"Are You Desperate for God?" - Robby Gallaty

[Music] amen good morning amen it's good to be here with you in person amen and joining us online anybody excited to worship let's give the lord a hand for our worship team this morning at gallatin as well it's so good to have uh you there and back as well in our chapel and many are joining us all over the country uh found out we have uh brandon from patterson louisiana joining us uh tanya from hendersonville scott from baldwin's baldwinsville new york and steve and patty from charlotte north carolina so just a few of them let's welcome them as well we praise the lord you hear as well uh today i want to talk about simply a question i want us to think about and the question is are you desperate for god are you desperate for god this summer i was really excited it brought me back to my childhood again as i got to relive all the memories from high school as i watched the last dance anybody with me anybody anybody excited about the last dance i was yeah well yeah the greatest team of all time i mean somebody tried to tell me about the lakers i'm like come on man really like like the greatest team of all time right six pete uh they won it six times three and then three again and it just brought me back to my my childhood right i got to see all the shoes and you guys know selfishly i got to relive all the shoes and the music brought me back but more importantly the commercials right anybody else wanted to be like mike growing up right my poor sister i thought back to those days my poor sister lori who's probably watching uh she had to watch michael jordan's playground which was a vhs tape and i'm not making this up at least 150 times poor lori watch this as we relive this time together one of the things i realized is that the greatest basketball team was capped by the greatest olympic team of all time the 1992 olympic team do you remember that team now i'm not talking about the team from the past 20 years i mean those were pretty good but i'm talking about the og team remember anybody with me here i'm talking about the greatest team ever i'm talking about these guys who played the game differently than today and i was watching this last dance episode of them if you remember going to france you remember this the bus pulls up and they're all on the bus and these people in france are literally losing their minds to just get like a glimpse of magic johnson and michael jordan and chris mullins and and all these guys and they were looking and it just reminded me of the excitement watch this of people to see basketball players and then i started thinking about the passage we're going to study today and i realized there probably was that same level of excitement not to see a basketball player but to see jesus like what we're going to see today is in the town of capernaum which was jesus's hometown we see a group of people so excited to see jesus that they are urgent and they are desperate to see jesus if you have a bible i hope you do turn with me to the book of mark in the new testament the book of mark in the new testament and we're going to talk about about what happens when jesus comes home and we're going to see that the crowd of people is so excited to just get a glimpse of jesus they are desperate to be in the presence of jesus and i wonder if we're that desperate for jesus today do you have this desperation to be in the presence of jesus two emotions i want you to notice as i read this text one of those emotions in the text is urgency the second emotion is desperation and i want you to kind of feel those emotions mark chapter 2 we like to say word here at long hollow and i know many of you have been saying it on your couch for months and months at home and some are going to say it even now right so if you're there at mark chapter two we love the word you could say word say it like you mean it amen amen thank you brother that's our staff member anyway chapter two verse one when he entered capernaum that's jesus again after some days it was reported that he was at home now i know what you're thinking but his home is nazareth why are we why are we talking about his home being capernaum capernaum was his home now in ministry this was his home base it'd be like me saying when somebody asked when we travel out of town where are you from i say hendersonville now i was born and raised in new orleans but i'm from hendersonville that's what jesus is saying this is my home base now it's capernaum so many people gathered together so much so that there was no more room not even in the doorway and jesus was speaking the word to them let's pray as we begin this morning lord my prayer simply has been for the last three weeks leading up to today that we would be desperate for you this morning that we would have an urgency in bringing our friends to you and we would expect you to move so god would you speak to us now we're listening we we need a fresh word from you so would you speak to us individually and personally we ask it in jesus name and everyone said amen all right let me give you the back story uh just leading up to this moment because it's important to understand the ministry of jesus so mark begins with jesus being baptized uh by john the baptist and so after jesus was baptized the devil or the spirit actually moves him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights it's a connection to the life of moses on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights but unlike moses and adam who were not victorious in the wilderness jesus emerges victorious he conquers the enemy to show that he is the perfect life that's going to give his body as a sacrifice for all okay so this is the beginning of jesus's ministry jesus goes to his hometown or his town he's living in of capernaum and he's going to have a healing service right he's at his his uh the mother-in-law's house of peter and all of a sudden the text says in verse 35 the whole town comes out and uh or 32 sorry the whole town came out they brought the sick and the demon possessed he healed many with various diseases and drove out many demons and he would not even allow the demons to speak and so jesus has this revival service picture like the whole town's there but apparently everybody didn't make it because apparently there are some other people who as we'll see just don't have the wherewithal to get there and so we see in this text something happens jesus is going to come back to capernaum a few days after the healing service and word starts to spread that he's back in town now jesus plants himself in the home to teach and here's what i want you to get don't think of a sermon like this when jesus taught it was more informal where he would sit on a stool and he would talk about the things of god and so he's in a home and the home is a home that holds about 40 people just wrap your mind around that 40 people max but jesus is here so every seat's out right like every corner of the wall is covered every place on the floor is consumed with people every crevice has a person even so much it says that the doorway was filled with people they're out into the street just imagine this place filled with people and people out in the street and there's no way to get in to see jesus and so all of a sudden the text says a paralytic man shows up look at verse look at verse three they came to him bringing a paralytic carrying by carried by four of them since they were not able to bring him to jesus because of the crowd they removed the roof above him and after digging through it they lowered the mat on which the paralytic was lying now apparently this man didn't make it to the revival healing service before so he convinces his friends to take him to see jesus now i want you to feel the weight of this long hollow this is a big ask it's a big ask why because there's no wheelchairs in the first century there's no motorized carts at walmart that every one of us wishes we can cruise around in from time to time can i get a name like but i'd be convenient they don't have those back then there are no crutches that he can walk on in order for this man to get across town to the home where jesus is staying he has to convince his four friends to carry dead weight through the heat through the town to the house where jesus is and so you think of the ask that he had but they agree they're like okay we'll do it so they pick this man up think of think of what it takes to take this man they carry him across town and their excitement to meet jesus turns to despair why because they can't get in like hey excuse me um we got a man here that really need man get out of here we want to hear jesus too right i mean that's kind of the scenario here so they start to look at one another like okay what do we do now like what do we do now and i wonder how many of us coming close would have turned around and gone home the first obstacle to get to jesus like that will go back but they don't do that because they realize if we don't see jesus we don't have hope like we got to get this man to the presence of g and we're going to do anything we have to do so they notice a set of stairs now this was not unusual in the first century because every home had a set of stairs that led to the roof don't think pitched roofs like we have today every home had a flat top roof and the reason they had a flat top roof and the reason there were stairs is to get up to the roof to sweep debris off the roof and to repair the roof so the roof was constantly in need of repair and the way the roof worked was they put a layer of sticks with a wooden beam over that and then they put mud and straw and tile and then they put more mud and more straw and more tile and they wet it and it formed like this brick-like substance so this was a thick roof here and so i imagine they take the paralytic they're like bumping into the wall they're trying to climb up the stairs with this man and then they get up to the roof and they're like okay now what like now what now i have to be honest with you at this point i'm probably checking out you know like okay you want to you want to tear this man's house up like really like like who's gonna pay for the cost of this thing like are we really going to do this now and i wonder get this how many of us at this point would have checked out they don't check out they say you know what we're going all in and they get on their hands and knees and you have to understand something that's interesting when they get on their hands and knees they have to unroof the roof not with a swiss army knife that they just happen to bring like nobody has a a leatherman in their backpack oh thank god you got the leatherman they don't have that nobody pulls out a shovel from their backpack they are literally i want you to picture it digging up the roof with their fingers they are scooping out the mud with their hands guess how long it takes on average to unroof the roof 45 minutes and so they start taking up the roof they're in desperation to see jesus feel the urgency i mean they are on their on their way they're on a mission to cg and they pull and i imagine jesus in the house you know he knows what's going on obviously and so all of a sudden jesus like you know what what you know what it's called like like a picture like like debris falling on jesus and head you know he's like still teaching about the kingdom of god and the breeze on his head and then finally the whole thing opens up and the man falls and they lower him right in front of jesus now i want you to see something pretty interesting notice what jesus says when he sees the man watch this verse 5. seeing look at the text seeing whose faith his faith their faith plural seeing their faith he says to the paralytic son your sins are forgiven now i thought pastor that in order for a person to be healed or saved they have to have individual faith in god so why is jesus saying i see their faith collectively as a unit the four friends maybe and the and the god why does jesus say this now let me give you the backstory jesus knows this guy believes because if he didn't believe he wouldn't let them bring him he mean that's a big deal for a paralytic they probably dropped him along the way his bones are probably fragile he could risk being hurt even more i mean it's a big deal so jesus assumes he believes but he goes on a limb and he says no but they believe too here's why think of the work it took to pick this man up to carry him across that palestinian heat and to the to the townspeople only to get to the crowd to realize there's no room and they don't turn away they're like no we're going to go to walk up the stairs to unroof the roof to lower this man down jesus says i know you believe but all you believe is well because if you didn't believe you wouldn't be here here's what jesus shows us come in close jesus shows us that faith always demonstrates itself in action but i thought faith was like an intellectual thing i thought i had to get all the facts right i thought i had to check all the boxes well that's part of it but true faith long hollow don't miss this always manifest itself into action amen like we always see faith into action so if you say you believe you should have action that follows your faith in all three gospels get this jesus says or the text says jesus saw their faith interesting it didn't say jesus gave him a pomp quiz in a theological exam just to make sure they had all the blanks filled it didn't say that it says jesus look at the text saw their faith so let me ask you a question today do you believe jesus is alive today do you believe that it's a question for you yes if you're at home yeah do you believe jesus can and i want you to really think about these questions do you believe jesus can save anybody today do you believe that do you believe that okay do you believe jesus can heal anybody if we bring someone to jesus do you believe that if you give them the jesus and they surrender their life to him do you believe jesus can heal anybody and redeem anybody today do you believe that yes i believe it too then why are you not bringing more people to jesus like if jesus is alive and jesus rose from the dead and jesus is present on earth today then why in the world do we not bring more people with problems to the solution to every answer they have amen and then the better question is this do you think jesus can save you today right yeah thank you do you believe jesus can heal you today do you believe jesus could change you today i asked the lord this week as i was meditating on this myself like why have you not seen personally full confession why have you not seen a mighty work of god in your own life recently that's what i asked the lord about me on your behalf obviously as well but i just asked the lord why haven't i seen like a mighty true move of god and the lord gave me a sobering reminder and here's what i felt like the lord impressing upon my heart it's because you're not desperate for me right you're not desperate for me anymore and here's the here's the problem i think with the church today is that the church believes in the transcendence of god on earth what i mean is that god transcends heaven and works on earth we believe that right we believe that that god still works on earth you just said you believe that but at the same time we neglect his presence or are complacent with his presence in our own life see it say it again we believe in the transcendence of god on earth we believe god's working he's here but at the same time we have become complacent to the presence of god in our life and i just want to submit to you today maybe that's the reason you're not seeing a mighty move of god in your life is because you're not desperate enough you with me there's no desperation for god we've become business as usual it's kind of mundane routine through through christianity here's what i find the further i remove myself from the day of my salvation the more complacent i can become anybody with me it's just business as usual sing a few songs read my bible memorize a few scriptures check a box long as i got my kids i'm good and i'm here to tell you there is more of god for us i want to give you two insights that i think we should consider as we study this passage you can write them down if you're taking notes i want to show you two insights i think are applicable for us number one is this your greatest need get this and we see this in the text your greatest need right now is for your sins to be forgiven that's your greatest need because you got to realize like like the man travels across town they go through all this work he is exhausted he finally gets in the presence of jesus the miracle worker the healer the one who cast out demons and healed the sick and set people free he is ready for jesus to move and what does jesus say son your sins are forgiven like people in the crowd have to say he ain't here for his sins to be jesus the man wants to walk right like that's why he's here like he doesn't want to be like if you were to ask the paralytic he would have said i want to get up from the ground i don't want this mat anymore but here's what jesus shows us i want you to get this there is a there is a deep connection long hollow watch this between physical healing and spiritual healing there is a deep connection here and what jesus is about to show this man is that yes i can heal you and i'm about to heal you but that's not your greatest problem because if i fix your temporary problem and not change your eternal trajectory you have a problem amen like what good watch this what good is it this morning for us to bring our concerns and issues to god physically and not ask him to work in our life supernaturally and spiritually now don't hear what i'm not saying i'm not saying your issues are not important because let's be honest we all have issues today we're dealing with here do me a favor put your finger on your wrist for a moment if you have a pulse you have a problem amen because you're human like we all if you're if you're beating you got a pro we all have issues right and i know these are real challenges for you like some of you have come with with financial challenges today like you're coming here and saying if i'm being honest pastor i'm challenged financially i'm challenged relationally right now i'm trying to work some things out with my family i'm dealing with depression if you're real right i mean if you're honest you're saying i live in somewhat of fear i'm in a place i never thought i would be right now so that is a challenge for me i don't know what the future holds in my life and my business my marriage if we're honest these past five months have been pretty strained my marriage is not what i thought so we have these real challenges i have a procedure coming up on nurse i have a health issue i'm these are real challenges these are real issues but jesus would say they fade in comparison to your spiritual need which is the forgiveness of the sins in your life see what good is it to have a to have a physical need met and you're able to walk and yet you spend eternity in a christless place what good is it if god heals you physically today but doesn't do something about your eternal destiny right what good is it jesus said if a man gains the whole world but loses his soul and so jesus shows us there's this inextricable connection between our spiritual life and our physical and here's one of the things the lord showed me recently that when we surrender our life to christ and ask him to take away this unforgiveness or this unforgiven sin in our life he begins to work supernaturally and invisibly where we can't see and it manifests itself in our life in the visible natural realm that's how god works right so we take a step of faith supernaturally and then god begins to work physically and visibly in our life and i can't help but think there are people right now who are saying that's me like that's me i have unforgiven sin in my life that i've been keeping secret and i haven't shared with anybody and i would like to offer that to god so here's what i want to do for just a moment i just want you to buy your head i just feel led to do this i think it's the right thing to do would you just buy your head for just a moment and i just feel like we should pray over this and pray about that and i'm going to pray right now for spiritual healing because jesus went to the cross as a perfect man and i know it's hard for us to like think about jesus being perfect because we're not perfect and we sin all the time but that's what separates jesus from every other religious figure on the planet is that he had no sin and he was able to offer us access to god and impute to us the righteousness of god in our life to give us who are sinners access to a sinless god and a perfect god and so so i'm going to offer that to you now would you just bow your head for a moment and as the lord searches your heart would you ask god right now what is the hidden sin the un forgiven sin maybe it's anger maybe it's animosity toward a person maybe it's pride maybe it's faithlessness maybe it's an addiction you're dealing with right now in your life maybe it's lust or or immoral feelings or an immoral heart that you i don't know what it is but would you cry out to the lord right now just say god would you cleanse me of my sin and remove unrighteousness in my life so i can have access to you not just not just for a place in heaven for eternity but god i want you to fill me with your presence to help me live today father i know there are many people who are who are watching us and who are joining us in person at gallatin in our chapel here at our hendersonville campus and they would say that's me you put your finger on the pulse of my my heart and that's me and i need god to grant me forgiveness god we think our greatest need is is a physical issue that we're dealing with but god that is that is a manifestation of a systemic issue below called sin and god would you heal us today so much so that we don't even look the same and you take the weight and the shame and the guilt away god it's as simple as praying to you and we don't have to have all the right words to say it's simply the motivation of our heart we ask it in jesus name amen hey listen one of the cool things about technology today is that what used to be the formal come forward invitation where you walk an hour and sign a card now has turned into a cell phone right so we're going to take that idol and maybe turn it into an altar amen for the glory of god so if you have a phone i want you to take it out for just a minute i want to give you this number this will be a number you use consistently so take your phone out this is a number where if at any time in your christian life or in your walk you want to take the next step toward the lord whatever it is you can type in next to that number and we have a team of people who will respond wherever you are we will respond and help you with resources to grow here's the second point i want to end with and this is the big one for us as a church body today a move of god you ready for this is always met with opposition always a true move of god is always met with opposition you have to realize when jesus forgives the man's sins who are the critics in the room you would think these are the guys who would support the ministry of jesus no the religious leaders are the one who are the most critical the most judgmental the most cynical the most condescending and then they'll go on for the rest of jesus ministry to correct him and disrupt him and to confront him in his ministry and what it shows me is this that any time the lord moves we're always going to have opposition from other people in our life and most of the opposition comes from intellects let's be honest you ever tried to convince an intellectual person about the things of god because what they always say is well i got to find out more information and if i can get more of my questions answered and when i figure out more about god then i'll surrender my life to christ and what i say to people like that is this listen brother if you could understand everything about god he wouldn't be a god you'd want to worship anyway amen like if i could figure out god then he wouldn't be a god i'd want to worship the fact that he is god and we don't understand everything is so refreshing because that's a god we'd want to worship amen like there's so much of god we don't know and i'm okay with that right but these intellectuals will give us the hardest time why because they critique and they say that's not of god and this is not of god but here's what i want you to see a move of god write this down is difficult to explain in human terms a true move of god because if you could explain a move of god in human terms it wasn't a move of god to begin with it was a move of man here's what i want you to understand aloha i'm at a place now in my personal life where i am desperate to see a move of god i really want to see god move i'm tired of playing games i'm tired of going through the re like i want to see a move of god where when god shows up the only thing we're able to do as a church is to bend down and take off our shoes and say i'm standing on holy ground like moses you with me like i'm talking about a move of god that instead of us questioning god when he shows up we begin to question ourselves like isaiah did and say woe is me i'm a sinful man i'm talking about a move of god where the shekinah glory shows up and when the shekinah glory shows up like elijah we don't have a word to say we simply stand in awe at the still small voice of god and here's what i believe i believe i'm not the only one i believe the fact that you're here today shows and the fact that you're joining us today shows that you want more of god and when god shows up a true move of god look at verse 12 the only thing the people say i love this i love this we have never seen anything like this before anybody want to see something like that like when you t hey man what's going on at long hollow i don't know because i've never seen anything like that before you know i really feel like we're entering into a new season here at our church and i hope you sensed that and i've been praying to the lord i've been i've been telling the lord listen i don't want business as usual as we come back as a church are you with me on this like i've been i've been asking the lord i don't want to manufacture revival like i don't want to manipulate a movie because we're good in the church at manipulating a move of god we set the lights right we get the music right we get the tone right we get it all right but that's a manufactured move of god i want to see a move of god when he shows up and envelops us in his presence i want to see a move of god where we fall in our faces before i want to see a move of god where he disrupts the schedule and he changes the formality of the worship service i want to see a move of god that's simply unexplainable because we are enamored by his presence and we taste and see that the lord is good and i believe i'm not the only one you know i'm tired of reading about revival i'm tired of hearing about revival i'm tired in seminary of writing reports about revival i want to see revival amen and i believe we're closer today to the return of christ and a move of god than we've ever been before anybody agree with that like i really believe that i really believe god is doing something new and fresh and you know it's it's easy to think man we want to go back to the way things used to be but the lord convicted me recently and said no no you don't want to go back to the way things used to be i'm going to do a new thing at long hollow i want to do a new thing i want to do a fresh i'm going to blow on you in a fresh way like you've never felt before here's the question what if we came every week with an anticipation that god would show up in our presence do you think you'd come prepared differently for worship whether you're watching online or do you think we'd come prepared differently like we're going to meet god what if you had this belief that if i could get my friends and neighbors who are far from god just to the worship service that we had the expectation they were going to be radically changed how different would that be that we expected god to work i know what you're saying well doesn't god always show up yeah he's always here isn't god everywhere at the scene yeah he's always everywhere at the same time but you and i know there are certain times in our life watch this where the veil between the natural and the supernatural is thin as the desert fathers used to say there are certain times in our life where the veil between the natural and the supernatural is thin i've had the privilege of probably like some of you experiencing seasons like that my first church was i tell you this before emmanuel baptist church it was in morgan city louisiana it was a smaller church it was a declining church at the time 65 people when i'd gotten there and the church had gone through a pastor and didn't have a pastor and they tried to find someone to fill in and i guess they thought you know what do we have to lose we can take a chance on a three-year-old christian who's just coming off a 200 a day heroin and cocaine a day like if he screws the church up we're going down anyway right let's give let's give robby a try so they brought me in and listen i didn't know what i was doing i didn't have a dad that was a pastor i didn't have a playbook of ministry and as i think back to that that's probably why god moves so much [Music] and i got to that church and candy and i got there we were newly married and we got to that church and we just believed god i don't know about you but back then i think i was so desperate for god to move and i believed god could move mountains and i would speak things and pray things with audacity to pray like god could do this right and i find that since that time i've kind of waned in that probably like some of you right remember the time you used to stay up late and read your bible through midnight you'd pray all night for hours for god to move but something's happened what's happened is we've become institutionalized as christians we've become domesticated as followers of christ right it's become routine but not back then man i was passionate about the things of god and the church grew a little bit in those first four months but then something happened at the five-month mark that literally blew the lid off the church and tim lafleur will tell you because tim was a part of this when it was happening and the church exploded from that last two-year period and in two years the church grew from 65 people to almost 300 in weekly attendance and i'm not telling you this to impress you i want to impress upon you this was a move of god there were more people baptized and saved in the first year of the ministry than were actually in the church when i got there you talk about a move of god you talk about change the course of a congregation i mean it was like like people would come in every day and i wasn't the only one and they'd say we feel like we're in the book of acts revival and so it was like a move of god and you're probably wondering so what changed what happened it was the salvation of one man that i believe changed the trajectory of a congregation right after i got to the church one of the deacons in my church said hey would you meet with my son his name was jesse and uh i said sure i'd love to meet with your son and we sat down for for lunch and jesse and i realized early on we shared the same past we actually knew some of the same people from the drug world and we started to talk about raves and partying and drugs and and the party life and we had some of the same friends from the past the only difference was jesse was still kind of teetering on that lifestyle obviously god had saved me from that lifestyle but i started to probe a little deeper and i said hey uh tell me about what the lord's doing in your life and he said oh man he's like man you know i grew up in church you know my dad would bring me to church he said i i mean that stuff's okay he said but i have a bigger picture of god now he's like i believe god's in all things man like he's in the trees he's you know he's in he's in the in the universe he's like man he's like bro listen i even sensed the energy coming from you man like like i feel the energy coming from you now did i mention i was brash and probably a little over the top back then i said yeah it's the holy spirit brother you're feeling for me all right that's the energy you're feeling for me and uh we finished our lunch we didn't talk for a couple months and his dad walked in my office about five months later just broken on a sunday and he said pastor i need a minute with you i could tell he was beaten down and he said jesse's in jail now what happened he said the cops were on to him he was growing marijuana in the attic of the business he was working at they got him on a distribution charge he's going to jail probably for a long time can you call him i said man i'd love to call him and so i picked up the phone and i called jesse on the phone and he was in prison and i said hey he was in jail and i said hey man what's going on and i could tell he was broken and he said man i've screwed up i ruined my life i'm not i'm not getting out he said you don't understand robbie the amount of marijuana i had and the distribution charge he said i'm not getting out for a long time and back then i was so bold i said no i don't believe that i said jesse i will commit to you and pray that god is going to set you free from prison and the way he's going to do it is you have to surrender your life to him completely and i'm not talking about walking an aisle or signing a card or raising i'm talking jesse full commitment to god and if you do that i believe he'll set you free and jesse's like man that's crazy it sounded crazy to be honest with you but i reminded him in the old testament god set joseph free from prison in the new testament god set peter free from prison and in the new testament god set paul free from the prison of philippi and if he did it then he can do it again amen so i told him and i said i'm going to pray with you if you surrender your life to jesus i believe god's going to work in your life and we prayed and we got off the phone and i believe god was going to work a week or two later i hadn't talked to jesse but i'd heard kind of through the grapevine that miraculously the judge had set up a new program they just started called drug court where people who were facing felony charges could go to drug court outside of jail kind of a year program but would be released from prison in order to do this and i heard that jesse may get his name on the list to do this i didn't know for sure on sunday morning i was preaching in that little church about a hundred people had showed up that day in that small church and all of a sudden when i got up to preach the back door was flung open and i looked out just like i'm looking now and there i saw jesse walk through the door [Music] it was the first time in a long time he'd come home jesse made his way into the to the row next to his parents at the end of the message like i did every service before and every service after i said is there anybody who would like to stand up and publicly say that they've surrendered their life to jesus christ and one person stood that day at emmanuel baptist church and he walked out the aisle and it was jesse and jesse walked toward me and the church had all watched this happen happening before them and i reached over and i embraced jesse and we both cried together because we knew that god had answered our prayer and it was the salvation i want you to get this of one man that changed the trajectory of a congregation from that point on and so here's the thing i want you to think about in your own life who who's the jesse in your life right now that if they get radically saved it would have a ripple effect in your life in the life of our church and the life of our congregation because let's be honest long haul we've experienced something like this if you've been here for any length of time you could tell stories of just exponential growth and a manifold presence of god and a move of the spirit some of you have been here you could say we've been there before and here's what i believe as i've been praying about this i believe god wants to do something again just like that and not that we go back for god to do it like it was but god wants to do a new thing amen god wants to do a new thing in our life a new thing in our church and i really believe we are on the cusp of the next chapter in the life of long hollow i really believe that and so i'm going to make a promise to you and i'm going to give you a challenge that over the next six weeks here here's my my challenge to you let me give you the challenge first and here's the first thing i want you to see and this is the thing we have to understand change lives change lives you believe that changed lives change lives let me say it another way life change births life change so who's the paralytic in our life who's the guy or the girl who's far from god who's the jesse in our life that if he gets saved or he shows up in god where it is a ripple effect in our family so the first thing i want us to do is pray that's the first challenge pray i want us to pray long hollow like we've never prayed before here's the challenge and somebody shared this with me and i'll share it with you they said robby what if jesus whispered in your ear today as you went home i'm returning december 31st 2020 for the second coming [Music] let's just say you go home you hear the voice of god i'm returning december 31st 2020. now some of you saying that's pretty crazy prove to me that won't happen and the way things are going it just could happen amen literally literally like god could say 20 20 i put the whole thing in perspective gave you perfect vision i gave you a warning i'm coming back so here's the deal let's just go there for a moment what if that's true and jesus is coming back and the whole thing's done and there is no reset button and there is no purgatory and there is no holding place it's uh it's done how different would you live as a christian how much passion would we have as a church how much urgency would we have to bring people to jesus at all cost i think it would change everything like everything for us and so i want us to pray over the next five months like we have never prayed before would you join me in that and just believing that god's going to work every time we show up work every time we share the gospel every time we tell somebody about him here's the second thing i want to invite you to do i want you to invite people so pray and invite i want you to begin thinking about who's the one person or two people in your life who are far from god who need a healing who need redemption who need salvation and i want you to pray and then invite them to join you now that's a couple options they could come in in person for the worship service every week they could join you for a watch party at home like some of you have done they can join you around the country like i've heard some people do and then and then kind of circle back up to talk about the message after they hear the sermon because the next six weeks i think will be monumental in the life of our church we're going to start a series that i think will be the easiest series that you can invite people far from god to attend because i think these are questions that they're asking i want to show you a snippet a bumper uh of the series a short promo and then i'll come back and tell you a little bit about it watch this [Applause] [Music] brutal throws setting the violence [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] greece is so here are the topics we'll talk about week in and week out where is god in chaos are we living in the end times i'm going to talk about that if god's such a good god then why is there so much evil in the world today or better question i'm hearing is is this life all there is and so here's my promise to you whoever you bring to this service or joining you online my promise to you is they're going to hear the gospel every single week unapologetically i'm going to preach the gospel and then i'm going to passionately call people to jesus every single week now for that to work in a way where lost people hear the gospel you're going to have to invite your friends to be a part of what god's doing here and so i want to encourage you over the next few weeks to do that we've created a system to help you do that you can text the same number i gave you earlier and you can text the word grow and it's a way for us to help you invite your lost friends or your fishing buddies or your neighbors or your co-workers or your family who are all over the world to join you and we have resources to help you do that and so we really believe that god's going to work i'm going to pray for us now as our worship team comes i really believe that we're here and god wants us to to really surrender to him and pray in desperation for something and i really believe everybody could say i'm desperate for something today so so what is and the key word there is today what what is the one thing as you close your eyes and really get alone i want you to be with the lord for a moment in stillness i want you to ask the lord what am i desperate for today are you desperate for healing [Music] are you desperate for peace are you desperate for justice are you desperate for financial freedom maybe [Music] maybe you're desperate for rest some are desperate for sobriety desperate to be loved and accepted or maybe you just would say pastor i'm desperate for more of god would you just speak that from the quietness of your own heart to the lord lord we want to see more of you in our life and less of us so we come to you now and and say god we we're praying for revival revival in this country revival in our community revival in our church revival in our home in our hearts would you grant that prayer we ask it in jesus name and everyone said amen

Channel: Long Hollow

Views: 2,853

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Id: FKqI9xOJN0U

Length: 50min 39sec (3039 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2020