A Renewed Call For Revival

And God bless you. Thank you, Dan Beiser. Good to be with you and others that are watching and listening wherever they are throughout the world. And the Lord has been good to each of us. And Dan and I do go back a long ways in our fellowship and the friendship. And we just kind of watch each other's ministries from a distance most of the time. But our hearts, there's a kinship, a oneness of spirit. And it was good to watch John McNeil last night and the brother that just completed, I've not met him yet, but a powerful word. And others that I've been able to watch this weekend, I've been very blessed by watching and listening. And let's just bow in prayer before we begin. Father, I bow before your throne, because you're worthy, because you're God, because you're king, because you're Lord, because you're master. You're the ruler. Jesus, you're our kinsman, redeemer. Lord and Matthew, you're the king and Mark, you're Christ, the servant. And Luke, you're the son of man, the prayer warrior. And John, you're the word. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And as Lord Jesus, you're the power of the gospel. And Romans, you are the gospel. The first Corinthians, Lord Jesus, you're the confirmer unto the end. You stabilitate us unto the end. You make firm unto the end. And we stand upon your word today, Lord. Lord, in second Corinthians, Jesus, you're the God that gives grace. You told Paul, my grace is sufficient for me, but my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Lord, in Galatians, you're the liberator. In Ephesians, you're the filler of the Holy Spirit. In Philippians, Jesus, you're the supplier of all of our needs. In Colossians, you're the preeminent one. In 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, you're the soon-incoming king. In 1st and 2nd Timothy, you're the shepherd and the bishop of our souls. In Titus, you're the blessed hope, the glorious supreme of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. In Philemon, you're the faithful brother. In Hebrews, you're the great apostle and high priest. In James, you're the giver. You're the giver Lord of wisdom. In 1st and 2nd Peter, you're the cornerstone. In 1st and 2nd and 3rd John, Jesus, you're the righteousness and your truth and your love. In Jude, you're the keeper. Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory, that the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever. Oh Lord, that's strong word, majesty. Majesty, worship his majesty. Lord, we come this afternoon in this solemn assembly to worship you in your majesty and your glory and your omnipotence and your holiness and all that you are, Jesus. Lord, your great mercy, Lord Jesus, to the revelation. You're the soon-incoming king and your Lord God Almighty in the book of Revelation. You've given us the last chapter. You bought us with the blood of redemption. You made us the kingdoms and priests unto you, Lord Jesus. But you also gave five warnings to the churches of the book of Revelation. Five times you said to repent to the seven times of messages you gave to the churches, Lord. And you said, you've left your first love. You said, all these things are good, but I have one thing against you. You've left your first love. You said, go back and do the works again. And Father, we begin this session this afternoon to go back. We go back. We go back to Jesus, our first love. We return unto you, Lord Jesus, because you're worthy. We return unto you, Lord Jesus, because in many ways we've turned our backs on you. We've sinned against you. We've worshipped leisure. We've worshipped our own time schedules instead of Jesus. We've worshipped ourselves instead of you, Lord Jesus. The greatest of idolatries is worshipping ourselves. Everything revolving around us, our comfort, our direction, our ambition, our will, self-will, self-effort and self-glory. Jesus, you did not come to cure my own nature. You came to crucify it. So I claim afresh today I'm crucified with, we all claim I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, we live, yet not I, but Christ lives in us. And the life which we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. And if we didn't be risen with Christ, we seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above and not on things on the earth, for you are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory. Oh, what a glorious day that's gonna be with my Jesus, I could see. When I look upon his face and know the wonders of his grace, when he takes me by the hand and leads us to the glorious heavenly land. What a day, glorious day that will be. But Lord, it won't just be then when you come back again. It won't just be then when you call or come. But Lord, even now in the presence of your spirit in this room, where I'm at in my home right now, Lord in Arizona, I thank you for your glory. I thank you for your power. I thank you for your presence. I thank you, Jesus, you said the spirit of the Lord is upon me and has anointed me to preach. Father, we come before you each one of us and we say, oh God, we enter into our union with Jesus, by virtue of death, co-death, co-burial and co-resurrection, co-seeking with Christ in the heavenly places. And Lord, that you might flow through us, that you might live through us, that you might pray through us, that you may preach through us, that you may love through us, that you may reach your hands through our hands, that your heart may beat through our hearts, that your mind may think through our minds, your eyes look through our eyes, your mouth speak through our mouths, your feet walk through our feet, for we are the body of Christ. We come, Lord, acknowledging our powerlessness and our weakness apart from you, that Jesus, we need you, that Jesus, we long for you, that Jesus, we long for a mighty great awakening in America to sweep this nation from the north and the south and the east and the west, and oh God, that you might bring judgment day conviction upon this country once again. There's too little conviction of sin, there's too little conviction of unrighteousness and unholiness, there's too little conviction of immorality and impurities and perversions in this nation. Father, I pray today, I ask you to pour out the spirit of judgment day conviction across this nation, that people will start driving by church buildings and pull over and they don't even know why, they pull over on the sides of the roads because they're so convicted of their sin, they don't know what to do, they call unto you and they say, oh Lord, I remember a verse my grandma gave me years ago, whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved, and Jesus, I call upon your name, Jesus, forgive me, Jesus, cleanse me, Jesus, save me. Lord, you are working such powerful ways that we can't even define it in human terms, we can't explain it with our clear-minded thinking and self-confidence, but all we can do is shake our heads and say, these are marvelous things that God has done in our midst, this is nothing more, nothing less than the hand of Almighty God, it's the unmerited favor of God, and we didn't make it happen, but oh Jesus, you just did it, you just did it in your great grace and your great mercy and all that you are. So Lord, we pray with Isaiah that you would render the heavens and come down as when a mountain melts and fire burns and causes the waters to boil, that the nations may tremble in your presence. I pray, Lord, that the church of Jesus Christ, that we would tremble in your presence. And Lord, I'm not pointing at anybody else needing revival, I'm not even pointing at that nation in that sense of the word, Lord, until I have first right now pointed at me. I don't pray for anybody else on this line right now. I pray for me because I need revival. I long for a movement of your spirit like I've never known. I pray, oh God, it's not my brother, not my sister, but me, Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Lord, I know you've been gracious to me in my life, and I've seen you do mighty things, and I've seen meetings go on for weeks on end and months on end, but that doesn't mean I depend upon yesterday's grace for today. Oh, Lord Jesus, I need your grace for today. Yesterday's gone, tomorrow may never come in my life, but I have this moment today, and I pray today for the fresh touch of your spirit. We all pray today for the fresh touch of your spirit, a personal, glorious, life-changing, Christ-exalting revival in our own souls. We're tired of hiding behind our theological pigeonholes as an excuse for not knowing the hand and the power and the presence and the glory of Almighty God. What many have been asking, why we're not seeing revival? Why no revival? Why this revival, Terry, as Ravenhill's book says? Well, Lord, you've made it clear in your word that if a man's going to ascend into the head of the Lord, who ascends into the head of the Lord? He that has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul on savanity nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord. So, Father, if I'm not receiving the blessing, if I'm not receiving the blessing, it is no one else's fault but me. The reason you're tearing is because of the church of Jesus Christ. Our hands are not pure, and our hearts are not clean, and we're worshiping self. That's what you said in Psalm 24. Well, that's why revival, Terry, is to purge us with his and make us clean. Wash us, Lord, and we shall be whiter than snow. Restore unto us, Lord, unto me the joy of thy salvation. Then I will teach China's gracious thy ways. Thus saith the high and lofty one, the one that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in a high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. And, Lord, the only reason why we're not seeing a greater manifestation of your spirit in our services coming together, number one, is ignorance of knowing how to get there. Number two, not knowing the biblical principles of knowing the power, the presence, the manifest presence of God. And number three, we don't ask you to come. We don't ask you to pour out your spirit. We don't wait upon you to come in your manifest presence. Father, that's because oftentimes I don't know it in my own prayer life, and we may, maybe some others here, we don't really know that in our own prayer life like we ought to or need to. Father, I think it's time we just get honest. Lord, I get tired of going to some prayer meetings where there's no life of God in the midst of the prayer meeting. It's all head knowledge. It's all head knowledge. It's all of the soul and not of the spirit. Much of it's not of the spirit. It's soul power and not spirit power. Father, I call it what it is. We all need to call it what it is. If it's a dead prayer meeting, it's dead. It's dead. Jesus, how can these bones of a prayer meeting live? Lord, you know. You know. We've come to the end of self in a fresh way that, God, we can't fix this nation. We can't change anybody else. But Lord, you know. You know how we'll do it. You know what you're doing. You said in your word to Ezekiel, prophesy to the wind. Say to these dry bones to live. Say to the wind of God to blow. And they rose up an exceedingly great army. And the wind of God blew into them once again. It once was a great army. Father, the church in America, people feared believers. They feared pastors. They feared church built. They feared the house of God. They had a respect for the word of God. They had a fear of you. But Lord, the fear of God has left the nation in great part of America. But Lord, I pray. I don't blame anybody else but me. But us as the church, if the glory of God was more real and more effervescent and more powerful and more manifest, and when they come near the child of God, they follow to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, I believe, Lord, this nation would come back to the fear of the Lord. So Lord, it's nobody else but me. I am to blame. The church is to blame. And I'm not even going to hide, although, Lord, I know your sovereign. I'm not going to hide behind the sovereignty of God and simply say, well, God has just not sovereignly chosen to blow. When you said, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from the wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven. Then will I forgive their sin. And then will I heal their land. You gave us the remedy to our malady, Lord Jesus. So let's even sin to blame you for us not seeing and knowing the hand of God on this nation. You said your word. The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is there a heavy that it cannot hear. But your sins are separated between you and your God. And your iniquities have hid his face from you that he will not hear, that he will not give you a hearing, a child of God. But because of iniquity, we don't have that hearing that we should have legally because we're harboring sin. So Lord, search us, wash us and cleanse us. And Lord, fill us afresh with the Holy Spirit. Oh, God, fill us afresh with the Holy Spirit. Lord, we pray those words of that hymn. It's brought to my mind, Lord, that hymn, Father, that we've done many times in churches over the years. Oh, breath of life come sweeping through us. Revive the church once again. Oh, breath of life come flowing through us. We need revival, Lord, once again. And Father, we just pray in a fresh way today for the breath of life, for the spirit of the living God, for you to work through us and upon us and promise, Lord, and in us in Jesus name. Father, I pray these words because you're worthy of the cry of our heart these days. Oh, breath of life come sweeping through us. Revive thy church with life and power. Oh, breath of life come cleanse, renew us and fit thy church to meet this hour. Oh, wind of God come, bend us, break us, so humbly we confess our need. Then in thy tenderness remake us, revive, restore, for this we plead. Oh, breath of love come breathe within us, renewing thought and will and heart. Come, love of Christ, afresh to win us. Revive thy church in every part. Oh, heart of Christ, once broken for us, tis there we find our strength and rest, our broken contrite hearts now soulless, and let thy waiting church be blessed. Revive us, Lord. Is zeal abating while harvest fields are vast and white? Revive us, Lord. The world is waiting. Equip thy church to spread thy light. Words of Mrs. B.P. Head. Father, we just thank you, and that's our prayer. In Jesus' high and holy and glorious name we pray thee as we turn to your word, Lord Jesus. Lord, speak. Father, as we start from time to time, and we time to time, we collectively pray together over your word. Lord, I claim and afresh your presence. I claim and afresh the promises of your word. And unto thee be all the glory and the honor and the praise for what you're going to do in the days and months and years to come. We do not call or come until you call or come. We pray these in Jesus' name. Lord, I pray fill me afresh with the Holy Spirit because I leak. We just thank you, Father, for these things. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You take your Bible and go to Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 40. It's a wonderful chapter, Isaiah chapter number 40. I'm just going to read, I'm going to refer to the whole, throughout the whole chapter, but I'm going to read verses 27 to 31. It says, Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest thou, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and justice due to me is passed away from my God. Have you not known, have you not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary? There is no searching, there's no lacking of his understanding. He gives power to the faint, and to those that have no might, he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. Powerful passage. G.K. Chesterton said, We do not want a church that will move with the world, we want a church that will move the world. I'll say that again. We do not want a church that will move with the world, we want a church that will move the world, said G.K. Chesterton. Samuel Chadwick, former principal at Cliff College in Sheffield, England, he wrote this, The church is helpless without the presence and power of the Spirit. The church is failing to meet modern needs, to grip the modern mind, and to save modern life. The church has lost the note of authority, the secret of wisdom, and the gift of power through its persistent and willful neglect of the Holy Spirit of God. Confusion and impotence are inevitable when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit of God. I want to read that again for me. Confusion and impotence are inevitable when the wisdom and resources of the world are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit of God. I want to add to that. Confusion and impotence are inevitable when the wisdom and resources of religiosity, of religion, are substituted for the presence and power of the Spirit of God. Chadwick also penned these words, the Spirit has never abdicated His authority nor relegated His power. Any church that is man-managed instead of God-governed is doomed to failure. A minister that is college-trained but not Spirit-filled works no miracles. The church that multiplies committees and neglects prayer may be fussy, noisy, enterprising, but it labors in vain and spends its strength for naught. It is possible to excel in mechanics and fail in dynamic. Did you hear that? Isn't that good? He said it's possible to excel in mechanics and fail in dynamic. There is a superabundance of machinery. What is lacking is power. Believe it, nowadays there's not even an abundance of machinery because many are at home. Can't even go to the symbol. Man can supply the energy, enterprise, and enthusiasm for things human. The real work of a church depends upon the power of the Spirit. He said the presence of the Spirit is vital and central to the work of the church. Nothing else avails. Apart from Him, wisdom becomes folly and strength weakness. He said scholarship is blind to spiritual truth till He reveals. Worship is idolatry until He inspires. Preaching is powerless if it be not a demonstration of His power. Prayer is vain unless He energizes. Human resources of learning and organization, wealth and enthusiasm, reform and philanthropy are worse than useless if there be no Holy Ghost in them. No Holy Spirit in them. The church always fails at the point of self-confidence. When a church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah. There's no Shekinah. Evangelists are given to interrupt the repose of the pulpit and to shake the world with the thunders of another. There's a book by George Ridout, Revival Blessings, Culpepper Lectures on Evangelism delivered at Asbury College in April, 1928. Like what Vance Havner used to say, he said that church, he said preaching should give either a charge or a shock, a charge or a shock. Whitfield said this, would ministers preach for eternity? They would then act the part of true Christian orators and not only calmly and coolly inform the understanding, but by persuasive pathetic address, endeavor to move the affections and warm the heart, to act otherwise bespeaks a sad ignorance of human nature and such an inexcusable indolence and indifference in the preacher as much constrained the hearers to suspect whether they will or not that the preacher let him be who he will only deals in the false commerce of unfelt truth. Whitfield used to say, I believe when you preach, you should preach a felt Christ. How true. Moody said, there are in the churches stores of unconsecrated wealth, unused or misused talent, multitudes at ease and Zion, witnesses who bear no testimony for their Lord, workers without the spirits conquering power, workers without the spirits conquering power, workers without the spirits conquering power. In case you missed it, workers without the spirits conquering power, teachers who speak without authority, disciples who follow far off, foreman's without life, church machinery substituted for inward life and power. D.L. Moody walked with God, a man surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. What this solemn assembly is about, it's about Jesus. It's not even about you and I, it's about Jesus. I recall years ago in the early eighties, living in the home of Richard O. Roberts, Wheaton, Illinois. And I remember every morning, I would hear his door open and close at 5 a.m. They go have his quiet time. Once a week, I believe it was on Thursday mornings, we had a men's prayer meeting in his, we called it his leather library, leather room there down at the store. He had a large bookstore there at the time and two warehouses, a hundred foot long each. And it sold to a seminary in California. And I was there packing all those books to be shipped to the seminary. And we also had once a month, all days of prayer. And his heart was so burdened for this solemn assembly. And he wrote the track back then, his gleanings and reading on the historic revival and how God has used that all over the world. I went to a solemn assembly one time on one occasion, won't say what state it was in. And it started with all this music that was praise and high praise and kind of happy clapping. There's a place for high praise, amen, I know that. But that's not a solemn assembly. A solemn assembly is a solemn assembly, assembly. You see the reason why churches have revivals today, doesn't just go back to Charles Finney. It goes back to Old Testament truth of having these three times a year, having solemn assemblies. The church needs to come together to have a season of brokenness and prayer and confession and repentance and putting your forehead right in the middle of your carpet in the altar area or the floor of your church and crying out to God. The church needs seasons and times. I do, we all of us do. Every speaker on this this weekend, we would all say, we all need this. The grounds level at the cross of Calvary. We need those solemn assemblies with God where we shut the doors. And we say, God, with your words, search me and know me. Try me and know, cleanse me by the blood of Calvary. I remember talking to Bill McLeod in Revival. The Canadian Revival broke out in his church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And we were talking on the phone about revival and sharing stories and it was a precious time to learn so much from him. We talked about the occasion when God laid on his heart. He said, I saw myself like in a vision in one of the big meetings. I saw myself in a casket right there on the front. He said, Lord, what are you trying to show me through that? He said, Bill, I'm simply showing you that if you will stay dead, I'll show you what I can do. Bill, if you'll stay dead, dead to self, I'll show you what I can do. Friends, how many times have we been in the beginnings of a moving of the spirit of God and our religiosity has touched the ark somewhere because someone didn't do exactly what we thought they should do. But we can't cross every T and dot every I that their theology isn't 100% like my theology. I think we get to heaven, we might realize angels laughed at some of our commentaries and how angels must weep at the division of the church and the squabbles and the fightings. And that is sin. When we love our doctrine more than we love Jesus himself, I saw the other day, some man put on Facebook, Jesus was a Calvinist. That is absolute heresy. There is no one above Jesus. There is no one that Jesus follows after. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus isn't Calvinist nor Arminian, he's Jesus. He's God in the flesh. That's how warped we get in some of our theological systems where it determines what the Bible we think the view of Jesus is in scripture and we define Jesus by our little system instead of just letting the word of God speak for itself. I don't know who needed that, but maybe someone did. Because what's happening is we're getting up in places and spouting up our little pet doctrines and we need to repent of the fact that we've made people fall in love with our system of theology and out of love and they've left their first love for Jesus. Whenever I see one, and I believe in theology from my table of contents to the maps in the back is the word of God. I believe in systematic theology according to the word of God that when we preach and live and minister in such a way where people fall in love with our theological system more than they are with Almighty God, the great commandment was not thou shalt love by that theology with all thy heart, soul, strength and mind and many I've seen they've made that their main thing. I watch him in ministry, I watch him. Where's the spirit of God? There's head knowledge, but where's the Holy Spirit? Where's the brokenness? Where's the authority? Where's the love for the saints? The preacher came and he had, which is repentance before God to me. But he loved his theology more than Jesus and he realized that was idolatry. Pharisees love their theology above Almighty God. It's idolatry. And until we, so to speak, take all of our sermon outlines and go to the trash barrel, the burn barrel as it were, throw them all in and light a match, we're not ready for revival. The Graham Organization, when they're contacted to do crusades, years ago when Billy was alive and active a lot, Sterling Newsom would ask the question to the gentleman he was talking to and inquiring about a crusade. He said, do you want a crusade or do you need a crusade? You see, because there's a big difference between wanting a crusade or wanting revival and being overwhelmed with a need for revival. As long as we just want revival in America, we're not gonna see it. I mean, God could sovereignly move, but until we get desperate before Almighty God, until we get a hold of the horns of the altar and lay hold of the horns of the altar in prayer and plead the promises of God, legally plead the promises of God, that's a whole nother time. Courtroom prayer, how to prevail, how to appeal to the judge of all the earth, it's transformed my whole life with the study of scripture on that topic, because I felt something missing, I knew something was missing in my life and God showed me from Isaiah, Psalm 77, I didn't know how to appeal to the judge of all the earth. Well, that changed. But God wants us to lay hold of the horns of the altar and cry out to him day and night, until, don't you love Hosea 10, 12, sow to yourselves in righteousness, weep in mercy, break up your fallow ground for it's time to seek the Lord until he comes and rains righteousness upon you. Powerful verse. This is all about Jesus. Not our pet theologies, not our denominations. I like what my mentor, my daddy in the faith used to say, traveling with him years ago, Dr. Stephen Alford, he said the thing about denominational ties, and I know God uses them and I have no problem with that. He said, if you go up, they blow off, if you go down, they burn off. The aspect of Jesus. I was in a church once and God broke out in revival, we went four months in meetings in that church. And I believe that God uses denominations, it doesn't have to be a sectarian, independent kind of thing. There were 12 tribes of Israel that set up camp around the tabernacle. By name, they were all different tribes, but they came and worked together during the day, and they went back to their tribe at night. You can be of a different tribe or denomination, but we can still work together, amen. For one goal and one purpose, the souls of men, the glory of God. Evangelism, revival. When revival is experienced, evangelism is the expression. If you don't evangelize, you fossilize. Many churches have fossilized because they stopped evangelizing. But they stopped evangelizing because they didn't know the power of presence of the Holy Spirit. They stopped living in absolute surrender to the Lordship of the Holy Spirit of Almighty God. This is all about Jesus. H.G. Wells, not a Christian at all, he said this, I am a historian. I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all of history. The focus of Isaiah chapter 40, it's all about Jesus. This book is the crib that carries the Christ. These two are wed and they were so parked just in the Bible and the drought in your heart. It's all about Jesus. Jesus said, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. That's what Jesus did. So we're gonna look for Jesus in the text of scripture today, amen? He said, comfort ye, excuse me, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tingly to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. For she has received the Lord's hand double for all of her sins. I mean, we could stop right there, couldn't we, church? Isn't that just powerful? What a blessing those words are to us. We have in the first verses of Isaiah chapter 40 in verses one and two, the mercy of God. Before we have the outward look, I want us to have the focus factor of who Jesus is. You may take focus factor with a little pill, but I want us to have a focus factor here in Isaiah 40 of getting our eyes off of mankind, off of a man, off of circumstances around us and get our eyes on Jesus. You know, image and vision, the focus factor, it was an upward focus of his mercy, verses one and two, of his glory, verses three to five. And the voice of him, the Christ in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord and make straight in the desert a highway for our God. You see, there's something you and I need to do in preparing the move of God. The reason why maybe some of us don't have a move of God or haven't seen it yet, is we've not obeyed the instruction of the Holy Spirit somewhere in our past to get ready for a move of the Spirit of God. If the Spirit of God came to any church in America right now, are we ready for that? You see, when God comes in revival, when you've been in the move of God, that's gone for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, after about the second week, the novelty of revival kind of wears off in a sense, not the glory of God, but through being enamored with revival and you realize it's agonizing prayer. You see, that's how a move of God is birthed. I'm not persuading God to do something he hasn't already provided me in heavenly places. I know that. It's not persuading God to put it in my account in heaven. You and I know that, it's already in our account in heaven. The agonizing of prayer is simply how God births what his will is in heaven, making it visible here on earth. Go tell your wife when she's having a baby, now, honey, don't scream, don't agonize, because in the sovereign will of God, it's already provided and you don't have to agonize at all. You're already pregnant. She knows she's pregnant, buddy. The agony isn't to get pregnant, the agony is birthing the baby. And we are in America, we're getting so far away from the travail of prayer that the scripture talk about. Paul, travail is a woman in birth. The prayers of Jesus, and the spirit was upon him without measure. He wept night and day, Hebrews says. He cried out with strong crying and tears. We've gotten a subtle arrogance in the church that we don't have to confess sin anymore, because it's all dealt with at Calvary. It is. Doesn't 1 John say, and if you have sinned, they shall be forgiven you. I know legally it's done. The prayer isn't for it to be legally done. That was done at the cross of Calvary. It's practically applied. That's what the prayer is for. Come on, somebody say amen. We've gotten back to what the old saints knew of, crying out and agonizing and travailing. The covenant promises of the word of God. Like I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. I'll pour my blessing upon thy seed, my blessing upon your offspring. We've gotten away from calling to me and I will answer you and show you great mighty things which you don't know. We've gotten away from repentance, five of the seven churches in the book of Revelation, repent, do the first word, repent, and go back. Folks, we gotta get real with this thing on revival. We gotta get real with this thing on repentance and actually repenting. It's so easy. I know my own nature. It's so easy to talk about repentance. It's so easy to talk about the need for prayer. How much time, and I don't say this to criticize anybody else. I point the finger here first. How much time do we literally take to get on our knees at the side of our couches or beds or chair of that desk? I know there are some elderly that can't do it. I know there are those that have knee problems and can't do it. I'm talking to those that are using those two excuses and their excuses. When's the last time we dropped on our knees for this cause, I bow my knees and with the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according, and it goes on, I won't quote it. To be strengthened with might by his spirit and the inner man, that Christ be drawn to the earth by faith, et cetera. When's the last time we dropped on our knees like Paul, like Jesus? God doesn't need you and I falling on our knees. He doesn't need anything. We need to do that. See, he didn't talk about it. Praying patiently on the side of his bed with two wooden grooves in the wooden floor where he walked back and forth. He agonized in prayer on his knees. I've been to the home in Washington, Georgia, where Ian Bounds lived. I've been to the very room because I had a friend of mine back there in Georgia. He's home with the Lord now, I believe. He led the son of Ian Bounds to Jesus when he was way up in years. This was many years ago. And this brother, he's passed away now. But I recorded the story of how he led Ian Bounds' son to Jesus. Ian Bounds' son wasn't even a believer till his dying days. And to my knowledge, Ian Bounds' daughter never came to faith in Jesus Christ. But you can go to that house in Washington, Georgia, and the son, he was with us. He was with me and I went in here, we were together. He showed us the room that his son said, daughter said, that's where daddy used to always go and pray. So I went in that little room at the top of the stairs right there, and I looked all over the floor. You might do the same thing. I looked all over the floor, trying to find somewhere in the floor, maybe some marks where his knees used to bend in prayer all the time. I walked into the Methodist church in Georgia that Ian Bounds pastored from the Civil War area. And I walked in what was the study at the time of the 1860s. I looked all over that floor, trying to find maybe a mark somewhere where the desk was or where maybe he knelt and prayed. You read about people like Billy Graham and how he prayed to fall on his knees before crusades. My mentor in the faith, Stephen Oldford, who was dear friends with Mr. Graham, he'd tell stories about times with Billy. He'd tell stories about times with Duncan Campbell as he would sit on the floor at the feet of Evan Roberts. And Evan Roberts would talk about the Wellester Revival. I remember Dr. Oldford and, I'm off track, but I'm not off track, amen, it's all right. I remember Dr. Oldford telling me when he said, sat at the feet of Evan Roberts and there were X marks on his face from years of prayer. He said, while they were talking, he said, all of a sudden, Evan Roberts stood up and walked upstairs and disappeared. Stephen Oldford said, I just sat there on the floor waiting. I wasn't gonna go anywhere. I didn't know what was, but I had an idea. I think he said it was that two hours later, Evan Roberts came back down. His eyes were swollen from having been weeping and praying, tears to his eyes. And he sat back down and they continued on in their conversation. The 57 New York Crusade and Billy Graham was there preaching and Stephen Oldford was meeting with Billy every day at four o'clock and they were working on, he was helping them work on his sermons. I remember hearing Billy Graham, watching Billy Graham on video, preaching at 57 and Yankee Stadium. I heard that sermon and I thought, man, some of that just sounds like Stephen Oldford. That's something he would write or say. And sure enough, I learned. They got together every day at four o'clock. So I went over Billy's sermons and added to it. But in that crusade, Billy Graham and Stephen Oldford were out on the deck outside the hotel room. And Billy said, Stephen, something's not right. I don't feel the burden in prayer like I normally feel for the Crusades. He said, pray for me. He said, we went into prayer. He said, all of a sudden, Billy Graham began crying out to God in prayer. He said, Stephen Oldford said, I was about embarrassed to even be near him. There was such an agony of soul in Billy Graham as he prayed and cried out to God. Dr. Oldford was a man of prayer. He'd go somewhere to preach or minister. If you're in a hotel room next to him, you can hear next door. You would hear him at two o'clock in the morning crying out to God for power to preach the service the next morning. Charles Stanley once said, it's impossible to stay up late at night watching Saturday Night Live on Saturday nights and to preach with the anointing of the Holy Spirit on Sunday morning. You see, we talk about Fannie Crosby and all the songs she wrote, and she was blind. While medication arrives when she was a baby, she was blinded. Fannie Crosby, the first woman to ever speak to Congress. Somebody once said to Fannie, Fannie, don't you wish you could go back and rebuke the woman who put that wrong medication in your eyes as a baby? She said, oh no, I would hug her and thank her. Someone else said to her, Fannie Crosby, they said, don't you thought you've missed out on seeing people because of their blindness? She said, oh no. She said, don't you realize, she said, that when I get to heaven, the first face I will see will be the face of my Jesus. You see, we're not gonna see revival. It's who we are so hungry to see Christ only, always. Christ in our homes, Christ in our churches, for the glory of God to come back to our services. To where as you even try to start the service, people are there early and they flip the altars before the service even begins, not because they were told to, but because there's that drawing power of the Holy Spirit of Almighty God that draws people unto himself. Services where when you praise him or however you do music in your church, where there's such a moving of the spirit of God in worship that people spontaneously start coming to the altars, coming to the front of you. If you have no altar, it doesn't matter. It's amazing how when the spirit of God moves, people are drawn to the front of a church building and on their knees. They'll have to watch for that burning bush of revival. I call it the burning bush of revival. You know the story well. Moses, the backside of the desert. 40 years, Moses became something. 40 years, God showed Moses he was nothing. Then 40 years, God used Moses. On that backside of the desert, he saw that burning bush. He knew it was different. It wasn't normal. It burned, but it wasn't consumed. And the word says that he turned to inquire. And when he turned to inquire, that's when God spoke to him. Take your shoes off to the place you're on this holy ground. And God gave him instruction on what to do. Preacher, when you're in a service, you've been crying out to God for revival. I urge you, don't miss the burning bush in your church service. Don't miss the burning bush when you're gathering together. There's a song going and there's a worship song and maybe it's in the blood of Jesus. We sang a lot in the blood of Jesus in the days and places where I've been where God's come in revival. Like much of the blood of Jesus. We'll talk about that later. While you're leading or while they're worshiping, all of a sudden, you see someone and God just breaks them sitting over here. A lady over here somewhere, they begin weeping in brokenness. And you know, God's really meeting with them in a great way. That's when you say, could some of you ladies just gather around this dear lady over here and just love on her and pray with her. Could some of you ladies just come over and do that? That's your burning bush. That's your burning bush. All of a sudden, a man over here, the same thing happens to him. And he breaks in repentance, overwhelming. And you haven't even preached yet. But maybe you are. And you say, could some of you ladies go and gather around this man over here and just pray for him? Just be there. Before you know it, it begins happening all over the church. Because the spirit of God has come and you've honored the Holy Spirit in the moving of his hand in that church service. But everyone that, if you've preached before, you know sometimes that window of opportunity to be so small of your obedience. How many of us have overshot an invitation? Or we overshot a sermon. We should have quit 20 minutes ago. And we missed the burning bush of revival. May we stay dead to self. Inquire by observation what God's doing in the service. And as soon as you turn to it in your soul, in your spirit, the spirit of God will prompt you as to what to do next. Just do it. Just obey God. And leave all the results to him. A vision of Jesus, his mercy, his glory. Isaiah 40, verses three to five. The messenger Isaiah predicts the ministry of John the Baptist, the message. John causes us to repent in preparation for the glorious appearing of the Messiah. You and I in the glorious appearing of God in revival. God's eternality, God's word stands forever. The word of the Lord stands forever. His gentleness, God will treat his own with the same tenderness the shepherd displays for his flock. God's omnipotence, he's master of all of nature, verses 10, 12, and 26. God's omniscience, he knows and understands all things and needs no one to counsel or advise him. His sovereignty, the Bible says there are all nations, 15 to 17, are as a drop in the bucket, as dust on the scales to him. Revival isn't too hard for Jesus. The moving of the Holy Spirit isn't too hard for God. He's not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. He said the fields are white already in the harvest. He said the answer is pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest. Beloved, be not weary in well-doing, for in due season you shall reap if you think not. Don't quit, don't give up, God isn't dumb. There's the upward focus, the inward focus. Man getting weary and tired down there. He gives power to the faint. Israel had a problem there. And they'd apparently forgotten God, his wonderful attributes. All that is before that, they'd forgotten about who God is. So in this solemn assembly, Isaiah 40 reminds us of who God is. This is the God upon whom we call. This is the God to whom we repent. And crowd unto him in brokenness and hungering and thirsting for him. Just him, we're seeking him. We're not seeking revival, amen. We're seeking Jesus. We're not seeking revival. The byproduct is revival. The byproduct is the manifest presence of God. We know the omnipresence of God. We just mentioned that here in the text here. The old sayings talked about the omnipresence of God. And secondly, they talked about the cultivated presence of God, which is your quiet time and your daily prayer, your time when the word of God, when God meets you and speaks to you. But the third thing they talked about was the manifest presence of God. You see, many acknowledge the omnipresence of God. They acknowledge the cultivated presence of God, but they wanna stop right there. Doesn't the Bible say that the glory of the Lord will cover the land? Doesn't the Bible say the spirit of the Lord shall come upon you? And just because he comes in you, like New Testament truth teaches, it doesn't mean he will cease coming upon you as well. Does it say anywhere in the New Testament that because he comes in you, he will no longer come upon you? No, it's nowhere. That's nowhere to be found. But here's the beautiful truth. When you and I live from the indwelling anointing of the Holy Spirit of God, then we experience the manifest presence of Almighty God. You see, it takes the blood of Jesus to know the manifest presence of God. There's the inward faith, but I wanna say this right now before I go any further. I'll never forget God's giving truth from his word. I got two Bibles here, one here and one here. But God gave him truth from his word with Moses. God said, when I see the blood, I will pass over you in Exodus. That's the same word for pass over used in Isaiah for a hen hovering over her little chicks. God began to show that if you wanna see the manifest presence, if you wanna see my presence, David, if you wanna see my presence in revival, he said, it's in my manifest presence. But how do you know the manifest presence of God? Well, humbleness attracts the manifest presence of God. We don't say, Lord, I fast three times a week. Oh, Lord, I've done this so many times. You know how subtle pride is. I am guilty of it. I, maybe you're not, I am. I'm guilty of saying something. I can insert something somewhere into a conversation. Well, I've read the Bible 35 times. And I can keep on going, not realizing was that pride? On the other hand, there's people that will falsely accuse you of pride because you have a large library. Oh, look at that proud person there. They got that big life. They think there's something else. No, they're just a Pharisee. You know what beauty of a large library is? Here's the beauty of a large library. When you've been on the road traveling and preaching and ministering, those of you that are itinerant, you know what I'm talking about. And those of you that are single, like myself, single, never married, you know what I'm talking about. When I come home to my library, I look at those books. I see all those names, Watchman Nee, Arthur W. Pink, Matthew Henry, Lightfoot, on and on and on. I'm reminded of all of the saints of God that have gone before me. It's almost like you look at that book on yourself and you take your Bible and all the people of scripture, they're saying, keep going, don't quit. Keep working for the master. Keep serving Jesus. It's like you got your own little cheerleading squad all around you to encourage you that they've shed blood, they've shed tears, they have swept in ministry for years and they've already met the master. But they're saying to you through those books, for me, they're saying as it were to me, and I don't hear voices, I don't mean that, but they're saying, we've run the race. We've run the race, don't you quit. Pastor, God is saying to you right now, don't quit. Don't quit. We've run the race, don't quit. Listen to these statistics. 97% of pastors have been betrayed, falsely accused or hurt by their trusted friends. 70% of pastors battle depression. 7,000 churches close each year. And I think probably more in this year now because of COVID. 1,500 pastors quit every month. 10%, only 10% that began in ministry, maybe out of seminary or as young men, only 10% by the statistics will retire as a pastor. 80% of pastors feel discouraged. 94% of pastors' families feel the pressure of the ministry. 78% of pastors have no close friends. Did you hear that? 78% of pastors have no close friends. And one reason why is they've been betrayed a lot. There's a lot of pastors' wives, they may not have a real close friend because they may be shared with someone and before they got home, it was on the six o'clock news. Come on, somebody. 90% of pastors report working 55 to 75 hours a week, resource week, distilled from barn and others. 1,500 pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout or contention in their churches. 50% of pastors' marriages will end in divorce. 80% of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastor. 50% of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way. No other ways of making a living. Come on, somebody. Am I looking at someone right now that that's where you are? You say, David, if I could financially do it, I would leave the ministry. Can I encourage you? My brother, what you and I need, what we need is Isaiah 6, revelation of Jesus. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a simple question? What has to die or what has died in your life? What has to die before you have a revelation of Jesus? It's not taken away from the death of Uzziah, who had understanding and the visions of God as long as he saw the Lord, God bade him to prosper, Chronicle says. He says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. Let's just stop right there for a minute. I'll finish Isaiah 41, and we're praying off and on, and you've got about 25 minutes left. Think about that. In the year that King Uzziah died, what has died in your life in ministry? What person you love has died? December 31st, 2019, praying in the new year, all along with the Lord, the God laid on my heart, there were gonna be a lot of significant deaths in 2020. I had no idea so many would pass away as we've seen this year. I remember when my mentor Stephen Alford died. February 21st, when Billy Graham died. We're home to be with Jesus. Adrian Rogers, when he died. All these men and women have gone around the nation when they died. But beloved, that doesn't mean that you and I quit. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. Can I encourage you, my friend, that what we need, what you and I need, what you need right now is simply a fresh revelation of Jesus? That will transform one moment with that fresh revelation of Jesus and the cross and his power to save and deliver and the revelation of Jesus and the word, verses one and two, comfort my people. Be comforted. One moment with Jesus transforms everything. Yeah, Isaiah had that. He was living in a very corrupt society. Woe unto them that call evil good and woe unto them that call good evil. That's where we are today. And then all of a sudden, he was in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died. He was wandering through, heartbroken over Uzziah. They were good friends. Uzziah died the last 12 years of his life. He was a leper because he treated as common the holy. He said, I saw also the Lord, highly for that. And his glory filled the temple. We need to see him in a sovereign power and glory. Amen, church. Ask God for that. Let's right now just pray that right now. There's someone that needs to pray right now. Will you pray with me, Lord Jesus? I pray and we pray right now for a fresh revelation of Jesus. Lord, you gave it to Evan Roberts. Lord, Paul had a fresh revelation of you. Lord, everyone I've ever seen you use mightily and significantly, Lord, they can all point back to what they had, a fresh revelation of Jesus, of Jesus. Lord, I pray for those watching right now. I ask you, Lord, by your grace, that even as they put their eyes upon Isaiah 6 later on, that they will have time, Lord Jesus, to say, oh God, Jesus, I pray right now for a fresh revelation of you. Father, give me a fresh revelation of Jesus. Evan Roberts did sitting in Mariah Chapel when he saw that cross on the wall. He talked earlier about God committed this love toward us. He said, I didn't see much to commend. That wasn't his words, but that was the gist of it. Until Evan Roberts had a fresh revelation of the cross of Calvary, a fresh revelation of the blood and the power of the blood of Jesus that we draw near by the blood of the Lamb of God. When I see the blood, I will hover over you. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, he sees in the light. We have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, goes on present tense, cleansing us from all sin. That biblical truth of the Old Testament with Aaron and even lepers, they'd go to the priest to be consecrated and they would take blood and put on the right toe, my direction, the right thumb, my occupation and the right earlobe, my perception. He would apply blood on the right toe, the right thumb and the right earlobe, my direction, my occupation and my perception. But the beauty of the love is this, on the blood, on that blood, he would apply oil on the toe, on the thumb, on top of the blood on the thumb and on the earlobe. And here's the beautiful principle that where the blood of Jesus cleanses, the spirit of God anoints. Where the blood of Jesus cleanses, the spirit of God anoints. So in walking with the continual cleansing of the blood of Jesus, you and I can walk with the continual empowerment of the anointing of the Holy Spirit of Almighty God because as the blood flows, the spirit flows. Come on somebody, say amen. Lay hold of that church, lay hold of that. I know sometimes you've been saying, oh God, I've been toiling all night and I've caught nothing. And you say, Lord, I don't even know where the other side of the boat is to catch the net. How many have been there? Come on somebody. And you fall on your knees in desperation and brokenness or on your face and say, God, I don't even know where the other, I can't even see the other side, oh Jesus. And he takes you to a deeper death than you've ever known in all of your life. Don't be clouded to say, God, I wonder sometimes after praying, I felt so violent and clean in the holy presence of God. When I opened my eyes, I literally thought I might see someone throwing dirt down on top of me, being buried in a grave. Oh, wretched man that I am, who should deliver me from the body of this death? That wretched death literally means weary from exhausted labor. You've been trying to do the right thing, trying not to do the wrong thing. And he said earlier, how to perform that which is good, I find not. The answer is not merely in the word how, the answer is in the who. Later on in Romans seven, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I know it's a question, but it's also my beloved, the answer. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord, Jesus the Savior, Christ the sanctified, my Lord, the sovereign, and coming to absolute surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, where the blood of Jesus cleanses the spirit of God anoint. Isaiah, I saw also the Lord high and lifted up, and his glory filled the temple, to see the sovereignty of God, to see the service of God. And the seraphim with six wings, with two they covered their feet, with two they covered their face, with two they did fly. The servants of God, with two they covering their feet, speaks of my dependence upon Jesus. With two they covered their space, speaks of humbleness before Jesus. And with two they did fly, speaks of obedience to Jesus. Dependence, humbleness, obedience, dependence, humbleness, obedience, dependence, humbleness, obedience, in being in the presence of God, may we know and experience afresh the grace of God, the grace of dependence, the grace of humbleness, and the grace of dependence. And beloved as that eagle, we're gonna get to it, as that eagle, the eagle doesn't flap around trying to get off the ground like a lot of other birds. They wait and they expect the currents of the winds of the high mountains, and they simply stretch out their wings and the wind catches them up and lifts them to the greater heights. Friends, quit flapping your wings, amen, and just stretch your arms of faith out, your wings of faith out, and let the wind of God lift you in the eternal outbursts of the spirit of the living God to the heights of heaven. Isaiah came under conviction, woe is me for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, oh, there it is. I saw also the Lord, for my eyes have seen the King. And he said, woe is me for I am undone. In today's vernacular, what he was saying was, woe is me, because I'm one of these percentages here. You say, I am so tired of trying. Someone says, bless your heart, someone says, I'm so tired. I'm so tired of praying for revival. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. And you say, I've been praying for decades and I get so tired. Can I encourage you? It says right there, that passage about being weak, about being tired in Isaiah 40. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. Isaiah, I'm undone. I heard Crawford Laris one time speaking in Memphis, Tennessee, with the Oldford Center. He said, the problem with media, which is we're not undone enough. Let me ask a question. Are you seeing souls getting saved in your church and your ministry? The word says, the fields are wide already in the harvest. Is it God's fault then? Folks, let's just get honest. You and I, we may say, oh, I'm filled with the Holy Spirit of God. And you may have a different opinion, depending as you call the evidence of that. But I asked you the question, are you seeing this? Are you witnessing? Are we witnesses? I don't mean just theoretically. I don't mean sitting in our chairs. I don't mean sitting behind the desk. I don't mean preaching by what someone used to call the coward's castle, the pulpit. I mean, is there a spontaneous overflow in my life and your life? And I remember the day the Holy Spirit convicted me. You say you're walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, but you haven't overflowed to tell someone about me in a week. You're not full of the Holy Spirit then. Oh, that was an eye opener to me. And beloved, some of us need to get honest about this. That when my behavior in my life is a contradiction to what I'm actually saying or what the word teaches, it's not God's fault. It's you and I. That's why we have this solemn assembly. Examine yourselves and see whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know you're not your own selves, because that's how the Jesus Christ is in you lest you be reprobates failures. But I don't say that to discourage the discouraged. Say to encourage. Because you say from tongues and a live call from off the altar, the revelation we must see, the confession we must say, the commission we must hear, the AB Simpsons outline is a woe, lo and go. Woe, woe is me, I am undone. Lo, and if you've taken away your sin of purge, go and tell. He applied the coal to his lips. I don't know about you, but maybe all of us need to pray more lately as my burden has been for my life. Lord, several times in scripture, your word talks about you've touched the lips of people, Ezekiel, Isaiah. Can we just pray today? Lord, touch our lips afresh. Touch our lips afresh, Lord Jesus. Father, I pray that right now. Cleanse our lips and emblazon our lips in Jesus' name. Oh, beloved, God wants to bless you. God wants to bless his people. God is more willing to bless us to move in the mighty outpouring of the spirit that we're willing to trust him and believe him for it. Amen. Maybe you have a legal case against you in the court of heaven. You see, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. It doesn't mean he's deaf and can't hear. It means he won't give you a hearing. You're standing there, you have an advocate, but if there's sin in your life, you're blocked off, your prayer life. That's why you have to silence the devil by confessing sin, because he's wanting to accuse you before almighty God. Day and night revelation says that when sin has been confessed and cleansed, it gives you and I that confident, bold access in prayer to approach the throne of grace and cry out to God, claiming the word of God and the promises of God and all of our legal documentation here to pray. And we argue our case with him right here. And then God gives us the answer to prayer. Lord, your iniquity is taken away and your sin is purged. It's power in the blood of the lamb. Then he heard the voice of God, the trinity talking, who will go for us? He's gone. And he said, here am I, send me. Wow, he heard the voice of God after he knew the power of the blood of cleansing. And God fitted his man for the service he called him to. How long, Lord? Until, until. These last 10 minutes, we're gonna please Isaiah 43, one of the examples of other places. He said, the everlasting God, verse 28, Elohim, the Lord Jehovah, the self existing one, the covenant name for God, the creator of the ends of the earth, by wrath to shape, fashion, create, always with God as a subject. That's who we're praying to here. He can shape and form and fashion and create. He faints not to grow weary, to be fatigued to faint. Neither is weary, toil, labor, growing weary. No lack of his understanding. That means he's intelligent. There's no lack of his intelligence, understanding, discretions, and reasonings. He understands and knows everything. That's who we're praying in the promise that if they learn to abide in Christ, God will renew their strength, allowing them to mount up with wings as eagles. He gives power, to give means to yield produce, to ascribe, to appoint, to assign, to designate. God has an assignment for you that nobody else can fulfill. God has prescribed you to do something that no one else can do. I love your preaching too, Tim. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. That word there, workmanship, in the letter was poema. It's poem, we get the word poem from it. You know, you're a God's thing of beauty created in Christ Jesus, created in Christ Jesus. Whoever believes into him, Ace, John 3, 16. He has power to make firm. He gives the capacity to act, understood both in physical and figurative terms. By extension, the word comes to come up, general ability to cope with situations. He gives this power. Faint means fatigue there. No might, no generative power. He increases, to be or become much. To be or become many, to be or become numerous. He increases strength, his power, might, a force that has potency to accomplish its intended ends or purposes. God has promised to give us the power of the force to fulfill his intended purposes for your life and mine. The faith factor, but then to wait upon the Lord, to be intertwined with, to hope for, to hope in. Co-death, co-burial, co-resurrection. Bonhoeffer said he died in the Nazi hands, explained the focus of his own life. He said this, when God calls a man, he bids him come and die. But James Calvert, the great Methodist missionary, went out to preach to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands. The captain of the ship sought to dissuade him. You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages. Calvert only replied, we died before we came here. My, my. The fullness factor, so renew their strength. To pass on or away, to pass through, to pass by, to go through, to grow up, to change, to go into form. Here it means power and might, to renew the potential, to exert force in performing such function. So renew their strength. I wanna add right here the process that eagles go through. It's a very difficult process. Golden eagle, they've seen some up to 30,000 feet. Their wings can span from eight to 10 feet. The females are larger in size than the males are. They only build their nests up on the high rocks. I'll only say this, the golden eagles, golden eagles, the eagles talk about here in scripture, rather, they only eat fresh food. They don't eat dead things, unless they're very, very, very desperate. There's a lot of Christians eating on dead issues, and they need to feed on Jesus, feed upon the word. When the old eagle, we're talking about here, when they get sick, they lie on the rock up on the high mountain, spread their wings out, and they stare straight into the sun. You know that we as believers, we get spiritually sick at times, we need to stare, get along with God and stare straight into the sun and get our eyes fixed on Jesus. And there's a healing process from the sun into the life of the eagle, where Jesus is our healer. But that eagle that could soar at high speeds, and they have 200 pounds of pressure per square inch in their talons and their claws, later in life, they go through what's called a molting stage. A pastor years ago, a man was preaching at a church in North Carolina. A man came to him and he said, you didn't talk about the molting stages, I don't know anything about it. He said, well, I'll take you and show you. And he took him up the next day, high up in the mountains, the dirt road as far as they could go, onto a trail up to a high mesa area. He looked down across to this high flat valley, but high up in the mountains. And he said, what are those crosses doing down there? He said, well, count them, and he counted them. He counted 29 crosses. He said, what are they? He said, what are those ugly birds on the ground over there next to them? He said, those are eagles. Those are golden eagles, not the bald eagle, the golden eagle. He said, well, what's wrong with them? He said, they're going through a molting stage. He said, well, what does that mean? He said, well, they go through a stage in life where they lose all their feathers. Their claws aren't sharp, their eyes aren't as clear as they used to be. They can't hunt because as they would try to hunt, their tail would whistle, it would scare the rabbit away. And they come up here for the molting stage. But look up there on the cliff of that rock. There was another beautiful golden eagle up there. And he began diving down toward these eagles on the ground. He said, oh man, he's gonna hurt him. He said, no, no, watch what he does. He dived down and he would drop fresh meat at the feet of those three eagles going through the molting stage. And the guide would say quietly in his breath, oh, turn eagle, turn eagle, you gotta eat that food. You gotta eat that fresh meat. Turn, eat that meat or you will die. So it was a wonderful day. And the guide said, come back at such and such a time when we'll come back up here again. They did, back at the same place. He said, count the crosses. He began to count the crosses. He had 29, 30, 31. I thought there was 29 before he said there was. He said, wasn't there three eagles down there that were molting? He said, there was. He said, but look up there on that rock up there. He said, yeah. He said, that's the third eagle that was molting down there. The eagle does nothing wrong in the molting stage. They didn't do something wrong, but they go through this stage. Just part of life. He said, but that eagle you see up there. He said, remember the one eagle that turned to eat the food that was dropped to him? He said, yeah. He said, that's him. The two other crosses are the two eagles that did not turn and they died for lack of strength. They wouldn't eat. And they died. And I'd go down and I'd bury them when they died. Beloved, maybe that's you today. Maybe you're in a molting stage. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. He will make your strength as the young eagles. You have racked your brain. You have asked God to search you. You say, Lord, is there some sin in my life that I've done as to why I'm going through this stage of my life? And God says, no, no, you can't find anything. And you've maybe become morbidly introspective. But beloved, it may be that God has taken you through a sanctifying process of a molting stage where your vision isn't what it once was. Your talents aren't what they used to be. You can't fly like you once did. You can't go to the heights like you used to. But don't lose hope. God has taken you through a molting stage, a season even now where it is a solemn assembly. You've become solemn. You can't do what you once did. He has set you down. He's made you still because he's taken you through a molting stage. I encourage you, when people call you and give you scripture, receive it. When you open that word of God, you begin to pray and seek the face of God. Receive it. Stay in the word and keep your face in the word of God. And after a while, those feathers begin growing back again, so to speak. Your talents get strong again. Your eyes become clear again. One of this time now, when you fly after the molting stage, you can soar higher than you've ever soared in all of your life. Your eyes are more clear and sharper than they ever were in all of your life. You have more strength than you ever have in all of your life. You made it through the molting stage. I believe there's someone right now watching, and you're going through a molting stage. I want to encourage you, they that wait upon the Lord, if you look at that verse in verse 31, they shall mount up. Mount up, not flap up. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Now, let me say that again. They shall run and not be weary. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall, but not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. It's a promise, they shall. They shall. They shall. You shall. You shall mount up with wings as eagles. I remember sitting in the car with Brother Bill Stafford. He's home with the Lord now. About three years ago, maybe four years ago, we're fellowshipping and laughing and talking together. I said, brother, I can't explain to you what's happened in my life. I said, I feel like I'm on the edge of an eagle's nest and I've launched out. And all this carry me is the wind of God. He laughed, he said, amen, brother. That's it, that's it, that's it. You see those little baby eagles when they grow, the mother eagle sits on the side of that eagle's nest and she fans her wings down into the nest so they get used to the currents of the wind of God. God's been fanning you in your life of ministry in many ways, getting you used to the currents of the wind of God. Comes a day though, that eagle has to get up on the side of that nest. And getting up on the side of that nest, if they don't jump off, mama knocks them off. They go flailing down. Daddy knows what to do. He dives down and he catches that baby eagle on his shoulders and takes that eagle back up to the nest again. Doesn't the word say he bore you as on eagle's wings? You see some people in your life, let me tell you this. Your heavenly father can fly faster than your babies can fall. Apply that wherever it fits. Your heavenly father can fly faster than your babies can fall. Parents, your father can handle it. Creature, your father can handle it. Ma'am, your father can handle it. Church, our father can handle it. Let's pray. Father, we bless your name, Lord Jesus. Let it wait upon the Lord. Shall be renewed and straight. Shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Lord, make this real, I pray, in our lives, moment by moment, day by day, as we bend our souls to you. You said, I will hear from heaven. I will give you a hearing. I will forgive your sins and I will heal your land. We pray these things, Lord, in Jesus' precious and holy name we pray, amen. God bless you.