Unlikely Friendships: A Discussion with Andy Byrd & Francis Chan at IHOPKC (Part 1)

well this is fun i have been so totally looking forward to this we're going to pray lord we just ask you let us see what you see and feel what you feel about this gathering these people this relationship that you are leading and forming we ask that you would glorify jesus in surprising ways to us just in the way we talk and interact and what unfolds after this we thank you in jesus name amen well we're doing a part one taking a small break and then the second service is gonna be part two because we're capturing it all on film putting all on the you know archives on the internet so folks can see both of them together and so i can go back and i'm gonna watch this again so a little introduction why do we want you to know francis chan and andy byrd because their story's beautiful if you never meet them again it's beautiful and it's inspiring if i never saw them again i'm enriched by going wow wow but there is another point that part of their story is part of our story as a family here and for us to understand and celebrate it causes us to be able to enjoy it receive it and participate in a greater way so this is purposeful this interview not just fun though it is fun now most of you know i'm not going to go into the story again but for those that are new with us that on april 9th several months ago we had a very unusual weekend on april 9th with chris reed here and the lord highlighted these two guys and eric mataxis and chris reed and and ken fish who are with us and they'll be with us this thursday friday and saturday as they were last week and i'm not going to tell that story except for to say the holy spirit highlighted these five guys with us and as i said this is probably not the best way to say it but i said to our family here i go a month or two ago these are strange bedfellows i mean there's no way they would be in the same room for an extended period of time just they just wouldn't do it it's just not because you're it's bad it just wouldn't happen and the last three or four days we have spent nearly not quite to shy up 20 hours together the six of us in conversation that's not counting the three evenings that came after it near not quite just shy of 20 hours of conversation most of it at my house around the table and there were tears there were inspiration and lots of fun there was some push and pull and it was sparks were flying sometimes and tears were flowing and eyes were going whoa wow and anyway let me see i don't know when the date was i think i wrote it down here yeah june 18th on a friday night about two weeks ago i gave a one hour story of how these five guys and myself and this team how this thing came together and what happened in april so i don't want to tell it again 90 of you know it but 10 of you go like i'm not getting what's going on here so june 18th on a friday night i call i have a message i called it it will be a strange title it's worshiping compassion prophetic and intercession you think what the story of these six friends people streams teams whatever we call it coming together but i'm calling it worship and compassion prophetic and intercession because that was something the lord spoke really strong literally in 1984 and this is an emergence or development of that reality and it will make sense if you hear it and i'm saying that for you for your purpose and now most of you know again last part of the introduction of this is that after that weekend in april 9th where the lord highlighted april 9 and april 18th and these us the six of us together that francis and andy sent me an email and said hey we want to come visit we just want to be in the prayer room with our f we just want to be here with our families and here we go and i said oh my goodness what a privilege these guys are so busy and for them to take two weeks this is april we're going to come in july 1 to 14 ish and uh i thought my goodness i mean because i know how busy they are they go we're gonna pay our own expenses fly our entire families out six children with andy seven children with francis expensive fly from kona with are you kidding and we'll do it we'll get an airbnb we'll take care of everything of course we're not going to let them do that but they said we just want to be in the prayer room with you just together and i thought my goodness then a week later or so chris reed calls up and says you know i was just with you last week i just miss you i want to come again and i said great we want you to come and get over because i this like my family he goes but my free time is in the first week or two of july at the same time and then i said oh well i got a couple friends coming he goes i'll stay out of your way house down your way i go oh no no no no and i thought francis mind blown like this could be fun i go yeah come and the henry side of me kicked into you i go yeah and then ken fish who's kind of like a mentor he's mentoring uh uh chris not entirely but really pouring into him because he's many years older he's been in moving in the spirit for many years he said hey next time chris comes i want to come well he's coming in july but i got some friends here we're we're going to i don't know you know i don't want to everybody at the same time he goes well we'll stay out your way and then he goes oh i can't come because i'm at eric matax's house for a week of ministry i said okay just come in the chris will come again in october november i i'm assuming and so then he ken calls back another week later or something he goes can eric come and i thought these are the same five guys that the lord highlighted on april 9th anyway i told a little bit of the story it starts there so before we get into your stories and how the lord is i mean your stories are so inspiring just to listen but then how you came together than how we came together and my favorite phrase what meaneth thou this you know when we don't know people have asked me what does this mean what does this mean i said if i tell you i will miss it my resume proves it i will miss it i'd rather not say so they go what are we calling at the prophetic convergence forum part two i go no we're calling it two weekends in july because and i said 10 days afterwards we'll understand better but 10 years later we'll understand a lot more because i don't have a clue what's going to happen so three days we spent almost 20 hours outside of the public meetings the six of us together give me your thought a few thoughts and you give a thought then we'll kick into your stories okay i i i am i i've thought this through so that i would not exaggerate first i'm hung up what is a bed fellow you said that i don't even know okay okay okay no no we gotta figure it out that's like an english let's move on i know let's move on quickly it's it's you know english yeah okay okay okay okay okay it's old english something okay i don't know what it is i just okay okay okay was that bothering some of you too yeah okay um i'm not as current in the culture as some of you guys are myself okay now okay let me let me bring it back okay now that that's clear um i just don't think i'm one of the okay think about it i don't like being called that okay um uh i i have thought about this okay i fell in love with jesus when i was around 14 years old youth ministry you know youth pastor taught me to study the word of god get along with the lord every day and i've pretty much done that for the last 40 years now but this whole time as i've been studying the word of god and even as i've been pursuing more of the spiritual and everything there's always been like this gosh i read this book these stories and what i experience do not match up and there it's always been the sense of there's more there's more there's more and this little bit of tension in me until this week okay that's what's happened this week where i'm sitting around a table with these guys and the way these lifetimes of stories coupled with deep clear biblical teaching and exegesis coupled with powerful manifestations of the spirit and love and encouragement everything else i'm going this is the bible this is this squares up with the god of scripture that i've been studying since i was 14 years old so this three days as you mentioned on on the friday on one of the nights you said it it will go down as one of the more significant times in my life in terms of paradigm shifting or i don't know what yeah i don't know what it's going to amount to still it like there's there's still so much time and everything you know that remains to be seen and and every day more you know every i should say every hour more pieces come together absolutely um and i i've been convinced that during this period of my life god was going to show me what the next season was all about that during this two weeks perfect that god was going to show me and so i i just believe i'm gonna know by the end of this andy a thought or two uh yeah hard to follow that um but uh it's been absolutely astounding i think the picture of unity um of love you know there's some of us that would have known each other longer there's some of us that literally met the moment we walked into your house so you know kind of happened most of the room did not know most of the room right and um to have shared what we have over the last three days um it doesn't just feel it doesn't just feel significant in terms of the principle and the value of unity it feels significant in terms of the urgency and the prophetic need for unity right now so it doesn't just feel valued and principle like this is a good idea it feels like this is absolutely necessary for what god's doing on the earth what he's doing in america and there's a sense of urgency to it there's a sense of the timeliness of us sitting in that room together so it's been incredible and hilarious i did not expect it would be so funny we laughed a lot a lot eric is one of the funniest guys i've ever met what you don't know is you're sitting next to one of the funniest guys i've ever written i just want to set the record straight eric can have any crown he wants i i i i don't want any crown he's fine funny crown just he can have it so i just approached this guy too i easily give that away but when he's preaching is one thing i said i'm talking about isaac with a free spirit that's that's the consequence not so free when he's preaching we'll pray we're gonna pray for that we're gonna pray for the gospel to pray for your freedom maybe not okay so anyway [Laughter] shifting gears back to a serious note you're let's take a few minutes introducing your childhood you came to the lord radical 14 years old went to master seminary and then you got you came to visit us so just give a few minutes on that and then i'm going to ask you a little bit and then how you two got together um okay so i came from a seminary that really taught against um some of the gifts of the spirit today and uh and i i believed everything i was taught and then i did a series on the holy spirit you know this is when i had started my church and began teaching and studying the scriptures you know so i'm a little bit removed from my seminary days and i'm going gosh i don't know if we were fair hermeneutically to these passages in scripture i thank god for my seminary that they taught me how to study the word of god but in studying the word of god i'm going i think there's a lot more to what the holy spirit is supposed to i don't see this break and i began to ask my staff who also came when came from the same school i'm like hey just behind closed doors what do you get from the scriptures and they're like oh there's more i'm like i know and we're we're like i never would have come to these conclusions so this was not oh francis had this miracle experience and therefore he became a charismatic no because a year ago i'm on a call with him he goes i think i'm a charismatic i said francis you is one i'm telling you right now he goes i think but i heard you no i know i'm on tape yeah i am i am okay [Applause] but i'm also an evangelical all right awesome okay um i love it uh what was i talking about oh yeah yeah i even asked some professors you know like can you defend this biblically and they go well not biblically they said there wasn't enough evidence biblically but i also look at history and it just seems like the gifts died in this period and you don't see it so when i put that together i'm not saying all professors just a couple of them and i was like whoa okay because i'm reading this book and there's more and that's when i was writing my book on the holy spirit too and uh so i start going down this road and also befriending some guys not not willingly i just happen to be on a board for this uh ministry called uh world impact for the inner city caring for the inner city poor and and you know getting good teaching them get them education you know and but on the board was a guy named jack hayford um another guy which he's a favorite to many oh really okay well jack hayward is one of the heroes to us uh when he heard what seminary i went to literally is at lunch hey where'd you go to school he literally dropped his fork and he goes and then we both just started laughing and he's like i i go look i and i'm i you know was apologizing to him because i expected him to get on one time he taught bible study for our our board and i expect him oh i had a dream last night and here's what the angel said you know and like no bible just all dreams instead he opens up the scriptures and starts going to the context of these passages and i'm like what in the world he knows the hebrew way better than i do he's exposing the word and coupling it with this character of of just everything i read about christ and it really changed my whole paradigm and i had to apologize like i'm sorry i did not have this view of you and took me on this road of speaking at all sorts of conferences for you know four square you know different you know pentecostals like and i'm like wow what am i doing and all these circles i really like them and everything was you know i was able to mesh in both of those worlds until i said yes to ihop i'm just i'm just telling you it was like we've talked about this many times it was like a story okay now you've crossed a line um and it was just this reputation and it it got to the point where i got so much flack for it i'm like what did i say yes to because i would just look at these different events and even if i disagree with things you know that gives me an opportunity to share maybe what god wants me to share to this group i like speaking to people i disagree with you know if i have the open door to this i'd rather speak to people who don't believe like i do you could get us back onto the bible you know yeah exactly i could show you what this is you know but i on my way here i think is daniel lim and another one of your leaders they're you know so i'm scared coming here when they pick you up from the airport yeah because i i had one of our staff his mom flew in in tears saying say it is not so francis is not going over to be with mike pickle like this is these are the things that i'm getting and and people have written me off at this point for coming here and so i come and i've got all sorts of questions um because i studied the kansas city prophets while i was in seminary and uh even though there was no such group which i found out from you i'm like what i thought that was a known thing you know you studied us in a positive way oh yeah sure yes like bedfellows um but uh go ahead i had so many questions and uh but on the right here even you know one of your leaders was like oh there's only two people i read it's mike bickle and john mcarthur i'm like what you that that doesn't even make any sense you know it's it's just like i know i won't comp okay but i'm like that are you serious like oh yeah we love him and we love the scripture and i love joe macarthur i read his love for years i love you you've been pushing him on me yeah i mean it's it's like what in the world you got to read his new stuff i got to get into john mccarthy no i know um but uh it was fascinating to me and the more i know mike the more i'm going wow he really loves the word of god and has been diligent to the word of god and knows the word he he is more diligent in studying uh i i don't know of anyone that studies the word of god and teaches it more than my i mean do you i'm trying to think who does that more so there's these paradigm-shifting things nonetheless i get there do you want me to talk about that yeah yeah the moment i get you go to the table yeah yeah like they they daniel's like hey why don't you go up on this stage i'm like i'm gonna give the context so it's the one thing conference there's 20 000 that are gonna meet the next day and he comes a day early to meet in the leadership summit of 300 people but he doesn't know what's going on and he's nervous and they drive him there to the leadership summit he walks in 3 400 leaders around tables with about 10 of us up front having a forum he thinks this is the one thing conference you go okay i'm glad i'm here and he walks in he doesn't know anybody and they said hey go up to the front table he's going what am i going to do up there wait is am i speaking what are you doing no one tells you anything so he goes up to the table and the holy spirit speaks to him you go from there yeah it this conference had already started i didn't know it already started or maybe it had started it was the morning meeting yeah it was going on and i was like i'm not supposed to speak at this thing you know so i just peek my head in because i just got off the airplane to see what's going on and i come up onto the stage or go up on the stage and and so maybe you guys had planned that i didn't and and as i'm walking onto this stage going off the leadership summit of 3 400 people in the side room yeah i'm going what where am i and i'm so scared and what we think we're going to do get you we no you might yeah i don't know what you're gonna do i just was so warned that i'm up there like i don't know anyone on that stage and this is a whole different context and i've had so many emails and had to respond to so many people and once i got up there and i'm very careful with this i believe i heard the word of god i believe god spoke to me where suddenly i'm i don't know if it was i don't remember if it's an audible voice or whatever but it was new to me and it was like saint francis i know you're afraid of these people do not be afraid of these people you know something like this is your family and um i'm just going okay okay but i i'm not believing it totally you don't understand like when you're ingrained in something your whole life and taught something for years and believing it for years and then you're warned again you don't just immediately even though you think you're hearing a voice right then it's new to you it's peculiar to you and but it was this sense in which don't be afraid don't be afraid don't be afraid this is your family and and as we got to know each other and it just became this beautiful time to where at the end and i asked mike he's like ask any question you have about anything you've ever heard about me and i began asking and he began answering and explaining why he didn't spend his life defending himself and god told him not to do that and at my jaw is just dropping at the humility of this man the biblical knowledge of this man the faithfulness for so many years that by the end of our time i had to just publicly say look i don't care what you think in and i'm speaking to the people that have been following me for years and had written me off now i'm going i love this man and and i i just wanted to stand by him because i'm going this i i misread him um i was told the wrong things about him and i see who he is now and i'm going to stand with him and it was it was uh that was a scary thing for me to be very moving to me yeah and i took it as from the lord yeah i took it as my heavenly father saying hey little guy i'm helping you i love you and i heard it through your mouth and so then the next year when i came back again a flood of emails this time saying okay it's okay that you speak there but do not publicly affirm mike fickle again and so at the end of it i'm going okay everyone told me not to do this but i can't help myself i go i love you mike like this get on the platform i love mike bigel yeah yeah because what he was doing was all those words coming he goes i'm just going to break this off of me go the opposite spirit and then get on with my message get this thing off my head you know so that's you just spoke what was in your heart so we're shifting gears now to andy a little bit about your background i mean it's remarkable i'm just going to say a little bit about you his dad his side grew up generations of baptists his mom's side grew up in the southern california revival culture so just give a little bit about that and then they got married we're talking about your grandparents spent 50 years teaching the sunday school class at the shelby baptist church but your mom your mom's side sang in the choir for catherine coleman and amy simple mcpherson your grandmother i mean and then how do they meet and then you're you come later go ahead yeah yeah so real brief you heard the baptist side 50 years same sunday school class they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary just incredibly faithful my mom's side my great-grandma was baptized in the holy spirit at amy simple mcpherson's church and she was kind of the family pastor from that point on so i grew up knowing her sitting in her rocking chair praying in the spirit just a wild wild woman my mom and my grandma sang in katherine coleman's choir and my uncle who started this community i ended up being born in was one of william branham's primary disciples one of his main disciples so that great uncle of mine moves into remote northeastern washington where there's no town hour from the nearest town buys a big piece of land and all these young 20s back to the lander movement jesus people movement kind of hippie movement in the 70s right this would be in the in the late 70s 1975 1975-76 and so they we start a town an hour from the nearest town everybody's living off the land no one has jobs we're ready for the economies of the world to collapse everybody's storing massive amounts of food and they're root cellars and you're like zero one two three four yep i'm born there 1980 and um and we didn't have a dollar to our name i mean it's just it was awesome and uh my earliest memories are growing up you know we're out in the field with chairs set up you know worshiping late into the night three four five times a night we would get or a week we would gather and just worship it was just what we did and we're way out there hunting fishing all the boy stuff everything that you do to survive when you have no money yeah she loved it though i loved it i totally loved it yes yeah so we lived there really full time until i was eight and then we moved from there to remote alaska out near russia on an aleutian island so it kind of went from like weird to weirder in a sense and um talk about your dad too a little bit yeah so my dad is a nationally renowned ornithologist he's a he's a bird biologist and my last name is byrd and uh he he was the lead biologist for the whole of the aleutian islands so he developed all the conservation biology and everything for that entire island change probably one of the few men alive who's been to every single one of those islands which most of them have no humans on them only birds and uh a few other animals so we lived out there for a number of years and real remote i mean it was so the we had 12 sunny days a year on average out there not a single 20. 12. 12 days a year once once a month we averaged a sunny day there was not a tree on the island because it was too windy no trees could grow it was a little strange we're going to pray for you after this i need a lot of inner healing i need all of our energy no i loved it maybe it was good for us yeah it was a boy's dream i just fished and hunted and camped and hiked and then the first time you walked raised by wolves the first time you walked into a walmart you went like wow oh very first time i i was probably almost 20 before you walked into a walmart probably i don't know i don't remember you said you were raised by wolves as well in the woods you know you know you get it maybe you don't okay okay i i don't not really then you go to wyoming you're 18. yeah so we moved to mainland alaska my most formative years are there small little town which francis just came back from a trip to my hometown my entire town was about five seven thousand people like when you were teenagers yeah yeah no stop light in the whole town but that was big that was the biggest town i'd ever lived in that was like a metropolis and um so i finished high school there and didn't know what i wanted to study um didn't know what i should go to school for my dad was definitely was educated was kind of we were headed that direction and so he let me take a gap year basically to go to wyom so i went to hawaii because i lived in alaska for far too long and uh sounded fun went for all the wrong reasons my graduation speech must have made my parents so proud um whatever i had to give a speech and i said i'm going to ywam to find a wife i just can't imagine how how that must have made them feel now as a parent like we're so proud of our son with that actually i'm going to wyome to find a wife but that wasn't true i was deathly afraid of women and uh i didn't have sisters it was a very peculiar species to me so there was all it was just smoke but but it's it sounded good to me at the moment so i didn't go to wyoming to fall in love with jesus i i don't know i went to leave alaska i went because uh adventure sounded fun but long story short i had my whole world turned upside down in that experience yeah how many years ago was that so 22 years ago now 22 years ago no they'll bring one okay there you go i'll let you have the dead battery okay so she'll fix it so you have no idea many of you know this but some of you don't that he is the leader of the send that's filling up stadiums now he's the lord's using him and the team next year at arrowhead stadium you couldn't fathom 22 years ago you would be leading national international stadium events i mean this we'll get that to there later but uh so you get on fire for the lord 22 years ago because your your roots were were worshiped three four nights a week but you know you you just needed that jump start now one of my favorite times i'm going to digress for just a moment of these three days where we spent nearly 20 hours together we started off and was i said hey let's each of us share a little bit of our story 10 or 15 minutes and we kept getting we would share a story like say francis for 20 minutes and uh then what would happen is we'd get into all these other discussions so we're on the third meeting and and andy hasn't shared this story yet and he's so humble he's he says that's good so i got to say this is one of my favorite things said in the whole 20 hours i said guys because they're all older i said except for chris reed you're the same age i said i got a surprise for you the surprise of the three days it's called gold you have no idea who andy bird is gold i mean francis is deep as deep as any as the deepest but he's more aware of how deep he's that he's not so he's got the humility and then you've got eric who's super insightful funny bold all these things then you got ken fish which you don't know so much yet so intelligent i mean a princeton scholar but moves in the spirit for 40 years he's moved in it then you got chris reed just wow i'll just leave it there and i said this is the gold right here and after about 30 minutes all of these older guys went oh my goodness i just had to say that you were the gold in the group so then next question how did you two connect i mean i know the story but talk about how you guys got together both of you together i'll defer to the golden child hey but just so you know that he's he's as guilty as i am on this because i said gold he said yes and so there you go no we um we were holding a gathering kona what do you think four or five years ago now we should find out the exact year i don't remember and um his francis has a tech team that does a lot of media projects with crazy love and some of the initiatives he's a part of and they're amazing and so they were coming out to work with us and do uh part of this training gathering they were also wanted to help us as wywimkona it was amazing so we're on a zoom with them talking about them coming to kona and francis walks in the background of the camera and i'm like that's francis chan and i and i i you know of course knew this was francis chan's media team but francis in my world much like mike is a is a hero of mine i mean the i say this many times you never think that your heroes will become your friends you just don't this is not in your thinking and so um that was very true for mike he mentored me at a distance never having met me for for a decade plus before we had actually met but i i was a number one student of mike pickles teachings but when they were tapes i was listening to them when they were cds i was listening to them when the website came out it was one of the greatest breakthroughs in our generation and and i devoured it so francis as well his books his life his message you know to a younger generation francis's um boldness his passion his zeal his willingness to do anything that jesus would say his stepping out of his uh very successful church all of it my whole generation was watching going we've no we've not seen anything like this this is astounding for a second he doesn't like this but it's true i think he has the strongest voice to the young adults believers in our nation i would agree any other person i know he doesn't care about that what i just said but it is true and in the most streams of the body of christ it is true yes yes yeah absolutely so he walks in the back he will you see him yes on on like the zoom culture yeah yeah and like francis we throw it out we're like francis you should come with your media team it's like our one chance like when he passes by yeah and francis was so kind he's like yeah wow thanks okay and kind of heads off off the screen and we're like it's over that was our one chance we missed it and now we were those guys you said that he said i always refused why i'm i got a lot of uh invitations over the years because i wasn't sure about theology again theology was like every i turned down billy graham like just i don't know that's embarrassing i know okay all right i know i know but it's like i that's how you know committed i was to what i believed gone to bob jones university it's very conservative i went to the other bob jones university i mean there's just two different directions i never thought of that but um yeah i kind of pushed it off but you know i was polite and i was like okay so now i go great yeah but in my mind i'm just like i i seriously would consider it but in my mind i'm thinking okay that's a cute little kona thing and uh you know charismatic and and and but i in my mind later i'm thinking well it'd be good for me to be with my tech team and you know i don't really know these guys because they're they're on another level in their minds and i think you know no just like coding i mean i have nothing i don't know what that is so i thought okay well kona that's kind of appealing too and eventually just thought okay i'll go to be with them to hang out build you know group building for my team um and when i got there okay this time i was a little bit more into the charismatic world by then and thanks to kansas city yeah yeah i think kansas city kicked it off just um but uh when i went to speak okay that first time i was like okay i think that was god saying that going to ohana court worship's going on i start walking towards the front to sit down like i normally do and you guys i believe this was the clearest i've heard the word of the lord the voice of god somehow and he said francis these are your children protect your children okay to the young young people yes and you've got to understand i've spent my whole life speaking at youth conferences i've never heard anything he's never said this these this group these are your children protect your children he hasn't said anything really um i mean outside of the scriptures um maybe i just wasn't open to it but i'm so like shocked by this this time is not like i wonder if that's god's voice i'm like oh god oh god i think i hear your voice forgive me because right now i'm still skeptical i've asked can i hear you and now that i think i hear you i'm i'm doubting whether this is you so this is going on as the singing is going my head is is like this is going god i thank you you're telling me i think you are telling me these are my children i am so sorry because i asked for this but now i'm having a hard time believing and trusting it's really your voice is it you that's telling me that these are my children and and then i'm supposed to protect them you know this is all going silently before god because i'm freaking out and trying to understand is this a moment i'm waiting for where i'm hearing from you and the guy next to me some guy don't even know during worship as i'm like this you know having my time with the lord he starts talking in my ear which i think is rude okay i'm just i'm being dead seriously i seriously thought this is why i don't do these white women things you know it's seriously like you don't interrupt someone when they're having this moment with god and but what the guy says in my ears he goes francis these are your children they have your dna i just lose you know i do i do the same thing you do where i just kind of nod my head because it's just like i'm not going to respond or whatever i'm just just leave me alone just keep that statement in my head and i lose it i just absolutely lose it that at the time when i'm wondering god did you just say that to me you have a human voice now and it wasn't an angel i mean brian's cool but he's no angel and you know i know him now but i've never seen him heard of him before he just whispered that in my ear my god you're so gracious that as i'm wondering if i heard your voice you repute it you repeat it through a human being and so that kind of started this journey with andy and wywam and our our friendship and so in april just i'm going to jump ahead then they go back in april where the three of us are on a zoom call together and he said in kansas city the lord says da da da your family welcome your friends something like that and then and then in hawaii i mean in kona he says your children he goes these are the two times i've heard god directly i don't fully know what this means and this is part of the dialogue that emerges into this gathering actually because the same thing is happening with the other guys at the same time all these conversations are emerging right around the april 9 and so i thought this is important like i didn't tell the others about our conversation i just let it lie there but then we all came together and then so anyway going back to to i went then uh uh lauren cunningham and darlene say a little bit about how they touched you because why wham i mean you were so impacted they're they are the founders of wyoming 60 plus years ago they're in their 80s now yeah you get to meet them then you get lisa to come visit you yeah i had no idea why about ywam because when you just keep something at arm's distance you know what do you know which is like every once in a while i meet someone from ywam and you know sometimes they know the bible sometimes wow and uh and so i've just kind of thought that and and then when i got there and i realized the history and how many millions have gone through this and then that the founder was still alive and his wife and meeting them and i i called my wife i'm like okay we need to come back here i i just met this older couple they've been doing this for 60 years and um we got to go yeah you need to meet them i said you know maybe even next week because i don't know how much longer they're going to live so we gotta i i want this is who i want to be when we are old they are still on the mission they're still focused i cannot believe what they have done in their lifetime i didn't know the scope of what god was doing and that's that's a shame of all of this you know when you're brought up saying hey you you don't want to you don't want to know that brother or that uncle you know then you miss out and you're going whoa i've learned so much from andy and his whole world i've learned so much from mike and his friends and and each time there's like a little bit of fear of the unknown of what's going to happen to me and who are these guys you're bringing you know and and it doesn't mean you throw your discernment out the window i mean you just can't that we're called to be discerning but i'm saying as i discern biblically with everything i've studied in my life i'm telling you it's coming together that's what is blowing my mind so so the thing that i really love that you when you were telling the story about meeting lauren and darlene at another time you said they're in their 80s living the same way they lived in their 20s because the 20 year olds get on fire they started the missions movement wyom and you know they had one missions base and they had two today there's 2200 mission bases 2200 locations of wyoming it's the largest missions movement in the world and in history and so they said they're in their 80s living in the same passion and childlike expectation and abandonment that they did in their 20s nobody does that for 60 years exactly and that's where i told her and that's what i've been telling that younger generation too like i don't want to be that guy that did something crazy in my 20s and then wrote a book about it and retired like it there's this there's this this pattern in the evangelical christian world where you do crazy things in your 20s and maybe you go to dts whatever but then you get married and you play a little safer then you have kids you play a little safer you know and and i get it i get it as a dad of seven ever you understand why it has to it goes that way but it doesn't have to go that way and i tell people it's like you took a step out of the boat and then you jump back in and write a book about it i go no i want to take a step further every year of my life to where i can't even see the boat when i'm 60 70. you know and i'm living by faith and it's a lifestyle of faith which was the only thing that made sense to me biblically because what am i trying to save now in my 50s what am i trying to hold on to i'm getting closer and closer to seeing his face i should be taking bigger steps of faith and so i've always believed that and tried to live that way but until meeting lauren and dar i you know i i tell people the younger generation is so hungry for young marrieds they're still living by faith people with children who still take risks you know people with several children that they're looking for that and they're looking for the grandpas and the grandmas that aren't you know just retiring and accumulating stuff but they're like man i'm gonna see god what am i doing with all this money let me give it away to the youth because i'm gonna see the face of god pretty soon because that's the only thing that makes sense to me biblically and i saw that in lauren and dar i see that in your leader mike and i praise god for that so there are 5 million young people who have gone through they call it dts which is we like our internship five million have gone into the the dts's in the last 60 years that is remarkable and one of the main leaders of yum john dawson is a very dear friend of mine for 30 years and and so i've loved why wham because i've got to know john and i'm awestruck by what's going on there and then of course mark anderson i mean if we had to say what ministries are best friends it has to be why wham collectively but then why why i'm down the road with mark anderson mark and karen for 30 years i mean the 22 years of ihop we have walked together and i mean i love that guy and of course now 111 globals there you know our own uh murray and deborah they're there mixing wyoming prayer and missions and we are just so excited and so thankful about why wham but lord i thank you for lauren and darlene cunningham i thank you for 60 or 65 years later in their 80s approaching 90s they are pressing for the new frontier thank you thank you thank you for lauren and darling cunningham lord even bill and yvette bright with campus crusade those two couples stand alone way out there in my understanding thank you for those kind of people that did it 50 60 70 years even in jesus name so one of our great moments was in 2016 in september when the y wham leadership because remember there's there's like 30 000 staff worldwide i don't know the real number of this but like the top or near 2000 or some number like that or 3 000 of their leaders decided to come together and they picked kansas city and uh lauren cunningham picked kansas city and one reason was because ihop he wanted to be next to the prayer movement and i thought how honoring so two or three thousand came you were there and in the context of 2016 some things unfolded and on this stage lauren cunningham said god promised me a million intercessors and the lord stirred my heart and some of the others and we said we are going to stand in the gap to help not way outside of ihop raise a million intercessors for the largest missions movement in history and we committed before the lord by the grace of god and that bonded us in a new way together and again you don't have to have best friends but why williams are best friends you don't even need to say that but i just said it but isaac you had a powerful dream about why wham just a month or two ago when you were visiting there i want to hear from you andy in just a minute because i want to hear about you meeting francis i want to hear about this dream i don't think i've heard and we're going to have a partner in a few minutes it's you know it's really short i took two services back in may and told the broader story uh because my wife and i morgan we went to kona and we saw you there briefly just for a minute in passing but we were so marked by our wyom family and it was like the lord just deposited all this love and passion as intercessory missionaries here to see the missions movement go forth in the earth in luke 4 18 power that's really what it is at the end of the day and that's one of our primary assignments here anyways the short of it is the the second or third night i'm there francis buckle your seatbelt i have a dream and in this dream in this dream i see jesus his back and he's working as a carpenter and he's bringing these two walls together these framed out walls and on his left it says ihop kc and on his right it says wyom and he's bringing them together and he's so hap i can't see his face but he's so happy and overjoyed at these merging together of these uh ministries but it's more than that it's it's about prayer and missions and the end of the age and global harvest and there's many many people across the body of christ involved in this and he's bringing it together and he's cleaning up the joints where they're all going to connect together because there's like these rusty screws that he's getting out of the way and he's bringing them together and then he begins to bolt them together and i understand just in the dream intuitively that the lord is bringing two walls together because without two walls you can't have a structure and i knew intuitively in the dream that the structure had to do with standing for two purposes that were unfolding in our generation purpose number one was it takes a structure to bear a load and to bear the weight and i i knew that to be the glory of god that the lord wanted to release a great outpouring of the spirit and he needed to bring together not just ihop and wyom but streams in the body of christ to bear the weight of what he wanted and i think it's so that one group doesn't get arrogant over the other that's my little commentary it that so this group gets a little outpouring they don't get arrogant over this group anyways the lords bring it together to bear the weight of his glory and then the second thing was it takes a structure to stand against the winds of adversity because as the lord releases a greater outpouring there's greater resistance in the natural in the spirit to the purposes of god and he's going no you need one another in a dynamic way so that you stand courageous and faithful in the face of persecution betrayal setback adversity in the onslaught of the enemy so anyways that's the short version of that another point you said that the walls like that because a wall by itself will fall down if it's just a wall if the wind's strong enough to knock it down but if it's a wall that's built together and the lord said there were rusty things at the joint he's fixing all of that yes so we're paying attention the next four five six seven eight years he's gonna make strong bolts and move some of the rust and we're saying lord we don't have an opinion what that looks like but we're in and it's supernatural and we're going to do this thing it's supernatural it's a work of god in what he's doing even what i see you know francis in your life and andy and your guys friendship it is a supernatural work no one got together and plotted how can we become best friends that doesn't work you've never became best friends with someone because you plotted in a strategy room how to become best friends with them and the lord's going i'm the one doing this convergence in the body of christ bringing friendships together bringing streams together and it was jesus down there it wasn't lauren cunningham or andy bird or mike bringing ihop and wyoming together in this dream it was him he goes i am the one that is building my father's family and i am the master builder to set things up for what i want to release in the earth in the days to come so and when i look back over the years again i know i've known john well for 30 years our families have been together several times over 30 years all of our fam i mean all the together and and mark anderson us old guys and i look at you guys and i go this is part two it's beginning again to a whole other level and you throw chris reed in throw benji elijah daniel brown the educator i mean all these all these relationships of 30 year olds are coming together in a whole new way and i'm going lord i know where this is going and lord says you don't have a clue where it's going way beyond what you think well we got about 10 or 15 more minutes actually we're going a little bit longer than we normally go because so many of you you're not pulling your car out of the parking lot so we don't have need as much time to change the parking lot out you're staying here for the next service so i'm gonna shift over here and uh look at uh the youtube uh video or whatever that you two made on april 9th oddly on april 9th you made it it's called the unlikely friendship and you had been to burma together then you did the send orlando together then your family has spent some days together talk a little that's amazing and we'll develop more of it after the break but just just build i mean here you guys are on the west coast on april 9th meeting making this video we're in kansas city on april 9th with chris reed talking and eric mataxis and ken fish is on the east coast on april 9 talking about john wimber in the vineyard movement all the same morning we're having anyway whatever it's amazing so talk a little bit about this unlikely friendship in burma and you came together in orlan and orlando just touch a little bit of that yeah i i mean i just it's the moment i got to know andy i just saw humility that i that is very peculiar when you're in the circuit of speaking and um in people that are leading big movements you suddenly meet someone where you go like you know you see different levels of humility and then i just go i don't see any pride in this guy this is crazy to me it is the weirdest thing he's leading he you know stadium events yeah yeah that are much older than him he's the main leader of the older leaders and then when i talk to the older leaders like hey what do you think about andy and they would say like he's the one guy tries i'm like old see that's what i think you know so the relationship it's not unlikely in that sense because i'm just like there's just i gravitate towards a guy like this um but that video thing it was really funny because my video team that morning had had a talk about how much they would love to do a uh video of andy and i but they were looking at his schedule and going oh he's he's in the midwest somewhere or whatever and so then right after that meeting they're having a zoom call with me and in the background they see andy bird walk in and the same thing reversed yeah exactly i go now and everybody wants andy okay so i'm uh i'm just you know i hear them going i'm like yeah sorry my friend andy and his kids are loud you know and uh because he's at your house yes oh that's the two or three daisies yeah okay and and they're freaking out they're like we were wondering where andy bird was because we were wondering if we would do an interview with you and him and he's at your house and then he walks in when we thought he's somewhere else in america and i'm like well come on over but i'll stay long because i just want we just want to hang out as families and so that's when all of that was filmed and then the next time when we were getting all these words from the lord he was heading to where africa south africa and something got messed up with his flights and suddenly i get a phone call hey i'm i'm in san francisco it's the night before easter and he goes i'm supposed to be going to south africa my flight just got canceled can i spend the night at your house i yes of course you know and and so that's when we start talking about this stuff and like whoa this is what god's saying to me this is what is something about unity the future i just finished this book on unity from others unity tour and then you know and then we hear mike's talk and we're like on john 13 or 17 yeah i'm like that's exactly what we're gonna base everything on i and i go look look at the text i sent you i said it has to be john 13 to 17. um crazy enough when i was 14 and became a believer those were the first chapters of the bible i memorized because i jumped into this bible quizzing thing just because i was very competitive and i just thought i'm going to win this too and memorize these passages first passages i memorized were all those full chapters and then suddenly we're like we've got to get mike on the phone um let's let zoom call him i don't know if he knows how to zoom at his age but we'll get one of his staff and read books i know that's so you know oh yeah who who reads books anymore uh but uh so we zoom call and that's how all of this came together i'm going to say again what you just said just so they're together and the lord has put john 13 to 17 in him in a deep way and he's made that known to andy this is before i say anything about it and just coincidentally as a kid he memorized it and i like that i competitively i wanted to win the contest when i'm 16. but it's but it is the lord set it up so he's got it memorized then 30 years later whatever 20 years later he's stirred by it that i'd give a message on it how i had this open vision on march 3rd 2021 and it's related to john 13-17 i give the message they're at the house together just because his flight got cancelled so he's at the house together they hear the message but that's after he already told him made it known to him john 13 to 17 is my direction and they went wait a second this is not ridiculous this is remarkable so they zoom me and we talked for an hour or two and we and this is two to three days before april 9th and so and it's all around a vision of us doing some sort of unity tour with our families trying to promote unity in the body of christ um and that's what the john 13 17 was going to be based on because he had just been traveling through the country with his family in a van and i was so close to just getting a van and meeting him as they got closer to the west and then he's like oh i'd keep going i'm like gosh it'd be so cool to travel as families you know about unity and and the amazing thing about what's happened the last few days has been how it's been centered even the luther thing when we talked about that the last night we're going wow this is this is crazy and it has to do with generations too of the reason why there hasn't been unity is there's been almost a competition where the older men were supposed to build into the younger men and cheer them on and guard them and say be careful don't get cocky but put them up there rather than competing with them it it's there's so much you know like james talks about where there's selfish ambition and jealousy where they exist so will every vile practice and that has crept into the church where it's become competitive and my people and your people and this and this and this and it's kept us from becoming this powerhouse that jesus promised when we were united and so all of that was was what we were striving to push for having no idea that bringing these different streams to this time was i believe gonna be like an epicenter of all of that so we're gonna end with this and then we're gonna pick up part two at 11 o'clock i'm going to end with this it's march 1983. i meet bob jones the first day he says all these things are going to happen and many of you heard the story but he said it's for your children and your grandchildren i'm 27 years old our children are two and four i said my grandchildren what are you talking about he goes these things are for the generation when your grandchildren will be in their strength that was the weirdest statement i heard i've ever heard besides the other 10 things he said earlier and they were everything i didn't catch any of it i go my children and my they're two and four he goes they will be mature your grandchildren will be in their strength when these things happen he said the 24 7 prayer the worldwide missions move all these things coming together and now that i'm 65 i'm looking this really is about them and i'm telling the young people here they go oh we you know you this that and the other i go no this isn't this isn't my story really i am a storyteller and i've been a steward of a story like bob jones and paul okay we were stewards of a story it's actually your story i was a steward and a storyteller it's really clear to me my role in it it's really the 40-somethings and those 10-somethings whether 18 who are going to be 20 in a few years it's really them it's their story so lord we thank you we thank you we thank you that you're orchestrating something bigger than us the missions movement the prayer movement the ends of the earth we thank you thank you in jesus name amen and amen so we'll see you at 11 [Applause] o'clock

Channel: Crazy Love

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Length: 63min 2sec (3782 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021