The Promise of Power — Carter Conlon

The promise of power. Father, I thank you this day with all of my heart. Thank you, Lord God, for your presence. Thank you for the touch of your Holy Spirit, the foretaste of heaven. Thank you, Lord, for the incredible inheritance of new life that you've given to us, and a reason to live, and a divine purpose on the earth.

Thank you, Lord, that you don't leave us to work this whole salvation out in our own strength. But, oh God, you enable us with your own Holy Spirit, the third person of the triune God, alive, moving, living inside of our physical bodies.

Lord, you enlighten our minds. You quicken our flesh. You give us the ability to become the people that you have determined we should be on the earth. And so, God, I'm asking for that anointing to be here in this sanctuary in full measure today on my life as I speak these words on every heart, oh God.

As we open our hearts to truth, that truth may transform us. Help us, Lord Jesus Christ, not to live beneath our inheritance, that which you bought for us on the cross, that which became ours when you were raised from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

Don't let us live in poverty when we have the treasure of resurrection life available to us. God, help us to escape poor thinking in the Christian world and help us again to regain and reestablish our rightful place on the earth.

Oh Lord God, we are to be a people empowered of the Holy Spirit, a people who push back darkness, a people whose God presence in our lives has to be reckoned with. And so Lord, I pray God with all my heart that you would make us a people so utterly and wholly discontent until we are filled with your Holy Spirit, until you have full reign inside of our hearts, our lives and our minds.

Oh Lord God, give us the grace to push back this flood of darkness in this present generation. Cause us as your people to stand up again. Oh God, send your Holy Spirit to us Lord. Send your Holy Spirit to this church.

Send your Holy Spirit oh God into each one of our lives and help us to reach the full measure Lord of what we are called to be in you. We ask you to raise your church and bring deliverance to this nation.

Bring deliverance to our children. My God, bring deliverance Lord to our homes, our families, our cities, our towns, our schools. Push back this canopy of hell that wants to spread itself over this nation.

Father God, it's all in the hands of your church. It always has been. So we ask oh God, that we would have the sense to press in until we know that you have gripped our hearts and our minds for your divine purpose.

And Father, we thank you for this with all of our heart and we praise you in Jesus name, amen. Acts chapter two, beginning at verse one. And when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire and sat upon each of them.

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled saying one to another, look, are not all these who speak Galileans?

How is it that we hear each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes, Elamites and those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya, adjoining Cyrene.

Visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabs. We hear them speaking in our tongues the wonderful works of God. So they were all amazed and perplexed saying to one another, whatever could this mean?

Others mocking, said they're full of new wine. But Peter standing up with the 11 raised his voice and said to them, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and hear my words.

For these are not drunk as you suppose seeing it's only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions. Your old men shall dream dreams. And on my men servants and on my maid servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they shall prophesy.

And I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Verse 17, Peter says it shall come to pass in the last days saith God. Now these last days began with the outpouring of God's Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and will culminate with cosmic signs at the return of Jesus Christ.

So these are the two bookends of the last days. The last days was biblically speaking a period of time. It began on the day of Pentecost and will end when Jesus Christ returns to take up lawful ruling and reigning on the earth forever.

Now between those two points is a season of a redeemed spirit, empowered people. That's who you and I are. We're left on the earth as a testimony of God's mercy, of God's power, of God's provision, of the reality and the truth of what happened on the cross 2000 years ago.

And we are called to be a people who push back the darkness that always wants to swallow all of humanity. Satan himself, he hates humankind created in the image of God and he will do everything to confound, confuse, darken and destroy men and women created in the image of God.

He will do everything to destroy the family created by God, empowered by God. We are called to push this darkness back and show everyone who can still hear that there is a way to forgiveness and there is a way to everlasting life through Jesus Christ, the son of God.

Now this God initiated force on the earth is comprised of all people, spirit empowered, to present indisputable proof of the reality of God. Young and old. I don't like the concept that people sometimes try to propagate that ours is a young church, ours is an old church, ours is a new church, ours is an established church.

As your pastor, I'm gonna tell you at Times Square Church, we are just the church. We are young and old, rich and poor, all walks of life. It shall come to pass in the last day, says God, I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. On my men servants and on my maid servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they shall prophesy.

I think in part what Malachi saw in chapter four when he said in the last days, God would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, in some measure at least, it speaks to me of a spiritual awakening in the church of Jesus Christ, a spiritual awakening that helps us to understand that we are one body.

We are one church, we are one people. There's a place in the body of Christ for the young, there's a place for the old, there's a place for the strong, there's a place for the weak, there's a place for those with reputation and there's a place for those with no reputation.

All people, all people, everybody is an integral part of what God is going to do and is doing in the last days. I love the fact that he says, I'll pour out my spirit, your sons and daughters shall prophesy.

And that really just means they will have an understanding of the future. They will see things that are not given to natural men to see, they will have an ability that only comes from God. He says, your young men will see visions.

I love it when John the Beloved, he writes, he says, I write to you young men because you're strong and you've overcome the wicked. Young men by nature wanna get up and conquer. They wanna take up the sword of God, they have this inner drive that's placed there by God himself to accomplish something in the earth.

And so young men head out to do something for God, but the old men, don't forget us old men are still here. Me and Rocky are still here. Is Rocky up there? Me and Rocky are still here. And it's given to us to see something of your future.

It's given to us to maybe caution you about some things that we've learned along the way. It's given to us to dream dreams of what your life is going to be and how God's going to use you to continue this warfare and push back the darkness.

But don't forget we're walking on this journey with you. And don't think because you're older here today that you've got no place in the body of Christ. Don't buy the lie that somehow Times Square Church is moving to more of a youthful focus and it leaves you out.

No, it doesn't. You and I are called to give guidance. We're called to encourage. We're called to, we do see what others can't see. Do you understand? That's why the body is not just one part, but many.

And no part of the body can say to any other part, I have no need of you. You've done your day, you're all done, you're over. Or I have no need of you, you're too young and you're too foolish, you don't understand the ways of God.

We all work together just like the heart and lungs work together inside the human body. We all worked together. Now in the Gospel of John chapter 16, I'm not sharing with you anything today you haven't already heard or you don't already know.

But there comes a time in your life and in mine that we need to stop hearing and start entering into something. Is, you know, you could study, you could pick up a magazine on some particular country in the world and you could study everything from soil samples to weather patterns to you could even memorize the numbers of highways that this particular country has.

But if you don't go there, isn't your experience just a little bit short? We can study the Bible, we can know the Greek and the Hebrew meanings of all of these things, we can talk about church history, we can study past revivals, we can know more than most everybody in the church.

But if you and I never enter into this incredible place of God's power, this incredible place of enablement by the Spirit of God, where we're taken out of weakness and made into strength, out of confusion and given wisdom, out of naturalness and brought into the supernatural life of Christ, aren't we really just to be a people pitied?

If all we are is historians and students, but we never participate in what we're studying. We can tell everybody else about it, but it's not really our reality. John in chapter 16, verse 13 to fit, well, Jesus said in the recorded in the gospel of John, he said, when the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth.

He will guide you. You have the Holy Spirit inside of you now. Every man, every woman here, you have the Holy Spirit. If you belong to Christ, you have God's Holy Spirit. He will guide you into what? All truth, not just some truth.

How does he guide you? You begin to read this book, you read it, and he guides you into it. He guides you into it. Not just studying it, but into it, becoming a reality in your life. This is what the Holy Spirit will do.

Not just give you knowledge. Doesn't the apostle Paul write that in the last days, there will be a people who are always learning, but never coming into the practical experience, may I put it this way, of what they're learning.

It's just all in the head. Nothing is in the life. Nothing has become part of their everyday living. But when the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come.

He will tell you. You know, on the day of Pentecost, when those men and women stepped out of that upper room, formerly weak, formerly failures, every person wanting, in a sense, to glorify Christ on the earth, but knowing that in themselves, without the power of God, is just not gonna happen.

When the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were immediately given the ability to speak the wonderful works of God in languages they had never learned. But they were known languages. The people who came, were there for the feasts in Jerusalem at that time, heard them speaking in their own languages, the wonderful works of God.

And that means the Megalios of God in the Greek, which means the anticipated outworking of the inward presence and power of God. They were talking about things to come. They were talking about who God is, what God has done, and what God is going to do in each of their lives.

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. He will take the victory that I won for you, and he will show it to you, because it's now yours. It's not just words on a page in a book.

It's now your victory. All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore, I said, he will take of mine, and he will declare it to you. He will show you the victory. There is a victory for you. Do you know that?

There is something of God for you, that God has for you, that you could never hope to do for yourself. There's something he wants to give you, that you can't get in your own strength. There are places he wants to take you, that you can't go with your own reasoning.

There's something that God Almighty himself wants to do in and through your life, and only he can do it. You take this book, you open it. This is how my life has been. If I was Joshua, and I was leaving you now, I'm not, by the way, but if I was, I would say my whole life, my whole Christian life has been, I've opened this book.

The Holy Spirit has led me into it, and I've believed it. And I have been made into much more than I ever could hope to be in my own strength. I've been taken all over the world. I've stood in places where only the power of God could accomplish what he sent me to do.

No amount of human effort or reasoning could ever do these things, only the Spirit of God. In this book, I learned how to be a husband. I hope, is that right? Can you say amen to that? I learned how to be a father.

I learned how to be a friend. I learned how to be a servant. Now, when I say learned, I started to enter into it. You're never perfect in any of these things. None of us are. But I left the old way behind, and believing God's promises to be true, entered in to a new way of living.

And I can honestly say today, the man who came to Christ in 1978 is dead. That man no longer lives. I don't know that man. That man's gone. I don't even wanna see a picture of that man. He's long dead.

He's long gone. God's Holy Spirit showed me things to come. Showed me. I remember one night I was laying in bed, and I was weeping. And I wasn't prone to weeping, but I was reading in the Bible about the love of God.

God's love towards us, and the love that he commands us to have to one another. And I was sitting there, and Pastor Teresa said to me, what are you crying for? And I said, well, I'm reading this about love.

I'm reading about the love of God for me, the love of God he calls me to have for others. And I'm just so far outside of this thing. I read it, but it's not been my experience. I don't love myself. I read in the Bible I'm supposed to love others like I love myself.

I don't love myself. I don't love other people. People have been a source of pain in my life for years, and I don't even know what to do. I was looking at it, and I felt that the Lord was trying to lead me into it, but it was just so far out of my experience.

Then she spoke a word into my life. She said, by the time you die, she said, you will be known as a man of such love. She said, God is going to transform your life. Praise be to God. Thank you, Lord. It's funny, you know, you look at the Bible and say, if God can't get through to you, your wife will, okay?

If he can't speak to your heart, he will speak to you whatever way he can. He'll get it through to you. But this is really the point. He will show you things to come. Young people, listen to me, don't sell yourself short.

Your view of your life is so short of what God has for you. Don't try to, don't try to cram the kingdom of God into yourself, you and your five-year plan and your 10-year plan or your life plan, whatever.

Don't try to do that. Your plan is so small compared to what God has for you. Let God's plan take root in your life. Let the Holy Spirit, as you begin to read the Bible in, in the power of the Holy Spirit, he suddenly unfolds a path before you.

And most often I would suggest it's a path you couldn't even hope to walk in your own strength. Because the glory of what he's about to do is not to be a view. You're not to be writing books, telling others seven steps you took to accomplish this or that.

There's only one step. You believe God and he takes you into it and makes it a reality in your life. Folks, we've got to get out of the natural as a church age and back into the supernatural again as God's people.

This is what the Lord is calling us to. Now in John chapter 20, the disciples were gathered in a place and they were afraid. Now the scripture says in verse 19 of John chapter 20, the same day at evening being the first day of the week when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews.

Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them, peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again, peace to you.

As the father has sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. He breathed on them. This was, the Bible calls this measure of God's Holy Spirit that we receive when we first believe in Christ.

It's the deposit of our inheritance. It's the beginnings of an eternity. It's that presence of God's spirit that he gives to our life that declares to our heart that we belong to him. It's that initial cry that comes into the heart, Abba, Father.

And many of you today, I know you remember that cry when it first came into your heart when suddenly there was no longer this distance between you and God, but somehow you felt that bridge had been made.

You were back in right relationship with God. And you know in your heart that you belong to him and he belongs to you. But not too many days down the road, they were assembled together again in another place, an upper room.

And in this place, it was not just something that God was going to do inside of them to prove that he was their father and they were his children, but he was going to give them power. Power that they had not ever even dreamed could be theirs.

Power that had been prophesied in the Old Testament, not just through the prophet Joel, but through others. Power, when God's Holy Spirit would come upon a people and young, old, rich, poor, influential, uninfluential, rulers, leaders, servants, all men, all women, all walks of life would be given an identical measure of God's Holy Spirit and would be raised up out of weakness and brought into the strength of God, given an incredible inheritance that could only come from the hand of God, made into people that only God could make them into.

Standing in the marketplace, declaring who he is and what he has done, enabled to speak to people in other nations and other cultures and other languages and tell them in their language about the marvelous works of God that only God can do.

I love the scene in the Bible when 3 ,000 people, at least 3 ,000, there's probably more, had just come from the temple and they're trying to make peace with God and they're going through all their rituals.

And I'm sure these rituals had deep meaning in every heart. It's like the person in the church today that goes to every service. They listen to all kinds of messages. They go online every chance they get.

They go to prayer meetings and they're coming home, but there's still this deep sense of powerlessness in the heart. And thousands of people coming back from the temple suddenly encounter 120 people who have come out of a place of prayer, filled with the Spirit of Almighty God, given abilities that are biblical.

There's nothing unbiblical about what was happening here. They're given abilities of God to speak in a manner, not just to communicate with people of different cultures and languages and countries, but they're speaking about things yet to come and they're doing it in such a supernatural way that everyone has stopped in their tracks and they say, what must we do?

What could this mean? What could this mean? This ought to be the testimony of your life and mine. When you go into your workplace, you should be so God-gripped and so God-touched by the Holy Spirit that whether they say it audibly or think it in their heart, everybody in that office with you looks at you and says, what could this mean?

How did this happen? How did she change so radically? How did he change? Where did this song come from? Where did this ability to speak positively when such negativity is in the air and surrounding us every day, all day?

What does this mean? That's when the apostle Peter stepped up and said, no, this is not any kind of an intoxicant you're looking at. This is that which was promised by God through the prophet Joel, that God in the last days was going to pour out his spirit on all flesh and humankind would be brought back into a right relationship with Almighty God.

And God himself was going to fill a body on the earth and prove beyond any reasonable doubt, the reality there is only one God, there's only one cross, there's only one spirit, there's only one body. This is that which was promised by God, which began on the day of Pentecost and will culminate with cosmic signs, shakings on the earth.

The Bible says so powerful that men's hearts will begin to fail them for fear. The writer of Hebrews says, everything that can be shaken is about to be shaken, that only that which cannot be shaken might remain.

And might I suggest to you, the only thing that cannot be shaken is God himself. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. And God will have a people empowered with a spirit of prayer, given to a spirit of praise, given to speech that comes from God with transformed hearts, transformed minds, transformed lives.

God will have a people on the earth in these last days. Glory to the name of Jesus. Assembled and say, God, thank you that I'm saved. Thank you that you visited us in that initial room and you breathed on us and said, receive the Holy Spirit.

But here we are, oh God, and we need power. We need power. That's got to be the cry of your heart today, my brother, my sister, we need power. You need it, I need it, we need power to stand, not just for our own preservation, but for the sake of our children, for the sake of those who are trying to find God through whatever means they're trying to find God.

You and I need power. We need to stand again in our generation as a witness, a living witness of who Christ really is. And then lastly, in Acts chapter four, it was a season of threatening where Peter and John went up into the temple, healing was flowing through their lives.

And then the order of the day brought them in and threatened them with imprisonment, potential physical violence, whatever it is. And they got together after this threatening with brothers and sisters in Christ.

And they said, Lord, look on their threats, verse 29 of Acts chapter four, and grant to your servants that with all boldness, they may speak your word by stretching out your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Now, I don't know about you. I don't know about your theology, but I know that I need God's Holy Spirit every day.

I need him all day. I need him over and over again. As God uses his physical body to pour out, I need him to pour back in. I don't ever wanna lean on my own strength. And I thank God for that initial deposit of the Holy Spirit, but I've gotta keep going back to the bank of God and saying, Lord, there's threatenings in this generation.

Thank you for that Pentecost. Thank you for that experience years ago. Thank you for my salvation. Thank you for how you touched me and transformed my life. But this is a day of threatening. Oh God, and you've got to shake the place where I am standing again.

I need your Holy Spirit. I need to be able to speak the word of God with boldness. And I'm asking you, Lord, to use my life and stretch out your hand and heal in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Heal sick in minds, sick in homes, sick in minds, sick in lives.

God Almighty set people free and do it through my life. You see, somebody who has no recognition of their need of the Holy Spirit is like a person who takes employment with a company, takes their first paycheck and never goes back to get paid again, works there for years and never goes back.

And there's a compilation of envelopes and resource waiting for them. But you say, why don't you go get your pay? Well, I don't need to. I got a check 25 years ago. I don't know about you, but I need the resource of God every day.

I need his strength. I need his power. If they needed the Holy Spirit then, how much more today? This is a very, very dark day, my brother and my sister. We're not gonna win this moment with an argument.

You know that. Everybody's arguing and nobody's interested in our argument. We will win it with an experience with God. We will win it with the presence of God being very much in each of our lives. We will win it by going into the prayer closet.

It doesn't have to be necessarily here. This can be your upper room, but your upper room can be your bedroom. You go into that upper room and say, God, I need your power. That's your homework assignment for this summer while we're gone.

I need your power. I need your Holy Spirit. And Lord, do it the way you want to do it in my life. But oh God, I need your strength. I need your power. Consider the threatenings of this moment. Laws passed, laws anticipated.

Voice is telling us we can't pray. We can't do this. We can't do that. We can't speak this. This is exactly what was happening in Acts chapter four. And they got together and prayed and said, Lord God, you've got to give us your Holy Spirit again.

You've got to enable us. You've got to empower us. And so that's my cry today. And that's my challenge to you over the next several weeks. Cry out to him. Cry out to him. You see, what you experienced in worship this morning should be your everyday experience.

It shouldn't be limited to Sunday morning. There should be a, whether or not you're raising your hands and jumping, there should be a little person jumping up and down inside you on the subway, worshiping inside of you, doing what you physically do here.

If all you have is a Sunday morning excitement, as good as that is, you're living short of what God has for your life. I challenge you because you see, my brother and my sister, the day calls for more than just casual Christianity now.

The day calls for an anointing of God's Holy Spirit that only he can give. Now, some people here this morning, you need courage. You're like those initial believers in John chapter 20, assembled but afraid.

You need that assurance of God. You need that breath of God to come upon your life. And others, you simply need power to obey. You know what you ought to do, but you need power to obey. And listen, we're all in the same boat.

We all need the power of God. We can't live this life to any effect in our generation without the power of God. And others are being threatened. You're being threatened in the workplace. You're being threatened in your schools.

And you need to pray as they did. God, consider the threatenings of this present time and stretch forth your hand through us and begin to heal and give us boldness to speak your word. That doesn't mean arrogance.

It means courage. It means compassion. It means the ability to stand and speak truth in spite of the consequence. They were asking for more of what got them into trouble in the first place. And when they prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken.

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness. I'm gonna be praying for you in the next few weeks while Pastor Teresa and I were, I'm gonna pray God shake this place.

I mean that with all my heart. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to start speaking the word of God with boldness. We need to stand up like we've never stood up before. We need a word in our heart.

We need songs in our lips and in our mouths. We need power in our hands like we've never known that only God can give us. And why shouldn't we be satisfied with less? The church that started out with power must not finish with an argument.

That's insufficient. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There is no change with God whatsoever. There's no change with him. He is the same. You and I have to have the courage to say, God, come and fill my heart.

I'm so encouraged in the fact that I look out in this church and I see so many young faces now, so many young people coming in. This is my hope for the future. You are tomorrow's leaders. But remember, leaders in God's kingdom are not people with an argument.

Those are a dime a dozen. Leaders in God's kingdom are people who are empowered by the Holy Spirit to be much more than they could ever hope to be in themselves. These are tomorrow's leaders. And so young people, don't be sold short of your inheritance in Christ.

Pray with me in these next few weeks. Pray with me and be determined. Be radical. God, I need your Holy Spirit. Pray it on the subway. God, I need your Holy Spirit. Pray it when you're at work. God, I need your Holy Spirit.

Start to pray for people around you. That person needs the touch of your hand. My hand can't do anything, but your hand inside of mine still can do the miraculous. God, that person needs a touch of your, that person needs a word of knowledge.

That person needs something spoken to their heart to pull them out of depression and even potential suicide. That family needs something, God, that I can't give them, but you can. And so I'm inviting you through my life to speak to that family.

Those young people need a sense of direction. I can't give it to them, but God, you can. They need to see something in me. They need to be able to stand back and say, what could this mean? How is that person saying what they're saying?

How are they communicating with me so powerfully? Why is it stopping me in my tracks on my journey? This is what the cry has got to be in this church. We're at a moment in history of an incredible visitation of God, if we can see it, if we're willing to embrace it.

We're in the last days, folks. We're in the last days. These are the last days now. I don't even know if there's gonna be time for another generation after you. I don't know that for a certainty. I do know we're coming very close to the return of Jesus Christ.

And I do know my Bible promises, my Bible promises that God will pour out His spirit on all flesh. My Bible promises that young and old, rich and poor, maidens and servants will be given the Holy Spirit and will be enabled to rise up and do that which cannot be done by any amount of human reason or human effort.

That's what the Bible says. Even in the midst of the cosmic shaking that's going to be coming even to the stars, the sun and the moon and the earth, even in the midst, God will have a people, a testimony of power, a people with a lamp that are able to hold it up and say, behold the bridegroom, let me show you the way to God.

And I challenge you with everything in my heart to pray and press in and say, God, give me your Holy Spirit. I will be praying that with you. I'll be praying it every morning and every night and half the time in the afternoon as well.

God, give me your Holy Spirit. The longer I live, the more I study and the more I know, the more I recognize that without the Holy Spirit, you can do nothing. There are no clever plans or no slick speakers, no smoke machines, no programs going to produce the presence of God.

Has to be Christ in you, Paul said, the hope of glory. So Father, I thank you, Lord, for this congregation. And I know in my heart that you are calling us to something which you are willing to give us.

You're calling us to something much deeper in you than we've ever known. You're calling us, Lord Jesus Christ, and you're calling your people everywhere, everywhere to yourself. You're calling us back to our roots again as your people.

You're calling us, Lord God, to walk away from the flesh and casual religion into an obedient, power-filled and powerful relationship with you. I thank you, Lord, the beauty of youth and the glory of age meet together in your church.