When God Moves…His People Get Desperate

Pastor Vance and his wife Christina for his live in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pastor Vance leads church and by the way, you know that having 40 is a sign of greatness, and humility are growing a large effect of Georgia Northland is one thing going. When Las Vegas is quite another. These were the best thinkers and leaders is one most zealous winners of people to Christ that I know.

Not only has he grown a great church in Las Vegas. They sent out hundreds of their best to plant churches within the Midwest and around the world will not sense what happens in Vegas is not stated in Vegas and neither would we wanted to. Now you know that our vision is 1000 churches in our generation's vision and no church in Las Vegas is very similar.

We've often said he'll star the West Coast was on the East Coast and will meet somewhere in the middle. I love Vance allowed his family loves church he is a great friend and I believe he is one of the greatest leaders mission leaders today before Pastor Vance comes the stage he's got a video that he would like to use.

That'll set up his time with us so reroll that for you now some and I look forward to being back with you next week as we open the book of Judges and see what God has for us in the weeks to come.

There is no power like that feeling. One by falling in love with Jesus all about the incessant noise of human activity. We heard some marching until this God is many people express an interest in revival. There were not so many deeply concerned about his and he was still good for still fewer program for spiritual revival is not the nation right now imperative is the beginning of revival is really viable extraordinary spirit of God.

God extraordinary prayer is the condition promoting content in 1857 was a young man by the name of Jeremiah Lanphier who lived in New York City and he found himself burdened and broken over the condition of his city in the day in which he lived and he was so burdened and broken over the condition of the city in the world in which he lived that one afternoon he was in a small church just the back room of that church on his knees before God just crying out to God in desperation and this was really the cry of his heart. Lord, what would you have me to do and sitting before the Lord and that little backroom church there on Fulton St. in New York City got birthed in his heart that on September 23, 1857. He was supposed to begin a Wednesday prayer meeting at noon for businessmen and women in downtown New York City to comment to gather together to seek the face of God together for God to move in a fresh and powerful way.

And so he did what you and I might've done having since God leading them to do that. He printed up a lot of flyers and and in brochures and begin to pass them out literally to hundreds of people inviting them to come and join him 12 o'clock noon September 23, 1857 for an hour of prayer. As you can imagine Jeremiah Lanphier woke up that morning with great anticipation and expectation in his heart.

September 23 12 o'clock noon couldn't get there fast enough for him.

He got there early, at 12 o'clock he sat in this room the building where he told people to come all by himself. Nobody else showed and to be quite honest. That would've been enough for most of us that morning to say.

Maybe I didn't hear from God.

Maybe I need to do something else.

Let's shut this down and start over because this can't be God. Nobody came not Jeremiah Lanphier.

He was so convinced that God spoke in the begin to pray all by himself. He just pray five minutes 10 minutes 20 minutes half an hour all alone, begging God to move, but a half-hour in the prayer meeting. Jeremiah heard some footsteps coming up the stairwell in the room where he was and somebody came and joined him there in that prayer meeting, so now there's two they pray together for five minutes and then somebody else joins in 10 minutes later somebody else.

By the end of the hour they had a whopping grand total of six people gathered in the room.

Pray again. That would've probably been the jumping off place for most of us, we would determine this is not successful, we will need to do this.

Let's shut it down.

Thank you all for coming. God bless you, be warmed and be feel right be done, not Jeremiah came back the next week. 20 people showed the next week it was 40 by January 1858. Three months later. People were gathering on three floors of the same building to contain all of the people who were coming to beg God to move by March 6 months in 6000 people were now gathering every single day in New York City to beg God to move, but it spread pass New York City. There were now also 6000 in Pittsburgh 2000 in Chicago 4000 in Philadelphia.

Meetings were now being held in Washington DC, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama. By May 1858, 50,000 people had trusted Jesus Christ in New York City and been born again into a living relationship with the God of heaven and newspaper reported. You can look it up its historical research been several new England states there were entire cities and villages were every person had come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. In 1858 there were towns, where there was not one unsaved person left the historians writing about this particular event tell us that for a period of months in 1858, 50,000 people per week were being born again and her relationship with God across the United States of America. So much so that by January 1859, about 15 months after this prayer meeting began. They report that over 1 million people in America had been born again in the relationship with God, and you got understand there were only 30 million people living in America in 1858. So why are you telling us that story this weekend limiting one 1857 to 1859 is the last undeniable recorded move of God in the United states of America spent 156 years since we've seen God move like that. Some called it the Fulton Street revival because of where it began in that building in New York City. Others began to call it the third great awakening. Some would argue that we've had since then, some other movements of God in America and we have but if you're going to talk undeniable were across theological spectrums across denominational lines.

Everybody agrees that was God and God move mightily. You gotta go all the way back 1857 1859. I know this morning you you don't know me and I really don't know you but I want to tell you something about me and where I am right now I am hungry to see God move like that again. I am not interested in going to church to go to church. I am not interested in just our Western brand of practicing Christianity hi there is a growing hunger that it's it's almost a hurt in my soul to seek God move again. We need a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God.

We need God to me… I want God to move.

Starting in me.

I need God to move in my life.

I'm not saying that it needs to happen out there obscenities to start right here with me. I will God to move in me. I want God to move in my family. My wife, sitting over here. We have four children, two in college one in high school when an elementary school and I will talk to move so that my kids get to experience. I don't listen. I've read about revival I've studied my kids to read about it.

I don't want to just hear stories about it.

I want my kids to see God move I want to taste the glory of God as God pours out his spirit and moves mightily through his people. I will God listen.

I want God to move in my chart. I want God to solve movement whole church in Las Vegas, but in our city.

When people say you need to make God your worries going to be. I don't care if they say here's where you go here. Great sermon. Or here's what you hear great music know I want to say you need God you are God's will be on Sunday God to move in my seat Las Vegas Nevada is where I live you know anything about Las Vegas you know we we need God to move in Las Vegas. The probably more than you even know all you really knows about this trip downtown and that's a million tourists every week or 2 million people who live there and if today let's just imagine today if today we launched 1000 new churches in Las Vegas today thousand new churches and every one of those churches open their doors with 500 people in attendance. Las Vegas would still be 72% unchurched to city of 2 million people.

That's 92% of them declare no relationship with God at all. When I look at our world.

We need God to be one of one of the reasons I'm so excited about being here this weekend up and excited all weekend about being here is because your pastor and are such good friends, and I know Pastor JD in his heart to see God move I've heard the reputation and testimony of your church and I know your passion and your hunger to see God week JD and I have even met several times over the last two or three years as our travel schedules put us in close vicinity to one another would just with another couple friends get together we've had conversations about what it looks like for God to move and what's our responsibility as leaders and how do we engage in. Get involved in what cats do we need God to move look at our world and I see in our world.

Racial tension and cultural divide like we haven't seen in a long time we see economic instability and moral collapse of violence, wars, persecution, and listen. It is time it is time that we as followers of Jesus Christ stop talking about politics and start getting broken over the hurt and pain of a world without God. Listen. Our solution is not coming from Washington, DC said this to our church in Las Vegas.

Listen our church in Las Vegas.

You got understand the one that pastor Teddy and I pastor together there. Las Vegas is an extremely multicultural multi generational fellowship. We have over 43 languages spoken in our church that we know what we don't have a majority of anything were white, black, Asian, despotic, Hispanic, Polynesian, everything in between. Where were, what happens going to look like in Las Vegas so so so you can understand our church.

There's all kinds of diversity.

It doesn't matter which sunless we have them on both sides of the political aisle sitting in our services, but it doesn't matter where you fall on the political spectrum. The answer and the hope is not legislation. The answer and the hope is not in some election. The only hope is the glorious amazing gospel of Jesus Christ. Because when God move when people get chains from the inside out and it's real, genuine transformation we need God to move, limiting the good news. God desires to move through his people. We just need to get to the place were we cry out with the prophet Isaiah. Oh that you would hand the heavens and come down that the mountains might wake at your presence. We see an example of it in the opening pages of the book of acts. If you have your Bible turn to acts chapter 1 at our church in Las Vegas for the last two weeks or three weeks we have been walking through the first two chapters of the book of acts under this simple heading when God moves and we been trying to understand from Scripture. Some characteristics or principles that you find in the people of God.

When God moves now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that there is a formula we can't go to the Bible and pull two or three steps and say what if we just do this then somehow God is obligated to move and weaken by following these principles manipulate God to move on.

I bet we cannot do that to what we can do. We can understand from the pages of Scripture. Some principles and characteristics that we as the people of God can wrap our hearts around so that should God in his divine sovereignty and infinite grace choose to pour out his Spirit in a fresh way and blow among us. We have our sales lifted up, and we are ready for the wind of God to blow so that's what we been doing, we been trying to uncover some of those principles to ready our hearts in the opening pages of the book of acts you find several of them this morning. I'm only going to unpack one if you have interest going deeper into what I'm talking about.

We just preach this series at our church you go online. It's completely free. Hope church online.com the series when God moves it's all there you go dig deeper into yourself and cost anything. It's all there on the website you go and get more information.

But this morning I went unpack. The first principle here it is.

When God moves his people are desperate. We set the scene for you. Jesus has lived his full life. He's model 3 1/2 years of ministry. He's already gone to the cross, died on the cross for the sins of the world been buried. He's already risen from the dead for 40 days he's making appearances to his disciples at the end of that 40 day. He gathers them on a hillside and here's what he reads what he says to them. Acts chapter 1 verse eight. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and all Judaica and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of their limited what he said right there.

I am about to move God is preparing them, and God is saying I am about to move, and here's what he said I'm going to move through you pick it up in verse 12. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called all of that which is near Jerusalem, the Sabbath day's journey away when it entered the city they went up to the upper room where they were staying.

That is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew James a son of Alpheus and Simon the zealot and Judas the son of James. These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers when God moves his people get desperate. You see it here in these verses in a couple ways and I want to give them to. Here's the first was an attitude of desperation I like to say that this way, they had a passion for God to move. They were hungry for a move of God. Look at in verse 14 it says these all with one mind. Now we read our Bible so much that we read over that with her spiritually glazed eyes and we read write past what it says but you need understand something. What I just read for you is a radical statement. Matter fact, it's so radical. I've never been a part of a church. You can even say it about these all with one mind. The word all is a Greek word that means all is important.

You did mean some it didn't even mean most the Bible says every single one of them all and eliminates most churches right there. All of had one mind the word mind is translated throughout the New Testament mind will passion thought is what the Bible says about these people they'd heard what God said. God said, I am about to move and God said, I am going to move through you and all of them together.

Here's what they said listen, that's bigger than anyone of us. I don't care what I have to sacrifice I don't care what I have to lay on the table. I don't care what I have to get rid I don't care what I have to lay down. I don't care what I have to look past. I don't care what offense I have to get over laying on the line and I am in.

They'd all wrap their hearts around the idea that God was going to move. They were passionate about is a woman.

We got passion in the church today and you're right we do. The problem is we all got passionate for something passion for something different. Somebody's passionate about this particular ministry somebody else's passionate about this particular demographic of society somebody else's passionate about this particular methodology, but the problem is when our passion is all divided what it does. Instead of uniting us. It separates us and sends us in different directions and we really don't accomplish anything these people said there's something bigger going on here. God desires to move among us. So, let's unite our hearts together, put aside our differences and rally in the glory of God and what he desires to do as what's happening here.

Listen, here's the sad reality. The sad reality is that the American church is to content with our comfortable and creative law are comfortable lives in our creative contemporary make me feel better. Worship experiences that we have no attitude of desperation and there is no passion to see God move in our lives in our churches in our society and our world. Here's the reality in America with all of our technology and all of our resources in all of our buildings and all our budgets and all of our staff in all of our ministry program and all of our ministry resources. We can have church for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks whether God shows up or not. We don't even need God anymore. We think we got it figured out. I mean, just think about your own life. The last seven days did you come here this morning expecting God to move or did you come here today expecting to go to church when God moves his people get this and just by way of confession. This is some God for the last year's just been doing in my own heart. God's have to break me in some ways even recently recently within the last two or three months I've been battling a health condition they they they searched it out and have finally after weeks of going to doctors determined that I've got some vocal cord issues that you maybe can hear little bit of it this morning. It did that hurt as bad as it sounds, it just is what it is.

But even in the midst of that God's use that. David said in Psalm 73.

It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn your statute is brought me to a new place of just dependence and desperation for God. We need God. One of things God use instrumental in my life was a book written by man named Jim symbolize pass for the great Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York called spirit rising. Listen to what Jim said in his book.

I sometimes wonder if the early Christians were around today would they even recognize what we call Christianity. Our version is planned or almost totally intellectual in nature and devoid of the holy spirit power.

The early church regularly experience how much loss do we suffer because we don't expect the spirit to show up as promised. Everything we read about the church in the New Testament centered on the power of the Holy Spirit working in the hearts of Christian believers. Sadly, for many of us that has not been our experience, I believe it's time to return to the kind of faith we see in the New Testament. Your they believed in Christ word they expected the spirit to do great things and he came through as promised, he will do the same for us today, but here's a question, do we have a passion for God to is it even on our radar, or if we expected. Just this bland. Have we just begun to accept that as normal. Christianity. This goes beyond just a passion as a second aspect here, there was an act of desperation and I like to sit this way.

They prayed for God to move.

They went beyond just this attitude of desiring to see cod movie acted on it. They began to beg God to be the Bible says in verse 14.

They were continually devoting themselves to prayer. Prayer permeated the New Testament church. You see, prayer expresses our total desperation for God. Let me prove it to you when you pray, the most to give you the answer when you're the most desperate. I mean you go to work tomorrow and you show up first thing and they hand you a pink slip and they say to you, you no longer have a job with us. Let me tell you what you just became you just became a prayer warrior right and not only you but every body that's contact is in your iPhone just got a text from you and said dear God, would you please pray for me. I don't have a job anymore. I need God and not just in your cot you called everybody in your small group and you said I don't know what I'm going to do here is the reality with God. Like every single day of our lives. We just don't realize this, you and I need today to have breath in our book. When's the last time you do so.

God I need you to even breathe see when were desperate. We pray these people. They prayed with me set the scene for acts 18.

I read it to you moment ago we read it hundreds of times in churches your seapower Holy Spirit was going on. Jesus has gathered his disciples, and here's what happens.

He says, thereby leaning close about to tell you the plan been with me 3 1/2 years. Here's a plan, leaning in you going to start going back to Jerusalem. Now he lost him right there you can understand what it just happened in Jerusalem. 40 days earlier in Jerusalem. They just crucified Jesus 40 days earlier in Jerusalem. They had just lining the streets and shouted listen, you did not have to take an opinion poll in the city of Jerusalem to find out if they were open to a move of God. They'd made it very clear we don't want your Jesus.

We don't want your Christianity. We don't want your movement. We want you to die. Jesus at lenient guys. Here's a plane will start Jerusalem, where they hate each and they were going go to Judea and Samaria where you hate them. You see, the Jews hated the Samaritans and history. They call them the dogs of society close to start where they hate you never got to go from there to where you his head go places you the Bible word is the uttermost or remotest part is what he may have a clue. David existed lenient. Here's the plan will start where they hate you know what you are going to take the gospel places you've never heard of you don't know how to get there.

You got no iPhone you got no social media you got no airplanes you got no cars you got no transportation me that's the plan, and here's what happened. He started floating so you're making some of the funniest versus all the Bible look at a person I verse nine and after he had said these things, he was lifted up while they were looking on a cloud received him. He is not going to hate you. Then you get to go you ate them. Then you do go, dropping a bomb in the room right and then go and they're all just standing Jews where where did he go you think I'm making up the giver. Verse 10 and as they were gazing intently into the sky while it was like and I believe what happened next hadn't happened died standing right there looking at what happens next.

Verse 10 behold, two men in white clothing also stood beside Jesus gets the happened he sits down at the right hand of the father looks down at the disciples are now going. He pushes two angels and said would you go down there and tell them to get you say you're making are so they also said the angel said lay looking into this guy and everything changed with the Nixon what he said this, Jesus, whom you have watched go into heaven, will come in just the same way as you watched him go. Here's what they said you saw him go through the clouds. We got news for you one day he's coming back through those clouds and when they wrap when they understood that everything changed into heaven.

They ran back to Jerusalem. They ran up into that upper room. They locked the door behind them all hundred and 20 of them having wrapped in their hearts around the idea that God is going to move and the Bible says in verse 14, they established a committee to plan God's activity in their city is that we are verse 14 says: oh, that's right. It says they held a think tank to discuss trees creative strategies and ways to promote God's movement in the city drew some right right in the what reporting to know. I tried it says they did a demographic study of their community to understand the felt needs to see if they would be open to a move of God in the city. That's what it says right now what it says. Here's what it says got in that upper room. They got down on their knees before Almighty God, and they sent God. If you are not God. We are hopeless God. If you do what you said you wanted to. We don't have a prayer God we have no intellect. We have no education. We have no influence. We don't have resources we don't have power. We don't have prestige all but God we have the promise that your spirit is going to empower us and we lay hold of and we do it that it they didn't let go of God until God moved limited what happened you know the story, God move in this exhibit, you and I are sitting here this morning because God turned the world up side down in response to those people in that God move my let me tell you spiritual reality that I know is true but I just can't explain it all right with lipid attention. I know as to how you know it's true because of read the book sees in his book, here's the reality. God in his sovereignty has chosen to limit his activity to the prayers of his people use explain that I listen I'm not saying I'm not saying he needs us. He got Nita's but in his sovereignty, and in his infinite grace he's chosen to work through us for his glory. Here's what I know you dig deep enough into any move of God anywhere in the world anywhere in history. You dig deep enough limited what you can find you're going to find men and women of God on their face, seeking desperately for God to move you never hear their names at a conference and not publishing any books but there men and women of God who just been hungry and desperate for God to move, so much so that they would not let go of the altar until God move this in the late Andrew Murray says look at this quote on the screen. I love this Andrew Murray says God rules the world and his church through the prayers of his people just that sentence alone while she the question you asked when you realize that is are you an asset or liability. God in his sovereignty rules the world and his church to the prayers of his people in my part of the process and obstacles of the process. But when he goes on to say that God should have made the extension of his kingdom to such a large extent depended on the faithfulness of his people in prayer is a stupendous mystery.

He said I can't explain it, and yet an absolute certainty. God calls for intercessors in his grace he has made his work dependent on them but some of this last life. He waits for God moves his people get desperate.

Standing here before you today is a living testimony of what I've shared with you from the word of God close with the story, God call my family Las Vegas you couldn't pick the city that was further off our radar. You see, I'm from Alabama where I grew up. People don't go to Las Vegas and if they do they don't tell anybody.

You see where I'm from. They don't think Las Vegas is hell, but they believe you smell it from here it's it's close. So when God spoke to my family about being involved in starting a church somewhere week.

We never dreamed to be a placement Las Vegas but as soon as soon as the circumstances open that door. We just knew God spoken us were supposed to go and so we relocate to Las Vegas, Nevada. My first week. They are wicked telephone call or phone rings. My wife said what we are.

Phone rings aren't in our house went to the telephone. On the other end of the line is a leading lady Peralta Filipino lady and lady suspect*cannot tell you a story asked the lady I don't know anybody Las Vegas you tell me any story you want to. Here's what she tells me is passed on from the Philippines.

I moved to Hong Kong to make money for my family was very poor. She said while living in Hong Kong amid an American family became their live-in housekeeper, nanny, and would send the money that I made back to my family and the Philippines to help them in the poverty they were living.

She said that family from America became like my new family and after living with them for several years when they relocated back to the United States of America.

I came with them as a part of their family and continue to work for them and live with them in the United States is US. We moved to a suburb north of Atlanta, Georgia called Woodstock, Georgia. She said while living in Woodstock, Georgia I heard a man named Johnny Hunt at the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia preach the gospel to preach about the great commission, like I'd never heard it before, and she said it radically changed my life. But she said my family lived in Georgia very long. We relocated from Georgia to Las Vegas, Nevada.

She set up in a Las Vegas Nevada for a year and 1/2 and I prayed every day that the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia would start a church in Las Vegas, Nevada pastor, would you please tell me who sent you here few days earlier my family are kids a little of everything. We had a little minivan in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia that we had driven over 2000 miles to a city and had no idea that lady Peralta even existed or was alive on planet Earth sitting on the other end of that phone to what I realized we didn't come to start anything. We were getting in on something that God was doing long before we ever got there were now 14 years into that journey in 14 years.

We have literally seen thousands of people trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in Las Vegas. We had the privilege of planting over 20 churches out of our church.

10 of those churches in the Las Vegas city limits. We we work now on four continents around the world on an annual basis where involved in relationships and training thousands of national leaders and those thousands of national leaders on these four continents are seeing tens of thousands of people come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior annual basis where involved right now to church planting movement that's happening in Southeast Asia, where there are thousands of churches being planted right now where there was no church just over a decade ago and people will call Bill say pastor ask you question what you do. What was your strategy and you need to understand today. I'm not trying to be overly spiritual. I'm not trying to be too simplistic.

I'm not even trying to be humble. I'm not. Here's all I want lady one lady from the Philippines grabbed a hold of the throne of God and she refused to let go until God moved forward year we have a written way of the favor of God because Laddie would not let go. She was desperate for God to move Jeremiah Lanphear Lettie Brault whose next winter we got to get to the place were just doing charge it good enough that we are hungry.

Listen listen were so hungry for God. We will not let go until he moves when God moves his people get desperate hope God, we cry out to you this morning. Lord, we do so in the spirit of desperation, knowing just how desperate we are for you and we ask you oh God, in this moment, would you move as we sit here today, just you and God are you passionate about God moving, is it even on your radar. Are you praying for God to move Lord, have your way. Jesus would you just be exalted. Would you be exalted in Jesus name