 Hey, this morning, I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me to First Kings, First Kings chapter 18. I believe in Bibles. Anybody believe in Bibles? I like paper Bibles. I'm old school. I like to write notes in it. I like to hold Bibles. I encourage people to bring Bibles to church. When the power grid goes out and we all go back to Amish, there will still be Bibles. And if all of your notes are in you version, you're going to have to start your discipleship process all over again. So hopefully you came to a pastor's conference. You have a Bible with you. First Kings chapter 18, title of what I want to share with you this morning is subversive surrender. Subversive surrender. And I'll unpack what I mean by that here in just a moment. But the context of First Kings chapter 18 is not unfamiliar to probably everybody in this room. It's Elijah, confronting Ahab, Jezebel, the prophets of Baal. The reason why I want to start there this morning is because one of my assignments in life, you know, different people have different assignments. But one of the assignments that God gave me as a young person was to call a generation to respond to the Lord, to be a prophetic voice, to call a generation back to total devotion to God. That was, as a teenager, that was the thing that God gave me as a 13-year-old young man, immature, still growing, still developing. But I had come out of a, you know, a dysfunctional background, broken home, really no sense of direction, a lot of insecurity. What's interesting is I told my church a couple of weeks ago, one of the most traumatic moments of my life was giving a speech in like sixth grade, fifth or sixth grade. My teacher's name was Ms. Kenneson. And she was our communications teacher. And I had to give a speech on the whale shark, like a 10-minute speech on the whale shark. And I was so shook up by having to get up in front of people and speak. So I was very artistic. So I created this really good image of a whale shark, 3D paper mache, the whole thing. And then I had written out the information. And Ms. Kenneson was a unique lady. She had long white hair. She lived with another woman. She smoked a pipe and she had a picture of Tom Selleck on her wall. And so this was my communications teacher. And I remember standing up in front of the class and giving my speech on the whale shark and getting my, you had to submit your manuscript. When I got my paper back and she evaluated my test or my speech, I got an F on my speech. And she said, Lee, she was kind of a gruff old lady. She goes, Lee, not everybody is cut out for communication. There are plenty other avenues for you to pursue. And I say that because the difference maker in my life was not, I was, you know, a young man that just felt like, hey, I'm good at gab. And so I'm going to do this for a living. The thing that changed my life was as a 12, 13 year old young boy hearing the Lord speak my name, call my life, put the pieces of my brokenness into context and give me an assignment for my life. So it changed my life. And so I say that to say that, you know, my assignment, what I am passionate about is calling the church to be who we're called to be as a prophetic voice in the hour in which we live. And nothing speaks to me more in our day, in our time right now than the account of Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal and Asherah. We know this story. There's been a drought that was at the summons of Elijah as a judgment against Israel in their apostasy against the Lord. And so Elijah said, it's not going to rain. I'm saying rain stop, and it's not going to rain until I say it's going to rain. And what's interesting is Ahab was the king of Israel, and he had forsaken the covenant that Israel had with God, and he had married a woman named Jezebel, who was a Sedonian woman, an idolatry or a pagan. He had violated God's command. He had married her, and she became the dominant voice. She became both probably relational, but also, more importantly, the spiritual dominant force. Ahab was very passive. Jezebel is very passionate. Not all passion is equal. Not all passionate is righteous. She was passionate, but a passionate about the wrong cause. And what happened was that leadership led Israel into a time of indecision and syncretism, where they continued to worship Yahweh, which was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they also worshiped the Baals. Jezebel's name actually is rooted in her deity that she worshiped, which was Baal. And Israel is in this time of apostasy and syncretism, where they're kind of worshiping Yahweh. They worship the Baal. They kind of worship all kinds of things, and they're not wholehearted, devoted. They're not following the command that God has that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind and strength. And there's this showdown that takes place on Mount Carmel between Elijah, the prophet of God, and the 400 prophets of Baal, and the 450 prophets of Asherah. How many know? Elijah was outnumbered, but he's the one who called the fight. He's the one who called the contest. He appears to have one day. He says, I want to gather all of Israel together at Mount Carmel, and we're going to see whose God is God. And I love what Elijah says to the people, as all of Israel's gathered together for the showdown. I mean, there hasn't been a showdown like this since Rocky took on Drago in like Rocky IV. And I mean, it's that kind of a thing. It's like this massive battle that's taking place, and so everybody comes for. All of Israel comes. And Elijah stands up in front of all the people of Israel, and he makes the statement. He says, how long will you go limping between two opinions? He says, if the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. And we'll pick up in verse number 30 of 18. It says, then Elijah said to the people, so everybody's gathered together. He says, we're going to offer sacrifices. The prophets of Baal, you guys go first. Bring us two bowls to sacrifice. Everybody's gathered there. And he says, you guys go first. And the God who answers by fire, he's God. And so the prophets of Baal, they do their thing. They put their offering on the altar. They pray. They cry out. They cut themselves. They gash themselves. They're bleeding out. Elijah mocked them a little bit. We'll get to that in a moment. But then it comes Elijah's turn. And then Elijah said to all the people in verse 30, come near to me. You know, all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. And Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes of the Son of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came saying, Israel shall be your name. And with these stones, he built an altar to the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar as great so that it could contain two says of seed. And he put the wood in order. He cut the bowl in the pieces. He laid it on the wood. And he said, fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood. And he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And then he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time. And the water ran around the altar, filled the trenches with water. And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and he said, oh Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and that I have done all of these things at your word. Answer me, oh Lord, answer me that this people may know that you, oh Lord, are God and that you have turned their hearts back. It says, and then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust. And it licked up all the water that was in the trenches. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces. And they said, the Lord, he is God. Yahweh is God. The Lord, he is God. And Elijah said to them, seize the prophets of Baal, let not one of them escape. And they seized them. And Elijah brought them down to the brook of Kishon and he slaughtered them there. We're going to stop right there for this morning. So we've got this, this crazy setup. Israel is in a massive drought. Elijah is the prophet. Ahab calls him, you look earlier, he says, you're the troubler of Israel. You're the reason for all of our problems. You're the troubler of Israel. The reason why we're in a drought, the reason why we don't have any rain is because of you. Now what's interesting is that there were about, you know, 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah that are in the land of Israel. And yet there's still a drought. Israel is under the influence of a demonic spirit at this time. It's a spirit connected to the deity of Baal. You see, idols are so devastating and destructive because not because of the actual thing that's been formed, but because of the spirit that is attached to it and the deception that comes with it. And you know, we read about Baal in the Old Testament, but sometimes we may not know the specifics about Baal. Let me, let me just give you the rundown of who Baal was. Baal was a deity that was worshipped all across the Middle East. It actually began in Babylon. His name was Baal. It evolved into Baal and he became one of the dominant fertility gods of the Canaanite people, Sedonian people, Babylonian people. It's just kind of all over. Baal was a god of fertility. In fact, sometimes they referred to him as the god of the storm, thunderstorms. He was a god that controlled rain. He was the god that controlled fertility of your herds. He was the god who controlled the fertility of your grounds. So in modern terminology, here's what we would say. We would say that Baal represented sexual freedom, multiplication, family legacy, wealth, and weather patterns that determined the economy. So it was, Baal was everything. Baal was every part of everyday life because they were all agricultural. They were all farmers. And if you're going to plant seed, you need rain. So if you need rain, who do you pray to? The god of the thunderstorm. Come and bring rain. And if you are a farmer in your agricultural and you've got herds, what do you want? How do you gain increase? Well, when your herds multiply and their, you know, their offspring are good and there's a lot of them, that's when you begin to gain wealth. The ashura that you may be unfamiliar with, you know, we talk about ashura poles, they would always have an altar to Baal and then a pole to an ashura. Ashura was an accompanying deity, a female deity that was a sexual deity. And the reason why they brought Baal and ashura together was within their folklore. They believed that if Baal, the god of the storm, would have relations with ashura, it would release a spiritual blessing on the land. In fact, they had temple prostitutes that would act out all kinds of sexually immoral things in front of the altar and in front of the poles of Baal. This is what was taking place in Israel. This wasn't pagans. This was the children of God were living like this. They were called to be 100% devoted to Yahweh, to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had a covenant with God and yet they're over here worshiping the Baals. And as Elijah said, they were torn between these two opinions. Now, you and I might read that and think to ourselves, how in the world could they possibly confuse devotion to God, the God of the Bible, the father of Jesus? How could they confuse that and yet come over here and worship Baal, the God of rain? And by the way, somebody must have prayed because we're getting all kinds of rain here today. So how could they confuse that, this paganism, this sexual immorality, this blending of religions of Christianity with all kinds of weirdness? How could they read the God's Word where it says, you know, the thou shalt not and yet come over here and do it in the name of Baal? How could they still worship in the temple at the altar of the Lord or at the tabernacle and yet then also come over here and do all these immoral things? How in the world could God's people possibly do that? That just seems unfathomable that that could ever happen in church. We live in the 21st century. And what's interesting is the perspective. Now listen, here's the key. Here's why Israel lived like this. There's an answer to it. Israel, like many of the other Middle Eastern Iron Age people, believed that there were multiple gods. Everybody kind of had a God and different, they believed their God was the greatest God, but they believed that other deities did other things. And here's what they believed about Yahweh. They believed that Yahweh was the God of deliverance out of Egypt. He was the God of the desert who would bring you through the Red Sea and feed you in the wilderness. They believed He was the God of miracles and power, but they believed that Baal was the God of everyday life. So let me put it to you in modern terms. They believed that Jesus was their personal Lord and Savior that forgives their sins and gets them out of the world. But on Monday through Saturday, they needed somebody who was more invested into helping them build wealth, experience pleasure, walk in blessing and favor. In other words, they had Jesus on Sundays for their soul and their spirit, but then practically every single day, they were living according to a worldly view of how blessing, favor, purpose, destiny, and pleasure was going to be played out. That's what syncretism does. We kind of take this and we take that. We treat Jesus like a salad bar. Has anybody ever gone to like a Ruby Tuesdays and they've got those incredible salad bars? I mean, some people have, we had a salad bar in our cafeteria in college, and it was terrible. It was like lettuce that was 14 years old that they spray painted green, a couple of shredded carrots, some old Wonder Bread croutons, and you know, Thousand Island dressing. Ruby Tuesdays is like an assembly line. You go there, it's got the cold plates, 14 kinds of lettuce, a little cherry tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, seeds, bacon. Come on, bacon. Bacon. 90 kinds of dressing. So you just kind of go through there and you fill up, right? And their plates are huge. And you go through and you put, you know, the lettuce on there, shredded carrots or tomato. Nobody puts mushrooms on anything that's saved. And you kind of pick what you want and you go through it. When you come out, you've got your custom salad. That's what we do in America with Jesus. Everybody starts at the salad bar of religion and we, well, we need some God. God's the lettuce. But then we take this and we say, well, I like this part of Jesus. I like the part where it says, I'll never leave you no forsake you. Oh, I'm going to put that on there. I'm going to take some Philippians in there where it says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I like that no weapon formed against you. So I'll put a little seeds on there. You get to the bacon. I'm not sure what the bacon is. It's probably no ISE, no ears heard, the things that God has prepared for those who love him. So you put a little bacon on there. But then you get over here to the cucumbers and go, yeah, I don't really like that cucumber part. And I'm not really, I'm not really big into blue cheese, nasty. Gorgonzola. It's like moldy cheese. Why in the world would I put that on? And this is what we do with Jesus. It's like, I like this part of God. I like this verse out of the Bible. I don't like this verse out of the Bible. I like how the world views this. I like how chicken soup for the soul says this. So, and what we end up with at the end is a secretized version of God and of Jesus that looks a whole lot more like a projection of ourselves than it looks like a revelation of him. And it's exactly what Israel did in the time of Elijah. That's why Elijah calls them together and he says to them, how long are you going to go about limping between two decisions, between two ways of thinking, two paradigms? What's interesting is that there was a drought. The reason why Elijah called a drought is because of the nature of who Baal was. Baal was the God who controlled the rain. And at Elijah says, well, guess what? No more rain. I'm going to show you that God is stronger than the demonic powers of Baal. And it frustrated. How many know? It frustrates demons when God does miracles. And it frustrated the people of Israel. So, Elijah calls them together and then there's the showdown. There's a showdown and I love what he says, the God who answers by fire, he is God. And we see a revival that takes place in Israel. They go from the consensus being against Elijah in favor of Baal and the prophets of Baal, to then the whole gathering of people saying, yes, Yahweh is God. Jesus is God. Yes, we're on that side. And then there is a reversal that takes place. But before that could happen, Elijah had to confront the spirit, the prophets of Baal because, listen, there are always going to be prophetic voices that rise up to shape and to shift culture. They're not always godly prophetic voices. You see, God will always raise up a prophet or a prophetic voice or a prophetic people that will call the church back to first love devotion to Jesus. But there are prophets in our culture that are selling the spirit of Baal. And I believe with all of my heart that what we are seeing in America in the last 20 years has, there's a lot of cultural reasons for it, but I think that what we are seeing is Baal by another name. A spirit of Baal has been unleashed on American culture. I mean, think about the cutting and the mutilating of the body. All of these types of things that are going, the sexual promiscuity, the idolatry, a lot of what Baal promised we would call the American dream. You want to get people upset in your church? Just tell them the American dream does not equal the gospel of Jesus Christ. Tell them that and find out who starts gashing themselves. Don't be surprised, some lady stands up and back, ah, ah, ah, ah. The prophet of Baal shows up. People would get angry or they might just, you know, block you on Twitter or something like that. But I really do believe that there has been a demonic spirit, and Paul writes about it in, in Timothy, he says that in the last days, people will give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. Do you know the doctrines of demons? The devil never shows up. Has anybody ever realized the devil never shows up, knocks on the door and says, hello, my name is Lewis Siffer, and I am here to destroy your life. Can I come in? Now he comes in camouflaged. And when it comes doctrinally, what we're seeing across the body of Christ in large segments of churches and things that at one time were well meaning love Jesus, is you're starting to see doctrines of demons and things that are more shifted towards a spirit of Baal that's been unleashed. And false doctrine, that's actually doctrines of demons, but it's syncretized with the Bible in Christianity. And as leaders in a church, we need to be aware of it. And the way that we recognize it and the way that we approach it has everything to do with whether there comes a time when God pours out rain of renewal and revival once again. You see the battle, the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal was over this. Who will control the rain? Who will control the rain? It's what it was about. And I want to propose to you this morning that God has raised you up, God has raised your church up, God has raised the volunteers, the moms and the dads, the young adults in the college campuses, the usher, the greeter, the nursery worker up in your church. He's raising up a prophetic people who will not cave into syncretism but actually be a prophetic people corporately that affects and determines the spiritual environment and atmosphere of a generation. The church of Jesus Christ is supposed to stand as Elijah in the midst of our generation and say, choose between Baal or choose between Jesus and to stand in the authority of heaven and by our prayers and by the way that we live our lives counter culturally and subversively, we control the rain. We control the rain. I believe the church of Jesus Christ, there is a promise in the heavens that God will move among a generation if God's people will choose to live their lives from a prophetic perspective. I believe that with all of my heart. So what I want to share in the next few minutes is I want to talk to you about some things that need to be surrendered. These are some things that I find in Elijah the way that he confronts these prophets of Baal that I think are applicable for you and I, especially church leaders. Because listen to me, I know that I just know that there's all kinds of pressures. There's pressures within the church. There's pressures from the outside of the church to change, to conform, to be something that you're not, to offer things that God hasn't spoken to you, to preach on things, to avoid certain things. And what it takes is it takes courage. What we really need is we need a Holy Spirit courage to be subversively surrendered. Subversive means to resist. Subversive means to undercut. But a lot of times when we talk about subversive, we use it in an aggressive form, that we have to be aggressively subversive. I want to propose to you that in the kingdom of God, in the hour that we live, the greatest way that we can live counter-culturally subversive lives is actually by surrendering some things. Surrendering some things that we've taken on board that maybe we need to rethink. So let me just give you this morning five things that I think we need to surrender. Number one is we have to surrender satisfaction with crowds without conviction. We have to surrender, and this is for pastors, including the guy up on the platform. We need to surrender satisfaction with drawing crowds without conviction. What do you mean by that? Well listen, the American church is proficient at drawing crowds. We can draw crowds. We can draw crowd for all kinds of stuff. And a lot of unfortunately the dashboard of success that we have used in the American church for whether we're successful as a church, one of the main dials is the attendance. We're just getting real this morning, is that alright? It's like, hey if we had a big Sunday or we had a big weekend, it's like success. Maybe, maybe, I think that it's important for us to know that we should be growing. It's important for us that we need to reach people in our community. There's hundreds of thousands of people represented in this room. We need to reach them. One of the greatest ways that we reach them is come and see. So they come, somebody invites them, they hear about it, they're spiritually hungry, and they come to church. And when God is alive and when God is on the move in a church, there will be crowds. I'm not saying we should contend for small churches. That's counter intuitive. But what I'm saying is, if at the end of the day the crowd, the size of the crowd dictates to us the level of our success, but yet when we gather the crowd, there's no spirit of conviction that's moving in the lives of people, and we go home satisfied, but people go home unchanged. We've got to surrender that. We've got to surrender that. Sometimes what happens is we'll do things and we'll undercut certain things in order to get the crowd. We can get the crowd. You know, Jesus was great at drawing crowds. Jesus was great at getting rid of crowds. Jesus did not, I mean, there was never a moment where Jesus is walking, and he's like posting on his Instagram, hey, about ready to walk into Bethsaida if you're around. It's a little flash mob sermon. Meet me at the synagogue. Hashtag Messiah. I mean, Jesus didn't do that. Jesus was the worst self-promoter, but the works that he did spoke for themselves. And so he couldn't avoid crowds. Crowds, they chased him onto his vacation spots, wherever he went. And he's trying to teach the disciples, and they're frustrated because they want to have a staff meeting. They want to talk theology, and then sick people keep coming up and interrupting, and getting mad that Jesus is healing them, getting mad that Jesus is feeding them. Jesus is successful, right? I mean, he's got thousands and thousands of people. I've been where they say that Jesus preached sermon on the Mount. It's big, grassy open field, and thousands and 5,000 men, and probably 15,000 people with women and children. Everywhere he go, he's got people thronging him, crawling through crowds to touch the hem of his garment. It's amazing. He's got crowds. What did Jesus do with the crowds? If you don't eat my flesh, and you don't drink my blood, you have no part with me anymore. That's weird, Jesus. That's weird. Take it back. Say you don't mean it. Tell us we're great. Tell us we're awesome. Just tell us how much you love us. And Jesus says, no, eat my flesh, drink my blood. And then he turns to the closest disciples, and he says, are you going to go also? Where else are we going to go? You have the words of life. But I mean, Jesus, think about Jesus. Jesus was not insecure about crowds. And we as leaders, if we're going to be able to be prophetic voices in our generation, we've got to get rid of the insecurities. We've got to surrender that. Because like Elijah, Elijah gathers everybody together. And what does he do? He calls them. There is a spirit of conviction. Choose, decide. You've got to make a decision. And listen, when we gather crowds, we have to remember the number one responsibility that we have as pastors and leaders, whether you're a youth pastor, whether you're a senior pastor, whether you're small group leaders, is we're not called to gather crowds in order to make us feel significant. We're called to draw crowds in order to make disciples. We're called to make disciples. You know, in the Old Testament, there's three kinds of leaders. There's the Joshua type of leader who can get you into the promised land. There's the Moses type of leadership that can get you out of Egypt but can't get you into the promised land. And then there's the Aaron kind of leadership that gives the people what they want. The people came to Aaron in the absence of a Moses into Joshua, and they said, hey, build us a God, build us a calf. And he says, what's his response? It should have been, no, you know better. But he said, all right, give me your jewelry. And he begins to make them a God. And then when Moses comes and looks at his brother and he's like, what in the world were you thinking? He's like, well, they gave me older jewelry, I threw it in a thing and a cow popped out. We got to make sure that if we're going to be leaders that are making disciples that we're not operating in a spirit of Aaron. Or we're just giving people what they want because we're insecure and we somehow need them to feel significant. What do you do when people leave your church because you teach on something that they don't like? It's not something they chose out of the salad bar. What do you do when that happens? Pastor, I love everything about you, but when you teach on that, you know, that really, that really irritates me. That, you know, that bothers me because that's my issue. Listen, we're not teaching the Bible because we hate people. We teach the Word of God because we love people. And we believe in the transforming power of the Gospel. But listen, Arthur Wallace, a great revivalist out of England, said, it's impossible for you to offer a pardon to someone for a crime they've never known they've committed. So we can't offer grace and salvation to people until there's a conviction that takes place, the work of the Holy Spirit that prepares their hearts. If every time we draw a crowd where it's like, whoa, we're doing really good, I'm going to delay teaching on that or I'm not going to go there, I'm going to skip over that. We end up with a Jeffersonian Bible that we've cut out all the things that ultimately may lead to a conviction in transformation in people's lives. We've got to surrender that. Again, Arthur Wallace, I love this statement. It's, it's one I've thought on for many years. He says this. He said, we will either become profits to our culture or ultimately we will become products of our culture. Which one do we want to be? Do we want to be profits to our culture? Or do we want to become products of our culture? For a large section, a large segment of leaders in the body of Christ, they're content with just being products of the culture shaped by culture instead of shapers of culture. Number two, we need to surrender relevance without presence. We need to surrender relevance without presence. What did Elijah do? After they, you know, the prophets of Baal, they say, okay we're gonna go first. They got their bowl and they put it on the altar and they began to dance around. The Bible says they raved. There's a bunch of molly being passed out. They've got the, you know, electric music going, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. Prophets of Baal, Asherah, I mean, think about it, 800 of them. It's a rave and they're dancing around. Nothing's happening. What's Elijah doing? He's like, you need to sing a little louder. Maybe he's busy. Maybe he's in the bathroom. I mean, come on. I love that that's in the Bible. Elijah's my kind of guy. Maybe he's in the Bible and the fan, he's in the, in the Bible. He maybe he's in the bathroom and the fan's going and he can't hear you. Scream a little louder, shriek a little louder so these guys are, ah, and they're cutting themselves and there's blood everywhere. Just imagine the scene and Elijah's just standing back knowing nothing's going to happen. He's confident in, he's confident in his God and when they're all done and they're exhausted and it's going on all day and God, their God has not responded, Baal can't break. Baal cannot break the prophetic declaration over the land. Elijah steps to the forefront and the first thing he does is he rebuilds the altar of the Lord. He rebuilds the altar of the Lord and it gives us very specific details of how he did it. He took the 12 stones that represent the 12 tribes of Israel and he begins to assemble them and then it quotes right there, it says, recalling back to what God said. It says, you shall be called Israel. Israel means one who reigns with God or one who has prevailed with God. What is Elijah doing? Let me tell you what Elijah's doing. Elijah begins to take stones and in the audience of all the Jewish people he begins to rebuild their identity. Remember who you are. Remember you are no longer Jacob who's a deceiver and a supplanner and a Caesar of opportunities. You are Israel. You prevailed with God. You're a victor. You have a prophetic destiny. You have an identity. Remember the promises of God that were made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Elijah prophetically begins to rebuild the altar of the Lord and upon the promises of God the presence of God in fire will appear. He begins to reorganize the wood on top of the altar. What was he doing? He was choosing the presence of God over the relevance in the eyes of the people. Now I used to, we, I think we probably all used to use this probably 10 years ago or more. Everybody wanted to be culturally relevant and I think that there's nothing wrong with relevance meaning that we want to be understandable in the context that we're at. We want people, you know, there was a big period of time in the church where the church was unaware and unprepared for people that were not Christians to come into our midst. If they did it was just kind of an anomaly and we just kind of did what we did and we used our Christianese language. How many know what I'm talking about? It's like well hello you know a first time guest comes in and it's like well hello brother how long have you been saved? Save? What do you mean by that? Well I mean washed in the blood. Okay that's weird. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Praise the Lord. And and we had our own language. I mean in Christianity we're a massive subculture. So we've got, you know, we've got Christian programs, we've got Christian music, we've got Christian television, we've got Christian schools, we've got Christian books, we've got Christian resorts, we've got Christian, you know, Christian t-shirts. You seen those? I mean like they look like beer t-shirts except it's just something like no high like the most high, some something like that or we've got Christian bumper stickers that say this car will be unmanned in case of rapture and we've got those. We even have Christian breath mints. They're called testaments. And if you think I'm kidding I have a whole bunch of them back in my office. Somebody gave me a whole bag of them as a verse on the breath mints. Do we really need that? So we've kind of created a subculture and out of that subculture some people awaken and say we need to make sure that we're speaking to our culture in a language that our culture can understand. But somewhere along the line we stepped over the line to where relevance meant. We surrendered our values. We surrendered what we do as the church to the lowest common denominator that the world can understand. And instead of using relevance I mean relevance is a fine word but I think we ought to be more contextual. And here's what we need to realize is when it comes down to do we choose between relevance which has evolved into a belief system that we need the world to tell us we're okay. We need the world to tell us oh you're good people. Oh you make sense. You're logical. Oh that's wonderful. Your apologetics answer all of my questions. And so you're so relevant. Here's what's happened in our pursuit of relevance we've become irrelevant. In our pursuit of relevance we become irrelevance and if we don't surrender that in favor of the presence of God rebuilding the altar of recognizing according to Exodus chapter 33 when Moses said if you do not go with us we don't want to go into the promised land. Moses was willing listen think about this. Moses was willing to forego the promises of God in the promised land if it meant he would have the presence of God in the wilderness. He said God if you don't go with us we're not going. And he says because of this it is your presence in our midst that distinguishes us from all the other people on the face of the earth. So a lot of times what we've done is we've taken the presence of God we've done it down we don't want we don't want worship to be over the top. We you know we pray that the Holy Spirit doesn't do anything weird. It's like we treat the Holy Spirit like crazy uncle that we keep in the closet and bring them out for special events and holidays because we're afraid if we invite our friends to one of my first dates I took Jane to church when Jane and I were dating and I took her and I was going to a small little assembly of God church and I said you want to go to church and she didn't come from any type of a Pentecostal charismatic background whatsoever. Good reform girl and I said you want to go church and she said yeah I want to go church with you so I took her church on the way to church my prayer was this oh God do not let anything weird happen at church today because I just know and we got we got to church it was a Sunday night we're sitting in the back and worship was good I still remember the songs that we we sang and the whole time I'm enjoying it and then all of a sudden a little Hispanic lady up in the front begins to speak in tongues I mean just going it was kind of how we did it there was a lull in the worship you guys remember this somebody to speak on in tongues and then you waited and then another guy on the other side another guy I remember who it was he he's standing over here he interprets and I my body temperature rose to like 400 Celsius I'm just like oh no I really like her it's over and then we went back into worship service was great I got in the car and I'm nervous and I said so what did you think of church she goes I loved it I go really she goes yeah the the worship I really felt the presence of the Lord and I said oh that's awesome and she goes and I love that they translate for the Spanish too I said oh yeah do it all the time see we all we all wrestle with this how many know though that the Holy Spirit's not weird he might work through some weird people sometimes but Holy Spirit's not weird we don't have to be ashamed of the presence of God it is God's presence in our midst is powerful intimate presence in our midst that actually marks us and distinguishes us in the middle of a world that already has Disney in the middle of the world that can make CGI animated films listen in our attempt to be relevance we're only going to look like cheap counterfeits we need to lean into the thing that we have that's from heaven that the rest of the world hungers for tries to imitate how many have noticed all the movies are supernatural you got witches zombies phantoms ghosts premonitions and aliens the world's not afraid of the supernatural so why are we building our churches and taking the supernatural out of it we need to give them the real thing need to give them the real thing when jesus steps on the scene vampires leave demons flee they tremble aliens go back to wherever they go i don't know where they live with Elvis someplace they go back to wherever they go the Holy Spirit comes when the presence of God comes and listen the Holy Spirit comes when we rebuild the altar when we remind the presence of God the church is reminded of who we are we are reminded of the promises that God has for us we are reconnected to our identity you know psalm 92 the book i just wrote called flourishes based on psalm 92 and it says in psalm 92 it says the righteous shall flourish in the course of their god when they're planted in the house of the lord do you know that everything that god created he created a corresponding environment that if that individual creation finds that environment it will reach its maximum potential so you take a bird the bird was created for the air you take a fish the fish was created for the water you take a fish out of the water and it doesn't thrive you throw the fish up in the air and expect it to fly it's gonna flop you take a bird out of the air and hold it under the water it's gonna drown where were christians where were human beings created to thrive in the garden which was what the presence of God we were created to be planted in the presence of God in relationship with God within the boundaries and the borders of God's word the word garden actually is a word that means a bordered environment that has been custom guarded and cultivated the house of God the the church of God is supposed to be a place for God's presence and when people walk into the presence of God something should trigger in their heart where they begin to flourish and come to life see God's an environmentalist environments matter we've got to surrender relevance for the sake of the presence let me move on and give you the rest number three we have to surrender business models for kingdom order church in this or in this hour we don't need CEOs what we need is shepherds we need we don't need the the best practices of corporate America listen i've read business books leadership books i've read them all but Elijah when he starts he goes back and he begins to put the wood on the altar in order and there's a kingdom order and what i'm saying by that is yes church has a business component of it but one of the biggest challenges that are facing churches in this hour is our governance it's the order of the hour we don't have apostolic presence in our churches we don't have the voice of the prophet in our churches we don't have an evangelistic spirit we we've bought into a world kind of model that is based on fear manipulation pain and insecurity instead of new testament model that says god appoints elders within the church that there's apostolic oversight and that there's prophetic encouragement and if we're going to be able to become new wineskins that hold the new wine of god then we've got to get things in order we've got to put the the wood on the altar in order so many of the moral failures so many of the economic failures that have taken place in churches large and small throughout the course of the last couple decades have had everything to do with just bad governance just not having proper order and you know what it's possible for you to have proper order on paper but not have it in your heart one of the greatest gifts that god has ever given to me over the course of you know 23 years sometimes people when they come to your church they'll say how in the world how in the world did you did you start from zero and build what you've built it has absolutely nothing to do with that i'm just a great leader and better than everybody else there are so many traps that i came to as a leader that if i did not have apostolic voices in my life like tom lane and jimmy evans and rick renner and lauren kovarubius i would have stepped into snares of the enemy and i would have been taken out i promise you it's not i'm just i'm not like some ninja that just swung through it like american ninja warrior and got through the crucible and nobody else did it's just i i knew that i was not smart enough and i needed people in my life we get in trouble when pride rises up inside of us as leaders and we think we can do it ourselves and the business model is and what i mean by the business model is in american business model we celebrate entrepreneurs do it yourself be self-made you've got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just go do that now we need kingdom order and we got to surrender our ego and we got to submit and become subversive in a generation that does not celebrate authority we need to be people that honor and welcome authority and influence into our life let me give you the next couple number four is we have to surrender the fear of man for the fear of god fear of man is a snare but it says in proverbs nine that the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one for by me your days will be multiplied and your years added to your life aw tozer said this no one knows the true grace of god who has not first known the fear of god we need to once again embrace the fear of god what do i mean by the fear of god i mean at the end of the day we live our lives as leaders knowing that we exist to serve him not others we serve others as an extension of serving him but we don't fear we don't live our lives afraid of what people are gonna say about us what they're gonna think about us what culture is gonna think about culture already thinks you're weird can i just encourage you i've had pastors say it's like you know we just really want to be culturally relevant we don't want to be too strange and too weird we want you know people to feel really comfortable can i just tell you something you believe that god became a jewish man was born in the middle east by a virgin that was announced by angels you believe that he died on the cross and actually rose from the dead 40 days later he ascended into heaven that god is a glorified jewish man with holes in his hands sitting on a throne and one day he's coming back with faithful and just tattooed on his thigh riding a white steed and gonna establish a kingdom and that you're going to reign and rule with him you've already gone off the deep end can i just let you off the hook we might as well believe it all lock stock and barrel might as well give up the fear of man go all in on this thing live your life in the pursuit of the fear of the lord knowing that one day you're going to stand before you're not going to stand before crowds of people judges you're not going to stand before the people in your community your followers on twitter the bullies on facebook or what you're not going to stand before any of them we're going to stand before one person and we're going to look into those eyes that blaze like fire the one who died for us on the cross who endured the shame was beaten spit upon crucified mocked who lived for an audience of one and you know what i want to hear on that day well done good and faithful servant i don't want to hear him say well okay i want to hear him say well done that's what it means to live in the fear of the lord let me give you the last one we've got to surrender self confidence for bold prayer first 42 says in elijah went up to the top of mount carmel and he bowed himself down on the earth and he put his face between his knees he said to his servant go and look and report back to me and he sent him seven times you see he had prepared the altar he had put the sacrifice on it god answered by fire god answered by fire god's waiting to reveal himself miraculously to this generation i believe that with all my heart but he's waiting for the altar to be prepared for us to get things in order to embrace the presence of god to walk in the fear of the lord he's waiting for the altar to be rebuilt for us to be reminded of our identity and to be reminded of the promises of god to make our decision of who we're going to serve then god will answer by fire but then we're called to be people of prayer because out of a revived church comes a praying church a praying church like elijah goes and he sits down and he puts his head between his knees and he begins to pray says servant go look into the skies and he comes back nothing go again nothing go again nothing how long are we going to do this till we see the clouds beginning to grow and he comes back and he says i see a cloud in the sky the size of a man's hand and Elijah says behold go i hear the sound of the abundance of rain you see who controls the rain rain represents revival renewal and refreshing upon a culture who does that a praying church that's become a revived church we got to be revived people of prayer bold prayer acts chapter four i love it it says when peter and those guys are brought before the the council and they have to give an account for what they're doing they tell them don't preach in the name of Jesus it says that they were stunned they were amazed at their boldness and they knew that they had been with Jesus if we're going to be a bold church we got to be with Jesus and in that same chapter those same bold disciples what do they do they prayer prays prayers like this and now lord look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal and signs and wonders performed in your name through your holy servant jesus and when they had prayed the place in which they were gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the holy spirit and continue to speak the word of god with all boldness a revived church is a praying church and we got to be a praying people you want to know who controls the rain god controls the rain god's ready to send the rain if we'll be people that will pray if we'll be people that will prepare the altar of god if we will surrender if we'll surrender the things that are weak we can seize the things of the kingdom i want you to stand up with me if you would every great revival doesn't matter where it was at korea argentina wales the west coast of the united states europe africa every great revival regardless of its distinctions and its themes has one major key that opened the heavens and brought the rain and it was prayer it was prayer in korea in the year 1901 there were less than a thousand christians in the whole nation of korea today in korea 25 percent of the population is born against spirit field five of the largest churches in the world are in the city limits of soul korea on friday nights they have all night prayer meetings people go to prayer meeting across denominational lines pray from 10 p.m to 6 a.m and then they go to work you ask them what's the key to revival prayer in nigeria right now there's a pastor who's building a million seat sanctuary it's not like sanctuary as you and i build because nigeria is a war between islam and christianity but he's building a facility that will see a million people on friday nights they'll have people walk five and six hours to come to prayer meetings in argentina for years and years and years they prayed for god to move they prayed for signs and wonders for a harvest they prayed for decades and then god answered with rain some of the great hymns that were written by charles westley john westley came out of prayer meetings where they got together the holy club and they would pray for god to move in a generation for god to move and awaken england send the fire today and god brought rain first great awakening prayer second great awakening prayer azusa street prayer ladder rain outpouring prayer jesus movement prayer and i'm not talking about weak prayer i'm not talking about just quiet devotional prayer i'm talking about profits rolling up your garments saying no to some things in the world gathering together in clusters and out of desperation and out of hunger and out of thirst calling on the god who answers by fire to move in our generation and if he did it once i believe he'll do it again if he did it before he'll do it again in our day god do those works again in our day i believe he wants to do it in your city i believe he wants to do it in your church i believe he wants to do it in your life and in your family see i don't believe that we're just supposed to hunker down and wait for jesus to come back i believe when jesus comes back he's gonna step into the middle of revival fire that has blazed across a continent i believe that the largest generation on the planet more people alive on the planet today than all of human history combined up until a decade ago all alive at one time god has positioned in corner of the enemy that in the last days he wants to pour out his spirit elevate a praying church and thrust in the sickle and see the greatest harvest the world has ever seen in one generation and be listen before we go any further instead of just talking about prayer i want us to lift up our hands towards heaven all across this place today and i want us to pray god help us to rebuild the altars in the midst of a generation that is torn between two opinions a generation that has learned syncretism a generation that has learned that jesus is an add-on accessory to your already good life lord in the midst of a generation that is confused about who jesus is let us be a church that is crystal clear and is solidly devoted and fervently praying let us be a prophetic landmark that when people come when people ask when people seek that there's fire in your house lord let there be fire on our altars let there be fire on our altars in our churches let there be fire on the altars once again god lord we don't we don't need led flames coming up we need the real thing god light a fire again stack the wood again when the world says oh it can't happen oh we poured water on it wants we poured water on it twice we poured water on it three times wet wood doesn't catch fire god send fire light it again in our day in our generation let them see you move in power and in might god send the fire today this is our prayer god fulfill it in our day we pray in jesus name amen amen