 hope today from a rainy Pennsylvania, which is good for us. We've needed that, but we're glad that God sends his reign to all of us and he's got a great program for you today. We've got a great program for you today. Sid, tell us what's going on today. Well, we truly do. This is a topic that we can all relate to and it's a word that we need to hear. You know, there is a war on family. So how do we rise up and fight against it? If you've a burden for your spouse, your children, any of your loved ones, you don't want to miss our upcoming conversation today with Cheryl Sacks, a prophetic prayer mobilizer who is on a mission to help Christians restore the family altar in their homes. She's going to reveal strategies on how you can protect your loved ones from the powers of darkness and shift the atmosphere in your home so your family can experience the supernatural presence of the Holy Spirit like never before. You know, Tom and Corey, this conversation is so important. Family is on the heart of God, Corey. This conversation is talking about bringing the war home, right? Not just having that public display of Christianity, not having that public display, but really going into the intricacies of home because we just talking a little bit is there is a lack of intimacy with God inside the home and most people just dedicate that relationship to God to their church. I mean, that's something that we were talking about a little bit. Church is so important, but so much more to have that life lived in the home. By the way, speaking of in the home, it is my 43rd anniversary today for Gene and I. And I'll tell you what, I dug deep, I dug deep and I found some pictures. I want to show you some pictures. So here's Gene and I leaving the church right there. Okay, see that? That's Gene and I leaving the church. Yeah, that's us. It's a classy affair. We even had the police come out, you know? And then the next one is that that's us at the reception, you know, right there, right after we said live long and prosper to one another, you know? But then a few years later, this was us, you know, we're talking about protecting the family, you know, this is after you have kids. This is what happens to you. No, let me show you the real one. So there we are really coming down the 43 years ago. It's been wonderful. I know Gene is watching right now, hun. It's been a great ride 43 years and three kids and now three grandkids and it's just it's you know, it's been a blessing. Happy anniversary. Thank you. 43 years. 43 years. It's really important. And you know, that's why we're so excited about this conversation today because we know that there are marriages, there's there's families, there's so many that are under attack. And so here at Hope Today, we love to equip you with conversations with insight with biblical understanding so that you can experience all that God has called to be for your family and our guest today, Cheryl Sacks, has the heart to see families healed, restored and empowered by the by the Holy Spirit to bring revival to their homes and nation. Cheryl is a national conference speaker and author and prayer mobilizer whose ministry has impacted tens of thousands of people and families by helping them go deeper into prayer. Enter her new book, Fire of the Family Alter. She provides insight on how you can experience a supernatural power of God right in your home. Cheryl, we are so glad to have you with us today. I am so honored to be with you today and excited about this important topic we're going to be talking about. You know, Cheryl, we are so happy to have you with us. And so as we dive in, can you just share the revelation that God gave you about the connection with family and prayer? Well, this was an amazing moment in my life, which I will never forget. I was speaking in a conference in my church, a very large church on revival and the Holy Spirit. But the entire weekend, no one had mentioned that family and revival are connected in any way. I didn't talk about it, neither did any other speaker. I mentioned that only because I want you to know that the words that I heard had to be from the Lord. It was nothing I had heard during the weekend. So I'm standing on the platform. At the end of the conference, I'm getting ready to lead the congregation in prayer for revival to come to America. And as I'm standing at the edge of the platform, I hear these words, revival will come to America when the family altar is restored. Well, this was in the 1990s. And I thought, even then, well, Lord, our nation has so many problems. How could something just as simple as families worshiping and praying together, transformation? I just hope you're not going to ask me to say that publicly. And then a young man on the front row in the sanctuary, got up, came to the microphone and began to pray the exact words I had just heard. Lord, restore the family altar in homes across America. And at that moment, I saw the entire nation covered in darkness. And as I looked deeply, I began to see homes light up across the nation in clusters and one right after another, as families were praying and worshiping inside until the entire nation was ablaze with the presence and power of God. It was awesome and profound. What an incredible vision and confirmation of the prophetic words you receive that the young man like said at that conference. And so Cheryl, can you tell us, because some people might say, what is a family altar? And then also share how you have seen that concept, that idea in your own life. Well, when we talk about a family altar, we are not talking about the Old Testament concept. When the patriarchs of old built altars out of wood or stone. In fact, today, when we talk about an altar, it's a meeting place with God, any place we meet with God. And the altar is first of all, our heart. So when we say the word altar, we are simply, I want you to just imagine a time and space when you're having an intimate conversation with God. And we can do this alone. We can do this with our spouse, with our family members, or with the family of God. And in my own home, this has looked different at different stages of our lives. When my husband and I were first married, without any children, we sometimes it was spontaneous, we would pray in the car. We would pray in times of emergency. We would set aside days of prayer and fasting. And then when we had our little daughter, we begin to invite her into our prayer time. And at least I'd like to say, at first, I didn't realize it was important to bring her into our prayer time. I didn't really have the revelation about the quote family altar. Plus, she was little. I thought she's not going to understand. So I would get up like at 4am, because I had a busy day. I would tiptoe past her room to go into the living room to pray. But it would only be a few seconds. And I don't know how she heard me, but she would be up her pillow and blanket dragging behind, Mommy, what are you doing? And I would say, honey, this is my time with the Lord. You need to go back to bed. But she would persist. And I realized, you know what, I'm going to use up all my prayer time, trying to get her back to bed. I'm just going to have her crawl up on the couch with me. And many mornings, as the sun came up, she would be cuddled next to me wrapped in a blanket as I whispered my prayers to the Lord. That was her first experience with a family altar. And this continued as Helen and I would pray with her together as she was going to bed at night. We would pray with her about issues at school in our living room. It looked different all throughout the seasons of life, but very beautiful and very powerful in every season. You know, just hearing like your personal story, Cheryl, about how heaven was coming into your home. And can you share the story about your daughter, Nicole, that had a very supernatural experience and encounter due to the family altar? Well, this was pretty amazing. She, our daughter, was always very unsettled if my husband Hal was away. And in this season of our lives, he did a lot of traveling and went on mission trips. And so when we found out that he was going to be gone for two and a half weeks to the Philippines, we were very concerned about Nicole. She just felt really unsettled when her dad was away. She would often stay up all night crying and be too tired to go to preschool the next day. And so we wanted to prepare her. The night before Hal was going to leave, we gathered and now beside her bed and we explained to her that there was nothing to be afraid about. Hal prayed over her and we prayed some 91 over her. That the Lord would give his angels charge over her to keep her and protect her. And the next morning, Hal left early on a flight and Nicole got up a couple of hours later and she said, Mommy, something happened to me last night. And I said, Well, what, honey? She said, The angels came. And I'm thinking, Well, what, what do you mean the angels came? And she said, The angels came to my room last night. And I'm still kind of thinking, Is this childish imagination or what is this? So I ask her for details. Well, so honey, what happened? She said, Well, the angels came and they stood in a circle around my bed and they were singing. It was the most beautiful singing I've ever heard. And I went, Wow, I don't think a little child would know to make that up. And I said, Well, what did they look like? She said, Some were tall and their heads touched the ceiling and some were little like me and some had on gold sandals and some had on gold belts and they were the widest white I'd ever seen. Well, you know, years before when I was a young woman, I had had an angel visit me early in the morning in my room. The light was so bright that I could not open my eyes. And when my eyes did open, I saw the wings of this angelic being. And all I can tell you is they were the widest white I had ever seen. A white that earth does not have a heavenly white. It's we don't have the color white that the these angels wings were. So I knew immediately that she had been visited by angels in her room. And do you know she never again feared when her dad was away? She had perfect peace. Wow. What an incredible story of how your daughter Nicole just encountered the supernatural presence of God and Cheryl, as someone's watching right now that they're like, you know what? I desire for my children, my grandchildren, my husband, my family to have this family altered to have the presence of God fill my home and fill my space. So what are some practical things that someone he can do today? What are some ways that they can establish a family alter in their home? Well, first of all, you can your family, I realize those of you who are watching today, your families look different. You you may not even be good yet or maybe you've been married and you're no longer married. You're divorced or passed on to be with the Lord. Your family may look like you might be empty nesters and your children are grown up or you may have little ones or maybe even a brand new baby. So it all depends on what your family looks like and what is age appropriate. But I will say that if you will set aside a particular time to pray with your family and invite the presence of the Lord into your home, you will see a change in the spiritual atmosphere. Now what you do during that time can look very different. I know Corey was saying he plays the piano. Well, if you play an instrument, invite your family into that experience. But you don't have to play an instrument. You can turn on worship music from the internet. You can just sing together even if you think your voice is not great. And then I know one woman, this is pretty cool, her kids were all grown up and she was cleaning house one day and the Lord said to her, Teresa, I want you to build a family altar. And she thought, well, I don't even think I know what a family altar is, but I think it means praying and worshiping together with my family. But she said to the Lord, my kids are all grown up, so how can I do this? Give me a plane. So the Lord said, call your two sons and their wives. Invite them to come to your home every Tuesday night and ask everyone if they'd be willing to fast during the day and on Tuesday night cook a beautiful meal. Everyone would have dinner together and then pray together. So she called and asked them and they said yes. And they began to come on Tuesday nights and bring their kids and have dinner, gather afterwards to worship and pray and get this. She led the prayer time with this question, what do you want God to do for you this week? And everyone began to share what they needed God to do for them that week. And her daughter-in-law was a physician, a woman's physician, and she said, I want to see miracles in my practice. Within three weeks, she began to see tumors disappear in her patients, women and their daughters that were deeply depressed, just delivered, all kinds of beautiful, miraculous things happening in her practice. And do you know what? The family began to so look forward to every Tuesday night. They couldn't wait to hear what God had done that week. Very simple, but that's just one strategy that you could put into your family. Well, Cheryl, this information is so wonderful. And while you were talking, I was thinking about something that maybe you can address. A lot of Christian families may feel that the man needs to be the leader, spiritual leader in many cases. And I feel there's a lot of shame with men feeling that their wife or spouse is more spiritual than he is. So in going and bringing worship into the family structure and having that family alter, what's some things that you can maybe share for a family that's struggling where the God may say, hey, you know, I'm not really that spiritual. How do I, how do I bring my family together? They may not even take me serious. How can they establish that if it's not been happening? They've only been worshiping at church. They've only been going and trusting the pastor's leadership. What are some things that they can begin to do to make that organic and authentic at home? Well, this is, if this is the dad or the man of the home and he feels like, oh, I don't even know if I've been, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes. I've blown up a whole lot in my home and I don't feel worthy even to do this. Plus, I don't know how to do it. He could simply say something to his family. You know, I feel like our family would really benefit by just setting some time aside to pray together. I don't really know exactly what this looks like. It would be a time that we'd be learning together as a family. What do you think about this? And then you can pass the leadership around of the actual prayer time. Maybe the wife would lead the prayer time one time. Even the kids can lead. They can participate and say, this is how I would like it to look next Tuesday night or or Saturday morning or whatever. Get everyone involved and the man doesn't always have to be the one leading the prayer time. And in fact, say you're a wife and your husband has not stepped up to the plate to initiate this, she could say, you know, I've been praying and I feel like the Lord is just would love if our family would have some time together with him. Weekly, how do you feel about this? It doesn't have to be a long time. How would you feel? Can can we just attempt this and see what the response is? Now, it could be great. Everyone says, okay, but you know, the teenagers might say, oh, I don't want to do this or they might do one time and then say, I'm busy. You might have some real resistance from your spouse or your children or whatever. I want to say, even if you're the only one praying, set aside an intentional time of a family altar and pray for your family and then get their prayer request. Say, I'm praying, I'm having a family altar every whatever, every morning, whenever. I'd like to know what you need prayer for. It gets things rolling. You are initiating what you want to see the family and soon I'm believing that someone will want to join you, one of your children, your spouse. And for a wife, I want to also say, there maybe the way to get started is you're having a hard time, you're sick or whatever. Just say, honey, could you just pray for me right now? I'm really struggling and that way you're not exactly putting someone on the spot. You're just in your natural daily life beginning to incorporate that time of prayer together. That's so powerful, Cheryl, just like the insight of just taking it step by step and being intentional about prayer. And so can you just take a moment, Cheryl, and just pray for our viewers that they would establish family altars in their home. So we will just see a move of God just sweep through the nation because I love that you say, as the family goes, so does the nation. So can you take a moment to pray? I certainly will and I want to say one more thing to all of our viewers today. When you are praying from your home, you are establishing a ladder between earth to heaven, a connection, so that when you pray, the things that are in heaven that you need will come down into your home. It's that important and that's the picture I want you to have in your mind as you are establishing a family altar. So Lord, I pray right now for every single person who is watching this show. I pray now Lord, encouragement into every heart, into every marriage, and into every home. Lord, where there are difficult marriages, where there are children that are away from you. Lord, I ask that you would cause faith to arise in every heart. And Lord, that there would be powerful prayer, even if you're praying alone or just with your spouse or with your whole family, that faith would arise, that there would be united prayer in the home, and that families would begin to see the miracles that they need because you are powerful. And you promised that if two agree as touching anything on earth that we would ask, it would be done for us, for our Father in heaven. And where two or three are gathered in your name, that there are you in the midst of them. So Lord, give each person watching today courage to take the first step. And I pray they would not give up, and they would persevere, and they would see your miraculous power released in their homes and in their families. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Sheryl. And as you were just praying, reminded me of the song, I don't know if you've ever heard, it was like Eddie James that says like, um, like the fire, the fire, my altar, never burn out. And we just declare that and decree that over you and everyone that's watching today. Thank you so much, Sheryl, for just your time, your insight, and what you're doing for the kingdom of God. Thank you. I really enjoyed being with you today. God bless you. God bless you too. And I recommend this fire on the family altar written by Sheryl Sacks. And it's experienced the Holy Spirit's power in your home. You know, Corey, like never before, we need to experience the power of God in our lives. We truly do. And I really feel like God really is touching us right now. You know, there's such ministry. Sheryl, it was such a beautiful experience to talk with her. And I felt that, I felt the presence of God really begin to come in because home is really where true ministry needs to happen. And in this moment, I just want to take a moment to talk with you. I kept feeling levels of shame with men and spouses and families to where people feel like I can't say anything about God in my home. I mean, look at the things that I've gone through. Look at the things that I've done. I've messed up the money. I've messed up the relationship. The kids don't believe me. They know I have a drinking problem. They know I have a drug problem. How can I bring God in? This is the pride that really keeps God from really moving. One thing about Jesus is not just the fact that he died for our sins, but he also died for the fact that we cannot do this by ourselves. Let me tell you something. I was in ministry for a long time and there was one key component about it that I got wrong. I kept thinking that I had to pay God back for what he's done. How can you possibly pay back for salvation? I started feeling the guilt of receiving his love and many times if I wasn't doing things for God, if I wasn't serving him the way that I thought was conducive, I felt like, God, I'm not doing enough for you. So I had this very transactional relationship with God basically saying, God, am I doing enough? Have I earned it? Such wrong teaching, such wrong understanding. And I had to really understand that he is our father and when I really became a father began to become much more clear to me. Can you imagine if you have children, can you imagine that your child does something that you don't like and they make you upset? And so you tell them, because of you've done this, I'm not going to feed you. So the child is hungry and the child is starving. He's saying, I don't want to ask daddy for any food because I've been wrong. For every parent that hears that, I'm sure that breaks your heart to say, I would never not give to my child even if they did something wrong. Understanding that God is our father, that that love is unconditional in a very conditional world. And that's the thing we really struggle with is the unconditional love of God that is so continual. But it doesn't just stop there. Not only does Jesus, as he died for us to forgive us of our sins, but it was so that the Holy Spirit can enter into our lives. When Jesus died, he told the disciples, I want you to stay in Jerusalem until I send you the gift. What was the gift? The gift was his spirit, because without the spirit of God, we cannot maintain this life. So right now I want to take a moment for you to just connect in this moment. And if you haven't received Jesus as your personal Savior, in this moment I want you to take that moment. Let's just have a quick word of prayer. Father in the name of Jesus, for every person that has been dating with Jesus and flirting with Jesus, but really hasn't allowed him to come into your heart, I pray right now in the name of Jesus that if you would believe in your heart and confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, that he died for your sins and rose again on the third day, you would be saved. The declaration of the mouth and the belief in the heart is the necessary component necessary to receive salvation. But furthermore God, I pray that every person would say holy spirit come into my life, enter my life. My life is a mess. I'm not going to clean it up before you come in. I need you to clean it up. That's why I need you because there's stuff that I can't clean. There's things I can't get right. There's things I can't seem to overcome. There's shame that's weighing on me. And God you're calling me, but that shame is so loud that I feel like I'm not even worthy to pick up your calling. So Father we rebuke shame in the name of Jesus. We rebuke guilt in the name of Jesus. We rebuke self-help in the name of Jesus. I know we're in a self-help generation, but we rebuke all of that that makes us feel we have to do it. If we we could do it, we wouldn't need Jesus and we wouldn't need the Holy Spirit. We thank you for every person that has received this word in the mighty and precious name of Jesus we pray. Amen. And if you have believed that, know that God is working for your good right now. He that has began a good work in you is faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Cory that is so so great, so important, so important for us to remember that we can't put off God. We have to invite him in and invite him in now. Cory has just prayed a powerful prayer that you would know God. Have you made that decision to follow him? You know the Bible says today is the day of salvation. I hope you have that salvation, if not, open that door. The Bible also says now is the acceptable time because a lot of times we say well I'll do that later. I'll do that down the road. I'll do that when I'm established. I'll do that when I'm older. I'll do that after I've had my fun, whatever, but the Bible says now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation. Let today be the day that salvation comes to you, comes to your family, and you begin to see the miraculous, wonderful, working power of God in your life. Have a great day. On tomorrow's hope today, helping you to better understand how the Bible fits together. Author and president of Israel Today Ministries, Dr. Jeff Johnson, helps people to understand the important parallels between the Old Testament and New Testament that will be sure to strengthen your faith. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.