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  ALL IS CALM, ALL IS BRIGHT... REALLY
  by Carter Conlon
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the call for individuals to surrender to
God's plan and purpose for their lives, highlighting the need to move
beyond personal limitations and excuses to embrace the empowerment of
the Holy Spirit. It draws parallels between the weakness of humanity and
the strength of God, encouraging listeners to step out in faith and
allow God to use them as builders in a broken world, bringing healing,
freedom, and restoration to many generations.

Topics: "Surrender to God's Plan", "Empowerment of the Holy Spirit"
Scripture References: Isaiah 60:1, Isaiah 61:1, Matthew 9:37, 1 Corinthians 1:26, Psalms 29:3

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the call for individuals to surrender to God's
plan and purpose for their lives, highlighting the need to move beyond
personal limitations and excuses to embrace the empowerment of the Holy
Spirit. It draws parallels between the weakness of humanity and the
strength of God, encouraging listeners to step out in faith and allow
God to use them as builders in a broken world, bringing healing,
freedom, and restoration to many generations.

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CONTENT
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Prophet Isaiah took him to chapter 60 for his light to begin to shine.
All the way through the book of the prophet there's all there's a build
of truth but when you get to Isaiah chapter 60 verse 1 he starts with
these words, arise shine for your light has come and the glory of the
Lord has risen upon you. There's just something about that number 60
isn't there? Does anybody know anybody here that's turning 60 this week?
I know somebody that's turning 60 this week and you know him too.

Pastor Tim would you come because your light's about to shine. Happy
birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Pastor Tim, happy
birthday to you. That's all 60.

That's how many years you've been alive. We had to have a fire
extinguisher because it's dangerous when you get to be 60 years of age.
You can burn the house down with your, with your, yeah that's it.

Every one of those is 12 months in your life. Yeah, no, no, that's a
lot. The second part of the prophecy of Isaiah says darkness will cover
the earth and a deep darkness the people.

That's what we're experiencing now in our generation but the Lord will
arise over you and his glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles will
come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising and we, we
see online all of the people coming in from all over the world every
week now to hear the word that God's given you. This church was
prophesied 35 years ago that it would be a lighthouse in a very, very
dark day and the darker it gets the farther the beam would go and we
knew this, Pastor David knew this before there was even an internet.

He foresaw it. He said something is going to come from this pulpit that
will go around the world and God has anointed you for this time and we
thank God for you Pastor Tim with all of our heart. We thank God for the
man that you are and we're committed to pray for you.

Stretch your hands out please. Elders if you'd gather, stretch your
hands out to your pastor please. Father, God, we thank you that you have
taken 60 years to prepare this man for this day, this season Lord that's
just ahead of him.

God, thank you that you have given him a voice, you've given him wisdom,
you have empowered and strengthened him. Now God, we commission you and
ourselves to stand in prayer with him and for him. Keep him, oh God,
keep him in the days ahead.

Lord, give him even greater resolve and power to reach a billion souls
in our generation. Why should that seem hard for the Lord? God Almighty,
thank you for the great privilege of having a pastor in this pulpit with
such a vision. We stand with him, we stand for him and God, we thank you
for him with all of our heart.

May this be the happiest birthday ever in his life. In Jesus name, amen.
Let's see what you got.

Oh, oh, oh, almost, oh. I'm, I'm afraid the choir all died of smoke
inhalation back there, they're all gone. God bless you pastor, God bless
you others, thank you so much.

Praise God, happy birthday Pastor Tim. Thank you, you may be seated. I'm
going to bring you a message today that is prophetic.

Now, let me define that before I begin. A prophetic message is when you
and I come into agreement with something God has clearly revealed in his
word he's going to do through us. Do you remember Jesus Christ talked
about the Holy Spirit and he said, when he has come, when the comforter
has come, who is the spirit of truth, he will take what is mine and he
will show it to you and he will show you things to come.

That's, that's part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is to show us
things that God intends to do in and through each one of our lives. Now,
very, very many people in this and other generations, they never really
come to fully understand the purpose of their lives. You have a divine
calling on your life.

I do, you do, every one of us. There's no, there's no exceptions in this
place. I'll show you that in the scripture.

We all have a divine calling. That calling involves allowing God to
enable us to do what we can't do in our own strength, to say what we
can't say in our own wisdom. It's a divine enablement of the spirit of
God to do something that affects the lives of other people around us and
ultimately brings glory to the name of God through his son Jesus Christ.

Because realistically, at the end of the journey, we can only point
heavenward and say, I could never have done this. It's the spirit of God
in me. As Paul said, it's Christ in you that's the hope of glory.

It's the Christ in you that's the hope of you and I becoming everything
that God has intended us to be. You'll be given a choice at the end of
this message today. You know, the interesting thing is, I was talking to
Pastor Tim between services, that of all that God created in the
universe, there's only one thing he created that has the capability to
say no to him, and that's you and me.

It's amazing. The geese just get up and go south. They don't say, why?
Has anybody considered this? I mean, why don't we stay here? Why don't
we build a fire? I mean, they don't reason it.

The sun comes up every morning. It goes down every evening. All of the
universe moves in this manner that's been prescribed by the hand of God.

Everything around us, the leaves turn their color at their appointed
seasons and such like, but there's only one thing in creation that can
say no. Ironically, it's that which God loves the most. It's that which
the Bible says is the center of His affection, which would be you, which
would be me, but He had to redeem us because He knew creating us with
the capability of saying no that we would have to be redeemed.

But once we are redeemed, once we have come to the cross of Jesus Christ
and God's Holy Spirit now, we're in right relationship with God, God's
Holy Spirit now has come upon us, it should be as natural as breathing
to say yes, Lord, not my will but Thine. What is it that you would have
for my life? God, would you deliver me out of this place of saying no?
Because if you don't get delivered from that place, you will wind up
like the children of Israel. Your whole testimony will be, I was in
bondage, and He set me free.

I was captive, and He opened the prison doors. And that's a great…thank
God for that. But you see the reality is they came out of a place of
captivity, but they wouldn't go into what they were called to be in the
earth, so they died in the wilderness.

And so many of God's people die, live and die in a place that He never
intended for us to die in. We're a supernatural people. We ought to
be…we ought to be time and again the people coming out of the upper
room, empowered by the Spirit of God, speaking about as they were with
an ability given by God about things that God had done, is doing, and is
going to do.

That's the reality of what they were doing, and it was that testimony
that caused the religion of the day to stop in its tracks and ultimately
bend its knee to God. There has to be a people who come back into that
reality again and I'm going to prophesy to you that there will be in our
generation a people coming back into that reality. Bottom line is we're
going to see a spiritual awakening in our time.

I fully expect to see it in my lifetime. In that context, I want to
speak to you about the first Christmas that we sing about, a message
entitled, All is Calm, All is Bright. Really? So Father, I thank you,
God, for the anointing of your Holy Spirit.

God, I see this. I see it, Lord, and would you help me to convey it? And
would you help those that are new to you, especially to receive it, God?
Would you help those who have lived in a place of saying no to put that
away, and perhaps for the first time in a major way to say yes to what
you desire to do in their lives? Even in the worship today, Lord, we
sense this incredible drawing of the Holy Spirit. We felt the cry coming
to the surface, God, but don't let it be subdued now in any one of our
hearts.

Oh, God, we recognize that church as usual is not going to win the day
we're now living in. It has to be you empowering a people for your
divine purpose, God, in the earth. Only you can do this now, and it's
amazing that you invite us to be part of it, God.

We know our frailties. We know our weaknesses. We know our struggles,
but yet you invite us.

Help me, Holy Spirit. Help me, Lord, to convey this to every heart
that's here today, to those listening online, and to those who will hear
this in the future. God Almighty, God Almighty, in Jesus' name.

Amen. All is calm. All is bright.

Really. Luke chapter 2, verse 1, It came to pass in those days that a
decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be
registered. There was absolutely nothing calm about this moment in
history.

This particular leader got it in his heart to count all the people in
the world of his dominion, which was the whole world, particularly as he
saw it at that time, to be registered. And in the original King James,
it basically says, for the purposes of taxation. Let's count the people.

Let's control the people. Let's see what we can get out of the people.
You see, Rome was a dominant worldview.

They considered their way of thinking and living to be superior to
anything and everything that was on the face of the earth. And their
whole sense was to conquer by might. What could not be conquered by
argument had to be conquered by force.

It's amazing how history repeats itself, isn't it? There's nothing calm.
There's nothing in this moment, and the future certainly looked anything
but bright. All is not calm, and all is not bright.

The people are being herded like cattle back to the city of their birth.
There's no regard to loss of income. There's no regard to inconvenience.

For example, Mary is obviously in her ninth month of pregnancy and is
about to deliver a child, but that didn't make any difference to the
powers that be of that day. You just went where you were told, so we can
count you, so we can ultimately challenge you, we can ultimately control
you. And so they're heading to these places, and the future must have
looked so bleak.

I can just imagine the people on that journey saying, were we not called
to be a people who were supposed to bring praise to God in the earth?
What happened to us? What happened to our purpose? We were founded on
the principles of the presence and the rules and the laws of God, the
Word of God, and our purpose was to bring glory to Him in the earth. And
for a season, I suppose, we did that, but what happened to us? Scripture
tells us, of course, clearly that they dealt casually with the things of
God. They dealt casually with this wonderful invitation into a
relationship with the living God, and may I say it, may you and I never
deal casually with this relationship.

May we never let the calling of God, the presence of God fall through
our fingers. May it never become just a Sunday morning or Sunday
afternoon thing, or a Tuesday night, whatever it is for you or for me.
Oh God, may I be aware of Your presence in my life every day.

Help me to move in unison with the Spirit of God, to cooperate with Your
presence inside of my life. I often pray this prayer. I say, God, You
know what the people around me are thinking.

You heard the cry last night. You were there. You were there in that
room where somebody sighed, somebody cried.

God, help me to… You live inside of me, so help me to walk in unison
with You now. Give me the ability to step outside of my own trepidation,
my own fear of rejection or looking like an idiot, and God, help me to
reach out and just speak to that person, or reach out and say, can I
pray for you? Worst case scenario, they say no. Nothing is lost in it.

You can still pray for them, even if they say no, you can still pray.
The place which once held such promise had been invaded now by a godless
culture. This culture's purpose, the Roman culture, was to intimidate,
to corral, and to control the people.

Oh, God, help us again in our generation, where we see history repeating
itself one more time. The people of God who are to be a voice for God in
the earth, whose mouths were to be speaking truth, who were to be
leaders in the way of right living and right relationship with God and
with one another, were now relegated to to just being whispering among
themselves. And I think in our time of the numbers of people, all you
can do is whisper now in the workplace, in the lunchroom, or whisper on
the subway, or whisper on the way home.

Everybody has to be careful what they say now lest they be canceled or
ridiculed or even attacked in this generation we're now living in.
Whispering just because of their own safety, lest the powers that be
should think that they're not loyal to this new world order that was
being imposed on the people. You know, the scripture tells us in Isaiah
chapter, I think it's 29, because they had not dealt honorably with God,
as I can honestly say we have not, in this nation, dealt honorably with
God.

We've had 400 years of freedom, and what did we do with it? We took our
freedom when we drove the name of Christ out of our schools. We stopped
teaching our children to pray. We ridiculed and mocked the name of God.

We started trampling into the dust everything that is holy in the Word
of God. We took 400 years of freedom, 400 years of people who came here
to escape tyranny. Oh yes, our history has been far from perfect, I know
that.

But as a nation, America could always be reasoned with, and at least
brought more closely in line to what true biblical Christianity should
look like. But the people of Isaiah's time dealt dishonorably against
this incredible calling of God that was on their lives, and here's what
the Lord said to even Jerusalem. In Isaiah 29, verse 4, He said, You
shall be brought down, you shall speak out of the ground, your speech
shall be low and out of the dust, your voice shall be like a medium's
out of the ground, and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.

And I can just imagine all these people whispering to one another when
they should have been free to sing the praises of God. The gospel as
they knew it, per se, should have been preached publicly and declared,
but now all they can do is whisper and hope, in a sense, for a better
day. All is not calm, and all is not bright in their day.

They're being counted to be controlled, and it's a picture of another
day that's soon to come where the enemies of God will again attempt to
dominate the whole world. You see, it's always been the design of
darkness to corral, to marginalize, to suppress, to destroy the
influence of God in the earth. This is a spiritual war, folks.

It always has been a spiritual war. We're not fighting against flesh and
blood. We're fighting against powers and principalities, spiritual
wickedness in high places.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty in God, to
the pulling down of strongholds, and casting down imaginations, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
There's an incredible power in the surrendered saint of God. There's an
incredible power in the life of the man, the woman who lays hold of the
garment of Christ one more time and begins to pray and says, I will not
let you go until you bless my family.

I will not let you go until you change my life. I will not let you go
until you make my life an influence in my community. I will not let you
go, God, until you do something so profound and powerful in me and the
others that I know who are called by your name that men and women and
children will turn back to you again in droves.

I will not let you go. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but
they are mighty in God. Mighty in God.

Hallelujah. In Revelation, it talks about a final day before Christ's
return, where he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free
and slave, to receive a mark on the right hand or on their foreheads,
that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of
the beast or the number of his name. Yes, we will always have to fight
this spiritual warfare, but as the people of God, I remind you, we are
not on the losing side.

We are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. He won the victory. He
sits at the right hand of God.

Every name that is named, every power that ever will be named, every
principality, both now, then, and to come, is under the dominion of
Jesus Christ. He is the head. We are his body on the earth.

It's time that you and I started living as sons and daughters of God.
It's time that we learn to take our rightful position in the kingdom of
heaven. And God promises to take us and bring his name to praise and
glory in the earth one more time.

And you say, Pastor, you have no idea who you're talking to. No, I'd say
to you, you have no idea who's talking to you through the Scriptures.
The problem is not with God.

The problem is with us, because we are the only ones who have the
capability of saying no. And if I can challenge you today, don't say no
to God any longer. Don't say no.

Don't say not me. Don't say send somebody else. I'm going to challenge
you to be like Isaiah.

When the question goes out in heaven, who shall I send and who will go
for us? And nobody speaks and everybody's quiet. Suddenly, there's a guy
in the back says, I'll go. I'll go.

If nobody else will go, I'll go. I'm the only one at this altar that's
needed to be redeemed. I'm the only one that feels unclean.

I'm the only one that's needed a call from the altar to touch my filthy
lips. But oh God, I have seen your mercy. God, I know your power.

I know your grace. I've seen your glory. I'll go, Lord.

I'll go. If nobody else will go, I'll go. It must have seemed that
everything they built was gone.

Their testimony was in a shambles. Their cities were in ruins. You look
at the news today and you just see what's going on in a lot of our major
cities.

The unrest, the incivility, the listlessness, the starvation of a young
generation. Just as one of the prophets said, the young ones in the
street literally crying out for bread and nobody will give it to them.
Not knowing what's right anymore, not knowing what's wrong, not knowing
if there's anything that really matters just other than just living for
the moment.

But it was in this place of destruction. It was in this place of seeming
hopelessness that the greatest plan of God ever known was revealed in
this place. It wasn't in a place of strength.

It wasn't in a place when they had it all together. It wasn't in a place
where the glory of God's coming down in the temple. It wasn't in a time
when nobody could even stand in the temple if the glory of God was so
powerful.

No, it was in a time when the nation seemed to be taken captive. It was
a time when the people's voices were just a whisper. It was a time when
the dominant godless culture seemed to be swallowing the testimony of
God, marginalizing, ridiculing the people of God and what their former
trust had been.

You can just hear the Roman soldiers as people are heading to their
cities, the mockery on them. Where's your God now? This God you boasted
about, this God you said was all-powerful, where is he now? In Luke
chapter 2, the angel appeared to the shepherds and said, Do not be
afraid. I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all
people.

For there's born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is
Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you. You will find a babe
wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,
praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace
and goodwill towards men. It was a plan that involved not only
redemption, but a plan that God had to restore his own people back to
divine purpose again. Now will you believe it if I show you your future
in the scriptures? I'm serious.

If I show you your future, will you believe it? That's the question. So
you have the power to say no, but as many as are led by the Spirit of
God, they are the sons of God. Every yes vote in the kingdom of God,
every person.

I shared this morning, I was in church and I was 25 or so years, 26
years of age, and I heard a message about give your whole future to God
and let your life be used for God's glory. I felt like the most
disadvantaged person in that congregation. I remember when the altar
call was given, it was so stunning because nobody moved.

And I thought, what's wrong with these people? They have big Bibles and
nice clothes, at least their conversation seems to be better than mine.
And I'm probably, I don't know what I was wearing, but most likely
jeans, jean jacket, a two-day growth of beard. I'm on my day off and
I've gone to church.

I don't remember what I was wearing, but I do remember my heart started
to pound. We were standing there. I was in the back, center row, way in
the back, right over there.

See you in the white coat, right near where you are right now. And I was
there and my heart, and I remember thinking, oh God, your kingdom must
be on fumes if you need me. I'm talking about the bucket is hitting the
bottom of the well.

There's no water in this well. And I'm sitting, my heart is pounding. I
think, God, I don't, I'm not qualified to do this.

You're talking about going forward, making a difference in other
people's lives. Look, I can't even make a difference in my own life.
I've got a really bad temper.

I'm not a good husband. I'm not a good father. I'm not a good employee.

I'm not good at anything. As a matter of fact, I don't like people. But
the drawing was there.

So I got out of my seat and I came and I knelt right down on this side
of the altar. And I remember my prayer to this day. I said, Jesus, I
have nothing to give you.

The little boy in the story, at least he had some loaves and fishes. I
don't even have that. I have nothing.

If you need a bad temper, I'm your man. You need a lousy father, that's
me. You want a husband that doesn't know how to give of himself, and
somebody whose heart is selfish, that's me.

I don't even like people. And I said, I remember saying, God, I have
nothing. But if you can use nothing, you can have me.

You can have my life. Now, in Luke chapter 4, which is the chapter that
we use about the ministry of Jesus, I'm going to show you now how you
fit into the ministry of Jesus. It's way beyond what you've even thought
about yourself.

Now, he comes into the temple. He's now this baby that's born in a
manger. Thirty years later, rather, he walks into the temple.

It's his turn to read, so he steps up in the pulpit like I am today,
opens the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and reads the Scripture. The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because, or for this reason, in other
words, he's anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me
to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are
oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

In other words, God has sent me to show a resource that people who are
poor in themselves are not aware that they have, or is available to
them. He has sent me to bring healing to those whose hearts are so
broken, so wounded, they don't think they'll ever recover. And, you
know, at Christmas time, this is a great time to bring this to the fore,
because many, many people here, Christmas time is a time of sorrow for
you, because family was not there when you needed them.

And it just brings back a lot of memories. There's a brokenheartedness
in many people's lives at this time of year. I came to set free those
who were captive, those who the enemy succeeded in putting behind some
kind of a prison door and telling them, you're never going to get out,
you're never going to be free, you're never going to change.

Jesus said, no, the Spirit of God is upon me to break open those bars
and to set free those who have been held captive by behaviors and
experiences and such like, or addictions that they cannot get free from
in their own strength. And the recovery of sight to the blind. In other
words, I came, I've come to give a vision to those who can't see a way
forward.

You don't see a purpose to their life. They don't understand why they
were created. They have a vision, but it's very limited in most cases.

They don't see life the way I have prescribed their life to be. They
don't understand why they were born. They don't see the plan that I have
for them.

So I've come to give them sight. I've come to give them a revelation and
to set at liberty those who are oppressed. In other words, those who are
under this constant bombardment of darkness in their mind.

You're a loser. You'll never amount to anything. You're an addict,
you'll always be an addict.

You're depressed, you'll always be depressed. You're always going to be
marginalized. You're always going to be nothing.

No, he said, I came to set you free from those thoughts. I came to give
you new thoughts. I came to give you a new mind, a new future, a new
heart, a new spirit, a new reason to live, a new journey.

I'm going to do something so powerful in you that when you don't need
the band to start playing to start shouting hallelujah in the house of
God. Nobody, nobody, nobody has to hit the right note. Nobody has to get
you stirred up.

You are going to walk in the house of God and you're going to be
shouting before you even get in the door. You're going to be shouting on
the street. You'll be shouting on the subway.

You'll be shouting on your way here. God is saying to you, I'm going to
do something so profound. You're going to find a whole new level of
worship.

You never, you never even knew this before. For many, it was singing.
It's going to go beyond singing.

It's going to be worship now. There's going to be a shout in your heart
because I'm going to take you where only I can and make you into what
only can be done by the hand of God and to proclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord. In other words, to tell you and to tell the people you
don't have to wait another month, another year, another decade.

Today is the day you can be free. Today is the day where this new
journey of sight and healing and freedom can begin. Today, not tomorrow,
not the next day, today.

And then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat
down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he
began to say, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Now you'd think in that congregation they would have said, oh
hallelujah, amen. But if you read a little farther and they took him to
throw him off of a hill to kill him. That's what religion can do.

Because the voice of God comes to people who have settled into a certain
level of religion, and the voice of God says, oh there's way more than
you've settled for. You've settled for just ritual and repetition. But
I've come to give you life and come to give it to you more abundantly.

I've come to give you freedom. I've come to give you a purpose to live
on the earth. But as I shared earlier, these are people they said no.

I mean they're waiting their whole life for the scripture to be
fulfilled. They're waiting their whole life. This is the Messiah.

This is the this is the cornerstone of the Jewish religion. They've been
waiting for years and years and years for this moment. And it comes and
they want to throw it off of a cliff.

But we're like that aren't we? We get so entrenched in the self-view. We
get so entrenched in in a certain way of living and thinking and doing
things, even in the house of God. We come out of Egypt as it is, but we
won't go in to what God has for us.

You know a lot of you here today you've come out of Egypt. If I were to
say can I have a testimony for the Lord, and somebody will stand and say
I used to be an addict and I'm free and I used to be blind and I see and
I was poor and now the treasure of Christ is mine. You'd give
testimonies, but I could say now where are you going with it? And for
some all they can say is well to church, when the calling is way beyond
that.

Way beyond that. I mean church is a good thing, and we need to not
forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the scripture says, but
the calling is way beyond that. Wow, I've come to give you life.

I've come to give it to you more abundantly. I've come to put a bounce
in your step. I've come to put a light in your eyes.

I've come to put wisdom in your voice. I've come to put healing in your
hands. I've come to give you spiritual authority over powers of
darkness.

I've come to give you a sermon to preach that you don't even know
anything about. I've come to give you a river of living water that I
promised would flow from your inward parts. That's what I've come for.

But you see, I'm going to show you now your part. I showed you Jesus'
part, but let me show you the scripture He was quoting in Isaiah 61 has
you in it. Did you know that? You didn't know that, did you? Can anybody
nod at me? Does anybody know it? Okay, Isaiah 61, He was quoting Isaiah
61.

Now let me read to you the whole Scripture. The Spirit of the Lord God
is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to
the captives and the opening of prison to those that are bound, to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our
God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to
give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of
praise for the Spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He might be glorified.

In other words, He's saying this, I've come to set you free from your
poverty, your brokenheartedness, your captivity, those things that bound
you, everything that brought grief into your heart, and I've come to
take you into a place where I'm going to beautify you. I'm going to
beautify you because of my presence in your life. I'm going to give you
joy for what used to cause you mourning.

I'm going to give you praise for what used to be heaviness. I'm going to
make you solid. I'm going to plant you in a place where the forces of
hell cannot blow you over.

You cannot be taken down. You will produce fruit even in the most
difficult seasons of your life, that the Lord Himself might be
glorified. God says, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to have a people. They're going to praise me. They're going to
be fruit bearers.

They're going to be planted in a public place that people around can
see, and they're going to bear fruit so that the name of the Lord God
will be glorified through their lives. Now, here's where you come in,
and verse four, they shall rebuild the old ruins. They shall raise up
the former desolations, and they shall repair the ruined cities, the
desolations of many generations.

This is where you come in. This is where you come in. Jesus said, I'm
going to take you out of prison, out of heartache, out of captivity, out
of poverty, out of blindness.

I'm going to give you a new heart, a new mind, a new spirit, and you are
going to rebuild this fallen society all around you. It's you that's
going to rebuild it, not some fancy preacher, not some new superstar,
you, the addicted, the afflicted, the poor, the brokenhearted, the
captives, those that were once bound, those that were blind. You will
repair the desolations of many generations, not somebody else, you, not
somebody else, but you and me who have the Spirit of God upon us and are
now given the commission to go out and let God be God in us.

Let God take us to where He wants us to go and make us into what He
wants us to be and give us what we need when we get where we're supposed
to go, that He might be glorified, and people will see it, and the
desolation of many generations shall be rebuilt again. That's called
spiritual awakening. That's what it looks like.

This last day of awakening is going to be the whole church. Now, we've
gone through the age of superstars in America where, you know, brother
so-and-so, sister so-and-so rose up, and thank God, a lot of great good
was done. But the last day awakening is going to be you.

Now, you can either stay where you are, or you can get up and fly south.
That's as far as I'm concerned. You can either do what God programmed
you to be, or you can say, no, no, not me.

Can't be me. This will be a sign to you. The angel said to the
shepherds, this will be your sign.

You'll find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger. And
suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts
praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, goodwill towards men. I chuckle at this.

The joy just hits me. The more I study the Scriptures, the more the joy
of the Lord is becoming my strength. The more I'm seeing the mercy of
God, the greatness of God, the goodness of our God.

This will be a sign, a baby. Wah! I mean, come on, a baby? I mean, not
like a Goliath, like an angelic Goliath, or like an angel army, a
fifteen-foot bronze god. I mean, a baby? And that's my sign? You see,
here's what God was saying.

This is the way I interpret it. I'm coming to the earth in the weakest
form of humanity. I'm going to prove to you that I'm not ashamed of your
struggles.

I'm not ashamed to indwell you when you're weak, and you can't change
yourself, and you can't carry yourself, and you can't feed yourself, and
you can't walk right, and you can't talk right. I'm going to be tempted
or tested in all ways like as you are. And when it's all done, I'm going
to invite you boldly to come to my throne of grace to find help in your
time of need.

I can't get over the fact, Pastor Tim, that God, God, who created the
universe, Almighty God, like when we sing in the worship today, and you
see all those speckles on the screen, you know, it's symbolic of the
universe, I assume, and you just, you're looking, you just, God, God,
God who made all these things by the word of His mouth, God who's
eternally existent forever and always, God who never, never was created,
never will die, has the power to say let there be light, and light
comes, has the power to breathe into a handful of dust, and it becomes a
living soul created in His image. God comes to the earth as a baby,
encapsulates Himself in probably six and a half pounds of human flesh.
God, who holds the universe in the palm of His hands, has to be carried.

God, who gives life and breath to all things, has to be fed. God, who
created the universe by the word of His mouth, has to be taught to
speak. God, somebody has to hold His hand when He's young and when He's
learning to walk.

God, who walks upon the oceans, who sits in the heavens and the earth as
His footstool. God, God, it's His way of saying to you and I, I'll
change you, I'll carry you, I'll feed you, I'll teach you to walk, I'll
teach you to talk, I will be God to you, I will be God to you. This will
not be you, this will be me.

I will carry you, I will bless you, I will change you, I will feed you,
I will teach you what, how to walk, how to get where you're going, and
I'll give you what to say when you get there. Hallelujah. You know, the
reason I'm laughing is because I've walked this walk with God.

It's just been amazing. It's been amazing to let God be God inside of
each one of our lives. And He wrapped Himself in swaddling clothes,
which are strips of discarded rags, and you realize that we are the
swaddling clothes of God in this generation.

We are the rags that God wrapped Himself in. Come on now. He indwells
this physical body.

If this isn't rags, I don't know what is. And He wrapped Himself in the
rags of my failure, the rags of my thinking, the rags of just my, I'm
just a rag, and He wrapped Himself in me. This shall be a sign.

No wonder, suddenly there was with the angel—that means the pastor, by
the way, as well—a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and
saying, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and goodwill towards
men. In other words, this is all the initiative of God. This is not
based on human effort or human emotion.

This is God doing this, and God alone is going to get the glory. Psalm
29 talks about the voice of God, the power of His voice, how He moves
the obstacles, and how He strips bare everything that would try to stop
us from moving to this place that God has for us. His voice dispels
confusion.

His voice takes us through the flames of fire. His voice walks with us
through the flood. And then it goes on near the end of the psalm, and it
says, Then everyone in His temple says, Glory, glory, glory to God.

When we get to the end of the journey, folks, you just lift your hands
and you just say, Glory to God, glory to God. Only God could have done
this. Only, only God.

It's not by—I'm not here by human effort. I'm not here by human might.
I'm not here by human wisdom.

Oh, glory to God. I was poor. I was bound.

I was captive. I was heartbroken. I was blind, and Jesus came to me and
saved me, empowered me with the Holy Spirit, and called me to let Him
glorify His own name through my life.

So this Christmas, I can honestly tell you inside of my life, all is
calm. All is bright. The life I live is not dependent on what's going on
around me anymore in this world.

The life I lived is dependent on the voice of God, the plan of God, the
purpose of God. I—it's just amazing how, as you get older, you see Him
more. I can't explain it.

A friend of mine once said, you know, you finally get it right and you
die, and he was right. He died shortly after. I finally figured this
thing out.

It's just all love, he said. It's just all love. This was after years of
theological stuff and books and everything.

It's all love. He says, I finally got it right. You know, and he died
shortly after, but he got it right before he died, at least.

So the question is now, what do we do with what we know? You know, do we
say, God, I'm in, or do we just say no? Not now, maybe some other time.
You see, the call of Christ in this generation is an all-in call for His
people. It's a call to the wounded, the marginalized, the abused, the
broken, the nobodies, and the nothings.

I'm—you know, I'm not laughing at anything or anybody today. I've just
got such joy in my heart today because I see it more. Here's—let me
close with this.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, beginning of verse 26, Paul says, you see
your calling, brethren. Do you see your calling? Not many wise according
to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, which means
there are some, a few, but not many. But God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to put to shame the wise.

Somebody here is saying right now, well, wow, I'm in the Bible. God has
chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame things which are
mighty. In other words, things that stand in their own might and their
own wisdom.

God has chosen those who know they're not mighty nor wise in themselves
to be given a might and to be given a wisdom that will bring His name to
glory. And base things of the world and things which are despised, God
has chosen. In other words, God says, I'm choosing people who wouldn't
choose themselves.

I mean, if I were God and I needed a pastor, I wouldn't have chosen me.
I'll tell you that straight out. I wouldn't have.

But God did. And things which are nothing, to bring to nothing the
things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. So, the
calling of God and those that He has chosen, the scale is this.

It starts at foolish and goes to nothing. That's most of you here today.
You're in that, you're in there somewhere.

Foolish to nothing. So, we're left without excuse because these are the
people that God has chosen, that no flesh should glory in His presence.
I just so thank God for His mercy.

But this last day's spiritual awakening is going to be led by a people
who are awakened again to this truth and awakened to the reality that
Christianity is not a spectator sport. We don't go to a game to sit in
the stands and cheer somebody else on. Christianity, we get in the game.

Everybody gets in the game. Everybody has a position to play. Everybody,
everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody.

It was 44 years ago, I guess now. I get out of my seat and I came to an
altar and I just said, God, here am I. I've been all over the most of
the world, I guess at this point. I've preached to crowds in the
hundreds of thousands.

I've lived to see many, many people come to Christ and the guy who had
no ability to speak and no care, nothing in my heart even for people. I
had so much personal failure going on that I, in my own sight, I didn't
qualify to do anything. But yet I got up and I said, God, I'll go.

Just think of what could happen today if you do the same. Don't look in
the mirror. What you need is not there.

Don't go looking in your drawer for some resume to stick on your wall.
It's not there either. It comes with upraised hands.

It comes with saying, here am I, send me. That's where it all begins.
I'm bruised.

I'm broken. I'm poor. I'm blind.

God, I'm nothing. And the Lord looks down and says, oh, you're way more
than that to me. You're my beloved bride.

You're my voice on the earth. You're the tenderness of my hands to those
who need a touch from God. You're the one with the authority to go in
and to take down those strongholds that are oppressing people's minds.

You're the ones I want to send into neighborhoods that look like they
have no hope and to send into places that look like they can't be
rebuilt. God, help us to recognize this moment we're living in now. This
could be one of the greatest moments in the history that you and I will
ever know in our lifetime.

And it all starts somewhere with somebody that says, here am I, send me.
I'll go, God. You know, it was after Isaiah said that, that he wrote the
words that we read today, that Jesus quoted in the scriptures.

Amazing what was given to him. It'd be amazing, too, what will be given
to you if you make the choice. So I want to give as many as can hear
God's voice speaking to you today, I want to give you the same
opportunity I had 40 years ago.

I'm sure Pastor Tim has had the same, Pastor Teresa, Pastor Patrick and
others have had the same opportunity. I want to give you the chance to
let God use your life for his glory. I'm going to invite you just to get
up and move towards the one who created you and wants to use your life.

We're going to pray together. And this morning we had a tarrying time at
the altar. It was amazing.

And Pastor Tim said this morning, this is where the callings of God
happen in moments like this, where you just, you just, you come in your
emptiness. You just recognize, well, Lord, I'm not destined to stay
here. I'm destined to be a builder.

So God put in my hands, whatever it is I'm going to need to do what you
called me to do. If that's the cry of your heart today, we're going to
stand. I'm going to ask you to come, just, just come.

And we're going to pray together in just a moment. Just make your way
out of your seat in the balcony, go to either exit, the main sanctuary,
just, just slip out and come on down. Join the Isaiahs of every
generation that have come forward and said, here my Lord send me in my
school, my family, my neighborhood, wherever it is, my workplace.

God, I want to be a builder. I want to be a builder in my generation.
And you will, the Lord will do that in your life.

Come on. Don't sit in the valley of decision any longer. Hallelujah.

Just keep moving. Just keep coming in. Give room for people to come.

This will be the best Christmas of your whole life. I guarantee you
that. There'll never, for some here, there'll never be a Christmas like
this again in your life.

You're going to change. You're going to change into the very person that
God destined you to be. So father, I pray God for those who are
responding in heart today.

What a wonderful life this is. What a glorious thing to know that the
God of the universe is willing to indwell us and take us and make us
into builders in this seemingly destroyed generation that we live in.
God help us, Lord, to go out, put the tools in our hands that we need.

Everyone here at this altar to become an evangelist, everyone to be
given the empowerment of the Spirit of Almighty God. Father, thank you.
Lift your hands, please, to the Lord, if you will, in surrender.

Help us, Lord, to put away our self-view. Help us to put away our
excuses and our reasons why you can't use us. Help us, God, to embrace
everything you have for each of our lives.

God, use us for your glory. I ask for a touch of the Holy Spirit. Oh,
Holy Spirit, come.

Holy Spirit, come. Invade every area of these precious brothers and
sisters' lives, their hearts, their minds, their eyes, the things that
you promised that you would do. Healing, freedom, sight, and
understanding of this incredible resource of God.

Jesus Christ, give us a voice again in our generation, Lord. Take away
our whispering and give us back a shout. Give us back a shout of glory,
God, everywhere we go.

We ask you, Lord, that people in this generation would bend their knee
everywhere and acknowledge there is a God. We ask you to do something so
powerful, Lord, that nobody can deny it, nobody can ignore it, nobody
can mock it. It would be you, Lord, and all you and only you.

Oh, Jesus Christ, thank you, God, for the giftings of the Holy Spirit
being given this afternoon. Thank you, Lord, for the callings of God.
Thank you, Lord, for those who are going to become so much more than
they ever dreamt they could be.

Thank you, Lord, for healing and repair in our homes this Christmas,
God, at our own family table. Thank you for healing. Thank you for sons
and daughters coming home.

Thank you for marriages being healed. Thank you for minds being brought
back into clear thinking. Thank you for miracles, God, miracles, Lord,
miracles, miracles in our homes.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you, God. Thank you for a shout of glory in our
homes and among our families.

Thank you for our children, our grandchildren, God. Thank you for our
neighbors. Thank you for our communities, God.

Thank you for what you're going to do. And, Lord, we know we're going to
come back in your house and we're going to shout glory, glory, glory,
glory to the living God. Glory to the name of Jesus.

Glory, glory, glory to the living God. Hallelujah, hallelujah,
hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/1-sg0kk6i1w.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/carter-conlon/all-is-calm-all-is-bright-really/
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