Sermon
A Call to Prayer for Our Nation's Revival
Publisher transcript
Transcript
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Rare will change America.
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I believe with all of my heart,
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with all of my heart our greatest days
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as a country are up ahead.
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God can do it, God will do it.
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He's going to show his mercy
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for our fevery, for our lying,
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for all of the innumerable sins we've done
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individually and collectively as a nation.
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We deserve the righteousness of God.
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But the cross of Jesus is there saying,
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I will give you what you don't deserve.
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Welcome to the City Light Church podcast.
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Thanks for joining us today
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as we look into God's word
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and discover the hope and truth
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that he has for us.
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He's surrounded by his grace
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and that he has a real hope
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and a future for you.
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Thank you, Jesus.
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It is good to be back home.
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Vacation was wonderful.
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Traveling is nice,
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but there's no place like home.
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One thing that
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hold on.
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I have the sweat,
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the wet wiping cloth
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and then the nose blowing,
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whatever this is.
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Burn that. Usher is burn that.
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Please.
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Take a torch to it.
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Whenever I go
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to Montenegro,
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the Adriatic is beautiful.
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The weather is lovely.
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It's awesome.
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But you just see that you're
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in a spiritual wasteland,
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a desert.
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There's no spiritual curiosity.
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There's no church I can go to,
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not where I was.
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An entire city of 30,000 people.
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Nobody's seeking after God.
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And you know when I say nobody,
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maybe there's somebody hiding
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in a bush under a rock,
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online trying to figure it out.
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99% of the population secular humanism
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is their God.
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Greed is their God.
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A lot of that stems
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because we were under communism
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for so long,
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and faith was squashed.
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Communism also declares
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there'll be no other gods before me.
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And it just makes me love
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this nation so much more.
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I came here in 1981.
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I was five years old.
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I heard the gospel here.
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I got saved here.
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America is a place
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despite its problems.
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It's still a place
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where the gospel
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has free course.
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It's still a place
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where hundreds of thousands of people
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get saved every year.
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Other nations can't say the same thing.
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You can focus so much
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on the negative,
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and there's been
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an intentional
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attack on all of us
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on our psyches
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to only look at the negative.
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To actually try to get us
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to hate our own country.
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There's a reason why
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still over 50%
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of all global immigrants
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they want to come here.
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Amen. There's a reason.
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The upward mobility.
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The freedom.
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I'm grateful for America.
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You know, there've been times
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where we just let my mind wander.
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Because I don't like
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obviously some things that I'm seeing in America.
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Can I confess some things to you?
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You ever let your mind wander?
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See, I am in chains of love to the Lord.
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And I can't let my mind wander too much.
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I am chained to my calling.
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I'm here. I've been here
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over 20 years serving the Lord.
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It's pastor of city light.
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And from everything that I can tell,
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I'll be doing that till he raptures me up.
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Or I fall asleep.
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Paul said that I'm a bond servant of the Lord.
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That's a willful servant
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in the chain of love.
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But I let my mind wander when
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they had the whole vaccine passes here
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and it was such a darkness over New York City
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and a lot of the country had opened up
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and you go out in New York City
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people still can't look each other in the eyes.
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They're all walking around like ninjas
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all covered up.
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And I thought, you know, I wonder
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if I had to go where would I go?
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So I started thinking of all the countries.
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Where could I escape to?
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And then very quickly hit me.
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There is no escape here.
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Where am I going to go?
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America is the last bastion.
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If America falls, what will happen to the world?
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And a lot of people who have been born in America
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or have been too long in America,
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they take for granted
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what we actually have in America.
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They think that
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this is the default state of the world
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and it's not the default state.
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Freedom being able
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to have upward mobility
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being able to preach the gospel
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that is not the default state of the world.
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For the majority of the world,
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the default state is one level of tyranny or another.
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Are you aware of that?
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So I'm grateful for America.
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Other countries that go through passport control in 20 minutes.
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I landed JFK hour and a half line.
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I still say,
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hallelujah, I love JFK.
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I love that woman yelling at me to stay in line.
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I love that I'm in this unrenovated part.
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Looks like a freak show from the 60s.
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But God bless America.
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And because of what happened
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with the attempted
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assassination of former president Trump yesterday,
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I just couldn't go on
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with business as usual in this service.
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As soon as it happened,
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I'm like, I can't now just
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we're going to do a few songs of worship
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and then I preach the word
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and then we need to pray for our country.
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Understand.
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Confirmation and urgency in my spirit and a gravity in my spirit.
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Do you remember when we were in 21 days of prayer and fasting
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in beginning of 2024?
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And I began to say do you think.
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I asked you a rhetorical question.
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Do you think this whole year,
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it's an election year,
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do you think it's just
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going to go on
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without any major event?
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It's going to be an individual
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And the majority of you, you knew exactly what I was talking about, you said something
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is going to happen.
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What happened yesterday is no small thing.
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My father, who's so, he's so well tempered, he's not extreme in his thinking, he's not
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emotional.
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And a few months ago, he told me with his face pale, he said, you know, a lot of the reasons
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why we left former Yugoslavia, that's, that's the, those same things I'm seeing here right
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now.
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Some kind of phony, baloney, bogus convictions, you can't even tell me what he was convicted
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of.
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That was 30 plus, though.
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Yeah, what were they?
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Well, orange man, bad.
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Can you, you know, the talking points are all the same, he's going to be a dictator.
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I wish we had a test run where we could try him out to see if he was going to be a dictator.
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I wish, I wish we had like, I wish he like, we can look at past history.
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There's a lot of, I'll say this would love, but there's a lot of brainwashed muppets
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around, especially New York City, muppets, just muppets, tiktok brain, muppets, just doing
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whatever the media, your, the enemy of America is the media.
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And just, just programmed in their heads, well, I don't like him, okay, tell me specifically
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what policy in his four years, did you not like?
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Me tweet, hurt my feelings.
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You don't even know that the reason you don't like him is because of the media.
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I mean, imagine you, you actually had a crush on someone, but every time you looked at
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them, someone came in your ear and went, and he was looking at him, yeah, pretty soon
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you started to associate that person you had a crush on with this harsh screech.
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You know, I kind of, I don't like him anymore, I don't know why.
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Well, that's why.
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But it's not just what happened, what happened yesterday, it's, it's the where the pivotal,
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pivotal time, and I feel that America can go in any direction, and I sense, I sense that
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we can experience something of a golden age, that God will come and have mercy on us and
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give us another chance and visit us again, hallelujah.
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I was in, I said earlier, I was in Montenegro, I was actually in Rome, I remember because I
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woke up, I just woke up when the debates began.
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There's 3 a.m. debates began here at 9 p.m., and I woke up at 3 a.m. I started watching debates
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in my hotel room, and I could only take like 25 minutes, I was like, all right, that's,
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that's enough, that's enough for me.
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And then when I woke up morning, my time, I was shocked.
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I'm looking at my phone and every media outlet, all of a sudden, realized that Biden's
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a Satoshi short of a Bitcoin upstairs, that he's, the lights are on, but no one's home.
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All of a sudden, they all realized, oh, his cognitive process, he's must, hmm, it looks
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like they've slowed down, and we're like, this is what we've been saying.
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It's not they just slowed down, they've gotten worse, but four years ago, when Trump was
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filling up stadiums, Biden was in his room with little circles drawn around him and 12
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other people, barely riding his bicycle eating ice cream.
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Jack, it's no joke, Jack.
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That didn't actually make me happy, it made me nervous when the media, you got to wonder,
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where do they get their orders from?
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What do you think of the orders from the, in lockstep, every outlet, celebrities that
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adored him, all of a sudden, it was like somebody just hit the button.
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And change of plans, this is the way now.
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And it is concerning, you can look at him and, you can't look at him and believe that
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he's running the country.
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But then the question becomes, who is?
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Who is?
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Who's making the decisions?
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And please don't confuse me.
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Don't confuse me with the whack-a-do Christian Trump supporters, please.
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Some of you, you only know two extremes.
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Don't confuse me with, I know who he is, we all know who he is.
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I'm not calling him God's prince, I'm not, we all know his character, we all know his
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personality, we all, we also know that God can speak through donkeys, amen.
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And he did in the Bible.
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I'm not voting for Trump because I want him to be my apostle, you're not voting for him
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because you want him to be your pastor.
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Say I wish we had a better option, go ahead and wish, wish away, I too wish.
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But here's where we're at, hallelujah.
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So I want us to pray church, we're going to worship, we're going to pray if you're a guest,
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it's a bit of a different service.
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And so like I have to say, I make no apologies for it, we flow with the Holy Spirit here.
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And we need to, as a body, listen, we as a body, we need to pray for our country, prayer
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changes everything.
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Back when I was in Bible school, old fiery man of God, he said this, he said, every failure
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in my life has been a prayer failure.
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And I don't want to wake up in 2030, 2035, and it's Mad Max beyond Thunderdome in America.
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And I go, Lord, how did you allow this to happen?
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And he says, how often did you pray?
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I mean, really pray, son, and I go, that's for the others.
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That's for the Southern grandmas to do.
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They're the ones who pray and hold up the nation, we got to pray.
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We're commanding in the Scriptures to pray.
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And it says why that the word of God may have free course and be multiplied and that we
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would be in live at peace.
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So I want us to pray for the strength of America that God would be merciful to the United States.
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We need mercy.
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You know, King Hezekiah, judgment came upon him and he cried out to the Lord, Lord, give
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me 15 more years, please, and God said, 15 more years, He's a merciful God.
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And I want us to pray for revival because what we need is a move of God.
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Some of you, you've come in and you can just read about revival in books, I've tasted
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it, I've seen what the Lord did in the 90s and how He would shake entire regions.
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When revival comes, even the stonchist opponents to God, their hearts are warmed, their eyes
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are opened, the presence of God is on full display, that God would flex on New York City
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on this country that He would raise us up as the city on a hill that our light would
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so shine before men that God would get glory in heaven.
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Do you believe it can happen?
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I believe it can happen, I believe with all my heart, it will happen.
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I believe we're closer right now than we were even just a few months ago.
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Hallelujah.
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Hallelujah.
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Hallelujah.
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Hallelujah.
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Hallelujah.
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Let me read this to you, numbers.
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Numbers chapter 16 verses 41 through 48.
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I shared this one, Pastor James and I did the series in God we trust with a question
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mark.
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I shared how apolitical I was because I was young and ignorant and I realized, you know,
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I'm saying this in New York City, a little different politically here.
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You have to ask yourself, why was he so universally hated when he was a media darling for decades?
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Then all of a sudden you have this outsider who comes in and he's hated by the left and
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the right because he threatens to expose them and shake up the system.
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I don't want to see America turn into a banana republic.
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I come from a country like that.
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The government changed three times in the last two years.
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How do you build in a nation like that?
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I was on the beach and I said, that restaurant, it was like half built.
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I'm like, I asked my friend, why?
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Like you guys work around here or what, what was going on here?
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Like your country, 95% of your GDP's from tourism and the restaurant hasn't even been
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built and it's summertime again, it doesn't look like anything happened.
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He said, look, the reason for that is, there's been a governmental change three times in
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two years.
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Nobody knows what's happening, who's coming or who's going so you can't build, you can
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invest and then when you look at what happened with that assassination attempt yesterday,
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that was a major, major failure of his security team.
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On such a level where you have to swim and wonder, I don't wonder too much, but you at least
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should wonder whether it was an inside job or not.
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Is that the country you want to live in?
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Not me, I have kids, I'm going to have grandkids.
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I've passed your church, I want the church to be blessed.
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I want couples to be able to get married in their 20s and I'd say, oh, we've got to
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wait till our 30s until we're more financially stable.
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I want moms to be able to stay home with their kids, should they choose to.
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Not this warped economic system that we've fallen into, we're both parents up to work
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50, 60 hours a week just to make ends meet.
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Hallelujah, let's read, on the next day all the congregation of the children of Israel
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complained against Moses and Aaron saying, you have killed the people of the Lord.
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They were always complaining.
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Now it happened when the congregation had gathered against Moses and Aaron that they turned
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toward the tabernacle of meeting and suddenly the cloud covered it and the glory of the
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Lord appeared.
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Then Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of meeting and the Lord spoke to Moses saying,
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get away from this congregation that I may consume them in a moment.
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You may wonder why was the judgment of God so swift and so harsh because it says some
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Hebrews complained, yeah, those were the same Hebrews that saw the 10 plagues come upon
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Egypt.
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Those were the same Hebrews that saw the Lord with a mighty and outstretched arm, bring
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them out of Egypt and split the red sea open and bring them through unto dry ground.
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They witnessed firsthand his glory.
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They witnessed his provision in the form of a pillar of fire by night and a cloud of
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covering by day so they should have known better, yet give it some time and they start
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complaining and the Lord says, this calls for my righteous judgment.
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But Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in intercession.
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Some Moses said to Aaron, take a censor and put fire in it from the altar, put incense
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on it.
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What is incense a symbol of throughout the Bible?
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Yes, good job, city lights, say louder, prayer and take it quickly to the congregation
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and make atonement for them, atonement they're simply means covering.
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For wrath has gone out from the Lord, the plague has begun.
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Are you seeing the connection here?
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Prayer avert's judgment, prayer releases the mercy of God, prayer brings the glory of
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God, prayer will change America, yeah, I believe with all of my heart, with all of my heart
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greatest days as a country are up ahead.
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God can do it, God will do it.
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He's going to show his mercy.
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What do we deserve for our thievery, for our lying, for all of the innumerable sins we've
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done individually and collectively as a nation?
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We deserve the righteousness of God.
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But the cross of Jesus is there saying, I will give you what you don't deserve.
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We were forgiven all of our sins.
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We didn't deserve that, but the blood of Jesus grants us that which we do not deserve.
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Verse 47, then Aaron took it as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the assembly and
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already the plague had begun among the people.
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So he put in the incense and made atonement for the people.
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And he stood between the dead and the living and that's what we're called to do, that's
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what we're going to do in this service.
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Hey, I want you to plug in with your whole heart.
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Oftentimes when it's just like a Sunday service, people get into consumer mode, like they
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want to kick up their feet, get a bowl of popcorn and watch Netflix.
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And yes, something is required of you and it's worth it.
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And this is one of the few opportunities we get where we're all together under one roof.
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And in the first service, we saw something shift.
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It was glorious.
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How many of you, you're still in there?
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Wasn't that something?
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It was like something just shh.
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Hallelujah.
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And he stood between the dead and the living.
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So the plague was stopped, amen.
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Father in the name of Jesus, you're a good, good God, a God who's abundant and mercy and
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tender loving kindness.
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So we bring up this country, our country, the United States of America.
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And we ask for another chance.
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Like Hezekiah cried and said, give me 15 more years, we cry on behalf of the nation.
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Give us more years.
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Let there be a turnaround and a change, a turnaround like there was in Samaria.
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Where the God of the turnaround shows up, that we do a complete 180, that there will be
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a holy and reverential fear of the Lord, that hearts would be turned back to you, O God.
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Lord that righteousness and holiness would reign in the land, that we would be a shining
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example of myriads of countries coming together and us fearing the Lord and loving one another.
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Father that the gospel would go forth, that you disrupt every system.
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Every system that's found its way throughout this country that is an offence to you, that
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you would disrupt it and raise it to the ground.
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Father that if you should carry in sending Jesus, that America be set up for centuries
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to come as a global lighthouse for the glory of God, in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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This is the City Light Church podcast.
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If you've missed any part of today's message, or if you would like to find out more about
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Pastor Boyan Jansik in City Light Church, visit us at citylightnyc.com, that's citylightnyc.com.
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Feel free to visit us online or in person anytime.
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We would love to connect with you.
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We pray that you have been encouraged today, that you have been reminded how much God
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loves you, and that you are surrounded by grace.
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Thank you for listening.
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Make sure that you subscribe to City Light Church podcast wherever you find your favorite
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