In every generation there have been revivals, massive moves of the spirit that changed the course of history. In every revival, there were believers like you who chose to answer the call to become the one in their generation. Discover your call to be the one in your generation. Welcome to Revival Radio TV. I'm Gene Bailey, back again with Pastor Greg Stephens, sir. Professor Greg, news anchor. Greg. Whatever you need.
Come over he’ll change the tire in your car. And, so, Greg, we were talking about, we only got to point number one, a revival. Wherever a revival was. There was a riot when we were talking about revival being messy and how we got it. But how do we get to that in a lot of people? And it's very common. And I know that we know a lot of folks that and I'm not somebody may specifically, but we can get into this, zone where we, we're, we're we're not relevant anymore to the guy on the street.
Yeah. So how do we how do we not do that? And, how what's the proper role of faith in, in revival? I mean, because we're believing God for revival, we're calling it and confessing it and doing all that stuff. Walk us through that. Where do we where do we make the mistake? I believe we make the mistake in this regard. When when I mentioned everywhere Jesus went, there was a revival and a riot. I brought up the the pigs with the demonic guy. He goes to Matthew's home.
It caused a riot among the Pharisees. He goes to Zacchaeus, go, hey, dude, in the tree, come here, I'm coming to your house. But he didn't say, come with me down to the synagogue where I'll be speaking. I'm going to your. I'm going to your house of all people. The tax collectors and and the religious. The church goers got upset about it. Why does he not know who that lady is? Same thing with the man at the gate. Beautiful with Peter and John. They have a riot break out there.
The same thing with Paul everywhere Paul went, the Judaizers would raise up people against them. So I got to wonder if you're not having a little bit of pushback, pushback. I wonder if you're preaching the same message that Jesus preached. Even the founders of America had the same thing. Here's the deal with Jesus. He would say stuff like, your faith made you whole, And so I studied that a little bit. Now we've got we can do a whole bookstore of just faith books, you know, over the years.
And they're good. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. And we've worked on pumping up our faith and building up our faith in our faith muscles, and, you know. Sure. And I'm not coming against any of that, but I don't see where a single person that Jesus said to them, your faith made you whole. They were where they were in faith. Oh, that woman with the issue of blood. Again, I don't have any record of her pumping up her faith muscles, buying faith promises, books or anything like that.
It said when she heard of Jesus, she said, if I can just touch the hem of his garment. So the condition for that miracle was what she said. Yeah. And I believe there's a lot of people that wondered why things aren't working, because you're the one that set the conditions to it. This is how God's going to move. He's going to do X, y, z by this time. But the the commonality I've seen on everybody that their faith made them whole. Their faith was in him.
She heard something about this Rabbi that maybe she heard that he touched lepers and cleansed them. You don't touch lepers. All right. So she's unclean. Okay, wait. If he'll touch a leper, then that means I can touch him. Maybe that's what she heard. I don't know what she heard, but she heard something. So my question is. What? What are they hearing about us? Yeah. What's my community? If my church disappeared tomorrow, would anybody notice?
Would they be happy? Yeah. How long would it take for them to realize that we're not here anymore? So, I ask a question of students at Kenneth Copeland Bible College, and I've done it online. What is faith? So what is faith? We have substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen. That's what Scripture tells us. I've had people say it's Mark 11:23 if you believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. Yeah, you shall have whatsoever things you say.
I've had people say it's a spiritual force. I've had people say it's a tool. I've had people say all these things about faith, but I've had some problems because what do you do when bad things happen to bad people? What happens? What do you say to the person that they didn't receive their healing? Do you say you were a lack of faith? I've heard people say that. Oh yeah, unfortunately it's true. I've heard people say, well, your love walk or you're giving or you're this or you're that.
I don't see. You must be in unforgiveness. Yeah, absolutely. And they get you to examine yourself. What? There's nothing wrong with that. But what I did is I just turned you back to you being the source and not him being the source. Right. So how does faith cometh? By hearing and hearing by the Word of God. But in the Greek it says, Christos Jesus words, he's the author and finisher of my faith. Yeah, faith comes from him. So I ask them this what does faith? What is faith?
And I'm what can I read you verse in Hebrews chapter 11. You have all of these faith people here by faith, Abel by faith, Noah by faith, Moses by faith, David by faith, Jacob. And then you get over here at the end of Hebrews chapter 11, still in faith, others were tortured, not accepting deliverance. Others had trial of markings and scourging, chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawed in two. Wait a minute. Tempted with the sword being slain by the sword.
If your definition of faith can't stand up to those verses right there, I got to wonder about my definition of faith. Exactly, because that's some bad stuff that happened. So how could those people be in faith and that bad things happen to them? How do I explain Hebrews 11? You're telling me that those people believe that they receive being sawn in half? Surely not. That's the thing they hoped for. Yeah, yeah. So if that's not the case somewhere, we've missed it.
You know, with faith, it's his faith. Well, and we cannot manufacture faith. We can have belief. So talk about that. Great. The difference between belief and faith. Because I think a lot of times we kind of throw that all together. He gave every man the measure of faith. Now, the first time you find faith in Scripture, in the Hebrew, it's a Hebrew word and it's emunah, and it means trust. That's literally the way it's translated. It's translated into English as faith.
I remember the Lord asked me one time, do you trust me? And I'm like, yeah, of course, Lord, I trust you. And then I had that rise in my spirit again. Do you trust me, Lord? I trust you, I trust you, I trusted you to move my family across the country to California. I started then telling him all the ways that I trust him. And I heard my spirit again, the same thing. Do you trust me now? And I finally got smart enough to say, obviously I don't. Yeah. So what does that mean, Lord?
And I heard this in my spirit. Trust requires unanswered questions and though you slay me, David said, I'll trust you. Yeah, I'll follow you. I'll believe in you. See, Gene it's his faith. It's his blood. It's his name. It's his righteousness. It's his body. As a pastor, I've got to realize it's his church. It's his sheep that none of this is mine. So my faith should be in him and. And for him, not in myself. The minute I make it about me or our church has a greater revelation than that church.
I've lost revival immediately because I'm not in competition with him. I'm not in competition. I can't be in competition with the Lord. I can't be in competition with the pastor across town. Sure. Well, and we've talked about here on the show, just just some other programs we did about faith isn't about striving. It's about surrender. Because I don't like what you just said. I don't have the ability. Faith is a gift from God. I can manufacture belief, I can believe, I can confess, I can do this.
But in the end of the day, it's God that gives me the faith. And so that's the gift of faith. So as I'm believing for a revival. So let's pull this back to revival. I'm believing God. I believe that God wants to pour out on his people everything I know about God. And Scripture says it's what he wants to do. Everything that I have, the stories I read, that's what happened. So I where do I go now with my faith for revival? I'm believing God. I'm petitioning God for revival.
But how do I have where's the line, Greg, when it comes from believing God or having faith or doing it in my striving or surrender, it gets it gets to be kind of overwhelming for this today or for a revival today. Jesus gave us the Great Commission. Go into all the world, make disciples, and now he'll say something very interesting of the religious leaders. He said, you will travel the entire world for one convert, and you'll make him twice the son of the devil that you are.
It's what Jesus said to the Pharisees. So wait a minute. They're doing the Great Commission. But he said, they'll make them twice the son of the devil that they are. So I asked myself this question if I want a revival in my city, am I trying to make disciples for him, like him, or am I trying to make them like us?
And I think that's where revival falls apart, is when all of a sudden it becomes you're making converts for your church or your belief system or your denomination, rather than letting them be transformed into his image. So if someone comes, we become conformed, not transformed. So let's say people come to a revival meeting and they have an experience with God. Yes. Then they fall away. What you're saying is they were still in a revival, but then they fell away. Did we?
We cannot equate success to them becoming in the church and going to Bible school and becoming the pastor of a church. That's not the level of success for that meeting or for that revival service. Right? I think that's I agree, the level of success is becoming like him becoming his disciples. Not not my denominations, disciples or my churches decide or my own belief in what it should be. Yeah. And so I think we we do that.
We get into this trap of trying to conform people to our way of thinking, rather than letting the Holy Spirit transform them. So we're all excited about the biker gang gang that comes in and gets on their knees at the altar, and we all shout about that, but then we we get upset when they they still dress like that a year later. Yeah. You follow me on that or what do I do?
What do I do with the guy who gets gloriously saved, filled with the Holy Spirit actually got healed, and he gets back in this car that night from that meeting, and his radio is still set to that station, and he lights up a cigarette on his way home. Yeah, well, it didn't stick. It wasn't real. No, no, these are people in their flesh that are still in their flesh. Nothing changed. Their. What changed with their spirit, man, we've gotta learn to start seeing people.
My opinion, based on what I've read in the word by the spirit rather than by the flesh, and because we want to size them up as well. That person's all tatted up, and that person is all of this, and that person's all of that, which is religion. It's religion. Your boy, you nailed it. I think you know, I'll make a statement here. I believe religion is the greatest hindrance to faith. Wow. I think it's for a greatest interest to revival. It's the same thing Azusa that you brought up Azusa.
the last time Azusa started splitting off into denominations. Nothing wrong with denominations, but when it did that, it separated the unity. And unity is a key to the move of the spirit.
Well, and there's a and I don't know how I don't remember where we saw this or where we got this information, but there was the supposedly there was, a moment with William Seymour where he was approached by someone that of faith and said, look, the minute you call this something, the minute you put a name on this, it'll be over. And they came back and sure enough, put a sign up, said Apostolic Faith mission. And it was the beginning of the end. And now it drained on for droned on for years.
But God's never he's in his, I think the mystery of revival is, is as important as what God's doing. I love when we talk about the Welsh revival. You get this whenever you when you're whenever you read about what was happening and even rereading some of the letters from back and forth from, Evan Roberts back to the United States. And they were talking about what's going on. And there's this, like, we're just along for the ride. You know, we don't we didn't see this.
You know, it was Evan Roberts. Big prayer was bend me, Lord. That was the extent of his eloquent prayer that God poured out there. And Moriah Chapel. So when we see this, we have to understand there's losing control or relinquishing control, not losing control. You relinquish control. It's a scary thing, but that's what religion wants to control. But when we relinquish control, we allow Holy Spirit to have his way. It's a total faith and trust in him. And I can only do that.
Only do that by faith. Absolutely otherwise. Otherwise, that's a crazy thing to do. It is crazy. So you mentioned that one Lord, was it Lord bend me, bend me Lord. Bend me Lord. It reminds me of Gloria Copeland when she says, take my life and do something with it. Yeah, she had no idea. I don't think what God was going to do with her life. So my wife, Michelle, is the spiritual life director for a Christian school high school.
And at the end of the year, she was talking to the seniors and they she didn't know how to end it, and she just heard the Lord. She heard Gloria and her spirit say that. And she said, you know, how many of you seniors and your students you just would be just this simple, just, God, take my life and do something with it. Every single student came forward. Yeah, that was a salvation message. It was a simple salvation message. I mean, she didn't say all these verses and all these things.
You just be honest. And I say, God, take my life as I'm leaving the school to go to college, take my life and do something with it and commit yourself to that. Every student came forward. And these are these are not all Pentecostals or Baptist. Sure, there's Catholics in that school. There's every denomination, and some are unchurched, but not a single student of the junior and senior class did not come forward on that request.
And I think it's that kind of childlike faith, if you will, of just I need you to do something with me. And here I am. And that's revival. That is revival. That's. But that's all you can cite revival after revival after revival that you've done on this program, even in our in our country, those pilgrims getting away from persecution coming here. Lord, we dedicate this place to you. It wasn't some big ceremony. No. Robert Hunt did that on the the beach of Cape Henry.
So this is this is we. This is your nation. And from this nation will win other nations for you. Right? And it happened for do. And it wasn't a faith statement. It wasn't a marketing strategy. It wasn't a it was a covenant. Actually, it's exactly what it was. But it was from here. Right to there. It wasn't. We didn't run this passive test group marketing study. Yeah, yeah. I didn't do any of those kind of things.
But I think that's kind of what we've gotten into, you know, with social media for clicks and everything else, it's just one on one individual salvation and individual liberty in America. So there has to we have to I really believe that we have to do and I believe this is what Revival Radio has done we have to leave a signpost for the next generation. Should the Lord tarry on the way back. Yeah. How do we get there?
Our founding fathers, they leave us a signpost on the way back to get where we need to go, you know? And, And I think that's what you're doing with Be the one. Well, and it's and it is a lot of times it's just really that simple. Now, I did some work earlier, obviously with the with Billy Graham overseas and I had the, the ability one time, Billy would write out his message handwritten and hand it off and would give it to the, TV truck, and they would so they could follow along with him.
And so I started reading, you know, I got a chance to read it, you know, and I wanted to keep them. Yeah. And I'm like, no, I can't, you know, I got you. I was going to ask you, what are you. Yeah, yeah. No, I had to give it back. But I was struck by how simple the message was in a in every. And if you break it down now the difference is not. And what Billy said, did he speak truth?
Absolutely. But what really? Even to this day and on this network, we've played Billy Graham classic crusades, you know, from the 40s and 50s and 60s. So the difference is not what he said, but the anointing that was on what he said. The spirit draws you even on videotape or hard drive or however it is now, you can still go, wow, look at that. I want to get saved all over again, you know, because, wow, there's the the anointing is on that. It wasn't the words that he spoke.
Now I can preach the same sermon doesn't mean I'll have the same result. You know why? Because you may not have the revelation of it. A lot of people speak. You just talked about Seymour earlier. Yeah. He's speaking about something he hadn't received. There's a lot of people that speak from head knowledge or something they've learned, but they don't have the revelation. If you haven't had the revelation of God's grace, you can't understand the grace message, which is not a message. It's true.
It's same thing with faith. If you haven't understood, the revelation personally of faith, you can't understand a word of faith. You think it's something that it's not? It's a thing. Yeah, yeah, and it's not a thing. It. And I think that's what we need to do. If we can get people the revelation of Jesus, who he really is, who he was and who he still is now. And my identification to him, that's all Billy Graham did, was tied you to him.
And once you get your identification with him, all of these other things seek first the kingdom of God, his righteousness. All these things are added to you. So what is the biggest hindrance? Well, maybe hindrance of the right word. What's the biggest misconception? When we think about Jesus the way you were just saying and we think about, we want to see a move of God.
We want there are people watching Greg that have kids and grandkids and spouses, and they've been some of these people have been believing God for decades for them to get saved. And when their kids grew up in church and we talk a lot about prodigals and calling the prodigals home, and you're like, you know, I did everything right, I've done everything right. And they still went south. They didn't. They're not following God. And they've they've gone off the deep end.
And and so all I know is to keep praying, say, God, please save him. He's bringing how how do we what is it that we're missing in that I love the prodigal story because I believe it's Jesus letting us know how our Heavenly Father feels towards us. Explain. That we were we were without a covenant, without hope. Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us. He became one of us to get us out. We weren't capable and ourselves because we were born under the curse.
What would have happened if if the prodigal who was who was the most upset in that whole thing with the prodigal son deal? The brother, the brother? What would have happened had he run into his brother on the way home rather than his father? Would the outcome have been different? Probably. And I'll submit that many of your loved ones and many of the people that we've been believing for, and your neighbors and your boss have run into the prodigal brother before they ever got to meet the father.
Oh, it's good, great. And as a result, we they feel unworthy. They feel like, well, I as soon as I get my life together, as soon as I get things screwed up, so I'll. I'll come back. He had a plan. I'm going to go be a servant in my father's house. Because servants have it better than the life I'm living right now. But dad wouldn't have any part of that. You're not a servant. We've taught people to serve God. Be a servant. I'm not really a servant of God.
A servant of our denomination, or a servant of our church system, or a servant of your pastor or your leadership. No, he said, you're not going to be a servant. You're going to be a son because you're always been a son. You'll always be a son, your child. If they accept Jesus as their Savior and Lord, they are sons and daughters. They just don't know that they are and they need somebody to remind them. The dad went and he jumped on him and he he said, you're not going to be a servant.
I'm going to put a ring on you. I'm going to put this robe on you. And you have your robe is of righteousness restored back to back to who you are. It's really the father's love that transformed everything. What did David do when he. When when an adulterer met God? He met his love. Yeah. And you start looking at a murderer, Moses. Paul got all murdered believers that he then sure ministered to. No one's too far gone. Greg, look at the camera.
Take these last four minutes and ministers, I'll be like, you got something to go? Go through it. Your child doesn't want to go to church because they've been. It's not about your church. The best thing you could do is not preach to them, but leave the door open to them. Well, they're living in an alternative lifestyle. They're going to need you. Leave a door. Don't shut the door to them. Wait. Watch for them. They'll come home.
And when they come home, you run and you greet them, and you don't say, I told you so, or bring anything up from the past. You just let the love of God flow from you. If the world could experience love, Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men onto me. The problem is, is we've not lifted him up. We've lifted systems up. We've lifted things about him up rather than lift him up. And it begins with you being the one and allowing your life to so shine with his love and his life.
Then will all men know, he says, that you are my disciples. Don't boast of your love for him. Boast of his love for you. That's where it begins. You say, Lord, I will fail you today. Not because I want to, but because I'm human. But you'll never fail me. The Ten Commandments were given as a promise that God will never commit adultery on you, that he will never kill you. He made an agreement with that. So, Lord, we thank you today that that child is coming home.
We thank you that even now, as you said, pray for laborers to be sent across their path. I pray for laborers to be sent across that girl's path. Across that boy's path. You said whatever we bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever we loose on earth is loosed in heaven. So we bind the enemy and his voices and influences around her. And I'm looking at a I'm looking at a blond female right now. We bind the enemy's voices around her right now, and we lose status for a season.
For a season, Satan, you will not be able to speak into her life now. We loose laborers to be sent across her path and she'll hear them. She'll be able to hear that father put a love. Touch her with your love again. May we be instruments of your love. I thank you that they're coming home from the north, the south, the east and the west. I put my trust in you, Lord. My faith in you that you are willing and you are accomplishing this all for your glory. You get all the credit.
You get all the glory. However it happens. Lord, we're open to that revival in our families life. I speak revival to our families and to our children and our children's children. In the mighty name of Jesus. Now we lift you up, Lord, let everybody see you in this nation again, and thank you for that. In Jesus mighty name, Gene I'm thinking about that statue with that lady in her hand as pointed. To heaven know that's the way back. It is the way back.
So if you, if you prayed that prayer with Greg, I want you to do two things. You know, we haven't talked a lot about this on Revival Radio, but I want you to go share this program. We're on Facebook and we're on YouTube and we're out there on Rumble. So go share this. And maybe share the link with somebody. You got a cell phone text, a link to someone that you believe is struggling with this. Maybe they believe that they've failed in their faith and they need to get some encouragement.
Send this program to them and send it on your on your. It's as easy you can witness as easy as clicking and sharing a link to this program. Thank you for doing that. Thank you to Brother Copeland, of course, for letting us continue to be here. Revival radio every week, bringing you stories of faith and great insight into Greg. Thank you. Thank you for that. Any last any last words here? Always watch for them. They're coming home. They're coming home. They're coming home.
Thank you for being a part of what we do right here on revival. We thank you for supporting the Victory Channel and Kenneth Copeland Ministries. This is where we talk about Be the One. Be the one that's willing to stand up and say, I'll go, I'll serve. I'll step out and we'll see those prodigals come home. Gene I had one thing just drop in my spirit. It's easy to love Jesus, but can you love Judas? Well, there it is. We'll see you next week, right here on Revival Radio. Thanks, Greg. Thank you.
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