 Hey, thank you. Sit down. Sit down. Sit. Sit. You're gonna make me cry. And that's, you know, I was actually, I told Jane, I said, I don't know if anybody's gonna show up tonight, because normally we have guest speakers during our Seek First Wednesdays, and you guys hear me on weekends, so hearing me on Wednesday, I was like, oh, well, whoever will be there, it'll be awesome, and you guys totally shocked us. Look at, I mean, this is a packed house on a Wednesday night in the heart of Christmas season, so love all of you. And Pastor Stephen, you and your team here hosting us. Thank you so much. And, man, I'm excited about tonight. I was reading, I've been reading, I read through the Book of Acts almost every month, and I was reading it the other day. Jane and I are also going through it. We read it, read a chapter or so a day, and I was reading about how Paul preached really long, and a guy fell out of a window and almost died. One of my favorite stories in the Bible. And Paul went down and prayed for him and raised him up and then went back upstairs and preached the whole rest of the night. And I just thought, that's my kind of guy right there. It's like 35 minute sermons, come on. You got to preach until somebody dies. I think that's kind of like the standard. So I'm not going to preach that long tonight, but I am excited about tonight because I feel like these Seek First nights are opportunity for the hungry and the thirsty to draw together and for us to really spend more time and prayer and worship. And I kind of get to, when I have these opportunities, to just share a little bit offline, a little bit, maybe a little bit deeper. And so I want to invite you to turn with me to Acts chapter one in your Bibles. Tonight, my message is prayer and worship, the fuel for our mission. And I want to talk a little bit about the prayer center, the prayer room downtown, and all of the Radiant City Center, the philosophy of Radiant Church, and what God is specifically calling us to in the next phase and the next season as we're expanding in our future and having a presence downtown. And those kinds of things on top of also showing you some things out of the Book of Acts. But here's one thing that I've noticed, and let me back up 23 years and remind you that when we were just planting Radiant, I had a God encounter with the Lord in my car on 131 as a 25-year-old future church planter who was scared out of his mind that I was going to mess it up. And I was praying in the car and saying, you know, Lord, if you'll tell me what to do, I will do it. I know I'm supposed to plant this church. What's it supposed to look like? And the only way to describe it is I sensed, became very, very aware of the presence of the Lord in a tangible, manifest way with me in the car. And not in a audible voice that necessarily you could have heard outside, but internal. You guys know what I mean by that? Internal, I heard what almost shook me from the inside out. The voice of the Lord say, lead, build a praying and a worshiping church. Build a praying and a worshiping church. And those two things, that prayer and worship, became like the two pedals on a bike. That, you know, you don't know which one drives the other, but they work in tandem together. Those have been values, not just things that we embrace as important, every church does. I don't know of a church anywhere that would say that prayer and worship are not important, but for us, they were the driving pedals of this movement that we've come to know as radiant. What I have recognized though over the course of several years of leading is that oftentimes in the body of Christ and not just here, but just the church, Jesus' church, there tends to be an emphasis upon one being more significant or important than the other. For example, you'll have churches who will say it's all about worship. You'll have other churches that say it's all about prayer. And you'll have other churches that will say it's all about missions. It's all about the mission, the great commission of Jesus. And what I think is that we've created false dichotomies where we've said, well, it's got to be this, or it's got to be this, or it's got to be this. When really all of them work together, I want you to write, if you're writing notes, I want you to write this formula down. I hate formulas, but this helps me see the lens of God's priorities as I read the book of Acts. Because the book of Acts is like a blueprint of how Jesus wants to build the church. It goes like this, prayer plus power equals propulsion. Prayer plus power equals propulsion. Look with me here at Acts chapter 1 and verse 8. In Acts chapter 1, these are some of the last words that Jesus gives his followers. He's gone to the cross, we know that. He died, they didn't understand it. The third day he rises again, he pulls Peter back in. He spends 40 days with his apostles teaching them things pertaining the kingdom of God. So imagine spending 40 days, a 40-day Bible college with the resurrected Jesus. That's not a bad deal. And he's informing you about the kingdom of God. I think it's interesting that it took 40 days to change the paradigm of his disciples to see through a kingdom lens instead of their own earthly, fleshly, carnal lens. And then when we get to Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, Jesus is about to ascend to the Father to the right hand of God. And he's already given them the great commission to go into all the world, preach the gospel. Acts 1-8, in response to their question, they said, Jesus, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Jesus says not for you to know times or seasons, but here's what's important for you to know. What's important for you to know is you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world. Notice what Jesus said. Listen, it's not important for you to know the timing of God. It's not important for you to know the dispensations or the economies of how God is going to accomplish, you know, the restoration of the kingdom to Israel and eschatology. You know, those things are important, but they're not the priority. The priority is that you need to know this, that you're going to receive power. When are you going to receive power? Well, he had told them, I want you to go to Jerusalem and I want you to wait for the promise of the Father. And what we will find out in the rest of Acts chapter 1 and Acts chapter 2, beginning in verse number 1, is that for the next 10 days, the disciples went into an upper room with Mary, the mother of Jesus, the brothers of Jesus, who've now become believers and followers of Jesus. If you are familiar with your New Testament, that would be the James who wrote the book of James and Jude who wrote the book of Jude. They didn't believe in Jesus and they didn't acknowledge Him as the Messiah until after the resurrection. Now they're stunned and in awe. They're with Mary, their mother, and the 12, or the 12 including Matthias and a whole bunch of others, 120 in an upper room. And for 10 days, they're obeying Jesus by waiting. Waiting. He said, I want you to wait for the promise of the Father. What was the promise of the Father? You shall receive power from the Holy Spirit. He will come upon you, you'll be empowered, and then you'll be thrust or propelled into the mission. So what did they do for 10 days? They prayed. Prayed 120 people in a 10-day prayer meeting. That's a prayer meeting. Can you imagine that? Now here's what's interesting to me is that when you read 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and Paul is talking about his own apostolic ministry. He talks about the gospel message that he had received that after Jesus had been raised from the dead, he appeared to the 12, then he appeared to 500 brethren at one time. And then Paul, lastly a man who was born out of season. So what we can estimate is that somewhere around 530 plus people saw Jesus after his resurrection, who were his followers. But what we find is that by the time there was the upper room, there's 120, and then even less than that, 10 days later on the day of Pentecost. And I just wonder, you know, where's the other 300 plus people who Jesus appeared to? Oftentimes we think, oh, Jesus would just appear to me and I could see what the disciples saw and touch his hands and touch feet. I'd believe, I'd be all in, I'd be committed. No, you'd skip the prayer meeting too probably. I mean, a vast majority of people would. That wouldn't make a difference because we have the same challenges today that they had then. But here's what's interesting is you find a pattern in the book of Acts that goes from Jesus saying, pray, pray, and you shall receive number two, power. And the power will propel you into mission. And it's not one or the other. It's not, oh, we're prayer people or we're, you know, power Holy Spirit people or we're missions people. A lot of times people will categorize one. And can I just tell you, it's like the combustive engine, the combustion engine that we have in our vehicles. You can have a spark in your engine, but if you don't have any fuel in your tank for the spark to grab a hold of to create combustion, the vehicle won't move. And all three of those work together. The spark, the flame is the power of the Holy Spirit that comes on the hungry and thirsty. That is the product of living lives of prayer and worship that will ultimately result in us being propelled into the uttermost parts of the world. The pages of the book of Acts, Acts chapter 28 chapters are all about the church going from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the world. And you know that the last verse of the book of Acts does not say amen. A lot of the books in the epistles end with an amen, which means done. The last word in the book of Acts, does anybody know what it is? I'll tell you, don't even raise your hand. Here's what it is. Unhindered. It says that Paul continued to preach the gospel unhindered, which means unstoppable. And the Acts chapter 28 is not the last chapter of the book of Acts. There's 2,000 years more of the book of Acts that are being written that we won't get to read until we get to heaven. And can I tell you, you were destined to have your name in the eternal book of Acts. To be people of prayer, to be people of power that are propelled out into mission. That don't fire you up. I don't know what will. Let me read to you this quote from E.M. Bounds, one of my favorite books called Power Through Prayer. He says, what the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel ideas, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use. And whenever he says men realize it's a bygone time, he's talking about men and women. Men whom the Holy Spirit can use. Men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come upon machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men, men of prayer. He goes on to say this, man is looking for better methods, God is looking for better men. We're constantly looking for what's the new, what's the new model, what's the new technique, what's the new piece of technology, what's the new thing that we can leverage in order to grow, to reach more people. And all of those things are fantastic, but I think what Jesus is doing in this current hour is he is speaking to his church and bringing us back to our core foundations that we find right in the book of Acts. The very first chapter, when Jesus lays the foundation stones of his church, he lays them by saying, I want you to pray, I want you to receive power, and that is going to thrust you out into mission. What our world and what this generation needs to see more than anything is they need to see the power of God that is active, animated, and alive in his people, resulting in good works that point people back to the God of Heaven. That's what the world needs to see. They need to see Jesus in us. They don't need to hear how smart we are because we're not that smart. They don't need to see our methodology because we're never going to compete methodology-wise. Let me tell you what I mean by that. We can have amazing kids' spaces. We should, and we will, and we do. But it's never going to be Disney. Why can't we hear of Disney? Oh, because Disney has billions of dollars, and if God wants to give us a billion dollars, we will create the world's most incredible children's space. So if you want to write that check, make that out to Radiant Church, you can text it, as a matter of fact, 77977, text $1 billion, and we're good to go. We'll even create our own Radiant, you know, channel, like Disney Channel. We'll do all that kind of stuff. It'll be awesome. Write the check. But practically, we're not going to compete that way. We're not going to compete with sound and lighting and video and musicianship. I mean, you can go to Wembley Stadium and 100,000 people in England and to see, you know, the world's greatest bands and reunion bands and those kinds. We're not going to compete with those things, but we shouldn't compete with them. For too long, the churches tried to imitate those things, and we look like a knock-off version of, when I was a kid, my mom would not buy me nikes, so she bought me, like, no-keys. Because they were at the discount store. You could get no-keys. It was an upswish. It was an under-swish. And she's like, oh, they're the same thing. No, they're not. Right? Or, you know, I wanted Levi's, and so I got, like, CVise or something. You know, just some knock-off, counterfeit version of something. Or, like, when you're in a place and they're selling, you know, knock-off Rolexes for $5. Great deal. They won't last, and they don't keep time, but they look good until they turn your skin green. What the church does not need to be is a counterfeit, weakened, knock-off, cheesy version of what the world is. What the church needs to be is an authentic expression of who Jesus is. And what we have that the world doesn't have is the presence, the manifest presence of Almighty God in our midst that distinguishes us as the people of God. We have the power of the Holy Spirit that Hollywood tries to replicate in all their movies called Marvel and all the superhero movies. And we have authority over demons, which they try and replicate with all of their horror movies that they put out. Those are the cheap knock-offs of what we are in the kingdom. Why are we constantly leaning away from what distinguishes us as different and otherworldly and then trying to counterfeit the one thing that they do better than us? Now, listen, I'm all about buildings. I'm all about expansion. I'm all about tools and technology. We'll utilize those things, but those are not what God anoints. Well, God anoints His people. His people. And we want to be those people that God anoints. Alright, I'm going to take you on a little journey. Alright, if you have your Bibles, this is called sword drill for those of you who maybe grew up in church. I want to show you a pattern in the book of Acts. Are you ready? Number one, look, you saw Acts 1.8. Look at Acts 1.14. If they'll put Acts 1.14 up on the screen for me. Acts 1.14. Acts 1.14. I'll just quote it for you. Okay, it says, and they were all together in one accord, devoting themselves to prayer. I hope you guys have these scriptures because I'm about to throw a lot of them up there. Do you have them? Can somebody in the back tell me if we have them? Okay, good. Alright, so put the next one up. Just go ahead and put them up in the order that you have them. Okay, here we go. Acts 2.42. Look at it. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship into the breaking of bread and to? Okay, put the next one out. What's the next one that you got? Next verse. Acts 4.31. And when they had the place in which they were gathered together was? Okay, throw the next scripture out. Acts 10.33. And Cornelius said four days ago about this hour I was? In my house at the ninth hour, and behold, go ahead and throw the next scripture out. And the man stood before me in bright clothing and said, Cornelius, you're? Has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Throw the next one out. And when he realized this, he went into the house of Mary. This is Acts 12.12. When he realized this, he went into the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were? Okay, throw the next one out. Acts 13.1. It says we're not going 52 verses, by the way. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, separate unto me, Paul and Barnabas, for the work to which I have them. And then after fasting and? They laid their hands on them and sent them off. Okay, jump ahead to Acts 16. Acts 16.1. About midnight Paul and Silas were? And singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were? Okay, do you guys see a pattern? And these are just a smattering. I could take you through about 50 verses in the book of Acts, where we see the early church expanding, multiplying, impacting even people from outside of the church who hated the church when they described the church said, uh-oh, these are those who are turning the world upside down. Paul goes into the city of Ephesus. Revival sparks. People begin to burn about $50 million worth of witchcraft books. And the largest church in the world at that time was birthed in the city of Ephesus, which was also the headquarters of the largest witchcraft library and the temple to Artemis in the entire world. Everywhere that they went they were propelled with the gospel. It was fruitful. There were signs. There was wonders. There was miracles. Most of these scriptures, if you go back and you read the full context of them, you've got Paul and Silas who have preached the gospel. They're in prison. What happens? They're praying and worshiping at about midnight and the chains fell off of them. The cell doors opened up. All the prisoners came out. The centurion is about to kill himself. Paul and Silas said, don't kill yourself. We're all here. And by the end of the night before the sun comes up, they baptized him and his whole family and gone back into the prison before they get delivered. You got Peter who's in jail for preaching the gospel in Acts chapter 12. And it says that there's a corporate prayer meeting going on for Peter because James has just been martyred and they're praying. And here's Peter in prison probably thinking to himself, okay, is this the end? And all of a sudden an angel comes in and frees frames everybody and says, Peter, come with me. And he's like, what? He's like, yeah, come with me. And the angel just kind of throws open jail doors. Well, everybody's frees frame. And Peter walks out of jail. He goes to the prayer meeting, knocks on the door, and the girl comes to the door and says, ah! And leaves, goes back to the prayer meeting and says, Peter's at the door and there's like, shh, we're busy praying for Peter. No, he's here. No, it's got to be his ghost. No, he's here. How'd you like to show up to that prayer meeting? Prison doors get thrown open. Foundations get shaken. They're filled with power in Acts chapter four. They are filled with power and they begin to declare the word of God with boldness. Everything that the early church did, they did as a result of this formula of prayer that leads to power, boldness, courage, that word power in the book of Acts, Acts chapter one verse eight is the Greek word dunamis. It's where we get the word dynamite from. Explosive, otherworldly kingdom, supernatural power so that they could be witnesses. And they went into all the entire known world. I'll tell you this little bonus information. Don't tell anybody I told you this. But the Greek word for witness is the word martyr. How about that? Anybody fired up to do some witnessing? Because when you read Acts chapter 12, it says they did not love their own lives even unto death, but they overcame the accuser of the brethren by the blood of the lamb, the testimony, their own testimony. And they did not love their lives even to the point of death. They were so captivated by who Jesus was. They'd been so changed by encountering Him. And they were so filled with power and passion that they were willing even to lay down their lives if necessary. And guys, if I can just be honest right now around the world, more people are martyred for their faith as Christians today than at any other time in world history. In Muslim nations, in communist nations, totalitarian nations, tribal feuds that are going on in Africa, different places all over the world, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, China, all over Mongolia, Russia even. There are people that right now are paying the ultimate price. Some in chains as prisoners. Some martyred. Some by property confiscation. What is it that fuels a church like that that doesn't have monetary resources that we have as the American church? What is it that fuels that level of boldness and faith among people that don't have the Bible reference resources that we have, the theological training that we have, that you don't have the musical excellence that we have? They don't have the buildings or the free access to worship in them that we have? What is it that fuels the church and these believers globally to live their life so radically that the government sees them as a threat and the enemy sees them as a threat because they're turning the world upside down? Well, I will tell you, it's the people of prayer who have received power and have been propelled. They've been propelled. You see, the ultimate purpose of the church is not necessarily just the Great Commission. We always say, well, the purpose of the church is the Great Commission. Yes, that is our assignment, but it is not necessarily our purpose. What is our purpose? Well, our purpose is to give God what he wants most. Count Zinzendorf, who is the leader of the Moravian movement, that was one of the... How many have never heard of Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf? You've never heard that name? Raise your hand. Let me tell you about this guy. So he was a very wealthy, in modern terms, he would be probably German or Czech, but he was a very, very wealthy landowner. And there were a group of believers that were being persecuted in surrounding countries that he gave refuge to on his large estate piece of property called Hernhut. And what he did was he invited them in, and these leaders were called the Moravians. These Christians were called the Moravians, and they came there, and they started this little community. And Zinzendorf was this man who felt a call to ministry, felt a call to do something significant for God. And so what ended up happening is in this group at Hernhut, they birthed prayer 24-7, and it became a 100-year prayer meeting around the clock, 24 hours a day for 100 years. But out of that prayer meeting sparked one of the first great missions awakenings. Because some of these Moravians coming out of these prayer meetings, encountering the Lord. How many know you can't encounter the Lord without what is on the Lord's heart? What is on the Lord's heart rubbing off on you? And there is nothing that is on God's heart more than the lost, than those who have never heard the gospel, because that is what Jesus went to the cross for. And so what they began to do is many of them were called into world missions. So several of them sold themselves, think about this, they sold themselves into slavery to the West Indies, so that they could go there and preach the gospel to the slaves and the natives and the people in the West Indies who did not have a witness. Literally went down to the slave market and sold themselves, were put on slave ships sent to the West Indies for the sake of the mission. How radical is that? And the Moravian movement is an example of how prayer propels us out of the power and out of the passion of Jesus' heart to go and to be propelled into the mission of Jesus. John Piper says it like this. He says that missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship does not. Worship exists, or missions exist because worship does not. That means that there are places on the face of the earth where God is not worshiped by the people he created to be worshipers. So missions exist to take the gospel to them so that those whom Jesus died for can ultimately become worshipers of Jesus. What's the end goal of it all? In the Old Testament it says, behold the Lord promises that there's coming a day when the knowledge of the Lord is going to cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. The glory of God is gonna cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. How is that going to happen? When every nation has heard the gospel of the kingdom and had an opportunity to receive him, when what is spoken of in the book of Revelation that before his throne I saw a multitude from every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. How many know that in heaven it's gonna be multicultural? Heaven is gonna be multicultural. There's a rainbow over the throne. There's a rainbow around the throne. There's a rainbow of every color, of every culture, of every language, of every age, of every nationality. I mean, he's gonna be worshiped in Swahili and in English. Did you know that right now the language from the earth that Jesus is worshiped by most is not English? Jesus is worshiped in Mandarin more than he is worshiped in English. American Christians make up 20% of Christianity globally. We're only 20%. We oftentimes think, you know, heaven's gonna kind of be like American Walmart. We're gonna show up there and there's gonna be a bunch of white people smattering of black people, smattering of brown people, and you know, just so that we've got representation, but it's really us. We're gonna walk in there with our American flag and da da da da. It's not gonna be like that. We're gonna show up and be the minority. There are gonna be people from Africa worshiping Jesus and with their African culture and their African language, there's gonna be Spanish and there's gonna be Native American or First Nations. There's gonna be Mandarin. There's gonna be Cantonese. There's gonna be Russian. There's gonna be every language, every kindred, every culture, every skin color gathered around the throne and for the first time around heaven, Jesus is going to see the fruition of everything he died for because what God said in Psalm chapter two is he said to Jesus prophetically, ask me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance. Do you know what Jesus earned when he died on the cross? He earned the right to be the king of all nations. All nations. That's what mission is about. It's giving back to Jesus what he deserves, not so that we can check boxes so that he can be worshiped. But in order for us to be propelled into mission, we've gotta be people of his presence, people of prayer and worship and people of power from the Holy Spirit. The reason, the reason why we bought the property downtown is because years and years and years ago had it in my heart. When we were 100 people, I had it in my heart. Let me back up. I had been to Colorado Springs and I had walked through a building called the World Prayer Center that was being built when we were there in 1998. I had read a book by the founder of that church called Primary Purpose and it was about how he built his church from the ground up on missions and on prayer and worship. Those were foundation stones in my life. I read that. So Jane and I went out to a conference in 1998. Tiffany was just a few months old. It was in June and we flew out there and they were in the process of building a World Prayer Center. And the World Prayer Center was this vision that he had of prayer that would go up before the Lord on behalf of all nations, on behalf of the city, around the clock, and they built a prayer room. Down below they had what was called the War Room where they would receive information from missionaries all over the world so that they could same time pray it. It was just think of, you know, like real calm, Pentagon, except for the Holy Spirit. And I walked through that room when it was being built and I wept. I just cried. I had no idea why I was crying. What I didn't realize is my oldest daughter would meet her husband, Zach, in that room years later. And what I didn't know is that several of our staff people who are helping us shape our culture today like Caleb and Rachel and many others would come from that same culture and internship there. Some of our closest friends, David Perkins, would come from there. It was the destiny moment I was standing there. And I remember coming home and just saying, God, there's something about that. And God began to birth this idea of, I don't want to just be a church that prays. I want to be a praying church. I don't want to be just church that worships. I want to be a worshiping church. Lord, what would it look like to have a place so radically different than the current American church wineskin where we would, with our money and with our resources and with our time and our energy, go so countercurrent against a consumer-driven, self-centered, production-modeled church wineskin. What would happen if we just flipped that and we became a book of acts type of thing where we said, you know what, we're not just gonna have buildings for church. We're gonna have an epicenter that is an engine room, a building just for prayer. We're morning, noon, and night. Prayer and worship goes up before the Lord and becomes a ripple effect that produces change and revival in our city, in our region, in our generation, and ultimately to the nations of the world. What would happen if we were to combine our missions and our passion for the nations born in the place of prayer that produced a combustion of supernatural Holy Spirit power that would then mobilize not one or two people to go on the mission field, but every single person who is in our church community to be filled with courage, boldness, and power because they've incubated in the presence of God and whether it's in the cubicle at Stryker or whether it's on the mission field of China or whether it's in the hallway mission field of their high school or on the concentration camp of their college campus. They were filled with the Holy Spirit on mission and had come contaminated with the radioactive residue of God's presence from a prayer room. So two years ago, Jay and I were taking a walk on campus. We felt like God told us to move downtown to be kind of a first fruits. It's like we had campus in Richland and one in Portage and we believe God's gonna give us more in the future. We've got places that we're looking at currently and by the way, come February, we're gonna roll it out for the church. We're gonna share a lot of our plans for that. So stay tuned for that. But a couple years ago, we felt like God first fruits called us, Jay and I to move downtown. And so we did. And Jay has always been an advocate for walking and like going for walks together. And I've always kind of bucked that but I've always been like, well, can't we run or race or do something? And she's like, no, let's just go for a walk. I'm like, okay, so we go on this walk and the first couple of times we began to walk on campus and they've kind of become prayer walks. And we walked by a, we walked by a building we'd never seen before and realized it was a mosque. And it was, had international students housing right on the edge of the parking lot because it's Western and Kay College. And what we quickly realized doing some research, it was a, it was the second largest mosque in the state of Michigan. And they had prayer meetings five times a day. And you know, let me just say this. Here's what I admire about Muslims. They are so committed to their cause. Very sincere, wonderful. I've met several people in our community that are Muslim and you know what? It's not right for us to demonize them. Jesus died on the cross for them, just like he died on the cross for Pagan, Irish Lee. But when I saw that, I was so provoked that in our city, from the heart of our city, there was prayer going up but not to Jesus. By people that were not the church. In the heart of a city. It's not in outskirts, not in our suburbs. It's wonderful and we have our permings now and I don't diminish those. But those are all preparation because we have this vision that can we create an engine room in the heart of our city? That the people of God from multiple campuses around our region come together, across county lines in some cases, get outside of our comfort zone. Everything from the heart of our city is governmental. Arts come from downtown. Finances come from downtown. The universities are downtown. The government is downtown. In radiant church, we're not there to do anything other than to be a blessing to our city. When we talk about building a radiant city, we're not saying radiant taking over the city. We just want our city that we dwell in to be everything that Jesus purposed our city to be. And nothing less. We want to pray for our police officers so that there's safety and so that crime diminishes in our city. We want to pray for our universities so young people do not lose their faith between high school and their senior year of college. We want to pray from the heart of our city that children who are in impoverished areas of our city have everything that they need and that they are surrounded with love and that abused women know that there's safety. There's spiritual warfare that's going on. We want to do it from the heart of the city and out of that, we want to see arts rise up out of downtown that are God-glorifying. We want to be able to have relationships and conversations with people. We don't want to be rude and obnoxious and we're not going to be protesters of things like this. We want to be salt and light in the midst of an environment and we want to do it in an environment of prayer and worship from the heart of this city. We're not going to surrender the heart and the nucleus of this city to any other power and to any other name than the name of Jesus. So when God opened this door and some of you have heard me tell the story, we looked at all kinds of buildings and we couldn't find anyone. God opened this door. It just was such a divine moment. We bought it at like $35 a square foot without a realtor involved. Come on, somebody. And then when we got in, then Monja Kitchen is like, hey, we want out. Do you want to buy us too? And what I didn't tell them is I'd been praying. Get rid of all those carbs because what we've had a vision for is a different wine's going to model. Here's what I want you to see is coming in the future. That's why it's so important. The first thing that we're scale building right now is that prayer room. We're finishing it out. And so a lot of what's continuing to come in through Big Give the rest of the year is helping us finish that because eventually we're going to use that on weekends as a downtown campus for downtown city dwellers, college students who want it. We'll be able to sit about 250 people in there. Monday through Friday it's a prayer meeting, a prayer room. On weekends we'll use it as a gathering point for Radiant Church from the heart of downtown right on the Mall. It's going to be great. You can go to church there if you want. And then we're going to have some of our offices there. But then on the basement lower level, there's a whole 10,000 square foot on the lower level. We're going to be shifting all of our Radiant School of Worship. You may not know it. We have about 25 students from all over the country and the world who are here right now. School worship students, where are you? We love these guys. We love them. But they're going to be shifting downtown. And then in the fall, next year, 2020, we're also launching Radiant School of Ministry. So it's going to be a training for pastors, missionaries, support staff, church planters, and marketplace ministers. People like you who are like, well, I'm not called into vocational ministry, but God's put me where He's put me. I want to be better equipped with understanding the Bible and how God's equipped me and spiritual gifts and how to be a marketplace evangelist. It's going to be available. And here's what I want you to see is out of this hub, downtown, we're going to have hundreds of young people flowing in and out of there being Discipled Train for Leadership. We're going to have a front porch environment to the community. We're going to have prayer that's going on in a recording studio that's churning out the voice and the word of God and the songs of the Lord that are coming out of this house in an environment like a engine. So somebody said to me when I was in Minneapolis, I've never heard of a church doing anything like this. And I'm sure that somebody's doing it, but here's my answer. Well, that's good because I want results that no other church is getting. If I wanted the results of everybody else, I would just follow the pattern of everybody else. And I'll tell you, it'd be easy for us, Radiant. It would be easiest for us to coast, to just say work. Thousands and thousands of people. Let's just keep cranking on the same model. But the heartbeat of who we are is a praying and a worshiping people. This pattern of prayer and worship that produces power, that propels us, has been in us from the very beginning when we were in the Devil's Den in the Gully Community High School cafeteria. When it was awful. Wobbly blue chairs. Anybody in this room that was part of that? Yeah, Jane. I got one back there. Is that Mikey? Mike? Mike Popenhagen. Mike Jr. back over there. Him and Jared bang on the drums all the time and drove Mike and I crazy. And now Mike Popenhagen. Stand up, Mike. I call him Mikey. Mikey grew up in this church. Mikey grew up in this church. And now he moved to Jackson when we planted Radiant Church, Jackson, five years ago. He's now on staff as the worship pastor. And they just this last weekend averaged 1,100 people a weekend. I mean, they're crushing. Just absolutely crushing it in Jackson, Michigan. Can anything good come out of Jackson, Michigan? Now you know. Radiant Church, Bay City. It's over 300 people, two years old. Ann Arbor is cranking right along. Lettington's five or 600 people. Kentucky is in the middle of a new building project. They're growing leaps and bounds about 1,000 people. I mean, it's all, these are churches that we've spun off. Leaders that we've infused and prayed for and resources that have grabbed ahold of this model and said we want to go and do this. Guys, what would happen if we did this in every state across the country? Multiple cities across Michigan and the Midwest. Not that, listen, it's not Radiant saying, oh, we got the corner on this. I would love somebody to come along and take the pattern and make it theirs. If they ask, we'll give it to them free of charge. And if we find somebody who's doing it better, I believe in copyright. We're gonna find what's right and we'll copy it. This isn't about us. This is about Jesus. We got one life. One generation. And it's not about arriving at death safely. It's not why we're on this planet. We want to grab ahold of this model so somebody said, I've never heard anybody doing this before. It's great. We don't want to do what everybody else is doing. Let them do what God has uniquely called them to do. But Radiant Church is called to be a praying and a worshiping church. Because what I want to see more than anything is, listen, right now I want to see the next generation. We're 100% committed to the next generation having a firsthand encounter with the living God. We want to see a revival of the Bible. I mean, the Bible, I mean, just something simple, but so many people have never read it, have no knowledge of what's on the inside of it. You want to have an encounter with the Lord, get with the Bible. We want to create incubators in the prayer room where people walk in and they experience the manifest presence of God. So I've never felt anything like that before in my life where we don't even have to pray for people to get healed. They're just healed. Where people don't even know how to describe it. They just say, there's like an energy in this place. People have asked about the coffee shop. I love the idea of a coffee shop. We want it to be a well. You know, in the Old Testament, people gathered around wells. That's where conversations were had. And it's a mutual meeting point. Coffee is a part of our culture. It's part of God's name. He's Jehovah Java. He told Moses, take your shoes off. These are holy grounds. And, and, and, and. He put, he put a book in the Bible called Hebrews. So before, don't at me. No, no. Coffee is part of kingdom culture. But listen, it's a great place for us to have conversations. It's a great place for us to meet people, to create a space for community to come in. And what they don't know is that within 30 feet, there's a generator of the power and the presence of God in a prayer room that's infecting the very physical fabric of the coffee shop they're sitting in. You're just like, oh, is that real? Oh yeah, it's real. Drinking your coffee and what you don't realize is Holy Spirit presence is just bleeding through those walls. Who knows what kind of conversations will be had. It's like a mission base. I want you to think in those type of terms, because listen, we owe the next generation an encounter with the living God. We owe them an expression of the book of Acts type of church. And that's birthed in the place of prayer. See, there's a lot of things that we're called to do. I mean, the mission field is abundant. Right now, missions is so important. Pastor Joel Dorlag is our missions pastor in leading all these impact trips. He lives it on a daily basis. But one of our goal for our impact trips is to send hundreds and thousands of people from radiant church after they've lived in a culture of prayer and been filled with power to then send them on short-term missions trips globally around the world because you're not gonna change the mission field half as much as the mission field is gonna change you. What would happen if a thousand people went and saw what Jesus is doing on the ground in some of the largest mission fields of the world and came back and their paradigm and their mind frame was changed to actually see the world they live in as a North American 21st century post-Christian mission field? It's happening. We had people who went on the Philippines trip and they came back and now all of a sudden, they're witnessing to people. They're just like, I've never shared my faith with anybody but I went to the Philippines and had to. So then I realized I can do this. Came back and now they're doing it. If it takes us going to another mission field to realize the one that Jesus put us in, then that's what we'll do. It took 40 days for Jesus to change the disciples paradigm. It'll take maybe getting on a trip, on a plane, on a boat, or traveling someplace else to get it into us to become praying people filled with power who are engaged in mission. Church, this is what we're called to. I got all kinds of notes but I haven't even started. This is all, I didn't plan it. These are really good. I'm looking at them. I have nine points. Who wants to fall out of the window tonight? Let's do this. Worship team, come back up. Everybody, let's stand up on our feet. I'll save those notes for a future series. One point per week for nine weeks. By the way, I got a series in January that is going to be called Stronger and we're going to take a look at the book of Daniel. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are for those of you who grew up on Veggie Tales. I won't even say it because now they'll have video of it and they have like a little list on my staff of all my cliches. So I'm not going to bite into that. But we're going to look at the book of Daniel as a prototype for how you and I live in the middle of a Babylonian culture and live stronger without defiling ourselves and actually being influential. What I want to do tonight is I want to pray. I want to just be people that talk about prayer. I want to be people of prayer. Pray. I want us to pray all across this room. I just want us to start just with worship. Start with just praise. And sometimes singing songs up on a screen are really powerful and we can make them our own. Sometimes just lifting our own voices, singing our own song, our own melody, our own lyrics, whether you're in tune or out of tune, whether you're loud, quiet, whether you are poetic or not, it doesn't matter, but just you worshiping him with a new song touches his heart almost more than anything. So I want us to lift up your hands all over the room if you would. And I want you to just close your eyes and the musicians are going to play melodically. And I want you to right now, for some of us this may be brand new, it might be out of your comfort zone, you're not used to doing this, but listen, we all hum, we all make a sound, we all grab a lyric. I just want you to right now lift up your voices and begin to just praise Jesus. Come on, just lift up your voices, let it become a symphony of spontaneous worship, a symphony of our love lavished on him. Jesus, come on, it's to touch his heart. Lift up your voice to touch his heart tonight. Yes, sir, I feel like he's calling me to take that next step to be a part of prayer meetings, to propelling the mission. I feel called, I'm marked by God that he's calling. Some of us out of desire will say this and some of us may not even have the desire but you're just, you know God's calling you and marking you. That's you. I want you to right now step out of your seat and I want you to make your way up to the front. We're going to consecrate ourselves in this place and we're going to fill the aisles if necessary. If you feel invited and you're responding to that call, you feel marked by God, I want you to come. God's calling you, there's a mandate on your life saying you are be a person of prayer, of devoted intercession, consecration, worship in this next season, come and just come even if you can only get to the aisle, just get to the aisle. Or right now in the name of Jesus. Lord, I pray that as we've responded to your call, Lord that you would mark us. I want you to begin to just tell the Lord if you've answered that call to just say, Lord I surrender, use me to be a living stone of prayer and intercession. Lord I say yes to your call, yes God. I'll surrender, I'll sacrifice, I'll lay aside every weight and hindrance to give myself to this call God to give myself to this imitation. Now invite them, Lord, do it with desire. Open, eat them on their families, on their homes, on their businesses because they've entertained and hosted the presence of God in the place of prayer. Let's just invite them say, I want more. Just lift up your hands all over the room. Let's sing that, I want more. Presence and set apart in this generation. The readiness of your presence to pray an anointing of worship on this house. An anointing for mission. Lord, we're people that do not want to just walk in the pathways of convenience and comfort. We're people that want to walk the ancient paths intercession, witness, mission and community. Lord, we want to see the foundations of the prisons hold captives in this generation shaken to their core. We want to see prodigals come home, city to the north and God bring a harvest, God. Faith, the faithfulness, the generosity, I'll just be honest, you guys just absolutely blow. It's just something about, it makes it so easy. How do you lead such a big church? It's like, you just have to know the people. It's probably good, I can't do anything else. I just want to say how much we love you, what an honor it is, you guys in the lead. I just want to say this as we're leaving today. The best is yet to come. We haven't even seen what God has in store. We haven't even seen what God has in store. So on your way out, give somebody a high five, a hug or a handshake, tell them we're in this to win this. Grab your kids out of kids church, hit the mission field, and we'll see you this weekend. God bless you.