For the Believer

Tonight we are going to continue kind of in the series. I don't know if we do very many series, but for lack of a better term. This the last few weeks we've just been talking about who are we as a community? Why are we here and where are we going?

And whether you've been here for seven years and you helped start this place, or this is your first week today, our hope is that this is a really clarifying couple of weeks for us to really all be speaking the same language and understanding who we are as a house, who we are as a body. And so the first week we talked about how we are building a base for God first and foremost. And a lot of that comes down to how we are putting the prayer room at the center. And I encourage you to go back and listen to that if you missed that week.

And last week we talked about how we are building a base in the city for the lost. And what does that actually look like when we empower everyday people to be on mission in their everyday life. And tonight we are going to talk about building a base for the believer. This is our next people group that we are thinking about.

Next week we are going to talk about how we are building the base for the city and what that means to us. And so you may have seen us talk about how we are calling this the everyday mission base. And so we call it the base for short, right? So it's the everyday mission space.

And so it may be, why are we calling it a mission space? Does that mean that we are like a missions organization that's sending people to the nations? And yes, we'll do that for sure. But really what a mission space is for us is a mission space for the everyday person, the everyday believer.

And what we mean by that is people that are not in vocational ministry or in occupational, not in occupational missionary to the nations. But we are all missionaries. If we follow Jesus, that means that we are on mission by nature. And so we oftentimes said we're more like a missions training school than maybe what you might typically think of with a local church.

We are absolutely that piece of the local church, but we have this training, equipping and sending mission that we're going, come in to the house to be trained, equipped, catalyzed and sent out into your Monday, your Tuesday, your Wednesday to reach your neighbors, your coworkers to love your family well, to be healthy on the inside, right? To do life in community. And so as we have established this house, we have had one consistent prayer that we have prayed, Josh and I have prayed this since we were in college. And it is God, would you send us the hungry ones?

Would you send us the people that have that ache, that longing, that reach in their heart that there's more? I don't care if they've been walking with you Lord for 30 years, there's still that ache in the inside of the closer I get to God, the more I know I'm just on the shores of knowing Him. Or maybe it's the hungry one who just surrendered their life to Jesus or is about to surrender their life to Him, and there's that ache for more, eternity built on their heart. And so hunger looks like so many different things, but our heart is to empower the hungry ones in our city, in our region with the practical tools of how to do this stuff.

It isn't just I don't want to just tell you about it, I want to hand you tools and teach and train you how to go and do this stuff. Does that make sense? So it's like every time that we're gathering, even for services, we're first thinking, Lord, what would bless your heart? What would move you?

What would you enjoy in this space? It's our first priority, but right after that we're going, what is going to empower the people to actually love Him in a way that spans decade after decade after decade? What does that look like? We're students of the everyday believer going, what do you need to succeed in life, so to speak, in actually following Jesus?

Yeah, when we're talking about empowerment, there's three elements to empowerment. Empowerment looks like equipping, so that's like handing somebody a tool, it's like a shovel, like, hey, here's a tool, that's equipping someone. Then training is showing them how to do it, right? I remember growing up on the construction site with my dad and he would equip me with a tool, then he'd show me how to do it, and then he would cut me loose and mobilize me, right?

That's what empowerment is, that's three-part, eight-equip, train and mobilize. And that's what empowerment is. And we feel called to empower everyday believers, okay? And so we believe as a community that God is putting an end to spectatorism, to spectator Christianity, sit and watch the ministers do the work of ministry, that the Lord is actually going, I'm clearing that out, and I want you to get in the game.

So he's going, hey, I don't want you to just watch on the TV, the kingdom. I don't want you to just be exposed to it with a post, I don't want you to just be exposed to it from the stance. I want you to actually get in the game. Can you imagine if you were telling even your kids, you know, like, let's say you're in your 60s and you're like, yeah, man, in the 2020s, I played for the Vikings.

And they're like, whoa, really? You played for the Minnesota Vikings? Oh my goodness, did you roll with Justin Jefferson? You're like, yeah, yeah, I played with Justin Jefferson.

You're like, whoa, okay. And the kids are getting excited. And then they're like, well, how many touchdowns did you score? How many tackles did you get?

And they just start asking you questions about your stats. You're like, well, how's all the practice squad? You know, we're like, oh, I sat the bench. I never actually got any play in time.

And they'd be like, what? Why? You know what I'm saying? Where's like, you were made to be in the game.

You weren't just, you weren't meant to just be on the sidelines watching the kingdom happen. You weren't meant to be just watching people taking trips without going on the trip. You know, it's like you were supposed to be around the fire with Jesus on the road trip to Capernaum, right? You're like, you were meant to be a disciple.

You weren't meant to just be in the crowds. You were meant to be with Jesus after he had spoken to the crowds. And then he goes, hey, let me explain the parable. That's what you were destined for.

You weren't just supposed to be a fly on the wall. You weren't supposed to be just like watching from afar. You were meant to know him. You were meant to actually get off the bench into the game, experience the kingdom, not just watch it from the sidelines.

You see this spectrum? Let's pretend I have a whiteboard. Can you just picture with me? So we're going to have a picture that we're going to, an imaginary picture here that we're going to interact with all night, okay?

So over here is cold and over here is hot. And there's a line connecting the two. Really complicated. Are you with me?

Okay. And so spiritually speaking, this is hot. This is cold over there. Cold is I don't have a relationship with Jesus.

I have not surrendered my life to him. And hot is what we would say we see in the scriptures of a kingdom life. What it actually looks like according to the word to follow Jesus. Yes.

The Western church finds herself about right here. Right in the middle. The middle is the strong majority of the Western church and what we see expressed when we gather. And so what that looks like is right here in the middle.

This is what we would call lukewarm. This is what we might call a little apathetic lethargic going through the motions. A little sleepy, right? The middle is where it becomes kind of normal in this place to forget that you're in new creation and just kind of be dabbling in the old man or just even taking on the characteristics of the old man, the very things that you've been set free from through Jesus.

It actually is just normal for me to be in this place. Maybe it's just normal here that I'm quick to anger. And that's just normal for me. I find myself to be really impatient and that's just really normal here.

Gossip and slander. Yeah, I mean, that's normal. I'm just sharing how I honestly feel. It's really a normal.

It's normal here to have my experience and faith be religion and just be a man. I go to church sometimes, but that is the end, the beginning and the end to my expression of a walk with God. There really isn't much of one. Right here, it's normal to have no idea where to go in the word and just kind of be lost about it.

Right here is normal to go. I think God's good, but sometimes I'm not exactly sure. Maybe that is a good point. Maybe God isn't good.

And I'm still just trying to figure out, but I think he's mostly good. Right in the middle is that expression of I know the truth, but I'm not necessarily living into all of it. I know that this is true, but is it true? I know that this is true, but you would never see it in my actual life.

In the middle, it just looks a whole lot like the good people that are cold to be specific. So you go, well, I'm not addicted to X, Y, Z. I'm not doing these things. I'm not cheating on X, Y, Z.

It's like, no, maybe not, or maybe. But you're going any person who's like a moral person that has no relationship with the Lord. Here doesn't look much different than a moral person who doesn't know Jesus. So then there's a person over here and they're going, I am longing for the more because what eternity is built on the inside of every human heart.

There is a longing and an ache for everyone right here. So they're searching, they're looking, and all that they see is this. We're going to call it the black hole. There's like a gravitational pull to the black hole.

And it's so pervasive in the Western church that from over here, this is all they can see. There's no sight line to the hot. You can't see it because all you're seeing is this, and this isn't what's real. This isn't what we were created for.

And there's this gravitational pull where the enemy is going, man, anyone over here, if I can just pull you slowly but surely into this, maybe I can get you to be spit out right over here. Do you see this? So it's like this isn't because we have bad intentions, but it's because we have a battle and it's not against flesh and blood. And the enemy goes, man, I couldn't get you to not say yes to Jesus.

I couldn't get trippy up in those ways, but if I can just slowly lull you to sleep, then I could just get you here. And maybe you'll sleep long enough that you're disoriented enough to actually not wake up. Do you see it? We feel this in our everyday life because it's like a current.

That's another gravitational pull, a current. That is what we experience toward this black hole, where it's like, oh, it's just normal for me to live like that. It's normal for me to wake up in the morning and go, I wake up for me. I exist for me to make myself happy.

And if I don't have a good day, man, that's really going to take me out. That's normal right here. It's normal right here to have a disconnection and have my marriage falling apart. And now we're just like roommates.

It's normal to not have connections to our children in this place. Are you tracking with what that looks like? It's normal in the center, in the middle, to go into my workplace and think about, oh, it's just about me climbing the corporate ladder. How much money can I make?

What's the next step I can make and not be thinking about the kingdom purpose of why you're even there? It's like the American dream being the focus. There's a lot of that in there. And so we have this zeal to see the middle and get the bride out of the middle.

There's this spectrum that you get hotter and hotter and hotter and there's no end to this. There's no arriving. There's no spiritual elitism here. It's like, man, maybe I'm here, maybe I'm here, whatever it is, but the closer I get here, the farther I realize that I am from it.

Right? It's like you can't exhaust the depths of him. You know, when I think of conversations that Katie and I've had with missions leaders that oversee mission movements of millions and millions of people that are giving their lives to Jesus. We're talking about tens of millions of people getting born again in the last 10 years, right?

Through the leadership of these leaders and what God's doing in the nations. And they've told us many times, they go, hey, once someone gives their life to Jesus, just make sure to protect them from the local church. Protect them from the American church because the greatest contraceptive to kingdom growth in unreached people groups giving their lives to Jesus is connecting them to the Western church. If you connect them to the Western church, they'll become self-focused, they'll disqualify themselves from actually being messengers and disciple makers, and they'll go right into spectator Christianity and think that the minister is the one that does ministry, and they'll sit on the sidelines.

And so they've literally counseled us, just don't connect them to the church. And we're going, we need more churches, right? And they're going, don't connect them because it's not the kingdom that we're seeing in the nations. You're not, lose your life so you can find your life, right?

And so what we have to understand is that now in American culture, this is so normal that if you're, some of you have co-workers and you're like, what do you believe in? They're like, oh, I'm Christian and you're like, right? Because it's a cultural thing. It's like a nominal Christianity.

And this is not just unique to Christianity, it's unique to Muslim faith, it's unique to other faiths, right? Listen, we need to understand that one of the greatest pools of mission in our day is actually in the church. What I mean by that is there's actually millions of Americans that don't know God, that aren't followers of Jesus, but they think that they are. And they're stuck in the black hole of American culture ideologies that has nothing to do with biblical Christianity following Jesus.

I believe what's going to happen is the church is going to wake up and go, the mission is actually here, even in the pews. They don't know him and they're actually in the congregation. They're even in the church building and they don't know him, right? And what God is doing in our day is I call it the great migration.

There is a great migration that is going to happen in our day. It's called the New Day for Western Christianity and American Christianity, where there is a migration out of the black hole and into red hot love affection for Jesus, kingdom advancement. God's doing it. God's doing it and it's the changing of the expression and the understanding of Christianity in one generation.

But listen, I want you to just pause, the changing of what the expression, because it's not just talking. It's the changing of the expression. Like following Jesus gets expressed through our lives in our everyday life, not just on microphones and messages and Instagram posts, because what the world is wanting, the cold. Do you know what they want?

They want the real. They don't want some plastic promotion. They don't want some good orator that can really say a thing that's inspired. No, do you know what they want?

They want you to love God, have a story, and actually be a real person that knows someone intimately that can introduce them to the God that created them. They want a real person. Listen, in the age of deep fakes over the next couple of years, we're going to be seeing things on media all over the place, and every one of the world is going to be asking, what's true and what's real? And they already are asking that question.

And the only way for them to know that they know that they know is to actually have a person standing in front of them that embodies the kingdom of heaven in real life. We can preach. We can preach the best messages. We can lead the best worship services, but they're not really going to know the kingdom unless you live it.

Unless we all live the kingdom. Unless we show them how. Listen, it's not going to be your pastors. It's going to be all of us.

It's going to be the pastors of the Twin Cities, the people of God that are actually going to be the flesh and bones. God's going, I want to give them hearts of flesh. They need to meet hearts of flesh that actually live it, that are living into the kingdom of vision. No one wants to be in the middle.

No one wakes up and goes, man, I just really want to be lost in this cycle of self. Nobody wants that. There is compassion in the heart of God for those of us that find ourselves fully in the middle or dipping our toe in the middle. There is zeal in his heart to see us pulled out of that space.

He is not angry. If there's anyone that's going, you're describing a lot of what I experience. There is compassion in his heart. Like I said before, it's like, this is not because we're choosing that we just want this lukewarm lifestyle.

It's like, no, the enemy is waging war to actually dismantle what God is doing in your life and his destiny over you. This middle was not what you were created for. It is not what God designed us for. That's why we're exhausted.

The middle is exhausting. The middle is exhausting. That's why so much of the church is sleeping. And she seems like she's bored because she's so overwhelmed with living a life she was never created to live.

It's not what you're created for. So if you go, man, I feel that. We've all felt that. We go, oh, man, I feel that.

It's good news. There's good news. There's more. It's good news.

It's not what you're created for. It's good news. It's not what the word says. It's good news.

It's not what Jesus gave his life for. There's more. But we have to call it what it is. Because so many of us are just swimming in it.

It's normal. We're swimming in this cycle because it's like, well, that's what I see other people doing. This is what's normal. This is the biggest expression in the West of a Christian faith.

And so this is normal. Not really different than the other people that are also in this cycle. But the first step is to call it what it is. And it's not normal.

This is not the normal way of life for sons and daughters. This is not what the kingdom looks like. When the person in the middle is actually, okay, you got a neighbor who really is like really looking for God. Maybe they've had some other conversations with people and they're going, I think I do.

I want to learn more about the Bible. I'm just so hungry to learn. This person in the middle is like, yeah, we can read the Bible together. Let's start reading the Bible together.

Let's start reading. Let's start reading. And this person who doesn't know Jesus yet is going, wait a second. So the things that we're reading are those so real today?

And you're like, yeah, but I don't see that in you. So like, do you heal the sick? Do you hear from God? Does he give you dreams and visions that give you instruction and night?

Does he do that? Are people actually like getting delivered from demons? You're like, no, well, is the Bible true? Is it real?

Yes. This gets complicated quick. This gets complicated quick. This is the breakdown of why these missions leaders are going, don't send them to the local church because they're going to come in and is what they see here and in our homes going to match what they read right here.

Are they just going to be totally confused? Is this true or is it not true? And where are the people that are taking the Lord and is worded going? If you said it, it's true and I will live according to it.

Where the Western church isn't taking them in and going, you don't have to surrender that much. You're like a little wild. You don't need to sell all your possessions. We are watering down.

This is what they're saying. The Western church will water down the expression that these people are having that are giving their life to Jesus. In the middle, Joshua started talking about this. There is this piece of it that looks plastic and fake that we are already seeing.

The world is raging against it but even more within the church, believers are raging against the system that has looked fake because they've seen the underbelly. They're like up here, it looks nice and shiny and clean and then you look under the hood and it's a mess. That's what's happening in the middle. In that place, we're seeing the deconstruction movement that's happening.

People are here and they're deconstructing their faith and a lot of the times they're ending up over here. The reality is we don't need to fear deconstruction. We actually need to encourage it. This needs to be deconstructed.

This needs a microscope held up to it and go, something's not right here. Something isn't matching up here. Please, if you haven't deconstructed the middle, start today. It's so important to deconstruct this because it's not real.

It is a counterfeit. But how do you deconstruct it? You deconstruct it by reconstructing it with the word and in context of community. You have to do it together and you have to have an anchor point.

So if you're in this place and you're looking at it and you're deconstructing it and you are just leaving it up to man's wisdom and your own good ideas and what do I think is good and what do I think is bad and what do I think is best, you will end up over here. It's just a fact and we're seeing it all throughout the church. I know each of us could name a handful of people that are experiencing that because no one is coming in and teaching, training and equipping how to deconstruct well. How do we do this through the word as our anchor point?

This is our true north. If we do not have a true north, if we do not have absolute truth, it's not going to go well. So if we look at this and I go, this is not working, this is broken. Holy Spirit, illuminate the word to me.

What is true in the context of community and accountability and you will be over here? You will come out of that deconstructing of the middle burning. And I just believe that we're seeing that's the great migration. We're coming out of the middle and I believe that the hot is going to burn brighter and brighter and brighter so that the cold can get a sight line to the hot because it's growing.

That is the new day. That is the new day for the bride that we're living into together. We're going to see it. Listen to me.

Listen to me. You are alive for such a time as this. There is reformation coming to the church and you are a part of it. You are on the front lines of it, but it starts with naming this as a farce, a counterfeit and a fake.

This is not what's real. And so it starts with that repentant heart to go, listen. This isn't normal in my life. And I've been allowing this behavior, this perspective.

I've been thinking it's no big deal. And today I'm going to name that that was not God's design for my life. And by starting there, it turns you and it aims your arrow or it changes your trajectory to begin moving this direction, how God designed you. And it feels so good.

It feels so good to move toward what he created you for. Yeah. When I think about deconstruction, just to build off of what Katie's saying, oftentimes it can come from a place of bitterness and resentment. And so it easily moves into isolation and then isolation turns into accusation and then it turns into unforgiveness and then the heart starts growing colder and colder and colder.

But if you can go, something's not right. I'm going to gather with friends that love Jesus and we're going to process it. I'm going to go to therapy and counseling. I'm going to humble myself and forgive those that have mistreated me.

I'm going to love those that have mistreated me and cause inflicted pain from leadership in my life. And if I forgive in the face of all of that and I look at this and go, there's something not right. I look at the scriptures and this is what I see. I forgive them.

They know not what they're doing because they just grew up in this. They were swimming in this and this is all they knew and this is all I knew. And but Lord, I love you. And then all of a sudden your heart's tender.

It's warm towards others and you got a flicker of a flame of love on your heart. Right? Ephesians 4 is such an important thing to us as a community. Ephesians 4 verse 12, it says this actually I'll start in verse 11.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and to knowing Jesus to mature manhood, to measure the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we won't be tossed to and fro like children and like waves carried away by every wind of doctrine. Right? So deception sets in when what happens is there's only one person that can tell you what's true from the Bible and they have a microphone in their hand and they're called reverent. And then it sets in because then there's only one authority that can decide what's true and what's not.

And then all of a sudden everybody just takes their word for it. We have to have a whole people that are opening up their Bible, they have the apostles and the prophets and the pastors and the evangelists and the teachers going open up your Bible and let me show you how. Open up your Bible. You can read it too.

You seek out the truth yourself. And then all of the children aren't tossed to and fro by the waves of every doctrine and deception and lie. But they're going I want to know the truth myself. Half of the call for us is to just provoke you.

And agitate you into loving good works. That's really the call of every day. How can we agitate you, equip you, and train you and call you in to your identity, love and good works. But look at this in verse 12.

I want us to look at this to equip and we're almost finished here. To equip the saints for the work. I love that. Saints for the work.

Do you know that you are saints? If you've given your life to Jesus, you are a saint. Not because of anything that you've done, but because of what Jesus did and now he dwells in you. You're a saint.

And you have a purpose. You have a mission. You have a ministry. You are a minister.

But it says that the church leadership is supposed to equip you. And I talked about empowerment, equipping and training. But that word in the Greek equip is also a word used for mending in the Greek. Like mending a net.

A net that's torn and it's amending together. And as I reflect on that ago, man, it's not just equipping you and training you for evangelism. It's actually going, hey, there's been pain. There's been brokenness and traumas in your life.

Do you know that you can experience healing? And listen, this is not just like the hot is not passionate worshipers and fiery evangelists. It's literally people that are going, oh, I'm going to let you in to pain in my life. I'm not just going to be on the surface and be fine.

I'm actually going to let you in to the places of my life that are ugly, the places of my life that I don't want people to touch or come near. And I'm going to let you in. And I'm going to let you start mending. I'm going to let you start mending my heart.

And you know what, when you do that, God is building a story and a testimony in your life. He's actually bringing a restoration story to your life as you're letting him have access to those places of pain and that mending, oh my goodness, the cold, look at your mending story of healing. And do you know what they do? They go, that's what I want.

I want the Christian that's in process. I want the Christian that's not self-righteous, that doesn't necessarily have it all together. I want the Christian that's messy, but keeps on getting back up again. I want the Christian.

I want to know a God that is loving me in my mess. And now all of a sudden they're starting to see the story of the hot on display and it's the story of redemption. It's the story of healing. It's the story of what's real.

Not just a message, not just a post, not just hype. The world is tired of hype. They want to know someone that has let them into the junk of their life and go, yeah, and I have a whole group of people that have loved me at my worst. And all of a sudden they start going, wait, so it's not performance.

And they start going, so it's not just being good. It's not just being a good person in morality. It's not just showing up to church services, but it's actually knowing God and listening to him and obeying him and having him be the leader and doing what he says. Yeah, yeah, that's what it's like.

You know what, we can feel condemnation when we go, some of the lists that you've been sharing feels like me. And what I want to call us into is the people that are red hot don't always have it all together. That's the point I'm trying to make. Red hot looks like I'm at the end of myself and I lay down in the fetal position and I go, God, I need you, help me.

That's red hot. Red hot is, Lord, I got nothing. Hey, man, can we connect, can we hang tonight? Can we get together?

I just need to process what's going on in my life. Not isolated, not in a vacuum. You're not too spiritual, you're going, I'm open to have people in my life. They're reminding me of who I am when I'm at my worst.

Those that are on fire for Jesus don't always have it all together, but they always bounce back with love. They always go, but I love him and I'm going to get to the rocky chair in love. I'm not going to get offended. I'm not going to get bitter.

Even if I don't have capacity to spend hours a day with Jesus and all I have is five minutes but I showed up before work because the longing of my heart is to love him. I'm a lover first. I'm going to keep on showing up. Even when I feel weak, even when I feel like I don't have anything in the tank.

I'm going to be a lover of God. Lord, change me even when I feel the pressure. Even when I feel like I'm crippling under the pressure. I know that I can show up again and you'll love me in the middle of it.

God is setting us free from religion, setting us free from the spectator thing and going, Lord, I want to be hungry. I want to know you, know you. I don't want to just know about you. I want to know you.

I want to be around the fire with you. I want to be in the locker room with you. I want to slam my fist against the locker as we won. As I saw victory come and deliverance come from my friend.

I want the real thing. You're created for the real thing. You are created for the more. Not the status quo, not the regular, not the I should.

God's calling you into the more. It's your destiny to be a saint for the work. It's all stand. You can spread out if you want to in the room.

Just get a little elbow room. The way out of the black hole is love. Our yes has to be greater than our no. Most of what we live in in the black hole of Western Christianity is because we're so tired.

Because most of our lives is about what we're saying no to. And most of your Christian life is about what you're saying no to. Don't do this. Don't do that.

Don't touch. Don't do this. Don't sin. And that's what keeps us in the cycle of religion.

And our hearts get cold because then we start pointing at all of the people that don't know Jesus that are cold and we say how could they do this? We point at the world and we accuse because we feel accused on the inside ourselves. Because we're living in condemnation and we're feeling guilty. We're feeling shame.

But the Lord is calling us to be a people. The great migration out of spectator Christianity and consumer Christianity is into the way of Mary. Into the way of great love. Into the way of extravagant love.

And it's not primarily about what we're saying no to but it's primarily about who we're saying yes to. We're saying yes to a God that's an all-in type of God. A God that took on flesh. And the way of a man humbled himself to the point of death.

Even death on a cross like a criminal. This is the one that went all in. He went all in red hot. Full of love.

Offered the wealth of his whole house. He was utterly despised. Unrely rejected. For the sake of love.

Lord I want to be a hungry one. Make me a hungry one that loves much. Lord make me one that loves. Doesn't settle.

Lord make me one that isn't just content with mediocre love. Make me one that goes the extra mile in love. The one that says I'm not content with just the American dream. I want the kingdom dream.

I want your God dream that you have. Lord bring me into the kingdom. Open my eyes. Wake me up to heaven.

Wake me up to you. Lord I want that. I want that because you're worthy of it. It's for you.

You're worthy of it and you're worthy of the cold. Those that are lost in our city. Getting a new vision. Getting a new vision of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Lord would you just wake us up as the bride. Wake me up and wake us up. Worthy of a bored bride. You didn't offer your life for an apathetic bride, a disconnected bride.

A bride who is all together unimpressed. You're worthy of a bride that burns. You're worthy of a bride that's fully awake. Lord I asked, would you, you can ask for this.

Make me a bride that's fully awake. Wake me up. I don't want to slumber or sleep. I don't want to be apathetic.

I'm sick of being bored. I'm sick of waking up in the morning for me. It's killing me. I don't want it anymore.

The things I thought that would bring me life are killing me. God I don't want it anymore. You have to tell them for yourself. No one else can do the work for you.

I want my heart to burn. I don't have to have it all together. I just want to love you. I want to receive your love.

I want us to be connected for real. I don't want to live off of yesterday's revelation. Last year's encounter decades ago when I had a fiery season in God. I want the daily bread, the daily connection.

And you and me, me and you. That's the desire of my heart. That I have a soft heart, a burning heart, an awakened heart. This is what I long for.

Do it in us corporately, Lord. That each of us would be an awake and a burning one. So that we could be a burning people. So that we could be a shining people.

So that we together could be built into a house for God. That's like a city on a hill. Do it in us individually. So that you can do it in us corporately.

In this city, in our region. This is the desire of our heart. Give us a higher vision God. Get us out of the block of just seeing our own lives, in our own moment, in our own season.

Lift the blinders. Lift the blinders off the bride. Off of me, let us see in reality. Oh, we'll grow straight to you.

New normal coming to the church of America. That it's actually the normal that you laid out in the scriptures that we veered away from. It's not exactly a new normal. It's an old normal that's coming to the Western church.

And we just name. I want us to name together the things that are not normal for followers of Jesus. I see the Lord. He wants to renew our minds.

And starting with saying, this isn't normal in the kingdom. I say that living in isolation is not to normal in the kingdom, not being connected with anyone that I would lay my life down for it, who would do the same for me. That's not normal in the kingdom. It's not normal to have no one connected to the reality of what's happening in my heart.

It's not normal to hang on to bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness. It's not normal to have divisions. It's not normal to assume the worst of people. It's not normal to be apathetic when we come to the scriptures.

It's not normal to not enjoy prayer. It's not normal to not enjoy and get lost in the place of worship. It's just not normal. It's not normal to lay hands on a stick and not see them recover.

It's not normal to not hear God's voice. Yeah, Lord, we say that it's not normal to have my identity dictated by what I desire to consume sexually. Oh, my. Lord, we say that it's not normal in the kingdom to have my politics be something that I'm not passionate about than actually what you say.

Lord, I say that it's not normal to be knowing that I have trauma but never wanting to actually experience healing from it. Lord, I say that it's not normal to have my whole life be dictated by escaping reality, by consuming media so that I can just veg and not think about things. It's not normal to numb the pain through substances, even just a little to take the edge off. It's not normal in the kingdom.

It's not normal to use profanity like the world does and use language that is not honoring to people and the Lord. It's not normal to just show up to a job, pay my dues, and just hope that I can save enough money just for vacation but not actually think about why I'm alive. It's not normal to not make disciples. It's not normal to, after 5, 10, 15, 25, 35 years of following Jesus to never lead someone to a born again relationship in Jesus.

It's not all right. Lord, take us back to the start. Lord, we want to know. We want to know you.

We want to grow up into the knowledge of you, Jesus. And we want to be unified. And we want the body to grow. I just want us to take a minute and just pray all at the same time.

Whatever he's doing in your heart, it's important that it starts to leave your mouth, that you start to articulate. Maybe you want to give your own list of, this isn't normal in the kingdom. And I'm not going to call it normal anymore. Maybe you want to ask him to give you hunger in a burning heart.

Maybe you want to tell him how frustrated you feel right now. But I'm just going to, Stephen, you're going to play a little bit of a lot of flatter. So people can actually say out loud, talk to him for yourself. We can't be the ones to talk to him for you.

It's one thing to agree with someone else in prayer. It's another to open up your own mouth. Tell him what you want. Tell him what you are thinking.

Ask him the question that's on your heart. Articulate. No one else is listening to you. It's like you and him in your own prayer closet.

Lift your voice to the Lord. Oh. God, we ask that this wouldn't just be another moment that becomes a distant memory. That this wouldn't just be another message or another Sunday.

This is what we really desire. This is what we really want. Help us Lord, to give you our yes. Thank you for starting to take the blinders off.

You can just thank him. Thank you for starting to take the blinders off so that I could see just a little more clearly today. I really want that. Even if it costs me, because it's going to cost us a lot.

Even if it costs me, I want to see you. We just stand with me on a crane. I'm going to send you out. It's all standing.

If it helps you, you can put out your hands in front of you. With your poems. Skyward, Lord, I thank you. Lord, I thank you that before you ascended into heaven, you called your disciples to make disciples and to go.

From every tribe, every tongue, and every people group. Teaching them to obey everything that you had commanded them. Lord, I ask that you would mature us as a people and that you would mature each individual into listening and obeying and then helping others to listen and obey and become disciples. Lord, make me a reliable disciple that listens to you and then does what you say.

Lord, I want a heart that's on fire, a heart that's burning. Turn us into a company of people that are burning ones. And Lord, we thank you for starting fires everywhere. We just say, Lord, would you send revival fire in the streets of the Twin Cities?

And would you do it with revival on feet from this people? In Jesus name and everybody said amen.