 How are we doing? Doing good? Man, packed house. Did you guys go to homecoming last night or was it your kids? Man, like every seat in here is taken. It's amazing. Hey, I want to take a second and welcome our portage campus that are simulcasting live right now. Can you guys just help me welcome them? So glad you're joining. It's so fun to do this live now. Everything's working great. There's no, I'm just kidding. Everything's great. It's got to give them a scare. I got to give Pastor Stephan a scare over there. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 60. We're going to start in Isaiah 60. I'm going to be preaching on accessing greater faith this morning. And we're going to start reading a passage that many of you guys have heard, especially if you've attended Radiant for a while, because it's actually the scripture which this church was named after. But I'm going to ask you to, as we read it, to just look at it with fresh eyes and fresh ears, because I believe the Lord is breathing something unique on it for this season at Radiant in this city. So Isaiah 60, verse one says, Arise and shine, for your light has come, for the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth and a deep darkness the people. But the Lord will arise over you and his glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light and the kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around and see. They all gather together. They come to you. Your son shall come from afar and your daughter shall be nursed at your side. Then you shall see. Just repeat that. Just say see. Then you shall see and become radiant and your hearts will swell with joy. This passage, what I love is, it highlights the need to arise and shine. Or in other words, the glory of the Lord is coming. And because of that, our response as the church is not to shrink back, but to actually step forward into what God has for us. And it commands us to look up and see. And I want to challenge, as I talk about faith this morning, I want to challenge the idea a little bit of blind faith. And how many of you guys have heard that term blind faith before? And there might be some truth to it. And I think it kind of comes from when Jesus says to Thomas, blessed are those who haven't seen but still believe. But we can take that idea of blind faith and use an expression of faith that is disconnected from problems, disconnected from society, that refuses to look at the situation and says, no, no, I need to kind of bury my head in the sand and just trust that everything is going to work out. And we do it in the name of faith, but sometimes I think it's actually doubt that's disguised as the name of faith because we don't actually have faith to arise and shine with what God is doing. And in doubt we just say, well, God's got under control. And obviously God does have it under control and we need to have trust. However, in scriptures it doesn't say to have faith you need to be blind and not have any sight. It says to look with different eyes all throughout the Gospels. It says the ones who have eyes let him see. Paul prays for the church and Ephesians. God, would you enlighten the eyes of our understanding? And so this morning we're going to talk about the need to look at our circumstances, our city, our family, our life through the eyes of faith. And so we're going to start in 2 Kings 6. I want to invite you to turn there. And as you turn there, I want to give you a little bit of context. The Syrian king is trying to make war with Israel and he's got a massive army. So he thinks, because I have a bigger army and they're stronger than I'm going to win. And so he develops kind of this stronghold camp, the secret place where he's going to bring his army to kind of strategize where he's going to attack. Well, Elisha, the prophet in Israel, knows prophetically the exact coordinates without anybody telling him and he tells the king and Israel sends spies and they're ready for this camp. And so the heart of the king is angry. He goes to his generals and he's like, who betrayed me? Where's the snake? Which one of you guys told Israel where I am? And they say to him this amazing phrase. They said, nobody, we're all loyal to you. However, the man of God in Israel, the prophet Elisha, hears the things that you whisper in your bedroom and he tells it to the king. And the king is fearful and afraid, but the king is still doing the math. I have a big army and there's only one of him. So all I got to do is take out this guy and I'm going to wipe out Israel. And so he asks his generals, hey, where is he? And I love the response because they say, surely or for sure there's no doubt he's in Dotham. What's the translation of that? Elisha knows that he's the number one target for Syria. He knows that they're going to be after him and he doesn't hide behind the army. He doesn't go and hide and not tell anyone where his location is. He's like, no, I'm going to be in Dotham. And if you want to have a conversation, you can come and meet me. And that's where we pick up in verse 14. Therefore he, the king of Syria, sent horses and chariots and a great army there to Dotham. And they came by night and surrounded the city. And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, alas, my master, what should we do? I bet that was a very nice way to wake up for Elisha. Elisha was just sitting there and all of a sudden someone walked in, there's an army, they're going to kill us. We're going to die. It's going to happen in moments. There's just, you know, that feeling when you just wake up out of bed. I know what that feels like. I have a five year old and every morning he's like, dad, you got to get up. It's an emergency. Everyone's going to die. The TV's not working. You know, and you're just like trying to like get your wits and understand what's happening in the moment. Okay, calm down. What's happening? And I love Elisha's response in this moment, even though he's just waking up, even though he hasn't actually seen the army for himself. He hasn't seen the problem. And he looks right at the servant and he says in verse 16, do not fear. I love it because Elisha doesn't even know what they're up against yet. But he knows if they operate in a spirit of fear, they are not going to be able to see what the solution is in the situation. And he commands him not to have fear. I love, there's an old Native American story of a chief and a son. And the chief says to the son, in every circumstance, there are two wolves inside of you. And the son says, what are the names of those wolves? And the chief said, one's named fear, and one is named faith. And so the boy says, well, which wolf wins? And the chief says, whichever one you feed. And there's a reality in these situations that we are confronted with that choice. And sometimes we act like fear is something that just happens to us when we have no choice. But if we didn't have a choice in the matter, then why would the Bible command over and over again to not fear? It says, do not fear. And so Elisha starts before we even adjust the issue. Let's start in the place of rebuking the fear. And so in verse 16, do not fear. For those who are with us are more than those who are with them. And Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see. See, the servant was so overwhelmed by the urgency of the situation. Oh my gosh, there's an army right here. They're gonna kill us. We have no time to think. And so it robbed him of having perspective. And so Elisha said, no, stop. We're gonna dial back the fear. And then I'm gonna speak a statement of faith there's more with us than against us. But he doesn't leave it just there. He actually lifts up his voice and he prays and it says the eyes of the servant were opened. This is a beautiful picture, a story of what happens to us in circumstances of difficulty and in pressure. We don't choose fear. We choose to pray in faith. But then there's a moment, we don't just get to open our own eyes where God opens up our eyes and we see things in a different perspective. Let's see what happens here. Verse 17, Elisha prays, Lord, I pray, open his eyes that you may see. Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, strike this people with blindness. And he struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha. Elisha prays, the servant's eyes are opened. He now sees that there was only part of the story. Part of the story was there's an army surrounding you, but there's another picture. You guys have heard there's two sides to every story. Well, there's two armies in every circumstance. And if we only fixate on the one and the natural, we will never access eyes to see through prayer to see what's happening in the spirit. And so when the servant looks with eyes that are open, he sees that there's an army. And I love that God is not into a fair fight. He doesn't win in overtime on a field goal with five seconds left. God is really into routes. The enemy's like, I have an army and God's like, I have a bigger army. And the enemy's like, well, I have horses and chariots. And God's like, I have horses and chariots and mine are on fire. Like he just one ups the enemy at every step. But here's what I want to kind of draw your attention to this morning. Is at that moment when they're looking and they're seeing these chariots of fire, Elisha didn't step back and be like, all right, cool. Now I'm just going to let God do his thing. I think sometimes we begin to see what God's doing. And we assume like, oh, this is where we kind of take a step back and just kind of watch. But if you read the story, you notice that the army of fiery chariots, they don't actually do anything in the story. They aren't the one who actually delivers Elisha. Elisha actually has to lift up his own voice and speak out the prayer and faith. And that is what released the breakthrough. And God all throughout scriptures waits to bring the breakthrough until he can do it in partnership with man. The Red Sea didn't split till Moses struck the staff in the ground. The Jordan didn't split open till they put their feet in it. The walls of Jericho didn't tumble down until they shouted. The man with the withered hand wasn't healed until he stretched it out. The woman with the issue of blood wasn't healed until she grabbed the hem, the garment. Why? God's powerful enough to do it, sure. But he wants his kingdom to come in partnership with man. You can't do God's part, because you're not powerful or smart enough. And God won't do your part because he wants you to access it in a spirit of faith. And how do we do that? We do that through prayer, and we do that through peering through eyes of faith. And I want to kind of talk about those two realities of prayer and faith, because they're different, but they're really connected. I like to think of them like, it's like Siamese twins that are born that are connected at the brain, that you could probably disconnect the two, but one would probably die without the other. And if we pray without faith, or we have faith without prayer, we end up seeing that both of those die. And so I want to kind of first point to your attention to prayer without faith. Prayer without faith. And Israel is this really, really helpful example of this, because prayer without faith takes you nowhere. And Israel had prayed for 400 years for a deliverer. God save us, God save us, God save us. And God delivered them and brought them out into the wilderness. And even though they were freed, they still related to God the same way. They still spoke the language of captivity and slavery called complaining. And when God delivered Egypt, he didn't say, I'm coming to set you free to make you comfortable. I'm coming to set you free so you can do whatever you want. No, he said, I'm coming to deliver you so that my people can worship me in freedom. And so God brings them to a place, the wilderness, and he starts to reveal himself. And what does Israel do? They reject him. They say, no, no, thanks. This is weird. You're weird. That mountain's on fire. It's shaking. There's lightning. We don't know what's going on. We don't like this. We'd actually rather worship our Egyptian gods. What they were saying is, actually, we're more comfortable praying to a false God and staying in bondage than walking in freedom and faith. And that's why they couldn't enter the Promised Land. It wasn't God being like, well, yeah, so if you're going to be a jerk to me, I'm going to be a jerk to you and you can't go into the Promised Land. No, if God had let Israel walk into the Promised Land, their lack of faith would have killed them. They would have been destroyed. The people of Jericho would have wiped them out. What God did, in his kindness, he left them in the wilderness in the place of prayer without faith where they would wander around but they would eventually learn his heart. And what Israel learned and how they stepped into faith in the Promised Land was what we need to learn as well. See, faith is not about being convinced that you really want what you're asking for. And that's how I used to view faith. I used to view faith like, if I want it and I really ask for it and I try really hard, then I can have it. Here's the problem with that view of faith. It puts all the focus on yourself. And that's really where this false doctrine of faith that tries to make people feel condemned and saying, this person, this bad thing happened because you didn't have faith or this person didn't recover from sickness because you didn't have faith. It's this faith that is all about you and being convinced of something. I want to propose this morning that faith is not about you being convinced that you really want what you're asking for. Faith is about being convinced about the character and the nature of the person you're asking. You are not talking to a gumball machine in the sky and if you do the right combination of faith, it releases something. You are talking with a real person whose goal is to give you his heart, his compassion and his emotions and you can't inherit the Promised Land. You can't step into what God has for you if you are not convinced of who he is and that he is good. Prayer without faith takes you nowhere. You keep wandering in the wilderness. It's a self-coping mechanism that makes you feel better about yourself and there's no power in it because it denies the transformational power of the knowledge of who God is. And so we don't want prayer without faith because it doesn't take us anywhere and the other side of the coin is faith without prayer and prayer without faith doesn't lead us anywhere but faith without prayer takes us in the wrong direction and I've heard people say this a lot especially in the last few years. They'll say something like we don't need to pray for revival. We need to stop praying for revival and just be revival. And here's the problem with that. There's nowhere in scripture that talks about stop to stop praying. Scripture continually says to pray without ceasing and I understand it. It's this reaction to the prayer without faith. It's a reaction to Christians who use prayer as an excuse to not step into breakthrough and to not step into their calling but they go too far and they eliminate prayer and that is incredibly dangerous because again it shifts the focus from God to us and what happens is without prayer the Holy Spirit and revival, it becomes an impersonable force that we like are supposed to just blast people with. I've heard we don't need to pray about evangelizing. We just need to talk to every single person we've ever met and just blast them with as much as God as we can and it sounds nice and it almost sounds biblical but here's the problem. That did not look anything like Jesus' ministry on the earth. Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing. The only reason why Jesus healed somebody is because he saw the Father healing him. The only reason he spoke to a person in real time in that moment is because his Father led him to that place and moved his heart to minister and when the Holy Spirit becomes an impersonable force and faith becomes the goal, all the onus is on us and we get into delusion and we miss the entire point where God doesn't give us the gift of faith just so we can be this incredible minister for him on the Gospel. He gives us faith to draw us closer to his heart. Again, prayer is not, or faith is not about being convinced that you want or that you believe in or that you really want to do the thing you're doing. Faith is about being convinced about the character and nature of who you're asking and in Matthew 7, Jesus gives a stern warning about faith without prayer because here's the deal, is faith, and when you access it in the name of Jesus, there's power in that. And in Matthew 7, it says, there's people that come to him and says, Lord, Lord, I've healed the sick. I've raised the dead. I've done all of these signs and wonders and what does Jesus say? Depart from me, I never, what? Knew you. He said, you were working for me like you were some agent and I wanted to grow in partnership. I wanted you to grow in love. I didn't want you to blast people with an impersonal force. I wanted you to show the compassion of heaven. I don't want you to just be some, like, disconnected, like, you know, kingdom government worker who never talks to me. I want you to be the hands and feet of Jesus on the earth. I want you to carry the DNA of the Father. And so when you heal, it's not to just show power but to show that the Father's heart is compassionate and kind and merciful and we're supposed to bring the nature and the character of the person we're representing. And that only happens through relationship. And that's why we don't pray without faith because it's disconnected from who God is but we don't have faith without prayer because it's disconnected to talking to that person. And Jesus has this beautiful strategy of making sure that we, we walk with these two hand in hand and I want to have you turn your Bibles in Matthew 17 and look at this. What I love about this passage is, Jesus is teaching us how to access greater faith. And you know, when Jesus teaches us something, he doesn't do it by just giving us, like, little warm fuzzies on the inside. Like, when God is teaching you faith, he doesn't just teach you faith by having you feel good in a morning devotional time, although you might feel good in a morning devotional time and that's awesome. He teaches you faith by putting you in a possible situation. And so Matthew 17, starting in verse 14, and when they came to the multitude, a man came to him kneeling down to him and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son for he is an epileptic and he suffers severely for he often falls in the fire and into the water and I brought him to your disciples and they could not cure him. I love that they just have to, like, throw the disciples under the bus there. Jesus says, oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. And Jesus rebuked the demon and it came out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, why could we not cast it out? So Jesus said to them, because of your unbelief, for assuredly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. So the disciples come to him and they're confused. Why are they confused? Because we've just seen in the last few chapters, Jesus has anointed them. He's commissioned them. He said go and then he tells them to cast out demons and they go and they cast out demons. And so the disciples are in this place where they are just assuming, wow, Jesus commissioned me to do something. I'm good for the rest of my life. And sometimes that happens with us. We get a breakthrough or the Lord reveals something and we think, wow, he anointed me. Therefore I'm just good forever. And then when that happens, we start forgetting to be reliant on him. We forgot who the power is coming through and the only reason he gave that to us is to share it with it, not so we would grab it and do something on our own. And so Jesus says, the reason why you couldn't do it is because your unbelief. But if he had just left it at that, then they might've thought, well, next time we just gotta stir it up a little bit more. If we just believe a little bit harder and again, it's that form of faith that puts all the pressure on yourself. If it doesn't happen, there must be something wrong with me. It's a selfish form of faith. And Jesus says, no, no, no. The reason you couldn't cast an out was because of your unbelief. But the reason for your unbelief is because your lack of proximity to the Father. He says, this kind only goes out through prayer and fasting. Or he says, I purposefully put you in a situation where your breakthrough and your faith was not enough. But I didn't put you in an impossible circumstance so that you would give up. I put you in an impossible circumstance so you would lean into the God of the impossible and receive the faith that you need for the breakthrough. And I feel that for us this morning. If you are in an impossible situation, if you have been shouting and trying your best and your best efforts is not getting you past that place of breakthrough, don't give up. That is not a sign that there's not enough faith or that God doesn't want you to push through that barrier. I think that barrier might be your invitation into a greater level of faith through a greater intimacy that the Father is waiting. The Father is waiting for you in secret. And he's waiting for you to say, I've tried everything and it's not working. And he says, good, because I want you to be even more reliant on me. And he reveals his heart and through fasting and prayer and through relationship. We're reminded of who he is. We're stirred in our faith and who he is. And then we release that new faith into the earth through obedience and breakthrough happens and breakthrough comes. We want faith with prayer. I want to read just a couple of scriptures that kind of highlights the relationship of these together. The first is Matthew 21. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive it. James 1.5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously without approach and will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without doubting for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. James 5.14, is any one among you sick that he must call for the elders of the church and there to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in what? Faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. Do you see? It doesn't say to just pray, but it doesn't say to just exercise in faith. This theme of praying with faith. And so how do we access greater faith? Because this is the part where typically shame and condemnation comes in. And you're like, man, that's good for you, but you probably just have this easy access to faith. You're a minister and you've seen all these miracles. The reality is I doubt just as much as you. I have walked in just as much unbelief. I have walked through the seasons where I've questioned if God was even real and if he was even good. But I'm learning how to walk into the path of greater faith. And how do you walk through the doorway of faith? Well, you go through the gate. And Psalm 100 gives us the key. It says, enter his gate with thanksgiving and then into his court with praise. See, sometimes we just say, oh, it's just thanks and praise and courts and gates. It's the same thing. No, it's not the same thing. The gate is the thing before the court. Thankfulness is what comes before praise. See, and here's why that's so kind of the father to give you that key. See, if he said, enter through the gate of tears. Well, like, you know, nine out of 10 of us, you know, 100% of the time can't do that. If he said, enter through the gate of travail or great faith or enter through the gate of miracles. Well, guess what? When you're overwhelmed, you're not going to be able to walk through that gate. No, in his kindness, he puts a gate that you can enter at any point called thankfulness. I don't care how confused you are. I don't care how difficult the circumstance is. You always have access to thankfulness. So it doesn't matter how confused you are. You can stop at any moment wherever you are at and you can create and step into a new world just through the access point of thankfulness. It's like Dr. Strange. You know, I don't know if it's like a wristband or if it's his hand or whatever if you guys have seen that movie. But his superpower is he can just move his fingers and he opens up a portal into a different realm and he can go through it whenever he wants. That's what thankfulness is for you. When you're depressed, when you feel no faith, when you feel doubt, you can stop at any point and you can say, even if you think you don't have anything to be thankful for, you always have something. Thank you for the cross. Father, thank you for your love. God, thank you for my family. God, thank you for my job. Thank you for my house. Even though these bills are piling up, thank you for your faithfulness. And you walk through this door and even though before you felt surrounded and all of a sudden you realize, there's more for me than that are against me. God is more at work than I realize and our eyes are opened and our perspective shifts and changes. And sometimes we think, oh, I just need a new job. I need a new wife or husband. I need new kids. I need a new city. I need all these new things. No, you don't need a new wife or husband. You need a new perspective. You need to actually see the person that God gave you. And if you fixate on the things that are already there, the weaknesses, there's no power in that. Bible doesn't say call the things that are already there and call attention to it and then rub them in their face. There's no power in that. And I'm just not that impressed with complaining because there's no power in it. Thankfulness is the language of faith and complaining is the language of doubt. It's just calling attention and magnifying the problem. And studies actually show that you short-circuit your brain and wire your brain pathways. And so the more you complain, the more you are unable to see the solution right in front of you. That's a Harvard study. That's not like some Christian guy came up with that and put it on the internet. There's something hardwired in us. When we confess out of complaining, it drives us to the place of doubt. But when we speak thankfulness, it opens up a whole new world. We step into the courts of praise. And all of a sudden, instead of before, we're like, man, God, fix all these things about my wife. I don't like these things. I'll fix these things about my husband. Instead, we say, God, thank you for my husband. Thank you for my wife. Thank you that he's a hard worker. Thank you that he's a good father. And as we speak those things out, suddenly we start to see things we didn't see before. And that's where Hebrews 11 says, faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence, say evidence, evidence of things not seen. I love that so much. Evidence. You guys just watched Sherlock Holmes. A lot of pop culture references this morning. Sorry about that. Sherlock Holmes, I love any movie or show on Sherlock Holmes because why? Because he sees things that other people don't see. He looks with different eyes and he looks for evidence of things that are there. You notice it doesn't say call things that are never going to be there or just speak into fairyland and call that thing into existence. No, call the thing that is not as though it were, but it says there's evidence of things that are unseen. So you're like a detective and you're looking for evidence of what God is doing. And when you see it, you agree with it, you pray it and you release it. And so suddenly you look at your husband and your wife and it's not God fix these things. I thank you, they're a great husband and father. And then God, would you strengthen their relationship with their kids? God, would you give him more insight? And you pray these things and you call the thing that is not as though it were. There's no power in complaining. And thankfulness and faith, they work together. I think of it like a car. In a car, you have a battery and you have the combustion process which creates your car moving forward. And so you have fuel, the combustion process and you have the battery. The battery is instant energy, right? The second you turn it, there's energy but it's not powerful enough to take you there. And that's like, the Bible doesn't talk about thankfulness raising the dead but what thankfulness does is you turn the key of the automatic gate of thankfulness and all of a sudden it starts the process of faith where the pistons start firing together it creates the explosion and faith is released. But we have to start in the place of thankfulness. Thankfulness releases faith and faith releases breakthrough. But we have to walk through the gate that's in front of us. We have to start in that place and I want to speak to you before I close because as I talk about faith, it's been so abused. After the first service, I had someone come up to me and said, I prayed and I believed that my brother wouldn't get healed and when you preached, all I could hear was it's my fault. And something happens when we hear a testimony of faith where the enemy tries to take our attention off of God and on ourselves. And that's why it's so important to walk through the gate of thankfulness and step into praise because faith is not about you. It's not about you getting something. It's not about you being some super Christian. It's about you growing closer to the heart of your father and that causing confidence for you to release his kingdom on the earth. I want to end with a story this morning that's really dear to my heart. It's about a man named John Paul and his wife named Viola and they lived in New York and they were pastors about 100 years ago and they had a four-year-old daughter named June and June snuck out of the house one day and started playing outside without a coat and she caught double pneumonia and in that day, they didn't really have a great way of treating that. So when the doctor came and visited, they said her body temperature had dropped dangerously low to where her organs were now suffering and there was really nothing they could do for her. And then a couple of nights later when the nurse was there with them and John Paul and Viola were in the room, all of a sudden June exclaimed, oh my gosh, I see people in white in the room. And John Paul used that to stir his faith but Viola was devastated. She thought she's now seeing things and she's probably on death's doorstep. And then early in the morning, they heard the nurse yelling for them and they knew exactly what had happened and the nurse came in and said, I'm sorry, but June passed away in the night and she hasn't been breathing for quite some time now. And Viola was so crushed that she couldn't even walk in and see just feeling kind of the shame and condemnation and John Paul had just preached a service about Jesus' healing ministry and he asked a question, if God did it once, could he do it again? And he grabbed his wife by the hand and said, we're going to come and we're going to pray. And his wife didn't want to come. She was so overcome by grief in that moment and they started to pray fervently, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Neighbors started to come to offer their condolences. They all knew what was happening but when they approached the house, all they could hear was the sound of fervent prayer and intercession, 30 minutes, 35 minutes, 40 minutes. The army has surrounded and the fight looks over but John Paul, he decides, even though it looks one way, he believes there's more for him than against him but he'd been given a promise that his daughter would be a missionary and a leader in the nations and he believed and at the 45 minute mark out of nowhere, June shoots up out of bed and just screams, where's my dog? Completely healed. The nurse screams, can't believe it. They're working on the death certificate as she comes back to life. And dozens of people in the village that saw her came to know Jesus. She's there because of the faith that was accessed by somebody who saw what the father's heart was doing. She planted an orphanage with her husband in Kenya and she got a prophetic word from a revival that happened in Michigan called the Bethesda Revival 70 years ago and it said she was going to be a leader in the nations. She went and planted an orphanage and thousands of orphans have been taking care of tens of thousands of people have known Jesus because one man decided to look with the eyes of faith into a circumstance and they had a daughter named Georgia. Moved to the United States, went to college and met a dorky little track star named Brent Culver. Brent Culver and Georgia had five kids and second born is Caleb Culver. It's the guy speaking out here today. The only reason that I'm here today even being able to preach this message is because my great grandfather 100 years ago decided to look with the eyes of the spirit in that moment and he heard and felt the heart of his father and he partnered with what God was already doing and released that on the earth and I have that in my DNA. I have that in my bones and guys coming into at the movies and this prophetic time I believe God is saying this is the hour to arise and shine and shine for the light has come. It's time to believe for the impossible. It's time to believe again for that son or that daughter that has been far away for so long. It's time to believe again for the prodigal. It's time to believe for the neighbor and you might say Caleb that's great your grandma got raised from the dead I don't even know how to deal with that but I don't have that type of faith but through the gates of thankfulness and praise can you access faith for one person? Can you access the heart of your father for your neighbor if nobody tells them about the gospel they could go to hell? Could you access the heart of your father for your son or your daughter or your cousin or your mother or whoever it is and you have all the reasons why we shouldn't invite them they won't come they'll think it's cheesy they've been to church it's not for them what if we look again with eyes of faith what if we look at a situation and say what if there's more for us than against us and what if we are part of a story that God isn't going to do it for us but we get to arise and shine and we can see and become radiant in partnership with his heart I want to invite you to stand let's hold out our hands just as a response Father here we are your church your radiant church God we don't want to do anything apart from you God we ask that you would give us your heart for this city God if we've looked at a thousand times and only seen the army surrounding us that will destroy us God would you open our eyes that we would look again that we would see horses and chariots of fire that we would see that you're moving and working God give us eyes to see that you're at work in our family God give us eyes to see that you're doing things in this city God give us eyes to see that if we partner with your heart that we will see the lost come home and then we can see a thousand souls be saved in this house in the next three weeks God we respond with faith because not our goodness but because you're revealing your heart and we say yes we walk through the door of thankfulness and say thank you for what you're doing thank you we get to be apart thank you and we step into the court of praise and we look with eyes of faith on our city God stir our faith and open our eyes in the name of Jesus and men