Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood
Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast.
You're going to hear from God today as we share from His word
about important issues facing your life that can guide you
according to the Bible. Well, happy New Year, Inglewood.
It's good to see you all here this morning.
I know that several folks are out sick right now.
Pastor Charles was telling me that the hospitals are so full
right now that they have EMT vehicles lined up in the
driveways and are treating people in the vehicles.
And so we want to pray for them in just a moment and pray for
you. Thank you for praying for me.
I appreciate so much our team of pastors here for stepping up.
They did get a phone call or text message for me about last
last Saturday night at about 7:30.
And I appreciate Dylan stepping up.
Didn't he do a good job? Amen.
Yeah, I did appreciate him and all our pastors.
I need to confess to you, I really wasn't sick with the
Super flu. My grand, my grandkids gave me
another one of those 25 piece jigsaw puzzles that I talked
about at the Christmas Eve service.
Been working on it ever since as hard as I could.
If you were at the Christmas Eve service, you know what I'm
talking about. That might just be the fever or
the decongestants talking, so we'll see.
Listen, thank you all for being here.
I do appreciate what's coming up.
Please do look at your worship guide.
Also, we're going to have a special time with our deacons
having a Deacon workshop on Saturday, Deacon ordination next
Sunday night. So it's going to be a very
special time next few weeks. I do hope you'll come back for
the mission trip meetings this Wednesday night.
Midweek starts back, so come on back, we'll have a good crowd
here. Wednesday night I'm going to
talk about we're going to talk about engaging the Bible.
But this Wednesday night I want to specifically talk about how
did we get the Bible? And I don't mean we talked about
the doctrine of Scripture some already, but what I want to talk
about is how do we actually get this thing?
And why these books? Why not other books?
Who decided this? How did this whole book come
together that we know as the Bible?
And so it ought to be a fascinating study this week.
And then we're going to dive into how we study it and how we
can actually interpret it, etcetera, in the weeks to come.
So you come back for that also, I've been talking to our friends
overseas, had a long talk with them on Friday and they still
have a court date on January 9th that we need to pray for.
That'll be good. And pray the the court will
bring glory to God with their decision.
Our friends are also facing other decisions in the midst of
all this, as you can imagine. So we want to pray for their
wisdom and for their clarity. So I want to pray for them as
well As for the folks who are sick.
I know several of you are probably joining us online this
morning. Thank you for doing that at
home. And look forward to seeing you
back here in the next weeks as as we get kind of through this
time together. And so let's pray together and
then move forward with what God has for us.
Father, we're so grateful for your grace and your presence.
Father, I just pray that you'll give me a voice for the next few
moments, Father. Pray, Father, that you'll
continue to guide us as a church.
Father, we are so grateful, Lord, that that you are God of
healing and of sustaining. So, Father, I do pray for those
many people in our church who are not feeling well.
We know many folks are out today because they're sick.
We also have had several folks during the break who've lost
loved ones and us pray, Father, that you would comfort them.
Father, we also lift up our friends overseas that you would
give them great wisdom, be with the court that it would make the
right decisions that would bring you glory and allow your Kingdom
to continue to grow. And Father, just guide us now as
we open your word. We thank you for it in Christ's
name, Amen. Now bear with me.
The first service, my nose became very athletic and I'm
going to do my best not to cough my head off.
I have double double halls in right now.
And so we're going to do our best to get through this.
We we are feeling better. Probably not quite 100%.
So I probably won't be hugging you too much today unless you
just really want this. Then you come see me.
My mother flipped houses now. We didn't call it that back
then. We didn't, we didn't have a word
for it. She restored old houses.
It was partly because of my grandfather.
My grandfather had acquired a lot of real estate, etcetera,
and she learned from him and but there was another reason for it.
So anytime somebody moved and we lived in an old neighborhood, I
grew up in a house that was about 100 years old when I grew
up in, in it. And, and whenever somebody moved
in our neighborhood, my mom would buy the house and restore
it and resell it. Or when somebody moved near 1 of
the rental properties that my grandfather owned, she'd buy the
house and restore it. And so we were in this
restoration cycle all the time. And she didn't do that to make
money necessarily. She did that to absolutely
control her environment. That is no joke.
She, she wanted to be able to pick and choose.
She could buy this, buy that house, restore that house, and
then sell it to her preferred buyer herself to control
property values and to control who lived in her neighborhood.
And so her intentions and her motives were not always very
good. And so it's always been
interesting to me, somebody who worked so hard to control their
environment like that. And sometimes restoration,
sometimes respiration is needed as a needed part of the future.
Sometimes the motive has to be checked a little bit so we can
either attempt to control our own future or we can submit to
the plan that God already has for us and has orchestrated for
us. And we do have to choose.
We must choose, and frankly, we will choose.
Everyone of you will choose one way or the other.
You're either going to follow your plan or you're going to
follow God's plan. God.
God has a preordained and I'll just call him what I've been
calling him the whole time. Illustratively, he has a set of
train tracks for us, a train track for us corporately as a
church, but also for each and every one of your individual
lives. I believe this is with all of my
heart, my entire theology is built upon this, that I believe
that God has an intention for us, a plan for us, a place for
us, a purpose for us. And we need to discover that in
order to live this abundant life that He's calling us to live.
And these things have existed forever.
And so we spent the first few months of 2025, the first few
months, studying his plan and beginning to build the right
train, so to speak, by addressing some specific
assessment issues, by clarifying God's mission, by clarifying the
church's vision, by defining essentials of discipleship in
2025, and to to help us to in this ongoing work.
And frankly, God has blessed us for that.
He's blessed our faithfulness in two 22,025.
We don't want to ignore that. We don't want to overlook that.
We don't take that lightly. But we also recognize we can't
rest on that. We're just beginning.
And So what we're looking at now is, is 2026, believe it or not,
is actually here. And it's time to really begin to
move forward. And what I believe is this
incredible plan that God has not only for Englewood Baptist
Church, but for each one of our lives.
And so these next steps are going to include further
alignment of our ministries, developing spiritual gift
discovery and service placement processes, leadership
development, as well as our ongoing discipleship and
evangelism that God has continued to bless us with.
But God might still have some work to do in our hearts and our
spirits along the way as well. He might not quite be done for
us as we prepare to fully fulfil the future that I think he has
for us. I believe This is why I'm here.
I've had the awesome privilege Teresa and I have of watching
him place his hand on churches in powerful ways.
More than once in our life. I've seen this incredible,
powerful thing to where he he brings true revival to church
that then spills over into spiritual awakening in the
communities. And it leads to a future that
nobody could have predicted, nobody could have planned
themselves, where all the credit soars to God.
And that's what we want. We want to see something in 2026
that is so grandiose. And if you think I speak
dramatically good. If you think I speak in
grandiose ways, fantastic, because I believe that way that
God has such a plan for us that when 2026 is over, we're just
going to stand amazed. And the only way we can explain
any of it is to give total credit to God for what He's done
in our midst. And So what we see is that I, I
want to share about this kind of idea and there's a book in the
Bible that will help us to understand this story, and it's
the book of Nehemiah. Now, I know that some of you
wanted me to share my testimony last week.
Don't worry, I'm going to bring that back.
I promise I'll bring the baseball bat up here, the whole
bit, and we'll have the whole testimony one day.
But because of Easter and because of our timing, I want to
go ahead and dive into the book of Nehemiah for a while.
Then I promise I'll bring that back because what I want to talk
about is I want to talk about God's restoration and the way he
works in the hearts and the lives of his people.
And so one, one of the things that we have to do is it's, it's
wonderful to, I mean, think about what a place to be, to be
on the front row, to be in a front row seat, to see and to
serve sacrificially, to take part in what I believe will be a
movement of God, right? And the book of Nehemiah tells
us such a story. It's the story of restoration.
It's a story of rebuilding. We're going to watch God's
people move forward into the future.
God always had planned for them, and now they're being restored
to that plan, right? So this this morning, the first
thing we got to do is we've got to learn about step one.
How do we seek God's plan? How do we seek that plan that
God has for us? Now, let me give you a little
background. Ezra and Nehemiah go together.
If you look at your Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah go
together in time and context. In fact, in the early editions
of the Old Testament Scriptures, they were two parts of one book
and they would travel together. And so in fact, many believe
that Ezra wrote both books under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit using Nehemiah's first hand account and Ezra was taking
it down and the prophets to add to that the prophets Haggai and
Zechariah go with this story. So if you really want to get the
full benefit of the Nehemiah story, read Haggai, Zechariah,
and Ezra along with Nehemiah in your personal study.
I've been doing that over the last several weeks.
It's been interesting to hear Zechariah.
Sometimes it's hard to understand because of his
visions, but Nehemiah then becomes one of the last books of
the Old Testament. So you have Nehemiah and
Malachi, which are not necessarily connected, but
Nehemiah and Malachi are the last books chronologically in
the Old Testament. Then you got about 400 years
before the New Testament sees. So these are the last words, the
last stories of the Old Testament, where Nehemiah
reveals God's absolute sovereignty as he fulfills his
promise to restore the people of Israel back from their exile in
Babylon. Right.
The people sinned. God used a Pagan nation to
punish them and take them into exile to humble them.
But as they are going into exile, he also promises that a
group is going to return. And then God uses Persia to
conquer Babylon so that the return can take place.
So that's where we are. So they returning groups to
restore the city, to restore the land.
The first group comes back to rebuild the second temple
because the Solomon's temple had been destroyed by the
Babylonians. And so they come back to rebuild
the temple. First, they face enemies who
don't want them to rebuild. It's part of the big story of
both Ezra and Nehemiah. These enemies don't want them to
restore, and so they faced enemies who settled in the land
while they were gone, and so they weren't able to finish the
temple. They just got the foundation
done and these enemies were strong.
And that they're always going to be those people.
They're always going to be those who oppose God's plan.
They're always going to be people who want to stand in the
way or criticize the way that we believe we're supposed to move
forward. They'd like to criticize the
path forward. They like to seek to discourage
God's people. We're going to see that in this
story. People who want to discourage
others from following God's future for them, they're always
there. So the prophets Haggai and
Zechariah come in and challenge them to finish the temple,
right? And then sixty years later, Ezra
comes with a group and encourages him even more, and he
opposes these enemies, challenges them to worship
Yahweh. They're supposed to.
And they finally are able to finish the temple, but the walls
and the gates of the city have been destroyed.
And so the city is incomplete. It's not ready to be resettled
yet. It's not safe.
They couldn't pursue their full future with God.
They couldn't worship him the way they were supposed to.
They weren't safe. They weren't secure from the
enemy. They couldn't obey.
They couldn't do what God wanted them to do.
They were to be a testimony to God's faithfulness.
They were to be a testimony of God fulfilling his promises.
And yet because of the city, because of the walls, the ruins
around them, they were not ready to do that.
So something had to change, something always has to change
for revival to occur. Something always has to change
for true restoration. So we see God building his
future for his people. Now Nehemiah chapter one verse
one, the words of Nehemiah, the son of of Halakhaliah.
Now it happened in the month of Kislev in the 20th years.
I was in Sousa, the citadel that Henani, one of my brothers, came
with certain men from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews
who escaped who had survived the exile and concerning Jerusalem.
And they said to me, the remnant there in the province who
survived the Exiles in great trouble and shame, the walls of
of Jerusalem are is broken down and it's gates are destroyed by
fire. We're just going to see four
quick things, simple things, but important things, progressive
steps for us to enter to 2026. The right way for us to enjoy
the restoration that God has for us.
The revival that I believe he intends for us to bring by by
walking through this passage. The first thing we see is the
recognizing the need. There needs to be a recognition
of the need at hand. Now.
The name Nehemiah means the Lord comforts, which is actually a
fitting name for what he's going to bring to his people, right?
And a group of men, one of whom might have been 1 of Nehemiah's
brothers, reports how bad things are back home.
Things are bad back in Jerusalem.
They're suffering great distress.
They're suffering reproach. They're struggling with
hardship. Frankly, they're struggling with
humiliation in front of these enemies.
They can't stand in front of them.
The walls and the gates are still destroyed.
They're unprotected. They're vulnerable.
They're living in ruins. And this represented great
danger. This represented great shame for
them. And so how could they worship?
How could they be a testimony when everything around them was
in ruins and their enemies bragged and boasted and
surrounded them and they had no protection?
Something had to change. Something new had to happen.
And Nehemiah recognizes this great need.
He recognizes that reality. That's always the first step.
We have to recognize and be and
be honest about the actual need. Their world was broken.
Their world needed to be restored.
When my friends, our world is broken.
Our world is absolutely broken and it's in desperate need as
well. And we need to recognize the
truth that we are all lost sinners and we all need
salvation, and that our lives have been broken and the only
one who can restore us is this same Yahweh who sent His Son to
die for us so that we could be saved.
But before we can be saved, we have to recognize we're lost.
We have to recognize we need salvation.
We have to recognize and admit when our spiritual lives are not
healthy and in need of revival and in need of restoration.
Right. So as we begin 2026, let me ask
you a couple honest questions. What's broken down?
What's in shambles in your life that requires restoration and
rebuilding? Are your walls torn down?
Are your gates burned right now? Maybe something hidden deep
within you that only you know about, that you carry into this
new year? Maybe it's something others in
your life know about and they're praying about for you that you
carry into this new year. What are you dragging into 2026
from 2025 that belongs and needs to stay back there in 2025?
What broken down ruin, What burned gate is a part of your
life right now that prevents you from being?
Everything that God intends for you to be has called you to be
as a part of His plan, as a part of His future.
What in your personal life stands in the way of salvation,
of obedience, The belief of revival.
OS Hawkins wrote a book about Nehemiah and in it he says
revival never comes in any person until he realizes the
dire need of it. Nehemiah asked for a report and
received one, and something had to change.
Nehemiah understood the necessity to recognize the real
need. And the question is, is will we?
We can't rest on what God's done, what we can't.
We can't expect just God. You're going to continue to lead
people. We'll continue to baptize every
week. We'll continue to see people
join the church. We're going to continue to see.
We can't just rely on that. What do you want us to do?
God? What?
How do we serve? How do we obey?
What do we need to surrender to see something even more
abnormal, something even more powerful, something that would
be considered a movement of God's hand?
Look at verse 4. And as soon as I heard these
words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days.
And I continued fasting and praying before the God of
heaven. And I said, Oh Lord God of
heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant in
steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His
commandments. Let your ear be attentive and
your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant that I
now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel,
Your servants confessing the sins of the people of Israel,
which we have sinned against You, even I and my Father's
house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly
against You and have not kept your commandments, the statutes
and the rules that you commanded.
Your servant Moses, our recognition of the need for
change. Must then drive us to prayer and
brokenness. Nehemiah had a great job.
He was the King's cupbearer. He he was paid well, lived in
the palace. I mean, I mean, if you're going
to live in exile, exile, this is the way to live in exile.
This guy had a maid in the Babylonian Empire.
And then this news hit his heart.
Nehemiah was so burdened, so burdened by this that he sat and
he mourned and he wept for many, many days.
He began to fast. He began to pray.
He could not eat, not with this burden for his people, not with
his burden for his home. So Nehemiah prayed.
And I just wonder when I read this passage, sometimes you
might see me if you drove down the highway with him.
You might see me shouting at myself in my truck about stuff
like this. That crazy guy driving a truck?
That's my pastor. I wonder what it's going to take
to dislodge the American church from its clutch on self comfort
to feel a burden for this nation.
I mean, what news do we need to hear to jolt US from our cocoon?
Prayer by God's people. Earnest prayer by God's people
is always a necessity for revival.
No great spiritual awakening in the history of humanity has ever
started from the book of Acts on.
Never in human history has a great spiritual awakening
happened without God's people being broken and in prayer on
their faces before God. What's it going to take?
We must weep over the ruins before we can begin to build the
future. We need to recognize the true
need for revival, and that should bring brokenness.
And then recognizing that true brokenness in and around our
lives should bring true revival. So we need to stop.
We need to seek the face of God and pray for his future as we
enter 2026 Inglewood. This is this is his church.
This is his future. What does he want?
Not what I think we ought to do, Not what I wish we had done.
Don't like that decision. Which we what does he want us to
do? Nehemiah's heart was broken for
his people. He was also broken over the sin
of his people. But notice this, He was also
broken over his own sin. He He was so deeply burdened, He
wept and wept. What would bring us to such a
place? What spiritual burden would lead
you to weep for days? What great spiritual need would
disrupt your normalcy and shake you spiritually?
He calls upon God, even uses his covenant on name, Yahweh when He
does it. He's the God of heaven, bigger
than any earthly barrier, bigger than any wall, big bigger than
any burned gate, bigger than any destroyed city, greater than any
earthly opposition, greater than any enemy that they could face.
And he remembers you always love his Hesed, love his covenantal
love to those who are his. And then Nehemiah intercedes for
his people. He prays for them.
The broken walls and gates had led to a broken spirit.
Broken walls and burn gates were stumbling blocks for his people
to move forward so that they could they could serve at the
future that God had called them to, to import himself out before
the God who could move any wall. It says, we have acted very
corruptly against you. We've sinned against you.
The word for sin there is habal, which means to offend God.
We've offended you. We've offended you by not
keeping your commandments. We've offended you by not
keeping your rules and statutes. We've offended you by not
worshipping you the way we should.
So he confesses national sins, He confesses family sins, and he
also confesses personal sins. Not just them, but me, Lord, Me
too, Lord. He doesn't simply point out
their sin. He confesses his own failing and
offence to God. Now you got to pay attention to
that because that's when the difference starts to happen.
That's that's when it starts getting different between normal
times and when God's doing something special.
People love to point out other people's sins.
People love to complain about the sins of the world.
There's nothing new about that. That's very, very normal.
People love to criticize. People love to even blame
others. They often even love to
criticize with no effort to help those who are seeking to
rebuild. But when they confess their own
sins, that's when God's doing something special.
And this is an absolute necessity for revival.
To confess and repent in prayer before God is absolutely
necessary for restoration to begin.
So Nehemiah knew that they had to turn from disregarding the
laws of God to obedience. That's repentance.
And he was broken before God when he recognized the great
need of his people and their sin.
And he admits that they didn't deserve his grace.
The very fact that they were in exile is proof of that.
And it was hard in Babylon to be obedient.
It was hard in Babylon to be obedient when they were removed
from the temple and when when they were tempted by the ways
and the gods of their captors. And that's the way the world
will do it. It'll make it hard and tempt you
to not be a part of this, to not be in a connect group, to not be
in a congregation, to not surround yourself with other
believers, but to go out there by yourself in the ways.
And the gods of this world are going to tempt you to follow
them. We can't blame the world.
We can't blame Satan. We can't blame our
circumstances. We can't blame another person.
We are personally responsible. We are to blame if we're
offending God and not walking according to His way.
We must confess our sin and repent for revival to occur.
What reality, what truth must you here to drive you to such
brokenness before the Lord? Revival is always preceded by
the weeping and the confession and the prayers of God's people
as they recognize the great need and repent of their sin.
Something must change, but still more is necessary.
Look at verse 8. Remember the word that you
commanded to your servant Moses, saying, If you are unfaithful, I
will scatter you among the peoples.
But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them,
though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from
there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I
have chosen to make my name dwell.
There They are your servants and your people, whom you have
redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.
So after we recognize the need and we're broken in prayer, the
third necessity for restoration to begin is we have to remember
God's promises. See, there's hope.
Nehemiah remembers God's word from the Old Testament.
He remembers the promises from Leviticus chapter 26 and
Deuteronomy chapter 30 that God is giving to Moses.
He promises 2 things to the Hebrews.
First, I'm going to punish you, even to the point of scattering
you if you don't stop sinning and chasing after foreign gods.
And then secondly, I'm going to bring you back if you'll repent
and you'll obey. And, and that's exactly what God
has done. God's always faithful.
He promised, He always fulfills his promises.
He fulfilled the first part and cast his people into punishment
with the exile and with their land in ruins due to their
chasing after the foreign gods instead of him.
Now please, Lord Nehemiah's reminding him, remember the
second part and bring restoration.
And God orchestrates history, lays down the tracks for us.
You're the only one who can do this, Yahweh.
That's what Nehemiah said. You're the only one who can
redeem by your great power and by your strong hand.
No one else has the power of revival.
No one else can restore. Only Yahweh can bring true
change. We need you, God, to bring
restoration. We need you, God, to bring
revival, because you're the only one who can.
And if we forget this, it'll never come.
If we think somehow that if we organize ourselves the right
way, if we organize ourselves the right way and we give enough
and we do enough, and we hire the right leaders, and then
somehow move forward by our own power, we can force certain
spiritual dynamics to occur. We are guilty of idolatry and a
human works based salvation and sanctification.
It will not work that way. This is a supernatural journey,
a spirit LED journey that we must be a part of.
And though though our obedient discipleship certainly a vital
part of of the building process, we always have to remember who
brings revival, who brings salvation, who answers prayer,
who can forgive and who can restore.
So God had to be remembered. God has to be acknowledged as
the author and creator of all of this, and the soul head and the
owner of this church, Inglewood Baptist Church, belongs to Jesus
Christ. He's the leader.
We have to follow him. He alone can redeem.
So we have to remember who he is and his word and his promises.
So, So restoration won't come without this focused
intentionality. Something has to change.
It's necessary to recognize the great needs.
It's necessary to repent and pray for the repentance and
brokenness of souls. It's necessary to remember who
God is and His promises to us and His absolutely absolute sole
authority to redeem and to forgive and to revive.
We need to recognize the need for revival.
Be broken in prayer. Remember Him.
And then finally, verse 11, O Lord, let your ear be attentive
to the prayer of your servant and to the prayer of Your
servants, who delight to fear Your name and give success to
your servant today, and grant him mercy.
In the sight of this man, the last thing was we have to
believe in God's sovereignty. He's in complete control.
Revival is a work of grey of faith under grace.
Nehemiah relied upon God to obtain favor with the king.
That's the man he's talking about.
He, he held this special position with the king.
As I mentioned earlier, he was the cupbearer.
So he was the guy who tested everything to make sure there
was no poison for the king. That was a much higher position
than it might sound like in our world today.
It's like a bodyguard. He had direct access to the
king, one of the few who would very close tight knit circle
around the king. And he and he was he was in this
high and trusted position. He prayed that God would grant
him favor to the king so that he could be used in the restoration
of his people. We're going to see next week
that he's actually taking his life into his own hands by even
making this kind of request to the king.
He knew he was totally dependent upon God to grant him the
necessary mercy, but he was willing to give up that special
position. He was willing to give up
everything that would be called earthly success.
He was willing to give up everything that was comfortable
to him, everything because he wanted to surrender it for his
people and for God. And he was willing to do this
because he desired to fear the name of Yahweh more than an
earthly king. He desired to do this.
He knew this was only possible if God willed it and moved the
heart of the most powerful king on earth at the time, the King
of Persia. So today, as 2026 dawns upon us,
do we still believe our God can move a world?
Do we still believe God is orchestrating and can move the
most powerful earthly forces around us in order to do His
will? Will we totally rely upon Him as
we move forward? Will we totally depend upon Him
to bring about His plan? This must be our hope.
This must be our faith. Not in me, not in you, but in
Him. Will we weep?
Will we pray to Him to have mercy upon us and to give us the
strength to truly repent for our sins, from our sins, and to
serve Him well. Well, we pray that our heart
would be moved by God. So this morning, first Sunday of
the year, whether you're here or at home, whose heart must be
moved by God first, right here, right now, this morning?
Whose heart must be moved first for this to begin, for this
movement to begin? Whose heart needs to be changed?
Will we pray with tears streaming down our faces for the
heart to be changed and God's mercy to be evident, even if,
especially if that heart's mine? Will we beg God for this?
My friends, God has a plan for Inglewood.
It's been laid out from before the beginning of time.
He's got a plan for each one of your individual specific lives.
Whether you believe in Him or not, whether you believe me or
not, your spirits going to impress upon your soul that I'm
telling you the truth. He has a plan for purpose for
your life, and He wants you to know it.
He's always had this, and He's faithful to fulfill that
promise. He's sovereign and no
circumstance can stop His plan. No earthly force or opposition
is too great. The only thing that stands in
His way is our obedience. But He's stubborn in His love.
He's stubborn in His will for us, so fortunately it's not
based upon our actions or works, but upon His choice and will.
He loves us whether we choose to love Him or not.
You can't escape it. You can't run from it.
He loves you and He wants you to know Him and to know His purpose
for your life. But He also calls upon us to
submit for those of us who know Him, and to demonstrate our
faith in Him. One of the most famous verses
perhaps in all the Old Testament, quoted and quoted and
quoted, Second Chronicles 714. 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.
We must seek the Holy Spirit to move us from the normal to the
abnormal in an abnormal, powerful, strong new way.
Are you weeping before God for such a thing?
Are you asking God to change this city, to change this whole
area, to bring revival and spiritual awakening?
That's what I believe 2026 is for.
That's why we're still here. I believe that's why he's
tarried and not come yet. But have we turned to look upon
him only and his future? Or am I still hanging on to
something back there? Leave it back there and let's
move forward in a new way. Father, thank you so much.
That you've got a plan. I don't have to dream up a plan.
I have to talk to you and understand yours.
Father, that's just not true for me as a pastor, Father, that's
true for every one of us as believers.
You have a will and a way for each one of us.
For some this morning or those listening online, this is
salvation. There's a recognition that they
need to be saved. There's someone here, Father,
who doesn't know you. I pray right now that they'll
recognize the reality of your existence.
They can't deny it. They feel it in their soul.
Right now. Their spirit is acknowledging
the truth that you're real. And Father, I just pray, Lord,
that they'll understand that the Father, we're all sinners.
We've all committed things. We've all said things, we've all
thought things. We've done things that that are
contrary to what you want. We've offended you and I pray,
Father, that they will repent of that sin.
They'll they'll feel sorry for their sin.
They'll want to turn from their sin and they want to turn to you
recognizing that that's why Jesus came to die on a cross to
pay for that so that we could know you and we could live out
the perfect plan that you have for our life.
Father, in just a moment as we sing, I pray that those who I
need to talk to someone more about that might come and talk
to a pastor or go to our next steps room and talk to a
counselor. Father, others, maybe they
recognize I need to be baptized. I need to join the church.
I need to join a connect group. I need to pray for my neighbors.
I need to pray for our city. I need to pray for the broken
down walls and ruins in my life, the brokenness that I have, the
burden that I carry. I pray, Father, that they would
come. They can use these steps as an
altar. They can pray with a pastor
again. They can pray with our
counselors. Father, I just pray.
We'll surrender, Father. That's the only way revival will
come is by our submission to you in Christ's name, Amen.
Our worship team is going to lead us.
There'll be some pastors here. I'm not going to stand here
because none of you need to talk to me right now, But other
pastors are going to be here. We have counselors in our Next
Steps room. We also have a Next Steps table
out in the lobby. People who just love to pray
with you, have private conversations with you about
what God's doing. But as we start 2026, let's not
be in a hurry to leave. Let's be in a hurry to reflect
and to respond. As we stand together and as we
worship Him. Thank you so much for listening
today, and I also hope that you'll go to
ourwebsite@englewoodbaptist.com as well as our app and find many
other resources that will bless you and your families.
Thank you once again.