Anniversary Sunday: Rest on 7 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

What Meta has meant to me in the last seven years has been family.

Meta's been my family away from home.

This is my home, away from home.

This is where I meet people that I love and care about and care about me.

They care about me.

And that is the most beautiful thing about this church.

Coming back to Meta, I was able to reconnect with God and bring my family to Jesus' wife.

So this connection and love.

It's gonna make me want to be closer to God and read the scripture too, the Bible, and all that.

I like to say that it's a place where I can come where I'm feeling down.

It can bring me hope, and it just gives me that sense of peace when I walk into these doors.

Meta has impacted my life in the way of how I serve others and how I live because I just want to live more for Jesus.

I can see it in the people's faces that are here in messages.

It's um changing my life.

And yeah, I just love being here and being part of this family.

Coming here and seeing the ministers and being with other believers, it's allowed me to not be as timid in my calling and to step out and to say those things that God tells me to say and call me to say, and just do the things that He's called me to do.

And I'm so grateful and so excited that I know that I don't have to hide, and it's okay for me to be different and to not be like everyone else.

Definitely, community.

Um, I feel connected more um to a community of believers than I have ever in my life.

When I first came to Meta, I didn't know who God was and who he was.

And now when I came, now I've been here for a while, so now I know him.

And real close.

I'm always on my rock.

Well, MetaCurch, happy seven-year anniversary.

How's everybody doing?

Yeah.

I want to welcome you in.

If it's your first time with us, you have picked a great Sunday to be here.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor at MetaCurch.

God has done so much in seven years.

His favor has been on this movement, on this church.

He has expanded us.

We're now meeting in multiple locations.

God is moving here in Holotus, uh, where we have people who are coming.

13 people coming to Christ and getting baptized in Helotus in its first year in operation.

We should celebrate that.

There are so many things that we could talk about with MetaCurch, but first I just have to remind you, I know we say it all the time, but I gotta get it in your head so it will get down into your heart.

Uh, the church is not the buildings that we meet in, the church is not a Sunday service, it's not a life team, it's not a program.

You are the church.

The church is the called-out people of God.

That's what God has been growing for seven years now.

It doesn't matter if we are meeting in a saloon, in a 4-H event center, or in a building that we own.

We are the church, and God has blessed us enormously.

And we should just thank him for that, for all that he has done and continues to do.

I could look at like a lot of metrics.

Let me get down to the most important one.

In seven years of metachurch, we have seen 712 people baptized in this moment.

So let's give God a hand for that.

I want to spend most of our time today talking about where we're going.

And part of as we are learning to really lean in and follow Jesus, one of the things you very quickly learn when you start living that spirit-led life is it comes with a lot of change.

Not only do we have some habits and hang-ups that we have to submit to the Lord and start living in his ways, but even directionally, we'll see this next Sunday.

Um, the Holy Spirit will lead us and guide us and move us.

And when Jesus says go right, we go right.

And when he says go left, we go left.

And we do that as spirit-filled individuals, but we also do that as a movement.

And so, pretty much the whole fourth quarter of 2025, you know, when I have something inside of me, it's hard for me to keep it inside of me.

And I get on stage every week and things leak a little bit.

So I would talk a lot in the fourth quarter about how I was under a lot of conviction.

And how I felt like the Holy Spirit was asking us to make some changes in how we are approaching, especially our Sunday services.

But I wasn't really ready, and I knew I wasn't ready to talk through it.

And I do feel like, at least in part, I'm ready.

And that's really hard for us because uh we are in the instant gratification generation, right?

And so I was thinking about we want to see the picture that God has for us immediately, right?

If we want to take a picture, we pull out our phone, in point one second, we have a picture, it's crystal clear.

That's how we want vision from God.

We want an HD picture, we want to be able to zoom in and see all of all of the details.

Every once in a while, in low light, if you have an iPhone, you will press that shutter button and it will take like three seconds to get all the light in, and you have an existential crisis because it's not happening right away, you know?

It's like, why is this taking forever?

And and those of you who are probably like 20 and below, you don't even know film.

You had to take a whole roll of pictures before you knew what pictures you had taken.

And so you would just click through, there's no screens, there's nowhere to see it.

You just have to hope.

And then you gotta go to Walmart and put it in a bag and wait three days.

Now, some of you grew up privileged, you did 24 hours.

I had to wait three days to find out if my finger was in front of the camera on 24 different pictures.

And now we get an instant.

And often, as God speaks to us, the clarity comes more like film than your iPhone.

And God brings affirmation first and foremost through his word.

God speaks to us through his word.

And then God brings affirmation through the fellow saints, other believers in Jesus, as they come and they bring these pieces of affirmation.

And so you wrestle.

And sometimes it's okay to step back and wait as God brings clarity.

Now it can become an excuse because at a certain point we gotta move, we gotta get after the things of God, but God gives new vision, and so I've been a little bit slow, but I'm ready to share some of the conviction that I've been under and how it's gonna change some things for us in 2026 and beyond.

And so let me start with kind of where all of this started.

Back in October, many of you participated in a fast.

We did a 24-hour water-only fast as a church to prepare for baptisms.

God heard us, right?

We went before his throne, we sacrificed for him, we baptized more people in a day than we had in any other single year.

We baptized 144 people after a 24-hour fast, right?

So God shows up.

Now, what most of you don't know is a month prior to that, in September, we gathered a very small group of our staff and key leaders.

I think there were about 20 of us, and in September, we did a 48-hour water-only fast.

And we were seeking a few things from God, but at the top of that list was the culture has changed, our world has changed rapidly.

Post-COVID, the culture is not the same as it was pre-COVID.

And so, how do we, as the body of Christ, be most effective in reaching the world?

And so we we sought God on that, and God spoke very clearly.

And here's how I knew that God was going to really show up in that September 48-hour fast.

Because Katie and I have been together for 15 years, and in 15 years, we have never experienced the spiritual opposition that we experience as we tried to start that fast.

And it's not really at the point in our history for me to share all the details of that, but I can just tell you that we have never seen such a clear spiritual attack against us, our family, the ministry, all of it, all coming at once.

And so let me let me just this isn't actually my sermon, but but the Lord laid it on my heart, and so I want to share it with you today.

As we begin to follow the Holy Spirit, you will gain the attention of the enemies of God.

And so let me say it in reverse.

The devil isn't worried about you because you sit in a seat on a Sunday.

The devil isn't impressed because you raise your hand in a song.

The devil is not concerned with lazy, apathetic Christians.

He doesn't care that you have a Bible verse in the Bible of your Instagram.

But as soon as you take seriously the call of God on your life, as soon as you start putting to death your sin, as soon as you start sacrificially loving your spouse, as soon as you start serving the body of Christ and reaching out and evangelizing unbelievers, you will end up on the radar of the enemies of God.

And so as we start to step into our power and purpose, we end up there.

And here is what the devil is counting on.

If he throws some opposition your way, that you will shrink back.

So the enemies of God will touch your money, will touch your career, will touch your relationships, will touch your confidence, will touch your mind, will just throw up a little block.

The enemies of God will mess up my microphone.

And here, here is what the devil's counting on.

Yeah, man, I'm gonna follow the Holy Spirit.

Opposition.

You know what?

Let me chill.

Let me chill.

That was a lot.

That was a lot.

Here's how you begin to receive opposition as you become a mature follower of Christ.

The more opposition that confronts me when I am walking in truth.

Now, some of you walk in lies, you get consequences, and you go, the devil is against me.

You are against you.

When you're walking in truth and in the spirit, and opposition comes, here's how we should reframe our mind as mature followers of Christ.

The more opposition comes, the more opportunity is present.

The more ground there is to take, the more the Holy Spirit will move.

So it's not time for me to get into all of the details, but I need you to know we were starting a fast at 8 a.m.

with 20 of our key leaders.

At 2 a.m., the devil was on us, and I have a godly wife.

So we looked at each other and said, This is just evidence that we have to do this.

This is evidence God's getting ready to speak.

And so we went through this and and uh came under a lot of conviction.

And I want to share some of that with you today.

And I want to give kind of a big umbrella for what we heard.

I can put it in two words slow down.

Now, if you've known me for more than about six seconds, slow down is not my specialty.

I move fast, I think fast, I talk fast.

I had a congregate say they watch every sermon back on YouTube so they can put it on.75 speed.

That just means they're trying to slow me down.

I want to give this banner idea of slow down.

Let me tell you first, quickly, what this does not mean.

This does not mean that we quit ambitiously building the kingdom of God.

We'll never.

This does not mean that we lessen our urgency for the return of Jesus Christ.

This does not mean that as God provides resources, we do not continue to replicate and expand this movement just like we have done in Holodas, where 13 people got baptized in a year.

We will take more ground.

When I talk about slowing down, I am talking about rushing past the movement of the Holy Spirit.

This is a holy rhythm that God has been demonstrating from the beginning.

Let me walk you through it briefly.

The universe is created by God, he works hard for these six days of creation, and then scripture says he rests.

Now you need to know this.

God does not rest because he's tired, because God does not get tired.

God didn't get through the first six days of creation and was like, oh girl, I put in my 40 hours, time to kick back.

He does this intentionally to teach us a key part of how we live life successfully.

God instantiates this in the Hebrew law with his people in the Old Testament.

As a command, they must take a Sabbath at the end of the week.

They work hard for six days and then the Sabbath.

It's not only the people, it's the contracts.

So you would sign a contract, maybe as an indentured servant, you would work hard for six years, and then you would be released.

It's not just the people, it's the land.

It's an agrarian society.

God says you plant, you reap, you harvest for six years, but on the seventh, the land must rest.

This is the Old Testament biblical pattern.

You work for six, you rest on seven.

You work for six, you rest on seven.

Now, I can't tell you how mad I am that I have to do this next part.

But there are seventh and eighth graders who sit in our services who are not gonna be able to move on until I acknowledge that the Lord gave me a big idea that has both a six and a seven.

So one time and we're moving on.

Six, seven.

Okay, we can we can move on now.

So frustrated.

I'm like, really, God?

A six and a seven, and then okay.

I'll just do it and then we'll move on.

This is the biblical prescription.

Uh don't miss this.

We just went through six.

Today, meta church, we're celebrating seven.

And God's gonna teach us this year how to rest in the Lord.

Something very interesting happens, and one of the reasons you guys gotta get through the academy, you know, I don't know how many people, probably getting close to 200 people have gone through the meta movement academy.

Um, but I want everyone to go through it.

You learn a lot, but one of the things you get to do is we spend three sessions on understanding God's word.

And one of those sessions, you spend a little over three hours with me, and we go from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

And one of the things that we see is the distinction Old Testament and New Testament.

What happens in the New Testament is Jesus comes and he perfectly fulfills the Old Testament law, which means Sabbath is no longer a command by God on your life.

Now that doesn't mean we don't learn from it.

It doesn't mean you work yourself into burnout and you neglect your kids and you ruin your marriage.

That's not what that means.

You should have godly rhythms of rest in your life.

But scripture tells us in the New Testament church age that we have a better Sabbath, we have a more holy rest, that our Sabbath is Jesus Christ Himself.

Amen.

Amen.

And our ultimate rest will not be found on this earth, our ultimate rest will be found in eternity, and so it changes for us.

And the key mechanism of that change is the Holy Spirit.

The reason that the Holy Spirit is this linchpin that creates this incredible change is because until the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit dwelled locally in Jerusalem, in the temple, inside of the Holy of Holies.

One of the things that happens when Jesus dies on the cross, he breathes his last, and the veil that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple is torn, symbolizing that the Holy Spirit will no longer be held locally in a building.

Paul tells the Corinthians, Don't you know you are the temple of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit now lives in the life of every believer.

Paul tells the Ephesians, don't you know that as you put your faith in Jesus, you are sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit, a guarantee that your eternity is secure.

The Holy Spirit now lives inside of every single believer.

This is the moment that changed everything and that transitions us from the Old Testament to the New Testament, from an old covenant, like we talked about on Christmas Eve, to a new covenant.

And so I want us to look at the moment the Holy Spirit first comes.

It's so instructive for what the Lord has put on my heart and many of our hearts as we are attempting to slow down.

We're gonna be in Acts chapter one.

In Acts chapter one, verse four, it says, While Jesus was with them, he commanded them to not leave Jerusalem, but to say this word with me, wait for the Father's promise, which he said, you've heard me speak about, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.

Jesus is about to ascend back to heaven.

He is speaking to the men and women who will start this movement that we call the church.

And his first instructions to them are the very thing that we hate more than anything in our culture, he tells them, wait.

There has never been a time in human history where we have hated patients more than right now.

Can you imagine your 13-year-old trying to dial up to the internet?

They would faint, they would fall out.

How did you live like this?

This is the stone age.

Can you imagine instead of just streaming your shows whenever you want, can you imagine still having to put a VCR in, set a timer, hope that you change the time after daylight savings time so you don't record the wrong?

It's like we hate it, man.

We hate to wait.

Some of you come this close to losing your Christianity Monday through Friday on 1604.

You hate to wait.

I hate to wait.

We are the culture of convenience and instant, instant, instant gratification.

And this matters.

Because the first thing that Jesus tells the men and women who will lead his movement to do is wait.

He says, I'm sending the Holy Spirit.

Because of the Holy Spirit, in John's gospel, Jesus tells us that this movement will do even greater things than Jesus did.

That's the gift that's coming.

But you are gonna have to wait.

I'll send the Holy Spirit in a few days.

Why?

Let me make a comparison here.

God created the world and rested.

He did not need to rest, he was teaching us something.

Jesus waits to send the Holy Spirit.

He did not have to wait, could have sent him immediately.

But he's teaching us something.

He's teaching us the power of waiting.

Now we know Acts 1.8 very, very well here because it's our vision verse.

It's why we're here in Helotus right now, where people are getting saved and where we're expanding the kingdom and taking ground for God.

It's why we will start other meta church venues, it's why we will do everything we can to reach as many as we can.

But I want to pay attention to a very specific part of this verse.

Acts 1.8 starts like this you will receive power when.

That's a conditional.

You will receive power when, here's the condition, that the Holy Spirit comes.

We can reverse engineer that.

You will not receive power unless the Holy Spirit comes.

Four verses earlier, he told us for the Holy Spirit to come.

We are going to have to wait.

This matters, Meta Church.

Because God has blessed us, He has put his favor on us.

We have grown to a movement on Sundays of over a thousand people.

Last year we baptized 222 people.

He's been over the top good to us.

But I do not believe we are good at waiting.

And we must at least acknowledge and recognize that we are in prime position to hate waiting.

We are Westerners.

We view our worth as how busy we are.

We're not just Westerners, we're Americans.

We are impatient, we are imprudent.

We do not like waiting.

We do not like wasting time.

We like things quickly.

We want God to give us clarity right now, vision right now, healing right now, power right now, answers right now.

We do not want to wait.

And Jesus says, uh, I'm ascending.

I will come back, crack the skies, gather up my church.

But what you need to change the world, and just so you know, 2,000 years later, we're on the other side of the world across an ocean in a land that the apostles did not know exist.

2,000 years later, we're a part of that movement because the Holy Spirit fell.

And he says, just wait.

Stay together and wait.

Now there's a theological concept that I need you to learn as we walk into the new thing God has for us in 2026.

And it's all about how the Holy Spirit operates.

I'm gonna introduce this this week.

We're gonna really talk about it next week.

But most of us think very individualistically because we are Westerners, we are individualists.

We even think about our role inside of the local church, like Metachurch, as individuals.

It's like, what can this do for me?

What did I get out of it?

Did I like the music?

Did this did the preaching speak to me?

We think about it in terms of us.

But the body of Christ is a body, and the apostle Paul.

Tells the Corinthians, there is one body, but many parts, and every one of you plays a part.

And if one part is hurting, the whole body is hurting.

I hurt my wrist.

I don't want to go into it.

The number of things I'm struggling to do with a wrist that is immobile right now is shocking to me.

It's just one wrist.

I've given the example before.

The most dominant NBA player of all time, Shaquille O'Neal, had his career sidelined for almost an entire season, not because of a hamstring, not because of a lat, because of a big toe.

When one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts.

And so you matter, and it's not just individual.

Here's what we think about and talk about and preach about.

This is mainly my fault.

We talk about the indwelling of individual believers.

At the moment of faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, empowers you, and seals you.

Now, God has given us free will.

When you become a believer in Jesus, the Holy Spirit does not go and unplug the free will part of your brain.

And so the most heartbreaking thing is to see so many believers who are ignoring the Holy Spirit's promptings, who are suppressing the truth of the Holy Spirit that it's trying to speak into their lives, who are pushing it aside for the things of this world.

You can do that to your own detriment, but if you truly have put your faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives and dwells inside of you.

Amen, if you agree with that.

Amen.

We know that.

Here's what we don't talk a lot about: that there is also a normative work of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, which is an outpouring on corporate movements.

The indwelling of the individual is about salvation to eternal life.

The outpouring corporately, when I say corporate, I just mean the opposite of individual.

I mean the body coming together like we're assembled right now.

This corporate outpouring, this is about power, unique power.

The indwelling of the individual is permanent, it is steady, it is unchanging.

The corporate outpouring is unpredictable.

It is not up to us, it doesn't come on our timeline, and it is unbelievable.

The indwelling of the believer is normative, it's the way God set things up.

The outpouring corporately, where the spirit falls and the ground shakes, it is history defining, it marks a generation, and it empowers individual movements to do things that they could not imagine.

My mentor, John Whitdy, he went through the New Testament and he studied every single time there is a corporate outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

He studied every single time it happens.

And you know what his number one conclusion was?

It happens whenever God decides it happens.

There is no magical order of service.

It's not because you sang the right songs in the right order, it's not because you prayed the magic words.

We are not responsible for when this falling of the Holy Spirit happens.

We are responsible to slow down and be ready.

We like control, but thank God we are not in charge because if you've tried to live as God, like Adam and Eve did in the garden, you learn very quickly you cannot bear the weight of it.

And so there are these two ways that the Holy Spirit normally moves.

And if we hate to wait, and we must wait if we want to experience the leading, empowering, and corporate outpouring of the Holy Spirit, then if we do not identify this in ourselves and put it to death, we could very well miss what God desires for us.

So let me show you how this worked.

Jesus gave these instructions, he ascended up to heaven, they watched him ascend up past the clouds till they could no longer see him.

Angels came to the apostles and said, just as he has gone, he will one day return.

And then they had to decide: Jesus is gone, will we obey?

Everyone behaves pretty well when the teacher's in the room, but as soon as the teacher has to go across the hallway, now you decide whether you respect the teacher or not.

Jesus is gone, he's gone through the clouds.

Will they go back to busy, go back to work?

Will they run in fear?

By the way, the guy they're following just lost his life not long ago.

Here's what they do Acts chapter 1, verse 14.

Acts 1:14

They all were continually united in prayer, along with the women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the brothers of Jesus.

They waited.

Not by sitting around twiddling their thumbs, not by scrolling TikTok, not by putting together conspiracy theories and timelines of his return.

They got together and they prayed.

And they waited.

And they waited and they prayed.

And they prayed until something happened.

And in Acts chapter 2, just as Jesus promised, something happened.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Let's read about it.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 1, when the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying.

Acts 2:1

And then they saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them.

And then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in different tongues, different languages, as the Spirit enabled them.

You will receive power when?

When the Holy Spirit comes and falls upon you.

Peter gets up and preaches.

What happens next is unbelievable.

We see it in verse 41.

So those who accepted his message and were baptized that day, about 3,000 people were added to the body of Christ.

3,000 people.

Because Peter stood up and he did not exactly encourage the people he was preaching to.

He was speaking to the Jewish people gathered in Jerusalem for Passover, and basically, here's Peter's message.

You idiots.

Peter's like, so here's what you need to do.

You need to say you're sorry, and you need to put your faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And 3,000 people got saved, not because Peter had the perfect sequence of words with the perfect inflection and the perfect tone.

3,000 people got saved because the Holy Spirit fell.

Several months back, we have a young man in our church, a guy that I love very much.

He was in an accident.

It left him paralyzed from the neck down.

And he was being treated in a facility in Atlanta.

And so I flew up to see him and to pray with him.

And while I was there, I had that Sunday off.

So I went to a church called 2819 Church.

Three years ago, there were less than 200 people at 2819 Church.

On that Sunday, I stood in the Atlanta sun for three and a half hours and watched 1,400 people get baptized.

The day before that, they had done the same thing, baptized 1,100 people.

When I talked to Katie later that day, the only thing I could say is this must have been what it felt like at Pentecost.

It must have been for the Holy Spirit to be so present.

And yes, the Holy Spirit is present in the life of every believer, but when we learn to slow down and wait and pray, you can read all of Acts, and there's all these milestone moments where big things happen that shape the church.

History-defining moments.

And there is a pattern, it's clear as day if we slow down to read it.

It goes like this waiting and praying and praying and waiting for as long as that takes, trusting in God's time, and then the spirit pours out, and power is unleashed.

History defining generation marking groundshaking power.

The very thing we have been praying for in this movement for seven years, and maybe it's time to slow down enough to experience it.

But listen, we hate to wait.

And so let me frame it this way: we want Acts chapter two outcomes.

3,000 saved and baptized in a day, the church growing, healing power, and clarity.

We want Acts 2 outcomes, but our culture does not want Acts 1 inputs.

We want God to show up just as quickly as our technology works.

And maybe God is looking for a movement of normal, ordinary, jacked-up people like me and like you, who would just honor Him enough to wait and pray.

And pray and wait and wait and pray until heaven moves.

Back in September, we went through this fast.

I came under a lot of conviction.

We have worked hard since MetaCurch started.

We really, we have, you talk about working hard for six.

We have worked hard.

And God has been so good to us, it's obvious.

And yet there was this shared kind of latent expectation among metachurch that God is just getting started.

Do you feel that?

And that there is more He has for us.

So let me tell you how I'm wired.

When I feel that way, I go, oh, I know what to do.

Work harder.

Communicate more clearly, strategize more thoroughly.

Those are gifts that God has given me, and I lean into them.

And then we fast.

It's like maybe you've done the work.

And it's time to learn to rest in the Lord.

As I was going through this, I was pretty deep into this fast.

I love to eat.

As a matter of fact, uh a couple of months ago, I had breakfast with a couple in our church, and before I knew it, there was this uh rumor about me and how many calories I could eat in one sitting, right?

Like, I love to eat, and I'm maybe 40 hours into a fast, which means, if you've ever done that, I'm angry.

You know, it's like hangry is a real thing.

And so I'm letting my anger take me to prayer because I'm just a minute.

And I heard, your church doesn't pray.

And I'll be honest, that was so ridiculous to me, I actually thought it was from the enemy.

I like rebuked it.

However, as I have learned throughout my life and continue to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, I had to admit that impression, that voice sounded a lot like the voice of God when He has shown up at other times.

So I start kind of arguing with God, like you know, mature people do.

And I'm like, we pray, bro, we pray.

We pray all we pray like multiple times in sermon.

We have a prayer team, God.

We've got a team for prayer.

And sometimes truth confronts you so brutally, you just have to lay down your arms.

Here's what I heard No.

You pray and everyone watches.

Your worship leaders pray and everyone watches.

It just broke my heart.

And I didn't exactly know what to do with it, which is why I've taken some time.

I'm a numbers guy.

Let me put some numbers in front of you.

In the New Testament, there's all kinds of instructions and encouragements to the local church on how it should function.

About 60 times in the New Testament, we see these instructions are encouragements for preaching and teaching.

Now we never skip preaching and teaching in metachurch.

Sunday service, we preach.

There's about 25 when it comes to singing and exhortation.

We never miss singing.

We got our bands at our venues, that are world class, we never miss singing.

We always preach and sing.

But what else?

There's about 40 instructions on fasting and communion.

Two things we almost never do.

Not your fault, my fault.

Here's what really got me.

Combined with the word I got from the Lord, there are over a hundred instructions and encouragements for the church to pray corporately.

Not someone with a mic pray and everyone listens.

Everyone pray together.

I got a kind of picture, and I'm not really a visual person, so I really paid attention to this.

We are in a spiritual battle.

Do you believe that?

We're in a spiritual battle.

Prayer might be our greatest weapon.

We get to step into the throne room of the God who spoke all of this into creation, and he actually listens.

You know, our church has grown to over a thousand people who show up on Sundays.

I thought, man, there's a thousand people showing up.

Some of you don't like guns, you're not gonna like this.

I'm just telling you what the Lord showed me.

We all show up, we're all armed, we got it, we got it on us.

We all show up, and then I pull it up and pray.

And everyone else stays holstered.

And we're fighting for our lives, and we're fighting for the kingdom, and we're fighting for lost souls, and we're all armed, but we're coming together as the army of God, and no one pulls out their weapon.

I've been under this tremendous conviction because something has to change.

We've been rushed.

I have felt rushed.

Now you guys know this, I mean, it's like a running joke that I preach too long, and I I get it, I really do understand.

I don't need to preach for an hour and a half, I promise.

I mean, if you want, if you really want me to, I will, I mean, I'd consider it.

You don't want that, you don't want that.

Here, here is, if I'm just being honest, virtually every Sunday there are promptings from the Holy Spirit while I am communicating the word, and I push them aside so that I can get you out of the parking lot before the next service shows up.

I push it aside so that we stay on our broadcast schedule, because now we're a multi-site ministry and that matters.

So I was rushed, but I was hesitant to say anything because it's a little selfish for me to want more time when I already take the most time.

But the Lord is speaking this to us, and one of the things you look for as God is speaking to you is affirmation.

And so I talk to Celeste.

She's our worship director, she runs all of it, she runs the music, the production, she oversees it across all of our venues.

She's an incredible leader.

You know I find out every Sunday, she feels rushed.

See, there's a dynamic that we have to understand here at Helotus and here at Petrenko because we broadcast the message, and that matters because we are one movement with one mission meeting in multiple locations.

And because we are broadcasting, we have to broadcast on time, which means when when Celeste is on stage in the back of the room, y'all don't see it, there is a countdown, and when it hits zeros, she has to be done.

It throws off everything.

We are rushed.

Now, I'm rushed, Celeste's rushed.

That was some affirmation.

The person I was really nervous to talk to was our kids' ministry.

Because I'm like, my guess is they don't want to herd cats for like 10 more minutes than they're already having to hurt cats, you know?

I don't know this, I'm just guessing.

I talked to Janina, an incredible leader, oversees all the Medikids.

She felt rushed.

It feels like we've got the kids on the curriculum conveyor belt.

We get them in, we get it started just in time to get them out to the parents.

Let me tell you something.

I grew up in church, for better or for worse.

I cannot tell you specifically one lesson I learned in children's church.

I can't do it.

But I could name 10 adults who were godly and spoke into my life that changed the direction of my future.

And you know what you have to have to have that?

You gotta have some space.

You can't be rushed.

So we're gonna make some changes.

We are going to create more space.

Let me tell you, my non-negotiables.

We will, starting on the 18th, we will pray together every time we gather.

We must.

Here's what I believe.

I believe this change will be the single most important adjustment we have ever made in the history of Metachurch.

We will take communion regularly, we will make space for it.

We haven't done it, that is not your fault, that's my fault, and I am sorry.

And we will continue to fast together corporately at strategic times throughout the year.

See, we felt so rushed, and it's like, I built that cage, I decided our service times, I put us all in it, and I shut and locked the door behind it, and God's like, Baro, you have the key.

Unlock the door, create new rhythms.

That's what we're gonna do.

Uh, we are changing our service times on January 18th.

I wanna walk you through this.

Uh, our service times will be different between our broadcast venue at Petrenko and any other venues we start.

And I'll explain the reason for that.

At Petrenko, our new service times will be 8:30, 10:30, 12:30.

Instead of hour and a half spans, we're moving to two hours to just give us space.

Now, at Helotus, we are offsetting by 30 minutes.

What that does is it means broadcast does not have to rush on a countdown to the broadcast going out.

And Holotus, you do not have to rush in anticipation of that broadcast coming in.

We're just releasing ourselves from that.

There is nothing more important in this season than us learning to wait and pray and pray and wait.

Helotus currently has one beautiful service.

It will move from 10:30 to 11 on the 18th.

Now, some of you are nervous, you don't really know what corporate prayer means.

Next week, my whole sermon will be addressing this.

What I need you to know is MetaCurch was planted to be a church for anyone at any part of their faith journey.

That is not changed, that will never change.

If you are not a believer, you don't know how to pray, we will give you space, it will be done well.

No one is throwing a microphone in anybody's faces and going, pray.

We're not doing that.

I promise you.

But we will pray together, we will take communion together, we will get in these rhythms that God has asked his church to be in.

And I believe if we honor God by slowing down, learning how to wait on him, that maybe if God is willing, the Holy Spirit will pour out in a way that we could not possibly imagine.

And as we pray and wait, we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes.

Amen.

Amen.

As we close across our venues, if you would bow your head and close your eyes, I want to create a little bit of space.

Here's what I believe.

God is calling us into something new as a movement.

God is calling us into new things as individuals.

And here's who I want to address.

I want to address anyone who is at one of our services or with us online, who the new thing God is calling you to is to start your relationship with Him.

There's never been a point in time in your life where you have put your faith in Jesus.

Jesus came to this world, he gave his life to pay the price of our sins that separate us from God.

He walked out of his own grave, guaranteeing us that he can offer life after death.

You need to know this, you may have been lied to.

Jesus did not come to offer you a religion.

Jesus came to offer you a relationship with your Heavenly Father.

You don't get it through works, you don't jump through hoops, you do not check boxes.

Jesus says, Everyone who believes in me will have everlasting life.

A simple moment of faith, convinced and convicted that Jesus is who he claimed to be and has done what he claims to have done, your sins will be forgiven, and you will be brought into an eternal relationship with your Heavenly Father.

So look, if you're here, you've never had a moment where you've consciously decided to put your faith in Jesus.

My guess is the Holy Spirit is pressing into you in this moment, drawing you into a relationship with God.

And what I want to ask you to do is to surrender.

If you're here and you have never put your faith in Jesus, but today you are ready to do that for the first time.

I want to ask you across our venues right now to just simply raise your hand.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I can say with confidence, out of God's word, that God sees and accepts your faith, that he has forgiven all of your sins and has given you eternal life, a gift that no one can take away from you.

Here's what I want to do.

I want to very simply help you acknowledge this moment.

For those who raised your hand, I want you to pray this prayer with me.

I'm going to ask all believers across our venues to pray this with me out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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