The Jesus Agenda | Kevin and Deven Wallace | Redemption to the Nations Church

take your bible open it to acts 17 and while you're going there one more time i know i asking a lot of you this morning help me welcome athens god bless you adam's family come on it's good to be with you [Music] pastor chris and amy pastor devin and ingrid the whole entire leadership family and the family of god there in athens we greet you from chattanooga and we praise the lord for you and this extension that god has allowed us to have through the blessing of technology we really are one family in multiple locations amen i want you to go to acts 17 verse 26 today it's going to be a little different and um and i i want you to understand we'll talk more about why it's different and what's different about this assignment today but devin and i felt like we just need to have a family talk and um and and just say some things that that don't necessarily fit into a preaching uh context they could be preached but sometimes we miss them and i just wanted us to sit down and talk from our heart to this house about where we are in as a nation and where i think we're going as a church and um and and just share from our heart today i wanted to take from a text the 17th chapter of acts the 26th verse and if we were going to call this something today devin and i would call this the jesus agenda how many know that the lord has an agenda and i think sometimes it's important for us to clarify and bring definition to what we feel like our assignment is so that the enemy cannot fill in the gaps with his own assignment and his own agenda and so when we articulate and when we declare what we believe to be the heart of god it makes it really simple or at least i think it simplifies it some for the people of god to decide is that where i want my house to be planted and my family to go and just where i want to go to church and sometimes people just leave church because of ambiguity and and a lack of clarity and i've learned over the years as a leader that the most important thing you can do to bring clarity to your church is to communicate and i just want to share from our heart devin and i'm just going to share from my heart this morning the 17th chapter of acts 26 verse this is some of my favorite stuff this is really good scripture and he jesus has made from one blood he made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings so that they should seek the lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him though he is not far from each one of us how many believe that's good news that god is not far from anybody in the room so if you felt like god was far from you the truth of the word of god is he's not far from any of us he's not far from any of us [Music] the bible says in verse 28 for in him we live move and have our being as also some of our own poets have said for we are also his offspring verse 29 therefore since we are the offspring of god we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone something shaped by art and man's devising truly these times of ignorance god overlooked but now somebody say now now god commands all men everywhere to repent or to change their mind repent sounds like a real spiritual word it is but metanoia is more than saying i'm sorry metanoia is i've been thinking wrong now i'm going to start thinking right and how many know that's what god wants us to do today is have right thinking say amen so today god devin and i we just confess before our family today that we need you and we want you to fill our mouth with truth and love and today i pray you'll guide us in this conversation so that our church arrives at kingdom conclusions we don't want to be led astray by voices in our culture in our generation that lead us into bondage we want to be led by the precious holy spirit in the truth and into the light so i invite your holy spirit to come into this room now and just have your way and we thank you for what you're going to do in jesus name everyone said amen you can be seated in the presence of god so some of this is going to be real known to you and some of this is for first-time guests this is new so if you heard it before consider this reinforcing if you've never heard it consider it revelation i guess i think it's important today to start with uh just what god called us to do what we feel like our assignment on the earth is and what we have been called to do as a church and most of you have heard this if you've been here any length of time at all i had a real visitation from god probably 11 or 12 years ago that i don't think god ever changed for us and in that time of prayer the lord visited me and he said i want you to lead the most loving group of people on the planet i want you just to believe me to pastor the most loving church in the world and over time we have found out what that means what that doesn't mean it's not a ooey gooey kind of love it's a commitment to love people with the kind of god love that breaks down walls and builds bridges and brings people hope and life and we've worked hard to do that over the years and by the grace of god i think we've seen some we've seen the needle move at least in some lives in the direction of the love of god the second thing that god told us to do is to establish our purpose and our purpose is to demonstrate the kingdom of god we are not here just to have church we are here to demonstrate and live in the reality of the kingdom of god how many know in order to demonstrate the kingdom of god you've got to know the kingdom of god you can't demonstrate a kingdom that you don't know about lord help my words fall as revelation on ears today so that people will hear by the spirit of god i pray we want our lives to matter we want our church to matter we don't just want to come and sit in sunday morning services and have great times in the lord and our city go to hell we want to demonstrate the kingdom of god in such a way that people see our good works matthew chapter 5 and bring honor and glory to our god which is in heaven and this is why we are active in the city in the community in the region in the area in the nations of the earth we're active because we believe we have a missional thrust from god to go and tell the good news the church cannot be measured by how many it keeps it must measure its effectiveness by how many it sins and if we're truly going to be who god called us to be and do what god called us to do we believe we have to demonstrate the kingdom of god and and we have to show people on earth what heaven on earth can look like and so this is how we do king this is the culture we the the culture we're praying to create the water that we swim in this is who we want to be we do not want to be religious people here there are some people who say pastor why don't you wear vestments why don't you wear why don't you wear the collar why don't you wear the suit i'm a bishop i got all that stuff i don't wear it anymore not because i don't believe in in order in the house of god but because i do not in this day and time believe that the order of the day is about rank it's a it's not about rank it's about love it's about demonstrating the kingdom of god and not getting trapped in conversations that are foreign to the lost the lost don't need to know about our religion they need to know about how much jesus came to save and to seek those who were lost and so that's why that's why that's why we do what we do and i um every church has a purpose whether you want to acknowledge it or not every pastor watching me that passes the church you may not articulate your purpose you may not say what your vision is but every church has a purpose and a vision and that is ours ours and um in in those two assignments to demonstrate the kingdom of god so if you're wanting to take notes about what this is about our church is about primarily two things demonstrating the kingdom of god and doing it by demonstrating love being not just saying but being a people who actively love others and we start with loving god actually it starts with god loving us and then it starts with us reciprocating the love back to god but an overflow of agape love out of our hearts keeps us from becoming myopic believers who are only focused on our own blessing we see our lives not as just a reservoir of blessing but as a channel through which the blessing of god flows through to touch other people and so that is that is the primary uh uh two things as assignments that i want you to grasp about this house and be reminded of we want to love people well and we want to demonstrate the kingdom of god those two assignments have been guiding principles in the history of this church and as we move forward it's important for us to keep that before us because this is really what we come to talk about today is about the divisive world that we live in i don't want to talk about the division and the things that divide us i want to bring clarity to those things that have become so divisive so that you and i understand that when conversations happen as redemption to the nation's church as people who belong to this church family i want us to be able to say the foundation of our conversation and the place we all end up at after the conversation is over two questions must be asked am i demonstrating the kingdom of god and did i do this in love i don't care how right you are if you and i don't have love even in our rightness we cannot be righteous there is a possibility we are not righteous i know plenty of people who are right but not righteous y'all don't know nobody like that do you i know people who are right but not concerned with righteousness and here's what i have found you there are three ways to approach the preaching and the delivery of the gospel to humanity number one you can preach error in the spirit of error number two you can preach error but with a right heart how many ever heard somebody preach and they love people and their heart was right but what they were saying was jacked up right then you can also preach truth with a bad spirit i call them terrorist christians and and and and and there there are there are people who take this word that is meant to bring precision in its surgical intention but they wind up just flailing the sword and hurting people as they swing it but then there are people who take the word of god rightly divide it and use the truth of god to teach to preach to expose to explain in ways that bring us more in line with the person in the life and the nature of jesus christ our heart in this house is not just to say right things with the wrong spirit our heart in this house is not just to have a loving heart but not say the truth our heart in this house is to preach the truth so saturated in love so that even those offended by it still will not um be so far from it through offense that they could not access it if if if they wanted to come in as god invited them and i want us with all of our heart to be a people who preach the truth of god in a spirit of love the two are not mutually exclusive they are actually very compatible i can tell when listen y'all you've been married 21 years you know when your wife wanted to say something trust me i thought he might have been keeping the microphone on that side i did by my attention keep going baby we had we discussed about this being called the jesus agenda because it was something the lord had really spoken to us in prayer because if you look at the life of christ he came with a really clear agenda and jesus was sent to a culture that had a lot of other agendas from the religious society to the romans to what was happening around them it was a very heated time but what jesus did was he stayed focused on his assignment and if you look at the life and ministry of jesus there were many times people he loved and cared about or there was a good cause that tried to pull him off his agenda even peter tried to pull jesus off his agenda twice actually once when he rebuked him for saying he was going to the cross and once when he cut off malcus's ear and both times jesus reminded peter of his agenda and one time he even rebuked him if you look at jesus he was sent to speak to the jews paul would come later and give the message to the gentiles and there were times that jesus was pulled toward that agenda and he had to remind the people around him of the agenda he was sent for and i just feel like in the society we're living in right now there are so many agendas when i say that word agenda you know me i'm a mom i'm going to break it down an agenda is simply a plan or a list of matters to act upon and everybody in their life has an agenda you have an agenda you have a purpose for why you're here you wake up every day with a list of things you're going to act upon and in a culture where there's so many agendas we just feel like a healthy conversation is needed to remind us god did not put us on this earth for our own agenda that's what makes us different than the world there are a lot of people out there with great agendas but the last time that i checked the reading and the teaching of the gospel we don't live anymore christ lives in us we laid down our lives and took up his cross and if you look at jesus mentoring his disciples he was teaching them to live by his agenda and so when you find yourself in a collision of agendas and you're not sure what to go by or what to believe or what to follow that's why we have this word and there are things i can even be passionate about but if it's not jesus's agenda it should not be where my time talent and treasure is invested and when i lay my heart down and i glorify him that jesus agenda was to glorify the father and our agenda should be to glorify him and so this talk today is just about finding the agenda of jesus and divorcing our minds from agendas that may not be his goal or his primary focus and just kind of bringing the bride into alignment and letting us come and focus our time talent and treasure into what matters for him and what we felt in the the beginning of service today was jesus first agenda which is revealed in john chapter 17 and it's love and anything that does not line up with love is not the agenda of jesus so that's kind of the foundation of talking about the jesus agenda today yes and so uh part of this born out of prayer just to be quite honest with you we've been feeling this for some time devon was going to do it on facebook live i was going to do it on facebook live and not do it from the pulpit but i don't think that's fair to you and i don't think that would be um in keeping with how important we feel like this discussion is for our people we don't want just the world to see it and and the house not hear it from our heart first because i want you to understand this part of what we're talking about today is not just for the world specifically it is for this house because if we're not all on the same page how many know that that it doesn't matter what we say to the world a house divided can't stand so so so i want us to start here i have been inundated part of this whole thing was born out of prayer part of this has been born out of inquiry just to be quite honest with you there have been a lot of people with a lot of questions in our church family about where we are as a nation and i was i'm just i'm not tired of getting blown up i don't like it when i can't respond to everyone but i can't respond to everything so i said dev we just need to talk about a number of things she had some things on her heart i had a few things on my heart the first thing i want to talk about is the election okay and if you don't i i want everyone just to sit tight through the whole conversation because if you leave on one uh unfinished comment you may leave offended hear the whole thing out and then if you're offended we'll understand it okay so uh but one of the things that's important about picking where you go to church is knowing where the church you're going to is going how many ever got on a plane not caring where the plane was taking you you don't walk up and say i'll just go wherever you're taking me you want to know the destination of the plane and this is today about just articulating some things so that you understand our heart and you know where we're going and decide if this house um is is where you and your family want to stay planted or get planted i should say i hope everyone here who is planted uh understands our heart already number one let me talk about the election here's here's where i am at i have had probably 150 emails messages texts or phone calls you say that sounds impossible i promise you it's true pastor what are you feeling about the election i feel like the election is over i do not know at the moment what the outcome will be and i feel like the church's posture in prayer should be for several things number one if there is fraud and widespread um approved proven fraud we need to expose that not just for this election but for our future i don't want to live in a nation who has a foundation of the ability to corrupt our voice being heard not and i'm not just talking about this election i'm talking about every election if there is widespread fraud you and i should want truth period end of discussion if they find widespread fraud in this election we need to have conversation about what that means for our nation in this moment if they don't we need to commit to support and pray pray pray for president-elect joe biden and kamala harris just like we prayed for every other president that we've had since we've been praying why would i do that because i need to pray for joe biden if anybody needs my prayers the president of the united states needs my press right now donald trump needs our prayers and we need to be a praying people regardless of the personality conflicts you have with your president we need to pray for them and that's not just my idea that's bible and some of y'all some of us have never heard the bible taught in a way that brings truth to our mind paul told timothy pray for your leaders not the ones you like but pray for your leaders and this election is fraught with with frustration and division and i get it but we are in a moment where if we've ever prayed for god's truth to be revealed it is now i want us to pray i'm not asking god or anyone to create a crisis we don't need a created crisis if there is fraud and we do have corrupt election systems and have had them for decades this is the moment for god to expose anything and us get it right and if there's not we need to hush and move forward and as we move forward never be held hostage by who's on in the oval office we will only be allegiant to one and that is the one who sits on the throne at the end of the day that one never changes and that is something we should all be able to agree on [Applause] let me see if i got any other thoughts on that yes jump in babe anytime jeremiah 29 7 why so why should i pray for our country let me say this i am not a part of the council culture i don't believe in it i don't endorse it why is it because you agree with everything in our past absolutely not there are horrible painful sinful nasty chapters in the history of america and the darkest scourge in america's history is the scourge of slavery and i have talked about that at length in this house it is evil it is maniacal it is demonic and we will not in any way ever turn our head from that discussion or that painful chapter in america we will always say that was horrible and hideous and we never if however you cancel the culture and remove from our history books the pain of that you open yourself up to the possibility of it repeating itself i want my kids to know i hate slavery so that in the future my cr your children and my children and no other body's children will never have to taste that pain again we will not allow our society to be led and ruled by demonically possessed people who hate people groups we can't so so i say that to say this we pray for our country jeremiah 29 7 says pray for your country that god's put you in so that the nation you live in will be blessed i want my country to be blessed you should want america to be blessed and the anarchists that are trying to tear this thing down most of them are possessed by devils now you don't have to agree with what i'm telling you right now but the spirit of god don't burn stuff down and tear and and hurt people and we western our response be we should seek to love them and share the truth of the gospel with them and most of them are honestly inflammatory figures who have no say in the matter i'm just going to say it all today y'all can take whatever soundbite you want to take when when i when george floyd was was killed in the streets of minneapolis it's crazy to me that the people many and most of the people who burnt things down were not even part of the african-american community why is that crazy not that i would have think thought anything that they would have ever burned anything down i thought why are the white people burning stuff down and you say pastor because they have a passion that's not passion that is that that is anarchy family and we've got to make sure in this nation we stay on task and not allow these voices to pull us out of of a productive posture i want to move the thing forward and move the needle back to the kingdom and quit allowing the devil to distract us and get us off into things that the kingdom of god has nothing to do with i want to pray for our country because i want our country to be blessed is our country perfect no it is not if i want my country to be blessed there's several things we must consider number one my voting should be shaped by my conviction regarding america's future i believe america was conceived by god she is not perfect and was not perfect she had tremendous laws but out of a desire to experience religious freedom and freedom from tyranny our founding fathers fought for a concept of freedom and opportunity and now we believe that opportunity is extended and should be extended to everyone no matter their color race culture or creed and each subsequent generation so you had the founding fathers i still think we should honor those george washington was a noble man did he have some error in his life regarding slavery again absolutely and when we talk about our founding fathers i don't want to seem as if i'm glorifying men who had flaws but i am thankful that in spite of their flaws god worked through them to establish this republic as subsequent generations have risen up in america each generation has offered necessary clarity and definition for the american dream much has been corrected and we have addressed many injustices in our history and that is no invitation to stop now we continue to press toward the dream of dr king and i do believe god raised him up to speak to a nation that had become divided and become distracted and i believe god spoke through him and i still think today it is incumbent for the church of the living god to point people from every race every tribe every tongue not to the hope that we have that america will be perfect but to the hope that we have that in the kingdom of god it is perfect and everyone can be a part of the kingdom now i want america to become a more perfect union but the reality of it is there are people involved demons and principalities and powers i tell you this all the time principalities need personalities to work through and in this nation there are principalities at work through personalities and the church has got to learn how not to wrestle flesh and blood but wrestle the demons that are working through the flesh and the blood this is why we continue to experience defeat where we experience the fetus because we spend time exhausting ourselves trying to attack people and the people will never be the problem it's the demon that is distracting and deceiving the people we need to spend our time on that now within the desire for freedom god planted an assignment i'm convinced that not only was america established for personal freedom and liberty i'm going somewhere but i believe her spiritual assignment to share the gospel on every shore of every continent is perhaps the greatest reason god birthed america i said all that to say this if i believe that america has a spiritual place in the heart of god and a future then i should and we should vote for policy makers lawmakers and leaders who allow the people of god to be free in their ministerial endeavor and assignment some chastise me for encouraging the church to vote christians into washington y'all i gotta share some things i would imagine people from another religion getting bent out of shape when i say vote christians into office but i could never in my life imagine people getting bent out of shape in the church when i suggest we should vote christian people into office as if my suggestion was somehow dark and devilish listen this is real simple if you vote people into a chair that have the spirit of god living in them they take the spirit of god into the room where the chair is if you vote somebody into an office that got a demon in them you take the demon into the office where the chair is if a christian is running for office the church should get behind the believer and and and that believers should have principles that reflect the word of god and if the believer don't have principle you can't say i'm a believer and take the name of god in the name of jesus i'm not saying jesus is going to be president i am saying christians ought to want to live and lead and develop laws in a way that honor god and protect our society now if america is going to be led into its prosperous god-given future it will be led there through leaders we need as many godly influences in local municipality governments and in internet in national level government positions as we can and we ought to vote that way now some chastise me for saying we should want to vote christians into washington don't they say don't force christianity on me okay i'm not ever going to try to force christianity on you because we know that state religion doesn't work what is state religion state religion is when the government says this is the god you're going to serve i wouldn't do i wouldn't make christianity state religion if i could why because you can't make anybody love god we should never want to make people be a christian but we should never want to have lawmakers who hinder people from being a christian i'm going to support leaders who believe in religious freedom period well you can't preach and teach on sexual orientation because everyone has a choice listen to me let me tell all y'all some i'm gonna fix something i i've had to i have to get fixed sometimes but i'm gonna fix something right now an eight-year-old does not know an eight-year-old now joe i love you and i'm praying for you but an eight-year-old don't know if he wants to be a girl i love i'm praying for him but that ain't right and if you start opening up that pandora's box in this nation you will sow the greatest movement of confusion and i'm gonna make this real simple for everybody god is the one that decides what you are and i'm not going to get graphic i don't have to i don't need to but if you need help discovering your gender we know how to help you you don't even have to live in confusion god told you and decided what you would be when you were in your mother's womb and he gave you the apparatus to help you know who you are i'm going to support leaders who stand and honor israel why because me and her are blessed people i ain't bringing no curse on my house or this house or this i don't want it brought on this nation i will vote for religious freedom no matter which party every time i'm not going to endorse anyone from this pulpit who is tangled up in an antichrist agenda i ain't doing it um this is something that's the election piece so if you want to know where i am on the election it's over we're praying in this moment for god's will to be done and for if there is anything hidden and i say if and i mean to say if because i'm going to tell you something right now the other thing i'm not going to do is create a crisis in the name of christianity and the and the christian movement look like fools when this thing is over at the end of the day we have integrity to protect and it's not just our integrity it is the name of the lord and so somebody said to me when are you going to prophesy about this election when god tells me to prophesy i will prophesy until then your witchcraft spirit will not manipulate me into saying something that god didn't tell me to say and until he shows me something my posture will be on my knees on that front row praying in the holy ghost that god's will be done in this nation and that anything hidden will be exposed that's all i'm praying the second thing i want to fix and talk about is the issue of abortion and this is something on devin's heart and i want her to share what is on her heart with this okay i'll start we have a very strong stance on abortion in this house till i die and i want you to hear listen i i i'm not saying i don't want feedback but i don't want you to feel the pressure to shout to affirm because devin and i made a decision a long time ago if everyone in this room leaves because we're pro-life and pro and and not for abortion on demand if everyone left i would pastor my children and my wife because i i can't forsake what i believe to be the truth of god for a crowd that don't make me holy it's just a principle i'm gonna live by we believe in life and i believe that heaven is a culture of life and it is for that reason that we are so loud sometimes about abortion and we're going to talk about what that means dev i want you to go ahead babe i'm going to jump back just really quick before we jump into abortion i want to be really sensitive to obey the lord and i want to go back and i do want to say something on the election piece um i am asking this entire body and anybody watching online to commit daily prayer to what is happening concerning the election in our nation i speak that from a posture of not only trying to hear what others are saying but what i have felt personally in my spirit and there is a real assignment for division right now for disunity for chaos for destruction and as a body of believers who believes in the sovereignty of god that is not a license for spiritual laziness god's will will always be accomplished but how we are participating in that will is our choice what generation he does his will through that's our choice if it happens the easy or the hard way that's our choice that's part of his sovereignty is giving us stewardship in the earth and there's a lot of chaos the enemy wants to ensue there's a lot brewing and swirling and as a church you and i are responsible for praying for the kingdom of the lord and his will to be done and for this nation to prosper and for those that have kind of just taken a back seat and said whatever happens will happen i'm going to tell you what happens is worth contending for what happens from this is worth praying for and we will all have more peace come january when we know we have fasted and prayed and sought the lord and heard from him ourselves so if i could plead with you over thanksgiving and christmas when we're doing so many holiday things and it's easy to get distracted don't go to sleep church don't go to sleep it's not the time to sleep right now set your alarm give yourself 30 minutes extra a day and pray for the kingdom of god to come to this earth because i'm here to tell you the direction of our nation will affect the bride it will affect the church it will never stop the kingdom of god it will never stop the jesus agenda but how hard or easy it is and what we walk through will be the result and it is worth contending for so that's the layout because you're absolutely right babe uh you want to speak to abortion you want me okay oh i thought you were gonna say something but but i i'll go ahead i'll jump right in um in this house i honestly um i can echo with kevin we we've always been pro-life and believed and valued life and and find it very very simply in scripture i feel like if you devote yourself to just looking at the truth of god's word it's very very clear in scripture that god values life all life life in the womb life is a child life is an adult life is a senior citizen god values life because he is life anything that is living is living because god gave it life whether it's a creature i mean there's even a scripture i quote it to my children a righteous man takes care of his animals god cares about life and in a society where we see a whole lot of care for stray pets and save the wells i'm confused as to why the church is confused about valuing life and so i don't want to start a controversy it's absolutely not political it's from the sincerity of our heart this word stands for life and god is the giver and the taker of life and so when you address an issue like abortion especially as a woman it can be a sensitive issue because we recognize how culture has painted it but life comes from god and as a believer and as a word following believer it is easy to convince ourselves as to why the word might not be culturally relevant but the word is eternal it never passes away and as kevin says if john the baptist can receive the holy spirit in the womb god knows a child in the womb the word is very clear on that and so we stood with life not for a political agenda but because we love jesus's agenda and we believe all life is is guarded and protected by him with that being said it it has created a lot of controversy even within the walls of the church and i just want to call the church back to a fresh look at the word of god and understanding the heart of jesus and understanding that abortion is real it's here and even for pro-lifers in the room it's not going to magically disappear overnight these are discussions we have to have i have said in many rooms with hours of discussion and i'm here to tell you i believe in life but there are certain scenarios that even should make a pro laugh or stop pro-life or stop and think wow i understand i understand why you're supporting choice i understand a bit abortion in that circumstance and some of you get uncomfortable when i talk that way but if the church doesn't talk real if we just throw statements out there like end abortion and we don't define what that means there are real-life examples sitting in our pews that say well my daughter was raped or i could die from this pregnancy and we don't meet people where they are and understand what jesus agenda is i wish you could see the faces i'm seeing right now but abortion is more than just killing babies on demand there there is a whole gamut of reasons behind it but at the end of the day you need to hear me say the word of god still protects life and although there may be medical circumstances we've got to talk about there may be issues where the choice of a woman is truly taken away and i'm just going to jump out there i'm a woman i can say it i have been attacked by believers saying that pro-life takes away the choice of a woman only in the issue of rape and abuse and incest does pro-life take choice away from me let us go back to sixth grade biology ladies we know where babies come from and we make choices with our bodies that have consequences and if we would educate our children properly they would understand the risk they take when they engage in sexual activity and we would not train them that abortion on demand is proper birth control did that just come out of my mouth that just came right out so as a woman who willfully participates in sexual activity whether married or not married ladies you could get pregnant and you don't have the right to kill something you chose to create and there's a lot of discussions that had to be had with abortion especially for all my pastors and church leaders out there that are screaming women's women's rights when when there's abuse and rape and incest i understand a woman has been violated her choice has been taken and even as a pro-life believer i'm willing to come to the table and talk about those circumstances but if you're a christian out there screaming pro-life you are also disregarding the rights of fathers and in a feminist movement in our nation we really want to degrade men but do you realize that we could choose to conceive a child together but i could kill it without his permission even though he's the rightful legal father i could divorce him and i couldn't keep him from spending time with my children but we could conceive right now and i could kill it and never even tell him about the child what is wrong with the church y'all we gotta talk about these issues it takes two to conceive and i'm gonna say it again in case these words are pulled out a woman's choice is taken in rape and incest and abuse and it happens don't you know i've seen it i've dealt with human trafficking survivors for over 10 years it happens but i'm here to tell you we are talking about abortion on demand as free birth control to our daughters who can't go buy a drink because they're not 21 but they can go kill their baby without their mama's permission and never receiving proper counseling we've got to wake up in the church and redefine choice and when we that's so good sorry it's just coming out like preaching like preaching coming out like i'm about to get you come here preaching when we and i think this is a valid point when we talk about abortion and and what i always hear and what we're trying to say we are sympathetic toward and we hear you what about the people who are raped what about the incest what about what about that can i first of all tell you that abortions to less than two percent of all abortions happen for those two reasons when we talk about getting an abortion for incest or because god forbid a child is raped um or a medical a medical threat to the mother to give birth at a certain season in the pregnancy and i'm not a doctor we have doctors here who know what i'm talking about those are all things we can talk about but that's less than two abortion for rape and incest is less than two percent of abortion so let's not act like of the 60 million children that have been aborted the majority of them happened because someone was raped or someone was a product of incest that's just not the case the large majority and what we when we say we're for life what we're wanting to attack is not a person in fact i wrote these notes down because as i was praying about this it was so strong in my heart if you're in this room and have had an abortion you need to know number one that the lord jesus loves and forgives and there is no condemnation and you need to know number two in case somebody in the church screwed this up not only are you loved by god you're loved by his people i want anyone who has ever felt like you couldn't go to church and you say pastor i i just don't know people like that devin and i take our students from rsm every semester to the memorial for the unborn right here in chattanooga if you've never been to the memorial of the unborn to see the thousands of plaques that have words from a mom or a dad written to the baby they aborted years after they had the abortion you will weep and sob until tears hit the floor to hear the mothers say they lied to me they told me i couldn't take care of you or the dad that said i never got to see your face but i'll see you in heaven these memoirs to all these children that have been aborted and it's on this massive wall and and i just need to say this we are very much praying for the laws of this nation to become more life oriented but in the wake and in our praying for god to turn this nation toward a culture of life in a greater way i want no one who has ever experienced the feeling or the reality of abortion to feel like you can't come on this journey to life with us because the god we serve is a forgiving god and he will redeem and heal your broken heart and we don't just want to watch that happen devin and i and this house want it to be a place of restoration for everyone and i think we've got to wake up as a church and recognize the greatest victims of the live abortion are not the children who are aborted it it breaks my heart to think of those babies but they are with the father it's the earth that suffers from the absence of the prophets apostles teachers doctors lawyers and and whatever geniuses that we're missing in our culture right now because it was happening and it's the women who are affected the women who have received abortions and as someone who believes in ministry to women i cannot with a good conscience preach a pro-choice message and say i care about the heart and soul of the women i minister to because it is a scourge and an injury and an unexplained shame and guilt that i have watched year after year broken women have to walk through and some never feeling like they can recover from because we all go through tough seasons a financial struggle or we go through seasons of fear of getting caught or we go through seasons where we're not saved and we make a temporary decision that 50 years later when our life is completely different we regret forever and when we are speaking to women about abortion all we do is address a temporary crisis a temporary trauma and we are not educating them for long-term effects of what they'll deal with later and so our heart should beat with compassion for women who have chosen abortion because a great wave of healing is needed and if you love women in this place and you love women's rights we've got to change our message because in fact what we are saying is is choice is really a prison and i just want to share something that i think brings light and perspective to why we are so pro-life in this place and why i have such a passion despite what people may say we don't know in this house who has been affected there's but percentages would say sitting in these pews there's a large number of families in here that have been affected by abortion whether it's a sibling a grandparent a woman a husband a boyfriend whatever that there are a lot that have been affected in here that may be dealing with regret or whatever but even in my own story this is why the church we we might not can convince the whole world of the truth of this word but this is why my heart beats with such a passion to call the bride into alignment on this message because when we confuse young ladies with our sermons from the pulpit we are setting them up for a lifetime of pain and we are leading them away from the blessing of the lord and it's happening i know youth pastors preachers teachers sunday school teachers that are instructing young ladies that abortion is okay and that god is okay with it and then i'm picking up the pieces 20 years later when they're broken and hurting and wanting truth that was withheld from them and even in my own life just very carefully to protect shame and guilt and condemnation but my sister is on the front row and just a piece of my own story as your pastor i sit here saying our life and our family was affected by abortion because my parents were not saved when they conceived me my parents are some of the most godly incredible leaders this day i am who i am because my dad took me to hand out food to the homeless and taught my sunday school class and was my youth pastor and my children's pastor when i was five but when i was in the womb he did not know the lord my parents were good old hippies like drug addict long-haired my mama went to woodstock y'all jesus the truth and i should have been aborted aborted and i would have been at that wonderful little place down the road where i go and do landscaping and take my students but my mom the week she conceived me stumbled upon a pentecostal church and she got saved and somebody told her she needed to speak for life and one year later after i was born after they would have listened to a lie after they would have made a decision my dad got saved and i'm here today because a church wasn't confused i'm here today because some prayer mama looked at my my mother and said sweetheart you may be scared and you may not can afford it you may not know much and your husband may not agree with you right now but let me tell you something life is what jesus would say and my courageous mother stood up for my life and my father today is such an advocate against abortion and he weeps because he would have made a temporary decision and i don't want to make this personal day but i'm trying to shake the church your words affect someone's future and all it would have taken was one confused preacher to give my mama the wrong message and you wouldn't have a pastor up here with a microphone today do you hear me we better recognize that when we speak truth we are affecting generations and i will not be a coward because i get criticized for pro-life i know my own story and i know stories in this sanctuary of young girls and young boys that might not should have survived abortion but they did and they are impacting the kingdom for a difference and so i'm just going to go ahead and do it i'm going to prophesy to somebody watching me right now either you're struggling with whether you're pro-choice or pro-life or just maybe there's a pregnant young lady out there watching me right now and you are really close to making a decision that you're going to regret 25 years from now i want you to look at me i want you to look at my face and know that child in your belly has just as much potential just as much calling don't you let your temporary circumstances put a coffin on your future you can do this and right here there's a whole church of people we will surround you we will help you we will support you and we will stand for life with you and ten years from now you can testify that god was faithful and it was worth it and i release that word to all the churches in america wake up wake up and align with your lord and we might save a generation of the enemy in jesus name my god i felt that jesus we need to repent as a church we got to repent for getting our message mixed up and let me just go ahead and say it i'm going to go ahead and say it for those of you that call me a racist because i'm pro-life i'm going to tell you abortion was the greatest gift to the racist abortion was the greatest gift to the race just because it's annihilating a whole generation of black apostles prophets teachers lawyers and doctors i'm here to tell you i care about black lives and that's why i stand against abortion i care about every black baby that they're trying to kill that they're trying to annihilate they matter their futures matter they're anointed in the womb and we need them in our nation we better get our message right we better get our message jesus [Applause] thank you lord i just want the lord to expose the agenda of the enemy and expose the jesus agenda in this nation and it's your sons and daughters and it's for a generation that will usher in the glory of messiah do it lord and as a church we got to change our message go ahead thank you lord so wow who wants to say something after that let's just pause a moment we're going to keep going can you just pray can we just pray in the holy spirit for hearts to change all over this nation our hearts to change all over this nation jesus we hear you we feel your spirit right now we just want your agenda we just want your help us lord change our hearts and father we intercede over our nation for all the babies that will be we stand in the gap and say they won't be in the name of jesus we pray for the voice of the church to rise up and intercept to put their arms around these young ladies and these women to embrace and under guard father we will invest in life we will believe in life and we pray father for the ending of this demonic agenda and a rising up of the jesus agenda oh jesus just pray in the holy ghost if you're not sure how to pray he knows how to pray break the lie in the name of the lord i want to i want to follow what devin said with this she was a perfect leader in what she just prayed a culture of being pro-life is more than just being anti-abortion i just got i guess i got just emaciated and blasted this week because i i said that you you and i should be anti-abortion but in the right circumstances as we've talked there are situations where we can discuss the choice for abortion but there are people who are against abortion for political reasons but not pro-life for kingdom reasons now let me explain what i mean you can you can scream about turning abortion around but not care about the opportunity the child that is going to be born has when they come on this planet this is where people say well that don't sound conservative listen i love certain conservative values but my kingdom values are more important than my conservatism devin and i today to the glory of god are blessed and god's been very kind to us both of us were raised in what most would consider poverty and i got my own stories and everybody in here got their own stories today we're blessed when the wind when the winter hits and the leaves fall off the tree from my back porch up on the ridge i can see the little house 700 square foot house i was born and raised in down in the hood i believe with all my heart and even when we got married we lived on wick y'all don't know what wick is but wick is essentially food stamps we got what is that cheese goat cheese who said goat cheese we ain't never got no goat cheese with wick vouchers if y'all getting goat cheese in today's time with wick voucher i want some wick vouchers cause then in in when we were young wick got you a block of that hard nasty it that cheese had white stuff growing on it we got cheese and milk formula and and and we lived on wick i was we were in that place 21 years ago i do not believe the church can scream about turning abortion around and at the same time not give opportunity to the born babies to have a blessed prosperous life once they are born and you don't know whether to clap and i know there are people in here saying that don't fit in my party and this is why i'm saying this day cause i'm tired of parties determining the platform because if kingdom people ever came together and got together instead of staying divided we could tell democrats i'm just going to say it you can curb on your abortion talk and we could tell republicans come up off that money that we've been paying taxes for and help us get child care for our children and educational opportunities for our children y'all don't have to say amen but sometimes in the church we're fighting for babies to be born that are going to have a hellish experience once they're born because they have no one or nothing to support them in their growth and i think both are necessary devon and i are not just anti-abortion we are pro-life there's a difference and another thing another thing just get this out here too the church has got to step up with a with adoption and i'm not trying to look if you don't feel that you know don't don't feel it but i'm just saying to you how important it is to you how important is it to you that we reverse these abortion tendencies and this culture in america how important is it to you that we turn this because if it's really important to you you're going to do more than get on facebook and repost the inflammatory posts that are dividing the body of christ and finding somebody who agrees with your little blurb because one of those children that didn't have anything growing up that many would say pull yourself up i was one of those people i did pull myself up and i made a commitment to my people that i knew and was born with and my family and my friends in the hood when i made a commitment when i get there i'm not going to forget the people who were part of my journey and loved me when when when we didn't have much at all and i just want to say this i do believe in giving opportunity i'm not talking about endorsing laziness i'm not talking about being a blessing to people and i know we got to wrap up we've gone so long this needs to be more conversation probably but don't just be anti-abortion church be pro-life the church ought to be making a difference with the babies that god rescues because of our prayers if we pray this through and god turns this thing in the court system we got to be ready to respond with the greatest demonstration of love to those precious born babies that the world has ever seen before i'm gonna end i'm gonna move on with to the last one is that okay yes we'll just end by saying this it's it's the same agenda of jesus to honor life and our society has compartmentalized it and you've got a group that cares about life in the womb and then a group that cares about adult life and and i've been accused of both like if you care about life in the womb then you are not supporting life on the streets and against police brutality and supporting the value of life i'm here to tell you do you hear it it's the same route we are actually fighting the same battle if the church would unify we would see a restoration of the value of life all the way from the womb all the way to the grave or to the tomb like kevin says our society is attacking the value of life on multiple levels and instead of tearing one another apart and competing do you realize how powerful the message of the church could be if we valued life period and it was in the womb and all the way to the tomb and we valued god-given life our messages should be unified so the last thing i want to talk about is this issue of race and then we're going to be done give me 10 minutes and we'll be done and we're going to pray and i really prayed about what to share with this because i don't want to it's almost become cool to talk about racism in the church it's almost um like the the uh the thing to do if you if you want to be woke um talk about racism i we've been talking about racism for 21 years and if you talk about the race issue in the midwest or the north or in california the race issue is not a big deal there are churches i go preach at thousands of members of church thousands of members in these churches and race is not a big deal it's a it's a beautiful uh uh tapestry of different nations and cultures there is something about the southeastern part of the united states where multicultural church is not an agenda sunday at 10 30 or 10 a.m is the most divided monolithic moment in america throughout the week we gather in our groups our tribes we become very tribal and it breaks my heart in one sense because heaven is going to be the heart of the father there and in heaven there are no monolithic same groups sitting over here and a different group but they're all the same sitting over here in heaven it's every kindred every nation every tribe every tongue gathered around the throne singing worthy is the lamb we've been contending for heaven on earth not that just when we get to heaven we'll all be together but i'm contending for it and believing for it now for whatever reason in the heart and in the mind of god i feel that is part a large part of our assignment and i recognize there are some people perhaps watching me maybe even some in this room who don't get that or don't even go with that we really don't want to be a part of a church that has this whole issue of healing the races as it's uh as one of its real targets in its mission but i need to say to you that has not changed for me we intentionally talk about race in this church because the devil has intentionally attacked it for decades and for hundreds of years and if we don't talk about it the enemy fills in the gaps i want to say a couple of things number one um there are places in society where racism exists if you deny that you're not being honest with yourself there are places in society where it exists and i want you to know that where it is seen and found and emerges the church should be a voice prophetically against it to say no not against our brother and our sister no not for a people group you can't treat people like that and we will not stand with it or for it we will oppose it denounce it renounce it rebuke it and bind it until it is broken off of our society completely i want to say that because in in this whole issue of race it's very easy to become tribal in our minds and say that white man can't relate to me or that black person i don't understand why um they're saying that i had this encounter this summer not going to go into detail i'm not going to call names but i'm going to tell you a quick story and lebron wherever you are if you'll come it will help me wrap this up this is important to me i never shared this with this church i only shared this with the people closest to me for a reason this past summer when george ford was killed i was called by bishop kevin adams how many know bishop adams down at olivet baptist church probably the largest african-american church in the city and he is absolutely one of the fathers in the african-american community and he's a very dear friend of mine and he called me and he said bishop i want you to come and pray with me at this prayer vigil tonight for george floyd can you come well i had something very important on my calendar that i cancelled and i said absolutely i'll be there i went to olivet baptists and on the rostrum with bishop adams and several uh jewish leaders and several even islamic leaders were there and he introdu he didn't tell me what he wanted me to do he just said i want you to pray and he introduced me this way he said i want bishop wallace to come who pastors the largest multicultural church in our city and i want us to hear him pray and pray with him but i also want him to say what his heart is in this moment of hurt and pain and division in our nation and i he didn't prepare me for that i didn't know what i was going to say except that when he was saying it the spirit of god to me said to me just go up there and tell them what works go up there and tell them what never fails and i walked to the pulpit and i said i don't have some great explanation as to how we're trying to build a multicultural church i can only tell you that we want to love people and that love never fails we prayed left i was getting in the car and several of the pastors there were about 20 if i remember right 21 pastors there they were all going downtown to a peace march and they come to me i was i didn't even know what was happening they came to me they said bishop will you go with us down to the peace march and i just said to everybody there if it's truly a peace march and it's about solidarity i'll go if it's if it's you know throwing things and i don't do that i'll go home and pray i can serve you better in my prayer closet than in that fashion bishop adams come out said it ain't going to be that wallace come with me and i went with him we turned the corner we walked like four blocks in 90 degree weather and i had on i mean i was looking good y'all i i had on penny loafers i had on a nice jacket i didn't know i was going to a piece i looked like man that joker he was for real about these peace marches i mean he came out dressed to the hill right i had no clue i was doing that i turned the corner me and bishop adams were walking together and a person actually three people walked up to me bishop hug me they come to our church their sons and daughters in our church who were at the peace walk and they're talking about equality and they've got up they've got up their signs you know uh let us live and and and show us kindness and all these things and it was truly peaceful and a person walked up to me that i never knew never even knew this person existed and she looked me up and down i'll never forget it and she said you ain't coming here to co-op my meeting i said co-op you meet sweetheart i looked at bishop adams i said who is this he said just let me take care of this and he talked to her and it subsided well what i didn't know now i'm downtown walking for peace to to show solidarity with my brothers and sisters in the african-american community the next day i'm in my office and my assistant chris walks in he said i got to talk to you i said what's wrong he said i got a call from tbi today i'm talking to tbi right now and some some people are threatening your life i said this is a joke and it was not a joke and on social media a person had released a video calling for people to rise up to stop me to stop me he must be stopped now some even called for large caliber weapons what you don't know is that in the summer pastor richie and chris had to call for seven weeks every night of my life for seven weeks a cop had to stay in my front yard from 10 pm to 6 a.m to protect my house because people who i went to show solidarity with said i was a racist bigot who owned the biggest plantation in chattanooga and that any african i'm gonna say it i'm i'm here any african-american who went to my church was saying that they were living on my plantation and many of you saw it i some of you saw it not many some of you saw it i we immediately appealed to facebook they took it off facebook because it was the most hateful vile hurtful thing i ever experienced in my life and i went downtown to show solidarity why are you saying this today pastor because i think we're misunderstood sometimes in our journey for freedom and for love and for hope and i i want you to know that we got skin in this game we we believe in this thing of healing of the races and we know it's not going to be easy and we know we're going to have to have hard conversations and we know we're going to be falsely accused and we know we're going to be called names and we know all these things that don't mean it ain't worth it and it doesn't mean that god hasn't called us to it i think all of us want this to be healed but nobody wants to get involved in the healing process everybody wants this to go away everybody wants everybody to have a fair equal opportunity but nobody wants to speak out against that i talked to a pastor friend of mine yesterday he said wallace and this guy runs 4 000 people he said well i'm one of his overseers i talked to him about it his church he said to me wallace i had one i had one message where i mentioned racism and lost hundreds of people because nobody wants to talk about it in the church let me run down the road and shout while people preach on the holy ghost but don't get me involved in making a difference in the community that i live and my heart today is not necessarily broke it's not even really heavy there's hope in me that in our generation we can move the needle toward love there really is the first thing i thought when this person attacked me and started saying it wasn't just what she said it was all of the followers we got to stop him now put an end to him now large caliber weapons now y'all when you're reading this stuff you got four kids and you live 10 minutes from your church it'll make you worry at night i'm just being honest with you and i thought you know what i don't know if i'm gonna be able to mention this anymore because every time i mention it every time i do something it inflames something and i made up my mind i ain't running from this one i'm not gonna fight in the flesh but i'm not running from this demon we're going in the name of the lord to love like we've never loved and to have and to have compassion like we never had compassion and here's my commitment i'll let dev end it i'll be done i called some friends of mine this past week i said we cannot wait four more years to start these conversations we got to start having conversations now if we're going to move the needle what's what does that mean move the needle i want to have such a conversation in the the church of america and to come to such a place of unity this is ambitious and it's just a dream that both the republicans and the democrats know we're going to have to make some changes to get the vote of the church [Music] i want them to know if they want our vote we're going to vote according to the principles of the word of god now this is ambitious [Applause] but we can move this needle and we can come to a place of life [Music] i renounce racism i renounce every form of supremacy and i want to say this to you i got blown up when the black lives matter thing happened everybody said what do you got to say about here's what i say about it black lives do matter to me to me and they matter to our church well we want you to believe in the black lives matter movement i believe black lives matter to me you're not going to manipulate me into honoring some platform that denuclearizes the family and i ain't going there but black lives matter to me and they matter to this church and now we can say white lives matter to us and hispanic lives matter to us and chinese lives matter to us and asian lives matter to us why are you saying this because if we don't put a megaphone on the message of the kingdom we will lose our relevance as the people of god we will lose our prophetic voice so to every son and daughter in this place in the african-american community i want to say this to you i want this to be a place where you feel hope when you walk through the doors i want you to feel like this is a place where you belong i want every hispanic person that feels like they're hiding because they're not legal in this city to know we love you here you would be amazed at how many people come through this church and they won't let us have their information because they're scared we're going to turn them in listen i just want people to see the love of god in us do you endorse illegal uh immigration i endorse love period do we need laws yes do people need to come in legally absolutely but they're here and while they're here what would jesus do that's all i'm asking [Music] i hate racism in every nasty form i hate it for our couples in this church where one of the spouse is an african-american the other is caucasian or one is latin american or one is called k i hate it that they feel like they can't find a church somewhere where they're accepted when we were raised we were told stupid stuff like your kids gonna have a bad life [Music] those mixed cup they say stuff like that i don't want that in this house it's not welcome here hate and division are not welcome here and leaders in this church we will not promote division we will not fuel the fire of division and hate and this is not kumbaya sit in the circle and have a different god of the week this is jesus kingdom and if you think his kingdom is full of republicans or democrats you haven't read your bible his kingdom is full of believers from every nation every kindred every tribe and every tongue and there are people in africa and there are people in europe and there are people in australia that don't even know what we're talking about today keep your eyes on jesus family love like he loves [Music] and he'll take care of the rest i want to pray but before i do i'll give you a chance to stay anything on your heart baby i think our agenda here is love and just to make it super clear we will not pastor a racist church this will be redemption to the nations where all race and ethnicities are welcome and if that is something you're struggling with in your heart you need to pray through that and don't bring that trash into this sanctuary we can't control what happens on social media and on the streets but we can control this house and i'm here to tell you this needs to be a place where no matter what color skin you have no matter your gender no matter how much money you do or don't make you can come into this place and feel a difference and feel peace and i want to say just once and for all [Music] kevin and i are white we don't really know how to change that i got a little chocolate inside of me a little chocolate god made us that way our four children so far are white but that doesn't mean we're racist and i would just like to shut the mouth of that lion right now in the name of jesus in this sanctuary anyone who's watching we will not live under the oppression of false accusation and i want to speak to everyone in this house you better be careful what you accuse someone of because only jesus knows the heart that language is not beneficial and it does not help if you want to know if someone's racist or not look at their life and look at their actions not their social media posts and we are not racist i don't care if my children all full for marry someone of a different ethnicity or background in fact i hope it happens i hope we have such a family that my grandchildren can't check a box on a form when they apply for a college i really pray that i pray that so i'll end by saying what i felt like the lord told me to say it's really easy to stay within your own tribe and it's comfortable but it's not kingdom and in order to build the church god has told us to build we can all look the same and i still don't think our church is diverse enough for our heart there's still room and that means it's going to take us all stepping out of our comfort zones and it's going to take us all taking some risk and if you're going to go forward with this church you're going to have to trust our hearts and i go to bed at night sometimes and i weep over the people in our own house that still may not trust our hearts but i hope we have earned that trust and i hope we can take hands together and do something that the world says is impossible because we're all willing to take a risk because we care about jesus's agenda more than our own and i hope you can trust no matter what difficult things we have to address behind this pulpit that our hearts are pure and that we truly love you no matter what your skin color is and that my children don't have a racist bone in their body they love everyone and don't you want all of our families to be that way and so this is just a call to go forward together in love with the agenda of jesus let's pray for that before we leave so today lord is a different day and we're thankful for this opportunity to share with our body our people the sheep of your pasture that you've assigned us to care for i pray words would have brought clarity i pray our heart would have brought in understanding and definition i pray this house is a place for hope i pray it's a place where wounds are healed [Music] i pray it will always be a kingdom anomaly anomaly planted in the center of downtown chattanooga a place where no one can look down the road and say well that's a white church that's a black church that's latin i pray they're just able to look down the road and see nations faces from every ethnicity and tribe [Music] not because that's what we're trying to hard to create but it's because the reality of the kingdom of god exists here and people from all those places feel like this is home help us lord we want to fulfill your mandate john 17 father i pray that they are one as we are one help us to be one today and i'm reminded lord of acts 17 that you made of one blood many nations we all came from the same tree and the same parents adam and eve passed down the curse but jesus you came to break the curse and to bring the blessing i pray that blessing would happen in this house in such a dynamic way that people see the glory of god on all of our faces bless our church as we move forward may we move forward together and in a divided nation may we be a healed people that heal others in jesus name amen

Channel: Redemption to the Nations Church

Views: 2,930

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: chattanooga, tn, tennessee, kevin, wallace, kevin wallace, deven, deven wallace, highland, park, highland park, rsm, redemption, redemption to the nations, rttn, rttn church, church, God, Jesus, spirit-filled, spirit, Holy Ghost, pentecostal, love, athens, jesus agenda, jesus, agenda, abortion, gender, biden, trump, praying, sexuality

Id: 8j0ZpH-hTSg

Length: 85min 24sec (5124 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020