9. Practitioner's Podcast: The Key to a Movement
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Practitioner's podcast where we're applying Jesus style, disciple making to every day life. This episode in all of our episodes are powered by Navigators, church Ministries, which help us church helps churches live out the great commission every single day. For more information or to get connected, go to navigators church ministries.org.
Justin, why don't you tell us who this episode is perfect for? Why are you giggling like.
Well, I just thought it was funny that you tripped over the intro and then I was waiting to see if you were gonna stop it, and then I think you kind of saw that I was waiting, but then you kept going and then so yeah, then it was, we're fine now. We are here now. So tell everybody who this episode's perfect for Tony, this episode is perfect for anyone who wants to see movement in there.
or their life. Okay. So to kind of set up what we're talking about here, if you have been paying attention at all, you've seen a couple different things happening in the church, in the Christian world. One thing is that since covid things have been rocky, right, there's been ups, there's been downs, churches are still trying to recover.
Many of them are, recover to the, the place where they were before Covid in terms of. Attendance and stuff like that. But there's also a lot of talk about movements, right? And today we're gonna use the word movement as kind of synonymous with revival. And so one of the things that, meteorologists and others are seeing around the world is that there's a couple places where movements are happening.
Kind of a sweeping of the spirit where lots of people are coming to faith in an area, over a short period of time. And not only are they coming to faith there, there's generations of people coming to faith as people are disciple making and in the word and all that. And so a lot of people are talking about how do we have a movement or a revival here in America and what's keeping us from doing it?
And so today we're gonna talk about the key to a movement because one of the things that I see over and over and over again is people saying, you know, there's just a couple things we need to start doing that will lead us to have a movement. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about this, but I wanna.
Our conversation, a little bit, at least around a verse that I found really, poignant, really applicable to this conversation, but also this cultural moment. And it Isiah 13 six. Okay, so Jose is one of the minor prophets, chapter 13 verse six. OFA says, when I fed them, they were satisfied. When they were satisfied, they became proud.
Then they forgot me. And so what Jose is talking about here is that as people. Get what they need and get satisfied. they tend to forget God. They become proud. We don't need him anymore. We don't need what we got what we need. So God, we're gonna do our own thing and they forget and move away from God.
And we're talking about in our culture, there's a lot of that happening, right? People have moved away from the church, moved away from God. Now have they gotten what they really need? That's a different discussion all. But Tony, that's kind of where we're, that's the realm we're in today in this episode.
What's the key to a movement? How do we, how do we move from this place where we are to a place that, sees a lot of people coming to faith that sees a movement of the spirit of God in this place where we live? Well, I, I think you gave the answer in your question, right? And one of the things that we realize is that movements take us from one place to another.
And so what we're trying to chase as the church, and when I talk to pastors, I'm sure when you talk to pastors, Justin, you see the same thing. We're all chasing different results. So, hey, I want a movement so that I can chase a different result. I want a movement or a revival, or in some circles I hear the term awakening.
You know, because I want a different result. I'm unhappy with the result I currently have leading a congregation or being a lay leader in the church, and I want something that looks different. So here's the, the, the tension around a lot of what we see is that we have this kind of underlying belief. That the movement is actually ours.
Hmm? That the movement is actually ours. When the reality is, when we look at the scripture ina it, it's saying, that we're in control. Right? Jose 13, six, you, you, you read it, it says, when they were satisfied, they became proud and they forgot me. Meaning there's a, there's. Theme in this scripture that the people of God can do the movement without God.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I think totally. And one of the things that, that you just said, movements move us from one thing to another, and that's really as, as we look at where we're at, a lot of people are hungry for that, right? We feel like we're in this transition period in the church between what's digital, what's modern, what's in the past, what's traditional, what's contemporary, all.
And people are looking for, well, what is the next thing? Or what is the thing that 20 years from now, what's church gonna look like? What's practicing of our faith gonna look like? What is disciple making gonna look like? And it's that idea that people are thinking with their heads and trying to figure out, all right, let's have a movement that's gonna move us from where we are.
This period of tension, this period of kind of being in the in between. What's gonna move us from here to that next, right? That's what we want. That's what we're hungry for. And as I hear people talking about it, I hear two things, Tony, and the two things that I hear people saying over and over and over again from different backgrounds is that what we need to do is we need to pray and fast.
And if we will get back to praying and fasting, then we will see a move. . And, and now let's be clear, everybody who's listening, who's now like saying, well, Justin are, and Tony, are you guys saying that we shouldn't prayer and have prayer and fasting? We're not saying that at all. , no. Prayer. Prayer and fasting are important tools, as a part of God's movement.
But the deal is, is that you're not gonna program your way to a move of God. , right? You're not gonna program your way to God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. So when we begin to think about movements, the first thing we need to know that prayer and fasting are important tools, but it's still God's movement.
You know, if God wants to move in your church, he doesn't need you to pray and fast. He'll just move if he wants to move , that's right. Now, historically, there's historical evidence to suggest that a posture of dependence on the Lord through the tools of prayer and fast. Will lead to a movement of God that we cannot control.
Mm-hmm. , which is sounds like what a lot of us are chasing. Right? That's what a lot of churches are chasing. That's the next great awakening, right? the revival movements, right. That we're chasing those things, but, but here's something really important. Okay? Prayer and fasting. a program is not going to.
To automatically equal what you're searching, what will is surrender, letting God be God and us giving up control of the movement. Yeah. Tony, so what I hear you saying is that if we approach prayer and fasting as the tools that are, that we can leverage before God to get him to do what we. , that is not what's going to lead to what we want
Right? Right. It is not, it doesn't work like that. Right. God isn't sitting in heaven waiting and, and have a scorecard that he's checking off and saying, well, when we get this amount of prayer and fasting, well then I'll have to do something. Right. That he's the active one. He's the one who is Yeah. moving people to even get to that place of prayer and fasting.
But what I've been thinking a lot about is, You know, as we're talking about movements, as we're talking about revival, we have to be real careful with our language so that, so that the people that are listening aren't thinking, all we need to do is prayer and fast, and then going out and telling their people we need to pray and fast, when really the difference is what you just said, right?
It's not necessarily the prayer and fasting. The prayer and fasting comes out of. What is, what needs to be a reality in us that then moves us to prayer and fasting, right? And so they're almost like pre-conditions that need to exist to get us to that place of prayer and fasting. That sense of surrender, that sense of God's holiness, contrast it with the depth of our sin that moves us to a place that says, I, I can only depend on God.
And it drives us as we look at the world and we look at the state of our church or our own heart or, you know, our ministry, any of these things, as we look at the state of those and we look at scripture and what God wants from us and of us, and what he's called us to do in the world. . This all mix should mix in our heart and when the spirit moves in our heart to mix in such a way that we want to get down on our knees and surrender and pray and fast.
Not just one time, but as a habit, right? That's the stuff of a movement. Right. And that's why I think you're saying, Yeah, absolutely. I, I mean, there are a couple of instances in scripture that are worth exploring when we think about movements. So I'm, I'm gonna pull out two and I'm sure there's lots more, and you guys can think about this as you look at the scripture, but the first movement that I see in the gospels is when Jesus began to call the first disciples and he comes out of the wilder.
He comes outta the wilderness tested and completely and utterly dependent on God, on the Father, right? So he's, he's dependent on the Father, and he comes out and what's the very first message he begins to preach? He says, repent and believe. Right? What's repentance? Repentance is. Turning away from sin and believing in the goodness and faithfulness and holiness that God desires to give us in the intimacy when we surrender our sin and our flesh like tendencies to him.
Okay, so th that's how that movement of the disciples really began, is it began the Lord Jesus surrenders God. The Father meets him in that surrender, and he begins to, to preach the message. Repent and believe. The second one comes from the book of Acts, right? Jesus gets ascended into heaven. And the last message that he gives them that we see in Acts chapter one, verse one and two, it says, this, obviously this is Luke writing, and my former book, Phil Ops, I wrote about all the Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven.
And this is, this is what Luke writes, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen, right? And the instructions are what for John baptized with water, but in a, oh, he says, do not leave Jerusalem. But wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about verse five for John baptized with water.
But in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. So, so what Jesus is saying, what Jesus is saying to the disciples is just wait here, wait here until the Holy Spirit comes. You don't have to do anything. The Holy Spirit's gonna show up, right? So then they gathered around him and asked, this is.
Lord are, are you at this time gonna restore the kingdom of Israel? And again, so this is people just trying to be people. He says, it is not for you to know the times or the dates the Father has set by his own authority, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.
And so that they wait. They wait and they just surrender the outcome. It's not about my timeline, it's not about your timeline, it's about the Lord's timeline and we don't get to control that. Yeah. That is so good. Another, passage that, and I forgot to mention earlier is, so when we talk about God not needing us, if you look at Second Chronicles at the end of the book, chapter 36, 22, through the end, God uses a heathen.
Cyrus of Persia too, to spark a revival in his people. And so, you know, it is, God is the causing agent of revival. We are the responders. Even to the point of, you know, when, when he causes us to begin to cry out for revival, that's him in us moving, right. His spirit. And we need to surrender like you're saying.
Tony, one other one thing I want to share, and this is. I remembered this. I don't know where I heard this first, but, this week I went and googled it to see if I could track down the, the origin of it. And it was probably when I was a youth, I heard somebody say, Justin, if you want revival, you can have it.
I was like, all right, well, you know, what do I do? Okay, go home, get a piece of chalk and draw a circle around yourself. Get on your knee. And ask God to revive everybody inside the circle and don't leave that circle until it happens. And I thought, wow, that's pow. I mean, that was powerful then. So powerful.
I remembered it. Sure. You know, so many years later I learned to, this week it was originally from an evangelist, British evangelist named Gypsy Smith, who began to talk about that, in the early 19 hundreds. But that is a great picture for me of our respons. . Right. That if we want revival, collectively we need to put the mirror up to ourself.
Mm-hmm. And we need to say, okay, if we want something to change in our society, in our culture, anywhere, then we need to take responsibility for how we are surrendered, to what degree we are pursuing him. Cuz we're responsible. We need to get desperate for revival. Yeah. We need to repent. We need to have that surrender and cry out for more of him.
To take over more of us because that's really, you know, it's when we have enough circles of chalk in America and we start to begin to take that responsibility that something might happen, right? But if we're not, if we're not to that place, it's gonna be real hard for us to, to expect that there's gonna be a movement here in.
I, I love that story, and I think you and I have talked about that before in our own meeting times, this idea about this personal revival. I, I think one other thing that needs to be talked about when we think about movements and revival and the great awakening, and this is for everyone who's listening, we don't get to decide what it looks like on the other.
Of the movement. Yeah. Right. And so I, I know a lot of church leaders who are chasing revival and movements to revive and move their personal church, but they, that may not be what God desires, right. We don't know , we're not God. Right? Like, and, and that's the thing, right? So when God moves in my life, it's not necessarily the calling I want.
but, but I need to trust in the Lord Proverbs three, five and six. Mm-hmm. lean not on my own understanding so that he can make my past straight. And so this whole process of movement and revival, as we enter into those tools of prayer and fasting, we have to know that it's not for outcomes that we can define or even really know.
The Lord may want to completely tear down the infrastructure of the church where you currently. And guess what? If the Lord wants to do that and you're praying for a movement and you're dependent on the Lord, that's what the Lord's gonna do. Yeah. Right. And, and so I, I think we have to be careful that we don't turn dependence on the Lord.
or this idea of dependence on the Lord, revival or movement. And so what happened when I was growing up, which is the old attractional church model, you know, if you build it, they will come, right? Yeah. If you give people this flay, kind of like a, A attractional, Jesus, hey, if you just come and pray and fast, Jesus will come and it'll be great, but you have to do it in our building on Sunday morning at nine or 10 30.
That's just not how God works. Yeah. Right. This is about building the kingdom of God, not the castle of Tony or. Yeah, no, that's a good word. I think too, the other thing we need to bring it back to is personal disciple making, right? So if we hunger for a movement culturally, then we need to be communicating with those that we're discipling about surrender dependence upon God, that a belief or a faith that God is gonna.
that he is an active God, that we can trust him, that we can call out to him. And that makes a difference. And it doesn't make a difference like we've been saying. Not in a leverage sort of way, but it makes a difference in the way of, you know, God's eyes range throughout the land to see and to look in on the hearts of his people.
And when he sees the heart of his people asking and pleading for things, it makes a difference. And it's not a, we can't quantify that necess. But we know it does. And so for me, I think that's a really important thing, that as we are working with those that we're discipling, that we're communicating about the activeness of God and the way the things that are on her, our hearts impact what happens in the world, and we wanna get on our hearts.
What's on. . Well, friends, I, we hope today's conversation was thought provoking. It's, it's a little different than what we normally do. This isn't a tool-based episode, but it is one that if you take it seriously, it just might change your life or at least your relationship with the Lord. So the takeaway for today, the Seeing God's movement starts with our surrender, right?
Seeing God's movement starts with our surrender and the action step. If you're brave enough, this is a big one. Go home, draw a circle around yourself, get on your knees, and don't leave until he answers. And, and we'll be praying for you actually, if, if you have some feedback on this episode, maybe you, you go home and you try this action step, Justin.
And I would love to, to hear from you. All the ways to get in touch with us are in the show notes. We're so thankful for you guys. If you would, do us a favor, hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcast. A rating, a review, and, share this episode maybe with somebody who, you know, in church leadership who's trying to, figure out what's next.
This might be a perfect episode for somebody like that. As always, guys, we're thankful for you and we look forward to connecting with you guys real soon.