Revival! | Dr. John Ewart

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood

Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.

You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word

about important issues facing your life that can guide you

according to the Bible. Well, good morning, Inglewood.

Good to see everybody this morning.

I know that some of you are fighting it off.

We've had several reports of folks with flu still and the

weather's weird. Somebody told me some snowflakes

are possible this afternoon. Have you all heard that?

Let's just, let's just cast that off, cast that out, pray against

that or something. But what was it, 75 yesterday

and now we're going to anyway. North Carolina, That's it.

Listen, let me give you an update.

Turn to Nehemiah Chapter 8. I'll catch up to you in just a

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

second. Let me give you a quick update

on our friends overseas. So our friends in South Asia, if

you're a guest here today, and we do have some guests here,

some friends of ours or even here from another church, we

appreciate you being here and appreciate the rest of you

coming. So, so our friends were facing

some legal issues overseas and they had two legal issues

they're dealing with. I can't go into a lot of detail

about all that. One of the issues was whether or

not they could leave to renew their visa, which was a big deal

there. They had passed the expiration

date on that. And because of some of the other

issues, they didn't think they were going to be allowed to do

that. In fact, when they went into the

judge, the chances of that being approved were very, very low.

Well, they were stunned. We are stunned in the fact that

the judge did approve it. And so, yeah, you can clap for

that. So what that means there's still

some other things that are going on legally there.

But what that means is they're going to be able to leave to get

that visa renewed and they'll be more to that story.

But that's all the part of the story I can share right now in

this situation. So come Wednesday night, and

I'll share a little more with you and I'll keep you updated on

that. But just continue to pray that

the judge hadn't written the ruling yet.

This was done on Friday. The ruling gets written

hopefully by tomorrow. Hopefully nothing happens in

between those two times for that to continue to move forward.

So we've been praying for that and thankful for that.

So there you go. All right.

So several years ago, my oldest son, our oldest son and I were

on a trip to Brazil and we were going through the Miami airport.

And so we had to get to get from Oklahoma to Florida.

We did that part and we're in Miami.

We get on the plane, it's an overnight flight.

And I remember being really happy because we had good seats.

Now that may not seem like a big deal to you, but when you're

shaped like I am, it's a big deal.

And so I was very happy we had good seats.

I was excited. I was telling Josh, I said, man,

this is going to be great. So we're going to go to sleep

because it's, you know, going to be an all night long thing to

get down there. They're about 30 something in

the group I was helping to lead scattered around that airplane.

And so we start to take off. It's night time dark already.

So, you know, just get me in the air and let me go, you know, see

if I can sleep, which I don't ever do on planes anyway, but

we'll pretend like I do. So here we go.

Front of the planes, off it, off the ground.

I mean it's and you're leaning back the front of the planes off

and then suddenly something goes wrong.

It's the only time I've ever experienced this out of I don't

know how many hundreds or thousand flights I've been on.

He hits his brakes, the front of the plane comes slamming down,

and we're kind of skidding down the runway in this big.

I mean, it's a big jet, you know?

And when he did that, one of the tires underneath one of the

wings blew and caught on fire. Now, I don't know if you know

where the fuel tank is on a big airliner, but it's in the wing.

And so now there's a live fire underneath the gas tank on this

airplane. And so today I think the

procedure would have been quite different.

Even though there was a fire and you could see the light from

the, I wasn't on that side of the plane, but some of our group

was and they were expressing to me quite, quite loudly that

we're on fire. Now, I don't know what the

decision was to do this, but we were casually taxiing back to

the gate. In today's world, I'm sure that

we would have been sliding down some slide and they'd have had a

foam truck out there, but that's not the way it was in those

days. So we're we're taxing back the

gate while we're on fire. Underneath the fuel tank, smoke

is visible. Smoke is now beginning to fill

the cabin of the plane. I'm yelling out orders of

everybody grabbed their passport because I knew we weren't going

to be able to grab all our luggage.

But get your passport. You might need that later.

So make sure you get that. People are starting to scream

now. People are starting to panic

now. What?

What are we going to do now? And that was just the beginning

of the journey. Don't you want to go on a

mission trip with me to Brazil in the fall?

No, I heard, I'll come back to that story later.

Listen, I preached from today's passage back in September.

I'm very aware of that. September 14th when I was

introducing the Come Live, the Church's vision series, and I

was talking about our seven essentials of discipleship.

We were talking about how do we engage the Bible with a humble

and teachable spirit out of this passage.

But there's so much here. I need to come back to that and

I will in just a moment. And, and, and, and we've been

teaching the same thing on Wednesday nights about how do we

engage the Bible that now available on podcast.

This Wednesday, we're going to continue what Pastor Charles

started last week. Appreciate Pastor Charles doing

that. We're talking about abiding in

prayer with dependence and anticipation this week on

Wednesday night. We had great crowds on Wednesday

night. Appreciate you coming.

And we're going to talk about why do we even pray?

What, what is why, how does prayer even matter?

And so you need to come back. I'll be sharing about that, but

there's so much in chapter 8. We've got to come back and I

need to share more from a totally different angle than I

did back in September because we need to listen to the learn from

God concerning his restoration. And so God sent Nehemiah back to

build the walls. We've been talking about that

for weeks. He obeys in the face of this

great opposition and and the mission was accomplished, but

now what? So what to what was that

supposed to lead the the walls done.

Now what? Listen, every great calling from

God, every mission from God, every purpose from God leads to

something more, leads to something even greater, leads to

something that lasts. And so this was there was

obviously a very practical side to building the walls.

They needed protection from their enemies.

They also need to create. You needed to create a livable

space for all the people who hadn't come back from the exile

yet. There are a whole bunch of

people still coming, and they needed to clean up the mess.

It was a mess. I mean, there are rocks in front

of the gates, the roadways are destroyed, things are burned

down. They got to clean up that mess

up. So there's some practical side

to it, but there was also this spiritual testimony of what God

promised prior to the exile, fulfilling the fact that he was

going to bring his people back and restore them in the city.

So there's this incredible spiritual dynamic, and God's

promises are always sure, they're always guaranteed.

But now what? Here we are.

We have the city again. We have a temple again, we have

some cool walls. Now what do we do?

Is that it? Is that all there is to it?

Well, quoting the great theologian Andy Griffith, he

once said you don't milk a cow just to get strong fingers.

So there had to be more. There's more to it than that.

What should all of this effort, all of this work, all of this

time, all of this effort, what should this actually produce?

Is there not something that ought to come out of this?

God, I worked hard. I prepared all I can for

whatever you want might want next.

So what's next? If you're at Inglewood, you say,

you know, you sent this crazy preacher who screams at us all

the time about 100% participation.

He talks about the future that that you have for us and how we

move forward. I mean, he's even made me go to

a connect group. And don't you love it?

Thank you very much. I mean, we're seeing people say

we're seeing people baptized every week.

More people are here than there were a year ago on average.

I mean, is that it? Is that all this?

Have we arrived? Surely we can just rest now?

Surely we can relax a little bit.

Surely we can just get comfortable.

Surely we're big enough. We we have enough.

I mean, we have new mission and vision statements, We have cool

wall art, we're making funny videos on social media.

I mean, we got the seven essentials, we got the core 5,

we got 100%. I mean, what, what else would we

want? We're done, right?

Surely this is this. What else could we we seek out?

We've arrived. I mean, the reason you build a

wall is just have a wall, right? So what do we do now?

Well, this is just the beginning of our journey.

Less than a week after they finished the wall, they gathered

the people for their next steps. They they gathered for revival.

And that's what we need to talk about for a minute.

What does that mean? What does it look like for them?

Look at chapter 8, verse one. It says and all the people

gathered as one man into the square before the Watergate.

And they told Ezra the scribe to reading the book of the Law of

Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both

men and women and all who could understand what they heard on

the first day of the 7th month. And he read it from, read it,

read from it facing the square before the Watergate from early

morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the

women and those who could understand.

And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of

the Law. Pay attention to that last part.

See the first thing if if we're going to experience revival,

we're going to experience the future that God has for us.

We're going to experience who we're supposed to be.

The first thing we've got to do is connect to and with the word

of God. There's nothing clever about

that, nothing fancy about that. It's just the truth.

All the people came, all, all of them.

Every seat was full, anticipating, eager for what was

next. Notice that phrase in the ears

of all the people were attentive to the book of the Law.

That word attentive means to be toward it, means to be into it.

They were into it. They were toward it.

They were to it. In other words, they were.

They were focused upon it so much.

They were drawn to it, directed to it, focused upon it,

connected to it. They understood it's great

value. They were hungry for it, wide

open for it, desperate for what God would tell them next through

His Word. They'd missed it.

Some of them didn't know it because of the exile.

Some of them need to be reminded of it because of the exile.

Just like maybe some of us, some of you.

So they were mesmerized to hear the truth.

Their attention could not be broken.

I mean, they were as much into something as somebody can be

into something. So focused, soaking, feeding,

being nourished by the word of God.

Nothing fancy, nothing clever, no funny stories, no

illustrations, no fantastic purple shirt.

Just the word. I don't know why you all like

this shirt so much. I get more compliments.

Purple. I don't know what they do.

When was the last time you were that into it?

Starving, longing, listening just for a word from God.

I don't know how you came here this morning.

Are you bored? And with what I would call

static redundancy. Static means there's no movement

redundancy. We're just going through the

same old, same old. We're just running through the

same old cycles. It's it's church.

It's church, check. Sunday, check.

I went to Connect group because I'm scared not to because he

might bite me, check. Just one more thing on the

schedule, check. Just one more choice among 1000

choices, check. Is this all that it has to

become? Or, or maybe that's all it ever

was. Maybe you've been raised in this

your whole life and it's frankly boring.

There's nothing to it anymore. It's kind of like signing up to

be a volunteer at the concession stand at the ball game.

You know, it's something you got to do when you're a parent or

something you got to do when you volunteer.

You sign up to work at the concession stand and and you

enjoy the free snow cone every now and then.

But frankly, you're kind of glad when it's over with.

It's my time. It's our turn to go work because

it's our turn to go work the ticket booth.

It's our turned. It is.

Do we take all this for granted? Do you take Joseph for granted,

his baptism for granted, his life change for granted?

Is this just old hat because it's happening every week?

Are you focused, connected, ready to soak it all up and in?

Are you really ready for His Word to change You, you, us?

Their past was really painful when you think about it.

I mean, they've been through a lot.

Their past was painful and maybe yours is too.

You know, maybe the past is hard.

I, I fight a lot of ghosts from the past in my ministry.

It's a part of it, especially when I come into churches, I

fight a lot of ghosts from the past, but I also know how to

bust ghosts and I know who I'm going to call feed each day on

His word. Take full advantage of every

word opportunity. Take it every advantage of every

word opportunity you possibly can in your life and here at

this church. Be here.

Be engaged in every opportunity you can to engage this word.

His word is alive, it's transformative, it's life

changing. So in your home, in your private

time and your corporate time, unite around it and join others

because of it. Grow as a disciple in it.

Serve because of your obedience to it, because we're all in this

together. And so you find your connection

with the body of Christ. You find your connection with

the body of Christ not, not in a person, not in a performance,

not in a program, not in a perceived past.

You've got to find that connection.

Because of the principles of God's Word and God's will.

People will have good and bad days.

They'll fail you. Some performances will be better

than others. Programs alone can become very

boring and and the past will fade away.

And if that's all you're judging, then this becomes a

competition rather than a commitment.

This one was better than this one, so I'll go to that one.

I like that better than this one.

So. So living for them will become

roller coasters rather than passive righteousness.

There must be more that brings us together and binds us with

Him and His bride. So if you're not experiencing

that sense of awe about God's Word, whose fault is that?

Listen to and long to hear from Him.

The revival of God's people, the movement of God's people,

demands it. It always begins with it.

Look at verse 5 it says and Ezra opened the book in the sight of

all the people for he was above all the people as he opened it

and all the people stood and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great

God and all the people answered Amen, Amen.

Lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worship

the Lord with their faces to the ground.

We've not not only do unite around the world the Word, but

we've also got to respond and worship with all and surrender.

This is actually one of our seven essentials of

discipleship. We got to respond in this kind

of worship, to focus and to connect, to truly listen to God

will lead us to acknowledge who God really is.

Ezra gives praise. He gives thanks.

Notice the phrase to the Lord, the great God, and the people

bowed and the people praised him and worship.

This isn't just some God. This is just not another God.

This is not just the God we happen to choose to serve today.

This is the Lord, the great God, the one and the only, no one

else. Nothing is greater.

No one is greater. Literally.

He is both Jehovah, the Lord, and he is God, Elohim.

He is both. He is great.

He is literally higher. He is literally more.

He is literally mighty. There's nothing that compares to

him, nothing that can compete with him, but he'll guide you

and direct your steps if you'll listen to Him.

So the people respond with the only appropriate response.

They cry out, Amen, Amen. So be it.

So be it. Yes, yes.

Turn to somebody and say so be it.

They reached their hands up. Notice what they did.

They reached their hands up and they bowed their heads down,

both honor and submission all at once.

Overwhelmed, they continued to worship that way with their

faces on the ground. That's how they worshipped.

Have you really biblically, honestly worshipped yet today?

Or if you just kind of gone through the static redundancy?

We sang a song like that one, like that one better than the

last one. They sang that one better than

they did the other one. Can't believe he's wearing that

purple shirt again. AW, Tozer once wrote, Keep your

feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will.

Refuse to be average and to surrender to the chill of your

spiritual environment. When we're prepared to

acknowledge and hear from God, our response is going to be this

teachable and reachable spirit. It's amazing that it's ready to

have communion with Him. Are we ready to hear?

Are we ready to respond or, or do we just take it all for

granted? I went to church today.

Didn't get much out of it. Well, that's the wrong question.

How much did you put into it? Did did you come with yourself

sitting on the throne of your life, hoping to be pleased?

Well, I liked that part. Didn't really care for that

part. He just preaches the same thing

every week. I don't know why he didn't do

something different. Or or or or do you come

submitting yourself completely, desperately?

Listen to these words desperately, passionately to the

one who really sits on the throne, hoping to best learn

from him and to actually please him instead of yourself.

Where are you? They were hungry, they were

starving, they were seeking. Look at verse the second part of

verse seven. I'm not going to read all those

names today. I did that back in September,

and I heard your judgement. Hebrew names, the Levites help

the people to understand the law.

While the people remained in their places.

They read from the book, from the law of God, clearly, and

they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.

We got to unite around this word.

We've got to respond and worship to Him, but we also need to help

one another with discipleship. We're in this together.

They helped one another to understand.

And I talked a whole lot more about that in September.

But sometimes the church and even the Bible uses terms or

images that are hard to understand for some people.

For some, they can't understand them yet because they're lost.

They have spiritual blindness and they need the Holy Spirit to

help them even understand some of these things.

Others are new believers or have never been exposed to to

discipleship or taught about some of the churchy theological

words that are used. We mean we must never assume.

It's fascinating to me with these midweek studies, how often

somebody comes up to me after whatever we've done, whether

it's theological triage or it's a, it's a doctrinal study or

it's a practical discipleship study that we're doing.

And people will come up to me and say thank you for doing

this. Nobody has ever taught me this

before now. Maybe they haven't, or maybe

they have, but for some reason it's sunk in this time.

Never assume. Never take anything for granted.

Teresa will tell you, and I've mentioned her vaguely to you

before, but in one of the early churches I pastored, we had an

older lady named Renee Douglas. She's passed away now, but Renee

lived up on the mountain, and Renee had no electricity.

Renee had no running water, and she had dirt floors in her home

and she sat right there. And whenever I preached on

Sunday morning, I often thought to myself, can Renee understand

this? Can she relate to this in any

way whatsoever? We must never assume a healthy

disciple of Jesus is going to engage the Word of God humbly,

personally with a teachable spirit, as we've been discussing

in our midweek and in our podcast, etcetera.

But they're also going to long to sit under teaching.

And that's why you need to take advantage of every word.

Opportunity. Don't take each other for

granted. We're always intended to be

together, and so we have to help each other grow in our personal

discipleship. And one of the questions is

whether you're growing or not, why or why not?

But another question for some of you who have been Christians for

a long time. Who are you personally

discipling right now? Who are you discipling?

Who are you helping along the way?

How are you helping your family? How are you helping your

friends? How are you helping your

neighbors? How are you helping your

coworkers? How are you helping your

classmates to listen to God and to learn what He wants from

their lives? How are you helping the next

generation? We've got brilliant workers in

leadership who work in our preschool and children in

student areas, and they're teaching.

They're not babysitters, they're teachers.

They're disciples of the next generation.

How are we helping them to hear? We must help others to

understand and to observe all that He has commanded if we're

actually fulfilling the whole Great Commission.

This isn't about just making converts.

This is about making disciples. So revival demands an

acknowledgement of this truth. It demands the recognition and

submission to the proper person sitting on the throne of your

life. So some of you might need to

give up a seat and let the Lord, the great God take his proper

place in your life, that that might be what you need to do

today. Because some of you may have

been holding him in arm's length, thinking somehow you're

in charge of something, thinking that you own something, thinking

that something's yours when nothing is.

Life belongs to Him. Your heartbeat belongs to Him.

Your ability to breathe belongs to Him.

Listen to verse 9. It says, and Nehemiah who was

the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the

Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, this day

is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep for all the

people wept as they heard the words of the law.

Then he said to them, go your way, eat the fat, drink sweet

wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this

day is holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of

the Lord is your strength. You ought to know that part.

So the Levites calmed all the people saying be quiet, for this

day is holy. Do not be grieved.

Notice how many times they proclaim that day is holy.

Because the fourth thing we just need to recognize in order to

move forward, in order to be the people He wants us to be, in

order to expense the revival and restoration and transformation,

we've got to understand what conviction, confession,

repentance, and rejoicing look like.

The people are overwhelmed. The people are just overwhelmed.

God pierces their hearts and souls with the truth.

They couldn't. They couldn't and they wouldn't

deny it. Taking nothing for granted this

time, no false throne claiming at this point this was

authentic, this was real. This was as clear as it could be

be. It was honest.

I remember years ago being in the Cayman Islands.

Now we're originally from Oklahoma.

We don't have ocean in Oklahoma, so going to the ocean was a big

deal. And I remember being in the

Cayman Islands and I remember standing in water up to my chin

and I remember being able to look down and see my toenails

and I thought to myself, I've never seen water this clear in

my entire life. Went scuba diving in the Caymans

and came nose to nose, face to face with a 300 LB grouper at

about 60 feet down. That was exciting.

He also made me hungry. But that level of transparency

was amazing. That's what he's calling for.

No pretense, no pride, no ego, no more worry about what

somebody else is going to think about me.

How do I respond? Honestly, authentically,

transparently before the Lord God?

They wept over their sin. I don't know the last time you

ever wept over your sin. They wept over their sin.

They wept over the things that they had done they shouldn't

have been doing and the things they should have been doing that

they weren't doing. Honest recognition, honest

conviction. This was necessary for his

restoration for revival to take place.

It's not always pleasant. It's not what we want.

It's not what we look forward to.

It's not what I thought was going to happen to me today.

What in the world's happening this morning.

But when the Holy Spirit strikes, confession and

repentance are prerequisites for His new movement in your life.

So they were confronted with the truth of God's perfect holiness.

Honestly saw themselves. They saw their sin.

So they surrendered their self-control.

They surrendered their self determined directions and

destinations. They surrendered any other

definitions or opinions of what they thought was right.

They surrendered their will to God's will.

And that is a much bigger deal than you might think.

Never, ever take the residual strength of your own will and

how it might hold you back from being fully His for granted.

It's a powerful thing when you're confronted by the

holiness of God's Word. Listen to Him speaking to your

heart and soul and humbly submit to Him, because that's when

revival is moving closer. Englewood The day was holy.

It was holy. It was holy.

Set apart for God. What about right now?

Is this a holy moment for you? Is this moment his separated?

Set apart for him? Not about what's for lunch, Not

about what's on, What's the weather?

Not about His is it for Him. You're ready to receive Him.

You're ready for joy to strengthen you, His joy to be

your strength, right? So God wasn't done with him.

He does. He's not done with us.

They were giving one more opportunity.

So are we. We don't ever take that for

granted. Surrender control, surrender

pride, surrender ego and receive His joyous strength in your life

to transform you. Now that should sound wonderful

and freeing. Many of you may be here and

you're broken. You need restoring, you need

healing, you need empowerment. So, so surrender and prepare

yourself for revival to join Him and His grace and His

forgiveness and His purpose for you.

Grace gave them this moment to recognize and receive Him.

But the story wasn't quite overlook at verse 12, it says.

And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send

portions and to make great rejoicing because they had

understood, Don't miss that they understood the words that were

declared to them. On the second day, the heads of

the Father's houses, of all the people with the priests and

Levites came together, came together to Ezra the scribe in

order to study the words of the law.

And they found it written in the law that the Lord had commanded

by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths

during the feast of the 7th month, and that they should

proclaim it and publish it in all their towns.

And in Jerusalem go out to the hills and bring branches of

olive, wild olive, Myrtle, palm and other leafy trees to make

booths as it is written. And, and the fifth thing we see

here, we see action. It's simply this.

Now go live it. Now I, I described this feast

back in September. I'm not going to do that now.

I just want to talk about the people taking action.

They rejoiced, they met each other's needs, they worship,

they understood the word of God. Don't miss that.

They actually got it and it changed them and it changed

their actions. Listen, learn and live.

See, they realized they needed to take action and do more that

they'd not been worshipping or obeying the law.

Well, they knew that. And, and, and, and maybe you're

here and, and you feel like maybe you've been in a spiritual

exile yourself. Distant prayers, not getting

past the ceiling, Word of God just seeming like words.

Maybe that's who you are knowing there are things that you should

not be doing and things that you need to begin, listen, learn,

and and live. Look at verse 16.

So the people went out and brought them and made booths for

themselves, each on his roof and in their courts, in the courts

of the House of God and in the square at the Watergate and the

square at the gate of Ephraim. And all the assembly of those

who'd returned from the captivity made booths and lived

in the booths. For from the days of Yeshua the

son of Nun to that day, the people of Israel had not done

so. And there was very great

rejoicing. They applied what they

understood. They put it into action.

True surrender led to true obedience.

And the people lept to this new obedience.

They lept to this new action. They were ready to do that.

They were more excited to do that.

They were willing to do that. And if and if we do not move

forward in some new ways, I promise you we will not only not

move forward, we will not stay the same either.

There will be static decline that happens.

It's common in church life. Interesting quote that this

brought to my mind was from a very interesting person, Abigail

Adams, the wife of one of our early presidents.

She was speaking to her husband, the president at the time and

she said to John, she said you cannot be, I know, nor do I wish

to see you an inactive spectator.

We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that

correspond with them. Healthy discipleship is an

authentic, progressive, dynamic life.

It's a life that matches our words.

It's an incredibly exciting life.

It's a life that the enemy will have to challenge, but a life

fully surrendered to him and part of the problem out here in

the world. This is not a guess.

This is what the world thinks of the church in our culture today.

They don't see, they hear our words.

They they hear what we say. We believe.

But then they watch our lives and they watch our actions and

the things don't match. We live just like they do.

They don't see a difference in many of our lives.

They see our hypocrisy. And so the people recognized and

celebrated the blessings of God and the opportunities that were

ahead of them. They saw this.

They celebrated restoration and revival and so this eternal God

was still at work on His people's behalf.

He saved and sustained and called for surrender and service

and absolutely nothing has changed.

Look at verse 18 as we close, it says in day by day, from the

first day to the last day. He read from the book of the law

of God. They kept the feast 7 days and

on the 8th day there was a solemn assembly according to the

rule. Listen, when true revival comes,

you can't get enough of it. You, you, you.

You don't want to put His word down.

You don't want to stop singing. You don't want to stop praying

and praising. You don't want to stop loving

one another. Your world views changed, your

goals are different, your aspirations focus on Him and not

yourself. And narcissism will find it's

pure and true revival. Comfort and complacency,

believing you're already OK and you don't need any of this will

dissolve in the wake of true revival.

Nelson Mandela once said this. He said it's not our deepest

fear of inadequacy that frightens us.

I'm going to say it again. It's not our deepest fear of

inadequacy that frightens us. It's our fear of reaching a

potential beyond our wildest dreams.

We're scared to become who God wants us to become.

And I'm just going to challenge you to put up yourself, friends,

and catch the blowing, soaring wind of the Holy Spirit because

he, he's blowing right here in Rocky Mount, and he wants you to

catch him. Well, I obviously got off that

plane. It was a mess.

It was not an orderly exit. It was chaos.

Now, remember, we'd already flown from Oklahoma to Florida.

We'd already waited at the Miami International Airport and the

International Terminal of that airport, where English is not

the first language. So now we've got off the plane

and and after 13 long hours on the tile floor of the

International terminal of the Miami International Airport, it

was time for us to board another plane.

I had to coax a few people to get on board that next plane.

They weren't all that excited about going on that trip

anymore, but we got them on board.

We'd already been through a lot, but we weren't done.

We were just starting the journey.

We had to get to our proper destination.

We had to feel the actual purpose of the entire journey.

So after another overnight flight, an hour drive, and a 14

hour boat ride through the night up the Amazon, we finally made

it to Boa Vista de Homos, where people needed Jesus.

They heard about him, hundreds were saved.

A beautiful little church in Boa Vista de Hamos today because God

had a plan, just like here, just like in your life.

And so I just invite you to join, to join us on the journey.

It's just beginning. Father, we thank you.

We thank you for the privilege of joining you on this journey

called Your mission. It's not ours, it's yours.

And Father, I pray this morning, Lord, we've been praying all

morning, Father, for somebody who needs to be saved.

Don't know why I felt that so strongly today.

But Father, whoever that person is, whether they're here

physically or listening online, I pray right now that You'll

Pierce their heart, their soul with the truth.

I pray, Father, that they'll recognize that and and they'll

even pray to you a simple prayer, prayer like this where

they'll say, Lord, I know I'm a Sinner.

I'm sorry for my sin. I want to turn from my sin.

I trust in Jesus as my Savior. I trust in him as my Lord.

I want to serve him in the church, Father.

Something that simple to get them started.

Father, I pray that if they're here that they'll come in just a

moment and take a pastor by the hand or go to our Next Steps

room and share with one of our counsellors about what they

prayed. For others who are believers,

Father, they recognize there's a next step for them.

For some of them, that next step may be baptism.

They see the testimony of Joseph today and they say that's

something I need to do. Maybe the next step is church

membership. Maybe the next step is prayer.

Maybe the next step is who can I disciple?

Who can I help to understand? And so, Father, I pray that as

we sing that Lord, you would Pierce our hearts.

Father, even as we take up the offering, Lord, that I pray

you'll bless so it'll be used to your glory.

But Father, I pray that that the primary offering today won't be

something we can even put in a plate.

It's something from our heart, something from our soul where

we're offering you us completely authentically.

Honestly, maybe someone needs to come and confess and repent,

whatever it is. No more pretense, no more

hanging on to a throne that does not belong to us, but surrender.

So, Father, bless us, lead us, convict us, inspire us right now

as we worship you in Christ's name, Amen.

I'm going to invite you to stand.

Our worship team is going to lead us.

There'll be some pastors here. You don't have to come talk to

us. You can go right to that room

over there where there's some wonderful counsellors who would

love to have a private, discreet conversation and prayer time

with you. You can come and pray at these

steps. You can come talk to one of us.

There's also a next steps table in the lobby.

Whatever angle you need, I just pray that you'll respond.

Thank you so much for listening today, and I also hope that

you'll go to [email protected]

as well as our app and find many other resources that will bless

you and your families. Thank you once again.