You've tuned into a mega church. We are people hungry to
encounter God through worship and His Word being witnesses to
the world around us. We pray this teaching blesses
you and trust God will reveal Himself to you in a new way
today. And if you need prayer for
healing or breakthrough? Want to find out more about
Omega? Get to our website or Facebook
page through the links below. Today you have me.
So yeah, I'm excited to to speak and share a little bit about
what I believe God is trying to speak to us in this coming
season. I'm preaching to myself 1st and
then to you second. So this is what the Lord is
speaking to me about personally. But I believe it is so relevant
for us as a church and where we're heading.
Cool. So there's something about
knowing the time, right? That changes how we behave.
If you know what time it is, you know what you're supposed to do.
So, for example, like you can drift through the day, but if
you have an appointment coming up in the evening and you've
kind of lost track of time, then you start, you start to quicken
what you're doing, you start to hurry and you get yourself
prepared to go to your meeting, to go to your date, whatever it
is you want to do. And so time has this element of
framing things for us. So Matthias, he's three years
old now, but say in in the evening when it's about four O
clock, he'll be playing in the other room doing his own thing.
And then he knows that Dadi and Sema and Ramana, Dadi and Dada
cook dinner. And so around 4:30, Mum will
almost be walking by and he'll say no, I want to play some
more. He knows what time it is.
He knows that dinner times coming.
He knows what that means. It means he has to pack his toys
up, He has to go sit on the table, right?
And so similarly, we just had Elijah and so we were in, in, in
the hospital going through labour.
And so the midwife comes into the room and the midwife says,
OK, it's time. She she thought Haley was fully
dilated. So she says now's the time, the
time to push is now. And so everything was all go.
Haley is getting her to push and push and push.
And an hour and a half went by and nothing happened.
And so then we had to get the doctors in.
And so the doctor comes in and takes a look and says you're not
fully dilated. It wasn't the time to push,
right? And so we need to know what time
we're in if we had to make the most in of, of, of the, of the
situation that we're in. The point is when you know what
time you have, you can behave appropriately.
The time to push wasn't the hour and a half the time to push once
you're dilated and then the baby comes, right.
In the same way, if we don't recognise what season we're in,
we won't be prepared for what God wants to do in our midst.
It's really important to be In Sync with where he's where we're
at and where he wants to take us for us to be prepared to take
it. And so the current context for
Omega is we've got so, and, and This is why I'm, I'm preaching
on this because I had this dream of, of, of, of this garage of
this barn shit of, of, of gathering.
And it was a double garage. But then it got made into a
quadruple garage. And so there's this expansion
and there are countless things dad has seen about a revival
that's going to come to Omega that the expansion of the house.
We're going to see people come to the Lord and and soul save.
And this is stuff that we as a church believe for, right?
This is we don't come here week after week just to do the
motions. We're contending for a revival.
We're contending for a move of God.
And so that's our context is that God has spoken.
We know these things are coming, but here's the tension.
The promise of God doesn't always promise of God doesn't
equal taking position of that promise.
There's this little thing in between.
And this morning I'd like to propose that that thing is
preparation, that we need to prepare ourselves for the move
of God that's coming. We need to prepare our hearts
for what God wants to do in our midst.
We can't just waltz into it and expect that and and God and the
sovereignty does do that. But if you and if you look at
revivals in the past, it kind of feels like God stands back with
a, with a, with a pen at a dart board and goes boom.
Oh, it landed on Azusa St. Let's let the revival break out
there. Oh, it landed in Wales.
That a revival break out there. But actually, if you look at
those stories, and we'll go on to it a bit more detail later,
there is years and years of prep work and intimacy that comes
from a few people that have given everything to see God
move. It's not just a a random
occurrence. And so that's our context.
There's a sense that something's coming.
And preparation, I think is what God is calling us to do, to take
hold of what he has for us. And so Numbers 13 is what Jaunty
read from. And this is a story and it's
really a tragedy of Israel not being prepared already for what
God had for them, right? And so the context of Numbers 13
is that Israelites have come out of Egypt, they've crossed the
Red Sea, they're into the they're in the they're at the
mountain, they've got the commandment, whatever.
Some year, a year and a bit goes by and God says, OK, now's the
time for you to go and take the land.
And as we see they send some spies out.
Sorry, I totally spaced this morning and I didn't bring my
Bible, so I'm going to have to use my phone.
But but we should all bring our Bibles to church.
Where are we? Sorry, Numbers 13, the Lord said
to Moses, send some men to explore the land of Canaan,
which I'm giving to the Israelites from each ancestral
tribe, send one of its leaders. So the Lord's command, so the
Lord's so at the Lord's command, Moses sent them from the desert
of Pran. All of the leaders of the
Israelites, these were their names.
There's a when you look at the passage in Deuteronomy, the
story gets replayed in the book of Deuteronomy and there's a
disconnect here. It says the Lord said to Moses
sent some meant to explore the land.
But in Deuteronomy, Moses said the people came to me.
Moses actually says the Lord has said go and take the land and
the people come to him and they say, can we send spies out to go
out ahead of us, Right. And so who?
Whose idea was it? Was it the people's idea or was
it Moses idea or the God's idea? Sorry.
And I think reading into it and looking through commentaries,
chatting with dad about it, I think what happened was it, it
was the people's idea, but God gave them permission to explore
their unbelief. He said, fine, like you have the
land, go and take it. But the people said, no, no, no,
we want to send spies out to make sure what it's like.
We want to, we want to see and, and the Lord said, OK, if you
want to do it your way, go ahead and do it your way.
Send people out with the 12 tribes.
And so God will give us the liberty to go our own way if he
wants. He is a gentleman.
He's not going to force your hand to do something that you
don't want to do. So if the Israelites wanted to
do things their own way and God allowed it to happen as a test
of their faith. So either way, this isn't the
plan of God. And God used this whole
situation as a test of Israel's faith.
Moses then says he sends out the people.
There's a list of all the people.
These are the names when Moses sent them to explore verse 17,
Canon said, go up through the negevant in the Hill Country,
see what the land is like and whether the people who live
there are strong or weak, few or many, what kind of land do they
live in? Is it good?
Is it bad? So at a first glance you're
like, OK, he's just telling them what to do.
But if you think about, if you dig deeper and you look at the
context, right, this was a subtle manifestation of unbelief
on Moses's part because did he really doubt that the land was
good or didn't even matter that it was good?
If God told you to do something, does it matter that you need to
do all these things? But interestingly, when God
first encountered Moses at the burning Bush back in the way
before all of us even started, that was one of the first things
he told him is that I'm taking to a land flowing with milk and
honey. It's a good land.
So in Moses commissioning was the promise and this was a
manifestation of unbelief where he he deliberately he knew what
God had spoken to him and in fact he'd relayed that to the
people of Israel as well. He said the Lord our God wants
to take us to a land of milk and honey.
And so here on the part of Moses and on the part of the people of
Israel is this little seed of unbelief that is crept in right
unbelief and to the promises of God.
And as I started to kind of as I was meditating on this whole
thing, it kind of took me back to the Garden of Eden where the
voice of the serpent says, did God really say this?
And I and I and it was that same voice that Moses heard that God
real that Israelites heard as well.
Did God really say he's going to take you to a land of milk and
honey? Is it really that good?
And so and again, talking with bouncing ideas back and forth,
Dad said we're we wake up in that garden every single day to
that voice and it's our responsibility to put it to
death. That voice of doubt, that voice
of unbelief. Satan hasn't changed since the
beginning of creation up until now every morning, unbelief and
offence are his key weapons and trying to get us to war against
the things of God in our life. Everything, yeah, everything
that happens is, is his poise to make you not believe that he's
finished his work on the cross. And when that doesn't happen,
it's offence. God, why did you not do this?
Why am I in the situation right now?
And so that is what was happening here.
The exact same thing from the garden was occurring in the camp
of the Israelites. And what unbelief and offence
does is it shifts us from a position of standing with God to
then standing against him and saying, why is this happening?
Right. It it changes our posture toward
him. And one of the steps to the
preparation of revival then becomes to stand strong in what
the Lord has promised you to keep, to keep what he said in
the forefront of your mind, the promises of revival and renewal
for this church, for the promises he's put on your life
is to keep them close to your heart.
And I again, as I was mulling over that, that verse from when
the Angel encounters Mary came to my mind, right?
And the Bible said, what does the Bible say?
The Bible says? But Mary treasured up all these
things and pondered them in her heart and she kept them close.
She locked up everything that God had told her, regardless of
what other people were saying, and kept them in her heart and
continued to ponder them. And so when God says something,
this needs to be our responses to lock it up in our hearts and
continually ponder it. Say, OK.
And in Psalm 119, that's the exact same kind of phrase that's
used in it. And that says, I have hidden
your word and my heart, that I might not sin against you.
And so entertaining unbelief is sin in our lives.
When we entertain the thoughts of the enemy that cause us to
doubt God, that becomes that takes root and bears from the
fruit of sin. So when God speaks, it's our job
and our responsibility to treasure what he said and to
keep his words safe within us, Right.
And so we go on the, the Israelites go out.
I mean, the spies go out and they come back with the report
that the land truly does flow with milk and honey.
What God had promised about the land was indeed true.
And then they say, nevertheless, meaning despite all of the good
things that we've said, they've just undercut all of the
positives. It's it's got giants.
It's got the people are too great, their traps all through
the land and so on and so forth. And so they've completely
undermine everything. The positives God had said
Significantly though, Caleb, that's right, Caleb and Joshua,
two men saw the exact same things that the other 10 spies
did. The same grapes, the same men,
the same land, the same cities, the same giants.
They came away singing in faith and the others were filled with
a sense of fear, right? There's a disconnect.
You two people can see the exact same things and have a
completely different response to what they see.
And ultimately, faith or unbelief does not spring up from
our circumstances. Then two people can be in the
exact same circumstance, have the same things in life happened
to them. But faith and unbelief stems
from the heart, right? Which God must change.
It can't be a circumstance. You can't say, oh, he's just
like this because he's had a good life and he's easy.
Whereas I've had a really tough life.
No, circumstances don't dictate our responses.
A heart does. And a heart can only be changed
by the Lord. So you can stand in front of the
move of God and still miss it, right?
Us as a church, like we, we could be right on the cusp of
something and still miss what's happening.
Not because God didn't move, but because our hearts weren't
ready. Like the 10 spies, they weren't
ready for what God is about to do.
But why were they not ready? They had seen God, but they
didn't know Him. And this was a representation of
Israel as a whole. They had seen the miracles, they
had seen the plagues, they had seen the Red Sea part, but they
didn't know him personally. Only Moses knew him.
And back when they first arrived in Mount Sinai, the invitation
was there from the Lord to to to know them and to meet with them.
And they said, no, we don't want it.
We don't want anything to do with him.
Moses, you go, you go and intermediate for us because we
might die. We don't want anything.
We don't want to have an encounter with this God.
And so they distanced themselves from him.
But Moses didn't. And more importantly, Joshua
didn't because Joshua's assistant was with him the whole
time. But I'll come to that in a
minute. But the key point being, just
because we're around miracles or an environment where where faith
is high and that we believe and contend every morning here for
healing, for deliverance, Just because you're in this
environment doesn't necessarily mean that we have that you can
you, you have that same faith we need.
It's important to expose. It is important to expose
ourselves. Don't get me wrong, it's
important to be in this environment, but we need to
actively participate to share in the benefits of faith.
We can't just passively come and kind of like expect it to.
Sometimes it does and a little bit does, but I think it needs
an active participation on our to partner with the things that
are happening with God and we need to personally cultivate
that relationship with Him. And this is where Joshua comes
in right now. Joshua was exposed to something
different. He would linger in the tent of
meeting after Moses would leave. He was up the mountain with
Moses while the Israelites were down there building the golden
calf. And So what happened is I think
it it it cultivated something and it built a hunger in him to
know God, to seek him to be in his presence that the rest of
the nation didn't have. Like Moses had it.
And I think Joshua had it. He wasn't just seeing God move.
He was learning who God was and was developing a hunger for his
presence as he saw his mentor Moses do right as a man speaks
face to face. He had was exposed to something
and said, I want that and I want that relationship with God that
Moses has. So when the giants appeared, the
nation, which was not rooted in the presence of God, saw
obstacles, but Joshua saw opportunity.
He knew that God could take down this giant.
And so this is where that personal cultivation to the
presence of God becomes really important to how we see
problems, to how we encounter and take hold of the promises
that God has for us. And as I was meditating on that,
the Lord brought to my mind David, right?
David and Goliath, really similar situation.
So we all know the story. David is a little shepherd, not
a little. He's a young man, a little, not
a little shepherd. He's a shepherd.
We're looking after his father's sheep.
And so his brothers are out fighting the war.
And interestingly, again, the Goliath was taunting the armies
of Israel for 40 days. That's the same length of time
the spies had gone to see the land. 40 days.
He comes to the army camp to give his brothers food and bring
things from home. And then he obviously asked saw
what the reward is. And he's dissatisfied that this
Philistine is, is is mocking the Lord.
So he goes up to Saul and says I've killed lions and bears.
And I will do the same to this heathen Philistine who has
defied the armies of the living God, the Lord who saved me from
the poor of the lion and the poor of the bear.
He will save me from this Philistine.
So David's confidence was built not in front of the crowds or
the stage. His confidence was built in the
field, in the secret place. His confidence and trust was in
the Lord who saved him from the lion and the bear could save him
in from this giant Joshua's confidence.
The Lord who brought them out of Egypt, who did this, this, and
this, could save them from that, would deliver them into this
promised land. And so David grew in the secret
place. He trusted God because he'd
experienced the God of deliverance.
Like, right? That was his experience of God.
And so when he saw a giant, he could respond in faith.
I'm sure his brothers were aware of all the things he was doing,
that he was fighting beers and he was fighting lions, keeping
his dad's sheep. They probably knew what was
going on in the field, but just because they know something's
possible doesn't allow them to respond in faith, right?
Just like the Israelites knew God can do these miracles, they
couldn't respond in faith because their hearts weren't
aligned at that level. And so Israel saw public
miracles but private distance from God.
David private intimacy, but showed public authority in front
of two entire nations to take down the giant.
Faith is not built in the moment of crisis or when it's needed,
but it's revealed in the moment of crisis.
It's not when you not when you need it is not when faith comes.
Faith is already built. It's already there, but it's
shown when that moment comes. And so if we had to possess the
move of God, it needs to be bought with the price of faith,
right, of intimacy, because intimacy develops faith, and
faith is the currency which heaven responds to.
Look at all the reviles in the past.
Look at all through the Bible. God responds to faith, and faith
is cultivated with intimacy and trust.
It's what pulls on God. If you're gonna step into God,
what God's doing, we need to increase our intimacy with him.
Intimacy produces trust, Trust produces faith, and faith
positions us to respond. And of course, the Bible says
without faith it's impossible to please God, right?
So, So yeah, let's look. So it's really, so I guess the
key thing for me is our intimacy with the Lord, like we need to
know him so that when the time comes, we can step
forward-looking at revivals in the past, Azusa St. revival,
right, didn't start with crowds. It didn't start with a big
church. It started with a handful of
people praying in a room and consistently praying to seek the
House of God, to seek the face of the Lord.
It was. Consistent, it was persistent
and it was unseen prayer. It wasn't a big thing.
And then slowly people started, it started to gain momentum.
People would come, that experience, the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit, and then people said, hey, I want that and more
people would come. And that's how it gained
momentum. The Welsh revival.
This is one of my favorite revivals just because, you know,
in the book of Acts it talks about there's a small revival in
the city and it says the currency of what is it?
Hell no. The current or like the currency
of hell like fell in that city in the sense that like people
making idols were out of business, stuff like that.
So in the Welsh revival, Evan Roberts was the man who ushered
it in. And when that revival broke out
in the city of Wales, the police had nothing to do like the
police stations would have they there would be no crime in the
streets. Bars went out of business
because people wouldn't drink the coal miners the way that
they would treat the donkeys and the coal mines.
When they encountered the Lord, they would they'd be swearing
and hitting. And then once they encountered,
once they encountered God, the whole language would change and
the donkeys wouldn't respond to how they would talk And the coal
mines, right? Complete and utter cultural
shift took place in Wales. The police had nothing to do.
So they would actually go to these revival meetings and have
choirs and sing in the worship teams because their job was to
be where crowds were. And they said, well, the crowds
are at these meetings, so that's where we're going to go.
And if we were going to go, they got saved.
They got saved. They joined the choir, right?
Like, it was such an complete transformation of a city.
But it started with this man, Evan Roberts.
He was only 25 years old when the revival broke out.
And people say that's young, but if you actually look into his
life, it was when he was 16-10 years before that he encountered
God. And God put something in his
heart. And so he would pray for
revival. He would pray for the city
country of Wales. And this he would talk with his
friends and say, hey, do you think God could save 100,000
souls in Wales? Is it possible?
Let's pray for it? And so all of this he would they
sowed prayer for 10 years and then right before the revival
broke out, he would have encounters with God every night
for a month, every single night. And he described it as seeing
God face to face. Every night.
His face would glow like Moses did.
I want that each and every one of us needs
that. It's not about the church.
It's not about the structure. It's not about who preaches.
It's not about the programs we have during the week.
It's about the secret place to see God face to face.
And what he preached at those meetings was a very simple
sermon. He wasn't a great preacher.
He wasn't a pastor. He didn't have the skills
required to lead a church. But his his sermons were based
on these four things. One, confess all known sin to
God. Everything in your life that you
know is a sin. Confess it, repent and put it
behind you. 2 put away all doubtful habits, but something's
interesting. Anything that you're not sure
about like, oh, could go either way, but my conviction is this
put it aside. It's not worth it.
It's not. That's the price of revival is I
want to do this, but I'm not. I have 1% of doubt that this is
right or it's causing me to do this.
Put it aside. You're not going to get revival
unless you clear your heart of doubt, Obey the Holy Spirit
promptly. Was #3 and #4 confess Christ
publicly. People won't know about Jesus
unless we talk about Him outside these four walls.
It's as simple as that. However you choose to do those
things, I think we need to do that.
And then in the Bible also we this whole confession of
repentance is so important because when Solomon is building
the temple, the Lord says, if my people who are called by my
name, what is it? Humble themselves next and pray.
Yeah, yeah. And so I don't know that's what
it's about. We need a move of God.
It needs to be birthed not on the stage, not in front of
crowds. It needs to be birthed in the
secret place to be sustained in front of people.
Like I said, that's what God has been talking to me about.
That's what I want. And I believe that's what the
call for this church is to do. As I was continuing to meditate
on this throughout the week, actually, yeah, that gave me a
thing, he said in Judges chapter 2, verse 7, it says the people
served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the
elders who outlived him and who had all seen the great things
the Lord had done for Israel. In Judges chapter 2, verse 10,
after that whole generation, another generation grew up who
knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel.
Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
One generation saw a move and the next didn't even know,
didn't even know him, and ushered in this whole era of
idolatry that can that plagued Israel for forever.
And so revival cannot be sustained on borrowed faith.
We cannot inherit intimacy from our parents, from our
grandparents, from the people we see, our pastors, or we can.
We cannot live on yesterday's encounter.
So it's really important that we ourselves are changed so that we
can change our children. Our children watch us really,
really closely when we don't even think about it.
They're always looking at how we behave, how we respond.
And So what we don't build into our lives now, we can't pass on
to the next generation, right? Like, and it's simple things
like, do you value money over over God?
Like is, is how much of is your attention solely faced on like
on finances or it's visible, it's visible in the home.
Like it's, we had to make a conscious decision like, OK,
we're not gonna like, it's good to pay down the mortgage and all
that stuff, but a whole life doesn't have to be centered
around finances. Like God will take care of that.
That's OK. Like we're so loose with that
now because gods in charge of that area of our lives.
So again, like we can't build into our lives and what will
pass on to the next generation. So how Yeah, they, they all I
can say is they watch, they notice and down the track when
when push comes to shove, all those things kind of add up.
Oh, it's OK to kind of skip church every now and then you
need a break. Like it's OK.
Like I don't need to do my quiet.
All that other stuff they see and it'll be picked up on.
And so generational warning, like we need to pass on revival
to our kids, to the other people.
And it's not just kids, it's the other generation in the church
as well, right? Like we have the privilege of
having really mature Christians, youths, really young children.
And so I encourage you, like encourage people from across
generations like revivals, not just for the the young ones
coming up. It's not just for the old ones
that have prayed and contended for it their whole lives.
It's for everyone. And so it's not gonna happen
until we all kind of build it together.
And so coming back, bringing it back to Omega, if Omega is on
the edge of revival, the question isn't will God move,
It's will we be ready for when he does?
Have we put aside the things that are hindering us in our
pursuit of him, in our relationship with him, so that
when he says it's time to take hold of the promised land, we
don't shy back. We go full forth.
And so preparation looks like prioritizing time with God.
It looks like learning to hear his voice.
We need to be a people that move based on his voice.
It can't just be out of a good plan.
Like the the thing of sending one man from each tribe was a
good plan. It was it was a plan given by
man, but we need to hear the voice of the Lord dealing with
fear and sin in our lives and building a history with them
before God does something through us.
He wants to do something in us. We need to be prepared to carry
his presence into what he's called us to do.
Yeah. And if you look at us, the
brothers hate the evil have done a belief and they intent True.
Yeah. So these are spiritual sort of
principle in there as well. So yeah, yeah.
An evil heart of unbelief stops you entering the promised land.
Yeah, absolutely. An evil heart of unbelief stops
you from entering the promised land.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, in that story, don't
the Israelites also turn against Caleb and Joshua when they say
we can do it? Yeah, exactly the same thing.
Yeah, yeah. That evil heart of unbelief
turns against the people of God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No cool. So be encouraged.
The Lord is doing something in our midst.
It's not numbers that are going to usher in the revival, but
it's going to be intimacy, and it's going to be how much of A
cost are we willing to pay to bring it in?
Right? I'm just gonna pray and finish
it up. Lord, thank you for your
promises. Thank you for your faithfulness
and your goodness. All the wonderful things you've
said over each and every one of our lives, all the promises
you've made to us as a church family.
God, I pray help us to prepare ourselves to take hold of the
promised land that you've given us.
Help us to prepare ourselves to take hold of the promises in
each and every one of our lives that you've given to us before
the foundations of the earth. God, when that time comes, let
us not be found lacking. Let us not be found in a place
of unbelief, in a place of fear. But God, let us be found ready,
waiting to take hold of everything that you have for us.
God, I pray, help us to develop that trust, that history with
you in the secret place, Praise Lord, so that when it's time we
can exercise that faith in public.
God, Lord, I pray, yeah, help us crucify the flesh with Christ
and know what it is to be made new with you in Jesus name I
pray. Thanks for joining us at Omega.
If you need prayer for healing or breakthrough, or simply to
find out more, please head to our website or Facebook page in
the links below.