#209 Exploring the Connection Between Humility and Revival with Dr. Glenn Sheppard

When I am with God, finding God's will, discerning God's way, obeying God's commandments, I stand on the most solid ground that any human can stand on on the face of this earth.

Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.

The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports. Well, hello. So glad to be with you here on the One Cry podcast. My name is Byron Paulus, and I'm just blessed to be a part of the One Cry movement in the context of what God is doing right now in quickening the hearts of believers, especially Gen Z, toward revival and spiritual awakening.

So thank you so much for joining us today. And we have a very special guest and a very unusual context for us at our home base, at our headquarters, where I'm standing right now. We host a chapel for all of our staff, whether they're remote, no matter where they are in the world and where they are here locally.

We gather every week and we have a time to just hear from others regularly. And so today we're doing that. We're going to let you kind of jump in on the inside here and watch and participate. Listen to our chapel. And our guest today is someone that I have held in the highest of esteem for many years. Somebody who's had a profound impact on my life, but more than a profound impact in prayer throughout our nation and world.

One of the founding charter members of the National Prayer Committee is Glenn Shepard. And Glenn Shepard is someone who God has used to help many of us, as he has mentored us over the years, to become biblically rooted, theologically rooted, but also dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And so we asked Glenn to... Just zoom into our chapel a few weeks ago, and we asked him to just talk to us heart to heart.

And I love what God put on his heart, dealing with humility and pride and the need for the next revival to be bathed with a heart of humility. So I would encourage you, just pause long enough to focus intently upon which this really mentor to so many leaders and man of God has to say to us at this hour in light of all God is doing. So thank you for joining us. And here from Chapel is Glenn Shepard.

What I want to share with you this morning is it deals with this whole business of pride and humility. In the book of James, of course, you know that passage in James, it says where it's so bluntly the writer addresses believers and says you're an adulteress. You don't do what you ought to do, and you pray, but your prayers are wrongly directed. You're praying for what you want instead of what heaven wants. And then it goes on to say in a very simple and profound way.

God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. The same thing said in 1 Peter 5, I think it is. Anytime God says something once, it's worth paying attention. When it's said twice, almost identically, you must pay attention. And where we are today, standing on the brink of a movement of God, We're seeing a geopolitical shift in our whole political arena. And it's not only here in America. I travel many countries around the world. We're seeing it internationally, globally.

The thing that the Lord has been speaking to me is don't stand in arrogant pride. Don't say, look what we have done. Don't claim our nation is the hope for the entire world. And so I want to talk a little bit this morning about pride. All of us travel on one of two roads almost every day of our life. And for me, I don't know about all of you, but for me, it's a battle to remain on the road of humility.

The road of pride is so tempting and so I want you to take a piece of paper you can just take a blank piece of paper if you want just a simple piece of paper like this and up at the top left corner put the word pride and at the bottom right corner put the word humility humility, Pride always starts high and has nowhere to go but never. Humility always starts low, and the limit is heaven. There is no limit. There is infinite work.

And if you stop for a moment and begin to think about this, and I teach a lot of young people, and I share with them these principles, I ask them, what do you perceive pride to be? And, of course, you get all of the traditional answers that pride is thinking more of yourself than you do of others, putting self first. There's a thousand different ways to phrase that, but it comes down to this simple single thing. I asked the Lord one day, Lord, what's your definition of pride?

And God answered me very clearly. He said, it's when you think more of yourself than I think of you. And of course I understood that here but all of a sudden it moved here into my spirit, and I began to think immediately biblically, you can go back to Genesis and move all the way through to the closing moments in the book of Revelation, you see that you see that perspective in every human heart. Lucifer was the author of it.

He was one of the three archangels of heaven led worship sang the hallelujah chorus and he was not satisfied with who God had made him to be he wanted to be God, And if you put that little piece of paper in perspective, pride always leads downward to rebellion. That's what happened with Lucifer. He rebelled against God. Now, rebellion is like the measles to the body of Christ, to a spiritual organization, to a family. It's catching.

Anytime I sense rebellion in my heart, I bring it before the Lord, and I say to the Lord, Lord, if this is rebellion against something that is diabolic and demonic, and it is your will that it be done, then give me the guts to stand against it. But if it's a rebellion because of my ego, my pride, my flesh, then God, I humble myself before you. Because you see, rebellion will always lead you downward to the next phrase. And that next phase is deception because the heart is just so deceitful.

And deception is when you believe something is of God that isn't and something isn't of God that is. And you turn things upside down. And the danger that I think we stand at today is to think that we can solve the issues that are before us at the ballot box instead of in the intercessor's closet. I don't know where it came in my heart, but many years ago, the Lord began to speak to me and tell me, I would never stand stronger or taller than when I knelt in the closet of intercession.

When I am with God, finding God's will, discerning God's way, obeying God's commandments, I stand on the most solid ground that any human can stand on on the face of this earth. And of course, when pride begins to lead to rebellion, rebellion leads to deception.

Then we see it in our government. We've watched the deception that has permeated our educational system that was to inform and educate, but has become a system of indoctrination and to misinform and to indoctrinate literally generation after generation.

Many of our great colleges and universities, and this is no surprise to any of you, but many of our great colleges and universities were established, Harvard was originally established, to train hot-hearted young evangelists to win the loss to Christ. Now, that's my paraphrase, but it's still in the very charter of Harvard. And look at where it is today. And so... We pervert things. We begin to say what God says is not right and what we want is wrong, is the right thing.

And we turn our hearts against that. But that comes from pride. And the end result of that, of course, is a perverted lifestyle. When I teach this so often, especially to young people in America, you know, pride to rebellion to deception to perversion. When I speak that, they often think, oh, Papa G, as they call me, you're talking about sexual, sensual. Yes, those are perversions, but that's not what I'm talking about. perversion.

The greatest perversion in America today is the church without the spirit of God operating and controlling it. That is perversion of the highest order. It is religion without form. It's a form of godliness, a godly activity without godly anointing. And it leads to nowhere except confusion, chaos, and turbulence. The end result of that is where we have come to, but we're seeing a change.

As we saw it in 1970 in Asbury, as we saw again just a couple of years ago in 2023, again at Asbury, thank God. And as we're seeing in college campuses and One Cry Bar and your group and others, you guys that are there that are listening, you've been reporting at 18, 20, 30 colleges now. UK is seeing transformation. France is having moves of God. I've just come out of Thailand and Nepal. I was in Paraguay earlier this year.

I am sensing among a group of young people, a generation that are not, they remind me of what they said about the first apostles, uneducated, almost illiterate. Rough, coarse, but touched by something that begins to not reform them, but transform them. I mean, they are becoming new creatures, and they don't know all of the theological terms that they need to learn and will learn as they progress, but they are being transformed supernaturally, and that's happening.

And so I believe we're standing on the brink of that. And if we, Americans, Christians, begin to think, oh, it's because of what God's done. And the only thing we've done is begin to humble ourselves. The great passage in 2 Chronicles 7, 14, of my people, not senators and representatives and these legal experts and the CEOs of company and military and entertainment. But if we get on our knees and say, God, I can't. God willingly says, I know, but I can't. And I've waited.

I've waited for your can't so I can can it. I want to pour my spirit in and through a generation. So pride always leads downward. It leads you away from God. It leads you into rebellion, into deception, and ultimately into perversion. But that's enough.

That's bad stuff. Let's go over here. And I want to begin here with humility. If my people, in a life verse of mine, 2 Chronicles 7, 14, if my people shall humble themselves. When God began to deal with me in 1970, I had been very active.

I knew how to climb the ecclesiastical letters. I was busy being a good Baptist Christian. And when God began to deal with my heart, he dealt, first of all, with my rebellion against God, and I was broken. I got on my knees in the chapel and seminary and wept for hours until literally I had nothing to weep from any longer, almost dehydrated. But if there's a dehydration, it's good. It's a dehydration caused by the Holy Spirit that empties you. And begins to avail you to be filled. And, uh.

And that humility, in those moments, I began to understand what God was intending to do. And I'm still on that journey now, 50 plus years removed, five full decades. And so humility, let's start down here with humility, down at the bottom, always begins on its knees. I often ask young people because I'm curious as to how they think and what they think, what is humility? And, of course, they use the traditional things, you know, thinking of others before you think of yourself and so forth.

I asked the Lord, I said, Lord, what is your thoughts on humility? This is what he spoke into my heart. He said, humility is when you obtain my opinion about anything you're dealing with on earth and then pray heaven to earth. You bring, and of course, immediately I thought of the model prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it's already set up there in heaven.

God's got a plan. And as we latch on to the very hem of his garment, as the woman did, as Jesus passed through the crowd, just touch it. Something happens, and we begin to bring heaven to earth. So humility is not something that we pray for God to make us humble. You know, so often, I quite often ask people when I'm speaking in this area, have you ever prayed and said, God humbled me? I have to put my hand up. It's a dangerous prayer. He will do it, and he does it sometimes.

But I remind you that the Scripture teaches us that Jesus humbled himself. Humility is not a force from heaven that molds you into the perfected will of God. Humility is a yielded heart that turns your life over to the master craftsman so that you begin to be transformed and your life emits the very fragrance in the presence of God. And it's the fruit of the Spirit. It's love. It's joy. It's peace. It's peace.

It's tenacious. this long-suffering mildness, meekness, it's not a puny little weakness. It's the powerful, dynamic fragrance of Almighty God. And it begins literally to change the atmosphere where you are. And when you humble yourself, you choose, you start down here. You humble yourself. Humility leads upward to submission. upward. You submit. There are two directions of submission. There's vertical submission to the will of heaven. There's horizontal submission to each other.

That's why the word of God says in order of preferring one another. I've been buried, Jackie and I've been buried 61 years this year. And I often tell that when we first got married, I thought she's the most phenomenal thing in the world I've learned she is that but I, I thought, my gracious, who is this girl I'm married to? That was only 15 minutes after we got married. And our personalities were different. Our backgrounds, we didn't have to cross

geographical distances. We were in the same little area. We didn't have ethical or moral differences. We didn't have language differences. But she was different. And so sometimes I'd say to her, you make me so mad. And she said, darn it, I don't make you mad. I just squeeze you and what's inside leaks out.

And she became my theologian at that point because, you see, what's in us is going to come out, not when we stand in the pulpit and pontificate, not when we sit in the pew and absorb, but when we operate in society and the world squeezes you, what leaks out is what brings transformation.

Jesus leaked heaven on earth. And when we are submitted to God because we have humbled ourselves, we begin to, in honor, prefer one another. Can you imagine the resolution that would bring in Washington, D.C. this morning? Can you imagine the transformation? Can you imagine what that would bring in divorce courts all across the country? Can you imagine what that would bring in, well, I'm Baptist in background, Bapticostal, they call me Christian.

Can you imagine what that would bring in churches? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and at one another. If we just did not have preferred one another. We loved others like Jesus loved us. And so when you humble yourself, what happens? You submit to God and you begin in order to prefer one another. That humility then, as we submit, puts us in a position where we have ears to hear. We begin to be tuned to God at a level that we've not lived at. And God begins to trust us and pour revelation into us.

And you see, Revelation, you know, I grew up like most of you did in church. If you grew up in church, Revelation, you know, the preacher would paint the picture of a dark room and somebody turns on the light. That's Revelation. I understand that. But revelation is really so much more than that. When I first began preaching, I didn't know how to preach. I started pastoring as a 17-year-old kid and as a college student. And I often say I've been back and apologized.

Anybody that had a teenage pastor deserves an apology. And so I didn't know how to do it. So I got some sermon books, simple sermons and so forth. And I cheated and used other people's sermons and didn't give credit, and I repented for that. But sometimes I did a pretty good job of delivering. Sometimes I did a pretty bad job.

Often when I would be in the process of delivering a message afterwards in these little churches, people would shake your hand as you go out and don't tell you what a great sermon it was. You knew in your heart that it hadn't been real good. And I said, Lord, how do I keep people from doing that? I really, you know, I wanted to know how they felt. I wanted to deal with them. I wanted to grow with them. So he said, just ask them what I said to them this morning.

And so I stood there just reaching out, take their hand, holding and shaking them. Say, well, sister, what did God say this morning? And quite often people would be like deer caught in the headlights, petrified. And then they would smile and say, well, it's, and then they'd fumble out. And I know that they'd heard me, but they'd not heard God. And then one day I was shaking on my old farm boy's hands in a little country

church. And he didn't have much education. He didn't know theology, eschatology. He didn't know, you know, all the six opinions about who wrote the book of Isaiah. He'd never been to any of that. and I said to him what did God say to you this morning and he looked at me. And he began to tell me what God had said that morning. And what he said that he heard I said was so much better than what I had said until I wanted to take notes on what he said I said because it was far more than I'd said.

And that day when I got before God, I said, God, what was that? And he said, son, I always say more than you say when you utterly depend on me. Revelation is when God takes the foolishness of preaching, that's biblical, and speaks through one of us, any of us, and brings truth from heaven. And the angels applaud, and God is honored, and something happens in the atmosphere. My old missionary friend, Bertha Smith, who was in the great Shandong revival, spent the last 10 or 12 years of her life.

I spent in her book. I just listened to every story she'd tell. She often would speak to Baptist preachers' conventions, and she had one message. It was on the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. The red man, black man. Get right with God and turn a bird. I mean, it was just pretty straightforward. Miss Bertha used to say to preachers, you know, God can use anything. He used a donkey one time, and he still used them in pulpits today. I want to be God's donkey.

I want to hear so what heaven says, that when I speak, people forget who spoke it, but they know it's truth from heaven. And when that kind of thing begins to happen, you see this progression. Let me go back to it again. Humility leads up into submission. When we're submitted to God in honor of preferring one another, we become an open book for God to write truth into our life. So many of you that I'm speaking to, you've spoken those kinds of truths into my life.

As we've walked together through decades, you've poured into me. And it's not been, you know, I could applaud you, I could name you this morning, but let me tell you what. When you spoke that truth, I knew that I'd heard from heaven, not from one of you. And revelation is when God takes the instrumentation of his creation and supernaturally proclaims a God revelation to mankind. Let me finish up this morning real quickly. And there's so much more to this.

This revelation, when you begin to walk in that. You begin to take on a Christ-like maturity. And I'm not talking about full-grown maturity. I don't think any of us ever get there until we get to where my friend Henry Blackaby is now and some of the others that have poured into my life. But Christ-like maturity. You know, there have been people who have impacted my life. When they walked into my presence, they walked into the room where I was. It changed the atmosphere.

Years ago, when I was first teaching and working with our Southern Baptist Convention at the then Home Mission Board, now North American Mission Board, I was at Ridgecrest doing some conferences. We used to do conferences on prayer and awakening, and people came from around the nation. I discovered that Baptists were desperate for knowing truth about the Spirit and about the Spirit-filled life and about walking in the fullness of the Spirit.

And I was teaching one morning basically on moves of God. Of course, I had seen the Asbury Revival, and I could speak personally about that. But I didn't know much about the others. I not studied them in seminary, but I began to be a student. The great 1857 prayer revival, the Welch Revival. I mean, just go on and on, the Hebrides Revival, the work of God and the great outpouring in the Shandong province in 1920s.

Up into the 30s, through their little Norwegian Lutheran missionary, Marie Munson, who impacted our Southern Baptist missionaries, who began to see signs and wonders and miracles took place. I was teaching that morning and telling the stories of what God had done in the Shandong revival. And as I was doing that, there were, I don't know, several hundred people, and I was pontificating away. The back left corner of the room, the door was interesting, the room was the back left corner.

Two little ladies came walking in. And when they walked in, the atmosphere was, it was like someone come in with perfume that was very strong, good smelling perfume. And they sat down near the back and I, you know, when you're a speaker. Most of you are. You watch what's going on. You try to listen to God and pay attention and address things, not just according to your prepared message, but God's dynamic, always changing and transforming preaching message.

And they were the kind of people, you know, sometimes you'll see people in the congregation, they look at you like this, Let's prove it. And then there are those who lean forward, and it's almost like they say, give me more, give me more. These two little ladies were like that. That morning as they were sitting there, I'd never seen them before. They were obviously elderly, my age now, but I thought they were really old. I was in my forties.

I finished the message, got ready to leave that day, and we were having a closing prayer, and people were on their knees praying. I asked my associate to close in prayer because I watched them leave, and I went out and I caught them on the sidewalk, and I just simply said, Who are you? When I turned around, she was about 4'8", maybe weighed 85 pounds, sparkled.

And she says, Oh, my name's Olive Lawton. And I said, well, Miss Olive, and the other one said very graciously, a stately South Carolina woman said, my name is Martha Franks. Well, I recognized her because it was a Martha Franks retirement center in South Carolina. And I said, tell me about you. And Miss Olive said, I was there. And I said, where? She said, in this unknown province. And they began to tell me about what God did.

And I realized that that day I was standing in the presence of some people who long ago had humbled themselves. They'd never married. They'd had Jesus as their bride.

They'd learned what it was to work interdenominationally. They learned what it was to suffer in concentration camps in Shanghai when the Japanese took over. They learned how to hear the presence of God and get revelation from heaven. They learned as they lived how to live long enough that their presence carried the fragrance of heaven.

Now this morning as I asked the Lord about speaking to you, and I mean it when I say I was honored because I have so much respect for so many of you that are on this, broadcast and I'm on this Zoom this morning I said Lord what should I share and the Lord said, remind them as I've reminded you. You never stand tall than on your knees in the closet of intercession. Remind them never to march in arrogant egotism and say, look what we're doing, changing the shape of our nation.

We're moving to conservatism from what I would have categorized, and I think most of you would, extreme liberalism that was going to destruction. Don't stand up and say, look what we've done. Kneel down and begin to weep and cry and say, oh God, thank you for what you have done. What more does heaven have? What do you want us to reach into heaven and bring down to earth? What is your will for where America is headed?

For this generation, Gen Z that's coming along, How do we pass the blessing of what you are doing, have done, and are continuing to do in our spirits, our lives, our families? How do we pass that on without telling them to be like us, but pointing them to Jesus? So this morning as I speak to you, I speak to you not as a seasoned warrior, but as a young and learning at the feet of the Master. I honestly mean it with all of my heart.

I am weaker today than I've ever been, and yet I am stronger than I've ever been. Not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the living Christ. And if I could impart anything or accelerate it in most of your learning this, if I could impart anything, I would impart the basis of what I'm saying to you, that the Spirit of Christ might speak to you in such a way that these next couple of years, and I believe we're going to see a shift.

I believe we're going to come into a time with the atmosphere. I can remember in the 70s going in and out of McDonald's sometimes and every table I'd see there'd be somebody at the tables praying. I can remember coming from the seminary out to the little church in Louisville where I was pastoring on the outskirts of Louisville, and stopping at a McDonald's and there were people on their knees kids, basically that hippie generation and they were crying out to God.

That's the generation that I want to speak to. So that's kind of the genesis of what God said for me to say to you this morning. If you'd allow me, I'd like to pray for you for a minute, and then, Byron, I'll turn it back over to you. God, thank you for my brothers and sisters. These are treasured friends. They're more precious to me with the passing of every day. You have used so many of them to pour deep, powerful, eternal truths into my very being.

I know there's been truths from you, but you've used them as vessels, so may they be blessed today. God, give us the wisdom as spiritual leaders. I pray for what's happening with one cry and the impact that can only be explained by your sovereignty that it's having over the body of Christ, not only here in America, but now it's beginning to spread to countries around the world.

I pray, God, humility will be the mark. I pray that our knees will become calloused, our hearts will become tender, our minds will be more filled with the thoughts of heaven, and our energy will be more powerful than we've ever had. May we truly understand that as we are weak, you are strong through us.

And so I pray for my brothers and my sisters this morning, the great blessing of humility, in order that they might be light in the darkness, fragrance in the sourness, and truth in the confusion. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. it.

Well, I trust that you were as blessed, challenged, and convicted. Honestly, in what Glenn shared here in our chapel service. I was moved deeply by the reminder that really, pride is thinking more highly of myself than what God thinks of me. And somebody else said one time, Pride is really thinking more highly of ourselves than what God and I know to be really true.

And so I'm realizing more and more, as Glenn shared, that a pathway, a highway to revival is really built through humility, that the great need today, if we're going to see God descend in great power, we need to descend in great humility. I think of Isaiah, in Isaiah 57, 15, it says, God dwells in a high and lofty place, but he dwells also in a place of those who are broken and contrite in spirit.

There's been such here in this podcast, such a reception on Bill Elif's and Kyle Reno's teaching on the present-centered life. And when we think of revival just being God's presence, we also know that God is present with those who are humble.

So I trust that you will keep involved and engaged in this movement, that you will be a tool to accelerate the movement that is taking place right now, and that you will join so many others that are doing that. By just simply taking a step of humility. And so I'm so grateful for Glenn Shepard. I have here behind me in our office a quote by Bob Bakke. And he said, there's no need to pray a prayer of something you are not willing to be an answer to.

And Glenn Shepard's been an answer to prayer and his own prayers. And I trust as you pray for revival, you will, with humility, step out in radical obedience and be an answer to your own prayers. If you enjoy this podcast, might I just suggest that you subscribe to it if you haven't already?

And may I suggest that you maybe forward this to friends of yours and ministry partners of yours and have them go to onecry.com slash podcast and begin listening to the series of podcasts that we do all with the purpose of accelerating. Music.