Mike Bickle addresses the critical issue of the Supreme Court's impending decision on redefining marriage, emphasizing the constitutional implications and the potential societal consequences of such a ruling. He warns that a negative outcome could lead to an increase in darkness and a significant attack on the authority of the Word of God, labeling the church as a hate group. Bickle calls for collective prayer and repentance among believers, urging them to turn from their wicked ways to seek God's intervention for healing in the nation. He highlights the importance of standing firm in biblical truth while loving those who struggle with sin, asserting that true love involves contending for the greatness of others. Ultimately, he encourages believers to actively participate in prayer and seek God's mercy for both personal and national restoration.

On paragraph 8 on our notes, as we announced that this Tuesday, the Supreme Court is going to be hearing the arguments for and against redefining marriage. And the issue at hand is them making federal laws that go beyond the authority of the states. And that's a constitutional issue that's been a point of challenge because the states have sovereign authority in a large degree but federal laws and you know the whole balance between that. And right now there's 13 states that haven't embraced gay marriage and the whole narrative related to that. And actually some of them are strongly opposing and going the other way. But the Supreme Court is hearing the case this Tuesday. Nine people, justices, and they'll make a decision. And if it goes in a negative way, the implications will be very, very invasive and all-inclusive throughout society in a very, very bad way. In a way that will be a darkness will increase and be promoted and promulgated through our society in a far-accelerated way. Some are calling this decision the most important decision after the forming of our Constitution in the history of America. You know that that's that's a bold statement and I don't know if it's exactly that level but it's certainly at the very top of the list of the most important decisions that have ever been made in the history of our nation, right at the very top. There will be a domino effect that will take place in our nation. And our nation will be, I mean our nation is in crisis right now and we're at a crossroads. I believe that through crying out to the Lord, tens of thousands of churches and hundreds of thousands of leaders and ministries and and believers and even probably several million believers collectively involved in this, not just on Tuesday but over the next couple days. And I believe that things could be changed in the spirit and we could stay back this tide of darkness and see a spirit of revival in, you know, instead of the direction that so many are saying it's inevitable to go. So I'm encouraging you this Tuesday that if you can, be a part of, come and be part of the prayer room. There's prayer meetings going all over the city, all over the nation. But this isn't just one of those drop in and do your normal prayer set. This is one of those where you cancel things. I'll be there most of the day from 6 in the morning till 10 o'clock at night. I have one or two things I have to do but mostly I'm canceling everything else and going to be involved in that minus a couple hours. And I know a number of other leaders are taking that approach as well. I mean this is a really critical time in our nation and the Lord tells us, look right here in paragraph B. He says, if my people that are called by my name, if they will humble themselves, they will pray, they will seek my face, they will turn from their wicked ways, I will hear them, I will forgive their sin, I'll heal the land, I'll bring restoration, I'll bring healing. And this statement of God healing the land, there's many dimensions of this. It's not just a one time. He waves his hand and every area of the land is instantly healed. But there's many categories of life and society that he wants to bring healing. There's different measures. Some of that healing will happen a little now, a little later, a lot now, a lot later. Others will happen in one part of the nation and others in more and other parts of the nation will happen more. So different categories of society, different time frames, different measures, different regions, all of those are included in this idea of I will heal the land. So the point being, we cry out and we can't fully measure all that he would do in the land, but I know that if we cry out to the Lord that he will affect things in the realm of the Spirit. I mean it's a most remarkable reality that weak and broken people like us, like the body of Christ, and it's estimated there's about 30, 40 million believers, born-again believers in America. Nobody knows the real number, but, but I mean we're a weak and broken people. I mean we're humans, but in the grace of God we have covenant with God and because of his generosity he takes our words in partnership with him and he actually shifts things in the spirit. Things actually change when folks like us, I mean all over the city, all over this nation, when we cry out to the Lord. There's a greater activity in the angelic activity in the spirit realm. There's greater Holy Spirit activity in many spheres of life and many levels of leadership and families. There's a diminishing of demonic activity. These things happen in the realm of the Spirit and of course we want to see things in the natural as well, but they have natural events that correspond to things happening in the spirit. Now here in paragraph B it says, if my people who are called by my name, they'll turn from their wicked ways. Now the people of God he's talking about are people of God. At the time this is, the Lord is speaking this, there's wickedness. There's compromise all among the people of God. He says if you, compromising, wicked, living in sin, believers, if you'll turn. He goes I'll change what happens in a nation. I mean that's generosity beyond anything I can imagine. I look at that instead of saying I'm just going to wipe you out. He goes I'll actually listen to you. I'll actually partner with you. In my generosity I will cover you and forgive you and your words will actually shift things in the realm of the Spirit and there will be corresponding things in the natural, again in various areas of society, different time frames, different regions. I mean the way the Lord does that is according to his own wisdom. But notice he says here, if they will pray and seek me. It's not enough for you and I to talk about the growing tide of darkness in our nation, to talk to each other about it. It's good that we do, but that's not enough. The Lord says I want you to talk to me. Don't just talk to each other, talk to me and talk to me together. Although private prayer is really important, but there's a time which this Tuesday all across the nation people are going to be gatherings and twos and threes and tens and twenties and hundreds and thousands and they're talking to the Lord. So it's not just that, it's not enough that we would be indignant to see darkness increasing or that we talked to one another, but we would actually pause, change some things in our schedules, whether in our home or our business and we actually get together with some other believers. It doesn't have to be in our prayer room, it could be anywhere and we actually talk to God. That's part of the thing that He's after because He's a relational God. He says I can do without you, but I don't want to. And I'm going to do it even with people who need to repent, even with people that have compromised. I'll actually cover their sin and forgive them and I'll give them a new beginning and a new day. I mean this is a remarkable statement of the Lord, but notice He says I want you to turn from your wicked ways, because we don't have authority to be vessels of light and to challenge the darkness in our nation when we're harboring and embracing that darkness in our heart. If we're embracing that darkness in our personal lives, it undermines our authority to confront it in our nation. It doesn't mean we have to be free of it, that we don't struggle with it, but we have to be warring against it, contending against it in our personal life, and that through the grace of God positions us in a place to be vessels of change in our nation. Now what's going on in our nation right now is an aggressive attack in our culture. It's aggressive. It's intentional. It's attack on the identity of the church. The church already by many is being labeled as a hate group, and they're being accused and degraded as having hate speech and all of that kind of language, but if this legislation of the Supreme Court, if it becomes a federal law that makes gay marriage legal in every state of America, it's much more than can two people get married. That's the tip of the iceberg. If it becomes encoded in the law for all the nations, it will be enforced in the curriculum of all the public schools. It will be enforced in terms of there will be economic boycotts and sanctions, and different believers won't be able to be on different boards, and all kinds of financial and institutional dynamics. I'm going to talk about a few of them in a few moments. I mean, it affects the medical profession. It affects education, universities, non-for-profits. I mean, it goes right through society, and the church that are the stewards of the truth, the Bible says, they're the pillars of truth. They're the ones that are stewards that are promoting and embracing and speaking out the truth of the Word of God. They will be labeled as a hate group. Leaders in the church, and I don't mean just pastor leaders. I'm talking about born-again believers, whatever sphere of society you're in. They'll be put on the watch list as suspicious, as troublemakers, as being involved, and literally it will become illegal activities to stand up and speak for the biblical view of these things. It is an aggressive attack against the family and marriage. It will be an aggressive attack against civil liberties, against states' rights, the Constitution itself. But more than anything that's on my mind right now is that, and I think the enemy's, this is my opinion, I think the enemy's major target is to undermine the authority of the Word of God. That's what he's after right there. Because many believers, as they're hearing the rhetoric and the narrative, the gay agenda narrative and the secular Western narrative that's being presented, many believers are looking at the Bible and they're saying, well, you know, the Bible disagrees with them, but you know, I don't want to really get in trouble, and I don't know how to make sense of it. So what they're doing, many even believers that they're actually minimizing or setting aside the authority of Scripture in their own life, in their own ministries, and going with the popular voice of culture. The Bible is the only book in America that is stemming the tide of this encroachment of darkness. Meaning, it's the only book that is standing in the way of the normalizing, the normalization of this gay narrative in our culture. No Bible, there is no resistance. And the whole culture will move in that direction. But the Bible is just so involved and rooted in our society, and it stands like an unmovable force, and those that are in opposition against it are really, they're strategizing, they're bringing their resources together, and they're coming with full force to attack the authority of Scripture, to drive the Scripture and its influence out of society itself. I mean, this thing will be an attack upon the church. The preaching of the gospel will be categorized as hate speech before it's over, if it moves in that direction. Now we're praying and asking the Lord that it would move in exactly the opposite direction, but we don't know what's going to happen. The popular political view is that the Supreme Court is going to move in that direction and set this into the legal code in America that will, again, it will have a tremendous impact upon our schools, our homes, our family lives. Look at paragraph E. I'll give you just one of the key reasons why that will happen, I mean, that will be the situation, or at least the challenge. Paragraph E, if homosexuality is deemed by the Supreme Court to be a biological equivalent of race, and that's what they're aiming for. They're saying that a same-sex attraction, you're born with it, so it's a biological issue just like your ethnicity. Your ethnic heritage, you can't choose what ethnicity you have, and you can't choose what sexual preference that you have, you're born with it. And they're pushing it to be an issue of biology, therefore they are a people group and they are a race. And when that is established in the legal code, then any resistance against them is racism. And all the laws that protect attacking races then will go into effect in that you cannot speak out against this because it will be seen as attacking a race. And all the laws that are very necessary, very important laws that prevent racism will be in, therefore implied, I mean applied and released in our society related to the whole rhetoric and the values of the whole gay agenda. And to go against it will actually result not just in penalties and being called a bigot or stigma, there will actually be legal penalties. There will be even prison involved in these kinds of things just like it is. If you are involved in racism at a certain level, there are legal penalties that are beyond financial or stigma that have to do with prison, etc. That's where the opposition, those that are against the Word of God, they want to take this argument. They're very, very clear about it. They want to drive Christianity out of the U.S. culture entirely. They're not happy to have the right to get married and to get the legal status alone so they can have the economic dimensions and benefit of marriage. They want the whole agenda, the whole narrative to permeate the society, and this is the strategy that they're going after. Paragraph F, people opposing the normalization of homosexuality, anybody that opposes homosexuality as normal, as a biblical, normal, healthy lifestyle, they will be lumped in, many of them. It will be very common to see them lumped in together with Nazism, with the KKK, slaveholders in the past, the Aryan supremacists, that's how they will view, they'll say, well that's what the slaveholders did. That's what the race, the bigotry against the blacks in America's history, it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. It's racism. You can't do that. And so there will be this broad brush and the desire to sideline the voice of the truth in our culture, and to villainize it, to degrade it, to marginalize it, eventually to make it illegal to take a stand for biblical values. Now the Bible, the Bible is the stance of the Bible on homosexuality, this is where the challenge is. The Bible says homosexual activity is an abomination. Now that's not my point right now to develop all of that. I'm, that's not really the angle I'm presenting this at at this point in time. My point is, the Bible is the book we're loyal to, the book we're identified to, the book we're committed to. It says it's an abomination, and the folks in the opposition against the Word of God, they're saying, that book, you guys stand for it, and it calls us an abomination. And you know, we'll look and say, well, I mean, yeah, I guess it does. I mean, that's not really, you know, we're not, don't have any negative feelings towards you. You're upholding a book that calls us an abomination. It says here in Romans chapter 1, that it's a shameful lifestyle. You declare that it's shameful to be a particular race. Beloved, you'd be in big trouble, and rightfully so, but they're going to make these biblical statements the indictment against those people that are faithful to the Word of God. The Bible will be classified as hate speech because of this language that's in the Bible. You know, we take a step back and say, Lord, you were not being very political correct when you inspired Moses and Paul and Jesus. I mean, Lord, this is a uncomfortable, politically very clumsy thing for people to have to walk in, and it's like the Lord wasn't surprised by that. He goes, yeah, I understand. I understand, but I want you to stand for the Word of God. Look what it says here in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. It says, do you not know that the unrighteous, they will not inherit the kingdom of God? He goes, don't you know that? He goes, be clear on that. He says, don't be deceived about this point. No matter what preacher is telling you something opposite, Paul said, don't be deceived on this point, because he, Paul, anticipated deception and confusion around this area, and of course all over the nation and the body of Christ, there's a lot of deception and confusion about this, but Paul said, be clear. He anticipated the confusion that would happen in societies throughout history that's mounting up, particularly in this day. He goes, neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, not homosexuals, not sodomites, not drunkards, not revilers, not extortioners, they won't inherit the kingdom of God. I mean, that's a big statement. That says they're going to hell. The Bible says that people that practice these things as the normative practice that they've accepted in their lifestyle, they're not in the kingdom of God, they're going to hell. And I mean, society hates that statement. They go, that's the book that you're loyal to, that your church teaches, that says those kind of extreme, hurtful statements to young 14, 15-year-olds that are struggling with same-sex attraction, that is what your book says to them. And that's why I'm saying the Bible will be relegated as hate speech under this narrative in the direction of where these laws are going, and there's, I mean, there's hundreds of implications, I mean thousands of implications in economic institutions, educational institutions, media, non-for-profits, church ministries, family life, this thing will hit, tentacles will go all the way down, and this is a pretty dramatic thing. Now just so when you read this passage here, Paul isn't saying that somebody that has been drunk before, or is even struggling with drunkenness, or struggling with, as a reviler. A reviler says it's a slander. The extortion is dishonesty in the realm of finances. I'm not focusing here just on immorality, on sexual practices. Paul is saying, no, if you are embracing your lifestyle as a normative practice that you are accepting, not warring against, but you're accepting it, he says, be sure you won't be in the kingdom of God. Well, I'm in the church, and I mean, I'm a preacher, or maybe I'm an elder, or I've grown up in the church, or what do you mean I'm not in the kingdom of God? I mean, I go to church, I do this, I do that, you know, these other things. And so Paul's not talking about people who struggle, people who even stumble into these areas, and they say, oh Lord, I did it again, I did it again, but they stand against it. Those people, that's not what Paul's talking about. He's talking about the people that say, no, this is just the way it's going to be, I'm just going to give in to this, and I'm just going to cast off the leadership of Jesus in my life. And Paul says, if that is really the normative way you live, you can be sure that when it's over, you won't be in the kingdom of God, when this life is over. But again, I kind of went off on that for a while, because it's an important point, but my real point right now is, this is how the culture is reading the word of God. They're saying, I'm talking about the encroaching darkness, and those that are embracing it, they're saying, your book says we're an abomination. Your book says we're shameful. Your book says we're going to hell, you're destroying young lives that are grappling with this, you are censoring and driving out people and minimizing their dignity, and on and on and on, and that's the challenge. And we would say, no, no, our book is the standard of love, and the safeguarding and the stewards of love in the culture, the word of God and the people in covenant with God. But paragraph G, remember this, love doesn't mean, it doesn't always mean you agree and affirm the practices of the ones that you love. You can love people deeply without affirming all that they do or agreeing with all that they say or all that they believe. In essence, love is, I mean there's many definitions of love that I could add in here, but you're contending for their greatness. You're looking at them and you'll disagree with that, you'll disagree with that, you won't affirm this activity, but in your heart you're saying, are you kidding, I love you, I'm contending for you to be everything that God made you to be. For the fullness of God, I'm actually standing with you for it. That's what we're contending for as believers. We are to love people so much that we're committed to telling them the truth. The idea that I love you, therefore I will only affirm what you do, even if that affirmation is part of, contributes to you walking into darkness all of your life, beloved, that's a contradiction of what love is. That is not love. If you went to a long-term family friend who happened to be a cancer specialist, an oncologist, and went in and said, hey old buddy, been friends for years, and hey give me a checkup, and he discovered you had terminal cancer. And he goes, well you know, we got a lot of family events planned in the future this summer and some outings, and you know, but you got aggressive cancer and if I tell you, it's going to mess up the whole summer and probably the next year or two, but we can save your life. But it's going to be a negative and you're not going to like it. Now that doctor, in the name of love, would not tell that family friend, that long-term friend, he couldn't say that I'm a good doctor or a good friend. He says, I don't want to be negative. I mean that might upset our plans, it might not work out the way that we want it to. Beloved, that doctor would be guilty of a criminal thing, a practice, I mean in the medical field. But he would be sinning against love as well. Well, there's our society in the spirit realm and the spiritual situation. There's so much darkness in cancer and God says, there is an answer. If you love them, don't back away. Be tender, invest in love, invest in the relationship, care about them, hear their story, validate their dignity, stand with them through the process, but don't you dare tell them lies about what is right and what is wrong when they ask you and open your heart or just give you opportunity to bring those things up. If you really love, love on God's terms. Fight for their greatness. Fight for all that God has made them to be, even though they won't like a few things that you say. Well, what this whole thing, this whole narrative of darkness that's being established in our culture, its desire is to formalize and to codify an anti-Christian culture. And so that we end up, believers end up written off as bigots and again, that we're racist. Now where this will go, if it gets put in the law, and we're praying it won't be, but even if it is put in the law, we're still praying for a breakthrough of the spirit in various fears and various time frames and even the reversal of all this. So no matter what happens, we're standing strong, laying hold of God's promises for our nations, for our families. We're going to operate in kindness and tenderness while we're moving forward clearly. But what will take place is if this gets established in law, again, any bold stand against the gay narrative will be, you will be called, or a ministry or your business will be called a racist and there will be legal dimensions and consequences to that. That's number one, that's very big because how that will permeate through society. Number two, they will systematically present all the sexual options throughout the curriculum of the public school systems. So every second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth grader, whatever, they will hear of all the options of the transgender, the boy with boy, the girl with girl, the threesomes, the fivesomes, that's where it's going to be going before long. All of these options, the young boy with the old man, the pedophiles, all of this will end up being presented as normative, acceptable, healthy sexual patterns in the school systems. Millions of children systematically taught this. That's where this will go if this is put into the law. Because if it's legal and it's a biological issue and it's about dignifying a new race, a new people group, let's go all the way. Then the bombardment of this through the media, I mean, we've all noticed in the last five years this, I mean already this explosion of just gay themes and family shows, you know, there's a gay couple in almost every family show or just whatever. It's all over the media. It hasn't even begun. It will be tenfold in a short amount of time. It will be everywhere, promoted by star athletes, whether they're gay or not, promoted by media stars, rock stars, you know, cultural icons, economic leaders. They'll be promoting this to show their, how broad thinking they are, and they'll embrace the narrative of the culture and those that are faithful to the Word of God. Again, they will be more and more put into a category to be marginalized, ostracized, and they will be boycotts, written off, and the Lord says it's in that context. Even if that happens, I will purify my church. I will pour out my spirit. I will cause a great recovery in my kingdom. And so even if it goes in that negative direction, I'm not going to hesitate in my heart and my confidence about where this thing is really headed and what the Lord has in mind about this. Well, let's look at top of page two, if you would. I mean, again, just a couple more examples about this. A university professor would not be able to write on anything contrary to this or teach on it in the classroom. If you had a multinational corporation, you're a board member, you couldn't be on the board. If you found out you were a part of a ministry that took a stand against this gay narrative, if you were in the school systems, again, they'll teach this systematically through the school systems. The medical profession, they could not treat any kind of gay propensities as a disorder at all. That would be illegal to treat it in that way. The thing that President Obama has been promoting is this. He wants to make it illegal, this thing called conversion therapy. And this has been kind of hot on the internet the last couple of months, and most of you are probably aware of it. But the conversion therapy is the idea that a twelve, thirteen year old goes to get therapy from a counselor, a professional trained counselor. But if that counselor is a believer, and that counselor gives any hint to that twelve, thirteen, fourteen year old, to that minor, that they should convert and resist their homosexual desires, that it will be illegal for that therapist to do that. They'll lose their license and more, but at least lose their license. The parent that sent their child to that therapy, there will be implications on the family and the places where they work, and the groups that they're affiliated with. They'll be on the watch list. It will actually be a crime, because the theory is this. The young people are so conflicted about this, and it's the voice of the church that's creating so much shame that they're traumatized. Some are committing suicide, and if we could just tell the church to stop it, we could free these young people to be all they want to be in all of their sexual expressions, etc., etc. So our own beloved president, actually I say beloved because we love our president. I wasn't saying that tongue in cheek. We love our president. We need to stand with him. We need to pray for him, believe God to touch him, and so I say that with all sincerity. That all of our public officials, we are to take them into our hearts, and to contend before God for their greatness, and for their fullness, and for all that God has for them as well. But anyway, he is promoting the idea of making it illegal for a minor to get counseling, for a school to offer it, for a therapist to offer it, for a parent to allow it. It would be illegal, and they would actually, I mean they're talking about the folks that are walking this out and talking about it. They're saying, you know, the family services would come into a home, remove that child, because the parents are sending them into a therapy situation that's actually harmful, and may lead to that child's suicide. They have to deliver that child from that Christian parent that are doing that. Beloved, that's where this goes if this all becomes legal. That happened in a day, but you give it not 10 or 20 years. You give it 2 and 3 years. You give it 5 or 7 years. This thing is moving so fast already. It's staggering the pace of which it's going. Well, let's look at, oh well, I guess we are at the top of page 2. You already did that. Let's look at Psalm chapter 2. In Psalm 2, David, King David, he's the one that laid this out, this crisis. And we've gone over Psalm 2 several times in the last year. But in verse 1, he said, the nations are raging. Beloved, this hostility against the gospel is going to go far beyond stigma. Right now, we're kind of relegated as hate speech, and bigots, and archaic old moral laws. We don't get it. But it's going to go far beyond that, because the nations will rage. It will come to full rage and hostility against this. It says, David said, why are the nations raging? Why are the people plotting a vain thing? And I'm glad he added that phrase, because he says, this is vanity. No matter the temporary momentum this will have in the nations, it is vanity. It is destined to fail. The Word of God and the leadership of Jesus is absolutely established and set. This whole thing will fall to the ground as broken, and it will fail, but it will have a temporary momentum. And maybe for a few decades, who knows how long, but it will fail. It is vanity. Verse 2, King David said, the kings of the earth. This is international. This isn't just American. The rulers of society. This is not just political. This is the rulers of society. Media, sports, economic, education, government, the rulers of society. Notice, they're taking their stand against the Lord, the God of Israel. They're taking a stand against His anointed, and that's clearly in context Jesus. They're against Jesus. They don't mind generic God. I mean, they all like generic God. Most of them, they just don't want the God of Israel and Jesus and His Word. Verse 3, they want to break God's bonds off of them, cast God's cords away. They're talking about the truth of the Word of God. They see the Word of God as bonds that enslave them. If we could cast off the Word of God, we could have our full liberation into our sexuality, into anything else that we want. We've got to get rid of these archaic, old-fashioned, biblical morals that are binding our culture and holding us in prison. And they see the Word of God in a very, very negative way. What's happening in the gay agenda is that they're interpreting the Scripture through their sexuality, instead of interpreting their sexuality through the Scripture. They flip it. They go, we don't want the Scripture to define our sexuality or interpret it. We're going to interpret the Bible through our sexuality, not interpret our sexuality through the Bible. We're going to flip it, and we're going to do that with every area of our life that we want to. And this is far beyond the gay agenda. That's just the issue that's before the Supreme Court. This is the strategy of darkness far beyond sexual issues. This is an all-encompassing strategy of darkness that is being employed in our nation and across all of Europe and the nations of the earth. Paragraph B. Well, we're in a Psalm 2 crisis. We just described the crisis of Psalm 2 just now. The leaders of society want to cast the Word of God out of the culture. That requires a Psalm, a Joel 2 response. And in Joel 2, we're going to look at it real briefly. God calls the people to Him, to cry out to Him, to turn their heart to Him, to ask Him to intervene. This, if my people who are called by my name, this type of thing. And God promises in Acts 2, outpouring of the Spirit. It's a release of the activity of the Spirit on our government, our education, our families, our finances, our land, our farms. We want the activity of the Spirit, the revival in the church, and to permeate throughout society. There's a Psalm 2 crisis. It requires a Joel 2 response of turning to the Lord and crying out to Him. And it results in an Acts 2 heightened activity of the Holy Spirit. Well, let's look here, just the paragraph C, just the next few moments here. Here's what Joel chapter 2 tells us. This is the response God wants from His people. And we'll just spend a few moments on that and then we'll respond to the Lord here after we look at this passage for just a moment. Joel chapter 2, look what it says in verse 12. The Lord says, turn to me with all of your hearts. Now, the good news, anybody can do that. You don't have to have an education. You don't need money. You don't need a particular gifting. You don't need an influence. You don't need favor with people to turn to God. Anybody can do this. That's what's so amazing. But it goes, I want you to turn with all of your heart. And the reason I want you to turn with all of your heart to me, because I have already turned to you with all of my heart. This is about relationship. This is not about God, the general or the football coach who's commanding, barking out commands. He goes, I've turned with all of my heart to you. You turn with all of your heart. This is about us together in love, covenant forever. This is what I'm after. And I'll use you to shift things in the spirit room through your weak prayers because they'll have powerful impact. I'll use you and your words and your deeds to affect lives around you and even the nation collectively. But I want you to turn with all of your heart. I want you to turn with, there's days where you have, there's fasting days. And fasting doesn't earn us anything, but it positions us and it tenderizes us and makes us more receptive, more pliable, more tender in our response to the Lord. I want you to come before me with weeping and mourning. Now that's not a contrived weeping and mourning. Some people get together and they say, okay, weep. Then they start weeping. No, that's not what we're after. He's talking about a, a true grief over our own personal compromise, over the compromise of where the church is, over the compromise of what's happening in the nation. He goes, come verse three, I mean 13, tear your heart, rend your heart. Rend means tear. And the passage, if you read it in context, it says, don't tear your garment to show your sorrow, tear your heart. Now the tearing of the heart, that's intense. That's very personal. The tearing of the heart means that we're settled in an area of compromise. And many believers have one area of compromise, maybe two or three, and they know it's wrong, and they don't like it. I mean they say, I don't really want this, but you know, I'm just stuck in this pattern. And the Lord is saying, I want you to be aggressive about addressing your passivity about that area of compromise. I want you to, your passivity to be resolved. It doesn't mean you're going to break through right away. It doesn't mean you won't struggle with it. It doesn't mean you won't fail again at it, but it's a change of a posture of heart. It's a tearing, and a tearing hurts. You're breaking your unity, your agreement with a life of just freely slandering, or being involved in pornography, or dishonesty in finances, or whatever, whatever, all the things that Paul talked about in the passage earlier from being a reviler, extortion, drunkards, all those things. All those kinds of things. He's saying, tear your heart. And then he says again, turn to me. This is what it's about. It's weak people that are in sin, remember the other passage, turn from your wicked ways. They got wicked ways, but he goes, I haven't written you off. I haven't written you off. I haven't lost interest in you. You got compromised, but I'm still contending for you. I'm reaching for you. Come to me. Now here's the confidence we have, because the Lord is gracious. It's what the prophet Joel says. He is so gracious. He's so gracious. He will give you a response so beyond what your sin and compromise deserve. We deserve to be set down and cast out. The Lord will draw us close, cover us. He will renew us, and He will bring us to fullness. I mean, talking about gracious. I mean, there's none like Him. I mean, this is a miracle that He, the God of the universe, says to us, I want your weakened, broken lives. I want you near me. Let's do it together. I'm not giving up on you. You've given up on yourself, but I'm not giving up on you. I'm gracious. He says, I'm merciful. He's tender. He's slow to anger. Look at this next. He's of great kindness. Beloved, when we come before the Lord, and we're going to do this just in a moment or two, we're going to turn our hearts to the Lord, you can be sure He will answer in kindness to you. He doesn't want to embarrass you. He doesn't want to break you. I mean, in that negative destructive sense, He wants to help you. He wants to bring you near. He wants to give you confidence. He wants to recover it, but on His terms. But He says, it's you coming to me. I reach to you, but you've got to come to me. I won't change my standards of what love and life and truth and purity are. I will be gracious. And the scripture says, He'll even relent. He'll change the destruction that's happening. He will, now in this context, there was a military invasion coming to Israel in Joel chapter 2, and He says, I'll even stop that invasion. I will relent. I will turn the situation where the invasion won't happen, as in essence is what He was giving them the opportunity. And He says here in verse 14, who knows? If you'll turn to Him, who knows? If He will relent, meaning, we don't know what part of our nation that He'll change. Will He change all the areas of society or a few? We don't know what regions of the nation, the whole nation, or this region, that region, and the other region. We don't know. We don't know the time frame. Will it be right away? Will there be a delay? Will it be a little bit down the road? He says, who knows? Who knows? Will it be a scale of 1 to 10, a level 2 break in of God, a level 8? He goes, who knows? I'm the gracious God. I'm the kind God. You come to me and let me show you what part of the nation, what region, what part of society, what time frame. You come and trust me to answer in my time. Who knows? I'll take a disaster and turn it into a revival, a blessing. I will release, I will, a disaster zone will be a revival center before it's over. And I, as for me in my house, I want it, I want this. I want the full blessing. I want to be among a people, that would be you, that we are doing this together, and in our city, our region, our nation. I want our whole nation. I want the whole earth to be affected by the glory of God. But let's contend for our nation, our city. Let's contend for our region. Lord, what would you give us if thousands of groups in the Midwest and a million groups in America, and again, let's go over to Asia and Africa. It's the same everywhere. Lord, what would you do? What harm would you cause to be cut off, if we would come before you? Verse 15, he says, blow the trumpet. That's what I'm doing right now. And beloved, thousands of pulpits all across America are blowing this trumpet right now today for Tuesday. I mean, leaders stood up, political leaders, senators, governors. I mean, there's a bunch of folks that are weighing in on this crisis and the need to cry out to God, I mean to Jesus. They're talking about Jesus. I love just reading the article of Governor Jindal of Louisiana, just came out. He says, you know, in Indiana, the leadership was going to do this, and they cowered under the pressure, and they backed away. And he said, in essence, it's not a quote, I loved it. He goes, if you want to do that in Louisiana, he goes, save your breath. I'm not cowering. I'm not backing down. We're standing for what is right, etc., etc. And he's an on-fire born-again believer. And I went, wow, and other ones are standing up. You know, Mike Huckabee, and just a number of them. I don't want to go down the list. And our own beloved Governor Brownback just down the road here is born-again believers, and there's many of them are standing for truth. And this is exciting, but it's dangerous. It's perilous, because there may be setbacks before there's victories, but there may not be the setbacks, but there might be, but there might be victories in the setbacks, but there may be victories in regions and in areas even though there's setbacks in other ways. Who knows? Verse 15, blow the trumpet. Call a fast. Call a sacred assembly. A sacred assembly is when a group of people gather in a building. It's sacred. It's not casual. They don't drop in, well, if it's a little convenient. This is sacred. They're saying, our nation is in peril. Beloved, this is truly one of the most important days in the history of America this Tuesday. It really, really is. The whole decision isn't made on that day, but I've got a feeling it's going to be framed out in a very, it's going to be postured in a pretty clear way by the end of that day. Gather the people. Gather the elders, which means the leaders. That doesn't mean just the elders in the church per se. The leaders, born-again leaders in the community. Gather them. He goes, you do this, look at verse 28. Afterwards, after you gather, after you turn, I will release the activity of my spirit. I love that word afterwards. After this, I will release an increase of my activity. There will be an outpouring. Maybe this level, maybe that level, but there will be a heightened activity of the Holy Spirit if you would come. So right now, as we're going to respond to the Lord, He says, turn to me. And then the other passage, if my people who are called by my name passage, 2 Chronicles 7, He says, turn from your wicked ways. Here He says, turn to me. He's just saying the same thing from two different angles. I want to invite the worship team to come up if they would, and I want us to take the next just four or five minutes and just wait on the Lord, and let's locate. You know exactly what it is. You have to pray, Lord, show me if there's compromise. Oh, stop it. You know exactly what that area is. It's the one that you're constantly worrying about in your conscience with the Lord, and you're trying to find Bible verses to settle down. It's that one. That's the area He's talking about. So don't go on some deep search. It's right there. I mean, you've been thinking about it the whole afternoon, the whole morning here. And so that's the area. He says, I want you to tear your heart. I want you, and that's not a physical expression. I want you to break your passive agreement. I want you to turn into resolve, to repent. Call it sin. Whoever you're sinning against or whoever you're sinning with, break it. Break the thing off. The Lord says, I'll give you a new day. I'll cover you. I'll be gracious. I'll restore you. I'll restore that which was destroyed, and then you'll be a part of me restoring a nation and healing a nation. You'll be a part of the company. Again, there's 20, 30, 40 million of us across this nation, and the Lord is speaking this to us right now. And I'm saying, Lord, thank you that you're a God of kindness. Thank you that you're a God of great mercy. So right now, all over the room, I'm going to ask you to respond to the Lord. You can come up here if you want. You can kneel down here. You can lie down here, stand. You can stay in your chair, sit, stand, whatever you want. But just for the next few moments, I want you to say, Lord, you're okay. Okay. I know what the issue is. I know. I am going to set my heart in a new way. I am confessing this as sin. Okay. Okay. The immorality is just all over the body of Christ. And beloved, you know, pornography is immorality. And I'm not trying to be mean right now. I'm trying to be helpful, actually. It's like, call that not just a trend that society is saying, nope, no, I'm going to go against that. And I'm stuck right now, but I'm going to get healing. I'm going to figure out how to get free of this. I am not going to be passive about it. I'm not trying to jump on you, pile up on you when you're feeling down, but you're saying, I'm going to settle this thing. Or I'm going to settle this, the sexual stuff that's outside of the covenant of marriage. I'm going to be done with it, Lord. If you mean it today, you will cover me and help me. He says, I do. And I want you. I want you in on the team, says the Lord. I want you in the process. I want to use you as a vessel of transformation with the larger body of Christ and those outside the body of Christ as well, that, that God will use to bring a blessing to this nation. So Lord, we come to you right now, God. And we ask you, is it reviling? Are we reviling people in this Facebook culture? Is it extortion? Are we being dishonest about money, but are we just not seeking your face? We're just too busy or too disinterested. Is it sexual oriented? I mean, we love people struggling with homosexual desires. Well, I love people struggling with it. I love people with heterosexual desires of immorality. We love people. We don't care what they're struggling with. We want to be with them. We want them a part of us, but we're fighting for their glory and their greatness in the, in the grace of God. So Lord, we say, yes, I bring my grief. I'm going to stop the bitterness. I'm going to repent against the slander. I'm going to clean up the finances. I'm going to settle the issue of the immorality, but whatever those five or 10 issues are, two or three, whatever. Again, feel free to come up if you want. You don't need to though. You can stay right in your chair. You can stand. Lord, here we are. Thank you for mercy, God. Thank you for a new beginning. Thank you that you love everyone that struggles with immorality. Thank you that you love all of us. You haven't written off anybody. You want all of us. Talk to him. You know, the two or three issues are the one or two. Don't just repent, do that, but receive his word. Like, thank you. Mercy. Thank you. You'll heal me. Thank you. Mercy. Kindness. Thank you. The Lord says, I've come to you with all of my heart. I want all of your heart. Until the end. I want to be found faithful. I want to be found steady. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. This Tuesday, we're going to cry out for America Tuesday. We're crying out for us right now. Our own lives, our families. Lord, heal my family. Heal my heart. Heal my marriage. Lord, heal my business. Heal my friendship relationships. Heal me, Lord. That's what we're crying out right now. Talk about America on Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. I want to live and fall before your gaze. I want to stay before your gaze. Lord, have mercy on me. Help my family. Help my children. Help my marriage. Lord, help my heart. With all of my heart, I want you. Help my passivity, my dullness. Help me, Lord. I want to give you everything, Lord. I want to be found faithful. I want to be found steady. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. I want to be found faithful. I want to be found steady. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. I want to be found faithful. Until the end. I want to be found faithful. Unfaithful with you. Count me worthy. Release the spirit of the fear of the Lord, the spirit of grace. Release the spirit of the fear of the Lord. Release the spirit of encouragement. I want to be found faithful. Unfaithful. Unfaithful. Until the end.