the gospel across Europe and into the Americas is directly linked to the Protestant Reformation of Wycliffe, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.

The Renaissance and the humanities, theology, and art rise out of the modern nation states that developed across Europe, which came directly from the Protestant Reformation.

So that's the 1400s to the 1600s.

1700s to the 1800s, England and America were revived and brought forth the first missionary advances through the windstorms created by Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitfield, and the first and second Great Awakening.

1906 to 1940, the Azusa Street revival in LA at the turn of this 20th century has led to the most powerful, most miraculous, most mission-minded work of the spirit that the church has ever known.

Folks, you've got to understand this.

This is accurate.

The Pentecostal slash charismatic movement is unheard of in all of church history.

What's going on?

What's going on right now?

What's happening in South America, what's happening in Latin America, what's happening in China, is just unbelievable.

I mean, it's not happening in America, but it's happening in other parts of the world.

It's not happening in Europe, it's not happening in America, but it's happening in other parts of the world since 1906 with the Zeusa Street.

Now, all of these, I'm going to go back over parts of them in the days ahead.

1940s to the 1960s.

1940s to the 1960s, the great evangelistic and healing movements after World War II came out of leaders like Billy Graham, Bill Bright, Orl Roberts, and Dennis Bennett, who were touched by the Holy Spirit and were ignited with fresh vision.

I mean, it's hard to believe what, but we've got to read it.

I mean, a great book to read would be Billy Graham's book, Just As I Am.

And he tells you his whole story.

And it's just, ugh, it's just fascinating what God was doing in the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s, and even into the 70s with these large-scale evangelistic crusades.

And then I, Liz and I had the privilege of being on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, and so we we were the recipients of what God did in Bill Bright's life.

1967 to the 1980s, during the greatest upheaval of our nation, God showed up and began saving a generation of young people with a windstorm called the Jesus movement that led to a new kind of church and a new kind of music.

The music you're hearing now was non-existent in 1965 in a church setting.

It was actually probably pretty much non-existent even until 1967.

And even at that, it was barely touching the surface of what it would become and what has happened today.

1980s to the 1990s inaugurated what I'm calling, I'm quoting C.

Peter Wagner, one of my professors at Fuller, third wave of the Holy Spirit.

The third wave of the Holy Spirit as the power and practice of Pentecostal power touched mainline churches.

So 1980s and 1990s inaugurated the third wave of the Holy Spirit as the power and practice of Pentecostal power touched the mainline churches.

Arthur Wallace writes, revival is the divine military strategy, first to counteract spiritual decline and then to create spiritual momentum.

One of the axioms of the Protestant Reformation, you guys, was, and I'll give you the Latin, ecclesia reformata semper reformanda.

Ecclesia reformata sempre reformanda, which means a reformed church that's always reforming.

I love that.

Isn't that cool?

A reformed church that is always reforming.

So the Pietist, those that were kind of a part of the vestiges later on of the Reformation.

So we're talking 16th century.

And you understand when I say 16th century, I mean 1500s.

Okay?

Remember, we're in the 21st century, but we're we're 2015.

So always that's how you count it, because you're going back to the first era.

So in the 16th century, 1500s, as that closed out with the German Protestant Reformation, which brought tremendous spiritual, political, social upheaval in Europe, there were these, there were these pockets of Germans and Lutheran, what we came to call pietists, who felt like that Luther didn't go far enough.

That the Reformation was theological, but it didn't really touch the spiritual heart areas.

And so these guys were raised up and they believed that a perpetual reformation, listen to us, this is great.

The precondition of perpetual reformation is the spiritual revitalization of the church.

And that's exactly why we're here.

That's what I believe too.

I'm a pietist in many ways, in the sense that I'm a heart guy.

I love head stuff.

I mean, I love history and all that, but you guys, it's the zeal of the heart that it seems God anoints.

Now, I like what Wesley said.

He said, I want men who have a heart on fire and a head on fire.

So we need both on fire.

And we certainly need great academics within the evangelical community, but it's the Lord who said, I have chosen David because he's a man after my own heart, not my own head.

And so, church, part of what we're here tonight and in the coming days, God touched my heart.

Because if God gets your heart, he'll get your head.

Right?

I know lots of people that have a lot of head knowledge and no heart knowledge.

You see, the zeal of the heart is where revival begins.

It's that passion of our heart.

You fell in love with your spouse because something happened in your heart.

And I don't know about you, but I know about me.

And I looked at Liz, and I could tell you there's things that could be a problem down the road.

Okay, okay.

And she looked at me and went, I know there's problems not even down the road, like right now with him.

But because our hearts were in love, our heads followed.

And so some of you here, you're heady.

Some of you guys and gals in here, you're heady, and some of you are hearty.

Okay?

You need both, but ultimately I want to challenge you to put your head aside in the sense that God awakened my head by reviving my heart.

Because it's with the heart that we worship and it's with the heart that we love.

A.W.

Bowen, one of the architects of the Hale Pietism in London, said, true Christianity is an active, lively, strong, vigorous principle seated in the inmost center of the soul.

Dr.

Richard Lovelace writes, the attunement of the heart is essential to the outflow of grace.

This is not to emphasize faith and experience over works, thought, and social action.

We must aim at building the structures of God's kingdom, but recognize that we will only create those through the transformation of our heart experience.

So back to the future.

So back to the future.

Back to the original windstorm.

So turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 2, and I'm going to conclude with this, and we'll pick this up tomorrow night.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 2, verse 17.

Acts 2:17

Acts chapter 2, verse 17, and we're going to go into worship.

Acts 2:17

This is what Peter announces on the day of Pentecost, this windstorm that occurs, as he quotes from the prophet Joel.

And it shall come to pass in the last day, says God, that I will pour out of my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.

And on my men servants and on my maidservants I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.

I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke, the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

So here's some things that he's saying.

He's saying there's this work of the Spirit that's going to be multi-generational.

Sons and daughters and old men.

I mean, God's Spirit comes on all.

It's not just going to be the Samsons.

It's not going to be just the judges.

It's not going to be the Samuels or the priest or the prophet.

Everybody gets it.

Listen, guys, you can have as much of the Spirit of God as you long for.

There is no discrimination.

You want God, you can have Him.

You want more of that experience with the heart of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, you can have it.

No limitations.

What God has done in the past, what we're going to read about in the days ahead, that can happen here.

We can long for that, we can cry out for that.

It's up to God to do it.

But my experience and my study of history and the Bible says to me, when you get a group of people that want more of God's power, they always get it.

It's not like God's just sitting there going, you know, you guys, I just appreciate your zeal and your passion, but I am really not interested in pouring it out right now because you're not good enough.

No, it feels like to me that what he does, what the Spirit of God does, is he pours out his spirit on people who, first of all, are weak, they're brokenhearted, they're messed up.

Some of you messed up in here?

I mean, like really messed up?

That man, that's like the definition of success in the Christian life.

Actually, God is not interested in people who've got it all together.

I mean, the people who opposed Jesus had it all together.

And the people who ran to him were all the guys that had issues in their life.

So it's so it's multi-generational, it's multigender.

He talks about visions and dreams.

Some of you are gonna have visions and dreams this week.

Never had them before.

You're gonna be released into visions and dreams this week.

You're gonna have a vision, you're gonna have a dream.

He's like, and you're gonna come to me, or you're gonna come to one of our leaders and say, We think this is the Lord, and be like, oh, totally the Lord.

That's so the Lord.

Well, how do you know?

I know, that's the Lord.

And you're going, oh, it's not the Lord, man, that's a pizza I had the night before.

But but I'm fasting, so I didn't have pizza.

Whoa, it's the Lord.

And it's gonna be it's gonna be cool.

It's gonna be really cool.

There's a young woman in this congregation right now who shared a dream with me a few weeks ago, and it's like, she says, Do you think this is from the Lord?

It's like so of the Lord.

It's like, that's almost like saying, you know, a guy puts on a jersey and it says 18 on it, and it's the Broncos jersey, and he takes the football, it's got Manning on the back, and he goes back with a group of guys and he throws the ball like a bullet, like 70 yards.

Is that the quarterback, Peyton Manning?

I mean, that's how obvious it was.

But she didn't know, and I said, no, this is the way God speaks.

And so we we we we talked about some of the prophetic things that were involved in the symbols that were in.

That's what's gonna happen to some of you guys.

It's really, really exciting.

And he that's what he does maidservants, manservants, daughters, sons, old men, young men.

Um, and then it's gonna come in a way by which people will start to call on the name of the Lord and they will get saved.

You call on the name of Jesus, you can get saved tonight.

The Spirit of the living God, the the the Lord of the Old Testament, the Lord of the New Testament, the Lord that has that has healed the sick and cast out demons and set the captives free can come into your heart tonight.

Show me a better deal.

Show me anything better than that.

That the Spirit of the living God can come into your heart tonight, forgive you of all your sins, past, present, and future, give you power to live the life that you've always longed to live.

Nothing better than that.

But the enemy is also on the move.

And the enemy wants to come and say, oh, he's gonna make you a missionary to Africa with man-eating cannibals.

Oh, all I'm gonna, I'm gonna marry some skag.

You know?

I know, you know, I know those Bible-toting guys at high school and everything, you know, oh, I'm gonna be like them.

I gotta cut my hair, and I gotta start, you know, playing chess in my break, you know, and they're just all nerds.

Right?

No, you can keep your hair, you can keep doing what you're doing, and let God transform your heart.

He'll take care of all that other stuff, but you won't be a nerd.

I promise you.

Not if you come to this church.

We'll we will make you an empowered nerd.

Charles Finney said this, which by the way, I have major issues with Charles Finney.

So that may come out, it may not come out.

I and Charles Finney wrote his lectures on revival, and they're pretty cool, but he had he was a little bit weird, in my opinion.

Um, I want to make a distinction.

It's one of these nights, there's a difference between revival and revivalism.

But for you to understand what I just said, then forget it.

It's not important.

Because this is because this is actually a good quote, okay?

This is but from Charles Finney.

So he's got some great quotes.

It's just that his theology was a little bit squirrely.

And by the way, God used him way more than he's used me, so who am I to talk about him?

So, like, Charles Finney, you kidding me?

He led he led thousands to the Lord.

They were double counted, but still thousands, okay?

But anybody who knows about Finney knows what I'm talking about.

It's called burned over New York, but whatever.

Anyway, great quote though.

The antecedents, accompaniments, and results of revival are always substantially the same as in the case of Pentecost.

Wouldn't you want to be a part of a work of the Spirit that's not unlike Pentecost?

God does that.

Well, let me close with this quote, and this is by J.B.

Phillips in the preface to the letters of young churches, written in the 1940s.

I keep this book on my shelf, and I've never read it.

Because I just like the preface.

I read some other parts and went, ah, it's not that good.

But the preface is really good.

So I sometimes you get a book just for the preface.

Okay, so I did.

So listen to this preface.

Really good.

I wish the rest of it was as good as the preface, but it's not.

The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance.

To them, it was a real experience.

We are apt to reduce these men, it is quite, to the Christian religion, as to a code or at least a rule of heart in life.

To these men, it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether.

They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ living in them.

Mere moral reformation will hardly explain the transformation and the exuberant vitality of these men's lives.

Even if we could prove a motive for such reformation, and certainly the world around offered little encouragement to the early Christians.

We are practically driven to accept their own explanation, which is that their little human lives had, through Jesus Christ, been linked up with the very life of God.

These early Christians were on fire with the conviction that they had become, through Christ, literally sons of God.

They were pioneers of a new humanity and founders of a new kingdom.

That's what I want.

That's what you want.

That's why you're here.

God would give us a real experience of his spirit.

So let's stand and let's have the guys come up for worship.

Bear with us if we go a little long tonight.

I felt like we needed that introduction.

But as we begin to worship, God's gonna lay prayers on your heart.

And this mic is right here.

It's gonna be on the floor.

Just feel the freedom, you guys.

You may say, well, I'm not very eloquent in praying.

I would say the most uneloquent prayers are often the best because they come from our heart.

And so don't come up here and perform.

Don't come up here to say some great prayer.

Please, just pray from your heart.

And if God's put something on your heart that you want to pray about, it could be for our nation, it could be for yourself, it could be for your family, it could be for our city.

Doesn't matter to me.

The dancing hand of God is in here right now.

And he's gonna give you stuff.

And if so, come up here and Philip knows he's just gonna drop the music down, he'll let you pray, and you pray.

And then if you're not sure you know the Lord or you or you need prayer for healing, there's something that's just a it's a roadblock, and you'd like some of us to pray for you.

Come over to that speaker and and we'll just see you standing there and we'll come up and we'll pray for you and we'll bless you.

So, Father, right now, we we come because Lord, we want a windstorm in our heart of your spirit.

God, as we go into worship, you come.

We welcome you here.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Remember that young woman out there that you've put on my heart, who has a she has an academic mind.

She's she's got an academic mind.

And so she she has this web of thinking in her mind that has always hindered her from passionately going after the things of the heart.

Lord, would you go to her right now and bust her heart with the love of God, with the love of the Spirit.

She's deeply and passionately loved by you for who she is, who she was created to be.

For that young woman out there, just say the Spirit of God is going to begin to set you free and break in to new levels of depth in your heart.

Let him in.

Let him in.

Let him in.

Don't think about it too much.

Just let him in.

We give you this time.