This sermon emphasizes the importance of being men and women of the Word, seeking God through fasting, prayer, and obedience. It highlights the need for brokenness before God, a hunger for His Word, and a willingness to be used as instruments of His love and truth in a generation that desperately needs spiritual intensity and revival.

I thank you for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We've seen that everywhere we go, flesh is flesh, and God is God, and the Spirit is Spirit in life. And I pray, Holy Spirit, that what you put on my heart will meet the need of this hour, at this time, in this place. Lord, I can't preach anymore. I never could, and never will be able to preach without your touch. Speak through me, Father. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. You know, when I read the Old Testament, I'm overwhelmed at the intensity of the men of God. I wonder where they get that spiritual authority and where they get this Holy Ghost stamina to do what they did for a prophet to lay for 365 days on his side, warning Jerusalem of coming judgment. 365 days laying on his side. I read of these men that fast 40 days and 40 nights. I can't fast three. I read of men that are so burdened with the burden of God and so incensed against the sin against God's nature that they can pull clumps out of their beard and clumps out of their hair. I'm amazed at men who can weep and cry and mourn for two and three weeks at a time on their face and not even wash their face, any oil on their hair, no food, no water, and mourn and grieve for the heart of God. And I read those stories and I say, God, those are men of another sort. I don't know what that's like. And then the thing that troubles me is that God says that these things have been put into word as examples for us upon whom the ends of the world have come. That these men were men of like passion. They were not supermen. They were not men destined. There were patterns. There was something in them that God did that caused God to lay his hands on them. Our present generation is probably, without a doubt, the most wicked of all times, many more times wicked than Sodom, Gomorrah, and Nineveh. If there was ever a time that people, nations, and churches, and the society needed men of such intensity, it's now. Why would God arbitrarily raise up men like I'm going to speak about this morning? Men of another sort who had this passion, who were able to do incredible exploits in understanding the heart of God and showing the heart of God to nations and brought them to repentance through their actions. And I say to myself, God, would you arbitrarily, all the way from church history, all the way back to Abraham, go all the way back and God would raise up prophets and God would raise up men and raise up women with such an anointing that they would bring the whole society to their knees and back to God. Why would God suddenly, in these last days, when we need him more than any other generation, not raise up men and women as such? Now when I say men, I'm talking about mankind, including women, so please, I'm not going to stop just to add women to it. Just take it that I'm speaking of mankind. If God's word is true that in the last days he's pouring out his spirit upon all flesh, I take that to mean that today it's possible that one who has set his heart on God and one who reads the history of these men and say, they were men of like passion, we have a needier generation than any time in history, and we have something they don't have, we have an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we have been promised an anointing above that which all the prophets yearn to look to, all the prophets wondered at, this great river, this great outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days, revelation of Christ, there's no other generation. I think it obligates us, now I'm not speaking just about preachers, but every member of every congregation, everyone who calls himself by the name of Jesus Christ to search the word of God out and find the patterns, how these men became men of another sort, why did God touch them? Why did God anoint them? Why did God use them? And why did their words not fall to the ground? And why were they so marvelously changed by the power of the hand of God? There are no hidden secrets about being touched by God. There are no hidden secrets. You say, well, these are men of destiny. Saul was a man of destiny. God told him all about the plan he had for an everlasting kingdom from him, and he aborted the plan of God. You can abort the plan of God, but you've got the same token, you can study the word of God and find the patterns, find the way in which men were touched by the hand of God and follow that path. I'm going to bring to your attention this morning three men that were touched by the hand of God, three men of a different sort, and show you the pattern through every one of them, the same pattern, and it set my heart on fire to seek that path. I'm not that kind of man, but I want to be a man of another sort, a man touched by the hand of God, where even the enemies of the Lord know that there's a spiritual authority and know that there's been something that comes from the throne of God's heart, God's heart in His throne, that moves people to the Lord. We're considering Ezra, first of all. The Bible said a man who awakened his entire nation, it is said of him he was a man with the hand of God on him. He said, I was strengthened as the hand of the Lord came upon me. He said, the hand of the Lord came upon me. Now why does God choose, out of all the scribes, why does He choose this one man? Now all of these scribes were in the word of God. This was what their calling was, to study and explain and edify through the word of the Lord. Why did He pick up this one scribe, Ezra? Did God somewhere in eternity pass, say there's going to be a man by the name of Ezra? No matter what he says, no matter what he does, he's destined to lead 50,000 people back to rebuild a city that will have fallen? No, the Bible says Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, Ezra 7.10. Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, to practice it. He set his heart. This was a conscious decision. Here was a man who doesn't do it just through weeping, he doesn't do it through some incredible experience that hits upon him. One day he said, I am going to be a man of the word, I'm going to go to the word and I'm going to tremble by it and I'm going to act on everything I read. And God saw a man who was saturated with His word, who hungered and loved and appreciated the word, and God took a man who'd prepared his heart. Of all the scribes, this one man prepared his heart, said, I am going to be a man of the word. There's not a person hearing me that cannot do that by a conscious decision. You don't need some Holy Ghost revival. You don't need somebody sitting down putting you under conviction. You take this word in your hand and say, God, as sure as I have the authority to sit and watch television for three hours, I've got the ability, I can make a decision, I can study God's word. He prepared his heart. He prepared his heart. God supernaturally lays His hand on only those who hunger and thirst after His word and do it. God didn't come down supernaturally one night and say to Ezra in a dream, Ezra, there are 50,000 people I want to take back to rebuild Jerusalem in the temple and you're going to need incredible power and spiritual authority. You're going to have to know the word. I'm going to come tonight in the middle of the night and I'm just going to baptize you with a love for the word. I'm going to baptize you with a vision for the people. I'm going to give you my heart. Tomorrow you're going to wake up with a love for the word of God in your heart. You're going to wake up tomorrow with a vision and a burden of God. You're going to know my heart. No, no, no, it never has been. It never will work that way. It's setting your heart to seek His word and do it. David was a man of a different sort. David had God laid His hand on him as few men have known it. Listen to his heart. How so a man cleansed his way by taking heed to the word, the word of I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. I delight myself in your word. I'll not forget your word. How I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. Your word's a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. Your word is pure. Therefore, my servant loveth it. Not only was the man of the word, he set his heart to fast and pray. I'm reading chapter 8, verse 21, to fast. He said to humble ourselves before God, to seek Him for a right way for us and for our little ones and for all our substance. Ezra had told the king of Persia, he said, we're going back, but the king had offered to send a battalion or an army force to go with them, protect them, because that whole journey was filled with thieves and murderers and robbers. He told the king, our God's able to take care of us. He spoke a creative word. He said, the hand of our God is upon all those for good that seek Him, but His power and His wrath is against those that forsake Him. He said, we serve a mighty God. He's able to protect this king. Thank you, but no thanks. We have a God. Now folks, he did not go back to his congregation and say, I've spoken a creative word and that is it. We're going to trust God now. We're just going to take God at His word. We have a lot of people do that. They go in the scripture and they get a promise and they take it by faith, forsake the prayer closet, never think of fasting about it. No, he gave the creative word. He spoke truth. He spoke it from the heart of God and then he goes to this. So we fasted. He comes back to his congregation. He said, I spoke the word, the word that I've studied, the word that I believe, the word that's locked in my heart. But now that we've spoken it, we're going to fast and we're going to pray until it happens. And we read now chapter 8, verse 31. So we fasted. We besought the Lord for this and he was entreated of us. The hand of the Lord our God was upon us. He delivered us from the hand of the enemy. There's such as lay in wait by the way. God touches those who love His word and who fast and pray according to that word. All through the scripture you find it. Moses fasting Joshua and his elders fasting the prophets, Jesus, Paul the apostle, the early church, Nineveh, Esther. Read all through the Bible. They fasted, they fasted, they fasted, and they prayed. Nowadays we don't fast. We take the excuse from Isaiah 58. Is this not the fast that I've ordained that you are charitable of heart? I won't go over all the charities he mentions, but it's giving of yourself to the poor and the needy. Folks, all he's saying is that's the result of godly fasting. It's the result he's looking for. You fast and pray, you're a man of my word, you will get a burden for the poor. You'll feed the poor. You'll have this in your heart. Fasting alone though will not bring the touch of God. There has to be this purging by the word of God. Read it, be purged by it, and obey it. My heart cried when I read this. I said, God, how did these men become so broken before you? They would just speak the word, just the word that was written, and just give the meaning of it. The scripture says, The people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up of hands and bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Hours of preaching the word, and the word found its place because a man who loved it, a man who'd fasted and prayed himself, was the instrument of God. Wherever there's ruin, in your family, wherever it is, God uses human instruments. He doesn't send angels. He uses human instruments. But there's a cost. He uses human instruments. He wants to use you. He wants to use everyone within the sound of my voice. But you speak the word, and they may not melt at the time, but you will have planted a seed that's going to have results. You may not even live to see it, but God's word will not fall to the ground. It won't fall to the ground through your lips. And the people wept when they heard the word. Then Ezra, priest and scribe, said unto all the people, More not, nor weep, neither be sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. You see, the principle is this, and it's everywhere you look in the Old Testament, and you find it in the New Testament too. When people begin to get God, word hungry, word starved, and they're spending quality time, and the word is purging and challenging, and the heart of God is being revealed. And that creates a desire for fasting and prayer where it's not just labor anymore, even though there's a setting in the heart and preparing it. But now there is a brokenness. There's no other way to brokenness. And now the people are broken, and they're on their face, but folks, you can't live under that kind of physical brokenness. It's physical and it's spiritual. It affects every part of the body. When the men of the prophet said, My bowels ache, they knew what they were talking about. Every pastor in this pulpit knows what it is to preach the heart of God and go and feel the rumblings in your flesh. But you see, you can't live in that. But the joy of the Lord comes. The first four years of this church, if you were here, you know we preached the law. We held up the mirror, because we had movie stars, we had Broadway players that were here talking in tongues, even praising God and going back to their old ways, going into movies and Broadway shows that were un-Christlike and ungodly. And the law was held up. We didn't tell them what to do. The law convicted them. And then the glory of God came down, and the joy of the Lord hit this church. And it's been here ever since. Ezra says, Now rejoice. Broken men are the most balanced happy men on the face of the earth. Now they may have a stern look like I may look right now, but folks, before it's all over, we're going to rejoice this morning. I'll give you a smile, but I'm not trying to be facetious, folks. Patina was interviewing some pastors after a meeting in Cardiff, in Wales, a couple days ago, and they said, How did this gathering impact you? And he said, I have got some good advice for pastors. If you don't want to be shaken and stirred, don't go to a Wilkerson crusade. Don't go. I'm not boasting on that. I'm telling you that we only have one chance. See, I announce this church, everyone goes to the church that does everything wrong. We do everything wrong according to what the world says out there and what many church growth planners suggest. They suggest you should have all whites or all blacks or all Hispanics. We've got 103 nationalities. We do it wrong. We still preach the blood. Welcome to the church with an offensive message. We sang this morning the blood of the Lamb. You see, the cross is an offense. The blood is an offense. But you see, when you're faithful to the word of God, that's the word. And there are some things the Lord says you don't dare change. You don't change the blood. You don't touch my cross. It's an offense. Jesus turned to the disciples when they said, Don't you know you offended Jesus? Does that offend you? He said, How is this going to offend you? You're going to see me ascend into heaven. And the words that I just gave you are life. And they're truth. We say don't touch them because that's the only source of truth, just as I gave it to you. And I'm not boasting on this church, but I'm telling you right now that we're to stick to this word. Thank God that every pastor of this church is hungry, thirsty, in love with this word of God. And they bring it to you from their brokenness. And I thank God for that. How did he get broken? How does the love of Christ, the love of the word, get to brokenness before God? According to Ezra, it's the hammer of the word. The scripture says, Is not my word like a fire and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? When you lay your heart on the rock, Christ, you let that hammer and that velvet glove of the spirit just begin to pound and break every pride, everything you speak, a tongue that does not gossip or put others down, and ears that are purged, and eyes that are purged, where there's no defilement of the mouth, the ears, and the eyes. The word of God begins to break. I know the only brokenness I've ever known has come through the word of God hammering. I have been hammered by Matthew 25. I can't get away from that, standing before the throne of God and having to answer for taking care of the widows and the fatherless and all of these things that the church is called to do. And I can't get away from that. And I thank God for that. I want that word to break me and hammer. Do you want the word to break you? Let's consider Jeremiah, a man of a different sort. He spoke of engaging the heart. The same thing, setting. He's saying, engaging the heart to seek the Lord, Jeremiah 30-21. Here you find the same pattern. Here's a man who goes for the word. The Bible said, and the word came to Jeremiah. The word came to Jeremiah again and again. The word came to Jeremiah. Why did it come? Because he asked for it. He sought it. He cried for it. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. Folks, this is the weeping prophet. But let me tell you, this is the man, this is the prophet that gave us the gladdest, most wonderful, happy, praiseworthy gospel in all of the Old Testament. He's the one who said, God will satiate the soul of the priest with fatness. He's the man of the new covenant. Study Jeremiah 31-32 and listen to the joyful news announcing of the new covenant. I will satiate the soul of the priest with fatness. My people shall be satisfied with goodness, saith the Lord. I'll make an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from them to do them good. I will cleanse them from all their iniquity. That's good news. Yes, the church is mercy, it's grace, it's long-suffering, it's joy, it's peace. It's all of that. But there's a history behind this man. He can pronounce the good news because he has a history of brokenness before Almighty God. Jeremiah 4-19, my bowels, my bowels. I'm pained at my heart. My heart makes a noise in me. I can't hold my peace because thou hast heard on my soul the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Oh, that my head were waters and my eyes were a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Folks, listen to me, please. This man was so broken before God. He absolutely shared. God shared his own broken heart. You say God isn't broken. God doesn't weep. When you get home, if you don't want to check it now, Jeremiah 9, 9 and 10, God was speaking to Jeremiah, and he said, and he just pronounced judgment. He's telling because of their vile, polluted mouth, because of the way they're fighting among themselves and the idolatry. He said, I'm going to judge. And God himself says in Jeremiah 9, 9 and 10, for the mountains, I'll take up a weeping and a wailing, and for the habitation of the wilderness, the lamentations. This is God speaking about his weeping, lamentating heart. Sister Basilia Schlink was the founder of the Sisters of Mary, a Lutheran sisterhood in Darmstadt, Germany. I met them probably over 40 years ago. And Sister Basilia Schlink was one of the greatest saints that ever walked the earth. What a woman of God. She'd spend three months at a time in that little place overlooking Jerusalem. And I've been there and seen the place where Sister Basilia and the Sisters of Mary. It's not a Catholic organization. These are spirit-filled, wonderful sisters. And she would weep over Jerusalem. And she wrote a book called The Lamentations of God. And as a young preacher, I couldn't buy into it. And I would go to their chapel, and they were weeping and crying for years. They wept and repented because they were in Germany and repented for the way the Germans under Hitler treated the Jews. They'd go in the chapel and weep for hours, mourning with God over what had happened in the Holocaust through Germany. I couldn't understand that until my later years, understanding God's heart. You see, in Jeremiah, it wasn't so much about the wrath of God, but it was the wounding of God's heart. That sin, sin wounded the heart of God. You read Jeremiah Burroughs, and you read some of the great Puritans, and you hear all of them, because they were broken men and men of the Word. It was not so much the wrath of God against sin. It's saying we have wounded the heart of God. And their hatred for sin was because of the wounding of God's heart. This is what causes the man to say, Oh, my head were waters, my ears a fountain of tears. How foreign to the modern gospel today. Weeping and mourning for the condition of the church and the nation. Thirty million murdered babies. A nation now trying to remove God from its pledge of allegiance and from its coins. And we see all of this. I had a reporter ask me in BBC, Don't you have anything good to say about religion? I said, Look, I come to your country, and your newspapers are saying your teenagers are going into drunken binges, and they're going crazy. You've just closed 1,200 churches in the Church of England. They call them desanctifying them. What they mean, it's a religious word for shutting them down. And I said, Your Tony Blair isn't even allowed to mention God. All his people are saying in your newspapers, We in England are not into the God stuff. Do you want me to say something nice? I said, You need an awakening of your kids. You're going to hell. You've lost a whole generation. And it didn't come from some kind of boasting. I wasn't standing on a pulpit. I went there weeping. I fasted and I wept while I was there for these kids. And I saw one boy standing on the street there, just cursing a blue streak, ready to burst into McDonald's and cause havoc, drunk as he could be. He came out and I grabbed him. God's Spirit came on me. I pulled him on the side and I said, Son, that's not you. That's not you. You're not like that. And he bowed his head. He looked at me. Something came over him. He said, Mister, I don't know who you are, but I'm sick inside. I spoke at Westminster Chapel, the great church of E. Stanley Jones. And the place jammed. It's a minister's conference, but young people came and invaded the balconies. And when I gave the invitation, they ran into the prayer room. And we have some pictures of them weeping and wailing. Weeping and wailing, so hungry for God. And the young lady stands there, about 18 years of old, and said, Mr. Wilkins, I can't cry. The church, and it's a state church, has taken my faith and robbed me. I feel nothing. The church took it from me. If we ever needed prophets, if we ever needed weeping and wailing in the house of God, I preached in that church a message I preached here, a call to anguish. And I can hardly get through it. But I'm not a screaming prophet. Folks, it's going to take more than we have been willing to give. But you see, the only way the joy comes, the only way the peace, and if it doesn't come that way, it's not real peace, it's just a phony peace. And it won't last in the hard times. And you see, because this man had, he said, his word, this is Jeremiah, his word is in my heart a burning fire set up in my bones. His word is a fire in my bone. And because the word was a fire in his bone, because he knew how to weep and get the heart of God. But listen to what he says. See, he gets the mind of God. The Lord hath pronounced evil against Israel, and the Lord has given me knowledge of it, and I knew it, and he showed me all their doings. You see, a mother who prays doesn't have to have somebody call or knock on the door and say, hey, your kid is in trouble, your kid's messed up. She prays and she knows God speaks and reveals things. And same with pastors who seek the face of God, mothers and fathers and wives who seek God. You don't have to tell them. They sense it. God speaks to their heart. God speaks. Jeremiah says, I've been on my face. And he says, God hath pronounced evil against Israel, and the Lord has given me knowledge of it, and I knew it. This church was not surprised by 9-11. We didn't know when or where. Every pastor here knew it, that something was coming. There was an awareness of judgment. Remember the weeping, the silence that God sent. Finally, Daniel in Daniel 9-3 sums up this man, and here's the pattern in full. Listen to it. This burning hunger for the Word of God, this saturation of the Word of God, and this obedience to the Word of God, the fasting, the praying, and the brokenness. Listen to Daniel. I sent my face. Here's a man who said, I prepared. Another man says, I engaged my heart. This man says, I set my heart. Same thing, Daniel 9-3. I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years whereof the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet. Here's a man who's showing us that he's a man of the Word. He's a man who's been studying all the books. I want you before I close to go to Daniel, the 10th chapter, and see it for yourself. I want you to see what happens to a man who takes this path. Daniel 10, let's start verse 5. Then I lifted up mine eyes and looked, and behold, a certain man clothed in linen, whose lords were girded with the fine gold of Euphrates. His body also was like pearl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude. And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, for the men that were with me saw not the vision, but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore, I was left alone and saw this great vision. I was left alone and I saw this great vision. Look at me, please. When Daniel was first taken to captivity, he set his standard. He would not associate with any wicked people. So we know, there's no question, that the men who were with him had to be believers. They had to be of his own kind. And suddenly, theophany. Here's the appearance. I believe this is Christ. He appears, and I'll tell you, he appears as lightning, brilliance, and his voice thunders like many waters. And Daniel says, I alone heard it. And you read this sentence that is shocking. And the men with me saw not the vision. They feared. They fled. They didn't see. They were afraid, and they ran. Why? Was Daniel the only one? And why couldn't men see and hear thundering voices from heaven? Why couldn't they see? Folks, there's only one thing that causes anybody to run from the presence of almighty God, and that's hidden sin. No other reason. They didn't see. They didn't hear. And we have people that can sit in this church and have done so under my preaching and the preaching of all these dear pastors. And you've been here for a long time, and you still haven't seen, you haven't heard, and you're still running. Not allowed the Holy Spirit to come yet and break you by the word, and the fear of the Lord has been shunned. Folks, more and more, I'm going to close. More and more, every day, I'm more and more aware of that hour that I'm going to stand before the judgment seat. And when there's a separation, sheep and goats, folks, that has nothing to do with nations. The Greek, there is peoples. There are no sheep nations. Name one sheep nation on the face of the earth with all its vileness. There are no sheep nations. These are people who are going to be separated. And Saul's going to be there. And I think of that day when Saul, king of Israel, stands there, and the books are open, and he's judged. I don't know. I'm not going to tell you what his end was. I don't know. But this one thing I do know, I believe that the Lord would probably, I think of this, what if the Lord on that day says, And here's what he was told, remember? He said, I wonder if the Lord was so in what could have been. If you had been a broken man, if you had not allowed pride and jealousy to enter your heart, if you had been obedient to the word of the Lord, if you had been a man of the word to read it and do it and obey it. But let me show you what would happen. I wonder if the Lord wouldn't have just, will he open it up and show him a picture of a graying, godly king who's honored throughout the face of the earth, as was Solomon for a season, and show a picture as a mentor over young David and how proud David was of his spiritual father, and how the great honor and the blessing of God that would have been on his life and his son, David's best friend in royal robes, and on down the line, show him finally how he became a part of the seed of the coming Messiah, and said, Saul, this is what I had in mind for you. This is what you missed. To see a picture of what could have been. And folks, I don't want to stand before God one day and the Lord say to me, David, let me show you what could have been. If you hadn't turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, if you hadn't walked in your pride, if you had just obeyed the word of God that you heard, I don't ever want to stand that way and have a picture shown me of what could have been. What could have been. I'm not playing on your emotions. I'm telling you, friends, right now, God doesn't want you to stand before him one day and show you what could have been. All your children serving the Lord, your family. A great prophet friend of mine had two sons in the ministry and one son in rebellion. I used to talk to him about it. He carried a broken heart even to his grave for that son. And that son died at a young age. And I grieved over it until I heard someone tell me that just before he died, he gave his heart to the Lord in a wonderful way. And I tell you, God honored that prophet. God honored him. And God will honor you if you set your heart. It's a conscious decision. It's one I make every day. God, I'm going to focus. That's the one word the Holy Ghost gives me And where I go now, focus. Focus. Keep your eye on the prize. The high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Keep your eye focused. Folks, nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. I want to go out with the hand of God on me. I want to go out with a rejoicing broken heart because only the broken hearted man or woman of God knows how to rejoice in the Lord. Will you stand? All folks, it's good news, isn't it? That God desires to save our families. God wants us to have a hatred for sin because it wounds his heart. Did you see the pattern? Into the Word? Back to fasting and prayer? Getting the burden of the Lord in his mind? It's nothing complicated about it. Setting the heart. Engaging the heart. Preparing the heart to seek the Lord. Thank you, Father, for the love you're putting in our hearts for the Word. God, let Times Square Church forever, as long as it exists, be a church of the Word. A hunger and a thirst that our people be established in the Word of God. That every pastor that stands at this pulpit will have come fresh from the heart of God in this Word. That we spend more and more time here in your Word. Not just with our books, but with this Word. The books are fine, but Lord, get us back totally into this Word. And I pray, Lord, for the congregation that you keep us. When we hear Pastor Carter and Pastor Neal and Pastor Patrick and others leading us into times of fasting and prayer, let it be with a joy in our hearts because we know that the Holy Ghost is calling us to something deeper. He's calling us to a way of the cross. Lord, then your yoke becomes easy. Then your burden becomes light. Some of you that are visiting here may not understand all that you've seen and heard in this service. It may be a little strange to you, but one thing I would hope that you comprehend. I would trust and pray that you sensed and knew something in your heart of the presence of God here. That you felt and you experienced something of God's heart here. And if you came, especially if you're here now, some of you haven't even stepped out of your seat, but God can meet you right where you're standing. And in all the overflow rooms and wherever you're at, watching on screen, the Lord can meet you right where you're at. For you that came forward, I don't have the slightest idea why you came. Only the Lord does. He's the mind reader. He knows why you're here. But I know one thing, that you come with the willingness that God would take everything out of your life that would be a roadblock to his full blessings. And you want that out of your heart. God moves quickly. Oh, how quick God comes. He'd come and touch you. He can put his hand on you right now by a conscious decision. First of all, for those who've come forward with a cold heart, you've left your first love, I want to lead you in prayer. And those that are coming to Christ for the first time, I want you to pray this prayer with me. The prayer itself won't save you, but the heart in it will. The reality of your coming, the Bible said, with the heart man believes, with his mouth he confesses. With his mouth he confesses. So if you're going to believe in your heart, I'm going to lead you in a confession of your mouth. We don't do this in the hidden back room, we do it openly. Jesus said, if you're ashamed of me, before men I'll be ashamed of the word of the Father. We're not ashamed here in this church to publicly confess Christ as Lord. Pray this with me. Dear Jesus, I come to you now for cleansing and healing. I want you, Jesus, forgive me. I surrender and give you my all. Oh Lord Jesus, put your hand on me. Oh Holy Spirit, fill my heart. Fill my life and give me power to go on serving you for the rest of my life. I surrender by faith in Jesus' name. Now I want those that are digging forward because you felt convicted perhaps, whatever it is, I want you to pray this with me right now. Lord Jesus, I'm asking you to put a hunger for the word in my heart beyond anything I've known. And here and now, at this time, and at this place, I want you to open your eyes when you say this. Just open your eyes. You don't have to look at me just with an open eye. I don't want this just to be an emotional thing. I want it to be a conscious decision. In Jesus' name, say it. I make a conscious decision to study the word intensely. I make a conscious decision to seek God in prayer and fasting as I am led by the pastors and by the church and by the Holy Ghost. All right, if you meant that, just give him thanks. Give him thanks. Lord, I give you thanks. I make a conscious decision Every message that's preached while I'm gone, I hear about it. And I've been hearing some powerful things. And you see, whether I'm here, Pastor Carter, Pastor Neal, Pastor Patrick, God's going to be calling us to more and more fasting and prayer and seeking His face. And when that is called, make your decision to do that. Amen. Now is the time, if you believe that, the Bible says, you know how the joy came to Israel after the repenting? It was just an announcement. It came by announcement. No more weeping. The joy of the Lord is your strength. I'm making an announcement. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Hallelujah.