The Need For Revival

The Need for Revival

Privilege of being on with this call for a solemn assembly. It's definitely needed. We see that even in the book of Joel, although the book of Joel only consists of three chapters, it was written as a wake-up call to a nation in crisis.

And this has been something burdening my heart for many years, and I'll share more of that in a moment. But let's start by just acknowledging the Lordship of Christ, because I've shared this for decades, that the highest form of worship is simple obedience to God.

The first time the word worship is ever spoken about in Scripture, the point of first reference, has nothing to do with singing or instruments. And yet it's about obedience to God. And I really believe that we're in a season where, though we are saved by grace, not by worse-than-any-man should boast, but we have got to get back to the worship of the God of the house.

In fact, last year I wrote an article called, Putting God Back in the House, His Own House, the L back in Bethel. You know, the Scripture says that Bethel or Bethel means House of God, and yet we're not to worship the institution, we're to worship the God, the L, of the Bethel.

We're the God of the house of God. And too often I think that often we have become those who worship the institution, we worship the things that are secondary to what is most important, but there's something about the equalizing, being in the presence of a holy, holy, holy God.

I remember Leonard Ravenhill, who'd become like a spiritual grandfather many years ago, and he had a teaching called Woe, Lo, Go out of Isaiah 6, and it's something about being wowed or woed in the presence of a holy, holy, holy God.

2 Chronicles chapter 5 speaks of when the priests came into the holy place. When they came out, they came not according to division. And how does that happen? When we all have our opinions, we have our different personal preferences, our different ideas, we have different styles of worship, but there's something about when we restore the altar of authentic worship in the presence of a holy, holy, holy God.

And we come into his presence with only his agenda. He tends to equalize all of us, regardless of our ethnic background, nationality, denominational background, or the presence of a holy, holy, holy God.

We're wowed in his presence, we're humbled in his presence, and he's able to do things that we could not do in our own natural capacity or human ability. In fact, I'm reminded of in Matthew chapter 28, and it speaks of that after the resurrection that the disciples went to the mountain that was appointed to them, that Jesus had appointed to them, and it says they simply did one thing, and they worshipped him.

Period. See, when we come, so often we come together in our gatherings, we have all kinds of personal agendas and our personal ideas and opinions, but there's something about coming into the presence of a holy, holy, holy God without any personal agendas.

It equalizes us in his presence. In Matthew 28, 2 Chronicles 5, when we're in the presence of God, he equalizes us and he's able to do what only he can do. In fact, it was in the 1980s, I remember our city in Houston was going through so many different things.

Jericho Walks and the Ministry of Presence

At that time, we were the fourth largest, fourth or fifth largest city in America. I think we're now arguably third or fourth with the Chicago. It's a very large metroplex, obviously, but I remember going through so many difficult things, and I realized there's some things that we have to recognize that we cannot do in our own strength or capacity.

It takes the presence of God and only the presence of God through God's people walking together, crossing racial, denominational, generational lines, meeting at the cross of Christ, seeking his presence, inviting his presence.

I remember we did what we called Jericho walks, Jericho marches around certain rock concerts and like Black Sabbath and twists. I'm aging myself now, but these are bands back in the day that were very heavy metal, but also had a very demonic side to them.

I remember songs like Motley Crue, singing songs like Shout at the Devil, and just the things, especially back then, I was working on one of the highest crime areas of the city late at night, working with runaways, drug addicts, at-risk youth, gang members.

It was one of those times where my heart was so broken, like the book of Joel, weeping between the porch and the altar for those who had gone astray and who needed the Savior to give a revelation of the work of the cross and the power of the resurrection.

So we began to do these Jericho walks based on scripture, you know, walk around each day for the, once each day for six days on the seventh day, seven times around the walls of Jericho, in silence, just prayer walking as we call them now, prayer walking and asking God, God give us your heart.

As the founder of World Vision used to say, God break my heart with the things that break yours. As we began to walk the streets and walk around these venues and concerts and just began to cry out for those that were blinded by the things that the flesh was attracted to, the Lord began to open up hearts.

And without us even having to say a word, just being the presence, there's something about that, the presence, the ministry of presence, of being there after we've been worshipped, prayed up in the presence of God, there's a presence that comes with us.

2 Corinthians 2 14 says we become the dispensers or the manifestors of the fragrance of heaven. And so we began to see some incredible things happen. I won't get into all those stories, but we began to do those.

We began to do our Jericho drives around the city of Houston. We have a thing called a 610 loop and now the larger one called the Beltway. And it's probably about 40 miles around back then. It's larging out the Beltway.

But we drive around with caravans of buses and cars and drive around the city once each day for six days on the seventh day, seven times. And then we'd have a time to gather to worship together. There's something about being still in the presence of God, having him break our hearts with the things that break his, that opens up our hearts to know how to have informed intercession.

But at the same time, by restoring the altar of worship, God then begins to even expand the capacity of influence to those who may not even be open to the gospel. We begin to see incredible testimonies.

Houston Prayer Mountain and Corporate Worship

So we fast forward from there. And in 1996, after we've been working with churches and gathering churches together in our greater Houston area, I remember taking about a month, the month of July of 1996, and just seeking the Lord at home, working from my house, being in a fasted mode, not complete fast, but being fasted, seeking the Lord, still taking care of things in the ministry by telephone or things like that.

But staying in my house, just seeking God. God, what is it that we need to do now for this next phase in our city and for our nation and the things you have us involved in around the world? And after that month of being fasted in my home, I remember the Lord putting it on my heart to grant, to rent an amphitheater and call it Houston Prayer Mountain.

I understand Houston has no mountain, it's flatland. But I found the highest place we could find, it was an old landfill by these two major highways intersecting Houston, one of the most driven by crossways and highways in the nation.

And I remember going and calling the owner, knowing that he gets, because it became an amphitheater, became a place for rock concerts and all kinds of other activities. And I knew that he would do this, but I called him and offered him just a crazy amount for just a minimal amount to rent it for 40 days.

I wanted to have it for the last 40 days of 1996. And I didn't have the money, but I would just, I just, I thought if he says no, it's probably the pizza I didn't have the night before in that month of fasting in July.

But I, after that month of fasting in July of 1996, I called him and I said, this is what I'm sensing I need to do. I'd like to rent your amphitheater for the last 40 days of 1996. And he laughed at me.

So I knew that, oh, I knew it couldn't be the Lord. And he says, I know who you are, I can't take your money. He actually said, look, I'll tell you what, just so I can pay the light bill, the water bill, I'll tell you what, I usually get X amount of thousands of dollars a day, plus concessions for all these things.

But I will give you the whole 40 days for half of what you offered me. I was taken back. So then obviously the Lord was in it. And before we walked on that facilities, at that amphitheater for those 40 days, the last of 1996, last 40 days, we had 300 plus pastors come together and we took communion together.

We began to pray to God saying, God, we need to be equalized in your presence. We ask for you to show up and have your way. And that what happens these next 40 days would not just impact our city, but the nations of the world.

So we will pray, give us Houston, give us the nations. And to our amazement, before I even walked into that property, the flat cost of the place was taken care of by people from all over inner city ministries, from Denver to people from Muslim countries unbeknownst to them.

They just called felt led to just so into what we were doing. These are Christians in Muslim countries. And so in those 40 days, we never took up an offering except for we had a box for those who want to give to the ministries we were giving to around the city during the holidays and helping them in Isaiah 58, Isaiah 1 model.

And so it was amazing to see at that time over 25 to 30 ,000 people showed up in those 40 days, some from nations all over the world and just felt led to come to Houston. Those are one of those divine moments.

I'm reminded of even what Duncan Campbell said in the supernatural move of God that happened in the 1948 Hebrides. And Duncan Campbell said this, it takes a supernatural to break the bonds of the natural.

The reality is we need the supernatural of God to break the bonds of the things that are happening in the natural even today. So in 1948, when Duncan Campbell said this, he goes on to say, you can make community, you can make a community missions conscious, you can make a community crusade conscious, but only God can make the community God conscious.

Just think about that. What would God do if it came to any, what would happen if God came to any community in that kind of power? I believe he says that day is coming. May God prepare us all for it. Amen.

And of course that was the conclusion of what he wrote in his When God Stepped Down, meaning God stepped down into our world, into our circumstance. What would happen if as the church in individual posture of humility and repentance and worship and then the corporate posture of authenticity came before the throne of heaven?

What would happen? God would step into our current circumstances. God would show, we've all been praying for revival. We've been reading about histories and awakenings and revivals past. I don't want to just read about them.

I want to be a part of what God is doing by surrendering my will, my desires. We have a saying within our ministry, while men reach for thrones to build their own kingdoms, Jesus reached for a towel to wash men's feet.

While men seek exalted in high places, the most exalted one left his highest place to pursue us. You see, what we need is to get things shifted just slightly. It's that slight adjustment, that spiritual adjustment.

Many people who go to chiropractors, if you've had your back out of alignment, you know that just one little alignment being set back in place puts everything else back in place. The same is true. We've just been getting just slightly out of alignment.

We need to get back into alignment to worship the El of the Bethel, the God of the house. We need to get back to putting, to worshiping God, not the worship itself. You see, oftentimes we are so enamored by celebrity, even in the church, that we begin to worship the worship, and we begin to worship the oratorically gifted communicator.

We begin to worship other people, but what we need to do is get back to the worship of the one who is worthy of all adoration and worship. The one who is worthy to worship Him in the beauty of holiness, because it's the glory due His name.

You see, getting back, I don't want to lose the awe of what He did in my life, when He gave me a revelation of the work of the cross and the power of the resurrection. And it's easy in life, and just going through the journeys of life, to get out of alignment and to begin to enjoy the institutional side of the church, rather than getting back to the incarnational, manifest presence of God.

I remember Leonard Ravenhill used to say to me, that he said, God doesn't answer a prayer, He answers desperate prayer. And I think there's something about the desperation, that the tension that is going on around us in the world, brings us to a posture of brokenness and humility, a place of authentic worship, and saying, God, only You.

We need the supernatural, as Duncan Campbell said, the supernatural, to break the bonds of the natural. And so that's where I sense that we need to be today. And as I look back at even Matthew 28 and 2 Chronicles 5, that became a common theme at our Houston Prayer Mountain in 1996.

But many people were touched from all over the world, without promoting it, not trying to make a big thing. We prayed every night, we worshiped every night. We had so many churches coming, and there are different worship teams would take turns.

And I remember people did not want to leave well after midnight, every night, even though work was going on, throughout the holidays as well. And then starting again at 6 in the morning, of times of worship, the Baptists, and the Foursquare, and the Assemblies of God, the Fifth Church on the Fourth Corner, the Lutherans, the Methodists, it was all kinds of denominations coming together, equalized in the presence of a Holy God, in a place we called Houston Prayer Mountain.

And Matthew 28 was another theme because it said, as I said earlier, that we came to the mountain that was appointed for us, that the Lord we felt had appointed for us to pray for revival for the nations, and for us to get our hearts right.

It became every night a time of brokenness, humility, with joy in the Holy Spirit. But it had to start with that posture of humility, recognizing we're nothing without Him, we're undone without Him, we need Him.

We gathered to put aside our differences for 40 nights of worship, 40 nights of prayer, 40 nights of ministry together, and it was amazing how many churches, even megachurch pastors that normally would not come together, God did something so divine in those 40 days that only He can do, because the supernatural broke the bonds of the natural.

It was amazing to see Baptists, and Assemblies of God, and Foursquare, and Church of God in Christ, and Missionary Baptists, so many gathered together. Many began to exchange the pulpits later, and began to become friends, and it was an amazing season.

But even into 1997, after those 40 days, the church began to come together. So what would happen if God moved so massively in our in our region? We wouldn't be able to contain baptisms in the church. So I was sharing one day, I said, what wouldn't be great if we just had this outdoor huge place to baptize people getting saved?

And while I was sharing that in a particular church, the owners of the water theme park looked at each other and said, we have a huge baptismal. And their water theme park, they had the wade pool. So out of that discussion, 103 churches came together, not to close the water park down later that year in 1997, it was during the summer, but instead we agreed to come together, encouraged our people to come, bring as many people we knew that maybe would not even know the Lord, to come into the water theme park for a day, and then after church, and then that Sunday afternoon, at a particular time that afternoon, we had built a little platform that went way out into the wave pool, and they made an announcement in the whole water theme park, that at that particular time, to gather at the wave pool for a special presentation.

So the whole water park closed down except for coming to, and it turned out to be a record day, a record day of attendance. And to our, the media was there, and to our amazement, we had all these pastors coming into the water in case people wanted to come and give their lives to the Lord.

And again, this came out of the place of worship together, corporate authority, it was released in corporate worship, corporate humility, and corporate repentance. God began to do something in a corporate context throughout the city.

And that day, we didn't think this through, we had the old carbon paper, and so we had so many people coming into the water to give their lives to the Lord, and obviously trying to write it down with pencil or pen, the carbon paper didn't work.

But the media said there was over 600 people, and we had well over that getting baptized, and different pastors from all different churches in the water with us, baptizing people, giving their lives to the Lord.

It was an amazing day to see the unity of the brethren that came out of the context of corporate worship, corporate humility, and brokenness in the presence of a holy, holy, holy God. And then we fast forward from there, we saw so many other things, reconciliation things happening in our city that I won't get into right now.

The Response and the Solemn Assembly

But in 19, in 2011, because there were so many things happening up until then, in 2011, some friends of mine, the Cataldos from International House of Prayer from Kansas City, wanted to meet with me at my office in Houston, along with some friends from the, at that time, Governor Perry's office and the governor of Texas, and of course our friends David and Cindy Lane from the American Renewal Project.

They came to my office and said, we wanted you to do a solemn assembly in Reliance Stadium. Now it's called NRG Stadium, but it was called Reliance Stadium back in 2011. And it sounded great, but I said, look, so often our get-togethers, and we call them solemn assemblies, or we call it a time of prayer, but it turns into a bunch of communicators, and oratorically gifted speakers, and preachers pontificating.

And that's great, but if you're saying that we have a nation in crisis, we need to come together in authentic humility, in repentance, reflection, to get a revelation of the work of the cross, the power of the resurrection.

If we're ever going to see revival or reformation, we need to start with that place of a humble posture before God, through worship, corporate worship, and then understand we need this place of corporate humility and repentance.

And they ever said, that's exactly what we want. I said, yes, but I know everybody says that, but they said, look, we're not going to even receive an offering, no egos, no logos, no selling of merchandise.

I'm going, really? And so we began to process. It took eight hours for them to finally convince me to participate, and I had the privilege of going into it optimistically, going into it cautiously optimistically, saying, look, if you've got these two other governors coming, and you've got all these people, it's gonna be so much fodder and things about what it really is going to be.

We've got to keep it pure. And to my amazement, and it was a privilege to be a part of it, to be one of the moderators that day, and to help facilitate the day, help mobilize that nationally. And on that day, to our amazement, we had some say over 50 ,000, some say 38 ,000, some I think the average is 44 ,000.

The people who even worked at Reliant Stadium said that there was at least that many people coming through, and more so. But to see that many thousands coming together to fill Reliant Stadium for one purpose, to seek the Lord, to worship the Lord in humility and repentance, there was a corporate release.

I mean, you could mention so many, there are so many people from Dr. Tony Evans, to John Hagee, to you name it, they were there. And there are so many others, if I named them all, you would know them, every denomination.

They happened to show up, mainly because, obviously because a governor trumpeted it, this call, it's called the response. But yet at the same time, there was no one controlling the platform. We were seeking the Lord, and praying, and just moderating God's presence.

No egos, no logos, no selling of merchandise, no t-shirts, no, it was just a place. Even those in political positions, or denominational leaders, or well-known leaders, they came, they prayed. Some only prayed 30 seconds, some prayed a minute, some shared the theme, the prayer primer for that section.

But no one took attention to themselves. It was an amazing day of what a solemn assembly should be, that it's not about ego and logo, it's about God. We are a people desperate for your presence. We need your manifest presence.

We need a renewed revelation of the work of the cross, and the power of the resurrection. And in that context, God began to move even our, the naysayers, even the heads of the atheist organizations, and others that wanted to protest, many were touched.

And there's so many stories of people that came to be critical, but people were touched in the process, when they saw the church cross their racial, denominational, generational lines, meeting at the mountain of the Lord, so to speak, with no other agenda but to lift up the name of the Lord, and to be in the presence of God, like a second Chronicles 5, that when you're in the presence of a holy, holy, holy God, you come out of His presence, not according to division, but one sound, one voice.

And even to those who were all in the community, the media, and others, and even Christians who said it was not going to be what we said it was going to be, they later realized it was exactly what the Lord wanted.

It was something that God called together, regardless of who was there, we were being equalized in the presence of a holy God. So out of that, we began to see pockets of these kind of things spreading across the country.

Of course, I've been a part of the call from the very beginning, the first seven calls with Lou Engel, back in the late 1990s, early 2000s. I've been a part of other gatherings like this globally, and so I've just longed for the authenticity of God's presence, of God's people putting aside their agendas to come together in the presence of a holy, holy, holy God.

And as we do that, that's authentic worship, isn't it? Simple obedience to God is the highest form of worship. Well, I want to kind of go over a few things that I've been, some of the things that we had even during the response, because later in 2014, I was called upon again, and they'd asked if I would help, because there was four more governors in 2015 that wanted to do something similar.

And again, the same criteria, no promoting, no mentioning names, no promoting logos or websites or agendas. It was to just lift up the name of Jesus. And so the governor at that time of Louisiana, governor of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida had asked to do those in 2015.

And of course, David and Cindy of American Menil Project were gracious to help facilitate the funding of all that and to make sure that it had direction and that it kept our agenda. They approached folks like me and said, would you make sure to help mobilize this to help get the logistics together and to make sure the platform stays pure before God?

And I said, absolutely. If it's going to be similar to what we did in 2011, let's do it. And so it was an amazing time in those four states. Little did I realize how significant many of those gatherings would be.

Again, these response gatherings based on Joel chapter 2, the book of Joel and on 2 Chronicles 7 14 that we all pray about. And there's something about the tension of where we are. He's become now revelatory, not just things that are good sermons or things that we do in concept.

It comes out of that place of desperation, as Leonard Ravenhill taught us, that place of desperation for God's presence. And so as I said earlier, the book of Joel consisted of only three chapters, yet it was written as a wake-up call for a nation in crisis.

Revival, Crisis, and the Church's Witness

So here Joel was pleading for his nation. As many of you are pleading right now for our nation, you're pleading for God to intervene, for the supernatural to break the bonds of what's happening in the natural.

It's an unseen force and we can't see this global pandemic. We can't see this COVID -19 or coronavirus. We can't see it, but we see the manifestations and the disruption and the pain and the death and everything else that is associated with the virus and beyond, but by its effects.

We see what the effects of it are even though we don't see it literally. The same is true. Many people say they can't believe in God because they can't see Him, but yet they will believe in what they see about a virus.

They're fearful of that. We need to help people see that through the plumb line of healing and hope and righteousness and justice, they would see the fruitfulness and the manifestation and the reality of Christ through the church to the world.

They would see that even though God may not see Him physically, they can see the manifestation or the results of or the fruit of the church representing Christ as ambassadors for Christ in a world that's in desperation.

I believe it's a great time because God, as we see in Colossians chapter 1, that God says that Jesus is the Son of His love, that all things are made to, through, for, and by Him, that all principalities and rulerships and dominions and kings are subject to Him, and that that's in the seen and unseen realm.

Ephesians 3 10 said it's God's intention to give that authority to and through the church, the manifold wisdom of God, the revelation of God, the influence of God. So I believe that even though many may not see God in face-to-face, the realities of God are everywhere, and He is ruler of all kingdoms, authorities, and principalities seen and unseen.

So we may not be able to see the virus, the COVID -19, and other things that are going on in the world, but God is ruler of all those areas, so we can seek the God that all things are created through, for, by, and to, that all things are made by, that we can pray to the Lord in corporate agreement out of a passionate, authentic heart of worship and desperation, realizing we need God.

Nothing we can do in our human capacity is ever going to be enough, but we can ask for the Lord to give wisdom, manifold wisdom, and to give insight to our scientists, and medical professionals, and to pastors, and to all of us, that we would get a renewed revelation of our need for Him, that He would invade our world and change an unseen circumstances that is actually affecting the natural realm.

I believe that's true. We have biblical precedence over and over and over again throughout Scripture. We look at even with this past month of Nisan, which is just ended on sundown April 24th, the month of Nisan is in the Gregorian calendar, in the Jewish calendar, Nisan, but the Gregorian calendar would be March, April, but we see that in the month of Nisan you had Passover, which we see Exodus 12, but what a great example to us of being under the blood, under the covering of the Lord.

It's when we choose to step out that we are now uncovered, but we stay under His covering. That was a form of God called self-quarantine when the plagues came over Egypt, and then when they stayed under the blood of the Lamb, and we know that the perfect Lamb of God that was slain before the foundations of the world is Jesus Himself, so that when we stay under the blood, so we have Passover in the month of Nisan.

We have Passover depicting the liberty and the deliverance that God gave to Israel during the plagues of Egypt, and delivered them from that place to go into the desert on their journey to the promised land.

We see Passover and Good Friday, Resurrection Weekend for Christians represents the Passover that happened 2 ,000 years ago in the brutality of the work of the cross, but it was the high cost of love by God that He would come and give His life for us, that He would exchange our filthy rags for robes of righteousness.

It was in that same season that we see in the month of Nisan that God did a work on our behalf that we could call upon the name of the Lord and be saved, and that's why we can rejoice. We have these precedents of Exodus 12, we have the 2 ,000 years ago, the work of the cross, power of the resurrection, we have all those, and then we also have scriptural references of another deliverance that took place with Nehemiah, and I'll share that more in a moment because I believe it's significant to where we are and the beginning of the breakthrough as we corporately cry out to God in authentic worship, restore, in that place of a personal reset with God, getting real aligned with the Lord in right posture, humility, repentance, personal reflection.

We come to that place, God can do a work in us and corporately do a work through us beyond the crisis because it's not just about the crisis. We need the long view of what are we going to do as the church and be as the church to be that fragrance, that sprayer, that manifester of the fragrance of heaven to a world that is looking and searching right now.

We pray for revival, we've cried out for revival, it's here. We just need to begin to reset, get the mind of God, how do we now reflect Christ in this season and this global pandemic and crisis. It's a moment, it says in Luke chapter 21, I love this scripture, I've shared it for many, many years.

Luke 21 talks about earthquakes and famines and tsunamis and tornadoes and fires and wars and rumors of wars. It talks about nation against, ethnos against ethnos, that's race against race, it's called, it's ethnic fighting and we see this increase happening in the world but it should not be so in the church.

And so we see that Luke 21 speaks of all these things as a precursor to the coming of the Lord. And yet verse 13, chapter 21 of Luke verse 13 jumps out in the middle of all these things and he says, but, this is Jesus's words, but it shall be an occasion for your testimony.

You see the world keeps saying, you hear it on the news all the time, crisis is a terrible thing to waste. I know they keep giving it tribute, attributing it to different people. Actually I used to give that quote to some books I wrote on leadership.

I talked about that Tim Romer, Paul Romer I mean, a US economist actually said that, it said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and that's talking about economics and not just letting things go. But I believe as Christians too, we should not let this crisis be a thing that causes fear or for us to withdraw as into the perdition, but to press forward, find the heart and mind of God through personal reflection, seeking God for his wisdom so that we can be those manifestors of the presence of God to a world that desperately needs to know him.

So Luke 21 is an example of that, that all these things would take place, but in the midst of these crises, verse 13 says, but it should be an occasion, it shall be an occasion for your testimony or an opportunity for your testimony.

What a great opportunity and that's a whole other thing that many I, you know, it's times of crisis and I've seen the church emerge all over. In our city we have lots of, you know, hurricanes and storms and tornadoes and of course Hurricane Harvey was our last one, a big one with all the flooding and yet when the national media contacted some of us, I said before I answer your question, let me just say this, up until today, every day, all you ever hear is political division, division, division, division, all the media ever promotes is division, division, division, a nation divided, ethnic division, racial tensions, we hear all these divisions, but the reality is right now what do you see?

In the midst of people being hurt and devastated, their homes being destroyed, what do you see all across the Gulf from Rockport and Corpus Christi, Texas, all the way up to East Texas and beyond, all across the Gulf, what do you see?

What you see is everywhere you see neighbors helping neighbors and when you go to those communities that were hit hard, you'll find that many will say the church has been here, the church has been here, God's people have been here.

See, it wasn't about what's your race, what's your denomination, what's your religion, it was the church responding in a crisis to the community that left lasting equity to advance the kingdom of God, not promoting any individual church.

Of course, everybody tries to leverage, but at the end of the day, the church gets credit because the church was created for times like this. Hurricane Sandy, the church responded. Hurricane Katrina, the church responded.

The tsunami in Indonesia, the church responded. Today, in the largest Muslim country in the world, you have a huge increase of Christians throughout that country as a result of the economic collapse of 1998 in Asia and with all that Indonesia went through, the church responded.

You fast forward to the tsunami, the church responded. A church that didn't care who got the credit, but the church coming together to respond to a crisis in the name of Christ that gave equity and today we've seen some of the largest gatherings of prayer and in fact there's at least 2 million Christian intercessors and pastors in Indonesia, a Muslim country, that prays for the Church of America every day.

That came out of tension and struggle and pain and desperation. The church emerged and became a light in the midst of a dark side. Even though churches were being burned down, churches were being vandalized, churches were being persecuted, yet in the midst of that the church emerged and there's a whole lot of incredible testimonies that came out of that that's not for me to share right now, but I feel like they're important for us to understand that out of the most desperate of situations, the church responds in right posture.