Episode 70: Revival

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

00:05

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

00:13

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

00:21

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

00:26

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

00:37

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

00:44

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Today is a double holiday.

00:51

It is a double holiday. I hadn't thought about that. I don't recognize one of us. No, it's...

00:56

Happy Valentine's Day. You know, that's St. Valentine's, so I guess they're both Catholic holidays.

01:03

What about Ash Wednesday? Y 'all do anything special? Oh yeah, you know, we're going to do drive -through, you know, we're going to throw a shovel full of ashes in your car, if you'll pull up and throw your window down.

01:17

On this Ash Wednesday, may the Pope and all his cohorts repent, or, if they don't, turn to an ash heap.

01:28

Too strong? No, not too strong. Well, that's not what it's called. That's not today's, that's not...

01:34

Well, it kind of could lead into what we're going to talk about today. Yeah, maybe so. Welcome to the

01:41

Real Church Podcast. I have no idea what episode we're on. I am your co -host,

01:47

Allen Nelson, one of the pastors of Providence Baptist Church in the metropolis, sprawling metropolis, soon -to -be sprawling metropolis, when millions of people arrive in April in Perryville, Arkansas.

02:00

And with me is Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of soon -to -be sprawling metropolis of Marshall, Arkansas, First Baptist Church of Marshall.

02:12

You're not pastor of the town of Marshall, but your church is in Marshall. What are we talking about, man?

02:18

Why is our town just going to increase with billions of people? Because the pagan sun worshippers are going to descend upon our humble abode.

02:28

I'm just going to call it. I don't expect even thousands of people.

02:33

If there are hundreds, as in multiple hundreds extra in the community, I'll call that something amazing.

02:41

Honestly, I don't know. I do know that a couple of weeks ago we had a ministerial alliance meeting, and one of the other pastors here in town, who is plugged in with the

02:50

Chamber of Commerce, he said that they have not rented out the – they figured by now every place in Searcy County would be booked up and stuff, and that it's not all booked up.

03:02

It's not filling up quite the way they thought. I do know that there has been a lot of stuff booked up in Van Buren County, where I live.

03:11

It's a little more direct over Clinton and Shirley than it is up here in Marshall.

03:19

There's 30 seconds shorter amount of complete darkness up here than in Clinton.

03:25

I don't know what to expect. Honestly, if it's as big as some of the people have said, it's going to be a train wreck.

03:33

We don't have the infrastructure for that. People – and you saw this in COVID – when you have events and stuff, there is – they tend to lean toward panic.

03:51

Anyway, that's not what our podcast is about today. No, no, no. But there are things that come up in your church life like this.

04:01

So what you and I are trying to do is steward well the opportunity, because unless the

04:08

Lord just providentially prevents this, it does seem there's going to be an uptick of people in our state and in our area.

04:15

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I certainly don't believe it's going to be extra thousands of people in Perry County anyway, dozens, hundreds maybe.

04:25

We'll see where we're at. And so that got us thinking – and I know some other brothers think as well – what do you do when the

04:35

Lord providentially brings people to your area? Well, we've talked about this on previous episodes.

04:40

We've talked about fair parades. We've talked about events and festivals that happen in your community.

04:47

What do you do during those times? Well, you go preach the gospel. And so that's what we're gearing up toward, to preach the gospel during the eclipse.

05:02

But we're also talking about holding revival services. And I want to be careful.

05:08

I obviously understand you can't manufacture revival.

05:15

Revival is of the Lord. Yet when you say revival services, it does seem to be something people kind of latch on and know.

05:24

In the history of our country, even before our country's official inception, there were revivals.

05:32

True, God sent revivals. And then even in the history of our country, there have been seasons of maybe not national revival, but at least pockets of revival.

05:45

What we're going to do is from April 5th to 8th, we'll be holding revival services.

05:51

We'll have two messages each night. And then during the day, we're going to go to places and preach the gospel and pass out tracts with revival services information too.

06:04

So they get a tract, shares the gospel, but also invites them to the service. So any comment on that?

06:11

And what are you guys doing? Yeah, so we're going to be having some evangelistic meetings.

06:18

There's a place here in Marshall called the Strawberry Shed. It's a really old kind of an open -air pavilion kind of a thing.

06:30

And we're going to meet there. And really, it's going to be less like a revival service and more like we're going to have some music performance style than worship necessarily style and then evangelistic preaching, just calling on people to repent and believe the gospel.

06:53

And then, yeah, hopefully during the day, we're going to try to do some kind of like a visitor center. We've got a facility that we're going to kind of try to make kind of a visitor center and use that as a base for going out and distributing tracts and sharing the gospel and doing those things.

07:14

So I think those are some things we're looking at doing. There's a couple other ideas.

07:19

We haven't got it all nailed down, everything we're going to try to do. But the same thing as what you were saying.

07:25

We know we're going to have more people in Searcy County than we normally have.

07:33

And I had one brother say, what are you going to do about follow -up? And I'm kind of like, probably trust the

07:42

Holy Spirit is going to be the follow -up. You know, because if they're from if we're really, you know, hopefully we will see maybe even local people hear the gospel and converted, you know, that would be amazing.

07:56

So it's not just that we want to reach the people from far away. But the idea is that there's going to be people here that that won't be here to be reached any other time than those days.

08:10

Yeah. And I'll say something else, too. I do think there is a noble desire for follow -up. I think it's good in an ordinary.

08:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, sometimes we're geared towards follow -up because we want to be able to produce numbers.

08:25

And I'm not saying this, brother, is I'm just saying that sometimes people's motivation. They're like, well, we got to know all this money.

08:34

Was it worth it? You know, and I say money, I mean, because like what we're doing, we're having guys come in.

08:39

And there'll be costs for our church for, you know, for feeding and and all these kind of things.

08:45

And so, like, was it worth it? Well, we're proclaiming Christ. That's what God has told us to do in his word to preach the gospel.

08:55

So that's what that's what we're going to do. I'm so exhausted with the gimmicks. You know, we recently

09:01

I don't know if you watched it, but recently dealt with that. He gets us.

09:07

Did they spend 14 million on it? I don't know. Whatever they spent on it. That sounds outrageous, but maybe it was they didn't share the gospel and they presented a woke

09:18

Jesus. What are we doing? God has called us as churches to preach the gospel.

09:26

I hear time and time again. What do we do to reach this city? What do we do to reach millennials?

09:31

What do we do to reach this generation? I'll tell you what you do. You take the book and you preach what it says and you point centers to Christ.

09:41

But the problem is, like, well, that doesn't work. You know, like, what do you mean it doesn't work?

09:47

Yeah. Yeah. So so anyway. And and and, you know, one of the things we kind of want to touch on in this episode is like, we're desperate for revival.

09:55

I mean, let's just be honest. Our country. This is speaking from man's side of the equation.

10:02

Our country is absolutely sunk. Oh, yeah. We're in debt that unimaginable debt.

10:11

We can say the numbers, but it really doesn't even make sense. We are on the brink of internal conflict, even between states.

10:22

We are continually sending money overseas to foolish things.

10:29

We are on the precipice of of, you know, international conflicts.

10:35

We have wicked leaders. We we you know, this was a joke, but it's a sad joke.

10:42

The other day, my son, they're working homeschool. They're working on the year. My son, like my youngest son, he's six.

10:50

He he knows the days of the week and the months and all that. There's our time of the concept. It's twenty twenty four.

10:55

What year is it? And so I just walk by and encourage him. Say, man, you don't know what year it is. That's OK. The leader of the free world.

11:02

He doesn't know what year it is. My wife commented on that on Facebook, and she said that that's kind of funny, but it's actually scary.

11:12

Yeah. Yeah. This guy holds like this guy's like has the codes to the nuclear law, like he's losing classified.

11:19

But anyway, that's the state of our country. Yeah. I mentioned to some pastors yesterday

11:24

I was in a meeting and I said to them, I said, which do you guys think is more likely the second civil war or a third world war?

11:35

And here's the thing. That's not just conspiracy talk. These days, both of those seem possible.

11:43

And here's this. Here's the sad thing, Eddie. By the time this podcast comes out in a few weeks, things could be worse.

11:49

But the whole point in all that is not to just paint a dismal picture. It's really to paint a realistic picture.

11:55

It's not a political statement that we're making. We're just stating the facts. These are the facts.

12:01

When it comes to Christianity, it's the Wild West, man. It's the book of judges.

12:07

Everyone's just doing what is right in their own eyes, whatever they want. They're kicking footballs off.

12:13

I mean, they're kicking Bibles off the stage. I don't know if you saw that. They're kicking Bibles off the stage for Super Bowl -themed services.

12:22

And they're singing, frankly, blasphemous or just stupid and silly songs.

12:28

And man, I'm just saying. I'm kind of passionate here. But all that to say, we are in desperate need of revival.

12:39

Maybe more of a need of revival than we've ever been as a country.

12:44

Abortion's still rampant. I mean, all of these things. The Southern Baptist Convention is trying to decide if women can be pastors.

12:53

And here's part of it, too. You mentioned the book of judges. That's where I'm preaching through right now.

13:00

We're in the later portion of Chapter 2. And just this last Sunday, we were looking at the text.

13:08

And it said that there in Judges Chapter 2, it's kind of laying out the cycle of disobedience in the people and then

13:18

God raising up a judge to deliver them. And you know what happens with each successive cycle is that when the people fell into sin, they were more corrupt than they were before.

13:32

I think we really need to realize that we are at a desperation point because if we do not see revival, we're going to fall as a people, as a nation, as a country, as a culture.

13:49

We're going to become more corrupt than our fathers, more corrupt than the generation that was before.

13:56

And I saw this during COVID. It was like, and this is,

14:02

I think the Lord really used this to kind of push me over the edge. But it was like people were just like, we want to get back to normal.

14:10

We want to go back. In essence, it was like the covers had been ripped off of us.

14:17

And I know you can't say we woke out of our sleep because woke is bad now. But you understand the analogy.

14:23

The covers were ripped off of us. We had to deal with something uncomfortable.

14:28

And everyone was like, let's just go back to sleep. And so we now are in a state where it's like, everybody's just like, let's get back to normal.

14:42

Let's get back to baseball games and football games. Let's get back to stock market stability.

14:51

And look, here's the deal. I don't mind saying this, assuming that the options this coming election are

15:00

Trump and Biden, I'll be voting Trump. That's what I'm going to be doing. But there's no hope in that.

15:09

That's not Trump. God is not raising up a savior in Trump.

15:15

That's right. And he needs to repent of many things.

15:21

But all that to say, we need revival. And I would encourage last year to see

15:29

Joe Beeky and Jeffrey Johnson and Paul Washer and Tom Askell, you know, coordinate and encourage.

15:37

And I think we've talked about on the podcast a national day of prayer, even international time global.

15:44

I think it was called Day of Prayer for Revival. We actually did a couple of those as our as a church in July and in October.

15:53

And then I actually had to miss the one in October because our daughter was born. And then next year, 2025, the

16:02

Founders Conference, which I'm really going to try to go to that. Their theme is on revival.

16:09

And so it's really encouraging to me to see that this is something on people's hearts and mind.

16:19

I thought maybe, you know, I know we've taken up probably half the episode already, but for this other half, why don't we talk about really what revival is?

16:30

How do local churches go about seeking it? And, you know, if we want to talk about maybe some dangers and such, but maybe

16:38

I'll just toss it back to you. Anything you want to add to what I said and then get the conversation going with when we say revival, true revival, what are we talking about?

16:50

Well, I think that to start on the road to true revival, there's probably two things that are necessary.

16:58

And this kind of goes back to what we've already been saying. But there has to be a real brokenness, a real sense of our need.

17:08

You're never going to have revival among a people who are apathetic to the problem of sin in their church or a sin in our communities, our culture, our families, our own lives.

17:22

I'm never going to have personal revival in my own heart if I'm apathetic to sin in my life.

17:29

So it's necessary that we have real conviction, like you were saying, a desperation for change.

17:40

And then I think historically, when we look back on the great movements of revival that God has brought throughout church history, it's always been preceded by passionate pleading with God.

17:56

You just don't see God bringing revival where he's not already brought the hearts of Christians to pray, like you were saying we were doing last fall with the emphasis on praying for revival then.

18:14

So, yeah, I mean, if we're not going to pray, we're not going to have revival. Yeah, I would just affirm everything you said and just add that revival is certainly more than just a service.

18:30

Yeah. When we say revival services, we're kind of saying that more maybe in a sense, in a pragmatic sense, so people in the area know what they're being invited to.

18:40

You know, if you say Bible conference or whatever, but so I see that point.

18:47

But we really are seeking for an uncommon manifestation of God's presence, if you will.

18:55

And it's more than just a service, an uncommon manifestation of the power of God to see revival judgment begins the household of God.

19:07

So in one sense, revival is not just a lot of lost people coming to Christ, though that is true.

19:15

But also the church to to get out of the rut, if you will, to focus on the things that are important to drop some of the foolish things that they're doing to repent.

19:27

I mean, what would it be like for a pastor to stand up and say, you know what? Last week we had a Super Bowl themed service and we kicked a

19:34

Bible and all that stuff was stupid and it was trash. And I don't know why I let myself get sucked into that.

19:40

And I repent. Right. Yeah. About that.

19:46

And I'll say this, too. There's some actual fruit. Like one of the things we are one year out of the

19:52

Asbury. I'm not going to call it revival because we're one year out.

19:58

And it was some apparently it was just an event. It was not true revival because true revival is going to produce fruit.

20:09

There's going to be in in in the revivals in church history and in American history.

20:16

Man, there are some crazy things happen. I mean, you you literally had people like like Zacchaeus. Obviously, this wasn't revival.

20:22

But in the in Luke 19, what does Zacchaeus do? You know, like he had defrauded people and he like the law said he is supposed to add a fifth to it.

20:31

But he was like, what do you do? Pay five times more or whatever. I mean, you see stuff like that. You see old wounds healed.

20:38

You see reconciliation. You see commitment to the local church.

20:44

So this stuff like Asbury, I'll give you an example of days and days and days and days of just singing and singing and singing.

20:52

But there's no after that. It's like, man, that was great. But there's no change in the church.

20:58

Right. Well, that's, you know, anyway, I'm talking. I can see you got something to say. Well, I was just going to say to our listeners, go to slow to write dot com.

21:09

Samuel say wrote an article, just a blog, just dealing with the

21:16

Asbury revival from last year. And he he states in his blog that he called several churches in the immediate area around Asbury and zero.

21:28

None of those churches reported any lasting effect from the revival.

21:34

Now, he mentions at the end of the article, you know, it's still possible that God really did save some people, really did do some some something in the lives of some people.

21:45

And there are possibility that there are churches far from Asbury that, you know, that he didn't talk to.

21:52

That have had an effect, but the reality is that there has not been a lasting move of the work of the

22:03

Holy Spirit in the lives of those churches. And what is God doing? He's building his church.

22:10

And so when we see these movements, when we see these events, when we see whether it's labeled revival or whatever we want to call it, it does not having a lasting effect on the local church, on individual lives.

22:25

Then it it that kind of proves it was not an actual work of the spirit of God, because God is building his church to revival.

22:35

Will will have lasting fruit. I mean, this might be a little too strong, but you might even say that one of the fruits of.

22:50

The Great Awakening, the first Great Awakening. Is. The fact that our country is founded.

22:59

Yeah. You know, and I don't think I'm being too strong there, but I think there certainly is an impact there from people's hearts changing and understanding, you know, liberty and freedom and God ordained rights and those things.

23:13

But anyway, I don't have we don't have to jump in on that. But the point is, true revival is going to bear lasting fruit, fruit in the family, fruit in the nation, fruit in the church.

23:23

And so, again, you mentioned earlier about, you know. Historically, revival is preceded by serious prayer.

23:34

And really, the question comes like what comes first, prayer or revival? And in one sense, it's

23:41

God himself stirring his people to pray, you know. So so it's not like it's not we're not saying we manipulate

23:49

God and we just pray enough and then God sends revival. But there seems to be and I hope this is happening now,

23:55

Eddie, that there seems to be multiple people across.

24:02

Various, maybe even theological divides in different places of the world, even

24:08

I'm talking about, you know, you have Baptist and Presbyterian and maybe you had

24:14

Dutch Reformed and. Maybe people more cessationist, maybe people more continuations, but you have a lot of different people, and I'm not saying those distinctions aren't important.

24:25

I'm just saying there's Christians in all those camps and you seem to have multiple people saying, guys, we need to plead for revival.

24:37

And so perhaps this is a stirring of the

24:43

Holy Spirit in the hearts of his people. I hope it is. And we ought to be obedient and seek the

24:50

Lord. Now, now, what would you say the difference is quickly between revival and revivalism?

24:57

Yeah, I think revivalism is when we're seeking, we are seeking to produce in the people or in the churches a desired effect.

25:10

We want there to be a certain emotion, a certain feeling, a certain reaction, a certain response, a certain something that we can quantify.

25:20

Whereas real revival is an outpouring of God's grace on, like we said, a desperately needy people.

25:30

Maybe a big difference is often what happens in revivalism or often maybe what stifles true revival is that we want to look for a shortcut.

25:44

We don't want to feel despair. We don't want to feel the pain of dealing with sin and real repentance.

25:54

And so we look for a way out of that. We look for a therapy.

26:00

We look for a treatment. We look for something that is going to relieve us of the pain, maybe a way of escaping it instead of dealing with it before the

26:14

Lord. And I think this kind of goes back to something I mentioned earlier. We have to be able to admit our own sin and our own struggle so that we can experience

26:26

God's grace and his mercy in that repentance. And a lot of times we don't want to deal with that.

26:32

And so instead we want to escape it. We want to find, you know,

26:38

I think it's why we see a lot of the false worship that we see in our culture running after substances and false sexuality and all these kinds of things is because people are looking to mask their brokenness and the hurt.

26:55

Whereas we as believers, we ought to be able to not just put on a fake smile and, hey, everybody be happy, but really call people to admit that brokenness, admit that sinfulness and come to God in repentance because he can bring true healing.

27:16

I'm going to give you a book recommendation, maybe that our listeners have never heard of, but maybe you have.

27:25

It's from Banner of Truth Lectures on Revivals from W .B. Sprague, I think,

27:31

S -P -R -A -G -U -E. He lived in the 19th century and honestly, in some parts, it's kind of dry, but he published this in 1832.

27:41

And of course, this is kind of during the time period of the Second Great Awakening or maybe a little bit after.

27:47

But he's trying to analyze that and say, this is what true revival is.

27:55

And so basically, he says that true believers should promote the cause of genuine revival and to guard against what you're talking about here.

28:05

This is his words, a spurious excitement. And so revivalism is kind of that spring meeting, fall meeting, and you just whip up excitement and then everything goes back to normal.

28:21

And I think the problem is for some of us guys that have embraced the doctrines of grace and been serious about the scriptures and such, that we've kind of looked at that and maybe thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

28:36

And so we've looked at that and we said, that's not right. And it's not.

28:42

But calling people together to preach, seeking

28:48

God and pleading with God, and even if you want to call them revival services or not, but preaching on these revival kind of themed messages from the scripture about returning to God and those things, that's not wrong.

29:05

Yes, you can turn that into an unbiblical mess and we've all seen it.

29:11

But the danger is just dismissing that altogether. So we guard against revivalism while seeking true

29:21

God ordained revival. And so now we've kind of hit on all this.

29:26

But now, you know, practically for local churches, whether your church is in the city or in the suburbs or in the country or you've got eight people and you're out in the sticks, as we say, what is it that local churches can do to seek revival?

29:45

We've already hit on this, but let's put some things just practically.

29:51

What can we do? So one of the first things

29:56

I would say is have prayer meetings. That's right. It's one thing to say we need to pray for revival.

30:05

But it's another thing to say, OK, let's let's put this in action. Let's have a prayer meeting seeking

30:14

God for revival. I think we did a podcast at some point. I believe we've done one on prayer meetings.

30:20

Yeah. And I think it's appropriate to say, look, we're going to have this meeting in this meeting.

30:27

In this specific meeting, we're not going to take, you know,

30:32

Aunt Susie's, you know, upcoming knee surgery. Not saying don't pray about that.

30:38

But I'm saying in this meeting, we're not going to take the we're not we're going to pray for this.

30:43

We're going to pray for this revival or for God to bring genuine revival.

30:49

Isaiah 64, I hope that you would rend the heavens. Yeah. Yeah. That the mountains might quake in your presence.

30:57

A very good counsel. Again, we're not saying whoever Aunt's surgery is not important.

31:03

It is. But in this meeting, we're seeking we're seeking the face of God.

31:09

Yeah. So I think that's good. What else? You know, I think another thing we can do is we ought to teach the through.

31:20

Even like you were just saying, you know, where where does the Scripture point us to?

31:26

God. In interacting with his people in this way and drawing them back to himself, and we ought to preach and teach that regularly to the congregation.

31:38

You know, this is something that where we have biblical grounds to call on God to do what he's been faithful to do before.

31:47

Yeah. You know, we ought to preach and teach, not just preach and teach at.

31:52

If we've said if we want to set aside meetings, meeting times, that's fine. You know, we ought to continue to gather together all the more as we see the day approaching.

32:04

But I'm saying even before you get to set aside meetings, there's no reason why in our regular gatherings we can't be teaching and preaching.

32:16

I know that you guys have been I know you guys have been teaching through your your statement of faith.

32:25

But before that, didn't you do a Sunday school series through Baptist history or something like that?

32:32

A couple of different times I've done in series on Great Awakening Revival. Right. Right. And that's an opportunity just to remind the believers that, look, the

32:43

Lord has worked this way. Yeah. You know, and obviously hold meetings, you know, hold if it doesn't matter if you want to call them revival meetings, but hold.

32:55

You know, longer meetings to preach these themes.

33:00

And a couple of practical things I would say is like, you know, number one, don't expect just because you're holding the meeting that God is obligated.

33:09

Right. Expect great things from God. Pray and seek.

33:15

But don't don't hold God to an obligation. You can't manufacture revival.

33:20

It's it's God. And a couple other practical things I say is like, look, worry about getting a preacher who is faithful rather than I'm not.

33:33

I'm not. There are there are, by the way, faithful evangelists. One of one of our friends that we've gotten to know a little bit recently, you know,

33:41

Brandon Harrell. I'm grateful for faithful evangelists. So I don't have a problem with evangelists.

33:47

But there are people out there that have three sermons that that's what that's what they that's just it's just money.

33:56

It's just a career to them. Right. So seek out a good and faithful brother.

34:02

And I'll say this. Don't like stop worrying about money. So, for example, you say, well, I'd love to do it, but our church, we're just small.

34:09

We don't we got eight people. We just don't got a budget. Okay. What are you talking about? Like, call

34:15

Eddie Ragsdale, you know? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, yeah. Call Alan. Like, like, you're like, hey, look, we just we need some preaching and we want it to be different because it's good to get in other voices now.

34:28

Now, you could do it yourself as your pastor or plurality of elders, you know, that'd be no problem.

34:34

But it's good to have other voices. But don't let don't let the budget be the issue.

34:40

Right. Like, that's frustrating to me sometimes when it's like, well, we just we don't got budget for revival this year.

34:45

Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah. You're you must be looking at the wrong guys.

34:51

Now, I do believe we should take care, especially people whose whose livelihood is connected with, you know, this.

34:59

We should take care of faithful brothers of labor is worthy of his wages. I'm not saying that like in shame on churches that have just been like that have not taken care of people when they could have.

35:09

Right. But we've got to get out of this mindset about money and ministry is just kind of really too

35:16

American, honestly. Yeah. Like, let's let's preach. Put a guy up in somebody's home and and then don't worry so much because this is this will frustrate, you know, in you just got to you just got to schedule it and you can't worry about what's going on.

35:35

Yeah, because if you if you try to say, well, I can't do it in this month because he got this. I can't do it in this month.

35:41

Got this. There's obvious things that aren't going to be good. So like you try to do it in Clinton, maybe around the chuckwagon week, like it's probably not a great week or whatever.

35:50

But even then, like just schedule it and just go and just do it and let and and trust the

35:56

Lord with it. Right. Right. And, you know, something else. It is good.

36:02

It's like you said, I think it's so good for our people to get in other voices, you know, preachers.

36:09

However, man, don't don't think the preacher is going to bring the revival. That's right.

36:15

You know, if God doesn't bring the revival, I don't care. I don't care who the preacher is.

36:23

I don't care if you got Votie Bauckham or Paul Washer. They're not bringing revival. God brings revival.

36:30

And so and so don't think, well, we got to get the I mean, I remember when I was when

36:35

I was a teenager, you know, there were certain there were certain speakers back then.

36:41

Yeah. You had you had to get to their crusade or their or whatever, because they were the guy, you know.

36:48

And let's be honest, in reform circles, this can happen. You know, you look at, you know,

36:54

I'm going to a conference this weekend, but you look at conferences. A lot of times people get to chasing chasing certain speakers, you know,

37:02

I want to go because my favorite, you know, celebrity reform pastor is going to be at this one.

37:08

But the reality is we ought to be seeking fellowship and and just the right preaching of the word and not thinking, well, it's got to be this certain pastor that I like it.

37:22

They're going to bring they're going to bring the truth. No, no. The Bible is going to bring the truth.

37:27

The Holy Spirit is going to bring revival. Yeah, that's right. And like one of the things we're doing in this another idea for people, put your ego aside and invite some people local that are faithful brothers to preach.

37:41

Yeah. But one thing we're doing is we've got a church six miles from us and a church maybe like 12 miles from us.

37:49

I don't know off the top of my head, but basically West Brown at Plummerville and Jeremy Williams at Houston.

37:55

And they're each going to be doing a message, you know, because I think it'll be an encouragement to them, but also be an encouragement to us.

38:04

We we minister right alongside these brothers, but we never get to hear him preach, you know, and and so I don't be don't be afraid to do that.

38:13

But again, we're not saying this is not even it can't be event driven. But at the same time, you pray and you preach, you know, you pray, you preach.

38:27

And an additional thing we're doing is actual public evangelism, you know, and then we're just going to trust the sovereignty of God.

38:40

And here's the thing, too, like we're going to have a clean conscience, like we're going to be faithful and we're going to preach the gospel.

38:48

And we're going to say we sought the Lord. And if the Lord sends revival, praise his name.

38:54

And if in his wisdom and providence, he doesn't send revival, we can say, well,

39:00

Christ was proclaimed. And in that we rejoice. So let me throw a question back to you.

39:06

What what will constitute you thinking the

39:12

Lord has sent revival? How will you gauge it? Well, I think it's just something to gauge.

39:20

Let's first first and foremost, I'll say this, most people, myself included, you included in most people listening to this haven't really experienced.

39:31

God sent revival like we're talking about. Right. You know, and I think that and so one point like I'm I want to be careful with my brothers with with, you know, because there are some faithful men, they're like, look at Asbury.

39:45

Well, I want to say I get I get the longing like I want that, you know.

39:54

But we also have to have discernment. And I think that how we we gauge discernment, how we gauge revival is biblical discernment.

40:04

Are we seeing repentance? Yes. True God wrought repentance, people turning from their sins and not just saying

40:14

I'm revived. And then the next day I got baseball or whatever, you know, it's like, yeah, not that you have to give up all those things per se, but some of those things you may, you know,

40:25

Hebrews 12 says, lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely.

40:32

So I'm I differentiate between those. There are sins in our life.

40:38

There's also weights, just things that were like, you know, I got to stop doing that. I got to delete social media off my phone or whatever.

40:45

Whatever the case may be is like it's not necessarily a sin per se, but it's it's a way. So you see people start giving those things up.

40:52

You see people start turning from their sins. You see people again, the local church, you see the local church become.

41:01

A priority again. You see the week begin to revolve around Sunday instead of Sunday be crammed in to the week.

41:10

You see salvations and baptisms and all these things, a hunger for prayer, a hunger for theology, you know, a hunger for Christ.

41:23

Sometimes our conversations, they feel so forced. Like I want to talk about Christ, but other people don't, you know, and it's like, you know, and so all these things,

41:34

I believe, will be short term and long term fruit. Yeah. Revival.

41:40

What do you think? Oh, well, I think. Yeah, I think we're going to I think you're going to see real repentance.

41:46

I think you're going to see a passion for, you know, we talked about prayer proceeding revival, but you're also going to see passionate prayer.

41:58

Being a fruit of revival, people driven, you know, to to pray,

42:03

I think you're going to see an increased fellowship among God's people. And you're going to see an ongoing work of evangelistic, you know, proclamation of the gospel where where real revivals happened.

42:20

You're not going to end up with what they said, you know, after the latter portions of the second great awaking.

42:27

You're not going to see burned over districts. You're going to see the evangelistic fires burn, continuing to burn as as the gospels proclaimed.

42:37

Yeah, I think those are things you can expect. Yeah. Out of real revival. You know, one thing

42:42

I didn't mention this earlier, we talk about evangelists, street preachers, those sorts of things, and we're going to have all that at our church.

42:49

So we'll have Pastor Jonathan Murdoch, Pastor Randall Easter, Pastor or Pastor Jeremy Williams and Wes Brown, myself and Pastor Jacob.

43:04

And then we'll have Brandon Harrell. But we also have street preachers as well. But every one of these men that are coming are local church guys, local church members.

43:14

And again, I would say, like, if you're trying to look at an evangelist to come in, who's not committed to his local church.

43:22

That's a problem. Or, you know, 52 Sundays, he's out preaching. He's never involved in the church.

43:29

That is a problem. Have I stressed this enough, Eddie? Revival and the local church are going to go hand in hand.

43:37

You see that in history. You see that, you know, in the scriptures, God's people are coming together.

43:46

You know, I know you don't have the local church in the Old Testament, of course. But when you see things like Nehemiah 8, you know, you have the people of God coming together.

43:57

It's not just this little individualistic thing. So it's connected to the local church.

44:04

You can't, you just simply can't. Because this is what, you said this earlier, this is what God is doing in the world today.

44:11

Christ is building his church. This is the kingdom. Yep. So, therefore, these two things are not going to be separated.

44:21

Yeah, that's right. The last thing I would say is whether or not, you know, we end up having, you know, some big event that is recognized, you know, by other people as revival.

44:37

I think we really, and I know I mentioned this already, but it really has to start with, man,

44:43

I need it. You know, I need it. Because I think if our idea is, man, our culture needs it, you know, we kind of started out talking about that, and that's true.

44:57

Or man, those other people at my church, they need it. I'm not even here saying this.

45:03

I'm saying this, I need it today. Eddie needs it today. Eddie needs revival.

45:09

Search me and try me. Oh God. Yeah. Help my unbelief.

45:18

Yeah, that's right. It's good, brother. I appreciate that. I appreciate the mild rebuke there, ripping our culture, but not talking about really, you know, really, really the culture is just downstream, if you will, from the church.

45:32

Yeah. So we need revival and let it begin here. Well, I hope this is helpful.

45:39

I hope that you and your local church will seek these things, pray about these things.

45:45

I'm not sure who all our audience is. If you're a pastor, lead out in this.

45:51

If you're not a pastor, pray for your pastor and maybe meet with your pastor or pastors and encourage them in this.

45:57

You know, don't bring this as a hammer and beat them over the head, but encourage them and see what the

46:04

Lord might do. I don't know that the Holy Spirit's not stirring his people, and I really hope that that is the case because our only hope is the

46:16

Lord. That's right. All right, brother. I think we've had a helpful episode.

46:22

I hope that we have. Why don't you sign us off? See you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

46:40

God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.