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Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
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A call to anguish.
Would you open your Bibles to the first
chapter of Nehemiah, please?
Nehemiah, the first chapter.
And would you please just leave that open
on your lap?
We'll get to it in the course of
my message tonight.
I would have a hard time preaching this
if I believed my own flesh telling me
that I preach too much of a heavy
message.
There have been times I've been to the
Lord in past months saying, Lord, can't you
give me a happy?
But I can't.
Now, God may be speaking to me.
This may not be for you.
But it's a call to anguish.
Lord, if you don't help me, I can't
get through this.
I can't.
Lord, I'm too old for games.
Foolishness.
And I'm tired of rhetoric.
Meaningless rhetoric.
Rhetoric that never changes things.
Lord, just help me.
Help me.
Folks, I'm tired of hearing about revival.
I'm tired of hearing about awakenings.
As last day outpourings of the Holy Spirit.
I've heard that rhetoric for 50 years.
Just rhetoric.
No meaning whatsoever.
I'm tired of hearing about people in the
church who say they want their unsaved loved
ones saved.
I'm tired of hearing people say I'm concerned
about my troubled marriage.
When it's just talk.
Rhetoric.
I don't want to hear anymore talk about
how immoral America has become.
How Godless our society.
How corrupt our business.
I'm tired of hearing about Islam taking control
and Christians losing power.
How dead the church has become because of
that too is rhetoric.
Meaningless.
Away with all of our how-to conferences
because they accomplish nothing.
How to cope.
How to build a bigger church.
How to reach the lost.
How to improve your people's skills.
And how to impact the world in this
computer time.
And I look at the whole religious scene
today and all I see are the inventions
and ministries of man and flesh.
It's mostly powerless.
It has no impact on the world.
And I see more of the world coming
into the church and impacting the church rather
than the church impacting the world.
I see the music taking over the house
of God.
I see entertainment taking over the house of
God.
An obsession with entertainment in God's house.
A hatred of correction and a hatred of
reproof.
Nobody wants to hear it anymore.
Tell me now, how many churches have you
visited recently?
How many churches do you know where when
you walk in the Holy Ghost is so
strong that every one of your sins are
brought up before your face?
The loving grace of God.
When is the last time you've been to
church where you've seen young people under such
conviction because the people of God have been
on their face?
And there's such a concern and there's such
an agony that young people are falling on
their faces and calling on God because a
spirit of conviction is called down from heaven
upon them.
How many churches have you been lately where
you hear a word comes forth that so
burns in your soul, you know it comes
from heaven, you know it comes from the
heart of God?
I hope you hear it here.
Whatever happened to anguish in the house of
God?
Whatever happened to anguish in the ministry?
It's a word you don't hear in this
pampered age.
You don't hear it.
Anguish means extreme pain and distress.
The emotion so stirred that it becomes painful.
Acute, deeply felt inner pain because of conditions
about you, in you or around you.
Anguish, deep pain, and sorrow, agony of
God's heart.
We've held on to our religious rhetoric and
our revival talk, but we've become so passive.
Our so-called awakenings, our stirrings, last but
a short time, and when the short-lived
revivings and awakenings come from the hand of
God, they are so short-lived and in
those times we promise God we'll never return
to our passivity.
That it's not long, it's just weeks or
months and we're back, and this time we
slip further back into passivity than when we
started.
I speak from experience.
And we say, this time, oh God, you've
touched me for life.
I'll never be the same.
And it's like fireworks.
A loud bang and a lot of noise,
and then it dies.
All true passion is born out of anguish.
All true passion for Christ comes out of
a baptism of anguish.
You search the scripture and you'll find that
when God determined to recover a ruined situation,
He would seek out a praying man and
He'd take him down into the waters of
anguish.
He would share His own anguish for what
God saw happening to His church and to
His people, and He would find a praying
man and He would take that man and
literally baptize him in anguish.
You find it in the book of Nehemiah.
Jerusalem is in ruins.
This is the center of God's interest on
earth at the time.
This holy city, and it's wasted, and it's
full of iniquity, mixed marriages with the heathen.
They were enslaving their own people, making slaves
out of the poor.
The house of God was polluted with filth.
The high priest was in league to buy
a heathen reprobate.
And how is God going to deal with
this?
How is God going to restore the ruined?
How does He do it?
What does He do?
You see, we face a similar situation, except
ours is many times worse.
A time when men, according to the prophecy
of Jesus, are worse and worse at what
is happening.
A church that's defiled with pedophilia, child molestation,
incest, adultery.
A nation in a moral landslide that's inundated
with pornographic filth that the whole world blushes
at.
And now out of Cannes Film Festival, according
to the New York Times, there's a new
movie about to hit the shores of the
United States with 13, 14 year old kids
having unspeakable kinds of sex with adults.
And they said at the Cannes Film Festival,
it's the boast of Cannes Festival, that we
have not only pushed the envelope, we've gone
over the edge.
And America's now ripe for it.
The ruin and moral chaos is corrupting the
house of God also.
How else do you explain the multiplied numbers
of Christians?
Go home and watch HBO, a program I've
never seen, I don't have television, but I
read about it in the newspaper today, in
the New York Times, called The Sopranos.
This is a mafia bunch.
That kill and murder and maim.
That do it to sex.
Cheating, lying, mafia.
And we have millions of Christians now in
the United States getting together and talking about
the next show and they're addicted to it.
Addicted.
Some of you hearing me now, that's your
favorite show.
No laughing.
This is life and death.
Did you come here tonight, did you raise
your hands and sing and shout and have
a good time?
And you know you've been watching this filth?
I believe in the love of God.
I've preached mercy, grace, and love, covenant of
love.
I believe in preaching the goodness and long
suffering of Christ.
But multitudes today are being saturated with your
okay messages.
We've got people now that are turning the
grace of God into lasciviousness.
We've become like the children of Israel who
said the right words.
But here's what God said.
I've heard the words of this people.
They have well said all that they've spoken.
All that there was such a heart in
them, that they would fear me and keep
my commandments always, that it might be well
with them and with their children forever.
He said, oh, you have the right words.
You sing the right songs.
But your heart is not right.
Nehemiah verses 1 through 3.
The words of Nehemiah, the son of Achaliah.
It came to pass the month of Chislew.
In the 20th year I was in Shushan
the palace.
And Hanani, one of my brethren, came.
He had certain men of Judah.
And I asked them concerning the Jews that
escaped, which were left of the captivity and
concerning Jerusalem.
And they said unto me, the remnant that
are left of the captivity there in the
province are in great affliction and reproach.
The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down.
The gates thereof are burned with fire.
It came to pass when I heard these
words.
I sat down and wept and mourned certain
days and fasted and prayed before the God
of heaven.
Here was the word.
Here was a delegation from the ruined city
of Jerusalem coming to Nehemiah.
It said, Jerusalem is broken down.
The walls are down.
There is ruin, nothing but ruin.
Now these, I'm sure, were godly men.
These were good men, but they had no
concept of how God was going to deal
with this situation.
How He was going to bring about a
recovery.
They had no concept of what God was
going to do.
All they could see was ruin and brokenness
and despair and hopelessness.
Verse 4, when I heard the words, I
sat down and wept and mourned certain days
and fasted and prayed before the God of
heaven.
You see, God found a praying man and
He takes him down into the waters of
baptism of anguish.
This man goes down into anguish.
And in verse 6, I pray before thee
now, day and night, confessing the sins of
the children of Israel which we have sinned
against thee, both I and my Father have
sinned.
Now folks, look at me.
Nehemiah was not a preacher.
He was a career man.
He was a king's cupbearer.
He was in comfort.
He was in royalty.
He had made, so to speak.
But this was a praying man.
And God found a man who would not
just have a flash of emotion.
Not just some great sudden burst of concern
and say, let it die.
He said, no.
I broke down and I wept and I
mourned and I fasted.
And then I began to pray night and
day.
When I heard, I wept.
Why didn't his brother, Neneh, why didn't these
other men, who apparently were godly men because
later Neneh was given the rule of the
city.
Why didn't they have an answer?
Why didn't God use them in restoration?
Why didn't they have a word?
Because there was no sign of anguish.
No weeping.
Not a word of prayer.
It's all ruined.
It's all they could see.
Does it matter to you today?
Does it matter to you at all?
That God's spiritual Jerusalem, the church, is now
married to the world?
That there's such a coldness sweeping the land?
So many people I know that were my
friends and I see them go one by
one, husbands and wives, into such passivity.
Going to churches where they can find smooth
messages.
No longer wanting to hear anything of wrath
or of correction.
Some of my closest friends.
I see them falling by the wayside.
And he cries, is it nothing to you?
Closer than that.
Does it matter about the Jerusalem that's in
our own hearts?
The sign of ruin that's slowly draining spiritual
power and passion?
Blind to lukewarmness.
Blind to the mixture that's creeping in.
You see when spiritual blindness comes, very few
recognize it.
It's the last recognized thing that happens to
a child of God.
If I as a pastor knew you personally,
and I was watching your life, And as
one of the pastors of this church, I
come to you and say, I love you,
but I have to tell you the truth.
You're changing.
You're not what you were.
Something in the world has gotten in your
heart.
I don't know if it's television.
I don't know what it is that has
your heart, but I see changes in you.
I don't see the brokenness.
I don't see the compassion you had once
for your family.
I don't see concern for your unsaved loved
ones.
You're changing.
Little by little, something's happening to you.
Would it bring you to your knees when
the ruin that you are not even aware
of is suddenly brought before your eyes?
And to tell you the truth, I thank
God for the anointing and the singing tonight.
I thank God for the praises that came
from so many sanctified hearts living in covenant
with the Lord.
But the truth of the matter is, In
all honesty, there are numbers among us that
are changing.
And they don't know it.
You've lost your fight.
You see, when you read the book of
Joshua, it's almost a book of failure.
Because they lost their heart.
They lost the fight.
That's all the devil wants to do, is
get the fight out of you.
And kill it.
So you won't labor in prayer anymore.
You won't weep before God anymore.
You can sit and watch television and go
to hell.
Hmm.
Let me ask you.
Is what I just said convicted you at
all?
Did you just let that go in one
ear out the other?
When a pastor tells you right now, I
don't know who you are, but the Holy
Ghost is speaking to me.
You're changing.
Little by little, you're losing the love of
God, the love of Christ.
Little by little, these things are making inroads.
Folks, why do you think your pastors cry
out against television?
Do you think we get any pleasure out
of the flesh?
There's no pleasure in somebody coming and saying,
I heard your message and I threw away
my television.
That doesn't give me any pleasure.
It doesn't give any pastor pleasure.
We have given it to him because we
watch for your soul.
These things, I don't know where it is
on the job.
These things that creep in, and suddenly this
Jerusalem, the walls go down.
Ruins sets in.
Does it really matter to you that your
unsaved loved ones are dying and we're getting
closer and closer to the end?
Does it really concern you they could die
and go to hell, even though you're a
lover of Christ?
Where's the anguish?
Where are the tears?
Where's the mourning?
Where's the fasting?
How many of you fast?
How many of you pray broken before the
Lord?
I'm talking about the body of Jesus Christ
in general.
Where's the getting up in the middle of
the night?
You see, he said night and day I
began to pray.
Where's the confessing of your sins and of
your children?
Confessing your children's sins before the Lord or
your mate's sin before God because this is
exactly what Nehemiah does.
He confesses his sins and the sins of
all the people.
And then he says, we have sinned.
I have sinned.
And then he said, we have sinned.
When Nehemiah heard of the ruin and destruction,
he never asked why.
Why can a holy just God allow his
city to go to ruin?
Why were so many dispersed?
Why were so many killed and murdered?
He didn't ask the question that we're asking
in America today.
Why did God allow the towers to fall
and over 2,000 people died in the
crash?
How could a loving God?
And folks, I share what Pastor Carter said
today.
The holy anger that arises in my heart
when I hear preachers on television or on
radio or hear that they've said on television,
oh, God had nothing to do with it.
God had nothing to do with it.
Don't put it on God.
Why don't you go to Daniel 9 and
I want to once and for all tell
you that this was God allowing America to
be wakened.
God didn't do it.
He didn't stop the plans of the enemy
because he had a greater purpose.
Because it was love for America that was
about to slip into everlasting hell.
I'm going to lower my voice so you
won't think I'm angry.
Daniel 9, verse 5, beginning to read, We
have sinned and have committed iniquity and have
done wickedly.
Could you say that about America?
And we have rebelled even by departing from
thy precepts and from thy judgments.
Neither have we hearkened to the servants of
the prophets which speak in thy name to
our kings, our princes and our fathers and
to all the people of the land.
In other words, the government has been warned
by righteous men.
O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee but unto
us confusion of faces as at this day.
Men have jeered in the inhabitants of Jerusalem
and all Israel that are near and that
are far off through all the countries whether
thou hast driven them because of their trespass
or they have trespassed against thee.
O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face
to our kings, to our princes, to our
princes, our fathers because we have sinned against
thee.
Why?
Because we have sinned against thee.
To the Lord our God belongeth mercy, forgiveness,
though we have rebelled against him.
Neither have we obeyed the voice of the
Lord our God to walk in his laws
which is set before us by his servants,
the prophets.
They all, Israel, have transgressed the law even
by departing that they might not obey thy
voice.
Therefore, the curse is poured upon us and
the oath that is written in the law
of Moses the servant of God because we
have sinned against him and he hath confirmed
his words which he spake against us and
against our judges that judged us by bringing
upon us a great evil for under the
whole heaven hath not been done as been
done upon Jerusalem.
Verse 14 Therefore hath the Lord watched upon
the evil and brought it upon us for
the Lord our God is righteous in all
his works which he doeth for we what?
Obeyed not his voice.
Now let me get back to my message.
There's a great difference between anguish and concern.
My husband is dealing with me about this.
Concern is something that you, the biggest interest
in.
You take an interest in a project or
a cause or a concern or a need.
Something that gets a hold of your attention
and usually it comes through some emotional stimulus.
You know, you can hear like we heard
last Sunday from South Africa and all of
the hundreds of thousands dying with AIDS and
the children and you can hear what we
heard from Sister Hulda Bontane this afternoon of
the thousands upon thousands of children dying in
Calcutta and India.
You can get all stirred up about it
and you can get emotional and you get
very concerned but folks, there's a difference between
concern and anguish.
Because you see, you can tie yourself to
a cause, you can get excited about it,
there's some project, you can organize it, you
can support it, organize it, put a lot
of effort into it.
I'm going to tell you something I've learned
over all my years, 50 years of preaching.
If it is not born in anguish, if
it has not been born by the Holy
Spirit, where when you saw and heard of
the ruin that drove you to your knees,
took you down into a baptism of anguish
where you began to pray and seek God.
Folks, this church was born in anguish.
Six months of anguish.
Tears.
A little country town in Pennsylvania where a
pastor of a small church cried out, Oh
God, I'm dry and I'm empty and there's
more to it than this and if this
is all the Holy Ghost is, I don't
want it.
I don't want it.
And such a desperation.
Weeks and weeks of calling on the name
of the Lord, confessing my own deadness and
dryness.
Then finally coming for street rallies here in
the city and walking the streets and then
wind up on 42nd Street and see them
selling a kind of heroin would kill you.
Say, I've got the good stuff, it'll kill
you.
And I remember breaking down and it didn't
matter the crowds going by.
I sat on a fire hydrant type on
the side of a building and wept.
And I was in anguish.
I was in anguish four blocks from here
on Broadway.
Weeping and crying and wailing.
I wasn't looking for a ministry.
I wasn't looking to build a church.
I was feeling God's pain for a lost
city.
The same agony I felt years before when
he started Teen Challenge.
And I've never had anything that's been any
worth to God in my 50 years that
wasn't born in agony.
Never.
It's all been flesh otherwise.
Flesh.
And folks, I've been around the world again
and listening to the cry of pastors.
Dead and empty.
Some cheating their own wives like animals.
And here I haven't prayed in months.
I haven't prayed in six months.
And I know that sermons won't do it.
I know that a new revelation won't do
it.
Covenant won't do it.
I know now Oh my God do I
know it.
Until I'm in agony.
Until I have been anguished over it.
I'm preaching sermons.
Oh God.
I'm preaching sermons.
And I said no it's too late.
I don't have that much time.
And all our projects.
All our ministries.
Everything we do.
Where are the Sunday school teachers that weep
over kids they know are not hearing and
they're going to hell.
Oh everywhere I go somebody's got a project.
Somebody's got a plan or a dream.
That's all there is.
It's an idea.
They didn't come to me from a broken
heart.
They didn't come to me after hours of
fasting and praying and mourning.
Not a broken heart.
It's an idea.
I'm sick of it.
You see a true prayer life begins at
the place of anguish.
A place where lifetime decisions are made.
You see if you set your heart to
pray God's going to come and start sharing
your heart his heart with you.
He's going to open up his heart and
I'll tell you there's pain in his heart.
But he sees and so few to hear
he's going to show you the condition of
his church.
He's going to show you the condition of
your own heart and he's going to ask
you a question.
What is it to you.
What is it that anguish servant has to
make a decision.
Everyone hearing me now you're going to have
to make this decision.
I have to make it.
You either get up from your anguish as
you walk out of the baptism waters of
anguish because I can't handle this.
I can barely make it as it is.
I don't want it.
God I have enough.
I just want to be an ordinary Christian.
I don't want to carry this kind of
a burden.
I don't want to have to weep over
my family anymore or I'm going to go
take it by faith.
So you have to make a decision you're
going to come and he says now if
you're going to bear my burden if you're
going to be an instrument of restoration if
you are expecting somebody else to be an
instrument to win your family or to do
this work you're mistaken.
I've burned your heart.
I've given you my heart and I've opened
up my anguish to you and I'm letting
you feel it and share it so that
it will bring you to your knees because
it is there that I'll speak to you
the word of direction.
And that's what happened in Nehemiah.
He came eventually out of the waters of
anguish with a clear word that nobody could
reject.
He brought the city a nation to its
knees.
You find that in the chapter.
You see you you either walk away and
go back to your passivity and say I'm
just going to be an ordinary Christian and
there's no such thing or your heart begins
to cry out.
Oh God your name is being blasphemed.
Holy Spirit's being mocked.
The enemy is out trying to destroy the
testimony of the Lord's faithfulness and something has
to be done.
You can't go unchallenged.
Let's go back to these words.
When I heard Jerusalem was broken down.
You see if he believed this theory that
the need represents the call you know what
you've done.
He said gentlemen if you'll just wait I'll
pack my bags.
Just give me a day or two.
This is the kind of challenge that's my
meat.
I love it.
Let's roll.
Let's do it.
No anguish.
No fasting.
No prayer.
No brokenness.
Let's just do it.
Nothing would have been done.
The walls would have never been rebuilt.
Anything you try to do without this baptism
of anguish.
It's going to falter and fall.
It's not going to work.
Here's what a sister wrote to me this
past week.
Brother Dave.
I'm so hungry for the Lord.
I'm so tired of how to meetings.
It's all spiritual fluff.
I was told of a woman's conference.
There was going to be a great spiritual
experience.
So I went with a group of sisters.
There were 15,000 women.
I was horrified.
The first night when they opened the conference
with a comedy sketch.
It went from bad to worse.
These.
We were hoodwinked by the leaders.
There was not a single prayer.
Not one mention of prayer.
It was a farce.
And I'm as empty as I've ever been.
Prophet Amos cried out to such woe to
them that are ease in Zion eating, chanting
their music.
But they're not grieved for the affliction of
Joseph.
And in the original Hebrew root word, they
are not agonizing in prayer over the ruin
in the in Jerusalem or Israel.
They're not agonizing.
They're not in anguish about the conditions.
Comedy.
Yes.
Happy singing.
Yes.
Eating fellowship.
Good time.
Yes.
Weeping, anguish, praying, fasting.
No, no, no.
Do not have it.
Folks, let me tell you something.
Out of this baptism of anguish comes a
marvelous thing that happens to those willing to
submit to.
Marvin's thing, it's the instant prompt knowing of
God's voice.
Instant.
Now, see, if you don't have a history
of prayer, if you don't have this willingness
to share God's heart, you get it by
asking him for.
He said, I'll give.
I'm more willing to give you are to
receive.
This is something you ask.
Oh, God, I want to step out now
and I want to know your heart.
And when you begin to seek his face,
you allow him to melt and break you.
You come into this communion with the Lord
out of that experience.
You see, God hasn't called us to live
in anguish.
This is the birth.
This is the womb of something God is
stirring, God wanting to accomplish in bringing out
of ruin, restoration in your family, whatever it
may be.
He bring you down into this baptism.
Now, just like the baptism of waters, you
come up, you come out, but you come
out with this instant knowing of God's voice
because you see Nehemiah.
He'd been fasting.
He'd been praying.
He'd been mourning and left a mark on
his countenance.
And the king noticed that he was a
cupbearer.
And one day he brings the wine to
the king and the king says, Why are
you so down?
Why your countenance?
Nehemiah didn't have time to go and booze
in his heart to the Lord.
He didn't have time now to go and
say, give me three days to fast and
pray.
No, he had to have an instant word.
Why you said countenance?
Nehemiah said, I was very sure afraid.
So I prayed to the God of heaven
and I said to the king.
In other words, instant prayer, instant direction.
Knowing God's voice.
There are times you're not going to know
what to do.
You have no time to run to the
closet.
You have to hear his voice.
This is the way walk in instant.
That is a glorious result of the baptism
of anguish.
The servant who willingly takes on the mantle
of God's pain is the only servant who
has the authority and the right to hold
God to his covenant promises.
We preach covenant here, but only those who've
known his heart and in those times have
allowed God to bring healing, has allowed God
to go down deep in the soul and
say, Oh God, I can't do this on
my own, but I'm not going to let
my kids go to hell.
I'm not going to let my husband and
my wife.
Oh God, I'm not going to live in
this death.
I'm not going to live in this lukewarmness
and this coldness anymore.
God, change me.
And when you get desperate before God, you
set your heart to seek him.
Then you can hold God to his covenant
promises.
Look, look at first chapter verses eight and
nine.
Remember, I beseech thee the word that thou
commandest thy servant Moses, saying, if you transgress,
I will scatter you abroad among the nations.
Now, he holds God to his covenant now,
but if you turn unto me and keep
my commandments and do them, though there were
most of you cast out from the uttermost
part of the heaven, yet will I gather
them from thence and bring them into this
place that I've chosen to set my name
there.
He calls on the covenant made to Moses.
He said, here's what you promise, God.
And folks, when you allow God to lead
you into this place beyond concern, beyond just
fleeting emotion, you say, God, I'm going to
set my heart.
Then you have every right to hold God
to every one of his covenant promises.
You see, and I'm going to close in
just a minute.
We have a church today full of diagnostic
experts.
Boy, just about anybody can tell you what's
wrong with the church now.
And now they're coming out with statistics and
polls.
They can tell you how many heathens there
are in China.
They can give you polls and charts.
But not the slightest idea.
They have all these how-to books.
Now, you won't hear one word about anguish,
tears, and brokenness.
You won't hear that.
In my closing thoughts, I want to ask
you, why did Nehemiah, of all God-fearing
men that were left in Israel, why did
God share his anguished heart with Nehemiah?
Because he was a man of prayer.
He was already in prayer.
Now, I want to tell you something.
I believe in destiny.
I believe that God chooses men.
But God can choose a man and he
can abort it just like that.
Nehemiah could have said, look, I have more
influence right here.
I have the ear of the king.
I need to stay right here.
And God, I'm sure, has.
I'll agree with you that God will raise
up somebody.
No.
He said, oh God, this is my burden.
Open your heart to me.
I know now it's going to take more
than preaching, more than a new revelation.
There's going to be no renewal, no revival,
no awakening until we're willing to let him
once again break us.
I don't know why.
I don't know if it's something that's coming.
The other pastors have shared with you what
they feel about some very, very troubling, difficult
times just ahead.
it comes not only from the pulpit, it
comes from politicians coming from all over the
world.
But I have to tell you that God's
calling me personally to a baptism of anguish.
I don't know what it's all about right
now.
But I told God, I will not.
I'm supposed to go and pass these conferences
in May in Scotland and Wales and Ireland
and then to Minsk and all over the
world.
I'm only going out two or three times
a year, but I said, God, I'm not
going anymore.
I won't take another meeting until I know
your anguish for pastors.
I can't go just because there's a need.
I can't go just because I've wanted and
accepted.
I don't want it.
I don't.
When I preach sometimes like this, everything gets
so quiet and I get the feeling that
Lord, I want to make people happy.
Folks, it's getting late and it's getting serious.
Please don't tell me.
Don't tell me you're concerned.
Don't tell me that you want your unsaved
loved one saved when you're spending hours in
front of Internet or television.
Come on.
I don't know how to end this.
Lord, help me.
I have a sense that this may not
be for the whole congregation, but he's speaking
to some very deeply.
He's speaking to your heart like he's speaking
to mine.
Maybe you don't need prayer along this line,
but I beg of you.
I plead with you.
I need prayer.
Lord, I just have to pray.
I don't know what else to do.
I've preached, Lord, what you put in my
heart and I don't know how to end
it.
You end it.
You do what you want to do, Lord.
You speak to us.
Lord, there's some need to get this older
and confess.
I am not what I was.
I'm not where I'm supposed to be.
God, I don't have your heart or your
burden.
I've been...
I wanted it easy.
This won't be happy.
But Lord, true joy comes.
True joy comes out of anguish.
That's where the joy is when we see
the results of our laying hold of your
heart and then you give us direction and
then we see the results that are lasting.
We see a whole city come to repentance
and then Nehemiah stands up and he says,
now is the time to rejoice.
Let the joy of the Lord be your
strength.
But that joy came out of seeing the
victory that came out of the anguish.
Oh God, I'm not chastising this church.
I'm not trying to bring woe on anybody,
but oh God, if you do it for
anybody, do it for me.
I want my heart broken again.
Lord, I want you to take me into
your heart and I want to feel the
hurts and the needs of this people too
so that when I stand in this pulpit
I preach your mind and your heart.
Will you stand?
Lord, sing
this song.
To this
auditorium and just join us here up and
about wherever you are.
If God's speaking to you, I don't know
what he's saying to you, but if he's
speaking to you and you need to deal
with it, just step on and follow these
that are here.
Sing it again, please.
EMI, the eighth chapter.
You can still come while I'm talking.
They read in the book the law of
God distinctly, gave the sense and caused them
to understand the reading.
And the people says, they all said amen,
they lifted up their hands, they bowed their
heads, they worshiped the Lord with their faces
to the ground.
Now folks, this is the result of this
baptism of anguish.
Now God's dealing with all the families of
Israel.
He's dealing with the princes, the leaders, and
Ezra and Nehemiah have now gathered the people.
Ezra opened the book and the sight of
the people.
When he opened it, all the people stood
up.
They read the book of God distinctly, gave
the sense and caused them to understand the
reading.
And Nehemiah and Ezra the priest, the scribe,
and Levites that taught the people said unto
all the people, this day is holy unto
the Lord your God.
Mourn not, weep not, for all the people
wept when they heard the words of the
Lord.
He said to them, go your way, eat
the fat, and drink the sweet, and send
the poor.
For this day is holy unto the Lord.
Neither be ye sorry for the joy of
the Lord is your strength.
You see, that's the result of taking on
the heart of God.
The ultimate joy is seeing God fulfill His
word and His covenant promises in your life.
There's nothing of the flesh that will give
you joy.
I don't care how much money, I don't
care what kind of new house there is.
Absolutely nothing physical can give you joy.
It's only what is accomplished by the Holy
Spirit when you obey Him and take on
His heart.
It gives you the knowing of His voice,
that instant knowledge of God saying, this is
the way, walk in it.
And then, the wonderful joy of seeing God
answer your prayer.
Build the walls around your family.
Build the walls around your own heart.
Make you strong and impregnable against the enemy.
God, that's what we desire.
Would you lift your hands?
Would you just tell Him what's in your
heart right now?
Right out loud.
Just tell Him what's in your heart.
Tell Him.
There's a reason you came up here.
Tell Him why.
Just tell Him why.
Lord, here's why I'm here.
I want to hear everybody.
Just speak it out.
Tell Him why you're here.
This is the conclusion of the message.