 Arise, shine, for your light has come. I'm going to do whatever it takes to create a resting place for a generation, for a dry and weary church in the body of Christ that's in a polarized nation to come to an environment and say, God is here. We go into the place of prayer and in the place of prayer, what's inside your heart is exposed. And I have had a vision years ago to see God work, and I mean working big time, that where we are is the most needed place in the world, where we are is where preaching needs to come forth without compromise, without trying to please people. I believe for the ones that prioritize their life to God's longing. God is going to flex and He's going to release His strength and He's going to release His resource and His power and His apostolic strategies. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the people. Arise upon me, and His glory shall be seen upon me. The nation shall come to your light, ease to the brightness of your rise. The Arise, shine, conference. I'm going to solve all our problems, but He's faithful to meet us. I have this. Over your city. Can we just lift our hands to the Lord in a sign of surrender to Him? There's so much joy in surrender. There's so much joy in surrender. Our hearts need to hear that, to believe that truth. The enemy is going to try to lie to you, to accuse you, to say you can't let that go. You can't surrender. You can't trust Him. What the Lord is looking at you right now with a smile, with tears in His eyes saying, trust me. We are gathered in this room, not just for some event or conference. Not just to meet new people, but we are gathered here to lay our lives at the feet of the King on the throne. We are here to lay our lives at the feet of Jesus. You are worthy. Our lives we offer to you in surrender, all hail King Jesus. There is joy to surrender to you right now. So as we come through these doors, we lay down our circumstances. We lay down our own motivations. We lay down the trials or the stresses that the burdens that have been weighing heavy on us. We say, Jesus, everything we are, everything we have, we lay it at your feet right now. A broken and contrite heart you have yet to deny. The one who comes to you, you will by no means cast out. We are here. We lay at your feet. Right now as the worship team continues to play, let's begin to say your own song, your own phrases to the Lord. Jesus, we surrender to you. I surrender to you. You are worthy. I offer my life before you. My dreams, my heart before you. I want to hear your voice. Hear your truth. Lift your song to the Lord right now. Let a song of praise arise in this place. A song of joy from surrender arise like incense before him. With one heart, one voice, one accord, we offer up our praise and our sacrifice to you. Holy Spirit, we welcome you in this place. Holy Spirit, we welcome you in this place. Have your way. Have your way. There's joy in surrender. So let joy arise. We offer our lives and our worship to you. Because you are worthy. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. Amen. We thank Pastor Rachel and the worship team here for leading us. Beautiful, beautiful time of worship. Thank you so much for being here with us. It's a full room. This is going to be an amazing, amazing conference. My name is Sean. I'll be one of the pastors here on staff. I am also going to be hosting you guys. So you'll see me coming on and off. But before we continue, you guys can go ahead and take a seat. When you do, find someone around you that you don't know. Ask them where they're from. We have lots of people here. Guys, this is such a beautiful sound. This is the church. All over, we're all coming together saying, I'm sure all of you just made five new best friends. And you have all their names memorized. So we'll be quizzing you at the end of the conference. So I am super excited and have the honor to announce our first speaker for the Rieshine conference 2023. He is the senior leader, senior pastor and leader of the Radiant Church and Radiant Network. He is an apostolic father in our church today. Fun fact, he's the only person I know that has been kicked out of a Bible school and then went and started his own Bible school. And so that is our leader that we have here. He's authored many books. He's also has a podcast called the spirit and truth podcast, which you guys can all pull out your phones and follow him as he talks through spirit and truth filled life in church. I know that many of you call him a pastor, many of you call him a mentor, many of you call him a friend. So I want us to stand to our feet and honor our leader here today, Pastor Lee Cummings. Thank you. It is so good to see you all. So just like Sean said, some of you call me pastor, some of you call me, some of you don't call, but I love conference time every year because I get to see so many dear friends and family both in the network of our church and then just some incredible dear friends from around the country. Real quick, let me just highlight this because this is amazing. This year we have churches and ministries, 131 ministries represented here. I think they're going to put the names of all the ministries up here, 131 ministries, 186 cities, 31 states and seven countries are here. So welcome to Arise Shine. And we're very excited to have all of you here. It is our joy as a church and as a movement to just host you all. We look forward to this every year. It was really warm last week, but we wanted you to get the real Michigan experience. So we've been praying and fasting for snow and for rain, just so some of you who live in miserable states with warm and sunny weather could come and experience what Arise Shine is really all about. It's great to see you guys. This week is going to be phenomenal. I've not only are you guys here and looking so forward to catching up and bumping into some of you and just hearing what God is doing in your cities and in your churches and ministries lives, but we also have some of my favorite preachers and leaders that are here this week to add to the conversation. And so my dear friend Michael Miller from Upper Room is here. He's going to be with us this afternoon and tonight. Tomorrow, Artie Kendall. How many of you have ever heard Artie Kendall preach? This man is 87 years old. Still preachers travels 40 weeks a year. He's written like 60 books. He's got a PhD from Oxford. He's a Holy Spirit general in the faith. And I brought him in not for you. I brought him in for me. I just brought him because I wanted an excuse to get to know him a little bit. So he's going to be here. And then our very own John the Baptist, Corey Russell is going to close out tomorrow night as well as Jeremy Riddle. I know some of you like to like pack up and get a head start. And if you miss tomorrow night session, you're going to hate yourself all year. So do not miss. It's going to be phenomenal. And one quick plug that I want to give last year, if you were here last year, by the way, if you were here last year, raise your hand. Okay. A lot of you. If you were here, you may remember the message that I brought on David's tabernacle in the thousand tent poles across America. And we felt that that message was bigger than just a session, that it was actually a message that carries a mandate for the American church to help build once again presence driven praying churches for revival. And this last year, what a difference a year makes. We began to see both in Asbury College and in many other places. What I believe are some of the, the sprinkling on the windshield of the church's, you know, vehicle in motion of God indicating that I still can and still will respond with the reins of revival if my people will pray. And so when that began to happen, we experienced a little bit of an outpouring here for the first couple of months of this year. It's been incredible, but we felt at that time that it was important to put together kind of a mandate, a manifesto, so to speak, of what the praying church in America looks like and a prophetic call to the church. And so we took the message and we wrote it into a book called Give No Rest, a renewed commitment to pursue God's presence in prayer and worship in the American church. So this is a message that flowed out of that and has expanded my great friend and prophetic writing partner, Edie Morey is down here in the second row. She helped me put this together. And we hurried to get it self-published so that we could have it for the conference. Now we have 500 copies and that's it. So they're in the bookstore as well as some other resources out there. But I want to encourage you, especially you leaders, your pastors of churches, not because we are trying to sell books, but simply I want to get this message into your heart at a deeper level and then it hopefully is a way for you to be able to pass that on to some other people in your team and other pastors and churches because we're believing that God in this hour is raising up the sleeping giant of the American church to pray, to worship, to put Jesus first and to rise and shine and declare the glory of God to a generation. Amen. All right, so that's available. And I want to start this morning by bringing a message to you to set the tone for the rest of the next couple of days. And I've entitled this message, the battle for the altar. The battle for the altar. And I want to begin by saying this this morning as we start that the lens I want us to look through over the next couple of days. I know we all come in from different circumstances and situations, different crisis and troubles or hopes and expectations. And so those can shape lenses by which we see things. But the lens I want us all to align our hearts with is an eternal kingdom lens. I want us to see through this lens for the next couple of days, through the lens of the eternal reality that is all around us, not from just the physical realities of the challenges that come with church life and culture or in art jobs or our careers or even on a national level just evaluating things in the natural. Those things are there and they're important and they're real, but they're not the central lens. The Bible says that those things that are seen are temporal. They're subject to change. But those things that are invisible are eternal and that's the kingdom of God. And I want us to see through that lens because it's only through that lens that we're able to see the source and the origin of both the crisis of the hour as well as the hopeful expectation that God has for us. See, the whole conference, the whole purpose for a rise shine is a promise out of Isaiah chapter 60 where God says that darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people, but the glory of the Lord is going to be seen upon the church. And so the mandate that God has for the church is as things grow increasingly darker and heavier, there's a mandate for us to arise and to shine, to not receive, to not dim down our light, to not camouflage ourselves, but it's to arise in this hour. So when the world sees darkness, they think it's over. When God sees darkness, he says it's just beginning. And so that's what the conference is. It's a prophetic mandate for the church to arise, shine and especially in this hour to be a praying people. So this message of the battle for the altar, I want to invite you to look with me at Judges chapter six. Hopefully you brought your Bibles. Let's see, this is a room full of leaders. Raise your Bible up if you got one. Okay, there you go. I love Bibles. Now, if your Bible's on a digital device, go ahead and hold your digital device up so we know. Okay. Now, if you don't need a Bible because you've memorized it and that's why you didn't bring your Bible, just go ahead and raise your hand. We want to honor you. Okay, good. All right. Judges chapter six, verse number 11. It's the story of Gideon. And it says, Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terabinth at Oprah, which belongs to Joe Ash. The Abbey is right. While his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you a mighty man of valor. And Gideon said to him, please Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all the wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us saying? Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hands of Midian. And the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hands of Midian. Do not I send you? And he said to him, please Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least of my father's house and the Lord said to him, but I will be with you. And you shall strike the Midianites as one man. And he said, now Lord, if I found favor in your eyes, show me this sign that it is you who speak with me. Please do not depart from here until I come back and bring a present and set it before you. And he said, I will stay until you return. This was the calling, the prophetic calling of a man named Gideon at one of the most crucial hours in Israel's prophetic history. And it's not unlike the hour in which you and I are living in right now. You see, I believe with all of my heart that the circumstances of Gideon and his calling are eerily emblematic of the 21st century church. They're eerie, the similarities of it. Think about this. Living in the aftermath of a cultural shift that's changed the view of themselves and everyone around them, the world, the nations that surround Israel, it's all experienced a cultural shift. Israel has gone from being the people of God that have come into the Promised Land under Joshua. They've defeated giants and armies, miraculously taken possession of the land that God had long ago promised to them. They're dwelling in homes they never built. They're eating from vineyards that they did not plant. They're the head and not the tail. They're first and not last. But the book of Judges begins by talking about it. It says, after Joshua there arose a generation who knew not the Lord nor his works. And they began to go off into idolatry. And so by the time Gideon comes on the scene, they're no longer the head and not the tail, but now they're in hiding. And the cultural shift that has taken place has made them come under the influence of an oppressive enemy. And so it's caused them to go into hiding. Literally the children of Israel at this time have PTSD because of the last seven years where they've experienced the oppression of the Midianites and the Amalekites. So what would happen is they would go to plant, every year they're in agrarian culture, they're farmers, they're in the land, they would plant, they would feed their herds, and they knew that every year there was going to come a harvest time. And every year those animals were going to give birth and they were going to multiply and they were going to increase. Their wealth was going to increase. Their security was going to increase. But now what's going to happen because they turned their hearts away from the Lord, the enemy, the Midianites and the Amalekites who were nomadic people out of the east would wait until the time of harvest and then they would come in like a storm and they would take all that they had harvested. They would take all of their crops, all of their wheat. They would take all of their newborn animals and they would destroy their cities and their villages. And so when that happens one time, think to yourself that's an anomaly. But when it happens every year after all of your labor, after all of your work, after all of your hopes and after all of your dreams, you go from mad to fearful to surrender. And that's exactly what happened to them. They went into hiding. By the time we find Gideon, the children of Israel, if you look at Judges chapter six, the first part of it, it's been seven years. And they went from living in Homestead now, living in caves in the mountains because that's difficult to get to. They go from thriving and planting to just giving up. And here we find Gideon. Gideon is in the wine press and he's got a little bit of spare wheat that he's trying to break off of the stem without being seen. And what does that indicate? It indicates that Gideon, just like the rest of the children of God living in Israel at this particular time, have given up hope and they've gone into survival mode. And what was going on culturally, as we'll see later on in Judges chapter six, is there was a bigger battle that was going on that God saw and God wanted to raise up a prophetic voice who would turn the hearts of their people back to number one, a devotion to him, but then to see themselves as overcomers instead of those who have been overcome and the real battle that was going on was not battle for the wheat and it was not battle for the cave and it was not even battle for the culture, it was battle for the altar because once God gets Gideon's attention, he turns and he directs him towards the altar of Baal which we'll get to in just a moment. But you can look at and you can see that Israel was in a very similar circumstance culturally to where Israel was. Here's what I think about when I look at the life of Gideon as Gideon was found by God in the place of yesterday's new wine searching for today's strength. He was in the place where yesterday wine flowed but today he's in survival mode. In the lowest place, that's what a wine press is with survival in his hands. He's trying to find strength today out of a survival mentality in the place where at one time there was over an abundance and there was a flowing of new wine. I think in many places across America we over the last few years have come to a reckoning. And the reckoning is this, is that we are the caretakers of revival stories and awakening stories and moves of God of the past but we don't have the strength for the hour in which we're in and so many people have gone into survival mode. I'm just trying to get through today. I'm gonna climb back up into my cliff into my little stronghold in my little cave and live for another day because I'm tired of the enemy coming and stealing. And listen, the thing that he steals the most is our hope and our expectation and our faith because over the course of seven years or a heptad or a complete period of time the enemy's strategy is always to steal hope and to steal courage. If he can steal courage from the church, if he can steal courage from the people of God he can cause us to be captives in the promised land, prisoners in the promised land. But God's answer every single time to circumstances like this, and by the way, you know, when you go to see a doctor before they give you the good news they always give you the bad news. You know, like this is what's wrong with you and then they say, here's how we're gonna treat it. So this morning, I'm giving you the bad news up front. The American church is suffering from PTSD. Yesterday's models do not work for today's challenges. All the tools and the implementations of our own strength in our own hand have failed us and we're searching for what to do tomorrow and we can either respond to the call of God and say, here's the way forward or we can live in hiding in our caves. God's answer every single time to circumstances like this is always courageous leadership. It's always calling leaders out of the wine press and calling them to a greater place of courage. It's interesting to me that Gideon's name means one who tears down. Gideon means one who tears down or mighty warrior. So when God shows up, imagine for a moment, if you're Gideon and you're just trying to like sneak out and grab a little snack enough to get you by and then crawl back up into your cave, into your lockdown cave. And you know, he's up there. He's in a pool, he's trying to do it and I don't know if you've ever snuck down in the middle of the night to get a snack and didn't want anybody to know you were doing it and then you close the refrigerator and somebody's waiting there for you. It's like, what are you doing? I thought you were on a diet. Why do you have pie in your hands? I don't know, the devil made me do it, you know. But imagine being in a wine press, trying to be as quiet and as stealth as you can and looking up and there's an angel of the Lord standing there. And he's not quiet. Gideon, you mighty man of valor. The Amalekites and the Midianites. I mean, he's doing everything in his power to be quiet and here he is. He's being called out by the angel of the Lord. And the angel of the Lord is, what's he calling them out to? Courageous leadership. You mighty man of valor. Well, wait a second, Lord, if I'm a mighty man of valor then I've got some questions for you. Number one, why is all this stuff happen to us? Why are we in the circumstances that we're in? Number two, where are all the miracles? I grew up in Sunday school and Sabbath school hearing about Moses and Joshua. It's like, how come God's allowed us to come under the oppression of an enemy? He's asking questions and you notice that the Lord doesn't answer his questions. The Lord doesn't say, let me explain to you why. Am I sovereign in my providence? He doesn't do all that. He doesn't answer him. He just turns to him and he says, go in this might of yours. And then he says, but God, I'm not qualified. You're looking for a courageous leader. He's saying, mighty man of valor, you've got the wrong address, the wrong guy, because I'm the least of my father's house. My father's house is the least of Manasseh. Manasseh is the weakest tribe in all of Israel and Israel is occupied. In other words, what he's saying is, there is nobody on the face of the earth that is less qualified to do what you are saying to me than me. But the Lord doesn't, how many of you know the Lord doesn't often let you win arguments? The Lord's, the angel of the Lord's not staying there and going, yeah, you know, you're right. There might be somebody better to do this than you. And yeah, you know, all right, I'll give you a break. Go back to shucking your wheat and in your wine press. Now he says, you're going to rise up and you're going to be a deliverer in the house and in the nation of Israel. See, Gideon, his name actually is connected to his destiny. And what we find is that Gideon's a man at this hour who's allowed his identity within him to be defined by his failures and circumstances around him. He didn't wake up one day and say, I'm going to be a victim. But you know, I think we've maybe all experienced this in our life as leaders. If you've ever tried to lead anything, if you've ever tried to build anything, try to raise a family, it's like, it's not one gut punch that knocks the strength out of you. It's when it comes time after time after time. And you just, you don't, nobody decides today, I'm just going to believe that I can't win. There just comes an inflection moment in your life where you stop believing victory is possible. And that's when we lose hope. And the most valuable commodity that we have as leaders and children of God is hope. The Old Testament calls us prisoners of hope. Think about that, prisoners of hope. And Gideon's a man that his name speaks about the destiny that God has for him, but his heart doesn't believe it. But God doesn't give up on him. God begins to speak to him because God saw in Gideon a courageous, and I want you to get this term, wartime leader within him. A courageous wartime leader. There are two kinds of leaders. There are peacetime leaders and there are wartime leaders. Peacetime leaders and wartime leaders. Winston Churchill was a wartime leader. If you've ever studied the life of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England in the UK during World War II, his early success or his early career was underwhelming in the 20s and 30s. It wasn't until Hitler came on the scene, the UK was thrown into a war in mainland Europe and at that time they needed a wartime leader. I love speeches, I love especially Winston Churchill and his first speech in 1940 as the Prime Minister of England at a time when it looked as if England was about to lose the war and come under the authority of the Third Reich. His first speech is monumental. It demonstrates what a wartime leader looks like. I'm just going to read a paragraph to you, but listen to these words. Winston Churchill says, I would say to the house, as I said to those who joined this government, that I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle. You ask what our policy is, I will say it. It is to wage war with all of our might, with all the strength that God can give us to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word, victory. Victory at all costs. Victory despite all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be for without victory there is no survival. And it was speeches like this in the middle of one of the most hopeless moments in England that the mindset and the paradigm of the nation turned because of courageous wartime leadership. What's interesting is as soon as the war was won, Winston Churchill's popularity went into decline. There was a period of time during war, during crisis, during hopelessness where all eyes were looking for somebody to step forward and say, yes, it's dark. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it's sobering, but we are gonna fight towards victory and we are gonna overcome. It's courageous leadership. And that's exactly what's needed in every hour of human history, especially in the kingdom of God. God is always raising up courageous prophetic leaders, whether it's Gideon, whether it's Elijah, whether it's John the Baptist in the New Testament, God will raise up those who are willing to say what no one else will say, those who carry a groan, those who are able to see what nobody else can see, those who can call the people of God to believe for something more. I wrote this when I was preparing for this. I'm in the middle of putting some things together, but I don't typically write word for word out, but I really felt like this will help me solidify what wartime leadership looks like. It says, the true measure of a leader is not the position he takes during times of peace, but it's where he stands during moments of conflict and crisis. Peace time leaders look to diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise as a means of securing what they have, not knowing that by making that decision, they've already lost. There is no virtue in détente. Wartime leaders refuse to back down and understand that peace tomorrow in future generations will be the product of their courage and sacrifice today. And what God was calling, Gideon II in Judges chapter six in an hour that's very similar to the hour in which you and I are leading in, so he was calling them to courageous leadership, to be a leader who had a mindset that in spite of pain, in spite of fear, in spite of the challenges, in spite of the enemy, that he had courage on the inside of him. And listen, you and I are living in a day when courage is actually discouraged. We're living in a day when consensus is actually the consensus, but it takes a wartime courageous leader to stand out and to step out from the fray, step out of the wine press and to say, I'm not retreating back to the caves, I'm going in pursuit of the altar of the Lord. Because this is what God says to him. God speaks to Gideon after he's gone through his whole process and in verse 25, the Lord calls to him and he says to him, I want you to take your father's bowl, the second bowl, seven years old and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, cut down the asher that is beside it in verse 26 and build an altar to the Lord, your God on top of the stronghold here with stones laid in their proper order. Why was God raising up a courageous leader, a prophetic wartime leader because the battle was over the altar? The battle that was waging was not just a battle for economics. It wasn't just a battle against a physical enemy, the Amalekites and the Midianites. It was actually a battle for the altar. This is what I mean by the lens. I want us to see through that lens because today it's very easy for us living in 21st century America to get our eyes on the Midianites or the Amalekites or on the economy or on the elections or on our micro challenges and miss the bigger battle. The bigger battle right now I believe in our culture, in the church of Jesus Christ in America is for the altar of the Lord. It's a battle for the altar. Whose altar is going to be allowed to stand? Is it going to be the altar of Baal or is it going to be the altar of the Lord? And why would God raise up a prophetic people in this hour? I believe it's to tear down the altar of Baal and it's to rebuild, to re-establish the altar of the Lord. Now let me, amen. In order for us to get there we have to understand that right now there are two spirits at work in this generation in profound ways. First John calls it the spirit of error versus the spirit of truth. I call it the spirit of this age. It's a deceptive spirit versus the Holy spirit. There are two spirits and here's what's dynamic about this. These two same spirits are also at work within the church. Israel was living in a time during Gideon as covenant people where they had synchronized their devotion to Yahweh with devotion to Baal. It wasn't like separate. They tried to combine them together and what they didn't realize is that beyond the altar they never believed that the altar or the asherapole was actually a deity. It was a representation of the spirit that was the dominant influence in culture. And so what was going on was over the course of time the influence of the surrounding nations and their idols and their gods began to influence the church and the dominant alternative spirit is the spirit of Baal. It's the altar of Baal that God wanted torn down. And when you read through the Old Testament Baal had many different names but it was the same spirit. And I believe really strongly that what we are experiencing it's not just here but because of our own context in our culture that what we are experiencing in the spiritual realm, the battle culturally that is manifesting a lot of things like in education and home and business and all across media you watch the Grammy Awards you see what's going on in schools we pay attention to the news cycle those are just physical manifestations of a spiritual influence that I believe is the exact same spirit that Gideon was confronting in his day it's the same spirit that God's people are always having to confront because I'll tell you that the spirit of Baal is actually the counterfeit alternative to the spirit of revival Baal the, let me just give you some details about Baal. Baal his name as a verb means to marry and his name as a noun means the one who has dominion over the dominant one owner, master and he was typically in the Old Testament the God of the storm rain and why that was important you might think why are they worshiping a God of the storm when you are a farmer and you make your money based on the ground and you need rain the God of the storm is an appealing God to worship because you need rain for your crops and you need crops to feed your herds your herds and your crops are your tomorrow's prosperity and Baal was, yes he was called the God of rain but rain touched three primary issues he was the bringer of rain which meant the bringer of success and fertility so let me put that to you in modern terms why that is a counterfeit to the spirit of revival the Holy Spirit because Zechariah chapter 10 verses one through two says ask the Lord for rain and the season of rain you will find in Acts chapter three it says pray that there's repentance so that times of refreshing may come from the Lord Hosea talks about the rains of righteousness revival is always typified as rain but Baal is yet the God the deity that's connected to storm that can bring rain or bring success and fertility so think about the modern equivalent of Baal is think about a spiritual influence that has a dominant message focused around climate the economy and sexuality is that something familiar to anybody it's you serve the Baal in order to control and affect the climate in order for you to have a thriving economy and it's all based on sexuality and in the Old Testament the way that you serve the Baal to get Baal to answer you was cutting emasculation of men sexual perversion and child sacrifice let me just give you the modern version of that trans-surgery and the emasculation of men toxic masculinity sexual permissiveness and abortion are manifesting themselves in this generation it's just a modern version of it that's very sophisticated same spirit it's Baal and if we look at it only through the natural we just look at it by the people who are being affected by this we need to constantly remind ourselves our battles not with flesh and blood we're not battling against people Jesus came and died on the cross to redeem captive men from their sin and from under the influence of this spirit so what a lot of people in the church in the name of empathy are doing is we don't want to address that spiritual influence because that means that we're not being empathetic to people how empathetic is it to have keys in your hand to every cell door in front of a prison of people who are wrongly convicted and imprisoned and to say it's not compassionate for me to announce to them that they can be free and to unlock the doors I'm just gonna stand back and wave to them and try to make their life more comfortable behind bars here I'm gonna send you a book here's some cookies here's a care package enjoy your prison Jesus didn't come to make prisoners comfortable Jesus came to set the captives free but the problem is in the church just like Israel we've synchronized the spirit of Baal with the spirit of revival we say well worship God on Sundays but we're putting our energy and our ideology and our thoughts and our politics and our child rearing and our sexuality and our finances and even our views on gender and life we're putting that all on the altar of Baal and what that is produced let me put it in we've got whole denominations that right now used to be rooted in revival movements when God raised up courageous prophetic leaders like John Kelvin and John Knox and John Wesley but yet now their ancestors and their spiritual lineage has in the place where there once was an altar where revival fire burned they've replaced it with an altar of Baal and now we're seeing whole denominations walk away from the faith oh the Bible this is an archaic book and you know it doesn't really mean what it says and we've got to accommodate in order to have a place at the cultural conversation and at the table you know what that is that's Baal the one who dominates saying you're going to submit to me in order to have a voice in Israel and you're going to live in your caves and you're going to be happy with just enough you're going to own far less you're going to eat bugs and you're going to live in a cave it's the spirit of Baal and we've allowed it we've syncretized it but that spirit that's at work is nothing but a counterfeit to the spirit of revival what God wants to do in a people listen I believe with all of my own with everything that is on the inside of me that not only is revival and awakening in America possible it's inevitable because God has said that wherever sin abounds grace does much more abound when the enemy comes in like a flood God raises up a standard against it and God looks at night time not as the end of the day but the beginning of dawn he always calls light out of darkness and that's exactly what he's doing in Gideon calling him out of the wine press and listen to me pastor and leader you are not here by accident God has put his spirit and his glory on the inside of you for this hour for this moment so that there will be a massive awakening in America in our lifetime I believe it with all my heart this last year we saw it I mean just Jane and I were in Mexico in February we had just come out of a seek prayer and fasting season with our church which was powerful we felt like January 8th like when we started it normally with 21 days of prayer and fasting you know it's dark in Michigan I know it's hard to believe but in January it gets dark and cold here and normally when you tell people hey let's gather together and not eat and do nothing but pray in the midst of gloom it can almost be like sackcloth and ashes and you kind of got to ramp people up it's like come on let's go let's go and usually by week number two we've got momentum day number one the hunger was marked I mean it was just never experienced anything like that and that rolled into week after week of this our prayer room was packed testimonies of salvation altars were full I was like God what are you doing I mean this is amazing Jane and I went to Mexico for a couple weeks and while we were down there about 10 days we were down there like the first week that we're down there my phone is blowing up we're sitting by the pool I'm just reading a couple books and my phone starts blowing up I'm like what's going on it's all my friends going do you see what's going on at Asbury I'm like what's going on it's interesting I brought a book to read that was on my iPad about the 1970 outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Asbury so my phone's blowing up and I got the worst case of FOMO over the next couple of days I'm like I'm in Mexico going oh everybody's going I'm making my track to Asbury it's amazing I felt the tangible manifest presence of the Lord and people are getting saved and it's amazing and there's 10,000 people they're shutting the roads down all signs are saying shut for revival and I'm like I prayed for this my entire life and I'm in Mexico with my wife and I know I'm supposed to spend quality time this beautiful woman that you gave me but God can we go home and she's like do you want to go home I wanted to say yes so bad I was like no this is so we stuck it out it was rough we stuck it out but we saw what began to happen at a small city in Kentucky that which by the way if you go back in the 20th century Asbury has always been a bell weather of when there's a national awakening about to happen in America and by the way there was no celebrities on the platform celebrities showed up reached out hey we'll lead worship hey we'll preach sorry no news wanted to show up no please don't come no smoke I love all smoke lights I like the show I like it all but something pure that just happened in this chapel by a chaplain who on a Wednesday morning after he preached his message walked off texted his wife and said I think I just preached the worst message of my life stage set and Jesus stepped into the room and for the next month or so I think it was just people ask me what do you think about Asbury here's what I think I think it was God giving us a sample of things to come I think it was God saying to get in in the wine press I'm not done oh you think a generation has arisen that I can't win to myself Gen Z is so far removed from the things of God you think that they're not hungry for a move of God let me just throw a little rain on your windshield how many know when you're driving down the road and you start getting that spit on the windshield you're just like storm up ahead I think Asbury was the spit on the windshield I think it was a four we're so used to ones that a four felt like a ten on the Richter scale but I feel like the Lord's like Asbury was only a four when I pour out my spirit on a generation like I did in 1967 through 71 it's going to be an 11 on the Richter scale you haven't seen anything yet I mean we saw it Asbury city shut down and it wasn't just Asbury it began to move to other places you know what happened hope rose up get in had been tucked away in the wine press just surviving running back to the cave and all of a sudden we begin to pay attention it's like no God's not done with the generation God is not going to allow the altar of bail to get built reinforced and highlighted to the exclusion of his own glory God's just allowed it to be built until he can find a generation of courageous wartime leaders that he can put his glory on who will contend who will set the stones on the altar of the Lord in do order not our order but do order see we tried to build the altar our way and God's like that's not my design build it right and I'll come build it right and I'll come Sunday after Asbury in our church we the Lord just came and he just said to us I'll come where I'm wanted I come where I'm wanted how many know it's always better to go someplace where you're wanted nobody likes to show up at a place where people go oh hey I guess you can come in no you want to come someplace you're wanted and we've we've just felt like the Lord's just like this is a Costco sample of my greater glory listen there's going to come a moment I believe we're going to see it God's going to pour out the Holy Spirit and it's not just going to be so that we can build a subculture in the church of revival it's going to awaken the church that's what revival is that's going to lead to national awakening and a harvest of tens of millions of souls in one generation and it's going to change the landscape in a marked way I believe that's what's coming but God is searching for a generation of leaders who will bring reformation to the church so that he can bring transformation to our culture and here's the mandate that God gives Gideon it's the mandate that he gives to all courageous leaders and I believe it's a mandate for us in this room the mandate for courageous leaders in this hour and make no mistake about it it's going to take courage pastor it's going to take courage worship leaders going to take courage small group leaders going to take courage missionary you're going to have to be courageous high school college student you're going to have to be courageous but the mandate for courageous leaders is twofold deconstruct the altar of bell and rebuild the altar of the Lord if we will do these things if we will give our lives to these two things simultaneously we will set the stage for greater glory than we've ever experienced before this is in the heart of God we're not trying to convince God to do something he doesn't already want to do God's trying to get a hold of a generation's attention he spent the last four or five years going have I got your attention yet have I got your attention yet or you thought you lived in one of those states that this could never happen have I got your attention now will you do it my way now will you turn to me with all of your heart the mandate for courageous leadership in this hour the Gideon mandate begins with deconstructing the altar of bell that that bulls down to three things number one contending for the faith let me talk to you about deconstructing the altar of bell I'm so tired of talking about deconstruction well this person deconstructed their faith or this person began to tear down their faith listen it's time for the church to stop playing defense and hope nobody deconstructs and actually get a voice that tears down that's what the word deconstruct means tear down the altar of bell expose the spirit that is at work and show the weakness and the fallacy of it and that begins with courageous leaders who are willing to contend for the faith once and for all delivered under the saints guys we got to teach the word we got to teach the word unashamed and listen we can't teach the word through inspiring self-help positive only teaching of the Bible we can't go through here with an exacto knife and say oh people love this verse I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and then we're not going to talk about the fact Paul's writing that from prison it's like I've got my bumper sticker I can do all things got it on my t-shirt for my soccer team Paul's in a prison chained rats crawling across his feet water dripping on his forehead everybody he's raised up has abandoned him he's begging somebody to bring the scroll somebody to bring him food and in the middle of that he's like count it all joy joy rejoicing the Lord always and again I say rejoice what that is that's courage and we're going to have to defend the faith we're going to stop letting tiktok theologians train our young people and teach them what the Bible says about every issue because we're afraid to touch it I don't want to talk about gender and sexuality in church now I just want to stick to the Bible really you don't think the Bible the Bible starts with gender and sexuality in the beginning and that's not a baseball term it's not in the beginning it's in the beginning in God's created order he made them male and female you don't think God's not in heaven going I didn't see that coming but that's I guess that's okay the reason why a generation is messed up and confused is we've allowed the spirit of the Amalekites and the Midianites to come in and steal their inheritance because instead of standing up courageously to disciple them we've allowed other voices to disciple them make no mistake about it our kids are being discipled it's just a question by who and we've spent this isn't in my notes we've spent 30 years trying to build environments to make people who are lost comfortable hey come on it's just like hey our music's just like the Garth Brooks show right and our messages are just like Brene Brown right and you know we're reading the nice verses out of the Bible it's like chicken soup for the soul fortune cookie theology you're gonna have an amazing future God's got a wonderful plan for your life oh have you read Matthew 16 take up your cross and follow me deny yourself it's gonna hurt it's like well that doesn't draw people in I didn't think we did I thought that was the work of the Holy Spirit but we've handicapped a generation we've handicapped a generation because we've given them about a third of the Bible the Bible is redemptive from beginning to end but we've got to be willing to deconstruct the altar of Baal stone by stone let me tell you why the lie of the enemy that is pervading our culture right now will destroy your life young person let me present to you a testimony of somebody that Jesus delivered out of a lifestyle set free from addictions let me introduce you let me introduce you to the Holy Spirit that is able to miraculously breathe life into your dead spirit why a subtle lie that the church has believed here's the spirit of Baal a subtle lie that the church of the last 10 years has believed is this the Holy Spirit can transform anybody's life unless you're gay if you're an addict Jesus can set you free if you're a liar, Jesus can change you if you're an alcoholic Jesus can transform your life if you're sexually promiscuous he can set you free and give you new purity but if you struggle with same-sex attraction or if you're struggling with your identity hope for the best and Jesus stands and says every drop of my blood on the cross is more powerful than the largest lie of the enemy I can set free to the uttermost I can set free to the uttermost it's like how have we believed this how have we believed this that we have to be silent on these issues we don't listen we're not called to condemn we're called to set free to enable people to offer the grace of God to people but we've hidden in the stronghold the cave of the lies of this culture you know what that is without even knowing that the church has subtly come under the influence of the spirit of Baal and hold denominations now are willing to actually change their theology than to grow in their power I guess we're just going to write off the Bible and write off and the domino effect is I guess that not all of this is inspired and so it's not inspired so you know if this isn't inspired on this issue and on that issue I guess there's a lot of liberty there then why are we doing this the reason I'm doing this is not because I chose a career path I was a 12 year old insecure messed up sexually abused kid and Jesus met me at an altar transformed my life, gave me a vision of my generation fixed my heart healed my wounds restored me and filled me with this Holy Spirit I want that for every living person in our city I want that freedom for every person so we've got to contend for the faith number two expose the works of darkness and then destroy the strongholds of the enemy where our strongholds most often built by the enemy it's in the mindsets in the subconscious spiritual lies that we've grabbed a hold of and said I believe that to be true 2 Corinthians 10 you guys know it it says that the weapons of our warfare are mighty in God to the pulling down of strongholds and every argument and every vain imagination that raises up itself against the knowledge of Christ this is what it means to deconstruct the altar of Baal what does it mean to build the altar of the Lord because that was the mandate that God gave getting he said I want you to tear down the altar of Baal but if all he had done was to deconstruct the altar of Baal it would not have been enough that's gone now it's just it's a patio and in the place of the stronghold I want you to think about that in the place of the stronghold I want you to build the altar of the Lord an altar is defined as an elevated place or an elevated structure on which worship is offered it's a sacred place legalism and fundamentalism will always sign on to deconstructing the altar of Baal but as soon as you begin to talk about building the altar of the Lord all the fundies get really uncomfortable all the satanists are like well now it's getting outside of our wheelhouse because the altar of the Lord is the place where the supernatural presence of God meets meets the people of God it's the place where heaven and earth intersect it's the place where we pray where we worship and God makes himself known verse 26 build the altar of the Lord your God on top of the stronghold here with stones that are laid in due order the altar of the Lord I believe and I propose to you is putting the presence of God back at the center of Jesus' church practically manifesting itself in thanksgiving adoration, exaltation intercession and prayer back at the center of the church back at the center of Israel's culture what the Lord was trying to say to Gideon is the way that you prepare an army to go and defeat the enemy out in culture is to construct the altar of the Lord inside the community of the people of God it's not enough for you to just know what you're against you have to reprioritize what you're for you can say no to a thousand things but unless you say yes to the one thing it's incomplete and I believe in the hour in which I think we've been really good in the church at identifying the things that we're against but the thing that a generation needs to see is a church with all eyes on Jesus and I'm not just talking about oh yeah we believe in Jesus I'm talking about His presence His tangible manifest presence is our primary importance when we come together it's about Him when we worship it's about Him and when we could spend our time and pour out our lives build new programs and new strategies those are nothing but trying to do some things in our own strength it's we in our hands while we're sitting in the wine press I'm four programs I'm four strategies and models are growing the church we've done a lot of those things but at the center of it is Jesus is wanting to get a distracted church to put their eyes fully back on Him and to welcome Him to be enthroned on the praises of Zion and to awaken the church to be a praying church to see the altar of the Lord the place of prayer as the place where courage fills our hearts once again restore the primacy of God's presence remove the impurities of syncretism and accommodation rebuild the altar of corporate prayer so that we can release an army of courageous saints churches that pray churches that prioritize the presence of God churches that our worship is not based on the preference of the people but it's based on the desire of the one we're worshiping services where we're not fashioning and focusing them for individuals other than the one who's enthroned in our praises that we give Him not just a portion of the service but we give Him the room and listen syncretism shows up because we take worship and make it about us Jesus, here's what you've done for me, here's what I want you to do for me it's wonderful, it's great but that's not that's not the priority it's Him it's coming back and believing that if we will put Jesus back on full display and worship true worship if we will call our church to pray you know there is the one thing, you can do all kinds of things but you call your church to pray and you find out who's really in with you but God's building a praying army God's building a people that once again have courage in their hearts and believe that if His people will pray that He'll heal our land, He'll forgive our sins, He'll move one of my favorite parts of this story is what happens in chapter later in Judges chapter 7 after He rebuilds the altar of the Lord and over the next couple of days we're going to talk a lot about what it looks like to build the altar of prayer and the altar of presence in our churches but after Gideon does that in Judges chapter 7 it says as they're going on attack mode against the Amalekites and the Midianites with an army of 300 it says then the three companies blew the trumpet, broke the jars they held in their hands the torches and in their right hands the trumpet to blow and they cried out a sword for the Lord and for Gideon you know what God had done God had infused their hearts with courage He had pulled together a remnant of people whose hearts had been once again filled with courage who were unified and ready to go on the offensive instead of dwelling in the defensive and they defeated the enemies they pushed back the enemy basically what we see in Judges chapter 7 is cultural transformation Judges chapter 6 is revival Judges chapter 7 is national awakening Judges chapter 7 national awakening doesn't happen until there is a Judges chapter 6 revival of removing the altar of Baal publishing the altar of the Lord and that doesn't happen until one man stands up out of the wine press and says I believe you God if you will go with me if your presence will be with me just like you just said I'll go wherever you want me to go and this morning that's what God's calling us to I believe today, tomorrow is our wine press moment with the Lord I believe he's here and he wants to equip an army not just of 300 but 1200 and he wants to infuse us with vision with courage, with hope and conviction so that his glory can be seen upon us and I believe also the Lord this morning he sees us and he knows us and he's walking up and down the aisles of this gathering of leaders and he's standing over the wine press of the American church and he's looking down at the leadership culture and he's saying you mighty man and woman of valor that's what he's saying to you you mighty man and woman of valor in your response might be whoa but God if I'm a mighty man of valor explain to me why this last year has been the most difficult year of my life explain to me why I had these leaders that left or these accusations that came against me or my kids are going to explain to me and Lord if I'm really a mighty man of valor that you've chosen to be a courageous wartime leader then explain to me where are all your miracles you don't know how many prayers we've prayed in our church through for salvation for God to bring musicians for God to give us resources for God to help us and God's not here today to answer your questions he's here to answer call you to be the answer to the challenge of this era this generation and he looks at you and he says this I will be with you but Lord I'm in a small city how can I change this generation this morning I was sitting in our back room with Jane and I looked up the window and I said can you believe people are coming from 30 states to Richland, Michigan Cornfield 186 cities 27 years ago if the Lord had shown up and said I'm going to use you to impact cities I would have been like but God I'm from my father's house I'm the least in my Cummings clan from Pontiac, Michigan transplanted to Richland, Michigan God how can you do that and the promise that God gives us as he's standing over the wine press today to us and he's calling you out as a courageous leader he's not going to answer the question he's just saying I will be with you know this his presence is enough his presence is the X factor his presence his courage personified in the person of the Holy Spirit arise shine for the glory of the Lord is upon you and the glory of the Lord will be seen upon you darkness may cover the earth gross darkness the people but my glory will be seen upon you and your light is going to be like the rising of a radiant city on a hill that the kings and nations come to in our nation and in our world's greatest crisis hour they're looking for somebody to stand up with answers with light with hope and with courage why not you why not this year why not your city if God can do it in Wilmore, Kentucky he can do it in Richland, Michigan his city and he can do it through you in this moment if we will only stand up out of the wine press and say here am I Lord send me this morning before we shift gears and go into breakouts and different things like that in this holy moment I want you to hear the voice of the angel of the Lord say to you rise up you mighty man you mighty woman and if you're saying God here am I just like Gideon I want you to stand up right where you are as if you're standing up in the midst of a wine press and we're going to pray and ask God to meet us over the next couple of days and help us to know how to build the altar of the Lord in our cities and in our churches on the strongholds of the enemy we can all talk about the strongholds of our cities but do you know what God likes to do in strongholds he likes to build altars on top of them four years ago we bought a small little building in downtown Kalamazoo a little 4,000 square foot room that was a storage room and we made the Psalm 132 commitment we will give no rest to our eyes and we will not crawl into bed until we have made a resting place for the Lord a dwelling place from the heart of our city no spirit filled no Bible believing community in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo rainbow flags flying everywhere and we just found this room and we said we're going to create a prayer altar in the heart of our city and the Lord reminded us after we did it he said this has always been a stronghold but now there's an altar to me where prayer and adoration arise morning, noon and night every day from the heart of our city if God will do that in Kalamazoo, Michigan he will do it in your city he will do it in your country he will do it in your community he's just looking for a Gideon let's just raise up our hands Lord I'm praying today for an impartation of the Gideon mandate and the Gideon anointing Lord would you release courage wartime courage in the hearts of your people in the hearts of leaders pastors missionaries teachers businessmen moms, dads, teenagers Lord pour out the spirit of courage as you stand over us this morning we look up and we see the Lord saying I will be with you declares the Lord I will go before you and I will prepare the way if you will courageously follow me Lord today would you release courage and anointing that breaks the heavy yoke that breaks down the altar bell that helps expose darkness and releases light and truth and hope to a generation God we want to see this generation encounter the Lord we don't want a generation to rise up who doesn't know the Lord nor the works of the Lord we owe it to this generation to pray in the reigns of revival and so Lord we do that today we say God it's the time of reign and we're asking you send reign send the reign over our cities over our churches over our families the reigns of revival in Jesus name come on before we finish by just ministering to the Lord today before we break off we've given lots of pad I want us to just go before the Lord and put a capstone on this and let's just minister to the heart of the Lord can we just do that we offer our hearts and our lives to you write these words and our hearts let this be a marking moment flag planted as we say yes to you God reveal in our hearts and in our spheres the altars of bail that need to be torn down and give us the courage give us the strength to do it and give us the grace to build an altar for the Lord presence driven worship centrality of the scripture and hearts set on revival God give us the courage we say yes and that's all you're looking for you're not looking for skill or experience you're not looking for money or influence you're looking for willing hearts hearts that will say yes to you right now so we say yes in the name of Jesus Amen