Posts Tagged ‘ten threats to revival’
Joseph Prince, false-grace and two key threats to revival
Listen to the final two threats to revival in my teaching series, Ten Threats to Revival. There’s a false-grace message that’s promoted by people like Joseph Prince that is threatening a move of God.
First, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Our gift to you? A completed series on revival that you can listen to and share with your friends right now! Listen to this teaching here: http://media.johnburton.net/6014999
The final two threats to revival that I address are:
- Seeking an enhanced life
- The lack of an immediate response
I’ll post the notes below so you can follow along, but I also wanted to share a couple portions from my book Covens in the Church.
Someone asked me about the call for an immediate response. What if we don’t feel that God is calling us to respond? Here’s my reply:
That’s a great question!
Here’s my response that includes what I wrote in my book that addresses this directly:
Most of the time, our response can’t be attached to our feelings. Basically, we’ll have to move contrary to feeling quite a bit.
We see in the Gideon story that God did release those who were feeling afraid… but, then, they disqualified themselves from participating in the mission.
The key story is Joshua. Under Moses, people didn’t respond to their authority rightly, so they didn’t enter the Promised Land and most of them died in the desert.
Under Joshua, there was precision and immediate response. Nobody stayed back. The call was troublesome and inconvenient, yet everybody was immediately responsive.
The most important first step is to answer the question of whether you are under the person’s authority or not. If someone regionally makes a call and I am legitimately not under their authority, then I can go to prayer and respond how God leads.
But, if I am under their authority, there’s no prayer necessary. I simply respond.
Here’s two sections from my book that deal directly with this:
As the leader of Revolution House of Prayer I have people who God has appointed as my authority. We call them overseers and they
are leaders of ministries and people with a mature walk with the Lord. Like the centurion, I am a man under authority.
Let’s say, for example, I, along with the leadership of Revolution, decide to hold a conference. We go through the tedious process of
securing guest speakers and figuring out how to administrate the event.
We spend thousands of dollars promoting the conference on TV, radio and in print. I am a key part of the process as well as the actual event.
I’ll be teaching in several of the workshops and facilitating the week of activities. A week before the conference I receive a phone call from
one of my overseers. He tells me he needs me to fly to Alabama to help a church work through a transition from one pastor to another. Their previous pastor just repented of indiscretion and resigned suddenly.
The problem? It’s during the same week as my conference. I would have a dilemma. Honestly, I don’t want to go to Alabama. In addition to the upcoming conference I have a wedding to officiate among other important tasks. My integrity and reputation, along with my own personal comfort would be at stake. What’s the correct approach to take?
- Refuse to mention my disagreement with my overseer with anybody–including my wife. There is power of life and death in the tongue. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. I’d have to allow God to break me and cause me to have a pure heart in this matter.
- Put to death any of my own desires and prepare to surrender to the wishes of my overseer however inconvenient they may be.
- Meet with my overseer and honestly share all of the concerns and issues at stake. Inform him that I’d prefer not to go and if he could find someone else, I’d really appreciate it.
- Submit. After a healthy conversation, my overseer states that he appreciates my concerns but he still needs me to go. So, I go.
I don’t have to pray about my decision. I don’t have to talk with anybody else. I have no option according to God’s established government in my life. I fly to Alabama with a smile on my face. God’s authority has spoken.
The enemy has caused many to believe that we can’t experience freedom while being submitted. This is simply not true.
Freedom from authority is rebellion.
Freedom in the absence of authority is anarchy.
Freedom under authority is liberty.
The process of response to my leader described above not only must take place between a pastor and his overseers, but also between a youth pastor and his pastor. Also, between the ministers in the pews and their leaders. We’ll eventually see the city Church established once again and pastors will be submitting to apostles in their city. It’s a process that is quite foreign to most.
The 100% Church and the Call to Corporate Mission Advance
This issue of pastors becoming salesmen has forced the rapid growth of para-church ministries. Leaders of para-church ministries have a greater ability to call those people who have partnered with them on their mission field into a position of readiness and response.
The success of the mission is at a lesser risk as all hands are on deck and ready to go. Pastors don’t always have it as easy.
For example, a pastor may hear God tell him to gather his flock together and fast from all food for 3 days. In God’s government, there would be no resistance, complaining or negativity. 100% of the participants in the church, who had already made up their mind to be unified and ready to press ahead as warriors for God, would immediately embrace this God given mandate. All would fast. If someone had a concern with the directive, that’s OK. A good servant won’t simply ignore the plan of action, but will rather make the effort to talk to the leader. A good leader will certainly listen to their concerns with compassion.
Much dialogue can occur. However, at the end of the discussion, the two would be ‘agreed’–moving in the same direction. The events of 1988 in Baton Rouge changed that considerably.
Now, the process that poor pastor must go through when the need to call the troops to action is enough to cause him to resign!
- He studies endlessly in the Word so he can ‘cover all of his bases’. He is already preparing his heart for resistance–the resistance that was perpetuated back in 1988.
- Due to this certain impending resistance, he prays long and hard for God to help him cast vision and sell this strategy to the church by giving him ‘the words to say’.
- He shares his impression that God wants this three-day fast with his leadership team, hoping to gain support. He knows he’ll need it.
- He looks at the schedule to make sure he doesn’t offend anybody by scheduling the fast during a time when someone else has already planned his or her own event.
- He prays again asking God for more insight as to the purpose of the fast. He wants to make sure he has enough info so as to effectively sell this idea to the people.
- He stresses out when God doesn’t give further insight.
- He starts to guess how many will actually respond so he can devise a plan to effectively make sure those who don’t respond don’t feel alienated. After all, an affirmed and happy family is very important.
- He then shares how he ‘feels led’ that God ‘would like’ the church to fast. Those who also ‘feel led’ should sign up in the back as they leave.
- The same five or six people who show up for everything sign up and the rest of the sheet is left blank. It’s a monument of a failed mission.
- The next time God says something, the pastor will be even less zealous in sharing the dream.
Here are my notes from last night’s teaching:
- Threat 9. Seeking an Enhanced Life
1. People generally want God to make their current lives better. They want an enhancement, an upgrade.
2. However, the demands of revival include the willingness to embrace a fire that won’t warm your flesh—it will consume your flesh.
3. I wonder if the church would listen to “prophetic words for 2013” if they included extreme surrender & death to self instead of benefits.
1. We should certainly understand that the great and terrible day of the Lord is at near! We are living as in the days of Noah.
2. “I Thess. 5:2,3 …the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them…”
1. “Just as false prophets of old fraudulently forecast a bright future, in spite of the imminence of God's judgment (Jer.6:14, 8:11,14:13-14; Lam.2:14; Ezek. 13:10,16; Mic. 3:5) so they will again in future days just before the final Day of the Lord destruction.”
2. Ezekiel 13:15-16 (ESV) 15 Thus will I spend my wrath upon the wall and upon those who have smeared it with whitewash, and I will say to you, The wall is no more, nor those who smeared it, 16 the prophets of Israel who prophesied concerning Jerusalem and saw visions of peace for her, when there was no peace, declares the Lord GOD.
3. Matthew 24:36-39 (ESV) 36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
3. I was chatting with a pastor from Quebec… he said people call him the ‘death pastor’… because he is unrelenting in his call to die to self.
1. What??!
2. Somehow it’s a derogatory thing to call people to lay down their lives?
3. Messages of personal benefit are rampant. Joseph Prince is teaching a very dangerous message.
1. No confession, no repentance, no way to lose salvation.
4. Evan Roberts called for people to gather—but not all people—only those who were willing to make a total surrender.
1. Revival doesn’t enhance lives, it crushes them. If we attempt to advance with a semi-surrendered people, the fire simply will not fall.
2. It’s not that blessing won’t come…but there are a lot of people who are looking for an enhancement to lives that are actually on agenda to be broken, not built up.
3. We don’t want life as we know it to become better! We have to lay that life on the altar and trade it for the cross!
1. It’s the same thing that was happening when the money changers were in the temple.
1. They wanted a better life.
2. It’s the same thing that happened at the triumphal entry.
3. Matthew 21:8-9 (ESV) 8 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
1. Hosanna literally means: Save us now!
2. They wanted an enhanced life!
3. Jesus decided to answer their cry, but when they realized it wasn’t what they wanted, they turned on him!
4. That spirit is in the church everywhere!
5. Matthew 27:20-23 (ESV) 20 Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. 21 The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” 22 Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” 23 And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!”
5. Since I’ve been in Detroit I’ve heard a lot about revival. It seems the whole region is crying out for it. However, this is where the root of the disturbance in my spirit exists.
1. Most every time revival is mentioned, the intent of that desire is to experience some sort of breakthrough, blessing or restitution.
2. It’s time we STOP crying out for God to revive the economy, for resolved issues, for racial tensions to subside, for a fixed city… and START crying out for God and God alone!
3. God is jealous and he won’t allow Detroit to be satisfied by money, security or anything else until we are satisfied in Him and no one or nothing else!
4. Jesus’ own disciples fell into the trap too… they focused on the enhancement instead of the mission!
1. Acts 1:6-11 (ESV) 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
6. DO NOT expect revival until we return to our first love and lay down our lives daily. It WILL NOT COME! In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the situation in this region got dramatically worse. The choice is ours, however.
7. It’s absolutely shocking to me that so much emphasis is placed on the pursuit of breakthrough yet the call to breakthrough into a pursuit of God falls on deaf ears.
8. Will we only gather and pray if we have a hope of personal blessing?
1. Where are all of the hungry people in Detroit? The stadiums should be filled with zealous, praying people every night of the week! Have the cares of life and entertainment so bewitched us that we have become convinced that being with God is not worth it?
9. I propose starting a movement of encounter which only has one goal—to be fully satisfied in enjoying and responding to the Lover of our souls. Nothing else matters. If we all have to live in a cardboard box on the streets of Detroit to encounter God, so be it! Our goal is not financial! It’s not selfish! It’s to be with God! That is all!
- Threat 10. A Lack of Immediate Response
1. We must develop a ‘drop everything ‘culture. An ‘all hands on deck’ culture.
1. There will be regular calls to prayer, calls to action… monthly, weekly, that will require a ‘drop everything’ culture.
2. My intercessors know this… if I send them an issue, depending on the severity, they drop everything… they get on a conference call… they pray.
3. If we have fallen into the trap of seeking an enhanced life, we won’t respond to the inconvenient call!
1. This is a major danger in the church today!
2. We’ll say, I don’t see how my life will be enhanced by participating, so I will hold back.
3. This is why we teach people in theLab to be alert… to always be on time… we don’t break for holidays… we don’t excuse people for vacations… it’s a drop everything culture of consecration.
4. This model isn’t just for theLab!!!! This is the life of the Believer!!!!!
5. Christmas morning at IHOP is just like any other day of the week! They stay on the wall… they don’t relax the mandate.
6. Let me set you free from a Christian cop out.
1. When called to action, don’t ever say, “I’ll pray about it”… unless you are truly going to invest some hard core prayer and then report back exactly what God said!
2. To say that we’ll pray about it… and then do what we want to do instead of exactly what God said to do whether we pray or not… is taking the Lord’s name in vain!
1. If we tell people that God said that we aren’t to do something when God never said that at all is taking his name in vain!
2. Most things don’t require praying about… and we’re a praying church!
3. In a drop everything culture where the prophetic calls are constant, if everybody just stopped everything to pray about whether they should respond or not nothing would ever be accomplished.
4. Check out a couple passages in Joel:
2. Joel 1:14 Consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.
3. And in Joel 2:
1. Joel 2:15-17 (ESV) 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16 gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. 17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep and say, “Spare your people, O LORD, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
1. The people are saying “Where is their God!!!!!!!!”
2. Connecticut! Where was God!!!! Church!!!! Are we so asleep that we don’t see this?
3. We have to gather!!!!! Be together!!! Be instant!!! Pray!!!! Always!!!!!!
4. At 5pm every Sunday, be in the prayer room!!! Cry out to the Lord!!!
2. We live in a day where there's Twitter, email, Facebook, video and more… in every house in the city!!! We have phones that are many times smarter than the computer that took a rocket to the moon!
3. There is no excuse to not hear and respond to the prophetic decrees moment by moment!
4. We must be alert and ready! Alarms are being sounded, yet are any hearing?
5. The call a couple of years ago was for every church to gather at Fire in February. Few responded. The same thing with The Call. Few responded. The prophets are calling the church of Detroit to respond, and immediately!
4. This is one reason why church schedules must be flexible.
5. It’s also a reason why daily meetings are critical.
6. When prophetic instruction is received, the entire region must know about it right away, and the people must respond.
1. The Manitou way of doing things… continual data, continual response.
2. Luke 9:59-62 (ESV) 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
3. We have to learn to do two things:
1. Embrace key prophets in the region
2. Stay tuned in, stay in your email, stay ready for an urgent message that just may require you respond in hours time!
7. In Joshua 3, the instructions were clear, and everybody responded in unison.
1. Consecrate yourselves today…for tomorrow!!!!
8. There’s no way to fulfill this mighty mission if we are only together one day a week (actually 2 hours a week!).
1. There’s way too much work to be done!
2. As an example, Mike Bickle recently called an urgent meeting. Most of the departments at IHOP in Kansas City were immediately closed and the people all gathered together to receive an urgent prophetic message.
3. In Detroit, we must promote extreme alertness and flexibility so we can respond moment by moment to the demands of regional revival.
4. If we are mostly focused on our local, personal ventures, we’ll stay disconnected from the greater, regional mission. The response won’t be what is necessary and revival will most likely never come.
Listen now to Ten Threats to Revival #8: Unbelief
A spirit of entitlement is false-faith. God is calling us to move ahead boldly as people of great faith!
You can follow along with my notes here:
- Threat 8. Unbelief
1. You can do this! You are called to live a ridiculously supernatural life!!!!!
1. You must believe! Go after the impossible! Be like Noah and live in such a way that causes people to mock!!!! You are called to live a miraculous life!
2. Understand that most people will not believe. In order to be in the mix of the end-time revival, you must believe!!!!! The more we pray, the more we believe!!! The more we hear his word, the more faith! Faith comes by hearing!!!
1. Luke 18:7-8 (ESV) 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
2. Frank Bartleman wrote Evan Roberts and asked him how to launch revival.
1. So, Frank did it and Azusa exploded and changed the face of Christianity!
2. Mike Bickle prophecy: “I will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in the earth in one generation.”
3. So what is Evan Robert’s prescription?
1. “Congregate the people who are willing to make a total surrender. Pray and wait. Believe God’s promises. Hold daily meetings. ”Evan Roberts
2. Reading this simple yet non-negotiable prescription for revival reveals that the church of this nation is far from ready!
3. Evan Roberts reveals one of the elements of revival is simply to believe God’s promises.
1. In Detroit there’s false belief over this region: Entitlement
1. When people don’t get what they presume they are entitled to, rage ensues.
2. The right to work legislation resulted in violence in Lansing.
4. It’s stunning how little the church believes in the supernatural. Healing, freedom, power and abundant life are tragically rare.
1. 1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world- our faith.
1. The call of revival is the call to overcome the spirit of this age.
1. It’s a HUGE, HUGE mission, and if we struggle in our belief, we just won’t get it done.
2. We must be Believers, not hopers.
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3. Matthew 13:57-58 (ESV) 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” 58 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.
1. I experienced this when I was traveling to Detroit… faith was high!
2. Now, who comes with raging, burning expectation of fire every Sunday?
3. If we expect to only have another service, that is what we will get—fire requires fervent, active faith that won’t relent!!!!
1. Most people think faith results in waiting… waiting for God to do something.
2. Not true!!!!! Faith is simply belief that something is to be done!!!
3. We go after it!!!
4. Faith is an action word-when we have it, based on a revelation of who we are in Christ, we rock the world, we work with passion, we burn continually!
1. Start a Tribe!
2. Pray continually!
3. Move! Advance! Do! Go!
1. Mark 9:17-24 (ESV) 17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. 18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
2. Jesus doesn’t take kindly to lack of faith!
3. Now, get this… the kid was going to die if the father didn’t have faith!!!! This is why he said ‘help my unbelief’… it wasn’t casual!! There was a point of crisis… he had to believe to save his son!!!!
2. Matt 9:20-22 (NIV) 20 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. 21 She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”
22Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment.
1. Faith is an action word! After the revelation comes the action… it takes both to receive what is rightfully ours.
2. It wasn’t only a hope and a prayer… it was a revelation and response.
3. Mark 4:23-25 (ESV) 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 24 And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. 25 For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
3. 1 Tim 6:12 (NKJV) 12Fight the good fight of faith
1. We don’t wait for things to happen, we cause things to happen!
2. Matt 21:21-22 (NKJV) 21 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done. 22“And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
3. DO what was DONE to the fig tree. Faith is an action word!
4. Hebrews 6:11-12 (ESV) 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
5. Action!
2. Oh God, I really want a great job in the ministry- I know you’ll come through for me… it will happen as you have divinely designed.
1. Well, have you submitted a resume?
2. Have you studied to show yourself approved?
3. Have you done the work?
5. I believe one of the most critical areas of both crisis and opportunity has to do with identity.
1. A spirit of insignificance- listen to it!
2. Wrong identity absolutely annihilates faith and ministry.
1. It has people hiding from their enemies in caves.
2. It results in taking a casual approach to ministry.
3. It keeps people at home or relaxing when their comrades are on the wall in the church.
1. Check out this report:
1. We had revival (I mean, full-tilt, make Brownsville Toronto and Lakeland look tame) … we were about to ramp it up… and suddenly most of the people who make it all “work” had “other things to do” —I wept.
2. If we believe, we will advance, work and expect… we won’t pull back or be casual.
3. If there’s someone who’s casual in their pursuit, you can know they are having a faith crisis.
2. If we have a wrong understanding of our identity, we tend to participate in the church or in mission so it can make our life better instead of walking in the power of an accurate identity using our lives to make the church better.
3. George Barna- Americans consider survival in the present to be much more significant than eternal security and spiritual possibilities.
6. Faith is what others will see as evidence that God is who we believe he is.
1. Heb 11:1 (NKJV) 1Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
1. It’s when we tithe before we see the money to pay our bills.
2. It’s when we step into the impossible.
3. It’s when we pray for the sick.
4. It’s when we obey the Word!
2. Action
1. Heb 11:4 (NKJV) 4By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice
2. Heb 11:8 (NKJV) 8By faith Abraham obeyed
3. Heb 11:27 (NKJV) 27By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.
4. Heb 11:29 (NKJV) 29 By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land
5. Heb 11:30 (NKJV) 30By faith the walls of Jericho fell down
6. Heb 11:32-34 (NKJV) 32 And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: 33 who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.
1. Action!!!
3. A barometer of our position in Christ has to be whether we can hear or not!
1. John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
2. This is the only way we can believe!
3. Rom 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
4. The only way to be united with Christ in the pursuit of revival is to hear and believe!
5. Heb 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
6. We can't just wait around in doubt, it's time to move!
7. We MUST believe!
1. Mark 16:14-18 (ESV) 14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
God rocked us tonight at Revival Church… listen to the teaching now.
The atmosphere was charged as God rocked us with a call to discover the spirit of prayer.
Listen NOW to tonight’s message, Ten Threats to Revival #6: A Lack of Intercession. media.johnburton.net/5614333
I’ll include my personal notes below so you can follow along.
Threat 6. A Lack of Intercession
1. It’s time to work!!!! It’s time to establish a foundation that will support revival!
1. Satisfaction with the present is fatal to the future!
2. God told me in Colorado that our ministry was going to be a model of revival for the nations.
1. I hesitated sharing that for quite some time.
2. One day God pressed the issue… and I agreed to cast that vision. I wrote it on the white board… and that very day I met someone who drove down from Denver to see me.
3. He said God spoke to him about our ministry… that it was to be a model of revival for the nations!
4. In San Diego I irritated a group of young leaders in the youth group… I was unrelenting in my focus on prayer… one day one of them came to me… he said, I don’t like the way you do things, but I had to tell you… I can’t deny that it works.
5. Prayer!!!!!!!!! If nothing else… prayer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. We must be with God, hear God and declare his Word!
7. Isaiah 58:1-3 (ESV) 1 “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.”
8. Amos 3:6-8 (ESV) 6 Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it? 7 “For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. 8 The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?”
1. These secrets only come through crazy levels of deep prayer!
2. God has secrets he wants to share with you, but he doesn't shout his secrets. Get closer. ~Leonard Ravenhill to Steve Hill
3. Evan Roberts declared that revival hinges on our obedience to pray and wait.
1. These two primary disciplines are so hard for Christians, but they should not be!!
2. Christians are prayer-sick… it’s shocking!!!
1. “I'm soliciting your thoughts about how one's heart begins to engage with God. It seems so few people claim they have experience a deep encounter with The Lord on an ongoing basis. Is it taught, or caught? Is it initiated by God or man? How is it sustained?”
1. There is a HUGE price to pay if you want to encounter God on an ongoing basis!!!! MASSIVE!!!
4. Undrai Fizer-
The Things that your spirit believes in will get you in trouble, and I want to know– “Are you alright with that?” Believing in, as well as becoming and being transformed into an expression of the Kingdom, will definitely produce “words against you.” Are you alright with that?
Are you alright with being put on the spot, wondered about, and misunderstood? Are you cool with the fact that you no longer are being empowered to please men, nor their opinions, and to suffer ridicule for being one with God? Are you ready to become friends with seeming “loneliness” in order to be one with God and His beliefs?
Are you ready to believe and become a thing that the world cannot label, neither can religion control? Are you ready to live with that type of fearlessness and power? Are you ready to eat Words of God that produce this kind of dominion? Are you ready to become best friends “with a sword” that will bring division between beliefs of the Kingdom, and beliefs of religion and the mundane?
5. Are we going to boldly and sometimes violently advance against a lukewarm society, against the spirit of Jezebel, against Absalom and take what God has called us to possess? If so, there is a price to pay- and we must pay it!
1. I keep hearing stories about how hard it is in various cities to gather a remnant who's devoted to prayer & warfare. This has to change!
2. Steve Gray- “God is looking for a people who do not have anything better to do than be in His presence.”
2. A pastor of a large church installed as a part of his counseling process a simple instruction:
1. Pray two hours a day for the next week and then call to setup your counseling appointment.
2. 75% of the people never set an appointment.
2. The first two elements in my book, 20 Elements of Revival, are to be agreed in the house of prayer, and to contend together.
3. Acts 2:46 (ESV) 46 And day by day, attending the temple together…
4. Today it’s nearly impossible for prophetic voices and apostolic leaders to sound alarms and gather people together… the upper room concept… 10 days in constant prayer… would be impossible in today’s church!
1. People have lives to live… kids to take care of… games to play!
2. Steve Gray- “The problem is that we have tasted of the good things of God and decided we want something else.”
3. Joel 2:15-16 (NKJV) 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; 16 Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room.
1. Bring the kids! Gather the children! Gather the babies! Everybody gather at the sound of the alarm!
2. We as leaders are to blame. We have set up churches that are devoid of prayer… churches that people can be involved in even if they don’t have a vibrant connection with God! We must repent!
3. The church is a Believers ministry! It’s not for the lost! It’s to be a place of burning, raging intercession!
1. Acts 5:12-16 (ESV) 12 Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico. 13 None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem. 14 And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, 15 so that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. 16 The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.
4. When we gather together and pray, the power will come to heal the sick in the streets!
5. Dutch Sheets said, “I know this is going to bother some of you, and some of you may leave our church…but the truth remains that the church is not a house of teaching, a house of evangelism, or a house of anything else… it is a house of prayer for all nations.
1. The true church could not have become the “institution” it has, if the watchmen had not been rendered impotent (John Martin).
2. The reason the prayer rooms are nearly empty is because prayer is not the main thing!
3. It’s secondary! It’s non-essential! It can be skipped! What??!!!
1. While other religious are praying 5 times a day and signing up for martyrdom, Christians can't put the wine glass down! ~Steve Hill
2. Steve said there’s a movement of ‘freedom seekers’ that are focused on their own condition rather than repentance, holiness and the call to impact the world!
3. I've have it up to here with drinking Christians! There's a philosophy of ‘freedom' that's on the rise in the church. ~Steve Hill
4. The unapologetic call to prayer as the primary purpose of every Christian will result in backlash!
5. I saw it with Mike Bickle. I’ve seen it in the Colorado Springs prayer movement I helped lead. Check out what Jesus dealt with!
1. Mark 11:15-18 (ESV) 15 And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.
2. There is a rising remnant that is looking for a place where they can go deep in zealous, fervent prayer, but they can’t find that place!!! Other activities are getting priority!
1. Life Application Commentary: Obviously Jesus’ actions stunned the many people crowded into the Temple area. Jesus quoted from Isaiah 56:7 and explained God’s purpose for the Temple: a place of prayer for all nations. These were important words in light of Jesus’ concern for the Gentiles who had come to worship, and considering the Gentile audience to whom Mark was writing. God welcomed the Gentiles into his Temple to worship, but they were unable to do so because of the animals bellowing and merchants haggling. Not only that, but all these merchants were no more honest than thieves who had turned the Temple into their den. This was a horrible desecration. No wonder Jesus was so angry.
2. So many are rising up against the call to prayer because it threatens what they are trying to get out of the church!
3. I’ve never, in my life, ever seen a group of people who were more on fire, more devoted and more in love with Jesus… more serious and sober about their mission on earth, then the people at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.
1. Yet, people continually denounce that ministry. What??!
2. Their love of God is extreme and deep… well beyond any other group I’ve ever seen… and people assault them for that?
3. IHOP is called a cult because of their singular devotion!!!!
4. One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple.
3. The call in Detroit is for 1000 intercessors to gather and release fire and cover this great mission. If we don’t respond, we probably don’t want the consuming fire of revival to come. We won’t be prepared for such a fearful burning.
6. The Tribes are being formed in response to this mandate.
1. We need YOU to start a Tribe!!!!
2. After the 2 Chron 7 fire that hit the temple, we have the famous passage in 2 Chron 7:11-14:
1. 2 Chron 7:11 Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished. 12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
3. We must pray!
Julia Palermo & a night of prophetic ministry at Revival Church
Julia Palermo will be calling us into the fire at Revival Church Sunday evening!
It is rare indeed that I would offer such a bold endorsement of someone, but Julia Palermo is from a rare tribe that refuses to blend in or live a marginal life. Julia breathes an uncommonly hot prophetic fire that brings liberty to the desperate and terrifying fear to the unyielding religious spirits around her. ~John Burton
At 6pm sharp we will be going deep into intercession and worship of the King at Revival Church!
Julia Palermo will be briefly sharing before I continue my series on TEN THREATS TO REVIVAL.
Then, Julia, Valerie and I will be giving prophetic words in a corporate setting.
Get ready for a fiery night!
Revival Church meets at CENTRAL CHURCH, 1529 E. 12 Mile Rd, Madison Heights, MI 48071.
You can listen to the first two part of the series, Ten Threats to Revival, at http://media.johnburton.net.
Jack Coe cancelled… BUT, Lindell Cooley and Nathan Morris TONIGHT!
I will continue in my series, Ten Threats to Revival, Sunday night at Revival Church!
Jack Coe had to cancel unfortunately but we are going to still go DEEP and HIGH in the pursuit of revival in Detroit!
I’ll be continuing my invigorating and strategic series, Ten Threats to Revival. It will absolutely ROCK YOU!
I want to encourage you to show up at 5pm for the Prep Room… one hour of white hot prayer in preparation of the service!
Revival Church meets at CENTRAL CHURCH, 1529 E. 12 Mile Rd, Madison Heights, MI 48071.
LINDELL COOLEY AND NATHAN MORRIS TONIGHT!
I haven’t encountered a stream as baptized in revival fire as the Brownsville/Bay of the Holy Spirit outpourings.
TONIGHT Detroit has the rare opportunity to experience this fire!
I’ll be there at 5pm if you all want to show up a little early… for prayer, etc.