 Well, thank you folks. What a joy to be with you Pastor Lee Jane. Thank you so much for your leadership Folks, I hope you do not take it for granted What it is to have godly leaders with spiritual authority Can you just give them a round of applause? They've made so many sacrifices They pray for you. They love you Do not take it for granted to be under good leadership The Bible says that those who teach and lead well are worthy of double honor So I hope you're not one of those churches that Complains and emails them. I hope you're a church that prays and blesses and honors because they really really are some of the most significant Spiritual leaders here in the US. So I'm grateful for the invitation to come and share God's word with you And they've given me acts chapter 2, which is like Come on. I mean, that's like a preacher's dream Acts 2 is about the birth of the church And the reason I think this is an important text is because we're in a moment right now Well, the church in the Western culture certainly is in crisis Around the world the gospel is flourishing but here in the West it is lagging this year over 1 million young people Will walk away from the church and the number one reason will be because it is not compelling It's not going to be sociological issues. It's not going to be theological debates It's not going to be apologetics problems. It's going to be they just don't find Jesus compelling And so we've got to get back and recover the heart of what the church is supposed to be and acts chapter 2 is One of the things that we see it gives us a blueprint of how to move Ford and so I want to talk about just two ideas from acts chapter 2 today I want to talk about power and I want to talk about practices because to me This is the key of what we need to recover in the church. So let's look at acts chapter 2 verse 1 power When the day of Pentecost came they were all together in one place Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire That separated and came to rest on each of them All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit Enabled them now, you know what has happened they Jesus has risen from the dead He's appeared to his disciples and this is what he's told them do not try the kingdom mission on your own Peter I appreciate your heart, but I do not like your follow through I see what Peter can do with the kingdom of God when Peter's in charge He's like you're gonna need some power to accomplish the ministry that I have so go and pray and wait for this outpouring And what God's going to do in this moment is he's going to shift from an external reality of the power of God To an internal reality of the power of God and this is going to be the birth of new covenant reality The old covenant was primarily external and distant God was there God was on the mountain God was in the temple and the law was something you had to live up to it was defined by you shall and you shall not But there was a promise of a new covenant where it would go from out there to win here The fire that fell from heaven ends up being the fire in our very spirits by the presence of the Holy Spirit And this is what we see in the passage fire comes on everybody and so instead of it being you shall God says in the new covenant I will I'm gonna put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my commandments and to keep them I will cleanse you from your idols, and I will make you clean. I'm gonna write my law on your heart It's not something you live up to in your own strength It's something you live out with my power and this is the moment where that happens together And this is a fundamental chef a shift from the omnipresence of God Which means God is the you know Yahweh is the true Lord of heaven and earth But we're not quite sure exactly where he is or how he's manifesting his presence To a tangible presence, and this is where God is in the room showing up Now the omnipresence of God, which is basically what has been happening In the inter-testamental period before the book of Acts and before the Gospels God's been there But he hasn't been flexing very much He hasn't been showing people what he's capable of doing and so when Jesus burst on the scene Jesus is bringing a Revelation of the tangible presence of God called the kingdom of God, and he says the kingdom of God is in your midst The omnipresence of God it's biblical. It's real. It's true to God's nature. God is everywhere. It's theological It's available to everybody. It's universal. It's passive. It's impersonal and it's abstract Which means we all know theologically God is everywhere. You know the book of Psalms. Where can I flee from your presence? God is in every place but holding the wicked and the good. We know he's there But it's the difference between having a millionaire show up to your church and being in the back pew and Then having the millionaire pull out his phone and take seven seven nine seven seven Like there's a difference of like being in the room and then showing that you're in the room Well, the omnipresence is God in the room, but the manifest presence is God showing you that he's in the room This is what's happening with the birth of the church. It's biblical. It's real the manifest present It's true to God's nature, but God has perceived locally. He's here It's transformational. It's not just theological. It's particular not general It's personal it requires a pursuit and a hunger It's covenantal, which means it's deeply relational and it's specific and this is what's so important to see This is the shift in the birth of the church When God initiates the new covenant, it does not happen in the temple in Jerusalem It happens in the people The place the presence of God is now manifest is not in the old covenant system. It's in the hearts of the people of God Which means when you show up with the people of God? This is the place where you should find him amongst his people and this ultimately leads us to a sense of encounter if It's personal if it's manifest that means that you and I Don't need a special system of priests and leaders and sacrifice to access to manifest presence of God It can happen right here. It can happen right now. God is in the room and he's available And if you're hungry, he will meet you. This is the good news of Acts chapter 2 God answers with fire and that distant fire becomes a personal fire It's up on the mountain in the Old Testament and the people fear But in the New Testament, everybody gets a flame on their head God is present and real and this is one of the most important things that needs to happen in our moment is a conscious shift From acknowledging the theory of a theological reality of the presence of God to the experiential reality of the presence blaze Pascal one of my favorite writers and thinkers and He was an inventor. He was a philosopher and he was a theologian but towards the end of his life all of that brilliance in his mind Melted into a personal encounter with God and on one night This is what happened in his again This is the point the general idea of God became a radical encounter with God And this is part of what he wrote in his testimony God of Abraham God of Isaac God of Jacob not of the Philosophers and of the learned Certitude certitude feeling joy peace God of Jesus Christ my God and your God your God will be my God Forgefulness of the world and everything except God. He's only found in the ways. This is literally called thinking in tongues This is a philosopher having an encounter with the presence of God Granger of the human soul joy joy joy tears of joy So he has this radical encounter with God and you know what he does which is key for us When he died they found that he had taken this encounter with the Holy Spirit and he sewed it in his coat So it always covered his heart He said I want to take that experience and I want to convert that into a lifestyle I don't want that just to be a memory of my younger years. I want that to be a living reality in my life Richard on Robert says this the sobering truth is that the greatest hindrance to the growth of Christianity in today's world is The absence of the manifest presence of God from the church Imagine showing up to church and not meeting God What a concept That's the very thing you should be doing is meeting God and encountering his presence in the Old Testament Moses said if your presence doesn't go up with us, we're not gonna leave and then he asks a question how else Will all the nations know That we're your people well, I've got an idea how about circumcision How about like a very very strict and different diet than everybody else? How about it? How about an ethical code? How about a way you organize your family? There's a million ways sociologically you can distinguish one group from another With human culture, but he realizes that's not the secret the secret is the presence if if we are not presence People we are not your people. This is what we see in Acts chapter 2 Then ultimately that encounter that's in veil available to us leads to the empowerment of God's people To do his mission verse 4 says this All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them This is amazing Peter goes from somebody who denies Jesus When a teenage girl's like aren't you his follower and he swears no, I don't know the man To somebody who's willing to stand up in the same city just a little bit of time later and preach to the religious leaders You killed the Messiah What happened? Peter didn't get a little pep talk and then get a good night's sleep and have some kale and then feel like no I'm good now. I can do this They weren't these weren't lifestyle tweaks these weren't little like anxiety reductions in his personality He had an encounter with the Holy Spirit The power he needed from that encounter became available for him to witness teenage fishermen Became apostolic martyrs at the ends of the earth because they were empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the mission of God And I want to say to us wherever you are in your life You need fresh power for the mission of God in this moment. I don't care how godly you are I don't know. I don't care how well you've walked in the gifts of the spirit in your history We as a church don't have the power we need for the cultural moment that we are in we need that power We need that power When I became a Christian, I grew up around the church and I made a very conscious decision at age 13. I just remember thinking okay, so let me get this right non-Christian sin and they enjoy it and You sin like hypocrites and you feel guilty. I Think I'm just gonna like bypass the guilt route and just go straight to enjoying my sin Thank you I was surrounded by all these hypocritical kids and I knew him from school and then I saw him at the parties and then That invite me to church and I was like, why are you going? This is making you miserable And then I got invited To a Pentecostal youth group now I didn't know anything about Pentecostals except that they were a cult Okay, so when I show up and the lights are off and everybody's praying in tongues and they're swaying in the dark I was like, oh, no, it's actually true. It's a cult. It's a cop But when I stepped in the room something happened that I never anticipated I encountered the presence of God and it repelled me and It attracted me all in the same moment I wanted to fall on my face and I wanted to leap through the roof and I did not have language to articulate The experience that I was having These were kids who were getting up at 4 a.m. To pray for revival before they went to high school This was a wild culture of encountering the presence of God and they said because of Pentecost you can meet God anywhere. I Was filled with it. So I was also a little distrusting because I was a little cynical and So that would always try and say hey, John We need to get you filled with the Holy Spirit and I was like if you try and in the dark lay hands on me I will I will slap you get your hands off me in the dark I was uncomfortable with the dynamic. I dropped out of high school I was working in a meat factory as a butcher and just didn't like the idea and I was like, okay, God if it's you meet me in my life One day I'm in the meat factory and I'm like, okay, God I'm having a showdown with you if what they say is real I want you to meet me right now and I tell you like a lightning bolt from heaven Filled that meat freezer. I felt like a river that I could not control of language erupt from my stomach and I was speaking in tongues Involuntarily at the top of my lungs in a meat freezer I'm telling you Power was available. Now. Here's the just so like I'm like I believe it I would start praying in tongues and get these prayer burdens So I would have to pull my car over and pray for 20 minutes I was so overwhelmed with a burden and I remember thinking to myself The power of Pentecost is in my life But then I came to America and I went to seminary And I got mentored by some of the smartest pastors in America And I learned about technique and I learned about programs I learned about church growth and I learned history and philosophy and theology One of my mentors came to see me in New York We planted a church, grew to 11 locations, thousands of people, big church in New York City One of my mentors from those glory days came to visit me And the church, it was a great night at church You know there's like good nights at church and there's great nights at church It was a great night And you know, when you're a preachy you have those moments where you just hit flow And you're just like I am preaching And I was preaching And afterwards maybe with a little bit of pride but certainly with a desire To please someone who had spoken into my life and saw me in the early days of my faith So we go out for dinner after and I said What did you think of the service? And he said, wow man, America's been good to you in many ways He's like, man, you got a real mind I never knew that He says, you're a real leader It's amazing to see what God's done He said, but I've got to tell you something, man You have lost the power of God in your life And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, there's no power, man It's performance, it's technique, it's leadership dynamics But the anointing is gone I was like, oh okay, thanks Praise the Lord It put me on my face And it made me realize how much you can get done in the modern church Without the power of God But we are coming to the end of that right now We've hit a generation that doesn't care how good church is If God is not there One Corinthians 4.20 says the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk But it's a matter of power And so this started me on a journey of deep repentance Lord, I've somehow lost the fire over my heart I've got to get that back So I want to say to you, you need fresh power You need fresh wind What got you here is not going to bring you into the future God has for you We need another Pentecost I need fresh fire coming through the roof I need another river of language coming out of my life I need fresh prayer burdens, how about you? We need this Now, this puts me in a season of radically seeking God like the early days I'm telling you, man, our church, just like my level of repentance was violent I'm like, we're reorganizing our church We're doing four hours of prayer a day I'm calling a 40-day fast We're in a season of repentance, man I was going like back to my roots And I'm telling you, God began to manifest His presence again I'm telling you, you would walk into the room sometimes You would just fall on your face It was extraordinary And then one day it stopped It stopped And I'm like, God, if I grieved you So I'm out walking around on Saturday nights Holy Spirit, here is my life I open my heart to you And it's just like the presence of God went And it just left my life So I call my mentor, who's one of the most godly men I know And moves in the power of the Holy Spirit And I said, man, we were on the verge of revival And something's happened, the presence is gone And he said, tell me about it And so I started sharing what happened And he said, this is the kindness of God in your life I said, what do you mean? He says, if God manifests His full glory right now It would crush you You do not have the discipline or character To sustain a move of God And what he's telling you is You need to prepare, not just encounter Now, why am I sharing this? Here's why I'm sharing this This is now my second point, okay Point number one, Acts chapter one There's power Sorry, Acts chapter two, there's power But do you know what happens at the end of chapter two? Look what goes on They take all of that power And they build it into tangible practices So they can use That power for the mission of God Look what it says, verse 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles Teaching and to fellowship To the breaking of bread and to prayer Everyone was filled with awe At the many wonders in science performed by the apostles All the believers were together And they had everything in common They sold property and possessions to gift To anyone who had need every day They continued to meet together in the temple Courts, they broke bread in their homes They ate together with gladdens and seer hearts Praising God and enjoying the favor Of all the people and the Lord added To their number daily, those who were Being saved here, so this is fascinating The wind and the fire Was poured into shared Discipleship practices in the church In essence, they had the power But they didn't have the container To sustain them And so all of the wind and fire Had to be turned in a teaching And fellowship and breaking bread And prayer and generosity And miracles in the local context So the idea of the power Could be translated into a community That could handle the power This is important Because you know that over the course of time Much of what has happened In the Charismatic and Pentecostal church Has been power tools for toddlers And that is always a dangerous thing When that happens When you've got more anointing Than you have character A disaster is very, very close And so we've got to have The kind of discipleship That can handle the power of God Ultimately the church's call Is not just spiritual experiences Though I love those And I honour those And they are sacred But the ultimate mission of the church Is that those experiences are translated Into maturity and health and into discipleship Neal Cole says this Ultimately each church Will only be evaluated by one thing It's disciples Your church is only as good as its disciples It does not matter how good Your praise, preaching, programs Or property are If your disciples are passive, needy, consumerist Being in the direction of radical obedience Your church is not good This is so fascinating to me Because we have so many programs In the western church today So much content and so Little transformation Because of it We need these practices that we see In the early church teaching fellowship Breaking bread and prayer Because we need lifestyles That can sustain the power Of God without it blowing us up And so Part of the weakness of the charismatic church Glory, gifts, fire but no character Dallas Willis says this The general human failing Is to want what is right And important but at the same time Not to commit to the kind of life That will produce the action we know to be right And the condition we want to enjoy This is the feature of the human character That explains why the road to hell Is paved with good intentions We intend what is right To avoid the life that would make it a reality And so we don't want to just think Hey, the gifts of the spirit Are a substitute for holiness They are not And we don't want to say the power of God Poured out in gatherings is enough For personal devotion, it's not We need teaching because we live In a culture of lies And so we need truth to reveal who Jesus is And to debug us From the cultural programming happening in the world We need fellowship and learning to love One another because we live in a time of cultural division Where we're villainizing and deeming One another and demonizing one another Instead of loving one another We need to break bread together And open our homes to get rid of the cynicism And the hostility So we actually learn to love one another Like Jesus said that we would And we need prayer to be turned Not into an encounter but into a lifestyle Of seeking God where there's devotion And here's the key Power is good Formation is better And there is no formation without repetition Now look I am like assemblies Of God I'm like shaken, barking like Dogs whether there's no manifestation That is going to freak me out And overwhelm me And sometimes when you're in that transition Your answer is like well if you just got another dose Of the Holy Ghost it would fix everything Like we're witches casting spells That's not what we do We are people being formed into the image of Jesus This is a different reality Now we know this In every other area of our life don't we No one would come forward and say hey look I'm 150 pounds overweight Can you just like pray for me that the weight Would fall off in a moment Because if God doesn't address a vision of a healthy person All that's going to happen is you put it on again Slowly over the course of time It's the same thing with money We can pray God I need a miracle But if we don't learn to steward our finances And give us over the course of time We'll just go back into debt If we're always complaining we don't have enough time And we pray for miracles to happen To make up for our laziness What God may fix it because he's kind That over the course of time he won't Because he wants to develop us in a mature people We have to Are you still with me I feel like all of a sudden you're like yay for the Holy Spirit You're like oh this is Not the what is this We have to reject The zap view of spiritual growth That's what the Bible says We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit Keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit And it also says that we have to train Ourselves to be godly And so we need the balance Of both of these things We need to be disciples of Jesus And I was very very blessed to have A mentor who came along and he basically Was like John you're on fire for God But you're going to burn the house down man I'm going to teach you how to channel this thing And so he would come over to my house At four o'clock in the morning And he would say do you know how to read the Bible And I was like of course I do And then he'd say read the Bible in front of me And I was like this feels weird and awkward And there's an unhealthy power dynamic And I'm not comfortable with this And he'd say I'm here for you man Just read the Bible And I'd read it and he'd say okay Let me show you something Do you know what context is No I was like no He'd be like do you understand how to Cross referencing and I was like no And he said I can take this raw hunger And I can channel it with skill And he said let me show you how I read the Bible And I remember him like taking me through the life Of David and just I think I was like 18 years old And just saying to him that's a sermon That's not a devotion How did you do that And this was a man that taught me Not just to love the word To skillfully use the word And he said tell me how you do evangelism And I said well this is well I walk up to people really early And I give them tracks and I say read this You're gonna go to hell And I walk off that was my evangelism Fear of the Lord And he said hey man that's one way of doing it That God can use Can I show you some other ways Do you know how to answer people's questions Do you know how to meet them where they're at And so then he would begin to teach me And he would come to my butcher shop And he would say we're both gonna fast And I'm gonna show up at the front of your workplace And I'm gonna pray and intercede the whole hour When we're gonna believe that a door is gonna open For you to share the Gospel with one of your co-workers And I remember him like oh gosh He's there Holy Spirit You gotta show up man's out the front right now Like I need somebody Somebody in the name of Jesus Ask me And sure enough Steve one of the butchers is like Hey what do you think about evolution Because the butchers never asked me this And then God began to manifest his presence I'm simply saying this I remember going into the church And hearing expository Preaching for the first time And here's what I thought If you could take the power And you could combine this With the practices You would have a church That is an unstoppable force In the world Why is it Things tend to war with one another Why are these discipleship Practice driven churches are like You don't need all that experience And everybody else is like you're cold You've got no fire Why not put them together Why not have the best of both worlds The apostle Paul could preach philosophy To the leading intellects of his day The apostle Paul could walk into a meeting And see faith The apostle Paul could write the book of Ephesians Which is not bad theology The apostle Paul could raise the dead Seamlessly integrated And those are the kinds of disciples We need in our world today We need power but we need practices And they don't need to be at war with one another They need to be integrated That's the future of the church of the disciples Jesus Is trying to make Here's what power gives us Encounter Passion Anointing Breakthrough Shouts that are drawn in A movement and the gifts of the Holy Spirit And here's what practices give us Formation and discipline And faithfulness and Process and skills And sustainability Commitment and health and character And when you put power and practices together You get history shaping community History shaping community Our church is Pursuing the presence and power And outpouring of the Holy Spirit That it has, but it is more healthy and disciplined And sustainable in its pursuit We're seeking God in a way That's not damaging us But forming us in the way that we do it Power and practices History shaping community Now, I want to say this cautiously Do you know how rare it is In the modern American church To have these kinds of churches They are so Few and far between I think It's one of the enemy's great strategies Because he realizes if these things come together They will be an unstoppable force So he uses division He uses theological debates He uses dominant personalities He does everything within his power To keep these things from coming together Because when they do, they are potent And you know what You were one of those rare churches That is open and hungry To build this kind of community I don't say that lightly Why do you think you have a network Why a pastor showing up from around the world To attend your thing Because they sense that's it That's it But are you living in To the thing that your church carries Are you living into what's available for you I want to close by just telling you a story Just to inspire you It's a story you may know But this time I don't want you to think of these people Far away and unlike you I want you to think of them as People just like you In a place like this And these people are the Moravians The Moravians under Zinzendorf Were the most integrated Practices in power community in church history I know of Nobody else got this combination right And Zinzendorf, as many of you know Because your church cares about revival Was a leader A German noble who actually was inherited or bought from his grandmother A piece of land And in the 1700s there was all sorts of religious And cultural persecution And there was refugees who were fleeing And a group of them with all these different Theological backgrounds ended up On his land Sort of camping out saying hey can we Settle here and build a village And he said yes I'd be honoured to have you And so this was a person with tremendous Wealth and privilege in essence Doing a little bit of a book of Acts Of those who had needs But the community was tremendously divided There was Calvinist, there was Arminians There was high church people There was low church people They were all trying to live in a community And that you would think hey our persecution And suffering should power bond us But still the difference Between power and practices And theology fractured them apart And so instead of like bonding In their trauma like they divided Because of their theology And Zinsendorf was like in what way Is this honouring God Can't we unite on anything? So he went door to door Over a period of weeks pleading with each family A couple hundred people saying Can't we put aside our differences And unite in Jesus The fire of God will never fall On a divided older Let's unite, let's unite So he won the hearts of everybody in the community And they got together in August the 13th 1727 for a communion service And after everybody Had united their hearts The presence of God fell on them During communion And they said for a period of like 12 or 13 hours They literally could not tell If they were in heaven or on earth The veil was torn And they felt like they were in the overlap Of the ages And just when they felt like it was about to lift Another wave of the presence Of God would come Just such a deep and overwhelming Special encounter And they began to ask the question Like God why did you do this And I want to say this I went on August the 13th To Hernhut, Germany To celebrate communion in the church Where this happened with my family And one of the weirdest things is like Hernhut is not a strategic location You're never going to go Hey you know what let's go to Hernhut You want to go to Hernhut You've never even heard of it And there's nowhere And there's not like a huge city nearby There's not like an economic engine It's not an arts capital But you get there And then you just see The very very simple principles That God comes where He's wanted Not where it is strategic according to human policies Hunger draws God in And the Holy Spirit came So they've had this massive outpouring Of the Holy Spirit and then they ask What do we do with it Let's do prayer And so they start a 24-7 prayer And literally they all just like Divided up the prayer sets By family and by individual They're like okay and they actually had a lottery And this is how they did it It's like okay I hope I get this 7pm set And it's like home boy you're on it 2am on Tuesday And they just divided it up like this Over the course of the week And I don't know they had so much power But they had so much practice To sustain this for over 100 years And any time it would begin to wane A spirit of prayer would come on the children And they'd say we've got to live By the call of God in our community And you'd hear the prayers of the children And you would just weep because they were so filled With the burden and the spirit of God Well then they had this prayer culture And they said well what's this for And then God began to speak to them And say we're going to be people who go And bring Jesus' message to the ends of the earth That's a time where new pathways Of travel were breaking out around the world And they said we live in a strategic moment Where we could get the gospel from Germany To the ends of the earth, let's go after it And so they heard about an island That was in the British Isles And in order to get to the island You had to be a slave Nobody else was allowed there And so two of the young men said We're going to sell ourselves into slavery To bring the gospel to these people And if you read the accounts it's kind of extraordinary You've got the community gathering They say may the lamb that was slain Receive the reward of his suffering And they just sell themselves into slavery They go on that island and they witness A staggering revival Over 2,000 people come to Christ And it becomes a model community There's a tiny little church Power comes But then they build structures to contain The power and then turn that power Into momentum Well as one of the communities Is bringing a missions movement To the United States They're on a ship and there's a terrible storm They feel like the storm's going to destroy the ship And there happens to be a passenger on the ship Named John Wesley And John Wesley is coming over to America To do missions and he said he realized On that ship that the Moravians Had something he did not have Which was peace with God And it haunted him and so he comes to America He's a total failure And he comes back to England And he starts asking what do the Moravians have And if you read about the conversion of John Wesley The conversion happens Where he says he's reading an introduction to an Epistle And his heart was strangely worn Who was holding the Bible study? The Moravians He goes to a Moravian Bible study Because they have power but they have practices Well the Moravians would do these all night prayer Watchers And at one night on New Year's Eve There was about 60 of these Moravian men Praying together And there was a young man there named John Wesley And George Whitfield is there And at three o'clock in the morning The presence of God comes down What we would call slain in the spirit They cannot stand in the presence of God And they're all filled with this fresh filling And then Whitfield comes over to the United States Starts preaching with power and authority And sparks one of the great awakenings In American history And that happened because 60 people hosted a prayer meeting William Carey Who is known as the father of modern missions Was actually trying to work against Aggressive Calvinism that said You do not need to get the gospel to the ends of the earth God will do it if he wants to reach the heathen And he keeps hearing these stories And reports of the Moravian So he goes into the Baptist society Throws down these Moravian reports And he says this, why can't we reach the heathens Like the Moravians So the modern missionary movement He goes to India And pioneers the modern missionary movement Amongst the Baptist And this happens because the Moravians have power To sustain what God's done in their midst William, I'm almost done They're quite a generative community aren't they William Wilberforce is in parliament Raging against slavery And one of the arguments they make Is nobody Can release the slaves because they'll just Turn and kill their masters And Wilberforce hears about an island Where 2,000 slaves Have come to Jesus in a revival And they're living at peace And working in their conditions In a God-honoring way And so Wilberforce is able to point To those 2 young men who sold themselves in a slavery And started that revival As a reference point in parliament To overthrow slavery in the British Empire So let's do a quick recap here A little church of 300 or 400 people In the middle of nowhere Germany Have an encounter with the presence of God But then they build a container To hold that presence They become disciplined people Of God extending that mission into the world They spark one of the greatest revivalists In history, John Wesley They inspire one of the greatest evangelists In history, George Whitfield They inspire one of the greatest missionaries In history, William Carey They inspire one of the greatest politicians In history who works the demolishing Of slavery in the world And all of this comes out of a tiny little community And here's the point I want to say to you Do you see how potent power and practice Is when it comes together in a community And I have one question for you Do you want to be one of those communities Do you want to be one of those communities They tell me this morning Kalamazoo means Boiling River Boiling River Oh, I love that In the middle, I don't want to be rude here I've never been to Kalamazoo It's a weird title Where are you speaking this weekend? Kalamazoo, have you heard of it? No A boiling river of a united church With the power of God flowing to the nations Is possible from you Do you want it? Do you want it? You've got to choose to say yes You've got to build a lifestyle Of discipline and discipleship That can carry the fire in such a way That it doesn't burn you out And you've got to not get so caught up in the discipline That you stop hungering for the power And think that you can take it from here Because you're organized This is a history shaping community You've got the possibility of being one And all you need to say to Jesus is Here is my life, yes, I'm in Why do you think he's put you here At this moment in history? Why do you think you are here now To slowly manage the decline Of the church in your region You think you are here now Just to be in culture wars About secondary issues You're here now for this moment Power, practice, outpouring You don't know who you say yes I don't know about you, I'm saying yes to Jesus I'm saying yes to this time It doesn't need to be big, it just needs to be potent That's what God's asking So let's just close by saying Here I am, Lord Here I am, you can use me You can use me So Father, we thank you for your word We thank you for the beauty of the book of Acts But Lord, we thank you that you're the God of history Not just the past Lord, we know you're moving in every generation You've put us here for a purpose So we say, Lord, use us Pour out your spirit Lord, we pray fresh wind, fresh fire But Lord, we also pray Discipline and practices to sustain it So that this can make it To the ends of the earth We love you, we hear your voice We respond to your word And we re-up with fresh conviction For what you want to do in our lives In Jesus' name, amen