 This is parachuting into Solomon's world where he reflects about his dad David the greatest king Israel ever had and Solomon says it says while the whole assembly of Israel was standing there the king Solomon turned around and blessed them then he said praise be to the lord god of Israel who with his own hand has fulfilled what he promised with his own mouth to my father David for he said since the day I brought my people Israel out of Egypt I have not chosen a city or a tribe of Israel to build me a temple but I have chosen David to rule my people Israel my father David had it in his heart to build me a temple for the name of the Lord but the Lord said to my father David because it was in your heart not that phrase because it was in your heart to build me a temple you did well to have this in your heart nevertheless you are not the one to build it but your son will on the March the 3rd 1968 Martin Luther King a month before he was assassinated preached from this very passage at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Georgia where three generations of his family prior to him had worshiped there his granddad and dad had pasted there and he took this very passage you're reading from tonight and took this thought and the thought he took from it was that that God loves it when we have things in our hearts to do for him that we know we will never see finished this is why it was important to God to commend David because David had made finances available David had made arrangements as best he could for a project called the temple that he knew he would never lift a worship in but he lived as if he would he made as much provision for it as if he would benefit from it like anyone else and it was important for Solomon to record that God said David you had this in your heart and it was good high five you had this in your heart now what's the point of that having it in your heart if you want the one that's going to get the credit for building it because God loves it when every generation especially of the church this should be society but certainly the church when we when we have things in our hearts that we want to do for God that we know we will never see completed in our generation but we commit to it we sacrifice for it we work towards it anyway society humanity thrives when men plant trees under whose shade they know they will never sit but this is not common in society it is not common certainly in the church and I'm calling this message the cathedral in your heart the cathedral in your heart because I'm using the word cathedral as a metaphor because on average I discovered it took two to five hundred years to build a cathedral the ancient cathedrals of Europe took hundreds of years to build and therefore the people that worked on the cathedral on any given generation more than likely would not be the ones most of them would never be the ones to worship in that cathedral neither would their kids or the kids kids ever see it completed and yet every generation that worked on the cathedral worked on it as if a generation to come would enjoy what they never could and it didn't diminish their commitment it didn't weaken their work ethic it didn't compromise their financial attachment to it even though they knew they would not live to see it fulfilled and I know how hard it is as a pastor to keep people interested financially in a project that takes a year your pastor Phil got up here and said here we're gonna we're gonna start a building program I want us all to get involved financially it's gonna take 150 years hope you're all on board people are you kidding me and and this cathedral in our hearts is is is my way of saying we have to have something in our hearts that that we are living for that's beyond ourselves that's bigger than us that's beyond our generation and I say this because I have been a christian for 42 years when I got saved as a teenager I came from a non-church going background my family were not church goers and I got saved at school through the witness of a school teacher when I was 15 years of age and I remember going into a local Pentecostal church and being raised in Pentecostal charismatic churches and what I realized early on lots of things one of which was that we were we were what I would call an an end-time generation mentality we believe that Jesus would return in our lifetime this is what I was raised to believe and this is what preachers preached and we had songs with lyrics in them about that some would specialize and explain it not to us with charts on the wall and the charts would go around the wall and when the charts ran out we had to get bigger buildings to put more charts up and the charts would track the book of revelation and explain to us and and I was raised on this some of some of you were too some of you young people in here don't know what I'm talking about that's good that's okay I'll come to you in a moment but I'm I'm saying upstream I'm trying to flag up a cause and effect and I was raised on this final generation Jesus is coming in our lifetime culture theology mindset looking back it didn't produce anything good in us it was supposed to but it didn't because what it produced was an odd relationship with unsafe people we saw them as people to be evangelized only because we may be going to heaven tomorrow so we'll snatch you as it were to take with us so we kind of did evangelistic assaults on people who shoot about awards for surviving evangelism from us because there was this sense of immediacy there was this sense of Jesus is coming tonight or tomorrow so we didn't build relationships with people we didn't build friendships with un-churched people we had no involvement socially in our communities because why would we invest in social issues that would take decades maybe to make a dent on if we might not be here tomorrow was why we didn't do that so what it produced in us was a detachment and what it produced in us was an uncoupling from a sense of responsibility to make a difference in our world because we believe that Jesus would be coming any moment we had this temporary passing through immediate kind of lift for now mentality and we were detached from problems and we had no long-term thinking no long-term conversations no long-term investments we were aloof from the world I can even remember we didn't we didn't insure our stuff because to insure your stuff meant you had stuff worth insuring which meant you were over attached to the world and to insure your stuff meant that you had given too much of your wealth to material things which meant you were over attached to a world we may be leaving tomorrow so we didn't insure our stuff so none of us had nice stuff or if we had nice stuff we didn't wear it to church or drive it to church we left it at home so we blended in we didn't have pensions because to have a pension plan a retirement plan was was to not believe that Christ was coming in your lifetime so to have a financial plan for your later life was an act of unbelief I suppose and so what I look back at these things I don't remember people saying to me if you're in the cinema when Jesus comes then he might leave you there or if you are doing whatever and wear this list of stuff that was all the things we shouldn't be doing on Sunday or on the Sabbath or you know we shouldn't be watching TV or a soap opera or we shouldn't be buying ice cream on Sunday or going to the shops or we shouldn't be in the disco tech as it used to be called I know I remember growing up and so what it did was it bred this fear in us uh because we didn't want to be in the wrong place doing the wrong thing if Jesus came and as I look back what it produced in us was the worst thing ever it could have produced in the church it produced stationary Christianity it produced people that were parked up because of a theology that produced that in us whilst we shouted to the unchurched to get saved to repent to turn or burn or some of the versions of that brutal approach to people all of this sprang from our belief that there would be no next generation so the young people in our churches we didn't see that they were someone to leave a legacy to someone through whom we would continue what we'd started we didn't see them as that we didn't teach them and train them that way we said to them Jesus is coming and they like me from 15 grew up through my teenage years believing that Jesus would come anytime and as I look back this was so unhelpful to the early days of my Christianity now fast forward 30 fast forward 30 plus years I have tracked this sucker it's still in the church it still is here in a form and a fashion that troubles me a little bit it's how to wash in a brush up it has a more respectable exciting name than you know Jesus coming in our lifetime and I'm talking about this word revival or end time outpouring or end time move of God or whatever language we all hear further and about it I am concerned that this belief system still does not produce anything good in us because if we believe that in our lifetime there's going to come some great end time move of God it's almost like we can relax a little bit we don't need to be too generationally minded because anyway Jesus is going to come in our lifetime it's a it's a rehashed version of what I grew up with and it may sound more exciting and more thrilling to call it these names but I just wonder whether or not it's producing inertia in the church around the world to me it's like some people's expression of that some people's response to that theology is that it's like spending what you don't have because you're convinced you're going to win the lottery so we we live in a way that it doesn't matter that right now I'm not reaching anybody right now I'm not thinking generationally right now I'm not investing in our community right now we're not involved in social improvement in the infrastructure of our communities it doesn't matter because one day revival is going to come and what revival will do is square it all the way there's going to be an unprecedented move of God millions and millions of unchurched people are going to flood into our buildings our buildings are what were big enough I've heard it all before and we're going to have this tsunami there's a word that'll get you going this tsunami of a visitation of the Holy Spirit to which I say says who because at best the theology for this is thin at worst it's a fantasy and I wish I wish this theology was much more to hand and much more obvious and it wasn't obscure and it didn't take experts to dig it out like the charts on the wall used to be and the rest of we that were uninitiated in theological things would just receive it as that's what we're supposed to believe but I want you to track with me and especially all you young people and that's why I mentioned that live full die empty because because I think we have to come back to this reality that when people have said to me over the years what do you believe the greatest strategy is because our church has grown unusually for Europe and for England and so people are interested in that and ask questions like so why is your church what's the best strategy what's the best church growth idea you've ever had and I know they expect me to say three or four things that and they can go and franchise but the best church growth strategy that that the world that the church has ever seen is what I'm looking at now to you all the growth of this church is here whatever God's gonna do in this city in the next 20 years is not I repeat not in heaven it's already here in your hearts there's nothing that there's so so if we accept that premise that the the next move of God is already here it's inside you if we accept that then for that to happen it isn't so much that we need an outpouring of God as an outpouring of you if we believe this if we and this is difficult because the big R the big R is not revival the big R is maybe responsibility which is far less popular and harder to speak about I wonder if that big R now for us and for you young people should mean something else because what it did mean didn't help me and didn't help my generation in the room and we parked up for years praying for God to move and I believe it became like a Mexican standoff between God and the church like a like a chess game where the church is at one side of the board and God's at the other and the church is looking to God saying it's your move Lord move Lord move Lord move Lord and I think God's at his side of the board going not my move it's not my move what do you mean Lord it's not your move move Lord whoa whoa whoa it's not my move I think God might say to us if he bothers to explain that to us I moved 2000 years ago and I think it's said to us what did you do with that and I think he'd also say to us the way some of you pray to me the way some of you get all carried away and all fired up and shabbat abadu at me and I'm a shabbat abadu I just think we exaggerate the whole point of it and use it like a rabbit's foot lucky charm I think God would say to us the way you pray to me and shout at me and call them from the north southeastern west and nobody's coming but you call them anyway I think the way you shouted me God would God might say to the church what do you think I've got up here that's better than Jesus I think you might say to us do you think do you think I'm holding out on you do you think I've got a second son hiding behind the throne that I forgot to tell you about do you think that if you are hard Navy seal enough in your Christianity if you pray more and fast more than those other lazy beggars before you that you may be the ones that will wrestle from a reluctant God this end time thing that we call something that we don't know where we got those language from but we call it something as if God's gonna okay you were the ones that were more sincere than the rest so I'm gonna do it for you I think I think what what a lot of this striving and a lot of this stressful Christianity comes from is this belief system that we're gonna be the ones that will wrestle it from God but I gotta tell you something churches that for 25 years have been doing this and they're not growing and they're losing relevance and turning inward are getting offered to a new idea and the new idea is more along the lines of maybe God is looking to us more than we should be looking to him maybe God has gone to the church tag you're it and he went tag you're it the moment you got saved it went tag you're it then we stood there for 10 years oh move Lord Lord Lord use me Lord use me send me hello tag you're it what part of you're it aren't you getting well Lord use me by your spirit and we get all this stuff and God's like hello another five years went by while you are parked up and what I've realized and what you must realize is that throughout history whatever there has been what we would call a move of God the only way you know there was a move of God is because of a person's name was that a move of God in Nehemiah's time yes how do we know Nehemiah and if I were God honestly out of a better idea than using people because we are so flaky we are so unreliable why would God condescend and why would God limit Himself to a species as unreliable as us but He does because when Genesis 8 says that God found Noah are you kidding me why why would an omnipotent omniscient God need to find anyone just send an angel power God would send an angel just send a bunch of angels who do as they're told and get it done but God has confined Himself He has let's call it what it is He has shrunk Himself down He has constrained Himself He has limited Himself to the caliber of the people on any given watch of the church generationally that according to the quality of us according to how much we pour us out determines what happens in that season of church history not according to how much He pours out because God's the same generation and generation out but we are not it would help if our Bible had blank pages because it goes straight from Noah to Abraham that's not what happened there's hundreds of years between Noah and Abraham and it would help if you turn the page into testamental period 400 years it would help if you had blank pages and on each page you said God's not doing anything can't find anybody God's not doing anything can't find anybody God's not doing anything can't find anybody and on that would go for generations because seriously that's the deal that God only moves God only pours out as we call it there's only a spike in history that we historically call what a move of God central to it was somebody a group of people a person that like Nehemiah that when he hears about Jerusalem he's in tears others heard about Jerusalem that weren't in tears so he's in tears so something's happening inside him that is not common and that internal movement in him became an outpouring of Nehemiah's heart who risked his life to do what he did and it says Sambalitan Tobiah were resistant in enemies but it says there in in Nehemiah that they were disturbed not that the church were praying for God to move not that they were disturbed there's a revival coming it says they were disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the people history is only disturbed when someone comes to promote the welfare of the people not when it is our virtual reality desire or prayer you know over the years three plus decades in the same church and pastoring and helping people grow you all know this these moves of God around the earth you know Toronto Argentina Pensacola you know in my lifetime and there'll be others that will that will you know get on the radar of the church around the world but I used to get fed up when the church people said I mean have you been to the move of God and I'd say no are you going I don't think so um and it's not that I don't believe we can learn from what God's doing somewhere else here's what I kind of resented the implication is that the move of God is always where you're not what's up with that why do I always have to get on the plane and go to the move of God and I say to our church there is no such thing as the move of God anyway God's doing millions of things simultaneously in the earth most of which you'll never hear a thing about so there's no the move of God but I'm after I'm after the church understanding this and you guys and the young people here and I know you get this I know you understand this stuff because I know your leadership but it helps to under underline this at the start of 2016 so we don't get to July and we're saying move God and he's like I'm gonna miss your move that God would say to us that the clock's ticking and and you get in no younger and the move of God isn't on a plane somewhere around the world and if I said to you tonight is Joyce Meyer or Reinhard Banke or Joel Allstein or these known things in the world if I said to you are they a move of God you would say to me okay it's not a true question of course they're moves of God but what I'm after is to say to you is this is this in this room tonight is this church is this a move of God because this is what we got to get down to that the move of God isn't what happens two or three times in a lifetime and we go and visit it and we get blessed and we get touched and then we come back to to boring business as usual beige kind of move local church stuff I must say years ago at the Hillsong conference I remember saying years ago you know most Christians have two gods they have a conference God on a local church God and they think those gods don't know each other the the the conference God is like Father Christmas because the conference God treats me in a way that the local church God that's like a father doesn't treat me the conference God just zaps me in the prayer line and I get called out by a random preacher who doesn't know me from Adam who who says these things over me that I'm going to be the next Billy Graham and and then I fall in the prayer line and and then I go back to my local church and take that big blank check to my boring pastor and say I'm you know I went to this conference and this guy didn't know me had to be the Holy Spirit he called me out and said to me that was the next Billy Graham and what are you going to do about it pastor because I'm ready I'm stepping up make way that's the that's the Father Christmas you know the the visiting preacher that didn't know you from Adam has a one-night stand ain't gonna ain't gonna parent you ain't gonna raise you ain't gonna have anything anything to do with what he told you and then you go to the local church guy and say you know next Billy Graham you know thank you when you're ready and the local church pastor says well you know what one day you may be the next Billy Graham one day you may touch the world and millions of people come to Christ but right now you're an idiot and you're a you're a lovable one and we love you but right now it would be a great idea if you got a job and if you could maybe get on with people a bit more that would be good and if you can stop spending what you don't have if you can stop being non-team player and stop being moody you know let's work on that stuff in 2016 and maybe 2017 maybe 2017 we can get a bit near to Billy it's like my grandkids that asked their parents for a biscuit or cookie and they say no so they ask me not telling me that they'd asked their parents and I give them you know sweet things because I don't care they're not sleeping at my house sugar them up I think we treat the church and the conference God like that and what I'm after saying to you tonight is that this this is the greatest move of God the local church that the world will ever get close to because we hear long after that stuff's coming on and thank God for everything he does but we are a generational answer that local church is a generational initiative on behalf of God in to the earth and there's nothing to replace it and I'm looking at the greatest move of God the world will ever see I'm looking at you you should look in the mirror every morning and after you've said the joy of the Lord is my strength say I am a walking move of God I am there's no cavalry there's no plan B tag your it I've got to pull me out today it's an outpouring of me that we've got to have in 2016 I've got to get out my potential I've got to get my gift to my love and my grace and compassion I've got to empty me out I want to I want to be full today I'm glad I was in church but I've got to hit that ground running tomorrow morning and pour out something that I know and I've understood and I've learned I've got to live full and die empty because the world is waiting for a revelation of us for the outpouring of the church and I talk to leaders and pastors and listen to all kinds of stuff around the world and I get so tired of this it's okay for you you live in England it's okay for you in Australia and big churches are common and it's normal where you are and we live in this place and that place and the devil and the principalities and the powers and we have resistance and we have things in our you know we should just take to some churches and to some Christians come out of that demon and leave it alone because it's not so much a case of the church is possessed by the devil as the devil is possessed by the church I think the devil must go to God sometimes hey it was not me they did that all by themselves and I think devil must I think God must look at the devil and say yeah I know I wasn't here I'm gonna be blaming you they don't a great job they don't need you you are redundant in that church but the devil doesn't mind the publicity he likes to think he's responsible for all of that I should get Christians to come forward while we deliver them from the demon that they're possessing then the demon will be like can you get this Christian off my back this Christian will leave me alone let's get the band back up here gives people gives people hope we finish when you say that you know what all you under 30s in here you you are our future you are this communities or wherever you from future and I don't want us to be continuing this faulty belief system that I think I grow up with where we lead you to believe that really you can tread water you can mark time you can have a great church experience you can have a lovely time be blessed and filled and occasionally invite a friend to come to an event at Christmas it's not enough that we have to salt and light we have to involve and reach out and love and include and and get out what's in you and pour you out because you are an amazing piece of kit you are you were born all of you were born a flipping genius but birth is a last day of freedom you'll ever have it's the last day God had you to himself then he trusts you to parents or guardians and society and influential figures and voices in our lives and experiences that begin to dumb down that genius and begin to rearrange that potential and be tell you that it's not your turn yet and and ready yet and whilst we are believing that one day our time will come 10 years go by this is your time and your turn now tag you are it if you will run into 2016 if we will run into 2016 with that I'm it you know when Peter said this is that newsflush this is still that there's been no new this so there's no new that there's been no upgrade no improvement on it this is still that so let's stop looking for something new we want a new we want a new that oh my God says you you haven't even begun to put a dent on the first that this is it you're it and you that are saying to yourself tonight he doesn't mean me I don't think he means me I especially mean you I especially mean you we've got to pour you out this year you've got to get you poured out this year