 This morning, when I was preparing and praying about first session of the conference that kind of sets the stage, I had a lot of different things that I knew I could talk about, but I felt like the Lord really impressed upon me to share from my heart what I believe God is speaking to us and to the church and the hour in which we're living in. Over the last couple of years, probably a year and a half in a very intense way, the subject of revival and historic revivals has been just kind of been reawakened inside of me. I mean, over the years I've read a lot about revivals. Jeff Grinnell, who I just mentioned in my youth pastor, when we were high school students and we were leaders, we experienced a little bit of a move of God in Grand Rapids, Michigan. PJ, that's what we call him, would invite us over to his house as youth leaders and seniors in high school, and he would read to us stories of revivals and renewals that took place in church history. He would read to us from Jonathan Edwards, he would read to us from Charles Finney and different ones like that, and what it did was it stirred within us a belief that if God has done it before, God would do it again. And that was many years ago, I mean today actually I turned 48 years old, so you guys are all, this is my birthday party, so thank you for coming. So that was many years ago that I graduated from high school, but you know that stuck in me, and even 23 years ago when Jane and I moved from Grand Rapids, from a fantastic church that was kind of every 25-year-old's dream to be on staff at. You know, I had the corner office, it was a huge church, Hunter Voice Choir, a television ministry, all those kinds of things. When God spoke to our hearts to leave that, and at 25, I mean at 25, I always believed I would plant a church, but at 25 years old, I still, I had two small children, we were just getting started, we had been married about three years, I'd been a youth pastor, young adult pastor, I still had acne. I mean, when you're 25, I was like, I could still read fairy tales and braille on my forehead. I mean, I don't know that that actually qualifies you to plant a church, but what was deep on the inside of me was a conviction of what God wanted to do in our generation. And so we moved down here, and you know, a lot of us have been church planters, and we've gone through different processes of different organizations, and we plant churches left and right, and we have kind of a protocol that we help people understand. When I look back on how we planted 25, or 23 years ago, we did everything wrong. We did every single thing wrong that I would tell anybody to do when we planted a church, except one. And the one thing that we had was a strong conviction and a clear vision of what God wanted to do in the future, the type of church that God wanted us to build. And so we launched out into that, and God has been faithful. And the DNA of revival has been in us from the very beginning. And over the last 18 months, I would say or so, the Lord has brought me back to going and reading and studying revivals, Welsh revival, first grade awakening, second grade awakening, the Korean revival, the evangelical revival that took place in America in the 40s and the 50s, and the Jesus people revival, the Pentecostal outpouring, different things, different moves of God in different regions of the world, the Argentinian revival, and beginning to get saturated in those moves of God, not in order to elevate them to some place of over importance, but to build faith. And I really believe the infrastructure to see what God wants to do in the hour in which we live. And so several months ago when I was reading a whole bunch of different books on revival, one of the books I was reading was talking and had a chapter entitled New Wine. And I understand that we use that phrase a lot in church world, but the chapter caught my attention and the Holy Spirit began to speak to me through it. And so I've entitled the message I'm going to bring to you this morning to set the stage for the next couple days is entitled New Wine, Fresh Oil, and Old Fire. New Wine, Fresh Oil, and Old Fire. And I want to begin by reading Habakkuk chapter 3 beginning in verse number 2, just this one verse. But Habakkuk, the prophet, he says, oh Lord, I have heard the report of You and Your work. Lord, do I fear? In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. And in wrath, remember mercy. I want to read it to you again, but I want to read it to you from the new English translation or the net translation. It says, Lord, I've heard the news about You, and I am amazed at what You have done. Lord, do great things once again in our time. Make those things happen again in our own days. Even when you are angry, remember to be kind. I love that translation. It says, God, we've heard about the great things that You've done in the past. We've heard of the Billy Graham Crusades and the thousands that would pour to the front during the evangelical awakening in California and that swept all across the United States. But God, our prayer is we don't want just that to be something we read about in the history books as people that have taken voyage on a ship called Christianity that has sailed out to sea away from the shores of America. We want to be people that look at that and say, God, you did it before. Do it again. In our day, revive those works. Revive what you've done before. And when we begin to pray prayers like that, it begs the question, what is the future of Christianity? What's the future of Christianity in 21st century North American context? Well CNN ran an article a little while ago, you guys might recognize this, and it says, Christianity's future looks more like Lady Gaga than like Pence. If Christianity's future looks like Lady Gaga, then we need to all move to Canada or someplace else, because that is not the Christianity that I believe that God wants to revive in our days. And it's nothing against Lady Gaga, Jesus died for her, Jesus loves her. But the Christianity they're referring to in the article has everything to do with Christianity becoming more like the world, not the world becoming more like the kingdom of God. You see, the new Christianity that many of the prophets are calling for, say this, say that the new Christianity will be based on the fact that the Bible is old-fashioned and must be updated. The LGBT litmus test is the new replacement for the sinner's prayer, and our eschatology of the Lord's return has been replaced with environmental concerns. And all of those things, God loves the environment, God loves LGBT people, God loves scholarship and, you know, academia, none of those things are bad. But what has happened is we have taken Christianity, we've taken the faith, we've taken the blood of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, and we've morphed it into something that is palatable and acceptable as the church so that we don't lose our place at the table of public discourse. And in doing that, we have somehow lost our prophetic voice. See if we put on a poker face for the world, but we never reveal the hand that we're holding, which is what Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for the Jew first and then the Greek. If we hold our cards too close to our chest and never reveal the truth of it, then we might safely arrive in heaven, but we will see a generation lost in dam that never has had a clear understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And listen, it's not the world's responsibility to seek out the truth, it is the church's responsibility to live out the truth. And in order for us to do that, I believe that there's a need for us to pray this kind of prayer that says, God, revive us. Revive your works. I know that lots of people say, well, Christianity's best days behind us. You know, it's interesting because when you look around the world, you look sub-equator, you look to the east, you look in the Middle East, you see that Christianity's flourishing, Christianity's proliferating. More people are getting saved on planet earth today than at any other time in human history. More miracles are taking place around the world than at any other time in history. Craig Keener just put out a two-volume set called Miracles, and in that he documented, he says that there's about 200 miracles that have been documented on an annual basis globally around the world. God is moving in a powerful, powerful way, but what do we need? What do we need as a very sophisticated, very unique, very humanistic, secularized culture? How does the church respond to the mission field that is before us? The United States now, if you did not know this, the United States is the third or the fourth largest per capita mission field in the world. Depends on which information you read, we're the third or the fourth largest mission field on the planet right now, just because of the number of people that are non-s, that have left the church, that have left the faith, that have never, you know, never heard the truth, never heard the gospel. So we need to see ourselves missionally in the day and in the hour we live, and what we need drastically is before we step out into the world, we need God to revive his works within us. Let me give you a definition of revival, because revival means a lot of things to a lot of different people. So when I grew up, my grandfather, I've kind of told this story before, my grandparents, most important people in my life, they taught me to love Jesus, love the Bible, love the church, but they went to a classic Pentecostal church, and then for a period of time they went to a Pentecostal holiness church. And if you've never been to a Pentecostal holiness church, it's like Pentecost on steroids. I mean, it's like, it's ramping up. You don't have church in an hour and 15 minutes, that's worship. And my grandmother played the piano, my aunt Jeanette played the Hammond B3 organ, she had a beehive haircut, and when the Holy Ghost, not the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Ghost came into the room, her beehive haircut would begin to shake and shimmy in the overhead projector. That's when you knew God was in the room. And in that church, in that church, we would have revivals. Every year we'd have a revival. And what revival meant was we pitched a tent out in the back, put sawdust down on the ground, and invited an evangelist who came in and preached, but about 50 people showed up under the tent every night for about four nights, and you got prayed for, you got right with Jesus, and you were good for another year. That's some people's versions of revival. Some people's view of revival is it's about manifestations of the spirit, that there's going to be manifestations, signs, wonders, healings, shaking, different, crazy stuff that takes place in some things that are called revival. And some people say, well, that's revival when that happens. Or other people, more of an evangelical stripe, that revival is taking place when evangelism is energized and people are born again and saved. What is revival? So we can't contend and we can't pray for something that we don't know what it is. So let me give you a couple definitions here by a couple trustworthy sources. One is a man named Jonathan Edwards. It's probably the greatest theological mind that America has ever produced. He was one of the leading voices in the first Great Awakening in America on the East Coast, and Edwards' definition of revival is this. He said it's a special season of mercy during which God pours out his spirit, producing greater sanctification among Christians, and in the conversion of the lost. So that's one definition. Let me give you another one this morning from a man named Jay Edwin Orr, who is great writer, revivalist, historian, misciologist. He said that an evangelical awakening or revival is a movement of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the church of Christ and in its related community. So what we see is that revival starts in the hearts of God's people. See I believe that renewal is personal. God brings about personal renewal in an individual. Revival is what happens within a corporate church or in a body of believers in a specific location or region or family when God begins to renew enough people's hearts. How many know that prayer in the presence of God is radioactive and it contaminates you if you get too close to it? That leads to revival in the church, which ultimately spills over and produces awakening in society, awakening into communities. Awakening into cultures. This is what we have historically seen. So when we talk about revival, understand that we're not talking about what God's going to do out there. We're talking about what God wants to do in here. What He wants to begin in a group like this. What He wants to begin in your city. What He wants to begin in your state, in your nation. God wants to revive His works. But there are some things that God does only in partnership with God's people. You know when you read 2 Chronicles 7-14, if my people. We all know that verse, right? Do you know the biggest word in that whole verse is the word if? If my people. If my people. Yes, God's sovereign. God can do whatever He wants to do. One of the things that He wants to do is He wants partnership with His people. He wants to stir our hearts in such a way that we respond with hunger and thirst the way that Jesus has hunger and thirst to move in a generation. So when we talk about revival, that's the definition. Let me break down what I believe in order for us to get to the point of critical mass to see revival in the church. And I believe we're seeing it to some degree in pockets. God is moving all over our countries, all over Western Europe right now. He's moving all over the globe, but in particular it's not as if God has abandoned the church in North America. I'm beginning to believe that we are seeing the beginning of a movement and the beginning of the rumblings of a move of God that are shifting the tectonic plates of the spiritual persona of our country. I believe it's happening. And I'm not talking about politics this morning. I'm not talking about legislation this morning. I'm talking about the kingdom of God. God is stirring things, and I believe that God is raising up people that will ask Him for a revival. God renew your works, let them happen again in our days. And let me tell you why this is very personal to me. I experienced a move of God. I experienced God in a very powerful way as a young person. Twelve years old, God moved in my life, called me in a ministry, sovereignly I heard Him speak my name, and it enabled me to go throughout my teen years and not deviate off of the path of following Jesus. I have no idea where I would be if God had not moved in my life that way. Sometimes people ask me, it's like, how come God didn't save me like that? I don't know, but it's probably because I was weaker and more insecure and I needed something dramatic like that to shake, shape, and change my heart. But here's what I know. I'm a grandfather now. My daughter and son-in-law gave birth to our first grandson in February 1st. So little Owen Lee, my grandson with my namesake, Owen Lee is my grandson. And I don't want to someday be an old man telling stories about what Jesus did in my life in my childhood that are two generations removed from Him. I want my grandson to grow up knowing Jesus, loving God, and experiencing a move of God. We owe this generation an encounter with the living God. We don't owe them better theology. We don't owe them better technology. We don't owe them better college education. What we owe them, what we are indebted to a generation for is to bring them to the point where they personally encounter the living God themselves. We owe them this. So what's that going to take? It's going to take new wine, fresh oil, old fire. So let me share with you these three things this morning. Number one, new wine. A new day requires new wine. It requires a new, fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It's interesting on the day of Pentecost that when the church in its infancy was gathered in an upper room or some believe on the southern steps of the temple, it doesn't matter. They're gathered together in response to Jesus' command that before you go out in pursuit of the great commission, you know, Acts 1-8, he says, stay in Jerusalem until you receive the promise from the Father, which you've heard from me when I said that not many days from now, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And then you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world. And so in response to that command, you know, the disciples, they gather together. They had Mary, the mother of Jesus, and several others. There's 120 that are kind of gathered and they're praying, and it's a 10-day prayer meeting. So many know that it's hard to get people to come to a 10-minute prayer meeting sometimes, but a 10-day prayer meeting. And here, by the way, here's what's curious. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that at one point before Jesus ascended, he appeared to over 500 brethren. But when we get to the upper room on the day of Pentecost, there's only 120 left there. I want to know what happened to the other 380. Did they give up on day nine? Did they give up on day eight? Did they say if Jesus doesn't move in two days? I don't know. But there's 120 in the upper room, and God pours out His Spirit. They're filled with the Holy Spirit. And this same group of apostles who had run for dear life had been hiding out in fear. All of a sudden, they're filled with boldness. They're filled with confidence. Peter steps out because a great crowd has been drawn from people from almost every nation on the face of the earth. God's timing is perfect, right? And Peter, who had denied Jesus, who had hidden and run for Galilee, now steps to the front and he said, as people were asking, what is this? What's going on? Are these people drunk? Are these people intoxicated? What does Peter do? He steps out in verse chapter, or verse 13 of chapter 2, and he says, these people are filled with new wine. But Peter, he says, these people are not drunk, as you suppose. The crowd was saying they're filled with new wine, but Peter, standing with the 11, lifted up his voice, and he says, men of Judea, and those who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ears to my words, for these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it's only the third hour. But then he goes on, he says, this is that, which was prophesied by the prophet Joel, when he said, in the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. So the Spirit being poured out on the church appeared to those who were observers to be people who were intoxicated and drunk with new wine. What does that mean? Well, elsewhere, Paul, in Ephesians chapter 5, uses a very similar metaphor, he says, do not be drunk with wine in which there's dissipation, but be filled continually filled with the Holy Spirit. Do you notice that oftentimes the writers of the Scripture of the Holy Spirit chooses to use the imagery of intoxication with wine to be a comparison and a contrast to the life of being intoxicated and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. You see, when you're intoxicated, you say things, they call it liquid courage. Now, I know nobody in this room knows that, because it's people out there, but nobody in here has ever had experience liquid courage. But that's what they call it. You know, you drink it, and you say some stuff that you wouldn't say. You might ask a person out on a date that you never would have thought of before. You're probably going to sing karaoke. You're going to be singing country karaoke at a church potluck or something. And it creates boldness. Well, being filled with the new wine of the Holy Spirit produces boldness on the inside of us. Interesting, that word, you shall receive power is the word that we get, same Greek word, we get dynamite from. But the word witness, when Jesus said, you shall be my witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem, to the other most parts of the world, is the same word we get the word martyr from. He said, you'll be my martyrs. See, it takes boldness to be able to stand in the face of persecution, of the enemy, of spiritual warfare, of death. You see, when you're intoxicated, you don't feel things. I mean, when you read throughout history, great men and women of God in church history that withstood massive persecution, even to the point of being burned at the stake of being martyred or being killed, there was something on the inside of them that could not be stolen away from them in which they were so enveloped in the presence of God and the love of Jesus in gratitude for salvation, they were so overwhelmed by the power of the Holy Spirit that nothing that man could do from the outside could change the contentment and the peace that they had inside. What would cause 120 or let's just, let's start with the 11 and then add one and then Paul, what would take this group of uneducated Galilean men who had seen what they do to Jesus? And if they'll do it to him, they'll do it to them. They didn't go to Bible college, they didn't have seminary, they didn't have printing press, they didn't have plane trains, automobiles, they didn't have Facebook and Instagram to mass market their message, they didn't even have Google, they didn't have Logos Bible software, they didn't even have a printed New Testament yet. But what did they have that propelled them out into the world? What did they have? They had the infilling, the power of the Holy Spirit, they had new wine. And you see, and here's my fear is in the church in North America. We put all of our trust in our technology. We put all of our trust in our education. We send people to Bible college and we say, you're qualified for ministry if you get a certain degree. And then we watch them go into the field of ministry and we watch them falter. We watch them struggle. Now listen, you need to know, the disciples went to the Bible college of Jesus for three and a half years. The living word, that's pretty good. Paul said at the feet of Gamma Leo. So it's not that you don't need knowledge, but we've elevated knowledge to the equivalency of maturity and readiness in our context. And what Jesus said prepared you and qualified you was the power of the Holy Spirit and a call of God on your life. That's the new wine. We need a paradigm shift where we recognize that what we need more than anything is we don't need a better YouTube channel. I'm all for that. But at the end of the day, YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, social media can only become a communication tool of what God's doing. But unfortunately what we kind of do is we take those media and we try and craft something to give the illusion that God is doing something. What we actually need is we need to return back to a place where we say to God, God, I need your Holy Spirit. I am dependent on your Holy Spirit. I can do nothing of my own. That's what Jesus said. I mean, Jesus said this. Listen, who are we to say Jesus says in John chapter five, the Son of man can do nothing of his own. But only that, what she sees the Father doing. And here's what we say to Jesus. Thanks Jesus. That's really nice. Guess what? I'm pretty gifted. We planted a church in Richland, Michigan with $5,000 in a village that has a population of 1,300 people. We don't even have a stoplight. We have a flashing red. We moved, the big news was in 1998, Jane and I watched them build a McDonald's. We're just like, praise the Lord, the golden arches have come to our city. But what we saw was what we did not have was eclipsed by what we did have. And I don't say that to say, look, what we've done. Wow, I'm just saying, I want to say to you what another individual said to me who did something in a very similar way. If God can do it in Richland, Michigan, he can do it wherever you live. Because limitations are not population limitations. They're not education limitations. They're not technology limitations. They're not intellectual limitations. They're not your staffing limitations. They're not your clothing limitations. The lid on our life, the lid on our ministry is will we say, will we continually come back to God and say, I want your new wine? Holy Spirit, fill me. In order to have new wine though, Jesus said we need to have a new wine skin. Matthew chapter nine, he said, neither is new wine put into an old wine skin. If it is, the skin bursts and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wine skins and so both are preserved. So God is ready to pour out new wine, pour out his Holy Spirit. That's one of the indicators of revivals is God does something sovereign. He pours out a spirit of grace. He pours out a spirit of power on a movement, on a group of people, on a church who have prepared themselves as new wine skins. A lot of times the reason why God doesn't respond to our prayers for, Lord, give me more harvest. Give me more salvation. God says you're not ready. If I were to entrust a thousand people to you, are you ready? If I entrust them to you, it's not just your systems and your programs, but do you have a new paradigm and a new mindset? Here's what's interesting. So when you study revivals, the greatest enemies of new revivals are the leaders of the previous revivals. During the first great awakening, they called them new lights and old lights. The old lights were those that came out of a previous move of God who became opponents of the new lights who were the new leaders. And it's just kind of a natural reaction because we're afraid that when God does something new that that actually is making a judgment or a criticism that God has rejected what he's done in us. So we look at that as rejection and anytime we feel rejection, we react. We just do. Personally and even spiritually we react. But every new move of God, God changes the wine skin. He changes the expression of it. It looks different. You know, during the 60s, there was a charismatic renewal that took place. God poured his spirit out on not just, you know, Pentecostals and in the early part of the 20th century, the Pentecostal revival took place mostly on the lives of people in the lower spectrum of socioeconomic status and people of means, people of dignity and people kind of in higher society went to mainline churches. So there was this stigma. But in the 50s, 60s and 70s, God began to pour his Holy Spirit out on mainline churches. Episcopalian churches, Roman Catholic churches, Methodist churches, Lutheran churches, Presbyterian churches, and all of a sudden gifts of the Holy Spirit and worship and renewal and healing and a renewed love for Jesus and the word of God and salvation just taking place in these old mainline churches. Well, then after the charismatic renewal, what happened was a bunch of hippies that are living out in Haight-Asbury, out in San Francisco, smoking pot, you know, daisies in their hair, the summer of love and wood stock and, you know, driving around their Volkswagen vans and peace, bro. I mean, long, shaggy hair. They began to get saved. They began to get saved. I was born in 1971. Time Magazine, June 6, 1971. Put on an image of Jesus on the cover of Time Magazine that said the Jesus movement. And it made Time Magazine because so many hippies were coming into the faith. So what happened was a bunch of hippies showed up with bare feet and bell bottoms into mainline denominational churches. It's like, we're here to worship Jesus. And they're just like, oh, wrong line skin. Wrong line skin. And what we saw come out of the Jesus movement was a new wine skin. The worship that we sing today was birthed in large part out of the Jesus movement. A lot of the style of leadership that we have, some great movements like the Vineyard movement and Calvary Chapel movements were born out of the Jesus people movement. You see, every move of God has a new wine skin. It's not good enough for us to say, well, we've got a structure. We've got a system. We've got history. God do it again. God says, I'll do it again. But before I do it again in you, I'm going to retool you into a new wine skin. New wine skins are flexible. They don't burst. They're not old. They're not cracked. They're not dried. So we need a new wine skin and the new wine skin that we need is a new paradigm. And what I wanna propose to you this morning is that our view in Western America, Western civilization, North American context, the way that we have viewed Christianity for the last 50 years needs to die. I'm not talking about our doctrine. I'm not talking about our theology. I'm not talking about the creeds. I'm not talking about a rejection of the Bible. I'm saying some of the things that we, some of the things of culture that have bled into the church that is now creating tension, we have to let those things go and we need to pray that God would pour out new wine, but first that he would make us new wine skins because the new move of God and however that looks is going to look as drastically different as the Jesus movement did from the charismatic outpouring. It's gonna look drastically different. And we need to be ready. Some of you who are in here, you're 30 years or younger, you're 35 years and younger and you're just beginning your journey in ministry. Let me just tell you, you're gonna be a carrier of some of the new things that God is going to do. Don't throw away everything that you learn from your mentors and those that came before you honor that, but don't let that limit you. Dream like those who came before you. Dream bigger dreams. Think new innovative ways to do it. And we need to recognize that there's something. Look, 50 years ago, if you were a Christian, culture said, oh, you go to church that means you're a good moral person. Today, if you go to church every single weekend, the latest reports say that most of culture views you as a religious extremist. Do you know that 50 years ago, if you were a regular church goer, if you went three out of four weekends a month, today in radiant church, we have on average, people attend 1.5 times per month. And people in our culture still view that as religious extremists. If you believe the Bible as the literal word of God, you're considered a religious weirdo that believes in some myths and fairy tales. We're in a college town. We have 35 or 37,000 college students in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And I've had professors in coffee shops see me read my Bible and they said, do you really believe that thing? And I said, I believe it from the table of contents to where it says genuine leather on the back. And I believe everything in the middle of it. But the day and age where culture in the church ran parallel is over. Culture is diverting and going this way. And many in the church are afraid of losing their position. So what they've done is their new wineskin is just replicating what the world is doing. But what we need to be is people that put our ear to the heart of God and say, God, what are you doing? You see, I don't need, I don't need, if I look like the world, then I'm ready to receive the influence because that's what intoxication means. It means that we come under the influence of something. We got to determine what spirit we want to come under the influence of. Do we want to come under the spirit of the world, the spirit of this age, or do we want to come under the influence of the Holy Spirit? We need new wine. We also need fresh oil. See, fresh oil all throughout the pages of scripture, oil is a picture of the anointing or the presence of the Holy Spirit. And a new anointing or a new fresh oil on the church's life requires something that whenever we start talking about the anointing or we start talking about, we need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we fail to take this into consideration that in order to get oil, there first has to be a pressing. There first has to be a pressing. You see, that's how they get oil. When we were just in Israel, we took a tour in November. You know, you'll go through some towns and they'll identify these huge kind of, they look like kiddie pools of stone. And in the middle, they've got, you know, a place where a big rod was put in with a big circular stone press and they would pour the olives, they put these raw olives that they picked off the trees and then they would run this massive stone in a circular motion and the oil would come out of the olive and drain into this place that carried it and they would capture it in a vessel. So the olive grows on the tree and when it comes to maturity, it's picked and it's put in the press. Once it's put into the press, it is crushed. And that's where oil comes from. The same oil that was used to anoint kings, prophets and priests. The same oil that was used to anoint all the items in the tabernacle of Moses and in the temple of Solomon. The same oil that was used by Jesus for healing first had to be crushed. It had to come under pressure because pressure reveals what's on the inside. You see, we don't really know what's on the inside of the American church. Really, because we've not experienced pressure. A couple of weeks ago, we just had a brother from Iran who came and met with our staff. He's a leader, he's Iranian. He lives in Tehran. I don't know if you know this, but the fastest growing church in the world is in Iran. And he leads an underground movement of house churches all throughout Iran. So we had a man, he came and met with some of our elders and our staff, and just incredibly challenging. And he has like two passports. He said the most dangerous place for him is in the airport, going in and out of the country. They have thousands of Christians. He said the mosques in Iran are empty. The opioid addiction levels in Iran are higher than any other place in the world because they have free access from Afghanistan to get heroin. And they're all using drugs because the sanctions have produced almost 1,000% inflation in their economy, so they have no money. They go to grocery stores, there's nothing to buy. They're under religious tyranny. There's no rights for women. And if you're a Christian and you convert from Islam to Christianity, they put you in jail or they kill you. And he says, I'm leading people to Jesus left and right. He said this and it staggers me. He has a process that they do when they witness and they share Jesus with Muslims. But he says, if I can get somebody from the beginning to the end of this ongoing conversation with them, eight out of 10 Muslims will become Christians. He says it's just, it's easy. And he says, you wanna know why it's easy? He says because the pressure that has been applied to the church has put us in a position where we desperately need God. We don't leave our house without praying. And he says, and the pressure has revealed who we are but who God is through us. He said some things that really shook us up. I'll share them with you, but you're gonna get mad at me. He said this, he says, the reason why we lead so many people to the Lord, number one is the pressure, but B, we don't leave the house unless we're on assignment because we take our lives into our own hands. He says, you go to Starbucks because it's the closest one to you. I go to Starbucks because I wanna have a conversation with the guy who works behind the counter. And number one, they don't have Starbucks. I think it's like, Stardoll Bucks or something. I got some crazy tea shop or whatever. He says, you decide the path that you're gonna drive to work based on the shortest distance between two points. He says, I take the path because I pray in the morning and ask God which way he wants me to go because I'm looking for divine encounters. He said, the reason why you don't know the name of the guy who checks your receipt at Costco is because you don't care if he goes to hell. And my elders were twitching. And I was in the back offended. I was offended. No, I sat there and I was like, who in the world do you think you are? And then the Lord said, it's true because if you really think about it, we've embraced our, we've built our lifestyles not around the mission of Jesus. We've built our lifestyles around comfort and convenience. And he said something, he said the pressure that we're under is actually revealed who we are and it's revealed who God is through us. It's the pressing, it's the crushing that releases the fresh oil and the fresh anointing. Here's the good news, pressure is here. Pressure is here and pressure is coming. I don't say that because I believe the sky is falling to the contrary. Sometimes we romanticize bygone ages and we think of things like 200 years ago before revivals took place. We think to ourselves, oh, everybody was puritanical. They all read the Bible together as a family around the dinner table. They went to church every Sunday. And really that's the result of you and I watching way too many episodes of Little House on the Prairie and not reading enough history books. Because what you find out is that before the Great Awakening in England, the moral sense of the culture in England and in North America and especially the Northeast, New England part of America was totally depraved. Alcoholism, disease, birth rates, immorality. I mean, it was just at an all-time massive high. It's always that way before God revives his church and brings about awakenings. So when we say that there's pressure this afternoon when we mark Driscoll's up here and I have an opportunity to ask him some questions. Some of what I'm gonna ask him about is most recent research that he's done. He did a massive research project among people that are outside of the church and trying to get a perspective of culture and it's just gonna blow some of our minds. But listen, pressure's here. It's the first time in American church where we've actually begun to feel pressure because our convictions fly in the face of culture. Really what we've had is about 200 years of living in a zero gravity environment. See when astronauts fly to the space station and they're there for nine months, they're in a zero gravity environment and what happens in a zero gravity environment is your muscles atrophy because the way that God's designed the body is that when your body is actually exerting resistance, not only does it produce movement but it revitalizes and strengthens the muscles to become stronger the more resistance there is the stronger the muscles become. You take your human body out of a resistance environment, put it in a zero gravity type of an environment and your muscles will shrink and dissolve because you haven't used them. America for about 150 years lived in a zero gravity bubble and we didn't have to move because culture was a mere reflection of who the church was and we confused the two. The blessing of the day that you and I live in right now is that pressure is coming and the church's muscles are getting reactivated and we're beginning to find out who we really are. The press is moving across the olives and it's not going to destroy us, it's actually going to reveal us. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter four verse eight, we are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. So many Christians right now are like, the culture's going crazy, the sky is falling, what are we going to do? We're going to have to pray, we're going to have to know what we believe, we're going to have to be kind to people, we're going to have to share our faith with them, we're going to have to believe God to do the supernatural, we're going to have to actually act like Christians. That's what's going to happen. And listen, it's not, oh, this is going to be so bad, no, it's going to be so good because when there's clarity, when there's polarization, listen, there's far too many people in our churches that think they're saved and are not saved. They're not even saved. As a shepherd, I don't want to show up before Jesus on that day and say, hey, Lee, you did some really great programs but unfortunately 30% of your church never heard a message clear enough to recognize that they needed to repent of their sins and actually get saved. They had great budgets because you did that series on budgets, they were living their best life because they were eating right, they're on their keto diet, their body's looking gray, they're waking up at five in the morning and working out, they've got their dream book that they're writing about, they had all that kind of stuff going, they take beautiful vacations and they raised wonderful kids that played soccer to the seventh grade until they blew their knees out. But they didn't know that they needed to be saved. The good news is that the pressure is bringing clarity. See, God doesn't give us an overcoming life with no pressure. He gives us life as we overcome through the pressure. He causes us to overcome. Jesus writing his seven letters to the seven churches that were persecuted in Asia Minor. Every one of the letters he says to the one who overcomes, to the one who conquers, to the one who overcomes. The fact that Jesus said that means that there's some things that we need to overcome. The last thing is this, and I'm not even gonna get to, I'll talk more about the final, the old fire. I'm gonna talk about that tomorrow morning. Last thing is we need to remember this. Jesus, before he went to the cross, went to a place called Gethsemane. And he prayed a prayer that changed the course of history. He said, if it's possible, let this cup be removed from me. But nevertheless, Father, not my will, but yours be done. Man, that's a powerful prayer. And it was because he prayed that prayer that he got up from there, was arrested, was tried, was scourged for our sins, was forced to carry his cross, was crucified, and died for the sins of the world. Salvation came to us because Jesus prayed a prayer and set a course for his heart in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane in the Greek means the place of the olive press. It was an olive grove. And it's no accident that that's where Jesus went. And he bowed down, he said, Father, my personal preference. So I don't wanna suffer. I don't wanna go through it. But I know that it's necessary. This is the hour. This is what I've been called to. Not my will, but yours be done. And he got up from that place and he set his face like flint to the cross. It's because of that we're gathered together 2,000 years later. In a little town called Richland, sons and daughters of the living God. Who is waiting for us on the other side of our pressing? Who is waiting for you on the other side of you contending in prayer once again, saying, God, use me. God, the pressure's coming, I recognize that. But I believe that what the enemy uses, tries to use to destroy me, you're going to use to reveal me. And I am a child of God. I was created for this hour. It's no accident. You were not born accidentally, randomly. God purposed you before the foundations of the world. He knew you and he saved you and he called you with a holy calling. Your job in life is not to suck oxygen and drink Coke products. Your job is to bring and usher in a move of God in your generation to see the great commission accomplished in your generation. We're supposed, we're called to be carriers of old fire. Old fire. I just want everybody to stand up. We don't even need music. We're all leaders here. We're all grownups, right? Here's the prayer I want to pray. Over the next couple of days, I want God to stir in us a desire. Not just emotions, but a desire to say to God, God, I want, I need new wine. I want this place to become a press for a fresh oil. And when we leave here, we go home with fresh oil. And God, I want to be a carrier of old fire. Old fire. You see, there's embers of old fires, old revivals, old moves of God that we think have been extinguished and that those flames are gone and done forever. But I believe with all my heart that there are the embers below the surface that are just waiting for the Holy Spirit to fan them into flame once again. And you see, we're called to be carriers of those old fires, those old flames. God wants to breathe on them, but you see, you and I take fire for granted. We think fire is just something you flip the switch, light a match, turn a lighter on. For most of human history, fire needed to be carried, needed to be carried by people that could be trusted from one place to the next. And I believe with all my heart, God is reinvigorating the church to remember the old fires and to pray and say, God, we remember the things that you've done before. Fan them into flame and put those flames on the inside of me to be a carrier of the old fire so that the old fire becomes a new fire. That's my prayer for us. I just want to pray for us and then we're going to release you guys into your first workshops. But would you just bow your heads with me all over this room? I just feel the presence of the Lord so strongly here this morning. God, do it again in our day. Do it in our day, Lord. We don't want revival to just be some fantasy era that we read about in history books. We have no idea what you have on your agenda, Lord, but I believe if we were to see what you have in your heart that you want to do, it would inspire us to say, God, send the fire. It would inspire us, it would encourage us with boldness to say, Lord, stir up the gifts and the callings of God that are within us. Move us beyond apathy and complacency and comfort and convenience. Lord, fan into flame the embers of old moves of God that we've maybe never even heard about or we thought are long gone, Lord. There are prayers that saints prayed that are just waiting to be activated by a generation. Lord, and I pray that we would be the generation that says, God, do it in our day. Give us fresh oil. We pray the prayer of Jesus, Lord, not my will, but yours be done. We want to be, if you want to press us, if that's what it takes, Lord, if the crushing and the pressing is what reveals us, then Lord, we're ready for that. Prepare us for that so that we can become carriers of the fire. In this room, Lord, men, women, young, old, pastors, leaders, volunteers, it doesn't matter who we are. God, we are here on appointment to be carriers of your new fire. God, do it in us. Start it in us. Over the next couple of days, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen, and amen, amen.